This blogaround brought to you by owls.
Recommended Reading:
Andy: [Content Note: Homophobia] Gay Son of Indiana House Committee Chairman Who Voted for Same-Sex Marriage Ban Speaks Out
Jeremy: [CN: Homophobia] Reality TV Star Josh Duggar Heads to Indiana to Lobby for Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment
Jess: [CN: Misogyny] Painting Wendy Davis as a Bad Mother Is Political Sexism at Its Worst
Rachel: [CN: Self-harm; disablism] "We Just Can't Have You Here"
Philippa: [CN: Food insecurity; food policing; disablism; racism; classism; fat bias] March of the Food Snobs
Gabriel: [CN: Racism; violence] Mumia Abu-Jamal and My Survival
Julianne: [CN: Racism; anti-immigrationism] San Francisco Will End Mandatory Shackling of Immigration Detainees for Court
CNLester: [CN: Transphobia] 10 Seriously Easy Things Cis People Can Do to Make the World a Better Place for Trans People
BYP: [CN: Racist slur] Elementary School Principal Suspended for Using the N-Word
Helen: Coolest 4-Year Old Ever
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
The Monday Blogaround
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today!
Something something Grammys. Did you watch? I didn't watch! Something about a hat? I like hats!
There is another arctic blast moving across the country. We are currently experiencing wind chills that feel like 50 degrees below zero! And the inside of our storm door is once again covered in a sheet of ice! This weather stinks. And I feel very lucky to be reasonably warm, which necessitates being bundled up in layers and a stocking cap just to sit in my heated home office to work.
[Content Note: Holocaust appropriation] This fucking guy thinks that progressives' "war on the American one percent" is like Hitler's war on Jewish people. Paul Krugman notes that he is hardly an outlier. As does Josh Marshall: "I think we're missing the point if we see this as the gaffe of one aging, coddled jerk. Because it's only a more extreme and preposterous version of beliefs that have become increasingly widespread in the wealthiest sectors of American society, especially since 2008 and the twin events of the global financial crisis and the election of Barack Obama. Let me state the phenomenon as clearly as possible: The extremely wealthy are objectively far wealthier, far more politically powerful and find a far more indulgent political class than at any time in almost a century—at least. And yet at the same time they palpably feel more isolated, abused and powerless than at any time over the same period and sense some genuine peril to the whole mix of privileges, power and wealth they hold."
[CN: War on agency] "Moderate" anti-choicers who want to restrict abortion like to cite the French model as a possible "compromise" in the US—which is not a viable comparison, frankly, because it elides the vast differences in equal healthcare access in France and the US. But anyway: The French National Assembly has passed a new measure that removes some of the restrictions stipulated by its 1975 abortion law. So, yeah—if we're going to use France as a model, let's use it as a model for expanding abortion access.
[CN: Homophobia] Some dipshit in Oklahoma is proposing banning all marriages in the state after a federal court ruled the state's same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional. "If you actually want to get in the game instead of just sitting on the sidelines watching us play, we'll take our ball and go home and NO ONE WILL PLAY AT ALL."
[CN: Gun violence] A new study has found that "injuries from firearms send more than 7,000 kids [in the US] to the hospital annually, an average of 20 per day. Among those admitted to the hospital, 6 percent die from their injuries. ...In addition to children hospitalized for gun injuries, another 3,000 die before they can make it to the emergency room, meaning guns hurt or kill about 10,000 American children each year." If it were anything other than guns hurting or killing 10,000 US kids a year, that shit would have been restricted or outright banned years ago.
All right then: "Google is shelling out $400 million to buy a secretive artificial intelligence company called DeepMind. ...DeepMind has only a landing page for a website where it describes its business as building learning algorithms for simulations, e-commerce and games."
Something something future conservatives starting up a new online news publication.
I love this story about elderly nuns rescuing an elderly pit bull more than I can say. "I purposely wanted a dog that nobody else wanted." All the blubs forever.
Rand Paul on Women
[Content Note: Misogyny; war on agency.]
This weekend, Republican Senator Rand Paul was on Meet the Press, and he said some obnoxious bullshit about the Clintons (I'm not going to defend Bill Clinton against charges he has exploited women, but I do take issue with the idea that her husband's issues should be used to derail Hillary Clinton's presumed run for the presidency), which has now upstaged Paul's contemptible comments about women generally:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Host David Gregory, a middle-aged white man: Let me ask you more about some of the debates within the Republican Party. Former candidate Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, got in some hot water this week with comments he made—I'll play a portion of it—as he talked about a war for women. Here's what he said.Women in Rand Paul's family are doing great. Case closed, your honor.
[video clip of Mike Huckabee, a middle-aged white man, saying: "The Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it. Let us take that discussion all across America, because women are far more than the Democrats have played them to be."]
Gregory: Is this helpful?
Senator Rand Paul, a middle-aged white man: Well, you know, I think we have a lot of debates in Washington that get dumbed down and are used for political purposes. This whole sort of war on women thing—I'm scratching my head because, if there was a war on women, I think they won. You know, the women in my family are incredibly successful. I have a niece at Cornell vet school, and 85% of the young people there are women. In law school, 60% are women; in med school, 55%. My younger sister's an OB-GYN with six kids and doing great. You know, I don't see so much that women are downtrodden; I see women rising up and doing great things. And, in fact, I worry about our young men sometimes, because I think the women really are out-competing the men in our world.
Gregory: But my question, about whether you think it's appropriate for the party, key figures in the party, to be talking about women, women's health, women's bodies, and the role of the federal government related to those things?
Paul: I try never to have discussions of anatomy unless I'm at a medical conference. [laughter] But what I would say is that we didn't start this sort of, I think, glossy and sometimes dumbed-down debate about, you know, there being a war on women. I think the facts show that women are doing very well, have come a long way. And, you know, like I say, I have a lot of successful women in my family, and I don't hear them saying, "Oh, woe is me. This terrible, you know, misogynist world." They look out and they're conquering the world. The women in my family are doing great, and that's what I see in all the statistics coming out. I have, you know, young women in my office that are the leading intellectual lights of our office. So I don't really see this, that there's some sort of war that's, you know, keeping women down. I see women doing great and I think we should extol that success and not dumb it down into a political campaign that somehow one party doesn't like women or that. And that I think that's what's happened. It's all been for political purposes.
Paul, of course, totally elides that it not merely "the Democrats" (i.e. Democratic men) who are talking about women's issues to score political points, but lots and lots and lots of women who are talking about their own lived experiences. Paul doesn't listen to us, though, and neither do his Nightmare Misogynist male constituents and Exceptional Woman female constituents, so he happily positions women's issues as nothing more than an invention of his male ideological rivals.
Just because the highly privileged women in Rand Paul's immediate vicinity are (allegedly) doing terrific doesn't mean that all the women without their privileges are doing terrific, too. Which I think Paul is smart enough to know. He just doesn't care.
I mean, this is a leader of a party who thinks people aren't entitled to food. Of course they don't think women are entitled to fancy stuff like an equal wage for equal work or unregulated bodily autonomy.
But he is worried about "our young men," though. What a hero. Finally someone to worry about the young men!
House Vote on HJR-3 Today
[Content Note: Homophobia]
Today, the Indiana state House will vote on HJR-3, and the vote will determine whether codifying discrimination into the state constitution will be put up for a vote on November's ballot.
If you are in Indiana, please take a moment to contact your representatives one last time and urge them to vote against this legislation. It's going to be a very close vote.
I just wrote letters (again) to my representatives pleading with them not to vote for HJR-3, and not to let whether discrimination is encoded into our state constitution be determined by mob rule. I begged them not to let marginalized people's rights be dependent on whether privileged people choose decency over the maintenance of undeserved privilege.
I hope our legislators are listening.
All the Happy Blubs
Let's start out the week with a happy story, shall we?
This is Andrew Mupuya, and he is an eco-friendly Ugandan entrepreneur, whose business grew out of his need to provide for himself to survive, and you should definitely go read this story about him, because he is amazing.
* * *
I imagine there will be people who will read this story and imagine that Andrew Mupuya is a perfect example of the aspirational poor about whom Kevin O'Leary was speaking last week. But I don't think it takes anything at all away from Mupuya's incredible vision, talents, and hard work to note that even he had crucial help along the way: "To start out his small operation, Mupuya figured out he needed a capital of 36,000 Ugandan shillings ($14). He raised the first $11 from selling 70 kilos of used plastic bottles he'd collected over one week. Mupuya then borrowed the remaining $3 from his school teacher and embarked on his entrepreneurial journey producing paper bags on a small scale."
Imagine if everyone who could spare $3 gave it to someone who needed it at just the right time.
Open Thread
Hosted by a chambered nautilus.
This week's Open Threads have been hosted by some of my favorite sea creatures.
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!
Munoz Case Update
Background here.
In the hearing over Marlise Munoz's choices and her family's right to see them honored, a judge has ruled that life sustaining treatment should be ended, in accordance with her wishes.
Good.
And that's all I'm going to say about that.
Quote of the Day
"I think Governor Huckabee would probably have phrased it differently. Mike speaks off the cuff, as some of us are known to do, and probably would have chose different words to communicate that."—Rick Santorum, defending Mike Huckabee's asinine comments yesterday about conservatives' "war for women."
"Speaking off the cuff" is the new "misspoke." Or whatever variation: "He's unfiltered." "He's unrehearsed." "He's a maverick." Whatever.
Yeah, that's kind of the problem. And we all know that's the problem. That your uncensored thoughts about women are reprehensible garbage.
I don't even know why they bother making excuses for each other. "He got a gleep glorp in his processing center." Sure. Who cares. The point is that your policies are indecent and you're all terrible.
No More
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
Earlier today, Lauren Chief Elk (@ChiefElk) asked me if I was familiar with No More, an advocacy campaign that bills itself as an organization seeking to "end domestic violence and sexual assault." Actually, it doesn't even claim to be an organization, but a symbol, a blue circle with a smaller white circle inside it: "NO MORE is a new unifying symbol designed to galvanize greater awareness and action to end domestic violence and sexual assault."
I guess the idea is supposed to be that making this "No More" symbol ubiquitous will raise awareness around domestic violence and sexual assault, which is a dubious premise for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that giving people the shorthand of a symbol (whether it's a ribbon or the color pink or a share button) doesn't generally create meaningful change as much as it gives lots of otherwise indifferent people the ability to look like they give a fuck about something when they really don't.
(Which is to say nothing about the choice of using a graphic that looks like a target as the symbol of an anti-violence campaign. Though the site explains: "The signature blue vanishing point originated from the concept of a zero—as in zero incidences of domestic violence and sexual assault." Whoops.)
Lauren raised some concerns on Twitter about No More, like PSAs that appear to include no women of color and their (unofficial? official?) partnership with the actors of Law & Order: SVU, a show whose contribution to rape myths is utterly unforgivable.
This heavily corporate-sponsored campaign is also "influencing a lot of things apparently, including policy."
When I clicked through to their website, I was greeted by an image of Jemima Kirk from Girls, a show whose primary male protagonist is a rapist. That was immediately followed by an image of Danny Pino, from Law & Order: SVU.
The third actor featured in this welcome slideshow is Maria Bello. So, two white women and a man of color, replicating the white women + men of color pattern Lauren had identified in the PSAs.
I then popped over to the About page, where I read about the "unifying symbol designed to galvanize greater awareness" and then came to this:
Who is behind NO MORE?Men first. Women of color last. I am deeply concerned about the way this list of partners is presented, which clearly suggests that male allies need their cookies first and foremost, and it's okay to shove the women most disproportionately targeted by this type of violence to the back of the priorities list.
Every major domestic violence and sexual assault organization in the U.S. – from men's organizations like A CALL TO MEN and Men Can Stop Rape, to the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, to groups that help teens like Break the Cycle and Futures Without Violence, to organizations that advance the rights of women of Color and immigrants like Casa de Esperanza and SCESA to the U.S. Dept. of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women – all of them and more are behind NO MORE.
And then I came to this:
Why should I care?They are. They are.
The next time you're in a room with 6 people, think about this:
• 1 in 4 women experience violence from their partners in their lifetimes.
• 1 in 3 teens experience sexual or physical abuse or threats from a boyfriend or girlfriend in one year.
• 1 in 6 women are survivors of sexual assault.
• 1 in 5 men have experienced some form of sexual victimization in their lives.
• 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men were sexually abused before the age of 18.
These are not numbers. They're our mothers, girlfriends, brothers, sisters, children, co-workers and friends. They're the person you confide in most at work, the guy you play basketball with, the people in your book club, your poker buddy, your teenager's best friend – or your teen, herself. The silence and shame must end for good.
(Does that construction sound familiar to anyone else?)
THEY ARE. A campaign ostensibly dedicated to raising awareness around sexual abuse is erasing survivors by talking around us. By imagining we are not reading, that we are not there.
And by diminishing our agency by exclusively defining us as extensions of other people who have not been assaulted.
"The silence and shame must end for good." At the end of a paragraph that invisibilizes survivors.
No more indeed.
Lauren and I are wondering how much influence No More has over policy at the White House (and they clearly have some), especially in light of the sexual assault initiative just announced this week. Because, despite the numerous advocacy groups who have signed on-board with No More, there are a lot of red flags that should concern anti-violence activists.
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by wind.
Recommended Reading:
Eastsidekate: [CN: Transphobia] I Still Need to Go to the Store
Julianne: [CN: Racism; illness] Study: In Black Men, Internalized Racism Speeds Up Aging
Flavia: [CN: White supremacy; racist memes] "Racism Is a Problem of Communication" and Other Assorted White Myths
Aoife: [CN: Christian supremacy; classism; misogyny; homophobia; transphobia; self-harm] Pope Francis and the Vatican PR of the Papal Reboot
Amanda: [CN: Fat hatred] Tumblr Thinks Bullying Fat People Isn't Hate Speech, and Fat Advocacy Constitutes Self-Harm
Kyler: [CN: Homophobia] Phyllis Schalfly Is Still a Hyperbolic Bigot
Becky: [CN: Misogynist video game tropes; slavery] Join Me for Unabashed Gushing over Assassin's Creed: Liberation's Female Protagonist
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Daily Dose of Cute
"None shall pass. Unless one promises to get me a treat from the kitchen after passing."
"Oh nevermind. Just step over me. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz."
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
Whitney Houston: "I Wanna Dance with Somebody"
This week's TMNS brought to you by songs by ladies whose albums I owned on cassette.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today!
[Content Note: Sexual violence; racism] A bunch of people are asking me if I've seen this story out of India, about elders in a rural village allowed the gang rape of a young women as punishment for dating a man from outside the community, after her family couldn't afford to pay the fine they'd levied. It's horrendous. I am grieving for the woman who was subjected to this torture. I can't even imagine what else I could say about it, besides to make the observation that there are lots of people who will use this story to talk about how bad things are "over there," but will jump to the defense of a bunch of high school athletes "over here" who commit similar crimes. Boys will be boys, etc. Rape cultures manifest differently in different cultures, but anyone who imagines that stories like this prove some point about the "civilized" west or the "savage" other is just comprehensively full of shit. And a racist rape apologist.
[CN: Sexual assault; harassment] Hunter Moore, the human nightmare behind the isanyoneup.com "revenge-porn" website, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of "conspiracy to 'access a protected computer without authorization to obtain information for private financial gain' and other counts. On multiple occasions, Moore paid Evens to break into the email accounts of victims and steal nude photos to post on the website isanyoneup.com, according to the indictment." Whatever the possible sentence is, it isn't enough.
Whooooooooops! Conservative author Dinesh D'Souza has been indicted on federal charges of violating campaign finance laws.
[CN: Cancer] According to Consumer Reports, the chemical used to give soda its caramel color may cause cancer. Terrific.
[CN: Food insecurity] The reduction in federal funding for food stamps is putting an incredible strain on food banks. And, contrary to conservative fantasies about charity stepping up in response to gutting the social safety net, all that's happening is that more poor people are putting a greater demand on limited resources, while the wealthy shout at them about fucking bootstraps.
[CN: Sexual violence] A new Justice Department study has found that "allegations of sex abuse in the nation's prisons and jails are increasing...but prosecution is still extremely rare." Which is certainly due in large part to the fact that prison guards are responsible for half of all those assaults.
Saturday Night Live has named its new Weekend Update co-anchor since Seth Meyers is leaving for Late Night and fates forfend Cecily Strong be allowed to anchor all on her own. Don't worry, everyone—it's a white guy! PHEW.
Welp
MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell interrupts former Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) in the middle of a discussion about the recent task force recommendation that the NSA stop collecting phone records with some TOTALLY TRENCHANT BREAKING NOOZ:
Harman: —seriously consider, ah, not continuing section 215 and getting the—Fuck everything.
Mitchell: Uh, Congresswoman Harman, let me interrupt you— Congresswoman, let me interrupt you just for a moment. We've got some breaking news out of Miami. Stand by if you will. [BREAKING NEWS graphic appears onscreen, following footage of a courtroom] Right now, in Miami, Justin Bieber has been arrested on a number of charges. The judge is reading the charges, including resisting arrest and driving under the influence. He's appearing now before the judge for his bond hearing. Let's watch.
Planet Hillary
Here is the cover story that accompanies the New York Times Magazine cover we discussed yesterday. There is plenty more HILLARY CLINTON IS A PLANET imagery for you to enjoy, as well as a story with lots and lots of words that, ultimately, felt to me like they said nothing of any value. If you aren't someone who's been reading about the Clintons for fully one hundred years, you might feel differently, I guess.
The most interesting part of the whole thing for me came in the second to last paragraph:
In her final months as secretary of state in the summer of 2012, when her approval ratings and press coverage were at all-time highs, I asked Bill Clinton what he thought of his wife's transformed image. Over coffee at the Hilton in Nicosia, Cyprus, he told me the story of having just finished working on the McGovern campaign, his official, and intoxicating, introduction into presidential politics. He said he told Hillary he'd met some of the most prominent people of their generation, and she was by far the most gifted. "You should be in public life," he told her back then. "She said: 'Look at how hard-hitting I am. Nobody will ever vote for me for anything.'"How many women with talents even half as considerable as Hillary Clinton's have never considered a career in public life, because they are too hard-hitting for anyone to vote for them?
I know at least a dozen of these women myself.
Massive Crash in Northwest Indiana
[Content Note: Injury; death. Please note there are images of the crash at the link.]
Yesterday afternoon, on a stretch of interstate not far from where I live, there was a massive 46-vehicle pile-up because of lake effect snow. Three people and a dog were killed, and more than 20 people were injured, some seriously.
On the news last night, a woman who was in a car just behind the huge crash said that there were white-out conditions at the time of the accident, and the roads were treacherous. Low visibility plus messy roads. And now there are questions about why the road was not closed, as other parts of I-94 have been during serious weather conditions in the past weeks. At the moment, the only investigation which has been launched is the police investigation into the cause of the crash.
Indiana State Police said the investigation into the cause of the 46-vehicle pileup on Interstate 94 in Michigan City Thursday afternoon that killed three could take months.Well, yes. That. And possibly the failure to close and/or properly clear the road. I hope that, at minimum, the policies on road closures will be reassessed.
"This investigation is going to take several weeks if not months to complete," Sgt. Ann Wojas of the Indiana State Police said at a press conference in Michigan City Friday morning carried live on broadcast news stations.
...The multiple-vehicle crash happened about 3 p.m. between the 35.5 mile marker and the 36.5 mile marker. Troopers said white-out conditions and ice on I-94 caused the crash.
"Just think, all of this hell was caused by one tiny little band of lake-effect snow that only moved for about 2 miles," Sullivan said Friday morning.
Iain and I frequently travel this very stretch of road, as well as the stretch of road that was closed down just weeks ago: "Earlier this month a brutal storm system caused officials to shut down Interstate 80/94 and Interstate 65 in Northwest Indiana."
On the one hand, I understand the urgent need to keep these major throughways open, because so many people depend on them. On the other hand, so many people depend on them that it is imperative to make sure the roads are safe for travel, especially travel for a lot of vehicles in close proximity. The horrendous images of the crash tell the story of what traveling on these roads is like: Small passenger vehicles mixed in with large passenger vehicles mixed in with lots of semis. The sheer number of semis traveling on these roads into and out of Chicago can make driving them a dangerous proposition even in the best weather.
Most of the cargo train rails in the area have been converted into nature paths. And instead of trains, we've got roads full of semis.
Anyway. This wicked winter continues to do its worst. I watched news coverage of the wreckage and rescue last night with fear and profound sadness, and I don't know what to say besides offering my sincerest condolences to the survivors of the people who died, and I hope the people injured have access to the resources they need to heal.
