Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker masculine_lady: "What's your ideal day off?"
Having no obligations. Not even looking at the internet. Spending time with people I love. Cooking a nice meal.
Dispatches from America 2.0
Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life [as well as Xbox Live], conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.Keystone Snoops.
Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.
The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.
...But for all their enthusiasm — so many CIA, FBI and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a "deconfliction" group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat.
I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear that there have been no reported intelligence successes from spying on gamers.
And What Is the Cost of Demonization?
[Content Note: Disablism; gun violence.]
Last month, the Obama administration enacted new rules requiring health insurers to provide parity in coverage for treatment of mental illness and physical illness. (That is kind of a shitty distinction, since the brain is a crucial part of the body, but it's a distinction that is routinely used in these discussions.) At the time, I noted that they were doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, as they justified the new guidelines by invoking the Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre.
As if the primary reason for requiring access to mental healthcare is not because people with mental illness need and deserve care, but to stop people with mental illness from harming The Normals.
(Never mind, as always, the fact that people with mental illness are much more likely to be victimized by violence than be perpetrators of violence.)
Anyway.
Today, Vice President Joe Biden announced "$100 million towards improving access to mental health services and facilities." Which, again, is terrific. But, again, the justification is prevention of mass violence.
In a statement, the White House said the funds would be made available to increase access to services and improve mental health facilities. The funding comes both from the new health care law and from the Department of Agriculture.You know, associating all people with mental illness with mass shooters every time you announce a mental health initiative comes at a steep cost to people with mental illness. And that $100 million is terrific, but it won't buy us an existence free of stigma.
"The fact that less than half of children and adults with diagnosable mental health problems receive the treatment they need is unacceptable," Biden said. "The President and I have made it a priority to do everything we can to make it easier to access mental health services, and today's announcements by the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture build on that commitment."
Biden was slated to make the announcement at the White House at a meeting with families of the Newtown victims.
And, the thing is, this harmful conflation doesn't serve any purpose other than feeding bullshit narratives about "crazy" lone gunmen that are comforting in their service to absolving collective responsibility for violence.
Further, the pretense that access to comprehensive mental healthcare will somehow "solve" this problem elides key realities of some psychological disabilities, like:
1. Not all people with mental illness are dangerous, and not all killers are mentally ill, i.e. meeting any standard of psychiatric diagnosis. (Again, being mentally ill makes one more likely to be victimized by violence than to perpetrate it.)
2. Not all killers who are mentally ill can be helped by psychiatric care. This is The Thing we don't want to talk about at all—that there are dangerous people who can't be "fixed" by all the mental healthcare in the world. Most of these people currently end up in (and out of and in and out of) the prison system.
3. In addition to the continuing stigma around seeking care for mental illness, perpetuated and entrenched by ill-informed public "debates" that demonize people with mental illness, some mental illnesses themselves inhibit care-seeking. Relying on people with mental illness to "flag" themselves in need of care, especially men prone to aggression and violence, is not a realistic expectation. And an increasingly fantastical one the more that mental illness is stigmatized.
4. Some perpetrators of mass shootings, like Naval Yard shooter Aaron Alexis, had sought help for mental illness. Mental healthcare access is not magic.
I am totally and unreservedly in support universal access to comprehensive psychiatric care. I believe universal healthcare to be a human right. And I wish that this administration could expand access to mental health services without reflexively attaching it to violent murder.
But apparently it's more important to look like they're "doing something" about gun violence while doing fuck-all about access to guns than it is to extend people with mental illness both healthcare access and respect.
Related Reading:
• In Pursuit of Doing Something Meaningful.
• An Observation About Mental Illness.
• Today in Terrible Ideas.
Photo of the Day
Last night, I tweeted this image of my great-great aunt, who was a Vaudevillian acrobat, but, for those who aren't on Twitter or those who missed it but may find it interesting, I thought I'd repost it here:
I love this pic so much. Her stoic expression. "No hands, assholes!" Everything about it is perfect. It might end up a tattoo someday.
I'm not sure, by the way, who is balanced across the tops of her feet, but she toured and performed with her husband, my great-great uncle, and her nephew, my great-grandfather, so it may well have been one of them.
Quote of the Day
"This is just another step in the evolution of marriage and I know that many couples up and down the country will be hugely excited that they can now plan for their big day and demonstrate their love and commitment to each other by getting married."—British Equalities Minister Maria Miller, announcing that, following the passage of the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act, the first same-sex weddings in England and Wales will be able to take place starting March 29, 2014.
[H/T to Shaker Richard Gadsden.]
My Big Fat Romantic Rebellion
[CN: eating disorders and disordered eating, fat hatred]
So yesterday I was reading a a piece in Slate by Amanda Marcotte, about a new book called How To Disappear Completely. It's written by Kelsey Osgood and draws on her own experiences with anorexia. She argues, in part, that modern anti-anorexia campaigns are ineffective and harmful. The images of starvation used in these campaigns, she suggests, actually read as aspirational to some women and girls, because of our culture's overwhelming adulation of thin-ness.
Now this book seemed pretty interesting, and I was nodding along in the first couple of paragraphs. I was also nodding at the opening of Marcotte's third paragraph, noting we do a bad job in general of talking to teens. Then my brain came to a screeching halt at these amazing sentences [emphasis mine]:
We may think we're saying, "If you make these choices, scary things will happen to you," but what younger audiences often hear is, "These choices are daring and rebellious—even romantic." Need proof? Kids brought up in sex-negative religions have sex on average at younger ages than kids who get more sex-positive messages. One possible reason is that teaching that sex is the forbidden fruit tempts teenagers to get swept up in the moment, whereas sex-positive kids have a more nuanced understanding that allows them to plan their sexual debut carefully. Anti-drug education programs often end up leading kids to believe that all the cool kids use drugs. Research shows that anti-bullying programs, because they detail bullying behavior, often end up teaching kids how to be better bullies. Fat-shaming causes people to eat more, possibly because of stress, and gain weight.
This is truly a marriage of the ridiculous and the obscene.
For one thing, I'm wondering when in the world "obesity" became romantic and rebellious. Don't get me wrong; I think that would be cool as hell. Picture the film scenes:
Fat Rebel Girl roars up to school on her motorcycle in her cool black leathers. She swaggers in the door. Boring teacher-types wag their fingers at her fatness as she strides disdainfully down the hallway. But in every classroom we see her peers straining to catch a glimpse of the Fat Rebel Girl, whom they emulate from her pixie cut to her unfeminist heels. She steps though the swinging doors of the cafeteria like a gunslinger of the Old West. But more fabulous, more fat. A server asks her "Hey, Janey, what are you eating today?" Janey cocks her head and responds with a practiced sneer, "Whaddaya got?" Teens swoon. Authority figures disapprove. And Janey, romantically and rebelliously, eats her damn lunch.
However much I like this scenario (and I do!) I think that the simple act of listening to fat people will confirm it's pretty much fictional. Unlike thinness, fatness (with a few exceptions) is considered axiomatically ugly in our society. Not romantic. Not rebellious.
The entire list of comparisons has some serious problems (having sex is like being a bully?), but I find the embedded fat hatred especially troubling in a piece about finding better ways to address anorexia. For one thing, the linked article doesn't actually support the assertion that fat-shaming causes people to eat more; the study under discussion mentions a range of effects from fat-shaming stress, including binge eating. Binge eating is disordered eating. It is not simply "eating more." Not all fat people are binge eaters. Binge eating does not necessarily make people fat. Again, this is pretty obvious stuff if you listen to fat people.
And reinforcing that if we "eat more," we will develop the dreaded fat, is not exactly helpful in a piece about anorexia. There are people struggling with anorexia and anorexic thinking patterns who are, have been, or will be fat. There are people recovering from anorexia for whom accepting fatness as a normal human state is crucial. There are (many) people who are fat or thin for reasons that have little or nothing to do with their eating. And there are many, many more people whose oppressions intersect in some other way with prejudices regarding fatness and thinness. None of these people benefit from the lies that (a) magical eating formulas keep you from being fat, and (b) you must not be fat because being fat is a terrible thing.
Take it from a Fat Rebel Girl: we cannot tear down one oppression by reinforcing another. It always ends up reinforcing the bullshit idea that any of these prejudices are acceptable, and is especially damaging to people caught in the axes of said oppressions. The really radical rebellion lies in learning to listen to other people's experiences of oppression, to draw the connections between them, and to work on undermining the whole damn kyriarchal mess.
Now excuse me. I'm going to swagger down the hall, and eat my own damn lunch.
Daily Dose of Cute
General Burnside was grown in America.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Please Support Shakesville: End-of-Year Fundraiser
[Click to donate.]
This is, for those who have requested it, your bi-monthly reminder to donate to Shakesville and/or to make sure to renew subscriptions that have lapsed.
It is also the time of year when I ask readers who visit this space and do not generally make donations (but can afford to) to please kick in to support Shakesville and the work we do here.
If you value the content and/or community in this space, please consider setting up a subscription or making a one-time contribution.
If you have appreciated being able to tune into Shakesville for explorations of pro-choice feminism, for getting distilled news about politics or other news, for recaps of your favorite show, or for whatever else you appreciate at Shakesville, whether it's the moderation, the community in Open Threads, Film Corner, video transcripts, the blogarounds, or anything else, please remember that Shakesville is run exclusively on donations. I would certainly appreciate your support, if you are able to chip in. The donation link is in the sidebar to the right. Or click here.
[Further explanation of fundraising is here. Please note that I don't want anyone to feel obliged to contribute financially, especially if money is tight. Aside from valuing feminist work, the other goal of fundraising is so Iain and I don't have to struggle on behalf of the blog, and I don't want anyone else to struggle themselves in exchange. There is a big enough readership that neither should have to happen.]
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today!
One of the biggest secondary news stories from Nelson Mandela's memorial service is President Obama shaking hands with Cuban President Raul Castro. Depending on whom you ask, this is either a show of good will, or the evil machinations of the most dastardly scoundrel on the entire planet. You be the judge!
In related news, CBS played Toto's "Africa" over a montage of footage from Mandela's funeral, because of course they did.
The food stamp deal emerging in Congress will mean no one gets kicked off, but will also include cuts to the program. A program which is already incredibly stingy in the help it provides to its recipients.
[Content Note: Sexual harassment and assault] Former Democratic San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, who sexually harassed and assaulted multiple women, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of false imprisonment and two charges of misdemeanor battery, and has subsequently been sentenced to 90 days of home confinement with no jail time. That seems insufficient.
[CN: Violence; guns] On a grim anniversary, Newtown requests they not be exploited: "Newtown officials asked for privacy and joined victims' families Monday in calling for people to mark the upcoming anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting by performing acts of kindness or volunteering with charities. ...The town has no formal events planned for Saturday, and officials have discouraged the news media from coming to Newtown. 'We are trying to respect the world's interest in us, but we also have a real need in our community to gain a foothold,' First Selectman Pat Llodra said."
[CN: Violence] In what feels like very related news, "new research suggests that PTSD might indeed be transmitted over the airwaves. ...The authors of the study, all from University of California, Irvine, suggested that 24/7 media coverage of traumatic events may exacerbate stress reactions among those who are already vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder by virtue of a past history of mental illness or past experience of traumas. Intensive viewing of such media coverage could not only sustain trauma reactions after they should begin to abate; it could 'unintentionally spread negative impacts beyond the directly exposed area,' they warned."
[CN: Misogyny; body shaming] Lululemon co-founder Chip Wilson has resigned, following comments he made about how "some women's bodies just don't actually work" for Lululemon's yoga pants.
Adam Sandler tops Forbes' 2013 list of overpaid actors. "We estimate that for every dollar Sandler was paid on his last three movies, the films returned an average of $3.40." I can't even believe it's that much.
Bad-ass mountain goats save themselves from an avalanche in the French Alps. The thing I love most about this video is how all the people watching are rooting for them! YAY!
People Are Getting Insured
Yes, the website is still broken. Yes, the system is still infuriatingly glitchy. Yes, the Obama administration needs to sort this shit out. But here is what the people who are arguing to repeal Obamacare, despite having no alternative policy of their own to help uninsured people access healthcare, are seeking to destroy: Not an imperfect website; the very lives of people who are getting health insurance for the first time in years, or ever.
It took two months, weekly visits to the jammed-up federal website and a half-dozen phone calls, but JoAnn Smith finally got health insurance Monday. It'll only cost her $3.19 a month to cover herself and her husband.If you're gonna try to repeal Obamacare, you'd better have a plan to put in its place. Otherwise: STFU. (I'm looking at you, Republicans.)
"I just instantly burst into tears," she says.
...Smith says she called the federal call center several times over the weekend, trying to get signed up. "Every day last week I called them," she says. "Yesterday morning I called early and there was like a 20-minute wait."
So she waited until Monday morning.
"This morning the most loveliest of helpers answered the phone," Smith says. "She said there was a mistake on original application, in that it said I was eligible for workplace insurance. She re-did the whole thing in record time and I don't have to copy my paystubs and get a letter from work."
Smith chose a silver-level plan from Humana, and said it was "totally mind-blowing" to see the $3.19 monthly premium, after a federal subsidy.
Let's Be Radical
[Content Note: Misogyny; choice policing.]
Here is something I wrote once:
I respect women, and I love them. And when I take stock of all the issues disproportionately affecting women across the globe, what I see is lack of respect and love for women so pervasive and profound that to merely assert to love and respect women yet remains a radical act.Here is something else I wrote:
...I love women. I respect women. I trust women. Not as part of some abstract, theoretical feminism but as part of an applied, practical feminism that urges me to love by nonjudgment, respect by listening, trust by supporting individual choices.
There is a difference between not hating women and thinking of them as likable. I have crossed that bridge. And once you are on the other side, you realize how cavernous the space between the shores really is.And here is one more thing:
Thinking of women as likeable in a misogynist culture is truly a radical act.
Recognizing that people are different, that their circumstances and lived experiences and needs are different, is crucial to being expansively pro-choice.Liking women, respecting women, trusting women to make the best choices for themselves is a radical act in a misogynist culture. Being comprehensively pro-choice instead of policing women's choices is a radical act in a culture in which we are exhorted to judge and condemn other women.
So is understanding, and acknowledging, that many women don't have meaningful choices at all, sometimes in multiple areas of their lives.
Thus, here's the question I keep coming back to: How is it feminist to judge a woman's choices when she doesn't have any good ones?
Feminism that is not expansively pro-choice is neither relevant nor accessible for women with limited choices. And I don't know that 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 some very specific definition of privileged feminism at all times is a disqualifying act, then I imagine none of us are feminists.
...We are all, I imagine, keenly aware that there is a feminist yardstick against which women's choices are measured—a yardstick whose increments of acceptable choice vary depending upon in whose hands it's held.
The mainstream feminist movement is compromised by privilege—and unexamined privilege has created a space in which the pernicious culture of judgment can proliferate. Sometimes in the form of overt hostility, as in the case of trans*-exclusive radical feminists who actively seek to deny trans* women a seat at the table. And sometimes in the form of the simple but harmful failure to understand the diversity of demands on the lives of women.
Unexamined privilege makes it terrifically easy to elide that marginalized women are compelled to enact multiple levels of performance and conformance to attain access. For example, the obligation to "turn off" different and/or more parts of our- or themselves in the workplace, in order to be considered "professional," in ways that have nothing to do with basic vocational competency.
Did you make the wise feminist choice to be born with what Corporate America deems professional hair? Or do you need to make a choice to "do something" with your hair that someone else might deem an unfeminist choice?
...There are billions of women on the planet who live their lives making choices every day, and very few, if any, of us have lives so privileged that we can make them in a consequence-free vacuum where the only criteria can be whether they conform to a narrowly-defined version of feminism, the architects of which often casually ignore meaningful disparities in available options among women.
The truth we must recognize is that adherence to a privileged version of feminism is a luxury.
And putting women's choices up for debate ignores that truth.
...One of the most important things I have ever done for my own sense of value, one of the most profound kindnesses I have ever offered to myself, is to take a long look at the deeply unreasonable, inherently condemnatory, nakedly cruel, worth-subverting, oppression-entrenching, target-moving, can't-bloody-win culture of judgment in its impossibly merciless face and tell it to fuck off.
I am not pro-judgment. I am pro-choice.
And, in a world that hates women and holds us in contempt, perhaps the most radical feminist/womanist act is creating space for women to love ourselves.
To hold ourselves in esteem.
Judgment and love are incompatible. Policing and esteem are incompatible.
It is eminently possible to critique the culture in which women's individual choices are made, and the cultural narratives that may affect our decision-making processes, without condemning those individual choices—or the women making them.
Let us be radical. Let us not treat as an aside whatever cultural imperatives inform and oblige women's choices. Let us center the realities of a misogynist culture. Let us center the idea that the way sexism visits privileged and marginalized women "is similar in its devastation but often unique in its practice." Let us replace the instinct to judge one another with the urge to understand one another.
The world looks very different once you replace "I don't think you should feel that way" with "I want to understand why you feel that way."
We will never change the world if we cannot even change the way we approach it.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker P.M.: What is the first thing you do in the morning and what is the last thing you do each night?
Put on/take off my glasses.
Tweet of the Day
Now THAT'S a barista @livelaughingman #art #coffeeclaws pic.twitter.com/2LOQFRnPFZ
— Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) December 9, 2013The image is of the foam atop a coffee drink, atop which has been formed a likeness of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.
[H/T to everyone in the multiverse, and thanks to each and every one of you!]
Here We Go Again
[Content Note: Choice policing; fat hatred; racism; transphobia; disablism.]
In the blogaround, I linked to a post at Flavia's place that included, in part, commentary on this piece of shit article in which self-identified feminist Charlotte Raven declares that high heels are unfeminist and "a form of self-harm."
As with the policing about selfies, policing women's choice of shoes ignores realities for fat women.
Accessories are the one place most fat women can reliably find ways to be stylish. Shoes are generally fashionable in a wider variety of sizes than are clothes. Which still doesn't mean every woman can find fashionable shoes to fit her feet, but there's a bigger selection of stylish shoes, particularly affordable ones, than there is a selection of affordable, plus-size stylish clothes. Last week, I excitedly posted about a new sweater with buttons on the sleeve with the explanatory note: "Yes, cute detailing on fat ladies' clothes is that rare!"
And, for fat women, being stylish isn't a luxury. It's often a necessity to get hired, to get access to healthcare, to get treated like a human being.
Fat women have all kinds of narratives about sloppiness, laziness, dirtiness to overcome. Sometimes heels are a crucial part of looking "put together" in a way that sufficiently convinces people that we care about ourselves, that manages to counteract pervasive cultural narratives that fat people don't care about ourselves. That we have "let ourselves go."
Being "put together" is part of the way many of us convey to a judgmental world that we are worth caring about.
I get treated completely differently at a $20 hair salon if I'm dressed up or dressed down. Two totally different experiences. I get treated differently at the doctor's office, and at the emergency room. I can't go to the ER in sweatpants, because I'll get shittier treatment. In an emergency, I have to worry if I am dressed up enough to prove that I deserve respect and care.
Proving these things has always, for me, meant wearing fashionable shoes. Sometimes those shoes are heels.
I am speaking to my own experience here, but many women with other marginalized bodies have the same experience. Women of color, trans* women, women with disabilities, and other marginalized classes of women may strongly relate to the idea of having to be "put together" in order to be treated as human beings.
What might look like "a form of self-harm" to a privileged woman might look like "a form of survival" to women who don't share her privileges.
If there's an issue about which to be concerned, it isn't women who have the freedom to choose whether to wear high heels. It's the culture that obliges some of us to wear them, irrespective of our desire to wear them.
I have absolutely zero interest in policing women's shoes, whether they are worn out of obligation or choice.
I have an issue with a culture that makes it a choice for some women, and an obligation for others. And I have an issue with feminists who can't be bothered to make that distinction.
Anyway.
Fat is a feminist issue. That fat women have different lived experiences than thin women, that we may regard things like selfies and high heels differently by necessity of our marginalization, is not a new idea. All of the above ideas are things about which I and others have written plenty of times.
There's no excuse for not knowing except not listening.
[Related Reading: Pro-Choice Feminism; On Visibility.]
TV Corner: Amazing America with Sarah Palin
Former U.S. vice presidential candidate, governor, best-selling author and original "Mama Grizzly" Sarah Palin returns to series television on Sportsman Channel to host a new show – the first part of the network's "Red, Wild & Blue America" programming plan – for the fast-growing outdoor lifestyle network. Titled "Amazing America with Sarah Palin," the weekly series will premiere in April 2014.On the one hand, I can't wait to not watch this celebration of sporty nationalism! On the other hand, I'm sure Sarah Palin will be a competent presenter and will probably have a lot of fun doing this show, and we can all find something to celebrate in her TV career, even if nothing more than its being a continual reminder that she is not in the White House. Hooray for us and hooray for America.
...Governor Palin takes viewers coast-to-coast into what Sportsman Channel calls "Red, Wild and Blue America" – where the American Spirit and the Great Outdoors are celebrated in equal measure. From everyday people to business leaders and celebrities; in cities, suburbs and towns; the leader of the "Status Go" movement – Palin – will find the stories of people and places that share and reflect her passion for what makes America the great, amazing nation that it is.
..."Governor Palin is one of America's most popular leaders, whose powerful love of country and passion for the great outdoors is inspiring to millions and millions of people," said Gavin Harvey, CEO of Sportsman Channel. "As a sportswoman, humanitarian, and patriot who has visited every corner of the USA, there is no one more qualified to host Amazing America than Sarah Palin."
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[Content Note: There is a strobe-light effect in this video.]
David Bowie: "Dead Man Walking"
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by contortionists.
Recommended reading:
Imara: [Content Note: Racism; unemployment] Black Unemployment Almost Double the National Average
Flavia: [CN: Hostility to consent] A Storify about Consent within Feminism and Who It Applies To
Samantha: [CN: Transphobia] Please Stop: The Trans Joke at the Spike Video Game Awards
Adrienne [CN: Racist language and imagery] 10 Examples of Indian Mascots "Honoring" Native Peoples
Andy: 'Family Ties' Actress Meredith Baxter Marries Longtime Partner
Tally: I'm Not Racist, But...
Veronica: Crank up Your Speakers or Plug in Your Ear Buds
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
