Femfest
I am in Oregon today, as I will be the keynote speaker at Southern Oregon University's inaugural Femfest, "an all day celebration and exploration of intersectional feminisms with presentations, workshops, and performances by students, staff, faculty, and community members," and I will be giving a workshop on rape culture. I'll be traveling home all day tomorrow, so I'll see you back here Wednesday. With, naturally, a full report including the text of my address. :)
Open Thread
This week's open threads have been brought to you by my favorite cookies.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Photo of the Day
Thousands of Volunteers Welcome Batkid to San Francisco:
Five-year-old Miles already has experience fighting villains - he's been facing off with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since he was 20 months old.All the blubs forever.
With his cancer in remission and his last bout of chemotherapy finished in June, his biggest wish was to continue living his life heroically. "He wanted to be Batman," said Patricia Wilson, the Make-A-Wish Foundation's Bay Area executive director.
We can do that, Wilson thought, and she began putting the call out to volunteers to help turn San Francisco into Gotham City for a day for the boy from Tulelake (Siskiyou County).
It might as well have been a worldwide Bat-Signal. Word of the foundation's efforts spread quickly on social media, and soon what started as a small effort to make a 5-year-old boy a hero for the day turned into a citywide extravaganza, with support and volunteers coming in from all over.
More:
#sfbatkid
10,000 Volunteers Have Turned San Francisco into Gotham City So a 5-Year-Old with Cancer Can Be Batman.
PHOTOS: Batkid Plays Hero for a Day in San Francisco.
(And, yes, I realize the whole "rescue the damsel" thing is problematic, but you know what? His cancer is in remission, and let's hope he has a long life ahead of him in which he can, among other things, learn all about stupid tropes. Today, he is a superhero.)
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Child abandonment.]
"I think my dog saved the baby's life. I'm very proud of her."—Roger Wilday, whose 9-year-old German Shepherd, Jade, discovered an abandoned baby in a park while the pair were out for a walk.
Roger Wilday was walking his 9-year-old dog on Oct. 31 when Jade disappeared into some bushes. When she refused to come when he called, Wilday went looking for her and found her lying beside a discarded bag.Blub.
"I walked over and saw a carrier bag — then I saw it move," Wilday told the Birmingham Mail. "I thought it was a bag of kittens, but then I saw her little arms and a head, and the baby started to cry."
Wilday called the police, who immediately transported the infant — who was only 24 hours old and still had the umbilical cord attached — to the hospital.
Based on the 6-pound baby's temperature, police believe she’d been in the park no more than 30 minutes.
"Pediatricians have confirmed the baby was lucky to be found when she was as even just a few more hours exposed to the elements could have had fatal consequences," Birmingham East Police Chief Inspector Ian Green said in a Facebook post.
A spokesman for the police say the baby — whom nurses have named Jade after Wilday's dog — is doing well and is expected to be placed with a foster family in the next few days.
TV Corner: Scandal
[Content Note: Discussion of sexual assault and violence. Spoilers for the most recent episode of Scandal.]
Mellie and Fitz.
Last night's episode of Scandal was so upsetting for so many different reasons, I'm not even going to try to do one of my typically silly recaps of the episode. Here is what we learned, in a combination of flashbacks to the early days of Mellie's and Fitz's marriage, and contemporary scenes of the current state of their marriage, along with scenes of Liv and her team investigating Remington, the top-secret mission in which Fitz shot down the commercial airliner on which Liv's mother was a passenger:
1. Fitz was a reluctant candidate, even for the governorship of California. He didn't want to run on his military record, because he was ashamed of it.
2. Cyrus once had a wife and a beard. (Get it?)
3. Fitz's father is a garbage nightmare of epic proportions. We already knew he was a terrible, abusive asshole, but it turns out he is a rapist, too. And quite likely the biological father of Mellie's and Fitz's son Jerry. God, I hate that guy SO MUCH. I hate him almost as much as I hate how, for many viewers, Mellie has from Day One been The Bitch to Unilaterally Hate, as if every character on the show isn't complex parts of good and bad and everything in between, as if every character isn't a bundle of contradictions defined by the extraordinary circumstances of their extraordinary lives, and now lots of reviews of last night's episode are treating the rape as a catch-all explanation for Mellie being (supposedly) irredeemably unlikable, because rape is either so insignificant that it means nothing or so encapsulating that it means everything, depending on how a survivor needs to be defined by other people. And it is enraging to me that the only thing that has finally managed to get lots of people to see Mellie as fully human is seeing her be raped by her father-in-law. I could go on and on and on and on forever, but I will leave it there. For now.
4. Abby forced a hug on Olivia. Did not like. (But Olivia enjoyed her consent-free hug.)
5. Charlie forced a kiss on Quinn. Did not like. (But Quinn enjoyed her consent-free kiss.)
6. Mellie convinced Big Jerry to tell Fitz what he needed to hear in order to run for governor. And he did it, so she wouldn't report him for rape. Holy hell.
7. Fitz is still having Olivia followed and getting reports on her, because their relationship is super healthy.
8. Mellie feels like the minimum she is owed in exchange for all the things she's done for Fitz (things of which he clearly doesn't know the half) is his friendship. Is his showing up for her. And, at least for the next five minutes, he agrees.
9. Vice President Sarah Michele Palinbachmann's husband likes boys. (Saw that one coming from a million miles away.)
10. Charlie tricked Quinn into murdering someone who was crucial to Liv's investigation of Remington. And saved footage of her doing it. And now she belongs to B-613. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.
11. Liv's mom is alive. (Also saw that one coming from a million miles away. BUT I STILL LOVED IT.) And she is being held in detention by Liv's monster-father.
12. Fitz didn't know before this that Command was Liv's dad?! Whoa. Welp, he knows now.
Discuss!
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by plushy squirrels.
Recommended Reading:
Aura: [Content Note: Racism; violence] Second-Degree Murder and Other Charges for Man Suspected of Killing Renisha McBride
Trudy: [CN: Racism; white supremacy; silencing; violence] There is no argument that can be made to justify the killing of Renisha McBride.
Annalee: [CN: Sexual harassment and assault] Kid Flash the Super Creep: The Problem with "Funny Harassment"
Rachel: [CN: Hostility to consent; NB: Not only women need access to a full spectrum of reproductive options] Researchers Explain How Anti-Abortion Legislation Threatens Women's Health
Kenneth: [CN: Sexual violence; oppression] Sexual Violence: Why It Can Destroy Us All
Moya: [CN: Misogynoir; classism; hetero- and ciscentrism; violence] An Open Letter to Nelly
And lastly, something on the lighter side: Are Silent Farts Worse Than Audible Farts? [video]
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Daily Dose of Cute
Dudley, Lord of Snugglesworth, would like to offer a cozy cuddle to anyone who wants one.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Martha & The Vandellas: "Dancing in the Street"
This week's TMNS brought to you by Motown.
The Feminists
[Content Note: Policing.]
In the last week, both Miley Cyrus and Courtney Stodden, two young white women who have been widely criticized for many of their choices and means of expressing their sexuality, have said that they are feminists.
And there has been lots of pushback on those assertions.
First, let me say very clearly that I believe the feminist and womanist critiques of, as a keenly relevant example, Miley Cyrus' racist appropriation is both valid and necessary. There is a distinction, and one that I don't personally find all that difficult to make, between critiques of expressions of privilege and policing women's personal choices. And I think there's a lot of deliberate blurring of that distinction that is used to discredit women of color who engage in critiques of privilege.
Secondly, let me say that I'm not in the business of auditing other women's feminism. If a woman says she's a feminist, it isn't my place to tell her that she isn't. And I don't think there are any women who have the freedom to live undilutedly feminist lives, who never have to compromise on their ideals in order to survive or avoid harm. If a failure to perfectly exemplify and embody feminism at all times is a disqualifying act, then none of us are feminists.
Thus, if Miley Cyrus and Courtney Stodden say they're feminists, then it isn't my business to say otherwise.
So this post is not about whether I think Miley Cyrus and Courtney Stodden are feminists. It's about the fact that I find it really interesting, and really rather hopeful, that these young women are openly identifying as feminists.
Certainly, their vision of feminism is different than mine (and my vision of feminism is also different than what it was when I was 20 years old), but the women who are most likely to come to a broad, inclusive, empowered vision of feminism are the ones who first identify as feminists.
There are a lot of young girls who follow every move these young women make. And they will hear that their idols say that they are feminists. And maybe that will make them seek out feminism, and the feminists and womanists who can give them something substantial that will make them see the world in a new way, that will exhort them to examine their privileges, that will value their humanity.
Not everyone agrees with me that it is not feminists' job to publicly audit declarations of feminism. In which case, I hope the auditors will not admonish Miley Cyrus and Courtney Stodden to stop calling themselves feminists, but instead to urge them to robustly embrace more and ever more feminism.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today.
[Content Note: Homophobia] In Indiana, Sarah Bray has been prohibited by a hospital from visiting her partner Jennifer Clemmer. The hospital is defending this garbage on the basis that the two women are only "friends," which is a neat trick since same-sex couples are not allowed to be legally married in the state. This is also a violation of federal law, as, in 2010, President Barack Obama signed a memorandum "requiring hospitals that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding to grant visitation rights to same sex partners." My friend K, who sent me this link, noted via email (which I am sharing with permission): "I'm not sure about all the legal ins and outs, but in the (highly unlikely) case that the Obama administration needs to make good on its promise to yank Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services funding for this kind of bullshit, it should be interesting. The Franciscan Alliance is huge—14 hospitals throughout Indiana (and the Chicago 'burbs), and 18,000 employees. They can't afford to lose federal funding, but the Obama administration (and Indiana) needs the Alliance every bit as much as the Alliance needs CMS. Which is reason 293,234,941 why it's a shitty idea to rely on private organizations to provide public services."
Forty percent of the undercover operatives in the US National Clandestine Service are now women. Here's a great article in which some of them talk about their experiences and the history of fighting for inclusion. Over at The Mary Sue, Susana pulls an interesting quote from CIA director John Brennan: "We cannot expect the people who look like me to really understand what's going on in far parts of the world… I have obviously lived among women my entire life, but I have not seen the world through a woman's eyes. I have not experienced different things as a woman." Wow!
In, ahh, less awesome news about our clandestine services: The CIA "is secretly collecting bulk records of international money transfers handled by companies like Western Union—including transactions into and out of the United States—under the same law that the National Security Agency uses for its huge database of Americans' phone records, according to current and former government officials." Swell.
Janet Yellen, President Obama's nominee to head the Fed, said at her confirmation hearing yesterday that income inequality "is a very serious problem" and that austerity is entrenching that inequality. Love her.
JPMorgan Chase called off its Twitter question-and-answer session after it got zillions of tweets that were either inappropriate or were asking hard questions about the company's business practices. Whoops! In an email, a spokesperson for JPMC wrote: "#Badidea! Back to the drawing board!" Ha ha! Guess they're not too big to fail after all! BOOM.
[CN: Abuse] China has decided to somewhat relax its one-child policy, allowing couples where one parent is an only child to have two children. They have also decided to end their "re-education through labour" program, which is very good news indeed.
[CN: Child sex abuse] Police in Canada, the US, Australia, and elsewhere have arrested hundreds of people in association with a child p---ography ring that spanned across the globe. Six children were rescued.
[CN: Homophobia] Alec Baldwin is a contemptible asshole with an anger problem, who immediately turns to rank misogyny and/or homophobia whenever he loses his shit. This has been a well-known thing about him for years, so I cannot understand why MSNBC decided to give him his own show. Anyway, he's screamed homophobic epithets at another paparazzo. And then he lied about it on Twitter. Will he suffer any professional consequences, or will MSNBC "lean forward" to stick its head in the fucking sand?
In case you were wondering, Hillary Clinton will not be skydiving anytime soon. Thank Maude we've finally got an answer on that searing question!
"Wow!"
Here is a true fact about me: I love watching people responding to sleight-of-hand magic tricks! It's so fun! I am totally awed by "magicians" who excel at sleight-of-hand, and I loved watching other people be awed by it, too. And, say what you will about David Blaine's magic stunts (Personally, I will say many of them are very stupid! Sorry, David Blaine! Although I do appreciate very much how you ask people's permission to do magic with them when you approach them on the streets! Good job!), but he is a ridiculously talent sleight-of-hand artist. So great!
Anyway. David Blaine has some new magic special airing next week or whatever, and I love this promo with two of my favies: Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad.
Video Description: David Blaine, a thin mixed-race man of 40 wearing a blue t-shirt stands between Bryan Cranston, a thin white man of 57 wearing a grey t-shirt with white writing on it, and Aaron Paul, a thin white man of 34, wearing a plaid button-down shirt. There is a table in front of them, and a deck of cards sits divided into two halves on it, one half face-up and one half face-down. There is a single card to one side, which Blaine returns to the deck.
"Aaron," says Blaine, "what's gonna happen is: You're gonna shuffle—you're gonna shuffle the face-down into the face-up, and you're gonna make the whole deck go back to perfect. So shuffle the face-up into the face-down, mixing it altogether, just like that." Blaine handles the cards, not doing anything noticeable to the cards, and hands them to Paul for shuffling. "Good. And then you're gonna make the whole deck go back to perfect."
Cranston leans over and watches intently while Paul shuffles the cards. "Give it a good shuffle," says Blaine. "Come on, Aaron," urges Cranston. "With a good shuffle—you can do it!" As Paul shuffles the cards, Blaine tells him: "Good, perfect. Just push 'em in. Great. Turn 'em face-down." Paul turns the cards face-down and lays them on the table. Blaine handles the cards, not doing anything noticeable, while instructing Paul: "And—and let's do this: Can you—? You're gonna make the whole deck spread across the entire desk, the entire table." Cranston repeats Blaine's direction to Paul eagerly.
As Paul slowly fans out the cards across the table, some of the cards are turned upright, and of course Blaine pretends to be disappointed. Cranston and Paul don't know what to think. "You know what? The truth is, if I would've shuffled, maybe it would've been different," says Blaine, "but it doesn't... Huh." They all stare at the cards. "Although wait," says Blaine, pointing to the individual turned-up cards. "There's a two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. It's almost like a flush."
"Wow," says Paul. "Not quite though," says Cranston. Blaine totally winds them up by saying, "Well, it's still cool." They agree. They think they're being nice, lol. "It's a straight, though!"
"You know what?" says Blaine. "What's that game with the, uh—it's like poker, but it's on like a bill?"
"Liar's poker," says Cranston.
"Liar's poker!" exclaims Blaine, as if he really couldn't remember, lol. "And it's like—it's like you play with the bills—"
"Yeah," says Cranston. "With the serial numbers on the bills."
"The serial numbers," says Blaine. He turns to Paul. "You shuffled this deck."
"Mm-hmm," says Paul.
Blaine turns back to Cranston. "Where's that bill that you signed before this began?"
Cranston cracks a grin. "The hundred dollar bill?!" Paul says. "Yeah, the one that he signed," Blaine says. "You're not—no way," says Paul, as Cranston reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bill. "No no no no no," says Paul.
Cranston holds up the bill. "You're never seen this before I pulled it out of my pocket," he says to Blaine.
Blaine says, "Can you read me the numbers in between the letters, out loud? Can you read it out loud? The numbers?"
Reading the bill, Cranston says, "It's five, two, six, seven, eight, three, two, four." Paul puts his hands in his hair and makes a hilarious face of disbelief. Cranston drops the bill on the table, and Paul looks at it to confirm the numbers. "WHAT." Paul says. Cranston laughs and claps delightedly.
"Wow!" says Paul. "Wow! Wow! Holy [bleeeeeeeeep]!"
Cranston examines the bill closely. "And, Aaron, you shuffled that deck."
"I shuffled that!" Paul says, his hand on his forehead.
A young, thin white woman who has been off-screen says, "This is one of those moments where I feel like I've watched magic on TV and I'm like: Everyone's in on it, for sure. AND NO ONE IS IN ON IT! Like this is [bleep]ing [wild]! I mean [BLEEP]! Wow!"
Cranston stares at the bill, and Paul takes it from his hand. "I'm keeping this, too," he says. Everyone laughs.
[Via.]
Oh, Senator Ted Cruz.
Welp, at least when he gets voted out of office, he'll have a second career as a comedian:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) faced howls of laughter from an audience in Washington, D.C. on Thursday when he claimed that he "didn't want a shutdown" over President Barack Obama's health care reform law.I can't wait until this guy is running for President. Officially.
At The Atlantic's Washington Ideas Forum, Fox News host Chris Wallace pointed out to the Texas Republican that many of his colleagues thought he hurt the party by forcing the government shutdown instead of letting Obamacare fail on its own.
"That ignores who I think was responsible for the shutdown," Cruz replied. "I didn't want a shutdown. Throughout the whole thing, I said we shouldn't have a shutdown."
That remark elicited laughter from the forum audience.
"Now, folks here can disagree," Cruz said, turning to the crowd. "But repeatedly, I voted to keep the government open."
Ads Update
Yesterday, Shakers Stephen Harred and Clár Uà RÃain generously helped identify the source of the video pop-up ads. It was Site Meter—the traffic counter I have been using nearly the entire time I've been blogging, and for whose service I pay a monthly fee for an upgraded account.
I've removed Site Meter's code from the site, so hopefully no one will get any more pop-up ads. Again, I want to apologize for the ads ever being here.
My profound thanks to Stephen Harred and Clár Uà RÃain for their help, and to everyone who sent me emails or left comments that helped with pinpointing the source. Thank you so, so much.
As for Site Meter, I submitted a ticket to them requesting some accountability for piggybacking on my traffic in order to serve ads for which I was not paid while I was paying them for their service. They have not replied.
Here It Is: The Trailer for Noah!
[Content Note: Brief images of violence in trailer.]
Last month, I brought you the latest exciting news about Darren Aronfsky's Noah, a big-screen version of the Biblical story of Noah and the Ark, starring Russell Crowe, Russell Crowe's beard, and a collection of CGI creatures which are a combination of "slightly tweaked" versions of real animals and "fantastical beings." And now the first trailer is finally here! Huzzah!
Noah, played by white Australian gentleman Russell Crowe with a beard and long hair, awakens to a breezy day and walks outside his hut-home. He stares at a green volcano emitting steam or smoke or unicorn farts. His bare feet are in some black goo. Apple. Snake. Running people. Fire. He sits up in his bed. Phew—it was only a dream! OR WAS IT.
He walks outside and his wife, played by white US lady Jennifer Connolly, asks him, "Noah, what did he say?" I bet she isn't talking about Tom Hardy, who regularly features in my dreams. "He's going to destroy the world," says Noah. Damn, that is definitely not Tom Hardy they're talking about, because he enhances the world in every way.
Some grizzled old man who is almost certainly very wise, played by white Welsh gentleman Sir Anthony Hopkins, wearing a wig that is totally from the Nicolas Cage Awesome Wigz line, says some shit about how if "man continued in his ways, the creator would annihilate this world." The creator? Who is he talking about? Steve Jobs? I bet it's Steve Jobs.
Meteors. "He speaks to you," says Old Dude. "You must trust that he speaks in a way that you can understand." What? That is terrible advice. Being that it makes no goddamn sense.
Noah is underwater. It's so murky! Which is really saying something, because every scene in this trailer is murky, but this water is murky even by comparison. This movie should be called Murk, rather than Noah. Noah has dreamt of water—death by water. Everyone should stop drinking so much water! Is that not what he means?
Lightning. The world is changing quickly. Thunder. A flower grows from the soil. "And I saw new life," says Noah. Earth from space. A giant storm. "A great flood is coming," says Noah, who has shaved his head for reasons unexplained in this trailer. "We build a vessel to survive the storm!"
So, in this version, Steve Jobs doesn't tell him to build an ark, but instead gives him mysterious dreams, and Noah decides on his own that he should build a huge-ass boat. (But not a huge-ass boathouse.) Basically, this is the version where Noah is a Doomsday Prepper.
Build build build. Ark ark ark. Birds. Uh-oh. Here come a bunch of angry white people who want onto the ark. JUST LIKE THE DOOMSDAY PREPPERS ALWAYS SAY WILL HAPPEN! The king of this motley assortment of people who didn't get Steve Jobs' urgent transmission shouts at Noah: "You stand alone and defy me?" And Noah's all, "I'm not alone." MUSIC! BIRDS! ANIMALS MARCHING! THEY'RE ALL GETTING ON THE ARK! Wait a minute—are the animals also Noah's army? Are the oliphants gonna trample the king?!
Snakes slither toward the ark. Bugs amble and buzz toward it. "It begins," says Noah. Yeah, you know what begins? Being bitten by so many snakes and sharing your ark cots with so many bedbugs!
A single raindrop on Noah's face. Birds. (Jesus, is John Woo a creative consultant on this film? "More doves!"—John Woo.) Hordes of running people. "When they come, they will be desperate, and there will be many," says Noah, literally sounding exactly like a paranoid doomsday prepper on the hit NatGeo reality series, Doomsday Preppers.
An army shouts and runs. The king tells them to take the ark. Oh no! Luckily, Steve Jobs has a massive storm waiting for them! SHOULDA BUILT YOUR OWN ARK, SUCKERS!
Noah's wife consoles and pets him. "I see how hard this was for you." Montagery. Hi, Emma Watson! What are you doing in this movie?! Water falls from the sky and SPURTS UP FROM THE EARTH. The ark drifts alone on the murky, roiling sea—and I am once again left to wonder: Why did all the sea creatures get a free pass? The fuck, man?
NOAH: COMING SOON.
