[Content Note: Harassment; war on agency. I am republishing this piece after reading another ludicrous screed in which a conservative dude imagines he's really triumphed over a liberal woman by accusing her of "loving abortion."]
There are a bunch of things that harassing emailers and Twitterers and sometimes commenters like to say that they imagine are the greatest GOTCHAS that ever GOT.
There's the stuff about my appearance—"You're fat!" (yup) or "You're ugly!" (okay) or whatever, which ranges from statements of fact to matters of opinion—and there's the stuff that accuses me of having an agenda—which: yes I do, and I'm hardly circumspect about it—and some other broad categories, but the one I love the most is this: "You're pro-abortion."
I imagine they expect that I would vehemently deny being "pro-abortion." Or that it bothers me, really just gets under my skin, even if I don't reply.
Nope. Because I am pro-abortion.
I want every single person who wants and/or needs an abortion to be able to get one, easily and safely. And that makes me pro-abortion.
No caveats about how abortion is a terrible thing, but. No qualifications about how abortion should be rare, but. No lies about how no one wants an abortion, but.
I am pro-abortion.
And, yes, I am also pro- lots of other stuff that incidentally reduces the number of abortions. I am pro-comprehensive sex education. I am pro-contraceptive access and affordability. I am pro-employment policies that support expectant parents, including a livable wage, healthcare benefits, and paid family leave. I am pro-government assistance for poor families. I am pro-lunch programs for children. I am pro-comprehensive support for parents raising children with disabilities. I am pro-dismantling the rape culture. For a start.
And I am very much pro-acknowledging that, even in some more perfect world where unwanted pregnancies were more widely preventable and pregnant people weren't obliged to terminate wanted pregnancies for financial reasons and and and, there would still be a need for access to abortion.
So I am pro-abortion.
The people who levy this label like an accusation like to imply (even though even they know it is patently absurd) that being pro-abortion means some sort of agenda in which people who don't want abortions are coerced or forced into getting them. That's bullshit.
It's bullshit—and it's projection. It's a projection of the anti-abortion position which really and practically wants to deny abortions to everyone, to people who want them.
I am invested in providing meaningful choice. I am pro-choice.
And, yes, I am pro-abortion.
You Really Got Me
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by paperback books.
Recommended Reading:
Bina: [Content Note: Impersonation; harassment; misogyny] Online Harassment: My Story
Vishavjit: [CN: Racism; othering] Where Are You From?
Lonie: [CN: Fat hatred; diet & exercise talk; rape culture; abuse] The Rules for Being Fat
BYP: [CN: Police brutality; racism] Ferguson Police Banned from Wearing 'I Am Darren Wilson' Bracelets
TLC: [CN: Transphobia; misgendering] California Governor Signs Respect After Death Act
Maria: [CN: White supremacy; privilege; classism; silencing; auditing; misogynist violence] An Immigrant Woman's Message to White Feminists
Ryan: Principal Joins Teen Who Wanted His Cat in His Yearbook Picture for the Most Amazing Photo Ever
Kyler: Aretha Franklin Covers Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" and It Is Obviously Amazing
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
OFFS
[Content Note: Sexual objectification.]
Halloween season seems to come earlier every year—and so does my annual Inappropriate Halloween Costumes post, whether it's costumes that uphold the rape culture; costumes that are just a shitty ethnic stereotype; costumes that appropriate people's identities; or some other gross manifestation of Othering for which Halloween is used an excuse.
This year's entry? Yet another in an ongoing series about how women's Halloween costumes have to be "sexy" versions of whatever. You can't just be a nurse—you've got to be a sexy nurse! You can't just be a witch—you've got to be a sexy witch! Etc.
(Unless you're fat. Then do not try to be sexy. If you're a fat woman, you're the costume.)
Behold: Sexy Frozen costumes.
While little girls will be trick-or-treating in Disney-trademarked Anna and Elsa costumes this Halloween, adult women now have the option of showing more skin while dressed as adult interpretations of the characters.I don't even.
...Yes, even Olaf, the snowman voiced by Josh Gad, has been given a sexy makeover, complete with a fake carrot nose, thanks to the "Funny Snowman" costume.
One year, I asked Deeks what I should be for a Halloween party, and he immediately replied, "Sexy chupacabra." Which made me laugh for one million years, because it is the perfect commentary on the absurdity that is Halloween costumes for adult women.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelda was very happy to see me when I got home last night.
She literally ran full-speed at me, leaped up at me, and nearly licked my face off, lol. I was happy to see her, too. ♥
Shaker Gourmet: Soup Recipes!
Since autumn is fast approaching, at least in my neck of the woods, I thought it would be a good time to revisit sharing our favorite soup recipes.
Got a great recipe for an autumnal soup or stew? Share away!
(Btw, there are also, in the Shaker Gourmet archive, back when Misty was running it regularly, a bunch of great soup recipes!)
As I've mentioned before, although I love to cook and experiment in the kitchen, I am a terrible provider of recipes, because I cook by my palate rather than by measurement. But here's my best attempt at a recipe for a potato mushroom soup I make that Iain and I enjoy.
Ingredients:
Olive Oil
Unsalted chicken or vegetable stock
Half and half
Madeira wine
Minced garlic
Diced shallots
Minced parsley (or dried)
Sliced mushrooms
Sliced potatoes (skin-on)
Salt and pepper to taste
In the bottom of your soup pot, warm a couple of tablespoons of olive oil over medium to high heat. Once it's hot, add the garlic and shallots. Sweat 'em. Add the mushrooms and let them cook for a minute or two. Add about a cup of the Madeira wine, and let it reduce a bit. Add several cups of the stock and a generous splash of the half and half. Add salt and pepper to your preference. Bring to a boil. Add the potatoes; the stock should cover the potatoes and then some, to make sure you have plenty of broth. Boil for a few minutes, then turn down and let it simmer until a fork slides through a potato with no resistance. Add parsley and dig in!
If you're not interested in keeping this recipe vegetarian, adding bacon at the beginning of the dish is also very yummy. If you add the bacon, though, be careful with adding salt later in the cooking, so you don't accidentally oversalt it.
If you are interested in keeping this recipe vegetarian (or even if you're not), adding kale at the end of the dish, giving it just a minute or two of cooking time, so it wilts but keeps some texture, is also very yummy.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
A year ago, I mentioned the story of Carmen Segarra, formerly a senior examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who was fired from her job after she was asked, and refused, to falsify her findings that Goldman Sachs' conflict of interest policy was insufficient. At ProPublica, Jake Bernstein has an important piece following up on Segarra's story: "Inside the New York Fed: Secret Recordings and a Culture Clash."
Relatedly, Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for hearings "into 'disturbing' issues raised by secretly taped conversations between Federal Reserve supervisors and officials at Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), a bank the Fed was tasked with policing. ...The tapes appear to show an unwillingness among some Fed supervisors to both demand specific information from Goldman about a transaction with Banco Santander and to strongly criticize what Segarra concluded was the lack of an appropriate conflict-of-interest policy at Goldman."
[CN: Shooting] Demonstrations in Ferguson have resumed in the wake of the burning of a community-made Michael Brown memorial and the paltry and overdue apology from the Ferguson Police Chief, and, over the weekend, two police officers were shot at. Neither incident was related to the protests, but there are understandable fears that the incidents will be used to reintroduce increased militarized policing of protesters.
[CN: Police brutality] Speaking of protests: "A wave of protest in Hong Kong extended into the working week on Monday as thousands of residents defied a government call to abandon street blockades across the city, students boycotted classes, and the city's influential bar association added to condemnation of a police crackdown on protesters a day earlier. The continued public resistance underscored the difficulties that the Hong Kong government faces in defusing widespread anger that erupted on Sunday, after the police used tear gas, pepper spray and batons to break up a three-day sit-in by students and other residents demanding democratic elections in the semiautonomous Chinese territory."
[CN: Classism; class warfare] Paul Krugman on Our Invisible Rich: "[T]he truly rich are so removed from ordinary people's lives that we never see what they have. We may notice, and feel aggrieved about, college kids driving luxury cars; but we don't see private equity managers commuting by helicopter to their immense mansions in the Hamptons. The commanding heights of our economy are invisible because they're lost in the clouds."
Chelsea Clinton had a daughter, Charlotte, Friday night, so cue nine million obnoxious news stories about how becoming a grandmother will influence Hillary Clinton's decision to run for president and/or her campaign. Anyway. Congratulations to the family!
Do you want to see some pictures from the 10th international London tattoo convention? Well, if you do, here you go!
Here is just a delightful video of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader taking the piss out of an interviewer who clearly did not see the movie they are promoting, which he reveals by asking Wiig about being nude in the movie, which she is not. Oof this guy.
[CN: Animal abuse and animal attack, but with a happy ending] This is a truly amazing story about a woman who was attacked by a pit bull and a pit bull who was attacked by a human finding each other and becoming a team who help "other humans that are survivors of traumatic events learn to trust, and let go of their fears." Blub.
Speechifying
[Photo by Deeky. Thank you, friend!]
As noted in the previous post, I was in Baltimore for this weekend, for a speaking engagement. It was great, even though I was embarrassingly hoarse by the end of it, and I got to meet Shaker TinaH (yay!), and lots of other great folks, who made me feel incredibly welcome in their amazing and thoughtful space. My profound thanks to them for inviting me.
Naturally, I stayed with Deeks, so while I was in town we could drink spumante and watch Heaven Is for Real, among other shenanigans entirely typical of our usual silliness. My thanks to Deeks for hosting me.
Besties.
And thanks to Iain for picking me up at the airport and taking me out for a nice dinner to welcome me home. I am very lucky.
Bad Responses to Terrible Things
[Content Note: Description of violence; misogyny; death; guns; disablism; Islamophobia.]
Last Friday, a 30-year-old man named Alton Nolen, who had recently been fired from a food processing plant in Oklahoma City, returned to the plant and used a knife to attack two female employees. He beheaded 54-year-old Colleen Hufford and repeatedly stabbed 43-year-old Traci Johnson, who survived, before he was shot twice by Vaughan Foods Chief Operating Officer Mark Vaughan. Nolen was injured and is now in the hospital, where he will reportedly be charged today with first-degree murder and assault and battery with a deadly weapon.
Nolen was a recent convert to Islam; he had started using the name Jah'Keem Yisrael on Facebook, where he had posted some political stuff but gave no indication he was planning this sort of attack. There are rumors he was fired after a heated discussion at work about women being stoned, but I can't find solid verification of that, and it may be just a rumor.
The only reason I mention it at all is because I have read several news reports saying Nolen chose his victims "at random," and I'm not so sure that's the case. Except insomuch as it's always "random" when a man kills only women, lest we have to talk about the harm that men do specifically to women.
That is but one bad response to this event—to disappear the fact that Nolen targeted women for a reason.
There are other bad responses. Like the usual "he was crazy," and the entirely predictable Islamophobia that has the usual suspects going apeshit about how this behavior is typical of Muslims or evidence of the increasing radicalization of the US Muslim community, despite immediate and unequivocal condemnations and the fact that US Muslims are now probably less safe because of this guy's actions and none of the rest of us are.
And then there is this, in the Christian Science Monitor: "Oklahoma City beheading: Will jihad-style attack boost 'bring gun to work' laws?"
This is an entire article about how Nolen was stopped because Mark Vaughn had a gun at work, which is legal in the state of Oklahoma, which treats as an aside the fact that Vaughn is a reserve sheriff's deputy, not just any old bloke with a gun.
This is the final paragraph:
Police also confirmed that Vaughan was acting as an individual and not on behalf of the local sheriff's department when he fired his weapon. But the fact that Vaughan is a trained police officer may at least in part undercut the argument by gun proponents that everybody should have the right to bring their gun to work.Ya think? Well, good thing we managed to squeeze in that point at the tail end of the story.
A story which is manifestly absurd on its face. Because it's not this single, extraordinary, horrific "jihad-style attack" that stands to "boost 'bring gun to work' laws" in the US, but people pretending that this single, extraordinary, horrific attack is part of some pattern of similar violence, when it is demonstrably not, because fearmongering is most effective tool in expanding carry laws.
But the truth is that expanding carry laws to allow more guns in the workplace will only mean that more people who intend to use guns to harm their coworkers are able to carry those guns into work legally.
I am angry that the media continues to indulge the absurdly dishonest narrative that more guns will ever mean more heroes, instead of more victims.
Good Morning! Or Whatever!
Here, care of Shaker FarmerStina, is a video of one-month-old Nandi the baby elephant getting a shower from her keepers at Reid Park Zoo in Tucson, Arizona. Happy elephant is happy!
Video Description: A baby elephant stands on the other side of a fence from a keeper, a thin white woman, who is holding a hose. Nandi dances in the spray, turning in happy circles so every part of her gets wet. She roots in the mud, and drinks from the stream of water. In slow-motion, she runs through the stream of water, her large ears flapping joyfully.
Open Thread
Hosted by a t-rex named Sue.
This week's Open Threads have been brought to you by the letter T.
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!
Daily Dose of Cute
LOL CATS.
Meanwhile, this is what's going on in Dudley's life:
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by leaves.
Recommended Reading:
John: [Content Note: Misogyny; harassment] An Anti-Feminist Walks into a Bar: A Play in Five Acts
BYP: [CN: Racism; misogyny] People Magazine Offends with Mammy Tweet about Viola Davis
Drew: [CN: Homophobia; Islamophobia; xenophobia; violent rhetoric] Some Things Never Change: The Values Voter Summit and the Dubious 'Rebranding' of the GOP
Julianna: [CN: Anti-immigrationism; racism] Ongoing Deportations Inspire Revival of Sanctuary Movement
Ragen: [CN: Fat bias] Cool Story Bro
Digby: [CN: War] Maybe we can cut some more unemployment insurance and meals on wheels to pay for this shockingly expensive war.
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Melissa Manchester: "Midnight Blue"
This week's TMNS brought to you by the hits of 1975.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Here is the text of President Obama's address to the United Nations General Assembly, laying out the rationale and plan for dealing with IS.
[Content Note: Police brutality; racism; death] After Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson apologized yesterday (YESTERDAY!) to the family of Michael Brown for his death (ON AUGUST 9!) and subsequent police handling of the case, there was a scuffle between police and protesters, and several protesters were arrested.
[CN: Terrorism; violence; misogyny] One of the hundreds of Nigerian girls and young women kidnapped by Boko Haram has been found: "It was not clear if the 20-year-old had escaped or been released by the militants after she was found 'heavily traumatized and not very stable' wandering in the bush in a remote region of the country near the town of Mubi in Adamawa state." I grieve for her, for what she has suffered, and I am angry for her.
In good news: "Workers at big hotels in Los Angeles have won one of the highest minimum wages in the United States after a campaign by unions and civil rights groups. The city council voted on Wednesday night to establish a minimum hourly wage of $15.37 for employees of hotels with more than 125 rooms, a decision expected to boost campaigns for better wages in other industries and cities."
[CN: Sexual violence; child abuse] In Oregon, a youth coach has been charged with sexual abuse of the members of the teams he coached. Rage. Seethe. Boil.
[CN: Misogyny; exploitation] This fucking guy: "Evan Thornley, an Australian tech executive and former politician, told a technology startup conference that when he ran a previous company, he was able to get talented women who were 'relatively cheap' because of the gender wage gap. ...'Call me opportunistic, I just thought I could get better people with less competition because we were willing to understand the skills and capabilities that many of these women had,' he said. ...He also drew blowback for including a slide that sarcastically said: 'Women: Like men, only cheaper.'" Wow.
In his final game for the Yankees, Derek Jeter continued to be awesome, one last time. Because of course he did.
And finally! I may just spend the rest of the day watching this gif of a brave(ish) baby elephant, lol.
Mitt 2016!
[Content Note: Disablist language at link.]
In case you're wondering why on earth Republicans are talking about Mitt Romney losing running for a third time, and not even in revolted tones, Ross Douthat explains it all in his latest column, helpfully headlined "Why We're Talking About Mitt Romney."
Spoiler Alert: It's because Mitt Romney has the magical combination of garbage that ties together retrofuck social conservatives and soulless robber barons.
Since Ross is himself a conservative, he doesn't mention this, but it's also because the Republicans are a horrendo nightmare party with very few nationally viable candidates at all.
