While grocery shopping last weekend, I came upon this amazing Thanksgiving cake display at the market:
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
This is an actual fucking article authored by former EPSN vice president Roxanne Jones and printed at CNN in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and thirteen: "Young men, get a 'yes' text before sex."
Which actually posits that a text message can verify consent, as though it's not possible to ask "Do you want to have sex with me?" followed by a series of any other conceivable questions that might elicit a yes, and then delete the interceding messages to make the "yes" look like a direct reply, irrespective of what the actual reply was.
And actually concludes with this fucking paragraph: "Nobody wants to be a stupid girl. It's time for us girls to smarten up. And it's time for guys to understand—when a girl is way drunk, it doesn't make it open season on her. In fact, it's just the opposite: If she's falling down drunk, stay away, far away."
Stay far away, because we all "know the type—the party girls, the girls who thrive on attention. The girls who will do anything to get a guy to notice them," and then falsely accuse good boys of rape.
Nobody wants to be a stupid girl. It's time for us girls to smarten up. Ms. Jones, I was not raped because I am stupid. I was raped because I had the misfortune of being in the presence of a rapist who was determined to rape me. Fuck off.
[H/T to Jess.]
[Content Note: Classism; appropriation; food insecurity.]
Eastsidekate: Did you happen to see this story on Ann Romney's super awesome family cookbook?
Liss: No, I didn't! You are a Thanksgiving angel (those are definitely a thing, right?) for sending me this amazing link.
Eastsidekate: There's all sorts of horrible things going on (no small bit of making fun of the Romneys for eating the food that poor people from unhip places eat), but: Whose idea was it to publish this cookbook, and how the hell did it become a best seller? I mean, a recipe for how to boil potatoes?
Liss: "The Romney Family Table hails from the tradition of community cookbooks that women have been cobbling together for centuries as a way of handing down family recipes." WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA?
Eastsidekate: Also: Can I call bullshit? I mean, it's plausible that the Romneys regularly eat whatever this kind of white bread cuisine is called, but the whole cookbook strikes me as an extremely condescending attempt to fit in with other gender-normative earth Humans. LOOK I MADE MY MAN A CAKE OUT OF A CAKE MIX LIKE ALL OF YOU OTHER POOR PEOPLE DO. Bull. Shit.
Liss: Welp, the one thing we know for sure is that the Romneys believe that the Romneys are entitled to food.
Eastsidekate: Zing!
Liss: Zing is the secret ingredient in all my recipes.
[CN: weight and body size discussion]
So, I was just outside walking the dog and our friendly mail carrier drove up to deliver the mail. Intending a compliment, I'm sure, he said, "You look--even skinnier, or something." I must have looked a bit stricken as I started mentally checking any signs that I could have lost weight in the last couple months (one of the first questions on my paperwork every time I go to the rheumatologist). He saw me freeze and said, "I though maybe you've been on a diet or something". Such "Have you lost weight?"-type "compliments" are likely reflexive, especially during the holidays perhaps.
I had the urge to drop it, but I told him that I got a funny look on my face because I have a chronic autoimmune illness that causes intermittent rapid weight loss, and I was already chronically underweight, so my doctors follow my weight to make sure it's stable. He seemed receptive and wide-eyed: "Oh, really!?", like he had no idea one could actually be too thin, or that thinness is not necessarily a sign of health. Maybe it was over-sharing, but I want him to think twice before commenting on someone's size and/or weight and/or dietary habits the next time. Or maybe he'll just think I'm a weirdo--fine.
If he wants to hand out compliments with the mail, he should probably stick to stuff like, "Hey--cool boots!" I had some seriously cool boots on and everything.
This blogaround brought to you by whiskers.
Recommended Reading:
Von: [Content Note: Exploitation; racism; misogyny; class warfare] Retailers Turn Thanksgiving into Black Thursday [Infographic]
Emelia: [CN: Racism; misogyny; body policing] A "Bad Hair" Day
Maria: [CN: War on agency] I Have a Question!
Jon: Memo to Media: Employers Have Been Slashing Insurance, Shifting Costs for Years
Christopher: [CN: Exploitation] On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
BYP: [CN: Guns] Police Find Multiple Guns, Lots of Ammo at Zimmerman's Home
Mindy: [CN: Fat hatred; body policing; misogyny] A Little More Research Wouldn't Have Hurt
Christian: [CN: Homophobia; slurs] Scottish Football Ref Expelled for Speaking Out on Homophobic Abuse
Finally: My thanks to Andrea and Tami at Squeezed Between Feminisms for including me on their "The Feminist New Crew" list. Also: I am recommending it because I hope you will go check out all the amazing feminists, womanists, and other gender equality warriors whom they've included in their compilation.
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
"The way sexism visits white women and women of color, including black women, is similar in its devastation but often unique in its practice."—Tami Winfrey-Harris, in a 2012 piece for Clutch magazine, "A Black Mom-in-Chief is Revolutionary: What White Feminists Get Wrong about Michelle Obama."
@Blackamazon had occasion to link that piece again today, and I just love that quote so much. So concise. Perfect.
It totally encapsulates why I am pro-choice in all things.
Similar in its devastation but often unique in its practice. We do not always see the ways in which our own lived experiences differ from the lived experiences of other women. Privilege makes it difficult to see those differences. Segregation makes it difficult to see those differences. The human urge to universalize our experiences makes it difficult to see those differences.
We must have an expansive understanding of the breadth of women's experiences, and how they interact with a culture we understand best from our own limited perspectives, and how those disparate interactions affect individual spectrums of choice and opportunity and personal narrative.
One cannot do any sort of meaningful ally work with other women without listening and understanding these words.
Similar in its devastation but often unique in its practice.
UPDATE: See also this great piece by Mikki Kendall: "For Black Women, Everything Is a Feminist Issue."
Here is some stuff in the news today!
[Content Note: Homophobia; illness] Chicago couple Patricia Ewert and Vernita Gray will be the first same-sex couple to marry in Illinois, as "a federal judge intervened this week and allowed the two women, in their mid-60s, to get an expedited marriage license as Gray suffers from terminal cancer." All the blubs.
President Obama is not having it with the opposition to the Affordable Care Act: "Yes, we're going to continue to implement the health care law. The product is good, people want it... Anybody who's going to keep on pushing against that, they will meet my resistance, because I am willing to fix any problems that there are, but I'm not going to abandon people to make sure that they've got health insurance in this country."
[CN: Animal cruelty; there are images of injured animals at the link] This is a long and difficult but very important read about the American Humane Association and its bullshit "No Animals Were Harmed" trademark accreditation seen at the end of film and TV credits.
[CN: Misogyny] Breaking News: Women can't win when it comes to asking for more money from employers.
[CN: Racism] Conservative dipshit Dinesh D'Souza tweeted "I am thankful this week when I remember that America is big enough and great enough to survive Grown-Up Trayvon in the White House!" yesterday, and then deleted it. Because principles. Gotta love (not love) people who think that calling someone "Trayvon Martin" is an insult.
[CN: Rape culture; sexual violence] Jess on Jameis Winston, the Florida State quarterback who is accused of raping a woman a year ago and still hasn't faced charges, and the Overlapping of Football Culture and Rape Culture.
[CN: Guns] Sure: "Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt recently warned unarmed Americans that he had found firearms in the Bible, and that was proof that God was 'judging' unarmed Americans and 'blessing' the gun owners."
Here are just a million great pictures of dog photobombing photos. Enjoy!
[Content Note: Racism; misogynoir; body- and choice policing.]
Yesterday, I wrote about Vanessa VanDyke, a twelve-year-old black girl who was threatened with expulsion from Faith Christian Academy in Orlando, because administrators claim that her natural hair is a "distraction."
Now, school administrators are saying that Vanessa won't be expelled for failing to cut her hair, if she "styles it differently."
Vanessa said she doesn't want to cut her hair and doesn't want to straighten it, either. At the same time, she also doesn't want to leave her classroom at Faith Christian Academy and her friends.What a fun holiday for their family!
After Local 6's original story aired, school administrators changed their requests of Vanessa and her family.
"We are not asking her to put products in her hair or to cut her hair," read a statement sent to Local 6. "We are asking her to style her hair within the guidelines according to the school handbook."
The handbook does not cite large or frizzy hair, noting only, "Mohawks, shaved signs, rat tails, etc."
[Vanessa's mother, Sabrina Kent] said she and Vanessa are going to talk about their options over Thanksgiving.
[Content Note: Homophobia; misogyny.]
Following his suspension after he was filmed shouting homophobic epithets at a paparazzo, Alec Baldwin's MSNBC show has been canceled. *sad trombone* And obviously he has great things to say about it, because he's terrific.
Naturally, one wonders why it is that MSNBC hired him in the first place, since this wasn't the first time that Baldwin has done precisely this thing.
I suppose they had a fun little sit-down where Baldwin promised, pinky swore, crossed his heart that he wouldn't ever do it again.
Here's a little bit of advice to "progressive" news organizations—or anyone, really—considering hiring someone: If you have to make someone's employment contingent on their promise to not ever scream hateful epithets at other people in the middle of the street, maybe don't hire them.
Suggested by Shaker HollywoodMarie: "What is the weirdest story from your life?"
There are a lot of weird stories from my weird life, but perhaps none so weird as this one: Once, I randomly met a dude online. He lived 4,000 miles away. We have been married for 11 years.
From the Telegraph's Pictures of the Day for 26 November 2013: British photographer Alex Bradbury, from Leamington Spa, walked over a glacier to reach this waterfall falling through crystal clear ice caves. The hidden caverns of ice appear temporarily at the edge of glaciers, in this case at the south side of Vatnajokull National Park in South-East Iceland. The lack of air in the ice means that it absorbs all visible light, apart from the blue fraction which creates the stunning colours. [ALEX BRADBURY / CATERS NEWS]Wow. It's always amazing to me how parts of the Earth can look so alien.
Who are these men who say things like women aren't funny, women aren't smart, women aren't tough, women can't do X, women are less than? They're men who have apparently never met any women, that's who.
Ha ha just kidding. They've definitely met women. They just don't listen to them.
[Content Note: Fat hatred; "headless fatties" imagery.]
Shaker nefernika sent this along by email, which I am sharing with hir permission (emphasis original):
Everything about this terrible article is terrible, from the "headless fatty" photo (of "two overweight women in New York"), even though the article is about the midwest, to the lede ("Want to shed the love handles? Put down the doughnut and go for a walk. Or, perhaps, think twice about pressing your doctor for antibiotics.") which places the blame for antibiotic overuse squarely on the patient and within the narratives of uncontrollable gluttony attributed to fat people, to the rest of the article. The whole article is about something outside of personal eating habits that may affect weight, and yet the way it's written is designed to maintain all kinds of fat hate. Definitely a candidate for "worst thing you may read all day."This is, genuinely, one of the worst pieces of mendacious fat-hating shit I've read in awhile. Which is really saying something.
[T]he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urges patient and physician alike to use antibiotics prudently. But doctors still prescribe antibiotics for people with colds or the flu — although the drugs are toothless against viruses — to appease insistent patients.So...doctors are inexplicably prescribing antibiotics to "appease insistent patients" (and we all know how inclined most doctors are to indulge the whims of their fat patients), and doctors need advice and guidelines about how to correctly prescribe antibiotics. (That is understandable! There is a lot of information for doctors to keep track of!) But somehow it's still fat patients' fault.
...Guidelines published this month give pediatricians the clearest advice yet about when to use the drugs and when to pass. They include a cheat sheet to better diagnose maladies and to better match the right antibiotic with a particular form of infection.
So nix the pastries. Go for a stroll.Perfect.
[Content Note: Racism; misogynoir.]
[Content Note: Classism.]
Sing it, sister:
Pope Francis has attacked unfettered capitalism as "a new tyranny", urging global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality in the first major work he has authored alone as pontiff.Of course, the difference between Pope Francis and me is that he leads a massive international organization that has literally billions of dollars of holdings in real estate and art alone, and I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to afford the payments on my used Ford Focus.
The 84-page document, known as an apostolic exhortation, amounted to an official platform for his papacy, building on views he has aired in sermons and remarks since he became the first non-European pontiff in 1,300 years in March.
In it, Francis went further than previous comments criticising the global economic system, attacking the "idolatry of money" and beseeching politicians to guarantee all citizens "dignified work, education and healthcare".
He also called on rich people to share their wealth. "Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills," Francis wrote in the document issued on Tuesday.
Called Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), the exhortation is presented in Francis's simple and warm preaching style, distinct from the more academic writings of former popes, and stresses the church's central mission of preaching "the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ".Well, that's generous.
In it, he reiterated earlier statements that the church cannot ordain women or accept abortion. The male-only priesthood, he said, "is not a question open to discussion" but women must have more influence in church leadership.
[Content Note: War on agency; religious supremacy. NB: Not only women need access to contraception.]
The Supreme Court has agreed to consider "a new challenge to President Obama's Affordable Care Act and decide whether employers with religious objections may refuse to provide their workers with mandated insurance coverage of contraceptives."
The cases accepted by the court offer complex questions about religious freedom and equality for female workers along with an issue the court has not yet confronted: whether secular, for-profit corporations are protected by the Constitution or federal statute from complying with a law because of their owners' religious beliefs.Two lower courts came back with divided opinions on the mandate, so SCOTUS will play referee.
