Sandra Bae: "You Are the Sunshine of My Life"
This week's TMNS brought to you by female artists covering songs originally popularized by men.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Sandra Bae: "You Are the Sunshine of My Life"
This week's TMNS brought to you by female artists covering songs originally popularized by men.
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!
* * *
Nothing special today. No foundation or cover-up of any sort, so you can see what my skin normally looks like, blotches and melasmas and all. Just a little eyeshadow (Oil Slick by Urban Decay) and a little lipstick (Bossy by ColourPop).
It's been so hard for me to find a red lipstick that works well with my coloring, but I really love this Bossy shade. And, naturally, the name delights me!
What's up with you?
* * *
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.
Thirteen
At the shore of Lake Michigan, 2002, just after we were married.
Today is Iain's and my thirteenth wedding anniversary.
We were married at a courthouse, with our friend N (Lottie's dad) the only guest in attendance, and afterwards we went out for burgers. It was a good day.
We are fortunate to have lots of good days. A combination of luck and privilege and working hard to make days good for each other.
It's not that we don't have struggles; it's just that our struggles don't turn us against each other, but bring us together.
It's not that we never hurt each other; we do, regrettably. But it is, inevitably, because of a failure, not because either of us ever deliberately tries to harm the other. We know each other's vulnerabilities all too well, and we protect them, not exploit them.
It's not that we don't bicker; we do, but we don't want to bicker, we don't enjoy it, and neither of us endeavors to prolong it. The last time we were in the middle of a row about something I don't even remember, Olivia came prancing out of the bathroom with an entire roll of toilet paper in her mouth, mewing triumphantly, and we both collapsed in fits of laughter, and set aside whatever it was that had caused us to not be laughing in the first place.
We both want good days with one another, and we do our best to make them.
That might not sound as meaningful as it is, but there have been times in both our lives where people keen to make good days with us were in short supply.
This is much better. This is everything.
I often say, as I did here recently, that I am contentedly married. Sometimes people react to that with derisive snorts or laughter. "Oh, contentedly married," they might say, with sarcasm in their voices. "That sounds fantastic."
They think that I mean to suggest something lesser than the more traditional "happily married."
Which couldn't be more wrong.
Lots of things make me happy. Being happy is easy (for me), but contentment is much more elusive. Especially the deep, abiding, succoring contentment I have within my relationship with Iain, where I find a way to leave restlessness aside and instead sit with a stillness in which I am able to love abundantly and allow myself to be loved.
I'm not afraid to be alone / But being alone is better with you / Life is better with you / Some days are better than other days / But these days, life is better with you.
Happy Anniversary, Iain. I love you. Thank you for loving me back.
At the shore of Lake Michigan, 13 years later, with the pups.
Daily Dose of Cute
LEGS!
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Police killing; racism] As I mentioned earlier this week, black leaders in Cleveland had no faith that charges will be brought against the police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice last year, so they invoked "a seldom-used Ohio law" to directly petition a judge to recommend murder charges. And their request was granted: "A Cleveland Municipal Court judge has found probable cause that police officer Timothy Loehmann should face murder and other charges in the slaying of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. ...[Judge Ronald B. Adrine] found probable cause for charges of murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, negligent homicide and dereliction of duty against Loehmann. He also found probable cause for charges of negligent homicide and dereliction of duty against [Officer Frank] Garmback. ...Adrine forwarded his opinion to city prosecutors and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty." McGinty still has prosecutorial discretion over whether to move forward, but Adrine's opinion will surely weigh heavily in that decision.
[CN: Worker exploitation] This piece by William Finnegan for the New Yorker utterly reflects all my thoughts and questions about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and why President Obama is so intent on passing it, despite opposition from his own party and from organized labor. I don't get it. At all.
[CN: Misogyny] Hey, remember when Jamie Dimon was being a superfuck to Senator Elizabeth Warren? (Sure you do! I just reported it yesterday!) Well, Senator Warren offered a pretty excellent response to Dimon and his cronies: "The problem is not that I don't understand the global banking system. The problem for these guys is that I fully understand the system and I understand how they make their money. And that's what they don't like about me." BOOM.
[CN: Rape culture] Republican Representative from New York Peter King, commenting on the sexual abuse allegations against former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, says: "The only victim here is Denny Hastert." Wow. This entire party really just needs to fuck off, at this point.
[CN: Threatening vandalism] Speaking of how cool Republicans are: In Indiana, lots of people are putting up "Fire Mike Pence" signs, because our governor is a terrible garbage nightmare. And, in one neighborhood in Indianapolis, someone is burning the signs posted on people's lawns. So that's neat.
Awesome: "Three cheers for Samantha Cristoforetti, smasher of space records: Samantha Cristoforetti is back on Earth after a six-month stay on the International Space Station, and she carries a host of superlatives with her. At 11:04 a.m. ET on June 6, the 38-year-old Italian astronaut broke the record for the longest space mission ever completed by a woman."
Welp, this sounds perfect: "Paul Feig's all-female rehashing of Ghostbusters is still a work in progress, and newest to the cast is Chris Hemsworth, who will be playing the receptionist. This is a big change up from his usual roles, and keeps in step with Feig's gender reversed roles over the original film."
Melissa McCarthy talking about speaking to Sandra Bullock for the first time as they were preparing to make The Heat together is hilarious.
YES! Oculus finally revealed its consumer-end virtual reality Rift headset yesterday. TAKE MY MONEY!
And finally: "New Zealand and Quebec have both recently made huge leaps forward for animal welfare by determining that all animals—not just dolphins and chimpanzees—are sentient beings who feel emotions and pain. The new laws will be doling out much harsher punishments to abusers." Right on!
On Rachel Dolezal
[Content Note: Appropriation; racism; disablism.]
Rachel Dolezal, president of Spokane's chapter of the NAACP and a professor of African studies, has reportedly been misrepresenting herself as a black woman for years. There is background here and here.
There are, quite understandably, a lot of people—and I am among them—who are angry that a white woman essentially donned blackface in order to do black activism, accepting positions that otherwise likely would have gone to a black academic. There are a lot of people who have lots of questions.
There are a lot of people defending her, often in deeply mendacious ways. Like suggesting it doesn't matter what her "real race" is, because she's doing good work (a contention based, at this point, solely on her own claims). Or suggesting that race is just a social construct, anyway, so it makes no difference who she claims to be. Which elides so many realities about race in the United States that it is difficult to know where to begin. I will simply note, for now, that treating race like a costume has nothing to do with race being a social construct.
And of course there are jokes on social media. So many jokes.
Not all of these jokes are equal. Jokes made by aggrieved black people who are using humor to process a theft of their identity, and some of the jokes made by white anti-racism activists, are not the same as jokes made by the white people who don't actually give a fuck about the complex racial issues of this story and for whom Rachel Dolezal's appropriation scheme is just another "weird" news story to briefly penetrate the shallowest levels of their consciousness.
Anyway. Dolezal's fraud was vast, and her reasons for it are not entirely clear.
She may have strictly been a cynical opportunist, but, as many people have pointed out, Dolezal could have done the same anti-racist work, and potentially gotten the same jobs, as a white woman—especially in Spokane, which has a small black population.
Maybe she wanted attention. The unraveling of her fraud began with investigations into her claim of being victimized by multiple racially-motivated hate crimes, of which police suspect she was the perpetrator. She claims to have survived childhood cancer, of which there is seemingly no evidence. There are a lot of red flags that suggest profoundly desperate attention-seeking.
She is estranged from her white biological parents (who publicly called her bluff, and the reasons for their timing is unclear, too), and calls a black man her dad, although no comment from him has yet been forthcoming. She has also taken guardianship (though her parents dispute it is legal guardianship) of two younger adopted brothers who are black, to whom she now refers as her sons. (And who do not support her fraud.) She is married to a black man, with whom she was supposedly raising them. There is a common and studied dynamic in transracial adoptions, typically white parents who adopt children of color, in which the white parent(s) struggle to navigate—or simply careen head over heels past—boundaries around exposing their adopted children to their cultures while not themselves appropriating those cultures.
(There is also appropriation of the term "transracial" to mean a white person who feels their true identity is as a person of color, which is erroneously equated with being transgender. Equating what Dolezal has done, for whatever reason, with being transgender is appropriative, wrong, and gross.)
Naturally, in the search for understanding why Dolezal perpetrated this fraud, there has been an abundance of suggestions that she is mentally ill. And maybe she does have a mental illness which contributed to her appropriation of a black identity, but there is no mental illness that causes someone to do this. If she is mentally ill, it is only part of the context, it is not the exclusive reason.
The likelihood is that a number of factors underwrite Dolezal's fraud—some combination of the above, all of the above, other reasons altogether. She has a lot for which to answer.
In the meantime, I hope she will stop this fraud. I hope she will stop saying [video may autoplay at link] that she is black. If stopping this behavior requires therapeutic help, I hope she will seek it. And I hope she will apologize to the people she's harmed.
A couple other things I hope: I hope white people will stop policing black people's reactions to this story, and stop denying them their right to be fucking angry. I hope that no one will give Rachel Dolezal a book deal or a movie deal or any kind of deal to "tell her story" and handsomely reward her for her gross appropriation and exploitation.
And one last thing: I hope that white people, and white women in particular, will not use Rachel Dolezal as a shield against interrogating our own habitual appropriation of black culture. I hope that we will not use her extreme, outlying example of appropriation as a threshold by comparison to which lesser appropriations are minimized if they fail to elevate to this heinous benchmark.
Instead, I hope we will see that what Rachel Dolezal has done is one end of a spectrum on which all white appropriation of black culture and identities falls, and use it as a reminder that we must be vigilant about resisting appropriation ourselves, rather than pretending that her next-level shit excuses the rest of us.
The WTF-ery of "Clinton Fatigue"
So reading over at The Moderate Voice, I learn from Shaun Mullen that it will be a very very bad thing if voters just get, well, tired of Hillary Clinton:
The long and the short of the situation is this: Republicans have been fiendishly clever in keeping voters (and that supposedly liberal media) focused on her. If she cannot put the focus on us — as in the dividends voters should expect to reap from her presidency, a sure-thing win could slip from her grasp.A fatal case of Clinton fatigue next November would not merely hand the White House to a Republican who, judging from the overcrowded GOP field to a man (sorry, Carly), would not merely undo the significant accomplishments of Barack Obama, but even more importantly pack a Supreme Court that would do untold damage for many years to come.
1. Yes, those Republicans sure are "fiendishly clever" in getting "the media" to focus on Hillary, reminding us that she is unlikeable (For Reasons!) despite being really, really popular. I guess Mr. Mullen was unable to avoid their evil mindrays as well. Whoooops! Oh well! "The media" just happens!
2. What candidate ON EARTH is not expected to be in the spotlight? (Oh yeah, a woman candidate. Because we're tired of your face, missy!) Seriously, it takes a real irony deficiency to complain that Clinton isn't putting the focus on voters. She just finished a listening-to-voters tour (which was bad because she wasn't focused on mainstream media, apparently). AND she just announced a major plan to restore voting rights across the country. That sounds like a focus on voters to me.
3. "undo the significant accomplishments of Barack Obama." YES. UNDO HIS MAN-WORK! Don't get me wrong; I don't want to see the Republicans roll back Obama's accomplishments. But context matters, and it's cringe-inducing to read that. It's not that, say, Clinton needs to win in order to further her own ideas for reform and progress. Nope! She needs to win this election so she can protect Obama's agenda. Get out there and protect that man's work, madam! (And keep that spotlight off yourself, okay?)
4. Oh yes, the Supreme Court. Do I hear a "Roe! Roe!"?
If someone is worried about a GOP win because voters get "fatigued" with Clinton, maybe that person should not write a column reminding us what a boring old lady she is.
In fact, if it were me, I would be actively trying to write about Clinton in a way that does not reinforce misogynist stereotypes. Because there are substantive critiques of Clinton to be made, but vague complaints about how people might be "tired" of her are not among them.
I'm pretty damned tired of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, but it's not out of some sense they've just been around too long and are no longer fresh faces. It's because their policies are harmful, bigoted nonsense that (for a start) favor Christian Dominionism, homophobia and misogynistic patriarchy. It's because Mike Huckabee pals around with child sexual abusers. It's because Rick Santorum can't even put aside his bigotry for a loved one. Those are actual positions those men hold, and I am tired of them.
So if you have a substantive criticism of Clinton make it. If you find you don't actually have a substantive critique to make, how about not making one? Because, frankly, this election could do with a whole lot less sponsorship from the letters W, T, and F.
"Hello, M."
Via Shaker KatherineSpins, this story about a 7-year-old trans girl named M. meeting Laverne Cox might be the best thing you read all day:
Laverne waved her Hollywood wave at the crowd, thanked us graciously, and then looked down at the little girl blocking her path.Read the whole thing here.
"Well, hello," she said.
"I'm M.," my daughter said.
Laverne smiled down at her. "Hello, M."
"And I'm trans," M. said.
I don't think Laverne saw that coming. The crowd around me gasped their approval ("Did you hear what that little girl said?"). Laverne seemed at a bit of a loss. She looked around the room. "Is anyone with her?"
I stepped forward. "I'm her mom." Then I got tongue-tied in the face of celebrity, and forgot how to speak like a normal human. I have no idea what I said.
But M. knew what to do. She went in for a hug. Laverne crouched down to meet M.'s hug at eye level, and as I frantically snapped photos for posterity, I heard her say to my daughter, "Remember, honey, transgender is beautiful."
Every single thing I read about and by Laverne Cox suggests she is just a really terrific person. And, you know, I don't want to dehumanize her by pretending she's flawless. I'm sure she leaves her shoes right where she knows someone is going to walk or forgets birthdays sometimes or some other annoying things that we humans are all inclined to do.
But she seems very thoughtful (by which I mean contemplative and sensitive with her words, rather than generous—although she seems to be that, too) and very kind, which are two qualities I greatly admire.
I'd be pretty darn excited to meet her, too.
Please Support Shakesville
This is, for those who have requested it, your bi-monthly reminder to donate to Shakesville and an important fundraiser to keep Shakesville going.
If you value the content and/or community in this space, please consider setting up a subscription or making a one-time contribution.
If you have appreciated being able to tune into Shakesville for coverage of the presidential primaries, for getting distilled news about politics or other topics, for a safe and image-free space to discuss rape culture and/or acts of public violence, for recaps of your favorite show, for recipes, for the Fat Fashion threads, or for whatever else you appreciate at Shakesville, whether it's the moderation, the community in Open Threads, Film Corner, video transcripts, the blogarounds, or anything else, please remember that Shakesville is run exclusively on donations.
I cannot afford to do this full-time for free, but, even if I could, fundraising is also one of the most feminist acts I do here. I ask to be paid for my work because progressive feminist advocacy has value; because women's work has value.
I would certainly be grateful for your support, if you are able to chip in. The donation link is in the sidebar to the right. Or click here.
Thank you to each of you who donates or has donated, whether monthly or as a one-off. I am deeply appreciative. This community couldn't exist without that support, truly. Thank you.
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Please note that I don't want anyone to feel obliged to contribute financially, especially if money is tight. There is a big enough readership that no one needs to donate if it would be a hardship, and no one should ever feel bad about that. ♥
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Bearpaw01: "What is a meal that has stuck in your memory, whether it was the food, the location, the context, the company, or any combination?"
Lots of memorable meals come to mind, most of them simple and owing to good food, good company, and good conversation. The most extraordinary (in its literal sense; that is, way the hell out of the ordinary) meal that has stuck in my memory, though, is: In 2011, on one of our visits to the Space Cowpokes, they surprised me by taking me to Chef Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin, regarded as one of the best restaurants in the world, for my birthday dinner.
I don't even know how to begin to describe how amazing this meal was. Everything was just splendid. The décor of the restaurant was warm and inviting; the service was spectacular; the food was beyond description—not only did it taste divine, but it was cooked to perfection, the presentation was exquisite, and the butchering was impeccable. When we told our waiter we were considering a bottle of Riesling for the table, he sent over their Austrian sommelier. Because you know how every restaurant has HAS MULTIPLE REGIONALLY-SPECIFIC SOMMELIERS TO HELP YOU PICK THE BEST BOTTLE OF WINE.
O.O
We did a tasting menu with multiple courses, and here are pictures of just two of the courses, to illustrate how unbelievably beautiful the presentation was:
My barely cooked course: Langoustines.
My dessert: Pistachio treatment.
The best part of all, though, was the company. Having a dining experience like that is an enormous gift and a privilege, but it wouldn't have been the same, not even close, had I not experienced it with three of my favorite people on the planet.
OMG LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
[Content Note: Misogyny; gender essentialism.]
This is just a real thing in the world: "Women Are Not Capable of Understanding Goodfellas."
Here is an actual thing that an actual adult human being named Kyle Smith wrote in this actual column:
[Goodfellas] takes place in a world guys dream about. Way down deep in the reptile brain, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Jimmy the Gent (Robert De Niro) and Tommy (Joe Pesci) are exactly what guys want to be: lazy but powerful, deadly but funny, tough, unsentimental and devoted above all to their brothers — a small group of guys who will always have your back. Women sense that they are irrelevant to this fantasy, and it bothers them.OMG STOPPPPPPPPPPPP LOLOLOLOLOLOL. What are you even writing in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and fifteen, fool?
But the real reason women are not capable of understanding Goodfellas is because women just don't appreciate all the ball-busting. And there is SO MUCH BALL-BUSTING, according to Kyle Smith:
The wiseguys never have to work...which frees them up to spend the days and nights doing what guys love above all else: sitting around with the gang, busting each other's balls."Hey, Kyle, can you please fit the words 'balls,' 'busting,' and 'ball-busting' into this piece at least 100 more times?"—No one.
Ball-busting means cheerfully insulting one another, preferably in the presence of lots of drinks and cigars and card games.
...Women (except silent floozies) cannot be present for ball-busting because women are the sensitivity police...
...What [guys hanging out together would] much rather do than discuss problems and "be supportive" is to keep the laughs coming — to endlessly bust each other's balls.
At its core, "GoodFellas" is a story of ball-busting etiquette...
...Henry saves the day by returning the ball-busting: "Get the f - - k outta here."
...Billy Batts...breaks ball-busting etiquette in two ways. One, he's not really one of the guys (he belongs to another crime family), and two, in the guise of breaking Tommy's balls, he brings up something serious...
...Later, Morrie, the wig merchant, must also die for improper ball-busting.
Even Karen's (Lorraine Bracco) relationship with, and eventual marriage to, Henry is based on ball-busting.
...Karen doesn't realize it, but she has successfully broken Henry's balls.
Remember how just earlier today, I was saying that men tend to dismiss female critics by saying they don't understand something, instead of accepting that maybe those female critics simply came to a different conclusion?
Yeah.
Like what you like, bros. If I don't share your opinion, it doesn't mean that I don't understand it. (Would that I could navigate the world without proficient fluency in the dominant white hetero cis male culture!) Sometimes it just means I think it's crap.
As it happens, I actually enjoy the movie Goodfellas. I don't, however, view it as aspirational tale of peak humanity.
I understand why a lot of dudes do, though.
I stay away from those dudes. As much as possible. Which is a mutually beneficial policy. Women are irrelevant to this fantasy, after all.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
"He's a bro with no ho."—Republican US Senator from Illinois Mark Kirk, caught on an open mic during a Senate Appropriations Committee markup discussing his colleague Senator Lindsey Graham's "rotating first lady" comment.
If you guessed that Senator Kirk's office defended this horseshit by saying he was just "joking around with his colleagues," give yourself eleventy million points.
It continues to be a real mystery why Republicans aren't connecting with a majority of female voters.
Trans* Women Are Women
[Content Note: Transmisogyny; gender policing.]
There has been, for various reasons, a whole new highly visible round of "trans* women aren't women" garbage lately.
Sometimes, the argument is that trans* women aren't women, full-stop. Sometimes, it's a variation (in rhetoric, but not effect) that ostensibly concedes trans* women are women, but not "real" women.
I'm not going to link to any of it, because the people who make these rancid arguments can fuck off.
Trans* women are women. As evidenced by the very words trans* women. Trans* is a descriptor; not a caveat.
There is no one right way to be a woman. And it's no coincidence that the trans* police tend to be the sorts of people who subscribe to the notion of a One True Womanhood, or a very limited spectrum on which most of us won't find ourselves.
And inextricably associated with those privileged, reductive, exclusionary ideals of womanhood is the fear, which inevitably manifests as hatred, that broadening the spectrum of acceptable womanhood will somehow diminish the women who fit and fiercely guard that ideal.
As though womanhood is a zero sum game. As if there's not enough womanhood to go around.
This is absurd. It's not womanhood that is eroded by inclusion; it's privilege. And privilege doesn't need protection. It needs rigorous dismantlement.
Trans* women are women.
I'm not saying that because I believe I get a vote on whether trans* women are women. They are women because they say they are women, and they are authorities on their own lives. I'm saying it because I want to reiterate that it's not up for debate in this space, and it never will be.
Daily Dose of Cute
My friend's dachshund Lottie, napping on my legs.
(This, by the way, is a Big Deal. Lottie doesn't cuddle with just anyone; she is a very loyal Daddy's Girl. So to get a snuggle from Lottie is a very high honor.)
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Leading the headlines today is the news that Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as CEO of Fox, his conservative nightmare media empire. Okay. He will still remain as chairman, and his sons James and Lachlan will take over. I'm guessing this will have approximately zero effect on how terrible Fox is.
[Content Note: Misogyny] Sir Tim Hunt, he of the cool science misogyny and even cooler non-apologies, has resigned from his position as honorary professor in the University College London's department of life sciences. Says UCL: "UCL was the first university in England to admit women students on equal terms to men, and the university believes that this outcome is compatible with our commitment to gender equality." Ouch! Don't let the door hitcha on the way out, Professor. Wouldn't want you crying in the lab.
[CN: Rape culture] I have all the concerns about the framing of "rape prevention" in this new research that asserts teaching incoming female college freshman about "healthy relationships, defining personal boundaries, and self-defense" reduces incidents of sexual violence. I'm all for teaching young people about healthy relationships and defining/respecting boundaries, and in fact I strongly believe these should be a part of every sex ed curriculum, but framing that as "rape prevention," which tasks women with preventing their own assaults, and only talking to women about boundaries, and not men, is garbage for a whole lot of reasons.
[CN: Guns; terrorism] WOW: "A school bus driver in North Carolina is being called a hero, after chasing two heavily-armed suspects off of school grounds. The suspects were taken into custody last Thursday morning, on the campus of South Macon Elementary School. The two reportedly planned to shoot students and staff inside. But their plans were possibly averted by the school bus driver, Alice Bradley. Officers say Bradley was walking through the bus parking lot when the suspects charged at her. She managed to get away from them, though, and make it to her car. That's when Bradley used her wheels to charge at the two suspects, driving them right off school grounds. 'Everybody says I'm a hero, I'm not a hero. I just reacted, like anybody else would, I guess,' Alice said. 'I was real nervous. I always thought I was a tough woman, but this really scared me.'" Tough and scared are not mutually exclusive! Way to go, Alice!
[CN: Homophobia] Oh for fucks sake: "The North Carolina House of Representatives has voted to override Gov. Pat McCrory's veto of a bill allowing public officials to opt out of marrying same-sex couples for 'sincerely held religious' objections."
[CN: Misogyny; video may autoplay at link] Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., says he doesn't know if Senator Elizabeth Warren "fully understands the global banking system." STFU, Jamie Dimon. I just want to observe that this is a common bit of misogyny: To assert that a female critic "doesn't understand" something, where a male critic would typically just be said to be wrong, but his understanding not called into question.
(See, for example, the number of times I am accused of "not understanding" politics, when I have disagreements with male progressives. It's not that I have different conclusions drawn from the same information; it's that I'm stupid.)
[CN: Rape culture; child abuse] "Co-Author of Mike Huckabee Books Was Accused of Child Molestation in Two Legal Cases." Huckabee sure does seem to like hanging out with child predators.
[CN: Racism] This Pew Research piece about their polling on multiracial USians is really fascinating in how it exposes (once again) that race is a cultural construct. I highly doubt that only 7% of the US population is multiracial, but their definition is limited to "US adults who have at least two races in their background" only back to their grandparents. Which, ahh, ignores some pretty important and ugly parts of our nation's history, for a start.
[CN: Misogyny; racism; ageism; fat hatred] The Hollywood Reporter did a roundtable with six Emmy-nominated actresses—Lizzy Caplan, Viola Davis, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Taraji P. Henson, Jessica Lange, and Ruth Wilson—to talk about acting and typecasting and beauty standards and nudity, among other things. And Viola Davis continues to be the best. I mean, all these ladies are awesome, but Viola Davis y'all.
RIP Ornette Coleman and Sir Christopher Lee.
Headline of the Day: "Lance Armstrong admits fears over trial—and compares himself to Voldemort." Sounds about right.
[CN: Human and animal injury, but everyone is recovering] Figo the guide dog threw himself between a school bus and his blind owner, 62-year-old Audrey Stone, taking the brunt of the accident, and then refused to leave her side until help arrived. Both of them were injured, but they have gotten the medical help they needed and are in recovery. "The dog took a lot of the blow," [Police Chief John Del Gardo] said. "And he did not want to leave her side. He stood right with her. He was there to save her." I hope at some point accommodations will be made so that Figo can join Audrey while she heals.
And finally! "Owner Pretends to Throw Ball and Captures the Exact Moment Dog Realizes He Was Betrayed." LOLOLOL FOREVERRRRR. Oh, dogs. Never change.
Jeanie Bueller's Day of Feminist Killjoying
Two things happened in the past few days, that started this post working its way into my brain.
1. I read, care of Tami Winfrey Harris, that Ferris Bueller took his day off exactly 30 years ago last Friday. Yowza!
2. I chatted with Parker Molloy yesterday on Twitter (shared with her permission; scroll up) about a short-lived sitcom that debuted 16 years ago, starring Jennifer Grey as Jennifer Grey.
The show, It's Like, You Know…, was incisively navel-gazey about the lifestyle of privileged white people living in LA, and, although it [video autoplays at next two links] looks pretty hacky now, it was really ahead of its time—not least of which because of Jennifer Grey, playing herself, after a nose job left her virtually unrecognizable and stalled her career. Totally meta, before meta was A Thing.
So, Parker and I were talking about how we loved Jennifer Grey in It's Like, You Know… But of course I loved Jennifer Grey long before that.
Dirty Dancing is one of my favorite films, and Baby Houseman one of my favorite film characters of all time, whom Grey inhabits with a perfect combination of burgeoning self-awareness and the unchecked privilege that manifests simultaneously as naïveté and courage. Female coming-of-age films are rare, and ones as good as Dirty Dancing even rarer, and Grey's Baby—a girl becoming a woman—was iconic to me the moment upon which I laid eyes on her, long before the rest of the world caught up.
Grey was also in another much-watched film from my youth, the aforementioned Ferris Bueller's Day Off, although I loved it for entirely different reasons: I was a suburban Chicago kid who may have, once or twice, had a "day off" in the city with my friends. A day full of angst and adventure.
Grey plays Ferris' long-suffering sister, Jeanie Bueller, who huffs and eyerolls and shouts indignantly through the film, a perfect picture of injustice in a pink cardigan.
I make all of these expressions at least once a day.
I'm certain that the filmmaker, John Hughes, imagined Jeanie to be lovable, and quite possibly a deeply cathartic character for lots of little sisters of golden boy brothers everywhere. But Jeanie was also written to be Ferris' adversary, a secondary foil to Principal Ed "Nine Times" Rooney. And you will find her on many lists of 80s "villains" as a result.
But while Principal Ed "Bad Knee" Rooney was primarily preoccupied with autocratically enforcing the rules—those high school rules designed for 14-year-olds; rules which have grown entirely stale and silly by the time you're about to leave four years later; rules Ferris Bueller successfully broke without consequences, thus exposing Principal Rooney's incompetence and overblown sense of importance in his teenager-inhabited fiefdom—Jeanie was primarily preoccupied with Ferris' rule-breaking because it was unfair.
Why should he get away with everything? Why should he be able to fool his parents that he's sick, winking at Jeanie behind their backs as they scowl with concern over his (manufactured) fever? Why should he be able to ditch school, and have its entire student body raise funds for his (imaginary) illness? Why should he be able to charm everyone into abetting his adventures, and why should none of them notice that he's entirely self-interested and offers them nothing in return but a dimpled grin?
Jeanie isn't having it. And she sets out to be his ruination.
Because Ferris is the hero, we are thus meant to root for him—and root fervently against Jeanie.
And maybe, if I had seen Ferris Bueller's Day Out (1986) and Dirty Dancing (1987) in the order of their release, I wouldn't have liked Jeanie as much as I did. But I saw Dirty Dancing first—and I was already Baby's most devoted champion. There was no way I couldn't feel affinity for Jeanie.
That only meant, however, I didn't hate her as much as everyone else seemed to. Even with vision clouded by heart-shaped summonings of Jennifer Grey, I still rooted for Jeanie's exposure campaign to fail, for Ferris to slip through her fingers one more time.
And I loved Jeanie best when, faced with the choice to finally claim victory over her brother, or sacrifice him to Principal Rooney, she chooses to instead save Ferris and leave Principal Rooney, tattered suit and all, to wallow in his defeat.
But Ferris Bueller had his day off 30 years ago. And three decades later, my feelings about Ferris and Jeanie are very different indeed.
Ferris seems a lot less like a charming rogue and a lot more like a privileged trickster who lies and schemes to get what he wants, who exploits people's generosity and trust in pursuit of his own pleasure and coerces his best friend to do his bidding. He seems careless with people's feelings, and irresponsible, and shallow. The kind of friend who seems like a whole lot of fun, until you actually need a friend to be there for you, and he's nowhere to be found.
And Jeanie. Well, Jeanie looks a lot more like a feminist who has had it up to here with the entitled antics of a very privileged man who does whatever he wants, suffers no consequences, and blissfully cruises through life getting handed nearly everything he wants, while she has to work twice as hard to get noticed and couldn't get away with a sliver of the crap he does.
Now I pay a lot more attention to Jeanie, to her understandable resentment and anger, to her tough demolishment of Principal Rooney, to her calling out his creepy fixations, to her amazing driving skills (!), to her taking a moment for herself to make out with the cute bad boy at the police station—Charlie Sheen, back when the most notable thing about him was being Emilio Estevez's little brother.
The thing is, Jeanie wasn't wrong. Ferris is kind of a douche.
Jeanie Bueller ends up on lists of 80s villians because she's villainized in a very particular—and familiar—way: She's a killjoy. She's a woman who is resentful of gender disparities that disfavor her and angry at a man who is exploiting them. She's a teenage caricature of the man-hating feminist, whose pursuit of justice is cast as a humorless scold trying to ruin a guy's fun.
Now, 30 years on, I root for Jeanie. And instead of feeling elated when she saves her brother, I wish she'd just close the door and smile through the window, while he finally gets his due.
An Observation
[Content Note: Privilege.]
Some marginalized people are entitled. Because some human beings are entitled.
But something I've noticed is that a lot of people with multiple axes of privilege tend to translate as "entitlement" what is actually better described as a really desperate yearning, a particular yearning that comes from getting close to what you want over and over, but never quite getting there.
There's a certain kind of thwarting that happens to marginalized people that doesn't happen to privileged people. And those of us with complex identities, who are privileged along some axes and marginalized along others, understand this keenly. Because we see how the marginalized parts of ourselves are used to thwart us in ways that the privileged parts of ourselves never are.
And people who never experience that particular kind of failure don't really understand the frustrated desperation it can engender.
So lots of them develop a habit of translating it as entitlement, which is something they do understand.
Some of them do this unconsciously, but some of them do it because misconstruing desperation as entitlement is one of the many ways that marginalized people are thwarted.
