Hosted by a partridge in a pear tree.
Question of the Day
The inevitable follow-up to yesterday's QoTD...
What is your least favorite topic of casual conversation?
I've inserted the qualifier "casual" here, because I don't want people to feel obliged to determine precisely the worst thing they've ever had to talk about, when that might be triggering. We can keep it lighter than that (although you are welcome to be more serious, too; just be sure to insert content notes as necessary).
Recommended Reading
Amanda Terkel and Ryan Grim: "Elizabeth Warren Gets Senate Democratic Leadership Spot."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) gained a leadership position in the Senate Democratic caucus Thursday, giving the prominent progressive senator a key role in shaping the party's policy priorities.[Content Note: Descriptions of sexual assault; misogyny] Barbara Bowman: "Bill Cosby raped me. Why did it take 30 years for people to believe my story?"
Warren's new role, which was created specifically for her, will be strategic policy adviser to the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, helping to craft the party's policy positions and priorities. She will also serve as a liaison to progressive groups to ensure they have a voice in leadership meetings and discussions, according to a source familiar with the role.
A source close to Warren told The Huffington Post that the senator was interested in the position because she wanted to have a seat at the table in the leadership meetings in order to influence the agenda.
Back then, the incident was so horrifying that I had trouble admitting it to myself, let alone to others. But I first told my agent, who did nothing. (Cosby sometimes came to her office to interview people for "The Cosby Show" and other acting jobs.) A girlfriend took me to a lawyer, but he accused me of making the story up. Their dismissive responses crushed any hope I had of getting help; I was convinced no one would listen to me. That feeling of futility is what ultimately kept me from going to the police. I told friends what had happened, and although they sympathized with me, they were just as helpless to do anything about it. I was a teenager from Denver acting in McDonald's commercials. He was Bill Cosby: consummate American dad Cliff Huxtable and the Jell-O spokesman. Eventually, I had to move on with my life and my career.[Content Note: War on agency] Sofia Resnick and Sharona Coutts: "Anti-Choice 'Science': The Big Tobacco of Our Time."
I didn't stay entirely quiet, though: I've been telling my story publicly for nearly 10 years. ...Still, my complaint didn't seem to take hold.
Only after a man, Hannibal Buress, called Bill Cosby a rapist in a comedy act last month did the public outcry begin in earnest.
...While I am grateful for the new attention to Cosby's crimes, I must ask my own questions: Why wasn't I believed? Why didn't I get the same reaction of shock and revulsion when I originally reported it? Why was I, a victim of sexual assault, further wronged by victim blaming when I came forward? The women victimized by Bill Cosby have been talking about his crimes for more than a decade. Why didn't our stories go viral?
First Big Tobacco, then climate change denial, and now, the anti-choice movement.All of the above well worth your time to read in full.
The issues might have changed, but the techniques now widely used by conservatives to distort science and, with it, public policy, remain the same.
They create nonprofits, staffed with die-hard ideologues, and set about producing and promoting bogus science, to build the illusion of dissent or doubt over conclusions drawn by peer-reviewed scientific or medical research. They develop their own "research findings" to suit their ideological views. Then they deploy scare tactics, all with the goal of passing laws that suit their agenda.
...The impact of these False Witnesses has been wide-reaching: According to Aziza Ahmed, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law, who has studied the use of evidence in abortion litigation, courts are now accepting as fact what were once recognized as shoddy, "fringe" notions.
Fat Fashion
This is your semi-regular thread in which fat women can share pix, make recommendations for clothes they love, ask questions of other fat women about where to locate certain plus-size items, share info about sales, talk about what jeans cut at what retailer best fits their body shapes, discuss how to accessorize neutral colored suits, share stories of going bare-armed for the first time, brag about a cool fashion moment, whatever.
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We are getting snow flurries here today—fat, fluffy, lazily wind-drifting snowflakes that aren't accumulating into anything. Still: Yuck. I'm not ready for winter yet. After last winter lasted fully one thousand months, it feels like we barely had a summer.
The good thing about the cold weather, though, is that I get to bring out my favorite sweaters again!
One of the "rules" by which we're supposed to abide in order to avoid "looking fat" at all costs (even if, you know, we actually are fat) is never wearing horizontal stripes. Fuck that! I love horizontal stripes, and I especially love them on sweaters. I have all sorts of sweaters with horizontal stripes!
One of my favorites is a black and white stripey number I got from Avenue last year or the year before. One of my favorite things about it is the sleeves:
I love the change in the width of the stripes mid-forearm, and I love the slightly long sleeves. A nice arm detail on a sweater is one of my favorite things.
(Which is why I also love this sweater from Lane Bryant which has a cute button detail on the sleeve.)
Anyway! As always, all subjects related to fat fashion are on topic, but if you want a topic for discussion: What fashion "rules" do you break? What sorts of detailing is hard to find in plus size clothing that delights you when you find it?
Have at it in comments! Please remember to make fat women of all sizes, especially women who find themselves regularly sizing out of standard plus-size lines, welcome in this conversation, and pass no judgment on fat women who want to and/or feel obliged, for any reason, to conform to beauty standards. And please make sure if you're soliciting advice, you make it clear you're seeking suggestions—and please be considerate not to offer unsolicited advice. Sometimes people just need to complain and want solidarity, not solutions.
Daily Dose of Cute
THIS FACE!!!
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Today in Creative Trolling
[Content Note: Harassment; misogyny; fat hatred.]
![screen cap of a tweet authored by @jayrawd1 reading: '@[me] you are very fat and you have a hatred of men because men don't want you'](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/apix/twitter96.jpg)
1. I CANNOT SANCTION YOUR BUFFOONERY.
2. This tweet is comprised of: A. An accurate observation; B. An inaccurate accusation; C. An inaccurate assertion. Thus, the entirety of my emotional response to this tweet is: A. Yep; B. Nope; C. Nope.
3. This is the laziest trolling of all the trolling. Telling a woman who advocates on behalf of women's humanity that she is unattractive and so no men want to fuck her and that's why she hates men is so old it was rudely awakened from its midday nap by the Big Bang.
And I'm guessing that, in the history of the universe, it's been a true thing about the woman at which it was lobbed like a handful of monkey shit approximately zero times.
Because, generally speaking, women who advocate on behalf of women's humanity don't tend to define our own worth on the basis of whether men want to fuck us.
That is literally a less valuable currency to me than Ronpaulbuxxx.
Anyone who imagines that my self-worth is predicated on whether "men want me" isn't very bright. Which is only one of many reasons I don't care what their opinion of me is.
And, not for nothing, is why I am not particularly disappointed to hear they don't "want me." Oh no I'm so crushed, etc. It's sort of like expecting me to be bummed that you didn't bring me an ice cream cone when I'm lactose intolerant. You're not really disappointed to not have something you don't want because it gives you explosive diarrhea. Or is a dairy product.
Anyway.
The corrected version of this tweet, and the millions other like it, would be: "You are very fat and you have a hatred of male privilege because it devalues women and genderqueer people and limits their opportunities."
Which would be a non-sequitur and two accurate observations.
And, more importantly, sounds fairly reasonable.
Once more, I will note that it is the men who give me abundant reason to dislike them who are most inclined to accuse me of man-hating.
It is easier, you see, for them to believe I have a blanket hatred for all men than to imagine that I just wouldn't like them. With good reason.
Quote of the Day
"Listen, if it makes you feminists feel any better, some of the stars are women. Not the sun. The sun is three huge men holding hands."—From Clickhole's "This Might Not Be 'Politically Correct' Enough for You Overly Sensitive Social Justice Warriors, But All of the Planets Are Men."
(Clickhole is a satirical site, FYI.)
I cannot. stop. laughing. It's perfect. Perfect.
[H/T to Andrea Grimes.]
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
In news that will surprise no one around here, I expect: "Political correctness," i.e. giving people in mixed-gender groups the tools to communicate respectfully and an expectation that they'll do it, works. "In creativity exercises involving mixed-gender groups, Jack Goncalo and his colleagues found that people instructed to be politically correct generated a greater quantity of novel ideas than those instructed merely to be polite, or given no instructions at all. ...The received wisdom is that 'political correctness' refers to something stifling and oppressive, while 'true creativity requires a kind of anarchy in which people are permitted to speak their minds, whatever the consequence,' Goncalo was quoted as saying. Yet when groups included men and women, the reverse proved true: in a creativity exercise, which involved coming up with new ideas for a business to occupy an empty building, the PC group did better."
[Content Note: Police brutality] The overall murder rate in the US is down, but police killings are at a two-decade high: "A count of 'justifiable homicides' in the FBI's Uniform Crime Report found that 461 people were shot and killed by police in 2013. What that figure tells us, more than anything, is that 461 is the bare minimum number of people who were shot by police last year. And it is almost certainly a dramatic under-estimation. Departments are not required to submit data for this count; it is voluntary. ...What's more, the figure is only a count of 'justifiable homicides,' which means those that are considered legally defensible. This means jurisdictions are least likely to include those shootings that are subject to criminal scrutiny in their reports."
Sultan Kösen, the world's tallest known man, and Chandra Bahadur Dangi, the world's shortest known man, met at a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Guinness Book of World Records, and this totally got me all choked up: "Even though he is short and I am tall, we have had similar struggles throughout our lives, and when I look into Chandra's eyes, I can see he's a good man," said Kösen. It takes some effort to look into someone else's eyes when you're seven feet apart in height. We should all make such an effort to see each other.
[CN: Sexual assault in the military; victim-blaming] This is incredible: "Here's What Happened During One Victim's Military Sexual Harassment Investigation: Katie Rapp, a soldier who reported sexual harassment while she was deployed in Afghanistan in 2011-2012, recorded her four-hour interview with a sexual assault investigator and provided it exclusively to BuzzFeed News." Everything about this story is fucking terrible, but what really sticks out to me is how Rapp's only real ally was her male squad leader, and both "said they have repeatedly been forced to defend their friendship to the National Guard," who repeatedly accused them of having an affair. Sure. Because there's no other reason a man would stand up for a woman being harassed. Fuck.
[CN: Harassment; racism; sexual policing; self-harm] This is not surprising but it is nonetheless appalling: "What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals."
[CN: Class warfare] This is one of the major reasons that I (and lots of other people) object to building healthcare reform through for-profit insurance companies: "Many Americans may believe that private insurance can keep major medical bills at bay. But a new survey finds that one-fifth of people with private plans still spend at least 5 percent of their income on out-of-pocket health care costs. ...The survey also shows that 'people who have insurance but have high health care costs relative to their income are as likely to skip getting the care they need as those with no insurance at all,' Commonwealth Fund President Dr. David Blumenthal said in the news release." Insurance doesn't make healthcare free, and politicians need to stop pretending that it does.
If you ever wondered what giant otters were talking about, now you know! (I didn't even know there were giant otters, previous to reading this article!)
And finally! Get the tissues: The APSCA's 2014 Humane Awards Cat, Kid, and Dog of the Year. ♥
Tweet of the Day
I still haven't stopped being ridiculously excited about this. Obviously. LOL.
One potential problem the mission is facing is that Philae has landed in the shadow of a rock face, limiting its solar panels' access to sunlight. The good news is that it's already sending back lots of info for analysis. Yay!
Today in Perfect Solutions
[Content Note: War on agency.]
Sounds reasonable:
The town council in Rossville, Ga. on Monday voted to ban abortion clinics because the mayor was worried about the "drama" one would bring to the city, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.Neat strategy.
"We want to be a peaceful city," Rossville Mayor Teddy Harris said during a council meeting. "We don't want to have any protesters."
There were not any clinics in the town before the ordinance passed and the measure still allows abortions if they are performed at a hospital.
"I just don't think (clinics) are appropriate for our city," Harris explained at the meeting.
Somehow I have the suspicion that the "ban the thing being protested to keep the peace" strategy would not be employed if a bunch of feminist women showed up to protest some local men-only organization.
Good Morning! Or Whatever!
[Content Note: Christian Supremacy; misogyny.]
Here is our favorite Christian friend Kirk Cameron, explaining how Moms are responsible for making Christmas perfect for everyone:
If you are a mom, if you are a wife, if you’re the keeper of your home, I want you to know that your joy is so important this Christmas. Because Christmas is about joy, and if the joy of the Lord is your strength, remember, the joy of the mom is her children's strength. So don't let anything steal your joy. If you let your joy get stolen, it will sap your strength. Let your children, your family, see your joy in the way that you decorate your home this Christmas, in the food that you cook, the songs you sing, the stories you tell, and the traditions that you keep. Invite your whole neighborhood into your Christmas, and invite the world into our story of our king and his kingdom. Join me and go see Saving Christmas November 14.Hahahahahaha that is a perfect advertisement for a perfect movie!
It would also, for the record, be a perfect advert for Ladies' Joy-Stealing Armor (by Spanx) and Ladies' Insurance against Joy Theft (by Aflac).
On his whistlestop promotional tour for Saving Christmas, which consists primarily of videos on his own YouTube channel and interviews with the Christian Post, Cameron also stopped by the Christian Post again, to wax grumpy about all the meanie pants who are trying to ruin Christmas and dispute his claim that Christians invented every single part of Christmas, right down to the marshmallows in your hot chocolate, you joy-stealing jerks:
In his first release since "Unstoppable," Cameron aims to "put the Christ back in Christmas" this holiday season by attempting to debunk disparaging theories surrounding Christmastime. Furthermore, the actor shares his own ideas on where Christmas traditions originated, including loose Biblical interpretations of the Christmas tree and the nativity scene. It is the actor's hope that Christians are inspired to protect and preserve customary Christmas activities after watching "Saving Christmas."Sounds amazing!
"I'm making 'Saving Christmas' because I love Christmas, I love everything about it," Cameron told The Christian Post before rattling off several Christmas traditions such as roasting chestnuts, drinking hot chocolate, and enjoying Christmas stockings, stories, trees and food.
"I'm a sucker for all of it, and of course the nativity, and there's a lot of people who really want to put a big wet blanket on the celebration," Cameron continued. "It starts this time of year. You have people who want to pull down nativity scenes, you have lawsuits showing up in schools that can't have Christmas performances ... it has to be winter break or holiday break or sparkle season ... they want to take that out of Christmas so they don't offend people who hate Christmas. And then we have a new group who are telling us, convincingly, that Christmas is actually a celebration of paganism."
The "Growing Pains" star dismisses theories that Christmas is derived in the pagan celebration of Winter Solstice in "Saving Christmas," offering viewers a Biblical reference to items such as the Christmas tree instead. Furthermore, the film reveals Cameron's take on Santa Claus, the three wisemen, and why Christmas is celebrated on Dec. 25 each year.
Naturally, although this is a hilariously absurd iteration of Christian Supremacy, it's still just as vile as any other iteration. No amount of goofy cheerfulness can mitigate the profound misogyny in telling women that a failure to project happiness at all times is a moral weakness, nor the dominionist garbage of misrepresenting people of other religions, atheists, and public secularists (among whom are plenty of Christians) as "people who hate Christmas."
Christian Supremacists who want to own the entire history of Christmas and force the celebration of their religious holiday on everyone else are full of joy. Those of us who say "no thanks" are full of hate. Cool math, bro.
[H/T to Bedhead.]
Question of the Day
What is your absolute favorite topic of conversation?
Frivolous, serious, irrepressibly geeky, embarrassingly square, limited to a tiny audience, universally relatable...doesn't matter. Just the thing you most love to talk about.
Today in Fat Hatred
[Content Note: Fat hatred; diet talk.]
Here is an article at NBC about a report which has found that popular diets do not yield long-term results. And because virtually the entire healthcare community persistently operates on the garbage belief that human bodies work like Bunsen burners, this finding is naturally attributed to fat people being big fat failures.
"Essentially, what they're telling us is that the diatribe about diets is a bunch of overcooked baloney," said Dr. David Katz, director of Yale Griffin Preventative Research Center, who wrote an editorial to accompany the study."Frankly, everyone falls off the wagon at 12 months" is one of two huge pull-quotes in the article. The other is: "It's more about what diet you'll stick with."
"They say, frankly, everyone falls off the wagon at 12 months, to say nothing of 24 months, and are gaining the weight back," Katz told NBC News.
Sure. Forget the fact that even most fat people who have radical body-altering surgeries regain weight. Forget the fact that millions of fat people report lived experiences with maintaining nutrition and exercise programs and nonetheless regaining (or failing to lose) weight. Forget the numerous studies which have found environmental and/or biological clues to why some people are fat and some people aren't. Forget natural human diversity in all other things. Forget that not all fat people have disordered eating.
It's that all fat people are lying liars and lazy failures who "fall off the wagon."
Which, you know, is to say nothing of the shaming of fat people who do have disordered eating and/or do have impediments to getting as much exercise as their individual bodies need and/or simply don't give a fuck about being policed into doing something with our own bodies that we don't want to do.
No one owes anyone else thinness.
No one owes anyone else health.
No one owes anyone else a specific appearance.
What we do owe one another, however, is the respect of neither auditing nor ignoring each other's reported lived experiences. Fat people don't owe anyone else shit. But everyone else owes us the respect of listening to us, believing us, and according us authority on our own fucking bodies.
Hillary Sexism Watch, Part Wev
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Richard Cohen, always a charmer, has written a piece insisting Hillary Clinton must run for president. Titled "Hillary Clinton is the Democrats' only hope," the piece opens thus:
Hillary Clinton looms over the Democratic Party like Evita from her balcony. She is the presumptive presidential nominee, the likely one, the inevitable one, the one and only, the one before all others run in awe and panic. Behold the biggest and, in a sense, only thing in the Democratic Party. All she lacks is a song.Evita. Seriously. Evita.
After a bunch of paragraphs about dynasties and the thorn in Clinton's side that is her marriage, the piece ends thus:
It's not possible that Clinton is actually mulling over whether to run. Not only does she have a moral obligation to do so — she's repressing other potential candidacies and vacuuming up their funds — but the sooner she drops the standard political pose and exudes genuine feelings, the better a candidate she will be. She is not the Democratic Party's best hope. She is its only hope.Get thine boobs to the White House, Evita! It is not your choice—it is your moral obligation. And you might as well just stop being a lying liar and admit you're running, because you're repressing all the menfolk who want to run for the nation's highest office and assume arguably the most influential position on the entire planet, but don't want to go up against you in a primary contest.
One of the things I love most about this strain of reporting, indistinguishable from the hand of one straight white dude who's writing it and another, is that it is posited as a certainty that Hillary Clinton is running, but also she is scolded as a dishonest gameplayer for not announcing that she's running.
Well, why does she need to announce anything, since there are so many men with prominent platforms who can read her fucking mind?
Anyway. Cohen says "all she lacks is a song." I happen to have a suggestion.
Lily Allen: "Fuck You"
[H/T to Tom Watson.]
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by plums.
Recommended Reading:
BYP: [Content Note: Police bruality; racism] Michael Brown's Parents Address U.N.: "We Need the World to Know"
Tressie: Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You But What Coursera Can Do for Your Country
Rin: [CN: Privilege; marginalization] We Don't Work for Free: Centering Marginalized Community Members in Decision Making
Mychael: [CN: Rape apologia; misogyny] Lincoln University President Expresses Great Concern for the Futures of Accused Rapists
George: The Most Hilarious Proofreading Mistake in a Scientific Paper Ever
Bobby: Quote of the Day
Nick: "Don't Ask"
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Daily Dose of Cute
Video Description: Olivia the White Farm Cat and Sophie the Torbie Cat play with each other on either side of a shower curtain. Sophie, who's in the bathtub and thus obscured by the curtain, is never seen, so it could be that Olivia is just playing with a ghost! Olivia runs back and forth, leaping up at the specter on the other side of the curtain, and eventually jumping up onto the tub ledge behind the curtain herself, to see what's what.
(Please excuse the dust and stuff. We're having a plumbing project done in that bathroom, the second part of which is being finished this week.)
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As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
I See You, Time
[Content Note: Anti-feminism; misogynoir.]
Time has published a terrific, ahem, poll asking "Which Word Should Be Banned in 2015?" This is their list of candidates:
Bae, basic, bossy, disrupt, feminist, I can't even, influencer, kale, literally, om nom nom nom, obvi, said no one ever, sorry not sorry, turnt, yaaasssss.
Last year's winner, they inform us, was twerk.
So, first of all, let us note that feminist is the only community identification that is included among the words that "should be banned." And their justification for its inclusion?
feminist: You have nothing against feminism itself, but when did it become a thing that every celebrity had to state their position on whether this word applies to them, like some politician declaring a party? Let's stick to the issues and quit throwing this label around like ticker tape at a Susan B. Anthony parade.Wow.
"You have nothing against feminism itself." Except, of course, for all the people who do.
With multiple current major news stories about feminist women being driven from their homes, subjected to violent threats, and abused with wanton abandon on social media, Time thinks it's a fun idea to suggest banning the word feminist, and then has the audacity to imply that it's silly to imagine that's because anyone has something "against feminism itself." Fuck. Off.
Secondly, I notice an awful lot of misogynoir happening in that list, too—words and phrases originated by black women, which have since been appropriated by the larger culture.
Why don't you just be more honest, Time, and instead run a one-question poll asking if Black Feminist Twitter should be banned?
Fuckers.
[H/T to Aphra_Behn.]
