Hosted by flags.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker SisterShimmy: "Who's the best musical artist you've discovered recently (even if they've been around for a while)?"
I Write Letters
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
Dear Douchebags of America:
Having to pay taxes is not like being raped.
See you next year.
No love,
Liss
OMG
LOLOLOL Peggy Noonan is such an asshole.
[I]n the case of Mrs. Clinton we are going to see the press act either like the press of a great nation—hungry, raucous, alive, demanding—or like a hopelessly sickened organism, a big flailing octopus with no strength in its arms, lying like a greasy blob at the bottom of the sea, dying of ideology poisoning.We nonetheless have court jesters, who make funny ha-ha jokes like "Hillary Clinton is treated like a queen by the media."
Republicans know—they see it every day—that Republican candidates get grilled, sometimes impertinently, and pressed, sometimes brusquely. And it isn't true that they're only questioned in this way once they announce, Scott Walker has been treated like this also, and he has yet to announce. Republicans see this, and then they see that Mrs. Clinton isn't grilled, is never forced to submit to anyone's morning-show impertinence, is never the object of the snotty question or the sharp demand for information. She gets the glide. She waves at the crowds and the press and glides by. No one pushes. No one shouts the rude question or rolls out the carefully scripted set of studio inquiries meant to make the candidate squirm. She is treated like the queen of England, who also isn't subjected to impertinent questions as she glides into and out of venues. But she is the queen. We are not supposed to have queens.
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by broccoli.
Recommended Reading:
Diamond: [Content Note: Police brutality] Survivors of Chicago Police Torture Will Receive Reparations
Andy: [CN: Homophobia] Guam Attorney General Orders Territory to Process Same-Sex Marriage Licenses But Agencies Resist
Chris: Hillary Clinton Urges Supreme Court to Rule for Marriage Equality
Jessica: [CN: Racism; hostility to consent] Broken Ends: When People Won't Take No for an Answer When It Comes to Touching Your Hair
Heather: [CN: Homophobia; misogyny; abuse; body policing] The Fugly Dyke Chronicles: How Getting Trolled About My Insecurities Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to My Self-Esteem
Abigail: [CN: Anti-immigrationism; homophobia; transphobia] We Are Teaming Up with the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance to Launch their "Rise Up! NQAPIA Week of Action on Immigration"
Nicole: Youth Make Their Voices Heard at UN Women's Rights Conference
Paige: First-Ever Hologram Protest Challenges New Law in Spain
Jorge: [Image at link may be NSFW] This Hot Dude Could Be Men's Health Magazine's First Trans Cover Model
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Daily Dose of Cute
Who's a good girl? Zelly is!
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Stop Using Me and Say What You Mean
[Content Note: Appropriation; homophobia; transphobia; anti-immigrationism; racism; misogyny; class warfare; war on agency; sexual assault; guns.]
There is a particular strain of political discourse that I despise: The use of "the American people," or "voters," or "taxpayers," followed by some assertion of what we want, or need, as if we are a monolith. It's a lazy and mendacious rhetorical tool, at best—and, at its worst, it implies that anyone who cannot read themselves into agreement with what "the American people" supposedly universally support is not a "real" American, a no-account, a traitor.
It makes my teeth grind, every time I see it, this insistent pretense that a diverse populace is in unanimous agreement about anything.
Worse yet is the monolithization of groups who are subsets of "the American people," groups whose presumed agreement and asserted collective need is frequently used, especially by conservative politicians and pundits, for the explicit purposes of justifying discrimination.
My identity, and my experiences, are appropriated over and over by conservatives in this very way—and I want them to stop using me.
Stop Using Me to Justify Homophobia
I am a woman married to a man, and "the sanctity of my marriage" is not undermined by same-sex marriage. In fact, my marriage isn't even sacred: God has nothing to do with my marriage; religion has nothing to do with my marriage; none of the things associated with sanctified marriage have anything to do with my marriage.
Our marriage is a contract taken out in a courthouse between two atheists, each of whom made a commitment contingent on continued happiness and fulfillment, not on some terrible belief that ending a dysfunctional relationship is a galactic failure while grimly sticking it out for "eternity" is a success.
We are not interested in a consecrated union. We are not delighted by the idea that we were ordained to be together. We have no need of the weight of eternity resting upon the foundations of our partnership. We want the choice to be together, so that we may choose every day whether to be together.
There is nothing sacred about my marriage—and I like it that way, thank you very much. It is earthly and profane and eminently human by design. And by virtue of the two people who comprise it.
The blanket assertion that marriage—any marriage, my marriage—is sacred, as long as it's between one man and one woman, undermines my ability to define my marriage outside of religion. And that redefines my marriage in a way that same-sex marriage does not and never could.
Not only does legalized same-sex marriage neither demean nor diminish my different-sex marriage, I am of the very firm opinion that expanding legal access to marriage makes my marriage worth more, not less, by virtue of the value conferred by inclusivity.
I have absolutely none of the desperate insecurity held by privileged bigots about their super-special relationships losing the shimmering, golden glow that only denying equality to same-sex couples conveys upon their gloriously gilded unions. They want marriage to be a members-only country club. I want it to be a rave under the stars across an expansive desert, to which anyone who wants to dance has an invite.
Stop using me.
Stop Using Me to Justify Transphobia
I am a cisgender woman who uses public bathrooms, and I am well aware that there are trans* women, some of whom might well have a penis, using the same public restrooms I do—Spoiler Alert: AND I DON'T FUCKING CARE—and anyone who's under the misapprehension that no trans women ever currently use women's bathrooms is a cloistered ignoramus who may well have been deliberately misled by a transphobic asshole with an agenda.
Trans* women and men and cis women and men already share bathrooms. This is not a tragedy or cause for alarm. OH NOES BATHROOM PANIC! is unmitigated bullshit. The End.
As is any other transphobic shit that is peddled under the auspices of "trans* predator" memes, and justified under some variation of the argument that I need to be protected from trans* people.
I am a cis woman, and a survivor of sexual violence. I am exactly the type of person who is routinely invoked as needing protection from trans* predators. I don't need your protection. No one has my permission to pretend that they're "saving" me by endangering trans* people
I am not in danger from sharing a bathroom with trans* women. But trans* women could very well be in danger from not being allowed to share a bathroom with me.
Stop using me.
Stop Using Me to Justify Anti-Immigrationism
I am a white person, who is married to a documented immigrant, who lives in a place with too few jobs and a not-insignificant population of undocumented immigrants. In a very real way, Iain and I are the people with whom anti-immigration rhetoric should most resonate. We live in an economically depressed area and Iain is a documented immigrant whose citizenship was secured through a time-consuming and costly process; he had to wait several months for a work permit after arriving; he had difficulty finding work in this area; I had difficulty finding work in this area when I still did office work; we have friends who have had difficulty finding work in this area. We're supposed to take the scapegoating bait and be irate, or feel cheated, or something.
And we do—but our ire is not directed at the undocumented immigrants who live in our community. It's directed squarely at our jackass governor and his conservative cronies running the state (into the ground), who discourage businesses from opening their doors in our state by making the state hostile to female and LGBTQI employers and employees, for fucking the state infrastructure via defunding and privatization, and for trying to dismantle our public education system and social services, just for a start.
The fact is, there's plenty of room for me to have a job along with my community's undocumented workers—which, I admit, is easier for me to say since we're not competing for the same job. But most US workers aren't competing for the same jobs generally held by undocumented immigrants, and not because they're "jobs no American wants to do," as John McCain would have us believe, but because the employers actively seek out an exploitable workforce comprised of people who don't know their rights and who can be easily controlled via the threat of deportation, a category out of which most US workers would self-select in favor healthcare benefits and livable wages, even if the crummy employers who exploit migrants would consider hiring citizens in the first place.
Iain came to the States not because his life was dreadful or his family was starving or because he couldn't find work. He came on a fiancée visa (a resource, btw, still only available to us because we're of different sexes) because he fell in love with an American. He had the great fortune of being born in a country with lots of opportunity, and moving to one with the same. He doesn't need to be here to survive—and yet he is routinely regarded as "deserving" to be here specifically because of the fact that he was privileged in the first place.
Demonizing people who are our neighbors as somehow less American because of geography and law doesn't resonate with people like us. Being "American" is more than that, and sometimes the people who weren't born here seem to understand that better than many of those who were.
The truth is, if conservatives were interviewed to see exactly what qualities lay within the soul of a Real American, their idealized Civis Americanus—fearless, adventurous, independent, enterprising, entrepreneurial, optimistic, indomitable, visionary, and irrepressible—would look an awful lot like the undocumented immigrant who makes hir way across the border in search of a better life, risking deportation and detention and bodily harm to realize a dream arbitrarily denied on the accidental circumstances of one's birth.
Would that it took at least walking across the border to become a US citizen. We'd certainly have fewer citizens who used the gift of their unearned citizenry as a justification to behave like intolerant, isolationist assholes.
Stop using me.
Stop Using Me to Justify Defending a Racist Justice System
I am a white, middle-class woman; the granddaughter of a cop and a victim of both random and not-random crimes; I live in a majority-white community which is increasingly ethnically diverse, which sits in the middle of a drug-trafficking corridor, and which is near a majority-black community with a high crime rate.
People like me are incessantly invoked to justify the war on drugs, the criminalization of need, the militarization of the police, minimum sentencing, three-strikes-and-you're-out laws, the death penalty, the school-to-prison pipeline, conceal-carry laws, Stand Your Ground laws, the acquittals of white citizens and white police officers who kill black men and women to keep "us" safe.
It's all necessary, I'm told, all of these law enforcement policies that disproportionately target people of color and wreck black communities in particular, in order to protect me.
I do not need this kind of protection. Even if it weren't aggressively ineffective, I would reject these policies on the basis that they are colossally indecent.
Protecting me from some vague possibility of harm, a possibility conjured into existence from a bubbling cauldron of stereotypes and fearmongering, is not necessary and it is certainly not a valid justification (there is none) for teargasing children and incarcerating recreational pot smokers and manipulating grand juries until they see dead teenagers as the ones on trial for their own murders.
It's mendacity in the extreme—invoking people like me and the manufactured fears of people like me in order to mask what is nothing more than the exploitation of racist institutions to generate revenue from for-profit prisons and put more money in the pockets of war profiteers by putting their weapons of war into syndication with local police.
I don't need protection. The people who are being harmed under the auspices of "protecting me" do.
Stop using me.
Stop Using Me to Justify Voter ID Laws
I live in Indiana, which has a shitty voter ID law upheld by the Supreme Court, and has been justified on the premise that it's necessary to protect the integrity of the voting process; to make sure that my vote really counts.
There is virtually no history of documented voter fraud in the state, but reams of evidence that voter ID laws disproportionately disenfranchise poor, minority, and disabled voters.
I have absolutely zero need to be "protected" from voter fraud that doesn't exist, especially at the expense of other voters (who, ahem, happen to largely lean Democratic).
Stop using me.
Stop Using Me to Justify Gutting the Social Safety Net
I am a taxpayer—and thus I routinely hear how my "tax dollars are being wasted" on social programs, and on the people who need them.
Never mind that many of the people who depend on government assistance are themselves working people who are paying taxes, which makes this entire line of reasoning (such as it is) bullshit on its face. I don't need to hear fairytales about rampant fraud, and about welfare recipients being lazy, shiftless, unhelpable moochers who can't be convinced "that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives," and about the jobs that working poor people work not being "real jobs," and about how raising the minimum wage kills jobs and ambition.
We don't get a say in how our tax dollars are spent, but, if we did, I would not seek protection from the taxes I pay being used to robustly fund a comprehensive social safety net; I would seek protection from the taxes I pay being used to buy bombs and build drones and fund interminable wars that are themselves justified on the need to protect me from a threat that isn't fucking real.
Stop using me.
Stop Using Me to Justify Abortion Restrictions
Every single thing about the anti-choice movement is terrible and exhausting, including the intractable assertion that people who seek abortions haven't thought it through. Study after study has found that this claim is categorically not true—and the reported lived experiences of people who have gotten abortions also reveal its manifest dishonesty—but still we get legislation like fetal heartbeat bills and mandatory ultrasound bills and required waiting periods.
If only these wicked women (it is always women in their framework, despite the fact that not only women need access to abortion) hear the heartbeat…! If only these wicked women see that there's a "baby" inside of them…! If only these wicked women are forced to think about their decision…!
And thus we are in need of "protection" from ourselves, and our own lack of thoughtful consideration about our choices.
Further, we need restrictions and regulations to "protect" us from predatory abortionists and unsafe clinics and evil feminists who love killing babies. Just an endless parade of men who propose legislation to rollback abortion access, giving garbage speeches on statehouse floors about "protecting women."
They need to "protect" us, they say, by robbing us of our agency, of our bodily autonomy, and of our consent.
I have previously noted on many occasions that I'm hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of a man who sits at a big mahogany desk in a government building making decisions about my body without my consent than I should be of the man who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.
It is an observation by which anti-choice legislators are outraged. They are horrified to be compared, even obliquely, to sexual predators. As well they should be. I am horrified to have to make it. But anyone who holds the position that zie should be able to legislate away my bodily autonomy and supersede my consent about what happens to my body shouldn't be too goddamned surprised by the comparison.
Especially when they are claiming to be "protecting" me as they do it. I do not need their protection.
Stop using me.
Stop Using Me to Justify the Presence of Guns on College Campuses as "Rape Prevention"
I am a survivor who was assaulted by someone I met in a classroom. Thus, my experience is often invoked to justify urging female college students to wield weapons as self-defense and rape deterrence.
Many of the objections to these proposals I laid out here: "Five Reasons Why 'Teach Women Self-Defense' Isn't a Comprehensive Solution to Rape." Particularly sections 4 and 5: Women who deter rape with violence, especially women of color, are often punished for doing so, and not every woman is prepared to use violence against her attacker, especially since many victims of sexual assault know the person assaulting them.
Further, making weapons more available in more places empowers people who are going to use them to commit violence at least as much (and, realistically, more so) than people who are going to use them to deter violence. If someone is seriously concerned about rape prevention, then limiting rapists' access to guns is a good place to start.
Even a rapist who might not rape at gunpoint may later use a gun to enforce his victim's silence.
And what of a rapist who is attempting rape at gunpoint? Is a woman supposed to pull out her own gun and have a shoot-out on campus in order to defend herself?
At what cost to the safety of other students does such a scenario come? It doesn't matter to the advocates of gun-slinging as rape deterrence.
Because they don't actually give a single, infinitesimal shit about rape or victims of rape. All they care about is guns everywhere all the time.
And if that comes at the cost of the people they invoke in fantasy narratives about rape prevention, they just hope no one will notice.
Well. I see you.
Stop using me.
Stop using me to justify disablism (more fraud rhetoric; more people who are "taking advantage of " people like me); to justify class warfare (protecting my "middle-class family" at the expense of people in poverty); to justify union-busting (because unions are job-killers; sure); to justify tax cuts, employment discrimination, housing discrimination, environmental devastation, nationalism, sanctions, war, all manner of fuckery from which I allegedly need protection.
I do not want your protection, and I want no part of your contemptible rhetoric suffused with faux concerns for my well-being that puts a thin veneer of compassion on your campaigns of discrimination and hatred.
I will not sit quietly while I am co-opted as part of a despicable strategy in which one group of people is monolithized in order to harm another group of people. Conservatives may say that "taxpayers" or "middle-class families" or "voters" or "women" want this or that bit of legislated bigotry, but they will be lying.
So stop using me, and say what you mean: You simply don't believe that same-sex couples deserve equal rights; you loathe and fear trans* people and want to keep them away from you and out of any spaces you might inhabit; you don't like brown immigrants; you don't believe black lives matter; you want to disenfranchise as many likely Democratic voters as possible to win elections; you are greedy and just don't want to give money to people in need; you hate women having control over their own reproduction, or control over anything at all, really; you love guns; you hate people.
My identity, my experiences, my life are not yours to appropriate. Especially under the guise of protecting me.
The primary thing from which I need protection, conservatives, is you.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[Content Note: There are camera flashes and a strobe effect in this video.]
Jennifer Hudson: "Feeling Good"
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
This is big news: "President Barack Obama will remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, the White House announced Tuesday, a key step in his bid to normalize relations between the two countries. ...Cuba will officially be removed from the terror list 45 days after the president's message was sent to Congress. Lawmakers could vote to block the move during that window, though Obama would be all-but-certain to veto such a measure."
(Because there are already stories about whether President Barack Obama is doing enough to help Hillary Clinton, or whoever the eventual presidential nominee is, I want to point out—and I will continue to point this out, whenever I see it—that this is not only the decent thing to do, but also a crucial assist to the next Democratic nominee, who will certainly benefit from voters who are pleased by this decision.)
Speaking of Hillary Clinton: At an appearance in Iowa, Clinton said "she's anxious to hear from Americans about what's important for them and what policies they see working in their own communities, but also that she decided to start with a baseline of 'four big fights' she wants to wage: To 'build the economy of tomorrow not yesterday'; to 'strengthen families and communities'; to 'fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all—even if that means a constitutional amendment'; and to protect the country 'from the threats that we see and the ones that are on the horizon.'"
And speaking of listening to people about what's important to them, this piece by Imani Gandy on the absolute necessity that Clinton listen to Black women is amazing: "Women of color, and Black women in particular (because we have the strongest turnout among women of color), could hand Clinton the White House on a silver platter. But not if she doesn't work for it. And that means addressing issues that uniquely face us. How does Hillary Clinton plan to work to restore voting rights? To end the scourge of police brutality against Black people? To reduce the wage gap between white women on the one hand, and Black and Latina women on the other? To overcome barriers that women of color face in health-care access? To reform draconian immigration policies that rip families apart? To ensure that women have the right to safe abortion care irrespective of their ability to pay for it? If she were to focus specifically on our issues, she could further increase our participation at the polls and inspire us to vote in greater numbers—not just in the upcoming presidential election, but in midterm elections and statewide elections too, thus solidifying Democratic victories at the state and federal level." Seriously, read the whole thing; it's terrific.
In gross news: "Gravestone of Hillary Clinton's Father Toppled in Possible Act of Vandalism." Fucking hell.
[Content Note: Homophobia; Christian Supremacy] My garbage governor, y'all: "Gov. Mike Pence said Tuesday that the controversy over the state's 'religious freedom' law has passed. 'I think the difficult time that Indiana just passed through two weeks ago is behind us,' Pence told reporters. His comments came just one day after his administration hired a global public relations company to help repair the state's damaged reputation. The state plans to pay the firm, Porter Novelli, at least $2 million." Again: This is a state in which 1 out of every 6 people relies on food assistance to survive. And they're spending $2 million on PR to convince people that bigotry ain't bigotry. Terrific.
And on the whole "Indiana voters need to get their shit together" meme: Yesterday, the Indiana House voted to pass SB1 to remove Glenda Ritz, 55-41. So, again: This is what happens when we do vote in Democrats.
This is a supercool math/logic problem. It's so tricky and so fun! Were you able to solve it?
Boooooooo: "After surveying tens of thousands of galaxies surrounding our own Milky Way galaxy, the scientists turned up no sign of advanced alien civilizations." Well, if we did, we'd probably just blow them up anyway. Sadface.
LOL FOREVER: "Gwyneth Paltrow's food stamp challenge is the most Gwyneth Paltrow thing ever." It really is.
And finally! "Incredible Nurse Cat from Poland Looks After Other Animals at Animal Shelter." ♥
Take Action to Stop the Forcible Close of Aboriginal Communities
by Shaker Rachel
[Content Note: Racism; displacement; violence; cultural genocide.]
I am not Indigenous, but I have been challenged to practice ally work in support of Aboriginal people in the fight to acknowledge and stop the racism that continues in Australia. During a recent local protest, one of the speakers asked us to reach out globally and try to raise awareness about the proposed forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities.
The cultural genocide of Aboriginal Australians continues today. There are not the violent skirmishes of war, nor the obvious oppression of official apartheid, but to be born as an Aboriginal person in my country is to face the slow and steady erosion of an ancient culture.
Archaeological estimates acknowledge that Aboriginal people have lived on this continent for well over 50,000 years, making them the oldest known living cultural history in the world. One might assume that being a wealthy, developed democracy would encourage the government to work with Aboriginal people to overcome the structural inequalities that have arisen since British colonisation; sadly, such an assumption would be false.
In Australia, we have a history of more than two hundred years of removing Aboriginal people from their country. Initially the British colonisers blatantly murdered or dispossessed Aboriginal Australians from their land. Declared "terra nullius" (literally no one's land), there was no acknowledgment that Australia was occupied by people prior to the English invasion in 1788.
This tradition of forcefully removing Aboriginal people continues today. The current Federal Government have slashed funding to Aboriginal services and passed former federal responsibilities to the states. One of these changes has included the end of federal funding to remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia. The State Government has decided that of the 274 communities it will not continue to fund as many as 150 of them. In response to criticism of the planned closure the Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared that "…It's not the job of the taxpayer to subsidise lifestyle choices."
This is one of many examples of our elected leader's privilege and disrespect towards Aboriginal people. He has since been asked if he will apologise for the hurt that he has caused people with his comment, or at the very least concede that it was a poor choice of words, but he has stated that he will do neither.
To give some insight into my country's treatment of Aboriginal people, our Constitution continues to ignore and discriminate against them. Australia is a country where if my grandmother had been Aboriginal she would have faced the threat of having her children removed as a part of the Stolen Generation. If my parents had been Aboriginal, in their lifetime they would have not been counted on the census but have been included under "flora and fauna." If I were Aboriginal and lived in a remote community in Western Australia my access to water, electricity, health services, and education would currently be under threat.
The Western Australian Premier, Collin Barnett, has stopped talking about the issue in terms of economic rationalism and is now trying to change the parameters of the conversation to focus upon the communities being closed to protect children. He seems to think that if he tells us the closure is due to concerns about child sexual assault, the opposition to his plan will lessen.
This is not a new argument in Australia as Aboriginal peoples human rights have been violated since 2007, in what was called the Northern Territory Intervention. Aboriginal women and children are at a higher disproportionate risk of suffering domestic violence and sexual assault within Australia. As a nation there has been a recent recognition that we are suffering an epidemic of abuse against women. There is growing enthusiasm for talk about eliminating gendered violence, but a disconnect when it comes to funding specialist services and implementing long term programs.
If the Premier genuinely has a desire to tackle the problem of domestic violence and sexual assault, there should be a state wide roll out of programs, with specialist services for Aboriginal people. The Premier's use of a serious social issue as a smokescreen to close down remote Aboriginal communities is an insult to all Australians. It also serves to distract the country from the real possibility that an underlying reason to remove Aboriginal people from their land is to open it up for easier access by mining companies.
In 2015, there have been a growing number of protests across Australia urging non-Aboriginal Australians to stand in solidarity with the residents of remote Aboriginal communities and demand that they are not closed down. People have taken to the streets to loudly show their disapproval of the proposition. There have also been online petitions, social media sites, and media coverage of the issue.
Murray George, a senior Anangu law man from South Australia, has spoken about his concerns raised by the plans to forcibly close remote Aboriginal communities.
We are worried for our culture. Some people have already lost their culture. But today we are still alive and strong, and I am talking for Aboriginal people.(This post first appeared on the facebook page for Anangu Pitjatjantjara Yankunytjatjara Lands.)
Federal and state governments have got to understand and listen to our people, because our culture is still alive, for all Aboriginal people in Australia.
If they close the communities, they close our culture. We will lose our way and it's gone forever. There is no way to bring that back. Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara is still alive today with the language, story and Tjukurpa (dreaming). We are here for everybody. We are important to Australia.
We want the SA Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Minister Maher to talk to us 'proper way' and not decide our future from Adelaide. He needs to support us to decide our future. We are in the bush, we want Minister Maher to come and sit down with us, to work together, for him to understand our way, our Law. We want Prime Minister Tony Abbott to support Aboriginal people and our Law and Culture.
Closing communities without talking to Aboriginal people, and without any plan, is really a bad thing to do. It's not good. Our life, our ancestor's lives, and our children's lives is not a 'lifestyle choice', it is our country, our family, our law and it is our culture. How can communities of poor Aboriginal people be closed, while the government supports tax rorts for the super-rich?
How can poor Aboriginal people be moved off our land, so that mining companies who are given large government tax breaks, can dig up our country? I'm from APY, where we still are alive with language and Law and culture. We are worried for our communities and Aboriginal people around Australia today. The Governments should help people from Aboriginal communities and work with us.
I am Murray George, from APY. This is my hope.
I cannot silently sit by whilst a wave of attacks befall Aboriginal Australians. The remote communities face a myriad of problems, but closing them down is not any kind of solution.
Sitting in a capital city and refusing to engage with remote community members is not a respectful way to instigate change. Whilst promises are made that in time there will be community consultations, clearly there are plans in motion that have ignored the perspective of those whose lives are about to be dramatically changed.
It says a lot about the colonial headspace of our government, that over two hundred years after invasion, Aboriginal people are still being treated as second-rate citizens whose basic human rights can be removed and ignored.
Wherever you are in the world, your support could help to shame the Australian Government out of its decision to forcibly close remote Aboriginal communities.
Sign the online petition.
On Facebook you can post a photo of yourself with a sign showing your support here.
You can tweet Premier Colin Barnett to tell him your views at @premierofwa.
You can email Premier Colin Barnett at: wa-government@dpc.wa.gov.au.
(I would like to acknowledge the Awabakal and Worimi people as the Traditional Owners of the land that this opinion piece was written on. I would also like to pay my respects to their Elders, past, present, and future.)
Hillary Sexism Watch, Part Wev in an Endless Series
[Content Note: Misogyny; ageism; body policing; reference to Hitler.]
And so it begins (again), in the most tedious way possible:
Don Feder of the World Congress of Families is out today with a column titled "Top Ten Reasons Why Hitlery Will Never Be President," in which he calls the former secretary of state "a frustrated, middle-aged feminist who's perpetually incensed."I love the idea of someone who calls Clinton "Hitlery" accusing her of being "perpetually incensed."
Anyway.
Feder, decrying Clinton as an elitist and a radical ideologue, ends his piece by asserting that Clinton will be brought down by "the hideousness factor."She's practically a monster! Gee, where I have heard that fully one million times before?
10. The Hideousness Factor – Lyndon Baines Johnson was the last profoundly ugly candidate to be elected president, and he was a legacy of the martyred JFK. Voters don't want a leader who looks frazzled or frumpy. We're told that Lincoln was too homely to be elected president in an age of television and paparazzi. But Lincoln's homely face had a dignity, a gravitas. If nothing else, we want a face that reassures us, not one that scares us, a la Night of the Living Alinskyites.
Obviously, no matter what Hillary Clinton actually looked like, it wouldn't justify assessing her fitness for the presidency on the basis of her appearance, but I mean:
[Photo taken at the 30th Anniversary National Conference of Emily's List, March 3, 2015.]
I'd love to say that looks don't matter and are totally irrelevant to the US presidency, but that wouldn't be true. Candidates' appearances do matter, even though they shouldn't. And the fact is that Hillary Clinton is not "hideous." If she were, she wouldn't have made it this far in US politics.
That said, if you can't find ten reasons to criticize Hillary Clinton that have nothing to do with her age or appearance or being a woman, you probably ought to just concede she's an awesome candidate and go take a nap.
Because, for real, I can find ten reasons to criticize Hillary Clinton on policy. But, then again, I'm not a misogynist shitlord who thinks "you ugly!" is a substantive criticism.
Question of the Day
What is your favorite movie soundtrack? Inspired by Dirty Dancing, which I watched for the eleventy-millionth time last night, and which has a seriously kickass soundtrack.
Recommended Reading
[Content Note: War on agency.]
Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress: "The Most Creative Ways That Anti-Choice Activists Try to Shut Down Abortion Clinics." Depressing but crucial reading.
[Related: Quote of the Day.]
Nope
[Content Note: Transphobia; cis gatekeeping; gender essentialism; body policing.]
Every single thing about this is terrible: A 21-year-old trans man from Louisiana named Tristan Broussard was fired from his job at Tower Loan after the company's vice-president told him that "the corporate office had to 'draw a line,' and that Broussard would have to sign an agreement that his gender identity wasn't 'in compliance with Tower Loan's personnel policies' or leave the company."
This, after Broussard had disclosed being trans to his direct manager, who'd assured him "that he wouldn't be judged and had nothing to worry about."
But the higher-ups disagreed, and insisted Broussard dress and identify as a woman at work or be fired.
"I told him, 'I can't,'" Broussard said. "'I'm going to have to turn in my keys.'"So Broussard left his job, and now, with the assistance of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Broussard is suing for wrongful termination: "The complaint cites Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, and which, since 2012, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has interpreted to apply to anti-transgender discrimination. In the past year, both the EEOC and Justice Department have filed lawsuits against businesses or governmental entities alleging Title VII violations based on anti-transgender discrimination."
The cis gatekeeping at work here is incredible, as it always is in such cases, but this is just beyond the fucking beyond:
According to the lawsuit, after Broussard declined to sign the agreement, Morgan told him that if "he 'had some surgeries and we can see some results,' then Tower Loan may consider hiring him again."First of all, it never stops being awesome (it is the opposite of awesome) how cis people flippantly advise trans* people to get surgery, as if gender reassignment surgeries in the US are affordable and accessible. Even trans* people with insurance struggle to access all the healthcare services they need, many of which aren't covered by most employer policies, and this asshole wants to fire someone and then tell him to go get some surgeries.
Which is to say nothing of the fact that no trans* person should be required to get surgery, if they don't want it. Certainly not to please an employer at a job where one's gender is irrelevant to one's vocational competency.
And I don't know that I've ever read clearer evidence that cis people think it's our role to be gatekeepers of trans* bodies than telling a trans* employee you may be willing to rehire them if they have "some surgeries and we can see some results." See. Some. Results. Go surgically alter your body then come back here and pull your pants down, and we'll see.
Breathtakingly contemptible. And yet utterly unsurprising, because cis privilege routinely tells cis people that policing trans* people's bodies is not just our right, but our responsibility.
It is neither.
I wish Tristan Broussard good outcomes in his lawsuit.
[H/T to Shaker Westsidebecca.]
Daily Dose of Cute
Couch cuddles with Dudley, last night.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
This F#@king Guy
[Content Note: Christian Supremacy; homophobia; description of war injury.]
Former Arkansas Governor, former Republican presidential candidate, and current dipshit Mike Huckabee has always been a conservative nightmare catastrophe hiding behind a thin aw-shucks veneer and a goofy grin, but the mask is really starting to slip these days, revealing just how hateful he truly is beneath the artifice:
Last week, Mike Huckabee was one of several potential GOP presidential candidates who spoke at a "family leadership regional summit" in Iowa hosted by Bob Vander Plaats and The Family Leader.I hardly know where the fuck on Earth to begin with this mess.
During his remarks, Huckabee said the fact that President Obama called gay football player Michael Sam is a sign that the culture in America has gone into an "utter collapse" and decried boycotts against anti-gay businesses as "economic terrorism."
"The values that so many of us hold dear are values that are under assault today," Huckabee said. "I never believed that in such a short period of time, the culture in America would go into utter collapse. If you told me just a few years ago that one day the President of the United States would use his precious time in the Oval Office to call people up simply to congratulate them for being gay, I would say, 'No, surely he'll call a veteran and thank them for their service, for losing a limb or a leg.' But even when Chris Kyle was murdered, his widow didn't get a phone call, but a gay football player who came out did."
Huckabee is a conservative Republican, who will shout "THE MARKET!" faster than you can pull up your bootstraps at the mere suggestion of worker protections or funding the social safety net, but suddenly "the market" taking its business to companies who serve everyone is "economic terrorism." Cool.
Further, the mischaracterization of President Obama's call to Michael Sam—"Congratulations for being gay!"—is profoundly reprehensible, even without the suggestion that presidents should call wounded veterans to thank them for being catastrophically injured.
And if acknowledging a gay man as a human being is your idea of utter social collapse, but working people being dependent on government assistance just to survive is just A-OK, you are a terrible person the end.
I don't even want to give this guy any attention, but he is seriously considering another run for the presidency—and nothing is more indicative of that than this extremist rhetoric. This is how potential Republican candidates endear themselves to the conservative base.
Which is worthy of comment, even though I desperately wish it weren't.
The Make-Up Thread
Here is your semi-regular make-up thread, to discuss all things make-up.
Do you have a make-up product you'd recommend? Are you looking for the perfect foundation which has remained frustratingly elusive? Need or want to offer make-up tips? Searching for hypoallergenic products? Want to grouse about how you hate make-up? Want to gush about how you love it?
Whatever you like—have at it!
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We haven't talked a whole lot about nail polish in these threads yet, which is maybe make-up adjacent, so I thought I'd open that up for a possible topic today.
Even when I wasn't into make-up, I enjoyed painting my nails. At least once I stopped biting my fingernails, which was a bad habit that lasted well into my adulthood.
I've only ever had one professional manicure, gifted to me for my birthday by my friend Ari, and I've never had a professional pedicure—although I probably could use one, given my barefoot ways.
My feet are always a challenge, because I will forever be barefoot as much as possible, which makes it hard to keep my feet looking not-hideous, but also means my perpetually displayed feet should really be not-hideous, lol. So I make a bit of an effort, which includes frequently painting my toenails.
I favor bright colors, and I'm particularly fond of this one—Purple Crush by ORLY. (A gift from Eastsidekate!) I actually just changed the color this past weekend; it's now a lighter shade of pink. But I will probably go back to this soon, because I love it so much.
Anyway! Talk about polish, or anything and everything else!
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Please note, as always, that advice should be not be offered to an individual person unless they solicit it. Further: This thread is open to everyone—women, men, genderqueer folks. People who are make-up experts, and people who are make-up newbies. Also, because there is a lot of racist language used in discussions of make-up, and in make-up names, please be aware to avoid turns of phrase that are alienating to women of color, like "nude" or "flesh tone" when referring to a peachy or beige color. I realize some recommended products may have names that use these words, so please be considerate about content noting for white supremacist (and/or Orientalist) product naming.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[Content Note: There is a strobe-light effect in this video.]
Kelly Clarkson: "My Life Would Suck Without You"
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Terrorism; abduction; sexual abuse; misogyny] Marking a year since Boko Haram abducted more than 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in northeast Nigeria, Amnesty International has released a comprehensive report detailing the breadth of the group's terror campaign in the region: "The human rights organization has issued a new report alleging that since January of last year, Boko Haram has abducted at least 2,000 women and girls, forcing them into slavery or the military, and has killed approximately 5,500 civilians. The grim accounting appear in the 90-page report, "'Our Job Is to Shoot, Slaughter and Kill': Boko Haram's Reign of Terror in Northeast Nigeria." It's based on 200 witness accounts, including interviews with nearly 30 women and girls who escaped from Boko Haram. 'The abduction of 276 girls from Chibok was just one case amongst many,' said Daniel Eyre, Amnesty International's Nigeria researcher. 'What our report shows is that many of these girls and women have been tortured. They've been raped. Forced into marriage with Boko Haram members. And some have even been trained as fighters by Boko Haram. Now these are war crimes and crimes against humanity and we're calling for them to be investigated.'"
[CN: Homophobia; war on agency; Christian Supremacy] Oh my god lolsob: "Today the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, IEDC, announced it hired a global PR firm, Porter Novelli, to help build a publicity plan that will reach people nationally and show that Indiana is a welcoming place to live, work, and visit. The IEDC is responsible for growing businesses in the state and attracting new ones to Indiana. After a recent PR nightmare in the state the IEDC accelerated plans to strengthen the Hoosier Hospitality image." Hey, here's an idea: How about the state legislature stop passing retrofuck legislation that attempts to turn Indiana into a Conservative Christian theocracy, stops restricting abortion rights, stops denying basic rights to queer people, stops attempting to destroy our public education system, and robustly funds the social safety net? You know, actually be a legislature of a state so welcoming that no PR campaign is required to convince anyone.
Good grief! "An Alaska Airlines plane declared an emergency and made a priority landing in Seattle after taking off with a worker trapped in the cargo hold. The pilot of flight 448, bound for Los Angeles, was alerted by the sound of banging 'from beneath the aircraft,' an Alaska Airlines statement said. Once back on the ground, the baggage handler emerged from the pressurised hold, saying he had fallen asleep. He 'appeared OK' but went to hospital as a precaution, the airline said." He's apparently fine, and has now gone home. Presumably to finish that nap.
Here's a cool update from our old pal Philae: "Scientists said Tuesday that measurements made by the European space probe Philae, which landed on comet 67P in November, show the comet's core isn't magnetized. The findings add to scientists' understanding of how comets and even planets formed, because some astrophysicists had theorized that magnetism might have been responsible for aligning and then binding together rocks into larger boulders. ...The findings are part of a wealth of scientific results obtained by scientists analyzing data collected by the Philae lander and its mother ship Rosetta, which is flying alongside the comet on its elliptical orbit around the sun."
Bill Kristol is a clown person: "Prompted by host [of ABC's This Week] George Stephanopoulous to name 'the most promising Republican candidate not in the race yet,'...frequent panelist and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol tossed out the name of former Vice President Dick Cheney. ...'If they get to nominate Hillary Clinton, why don't we get to nominate Dick Cheney? I mean, he has a much…he has a much better record,' Kristol said as the entire panel burst into laughter."
Speaking of cool Republican presidential candidates: Republican Ohio Governor John Kasich says he's "seriously considering" running for president. He's terrible, so that sounds about right.
Are you excited about Marvel's new superhero movie Ant-Man? If you don't even know, here is the trailer so you can figure out if you're excited! I am pretty pumped about a superhero whose superpower is crawling all up on that infinitesimal smudge of peanut butter you left on the counter, thus alerting you to its presence!
Guitar Hero is back with "a brand new controller with a refreshed interface, designed to more closely resemble real guitar playing. The game will ship with a wide array of licensed tracks, and will also allow players to access extra songs—and to indulge in online multiplayer competitions—through a new Guitar Hero TV service, billed by publisher Activision as 'the world's first playable live music video network.'" Sounds fun! I was more into Rock Band than Guitar Hero (and I was super into Rock Band), but I'm pretty excited to give this a try.
And finally! A tiny kitten conquers the stairs like a boss! Aww lol.
