Witch.Words

Pennsylvania House of Representatives Declares "Year of the Bible"

2012-01-31T14:07:00.000-08:00

In a frighteningly theocratic gesture, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives just passed a resolution last week declaring 2012 the "Year of the Bible", with a list of "WHEREAS"-es that repeatedly refer to the Bible as "The word of God", and which explicitly states that studying the Bible makes you a better person.

No, seriously.

They actually did this.

For bonus fuckery points, it was quietly introduced and quickly passed under a procedural rule that designates a resolution "non-controversial" in order to expedite passage. For extra-super-bonus fuckery points, it passed unanimously!

Yeah. Declaring the holy book of one religion to be the singular Word of God, and saying that "Renewing our knowledge of and faith in God through holy scripture can strengthen us as a nation and a people" is totally non-controversial. It's not like there are any non-Christians in the state, right - like maybe a Jewish population that's fourth largest in the country? And Pennsylvania's own Constitution totally doesn't say that "no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship." I mean, even if it does say that, passing a resolution endorsing a "...national need to study and apply the teachings of the holy scriptures" doesn't really count as a legal preference for Bible study as a mode of worship, right?

I just don't even know what else to say. Other than to point out how well this would have gone over if it had been a resolution declaring a "Year of the Qur'an" or "Year of the Tanakh" or "Year of the Eddas" or "Year of the Vedas" or any of the other literally hundreds of holy texts for various religions around the world, and the clear double-standard that makes a resolution declaring one particular holy book the Bestest One Ever acceptable for unanimous - unanimous! - passage, which then gets so little media coverage you wouldn't even know it had happened unless you subscribe to certain religious-issues blogs, versus the media shitstorm and cries of "creeping Sharia law!" that would have ensued if they'd declared a Year of the Qur'an.

Oh, and by the way - if this doesn't prove that Christians are not fucking oppressed in this country and there is no goddamn "war on religion", no matter how badly their persecution complex wants to invent one to cry about, I don't know what will.

For any readers in Pennsylvania who would like to contact their Representative to ask them to please stop dabbling in theocracy and actually, y'know, fucking govern their state, the "find my Representative" tool may be found here, and here is a list of email/contact pages for all Reps.

Speaking of Lilly Ledbetter...

2012-01-30T17:06:00.000-08:00

On Friday, I wrote about how I'm kind of tired of having the Obama administration/campaign constantly shoving the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in my face as the singular demonstration of their Super Awesome Totally Not Just Pandering Commitment To Teh Wimmenz, and how it is increasingly clear that it's really the only token women-centric thing they can (or for whatever reason, choose to) point to having done in the past few years.

Yesterday morning, I received a campaign email from Women for Obama, featuring Lilly herself retelling her story as a "call to action".

*headdesk*

To be clear, I have nothing against Ms. Ledbetter using her story and her voice to support whomever she chooses. If she truly believes in the Obama campaign and wants to lend her name and story in support, that's her choice and I have no issue with it. This is not about her, nor is it about her choice to support Obama in this matter.

I just find it lolsobtastic that, not even 48 hours after observing the Obama administration's over-reliance on her story, I had it shoved at me yet again, as if this time it might finally convince me that the Obama administration really has my womanly interests at heart.

Mr. President, I hate to say this, but...it's not like your administration's support of the LLFPA is really a secret at this point. I have no idea how any woman who's ever had even the barest contact with your campaign might have avoided hearing about it at least two or three times as The Reason To Support You. Why in the name of all that is holy is it really necessary to put the same story out there AGAIN?!

Please. I'm begging you. Find a new goddamn angle already.

Dear President Obama: You can only trot out the same show pony so many times before we start to wonder if you have ANYTHING else in your stable.

2012-01-27T14:15:00.000-08:00

Look, I get that women in this country - at least, ones who like their rights - are pretty much up shit creek when it comes to voting options in major elections. We either vote for the party that actively hates us, or the one that treats us like a reliable but disposable guaranteed vote, patronized in election years and used as a bargaining chip in between times. So I understand that you're not going to try very hard to make us feel super welcome, because you just don't have to, and I'm sure you're right when you say it's much more important to focus on the coveted "independent" vote. (Lol, no, I'm not.)

But if you're going to keep tossing out crumbs from time to time to make it look like you're paying attention, could please at least change out the bread in the crumbs bag every now and again?

Because yes, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was good and important and all that (although I've heard it was already basically in the bag before you took office, for all that you are perpetually taking credit for it). But for fuck's sake, you have made it the centerpiece of EVERY. SINGLE. "WOMEN-FOCUSED". CAMPAIGN EFFORT. FOR. THE. PAST. THREE. YEARS.

And here it is again:

A screencap of President Obama's Facebook page, showing a status update that links to a video titled "President Obama on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act"; text accompanying it reads ""Policies that help women are policies that help our families - and our economy - grow stronger." President Obama reiterates a message from his State of the Union address: Equal work deserves equal pay."

When you push the same stale "victory" at us over and over again for three years, it sort of lends itself to the impression that you really don't have anything else to offer. (As indeed you don't.) You could have mentioned this past year's War on Women and how shameful the unrelenting onslaught of attacks on a Constitutionally-protected right are. You could have talked about how your administration has been aggressively using the FACE Act to prosecute anti-abortion protesters who interfere in people's access to clinics. You could have commented on your administration standing firm on the requirement that employers who provide health insurance include contraceptive coverage, even in the face of pressure from religious figures like the USCCB. And yet you chose, yet a-fucking-gain, to parade the LLFPA as your token commitment to women.

Why???

It's not just that I'm sick of hearing about it, although I am. I am genuinely wondering why you seem to think that fair pay is the ONLY women's issue worth mentioning, ever?

I am also more than a little annoyed at the defensive framing of the commentary on it - the emphasis on "it helps our families and especially the economy!" - as if simply doing the right thing to treat women fairly under the law isn't its own justification, isn't enough, but must be For The Families and For The Economy. I also take issue with referring to it as "helping". "Helping" implies optional, implies choosing to be nice to someone out of the goodness of your heart. Fair pay laws are not "help", they're fucking justice. They are an attempt to enforce a minimum standard of fairness and basic equality. I realize that doesn't make as good a sound bite, but the paternalistic attitude of "We're helping women, because it helps their families, and because The Economy" is really starting to grate on my nerves.

I talked, not too long ago, about how token crumbs actually work to highlight the inadequacy of said crumbs, rather than being a true motivator of loyalty and positive regard. At this point, trotting out the LLFPA show pony functions the same way. It simply shows how little you are interested in either taking strong action to support this constituency, or even pointing out the other small ways in which you have actually done so, and by doing so, demonstrates just how little regard your administration/the Democratic establishment has for women.

We may have nowhere else to go, practically speaking. But the more you distance yourselves from us on the assumption that having nowhere else to go means we'll stay with you, the more you risk losing us anyway. We may not vote for your opponents - but many of us won't be particularly motivated to get off our collective ass and vote for you, either.

Patronize us at your own risk, Obama Administration. You may find one of your most stalwart beams crumbling under you just when you need it most, if you keep this up.

CPCs Acknowledge Their General Uselessness in South Dakota Lawsuit

2012-01-26T13:27:00.000-08:00

Well, okay, not in so many words, although that would be pretty funny if they did. No, I'm talking about the South Dakota law that passed a few months ago mandating that all people seeking abortion care must visit a CPC first (because it's not enough to require doctors to read from a prepared anti-abortion script to every patient, no - it has to involve a forced visit to a whole "business" dedicated to lies, guilt, manipulation, shaming, and harassment! That's totally the definition of "informed consent"). Planned Parenthood and the ACLU filed suit against the law, of course, arguing that it's an unconstitutional violation of the patient's right to privacy and that it constitutes "compelled speech", infringing against the First Amendment rights of doctors and patients.

Two CPCs in South Dakota have just been given the okay by a federal judge to join in the lawsuit, by arguing that "Because there are about 700 abortions performed in South Dakota annually, ... they could be denied access to that many clients by Planned Parenthood's lawsuit."

Wait, so...they are saying that, without a law forcing people to patronize their establishment, they will lose access to all of those seven hundred potential clients?

I guess this means they know perfectly well that nobody chooses of their own free will to go to a CPC - they have to be misdirected, waylaid, lied to, or, if all else fails, legally coerced. Whether they want to admit it or not, their argument shows that they know it.

(That must be a pretty sweet business model to have, though. None of that faffing about with "provide a service people want/need for a price they can afford and are willing to pay", just "convince lawmakers to write a law forcing people to patronize your establishment," and bam! Instant clientele!)

Tell Gov. Brown: No Repeal of Hayden Law!

2012-01-25T18:27:00.000-08:00

Over the past few years, austerity measures have been the go-to "fix" (I put that in scare quotes because austerity fixes fucking nothing and we all know it) for budget deficit crises at all levels of government in this country. Services for vulnerable populations have been slashed left, right, and center. Disability services. Subsidized health insurance services. Reproductive health care services. Food banks. When the going gets tough, fuck over the poor and those in need, seems to be the theory.

This week, I heard about another cut about to go into place here in California, that would harm a population that hadn't occurred to me to worry about yet.

Shelter animals.

Governor Brown has said he wants to repeal a 1998 shelter-reform law, called the Hayden Law, that among other things mandated that county-run shelters hold onto animals for six days after being brought in before they could be euthanized, instead of the previous 72 hours. The reform also required that shelters structure their open hours to include after-work and weekend times - or, if they were a small staff, make "by appointment" times available outside of normal work hours - so that (when combined with the six day minimum holding time) people who had lost a pet but who also worked a day job would actually be able to come and claim their animals before they were put to sleep. To quote from the Facebook page of Sutter's Friends, a group dedicated to stopping the repeal:

What is at risk in the proposed repeal? Permanent loss of the requirement to provide prompt and necessary veterinary care. Permanent loss of the requirement to hold animals for an extended period to increase opportunites for redemption and adoption. Permanent loss of the requirement to post lost and found lists. And, among other things, permanent loss of the requirement to provide care for animals other than cats and dogs, such as rabbits, hamsters, and other animals commonly kept as pets.

This is a topic near and dear to me. Every animal but one that I've bonded to - either belonging to me, my family, or close friends - has been a shelter animal. Ozz and I just adopted our first in December, and we specifically chose to look for our new family member at the county shelter instead of the no-kill alternatives so that we could help in some small way to increase the survival rate there. Kalika, our family's first dog, a golden retriever from the county shelter. Kelly Anne, another golden, from a private rescue organization. Diablo and Cielle, my mom's two cats, from a different private rescue org. Amee, my ex's Siamese cat, from the county shelter. Isis, my ex's and his brother's cat (and sort of mine, too, for awhile), from a shelter in Tennessee. And now, Mara, Ozz's and my cat, from the county shelter. And we plan to continue adopting from the shelter when we're ready to expand our family.

Local animal shelters can be an invaluable resource for saving animals' lives, from strays to runaway or lost pets - but they are all too often where animals' lives end, too. The Hayden Law helped tilt that balance a bit more toward saving. Jerry Brown's repeal would tilt it back toward death, and while I realize CA's budget situation is fairly desperate, I somehow don't get the feeling that euthanizing more shelter animals is going to be the linchpin on which a balanced budget would turn.

So I'm asking my readers to lift a small teaspoon in support of the Hayden Law. Petitions against Gov. Brown's proposed repeal may be found and signed here and here; if you're on Facebook, "like" Sutter's Friends to stay on top of updates.

It's the humans' fault that there are so many homeless domestic-breed animals in the world to begin with; the least we can do is try to kill as few of them for the sake of our irresponsibility as possible.

No, he did not "ask for an open relationship"

2012-01-21T12:32:00.000-08:00

It seems we have yet another Republican Sexual Hypocrite in Newt Gingrich. The interview with his ex-wife (video autoplays at link) has been all over the place, and while I am all for calling out RSHs on their hypocrisy, loudly and repeatedly (look, if you're going to run on a platform of "family values", you should probably have some yourself, y'know?), I am really not okay with the way it's being reported by most news outlets.

Newt Gingrich did not "ask for an open relationship." He had an affair - he cheated on his wife, who had thought they were having a monogamous relationship - and then asked his wife to immediately get over it and accept that he was going to continue having said affair while remaining married to her. That is not the same thing. Not even a little bit.

See, I have had a partner ask me for an open relationship before. The difference between a partner asking for an open relationship, and what Newt did, is that when my then-boyfriend approached me to talk about an open relationship, he did it BEFORE HE SLEPT WITH SOMEONE ELSE. He came to me and said he had an interest in trying non-monogamy in a relationship (which we'd talked about a little bit before, so it came as no huge surprise) and he had met someone he was interested in pursuing this with, and he wanted to know how I would feel about that. We talked, I agreed to give it a try, and when after a couple weeks I realize I just couldn't handle it with where we were at in our relationship, I told him, and he broke things off with her. (We later gave it another shot, and the three of us ended up in a triad relationship, anyway. All's well that ends well, I guess?)

That is how you do an open relationship. Not "cheat for years, then admit to it and be like "but I don't want to have to choose between you so I'm just gonna keep fucking you both. That's cool, right?""

I'm just sick of seeing headlines, articles, and comments, all moralizing and disapproving about Newt's "request for an open relationship" as if that's what's wrong with this situation. Because it isn't. Open relationships can be done ethically and with full knowing consent of all involved parties (although admittedly, if your relationship is non-normative in structure, you should probably not be spending a great deal of time and energy judging, condemning, and trying to make discrimination against those of different non-normative relationships even more prevalent and enforced in law), and in an ideal world, having requested an open relationship in a prior situation wouldn't be some sordid mark against you in the public eye. But the media is presenting this in a way that conflates open relationships with cheating, which is disingenuous and flat-out incorrect.

Newt Gingrich cheated, then tried to weasel out of it. He did not ask for an open relationship, in any meaningful sense of the phrase. Period.

This Is A Real Question That Has Really Been Asked, For Realsies

2012-01-18T16:30:00.000-08:00

For the "I could not make this shit up even if I tried" files, a judge in Delaware has asked:

"Is the Lord's Prayer Christian?"

Just...go ahead and let that sink in for a minute. Read the question again if you need to. I'll wait.

We are talking here about the Lord's Prayer, one of the most recognizable of the standard-issue Christian prayers, shared in some form or other across nearly all denominations, one of the first prayers Christian children learn - both Ozz, raised Catholic, and I, raised Methodist, can rattle it off without thinking, even now, a decade out of our respective Christian upbringings. And they are asking if it is specifically a Christian prayer, or if it could be considered "generic" and "not advancing a specific faith".

Are. You. Fucking. Kidding me?

How is this even a question?

The context of it, if you don't want to click through, is a case on whether the legislative prayer used to open sessions of Sussex County Council meetings is Constitutional or not. They apparently open their sessions with a recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Legislative prayer has been certified by the Supreme Court as Constitutional so long as it does not advance any particular faith; Sussex County's lawyers are arguing that the Lord's Prayer is "generic", so therefore, it should be considered Constitutional.

More specifically, when questioned on whether the Lord's Prayer is specifically Christian, one of the attorneys for Sussex County replied that "[Jesus] was not offering a Christian prayer in the Christian tradition because no Christian tradition existed."

...

...............

Whut.

So you're talking about a very specific prayer, laid out by the founder of your religion, lifted word-for-word from passages in the holy book of your religion (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4)...but you want to claim it's "not a Christian prayer" because at the time that your founder uttered it the religion had not actually been formed yet?

I just can't even believe they're arguing this with a straight face in a court of law. Nor can I believe that the judge has said it might be "a difficult case" because there is no mention of Jesus by name, as if that's the final arbiter of whether or not a prayer is Christian in nature. If it's taken from your scriptures, used in your churches (and only in your churches, as I can't think of any other religious group that uses the Lord's Prayer, ever), I don't care if it explicitly names a deity or not, it's a Christian prayer.

But hey, if that's the logic we're using here, perhaps I should see if I can get my local City Council to start opening legislative sessions with the Charge of the Goddess. It names, like, ten deities - that's more inclusive than the Lord's Prayer! - and obviously that means it's not advancing any one deity and therefore should be totally cool as a "generic" prayer that "doesn't advance any particular religion", amirite?

Caturday!

2012-01-07T22:18:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday, and also happy one-month-of-new-home day, to SWHNYBN, who has in fact been named:

Lady Mara McNibbon, Duchess of the Laundry Pile, is not amused.

Here, have a video of her playing one of her favorite games, "Tear up Daddy's arms while suspended in midair", with Ozz.

Video description: Ozz, a tall, heavyset white man with long brown hair and a goatee, holding Mara, a petite white-calico-tabby cat with one arm. She is busily chewing on his fingers as he holds her suspended over his arm. You can hear me behind the camera laughing at the two of them. Suddenly Mara stops and lifts her head to look in my direction with a surprised "Who me?" expression. I giggle and say "Oh hai, sweetie", then "Oh, no, back to chewing on Daddy's hand." as she decides nomming his hand is more interesting. He extends his arm to me, Mara still dangling and chewing on him, like he's going to hand her to me. "Ack, no, do not hand that to me. It's all teeth." He pulls her back to his chest; "Yeah, she can keep chewing on you, that's fine." He turns and tries to set his little bundle of teeth on the couch, but as soon as she hits the cushion she whips around onto her back and grabs his arm with all four legs, pulling him down to keep nomming. "Well, apparently putting it down doesn't work." She starts trying to climb her way up his arm with front paws and teeth; he shakes her off. Undeterred, she pounces at his hand again. They wrestle a little bit more, until he gets a hand under her and scoops her up off the couch so she's dangling in midair again, which fazes her not even a little. I laugh again, and she looks up startled right at the camera, then abruptly calms down and lets herself be tucked under Ozz's arm like a furry little football as I say "I guess we're done then." Fin.

Hope everyone's having an awesome weekend!

To The "Pro-Life Feminist" On Tumblr Today

2012-01-04T13:43:00.000-08:00

(Prompted by a small back-and-forth between an anti-abortion "feminist" and myself on Tumblr yesterday and today, consisting of these three posts.)

I snarked at you earlier. I was a mocking asshole, because that's sort of my style in discussions like this. I make no apology for it, either. But I want you to understand the seriousness underlying my snark and rudeness:

You use these certain arguments against abortion; you say that "it's a serious decision" and talk about abortion as "killing one's child" and how abortions not in the case of rape or dangerous health risks are "just a choice, like buying a new purse at the mall" and so on - but when called out, you try to escape responsibility by disclaiming it as "just your opinion" because you, unlike those other anti-choicers, are realistic enough to understand what criminalizing abortion would do, and therefore you don't support making abortion illegal (so therefore I, and other pro-choicers and real feminists, should shut up and leave you alone because you're not trying to have it banned so it's okay, as if criminalization were the only real problem with the anti-choice movement).

The problem with that is that your arguments are exactly the kinds of arguments, exactly the kind of language that gets used by those who do support and actively work toward making abortion illegal. "It's a serious decision" justifies burdensome waiting periods which necessitate multiple appointments, thus raising the costs of abortion (including travel and accommodation, because nearly 90% of counties in the US don't have an abortion provider so most people have to travel to obtain one) well out of reach for many low-income people, and invasive, propaganda-based "[hyper-, mis-]informed consent" laws designed to scare, guilt, shame, or otherwise emotionally manipulate pregnant people into continuing their pregnancy. Sensationalizing abortion as "the right to kill my baby" is, well, basically the whole justification for the anti-choice movement, which is not only seeking to completely ban abortion, but would like to take on hormonal birth control as well; specifically, though, that kind of phrasing gets used to push extremist "fetal personhood" measures, which are well-documented to be epic fuckery. Minimizing and dismissing voluntarily-chosen abortions by comparing it to the frivolous purchase of accessories reinforces right-wing talking points to nurture the stereotype of people who seek abortions as airheaded sluts who fuck a dozen people and then pop in to the clinic for a quickie abortion between brunch and a manicure - and lest you claim that stereotypes are no big deal, they help to push public opinion toward favoring criminalization, creating a more hospitable social climate for those anti-choicers who do want to see abortion made illegal.

Shorter version of that paragraph: Even if you don't support criminalizing abortion, when you say things like this, you are aiding and abetting those who do.

I speak to you as a person who has used her constitutional right to reproductive self-determination before, and would again if the situation came up again. I speak as someone who is so horrified and sickened by the thought of being forced - and being pressured is nearly the same thing, it's just enforced by social sanction instead of legal penalties - to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term that I would literally rather die than have my body commandeered and used against me that way. And when you say these things to me, I don't care that they're only your personal belief and you would never have them brought into law to rule over me, because I live in a country where every day I see and hear people who WOULD have those beliefs legislated onto my body against my will speaking the EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS that you are using. When you argue their talking points, using their language, you present yourself to me as one of Them: an enemy, not an ally.

You speak in concert with those who would take my rights away, who would render me only a passenger in my own flesh, subordinated to the needs of an invader I didn't want and didn't ask for, forced to risk my life and health to give it birth. The distinction of whether or not you would support them in their criminalization efforts is functionally irrelevant to me, because when you parrot their arguments and pass it along, you are another voice for their side - especially if you don't explicitly lay out your beliefs on legislative solutions in contrast to theirs when you speak or write about it. Simply put, you are strengthening their position. You are giving them social sanction, making it easier for them to do the work of criminalization, whether you agree with them in that or not.

And I will never be willing to acknowledge the label of feminist when it is worn by someone who, even indirectly, supports the anti-choice movement. You are, at best, a badly misguided fauxminist; at worst, a colluder actively perpetuating our oppression. You are not, in any sense of the word, a feminist.

Would somebody put a stake through this thing's heart, already?

2012-01-03T19:39:00.000-08:00

We have killed it three times already, and it simply will not stay dead! Via RHRealityCheck, I hear that the zombie parental notification bill is back in California again, after defeats in 2005, 2006, and 2008, for another round. Two different versions of the bill (one of which would require a 48-hour waiting period between notification and procedure, the other of which would not) are now circulating petitions to gather signatures in the hopes of making it to the ballot for 2012.

This particular fight is, in a strange way, dear to my heart, as it was the scene of my first involvement in a political campaign as an adult, back in 2005 - the first demonstration I ever went to was coordinated through the Santa Cruz Planned Parenthood against Prop 73, the first phone banking effort I took part in was also through them for the same issue. It brings up good memories, but at the same time, it's annoying to see an issue I first fought for as a rosy-cheeked behbeh activist still in my teens, coming up again.

Admittedly, pro-choicers in CA sort of knew this would happen; the initiative has been funded each time by a wealthy conservative newspaper owner in SoCal who has publicly vowed to keep trying until it passes, and he's renewed that commitment after every defeat. (Gee, must be nice to have money enough to throw at a failing proposition year after year - voter initiatives don't come cheap, especially if they get sufficient publicity to turn truly contentious.) It does, however, mean the rights of young Californians will be continually at risk, until Mr. Holman either dies, or gets bored of it, or gets the message and goes away.

I would be surprised to see this bill fail to get enough signatures, since it's managed to multiple times before and this time, it's riding a surge wave of anti-choice momentum from the past year. Most likely, it will end up on the ballot, meaning another campaign, more money and time and effort spent on simply trying to hold the crumbling battlements against the unending anti-choice onslaught.

Well, I'll be there. Again. And to my readers in California - or anywhere else, if you have the means to remotely assist - I hope to see you there, on the front lines.

On "We the People" and Token Participation

2011-12-19T10:42:00.000-08:00

We the People, the White House's new website dedicated to "[providing] a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country," has been around long enough now to actually send out responses to many of the initial petitions set up on the site - 26 official responses have been uploaded to the site and emailed to the signers of the petitions they were replying to.

And they have, to a one, been useless, campaign-speak restatements of the Administration's official positions on the issues the petitions covered. Not a single one has actually offered commitment to action. All they have done is reaffirm the Administration's positions on things and offer detailed justification for why they hold the positions they hold.

For example, the response to the petitions which asked for removal of the phrase "In God We Trust" from the currency and removal of "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, we (I had signed both of these, go figure) received a patronizing restatement of the Obama campaign's usual "God is in the mix" platitudes, echoing right-wing talking points about how such "generic" (HA!) references to religion are simply recognizing the "important role religion plays" in this country and therefore, fuck you, we don't really care what you think. The petition to retain 6-day mail delivery from the USPS received an in-depth explanation (and possibly spin job, I don't know this issue well enough to gauge the accuracy of the statements they make), titled "A Balanced Approach to Reforming the Postal Service" (oh, goody, more artificial "balance", gods know we don't get enough of that in the President's usual speeches), of how insolvent the USPS apparently is and exactly how they'll be transitioning down to 5-day delivery in 2013, because fuck you, we don't really care what you think. And just a few days ago I received by email the Administration's response to a petition to abolish the TSA and spend their budget on homeland security measures that *actually work*, citing their 70% undercover-test failure rate and its Constitutional abuses of American citizens; it was a long, useless bullet-pointed list that could be summarized as, in essence, "BUT THE TERRORISTS WOULD WIN!", because fuck your Constitutional rights, we don't care what you think. Check out the "responses" page for more useless replies (each links back to its originating petition(s) at the bottom of the response as well) if you want to have some frustrating fun with it.

Allow me to go on a personal tangent here. For about five months while I was living in Tennessee, my then-girlfriend got me a job working with her at an inbound call center. It was a shitty job, but the reason this silliness with the We the People site is bringing it to mind is because it absolutely epitomized the cold, sanitized, vaguely-ironic feeling of Corporate Cares (or rather, wants its automatons to think it cares) so well. There was the monthly "employee appreciation day" for those of us in the call center, which you would think was a nice thing, right? Except it consisted of the designated HR drone pushing a cart up and down the aisles of cubicles, giving each of us some cheap plastic trinket - keychains or some other nonsense - and allowing us to pick a piece of candy from the bowl on the cart. We all rolled our eyes about it, and one day she - who was studying industrial-organizational psychology in college at the time, and who would often explain to me the principles of her classes as applied to our shared workplace - explained to me how shitty token rewards like that, as opposed to gaining even a meager token amount of loyalty from the employees in return, actually do more harm than good. Because calling something a "reward" or "bonus", then having the reward in question be something painfully token, is not only insufficient as a reward, it's insulting, because it's basically rubbing their nose in how little you think of them.

The We the People website? Is a cheap mass-produced plastic sandal on a keyring and a stale miniature Twix. It makes grand claims and promises about the First Amendment and the right of the people to petition the government for a redress of grievances, saying "We created We the People because we want to hear from you." But when you actually try to participate, they send you away with a patronizing pat on the head and a "There, there, dear, run along now." Which is worse than if they'd never made the offer of petitioning and being heard, offering us a reward that turns out to be no reward at all.

I'm not the only one who's noticed, either. One of the newest petitions on the site is a petition to "Remove the word "petition" from this website as it is misleading and untruthful. Instead, use, "Request an Explanation.""

If you happen to be in the US, I highly recommend signing it. We all know what the response will be, but I think it would be deliciously meta to have their "response" to this particular "petition" be yet another explanation.

B for Brouhaha

2011-12-16T11:49:00.000-08:00

Dear Obama Campaign: Why do you keep sending me emails requesting my support, while making it exceedingly clear that you are not interested in or willing to support me in turn? Remember my outrage at your "women for Obama" message a few weeks ago, and how frustrated I was at being appealed to "as a woman" even as women's health issues had taken a backseat/been actively thrown under the bus by this administration multiple high-profile times in the past three years?

Consider that frustration cranked up to 11, after the HHS overrode the FDA's decision to allow Plan B to be purchased without restriction, out on store shelves, and you explicitly supported the move, even to the point of using your daughters as justification for a blatantly political election-year ploy. Remember when you promised that the decisions of your administration would be based on sound science, evidence, and fact - with the implied comparison to ideologically-driven right-wingers? I certainly do. So do these Senators. And I'm genuinely curious what bullshit y'all are going to pull out of your ass to justify your decision to go against what the experts decided based on actual science and research.

Much has been said about The Eleven-Year-Old, and the use of this fear-and-emotion-based appeal has been thoroughly deconstructed already, so I won't say much - only that if you would rather see a child forced to bear a child than allow her a modicum of control over her circumstances, your priorities are seriously fucked up. Actual abortion or bearing a child at that age are both far more physically difficult/dangerous than a medication which studies have shown to be quite safe, anyway.

The thing is, this overruling doesn't just affect The Eleven-Year-Old. It also affects teens as old as fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. Are you seriously telling me that a sixteen-year-old is mature enough to drive a car - hundreds of pounds of metal moving at high speed, quite capable of killing and maiming if misused or mistakes are made! - but not mature enough to take a medication properly, whether it's because of a broken condom or to protect themself after being raped? What the fuck kind of logic is that?

And then there's the much-less-mentioned half of the overruling. The part that would have moved Plan B out from behind the pharmacy counter and onto the shelves.

Allow me to rephrase that: it would have moved Plan B out from behind the gatekeeping of pharmacists, many of whom are anti-choice, and, in some places, legally protected in their choice to deny people access to certain medications because it upsets their delicate fee-fees. A grown-ass person can be in need of emergency contraception and still be told "No" simply because the pharmacist doesn't like it - and depending on where they are, there may not be a damn thing to be done about it. Allowing Plan B to be stocked on regular shelves with other medications would have removed this (gigantic, horrible) barrier between grown people and the medication they need, much less teens or children. That's the other thing y'all chose to block. You not only told young people "We don't think you should be allowed to control your reproduction without the okay of the adults around you", you also told pregnancy-capable people everywhere "We don't think your need to access emergency contraception is important enough to make it available to you without going through a gatekeeper."

Well, Obama administration, don't say you weren't warned when your core base gets tired of you pulling shenanigans like this and refuses to come out and vote for you next year. When your percentages are dropping among blocs like women and pro-choicers, core Dem constituencies...you have only yourselves to blame.

If you can't beat them, take credit for what they forced you to do!

2011-12-15T09:12:00.000-08:00

Via Calitics, it seems Anthem Blue Cross (one of the health-insurance giants) is running an ad touting "100% free annual checkups" that they "offer".

A full-page ad from a magazine, showing a smiling doctor using a stethoscope on his patient; text reads "Anthem Blue Cross Free Annual Checkups" with further copy below explaining how "annual checkups help keep you healthy and that's why Anthem Blue Cross covers them at 'no extra cost to you'."

Well, this is awkward. Because those free checkups that they're talking about like it's some kind of magnanimous caring gesture on their part to take care of their customers? It's actually a requirement, part of one of the more popular provisions in Obama's health insurance reform bill that requires insurance companies to cover preventative care with no copay or other upfront cost to the patient. And it's a requirement that the insurance companies, including Blue Cross, fought viciously against.

Which makes it more than a little duplicitous to, once it turns out to be very popular with the unwashed masses, run big ol' ads saying "HEY LOOK HOW NICE WE ARE TO COVER THIS PREVENTATIVE CARE FOR YOU please ignore the fact that we had to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing so".

But I suppose, in this era of Faux News and Tea Party absurdity, it's perfectly logical to attempt to reap public goodwill by pretending it was your idea all along. After all, depending on where people get their news, all they know about "Obamacare" is that it's for commies and something about death panels.

Of course, we all know the "liberal media" won't bother to call them out on it. And thus, the cycle of misinformation continues...

Apologies for my absence, but LOOK IT'S AN ADORABLE KITTY!

2011-12-09T12:19:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been away, dearloves! It's a bit of a long story, but the short version is, I enlisted my mom's help to do some massive decluttering and housecleaning, which took a full week of working every day at least half the day, starting the day after Thanksgiving and going through the next weekend (I swear, I think we hauled at least two dozen black trash bags of stuff out of this place, between trash and Goodwill donations!). The reason? Ozz and I decided to get a kitty, talked to our landlord about altering our no-pets lease, and the end result of all this work (the house needed to be made safe for a kitteh; there was far too much clutter and junk in corners that a cat could get into trouble with and which could've hid spiders or other nasties) came home with us Wednesday night:

She-Who-Has-Not-Yet-Been-Named, a mostly-white calico cat w/orange-brown and grey tabby patches, curled up on the bed with her front paws over her tiny little face

She's almost a year old but still quite petite, with a purr like a good-sized motor that starts up as soon as you touch her or sometimes even talk to her. She's a snuggler, too:

SWHNYBN laying on her back across my lap, sleeping with her head pillowed on my arm and a paw resting on my laptop while I tried to work around her

My fiance Ozz, laying down and smiling at the camera with SWHNYBN draped across his chest looking half-asleep

So! There's my excuse for being gone the past couple weeks. And a very cute little excuse she is, too. As she settles in and my routine re-stabilizes, expect to start hearing from me again - I have Things To Say about Obama's Plan B fuckery, the bullying of a Pagan child by his teachers, and a potential "atheist license plate tax" in Georgia, among other things. Hope everyone's holiday season (if you are celebrating anything this time of year, anyway) is going well thus far!

PS: I am perfectly open to doing regular or semi-regular Doses of Cute, now that I have a subject, but I don't want to spam y'all with cat pictures if you're not interested. Would you be interested? Let me know in comments!

USCCB says "Help, help, we're bein' repressed!"

2011-11-22T18:00:00.000-08:00

The USCCB = US Conference of Catholic Bishops, meaning a collective of old celibate (unless they're abusing children, that is) men who think Jesus has given them a special license to boss everyone else around, no matter what everyone else believes about Jesus or anything else.

And right now, the USCCB want us to know they are Very Seriously Concerned for religious liberty in this country, because their will is not being implemented on the rest of us speedily enough, which is a violation of their religious liberty to be the boss of everyone. If your beliefs include that you should be in charge, I guess not putting you in charge is a violation of your religious liberty, right? The USCCB thinks so, anyway! Check out the horror show of quotes from them this past week or so...

“We see in our culture a drive to neuter religion,” Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the bishops conference, said in a news conference Monday at the bishops’ annual meeting in Baltimore. He added that “well-financed, well-oiled sectors” were trying “to push religion back into the sacristy.” (via)

Oh noes! How dare we try to maintain our separation of church and state by making sure religion remains in the church where it belongs?! Don't we know that's Bad and Wrong and religion belongs in both the sacristy AND the Oval Office?!?! Dirty little heathens be we, I suppose.

"There is no religious liberty if we are not free to express our faith in the public square and if we are not free to act on that faith through works of education, health care and charity," [Bishop William E.] Lori said in his first address to the bishops as chairman of the newly formed Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. (via)

"If we cannot get government subsidies and contracts to carry out our religious works while still being protected from having to follow the law within our organizations, we are being OPPRESSED I TELL YOU! And we know about oppression. We've been practicing on everyone else for centuries, so that we would recognize this moment when it came."

"For some time now we have viewed with growing alarm the ongoing erosion of religious liberty in our country. Among the challenges we see is a pattern in culture and law to treat religion merely as a private matter between an individual and his or her God,"

...This is beyond even my considerable reservoir of snark. I, um...yeah, I'm sorry, I got nothing. When they're talking about "treating religion as a private matter between an individual and their god" like that's horribly, desperately inappropriate and oppressive, what is there to say? Is it Opposite Day again or something?

But what caused this bout of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching, you ask? Well, like all big corporations, the Catholic church is campaigning for a more favorable regulatory environment - that is to say, fewer or no regulations at all. Specifically, they're upset because of the new HHS rule that, as part of the health insurance reform package, would require nearly all employers who offer healthcare plans to employees to cover hormonal contraception without a copay as "preventative care". There is a religious exemption in the rule already - an organization which A: has religious values as its primary purpose, B: primarily employs people who share the religious tenets of the organization, and C: primarily serves people who share the religious tenets of the organization, would be exempt from the rule. Meaning that churches themselves are safe from the horror of being forced to make it easier for their employees to access contraception under the employer-subsidized health-care plan.

The problem, of course, is that Catholic hospitals do NOT primarily serve people who share their religious tenets. In many places, Catholic hospitals are the ONLY hospitals within a reasonable distance, and thus serve the entire general populace of the area, Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Under the new rule, that would disqualify them from a religious exemption, and the health-care plans offered to employees of the hospitals would have to include the option of contraception. That's the option, by the by, not a requirement; no person would be required or even encouraged to use it. It would simply be made available to those who want or need it, free of copay. (I'll remind everyone that even if Catholic hospitals did employ primarily Catholics, Catholic women use hormonal contraception at about the same rate as non-Catholic women, that is to say, almost universally (98%). So it's not like making contraception cheaper to access is really controversial for anyone except the actual church hierarchy.)

The idea that they might have to make it easier for women in their employ to get ahold of hormonal contraceptives, instead of making it harder, is giving them all conniption fits, and they're doing their damndest to lobby President Obama to throw us under the bus again by widening the exemption to suit the USCCB.

Righteous fury at the fact that the President seems to be taking the USCCB's lobbying seriously aside for the moment, I just want to return to one of their ludicrous displays of pretzel-logic about "religious liberty" for a moment, as it's extremely telling of what's really going on here:

There is no religious liberty if we are not free to express our faith in the public square and if we are not free to act on that faith through works of education, health care and charity,

Because they are framing the issue so that it sounds like the government is going to force Catholic health care and education organizations to shut down, thus denying them the ability to act on their faith in that manner, when actually the government is in no way impeding their ability to act on their faith "through works of education, health care and charity". It's simply saying that if they want to employ people to do those works, they need to provide those employees with access certain baseline services. Which is a totally different thing.

Catholic organizations walk a strange line in this country. They (ostensibly) employ and (ostensibly) serve the general public, not only Catholics, but they expect to be able to impose their religious doctrines of those members of the public who rely on their employment or services - and again, remember that in many areas there are no other options for some of the services Catholic organizations provide - and they expect to receive special dispensation from the government to restrict both employees and clientele in ways ordinary businesses aren't allowed to, because, in essence, "Jesus told us so". Especially since they're claiming that their religious doctrine requires them to do certain works, they really are using the kind of argument I facetiously posited in the first paragraphs of the post: If my religion says I have to be in charge of things, not putting me in charge of things is violating my religion!

It follows logically, in the strictest interpretation of the statement, and yet it's clearly and obviously ridiculous to expect such treatment. Why? Because the government's sole purpose is not to protect religious liberty. That is an important part of its duty, but it is still only *part*. The government is of much wider scope, tasked with ensuring the welfare and well-being of all its people, and when push comes to shove and a single organization's doctrinal need to impose their views on other people - like, say, employees and clients - is harming members of the general public, religious liberty must give way to protecting the people. It's called "compelling government interest", and it's why we wouldn't allow a person to go about murdering other people even if it was a legitimate requirement of their religion, because the safety and well-being of others has to come first when the two principles are in conflict.

Yet the USCCB isn't satisfied, and won't be satisfied, until their right to impose their doctrine on everyone within reach is enshrined in law as being of more importance than the needs and safety of the "everyone within reach" they're trying to impose their will on.

Like the Grinch, Only Worse

2011-11-21T14:02:00.000-08:00

Because the Grinch *had* a heart, even if it was a tiny shriveled little thing, and it was *able* to grow three sizes that day. Whereas Roger Schlafly, son of the infamous Phyllis "I'm going to make it big and get rich by making a career out of telling other women they shouldn't have careers - oh and getting married means your husband has a right to your body at all times" Schlafly, cannot possibly have even a shred of a heart left in his body at all.

Because if you have a heart, you do not attack mandatory reporting laws designed to protect children from abuse. Period. Much less referring to mandatory reporting as "snitching" and saying that such laws "turn us into a nation of snitches". And you sure as fuck don't claim that mandatory reporting laws are an "attack on the autonomy of the American family".

Cause if your family's "autonomy" includes the right to choose to cover up crimes against children which would be violated by mandatory reporting laws, you do not deserve to have a family, nor do you deserve autonomy at all. Period.

Women for Obama? Not This Woman.

2011-11-21T09:42:00.000-08:00

Apparently the campaign season has reached the point where it's time to start specific outreach, for I had an email land in my inbox last week that frankly took my breath away with its audacity:

As I have traveled across the country, I have had the privilege of meeting incredible women from all walks of life. From young women paying their own way through college, to moms working the extra shift to keep food on the table, to women struggling to make ends meet during retirement.

We talk about their bills, their children -- how they're constantly striving to strike that balance between work and family. And no matter what kind of challenges they're facing, they don't complain. They just work harder.

This is what we do as women. We persevere. Because no matter our ages, backgrounds, or stations in life, we are determined to leave a better world for our children and give them opportunities we never even dreamed of.

Women have always been the heart of the Obama organization. We make up nearly half of the American workforce and are the majority of students in America's colleges and universities. We're the primary caregivers for our children and seniors. We're the heads of households and workplaces across the country.

And right now, it's time for us all to dig deep, step up, and keep building this campaign together: person by person, discussion by discussion.

Today, we are officially launching Women for Obama -- and I am incredibly honored to be serving as its chair. This is a special group dedicated to growing this campaign from the ground up. Because we know better than anyone that movements for real and lasting change have got to start at the grassroots -- and they're sustained by the relationships we develop with one another. Together, that's what we're going to do -- build relationships with supporters, new and old, and grow this campaign -- one woman at a time.

I wanted to ask you myself if you'll sign on to join us.

The stories of the incredible women I meet serve as a constant reminder of why we're all here: because American families all around the country are facing very real problems. They're balancing mortgage payments and utilities bills with full-time jobs and raising children. They're struggling to make ends meet while still trying to put money aside to send their kids to college one day.

Barack understands these issues because he's lived them. He was raised by a single mother who struggled to put herself through school and pay the bills. When she needed help, Barack's grandmother stepped in, waking up every morning before dawn to take a bus to her job at a bank. And even though she worked hard and was good at what she did, she ultimately hit a glass ceiling and was passed over for promotions time and again because she was a woman.

So Barack knows what it means when a family struggles. He knows what it means when someone doesn't have a chance to fulfill their potential. And today, as a father, he knows what it means to want your daughters to grow up with no limits on their dreams.

That's why, since taking office, he's worked tirelessly to make sure every child and every family gets a fair shake.

The historic health reform he passed is making sure every American family gets the quality and affordable care they need to stay healthy. The crucial investments he's made in our students and workers -- raising the standards in our public schools and building out job-training programs at community colleges -- are investments in our country's economic future. And the very first bill he signed into law -- the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- will help make it easier for women to get equal pay for equal work, because he knows that women's success in this economy is the key to families' success in this economy.

But we have so much more to do. And, as women and supporters of this campaign, we need to keep showing up -- and we need to keep fighting the good fight.

So I'm asking you to join me, and women all across the country who support this movement. I'm asking you to say you're ready to work.

Join Women for Obama, and help us grow this organization:

http://my.barackobama.com/Women-for-Obama

Thank you for being a part of this,

Michelle

How. DARE. You. An administration that has used my rights as a bargaining chip, willingly trading away protections for the most vulnerable among us in order to pander to Blue Dog Democrats, and stood silently by, watching, without so much as a quiet cough of discomfort or awkwardness as a tidal wave of anti-choice legislation swept this country, now wants to approach me as a woman and ask me to sign on to campaign for them?

With all due respect, y'all can go fuck yourselves with something spiky.

This whole letter rubs me the wrong way, from the sisterhood-y tone to the "that's what women do, persevere (but without complaining because to be a woman is to work and be silent and consigned to the shadows while your labor keeps everyone going apparently)" to centering the message about "FOR THE CHILDREN BECAUSE ALL WOMEN ARE MOTHERS OR AT THE VERY LEAST MATERNALLY-INCLINED TO PROTECT TEH PRESHUS CHILDRENZ".

Pointing to the Lily Ledbetter Act wins you no points, given that it's been said by those involved that it was pretty much a done deal already before Obama took office, and it doesn't even do what the administration is always claiming it does, and yet it's always proudly trotted out as the main show pony in these appeals to women as a voting bloc. Help for students is good, definitely, and there will be women among those students benefiting, but the tone of it has that FOR THE CHILDRENZ feel that's really turning me off about all this. And touting the health ~~care~~ insurance reform, in which the administration started in the middle and compromised to the right, including ceding ground on the issue of federal funding for abortions for people on Medicaid by issuing an executive order reinforcing the Hyde Amendment to appease DINOs in exchange for their votes on the legislation, in a letter appealing to women to throw their support to the administration's campaigns, is a whole new level of audacity.

We're talking about a President who has repeatedly deliberately used right-wing framing in talking about reproductive choice, whose Equality Day Proclamation had not even the tiniest mention of reproductive freedom, who traded away poor women's reproductive freedom in order to get his precious health ~~care~~ insurance reform, who staffed his administration with known misogynist fuckwits, whose PR rep couldn't even manage a simple statement on the Republican war on women at the state level without epic mansplaining and dancing around the topic, who even when his administration does actually work to protect freedom of choice remains absolutely silent about it as if wanting to keep things hushed up, and who is even now openly considering caving to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and allowing them to discriminate against women in their employ at Catholic hospitals and schools the nation over because they've got their shorts in a wad about "insufficient" conscience protections that will require that the insurance they offer to employees cover contraception care among other preventative services.*

And after all of this, you have the unmitigated temerity to appeal to me not simply as a voter, but specifically as a woman?

I do not even remotely begin to have enough middle fingers with which to salute in response.

When y'all are ready to actually stand with us beyond LILLYLEDBETTERLILLYLEDBETTERLILLYLEDBETTER, let me know and we'll talk. Until then, keep your patronizing schtick to yourselves.

*I realize the bulk of my links in this paragraph all go to various posts on the same blog; I also realize that some people will take that to mean I didn't have any other sources and can be disregarded on these claims. I use these links for three reasons: one, because I know the blog and its tags well enough that I could find the information I was after fairly quickly; two, because all the posts are well-written and well-sourced with further links you can read for more information; and three, because I love Shakesville and am always happy to send people over there. Please don't mistake this choice for a lack of supporting data elsewhere, I simply pull from the places I know well and have access to.

(Partial) Credit Where (Partial) Credit Is Due: Susan G Komen's Response to Raise A Stink

2011-11-16T09:13:00.000-08:00

It's no secret around these parts that I am vehemently not a fan of Susan G Komen for the Cure. So when Think Before You Pink (a most excellent org dedicated to exposing pinkwashing and calling companies to account for their pinkwashing ways) launched their campaign Raise a Stink!, asking Komen to recall and reformulate their Promise Me perfume so that it no longer contains galaxolide and toluene, two toxins that have been shown to increase risk of breast cancer (irony FTL?), I was all over that. I sent off the email to Komen, not really expecting to hear back, or expecting to receive a news update from TBYP at a later date. To my surprise, however, the following email landed in my inbox this afternoon:

Thank you for your email to Susan G. Komen for the Cure® about the Promise Me fragrance. The fragrance was designed especially for Susan G. Komen for the Cure by TPR Holdings, which is donating $1 million to Komen annually for breast cancer research, education, screening, and treatment programs. The funds raised through the sale of the perfume will be put to good use in the pursuit of that goal.

Our first concern is always the safety and well-being of women and men facing this disease. To that end, our partners’ products are subject to review by our Medical and Scientific Affairs team, which evaluated the perfume’s ingredients, the latest research, and guidelines from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

According to our research, the ingredients found in Promise Me are within fragrance and cosmetic industry standards, and at these levels have not been shown to elevate breast cancer risk in people. At Susan G. Komen for the Cure, we support evidence-based medicine, that is, decisions based on current facts and knowledge. In addition, we make this information available to our constituents, respecting that they are intelligent consumers who make informed decisions about the use of products based on evidence. As new research and new findings are published, we will certainly take them into account.
Nevertheless, at Komen’s request and to be sensitive to these concerns, the manufacturer agreed to reformulate the perfume. The last batch of the perfume was manufactured in May of this year; we expect manufacturing and sale of the reformulated product to begin in early 2012. We do not intend to ask the manufacturer to recall or remove unsold products.
Komen has always believed that ending cancer requires research about how it begins and how it might be prevented, which is why Komen has invested more than $65 million to prevention research and an additional $7 million supporting 18 projects investigating environmental estrogens, pesticides, steroid hormones, and nitrites/nitrates and their relation to breast cancer.
We’re also taking action for clarity and consensus around the direction that environmental research should take in the future, which is why we requested – and are funding – a $1 million study by the Institute of Medicine to answer that question. We expect IOM’s recommendations in December, along with IOM’s assessment of evidence-based strategies for individuals to reduce their risk of breast cancer.
Komen is strongly committed to addressing breast cancer through science, advocacy and community and global outreach to achieve our mission to end breast cancer, forever.

...Hmmm. Well, good and not good, in spades.

-1 for excessive use of PR-speak padding "HEY THEY'RE GIVING US A MILLION BUCKS AND WE'RE GOING TO DO STUFF WITH IT" which contains the inevitable undertone of "it's for a good cause so you shouldn't discourage it!" (and we all know how well that goes over with me)
-1 for "industry standards" and the little dig about "evidence-based medicine" which implies that those of us who are unhappy about this are just being alarmists. I would think that an org dedicated to "ending breast cancer forever" might want to be a bit more strict about the use of even potentially risk-increasing chemicals than "industry standards" allow. "Industry" as a whole is about making money, not being safe, and we've all seen what happens when those two goals come into conflict, haven't we? So yes, I do expect better from a dedicated cause org like Komen than a cop-out about "industry standards".
-1 for "make this information available and let you decide" as a brush-off. Part of the point was that independent lab testing found these chemicals, and they were not listed on the label as ingredients. So no, that's not making information available. Even if it was, do you really think it's fair to expect your constituents to have at their fingertips the information about chemistry and the research on these particular chemicals to know what they do or their hazards? If that were the case, why have FDA restrictions on cosmetics and fragrances at all? Put whatever you want in there, as long as it's on the label so consumers can "make informed decisions based on evidence", right? The point of standards at the manufacturing level is so that your average person doesn't have to have a degree in cosmetic science to understand what they're putting on their skin. Since you commissioned the perfume, upholding that standard is your responsibility, and as I said, "industry standards" is not an acceptable cop-out here.
+1 for requesting that it be reformulated. Yay! That was the first part of what we were trying to do, so awesome!
-1 for not asking the manufacturer to even so much as pull unsold stock. Even if you don't want to go to the trouble of a recall, don't sell any more of it, FFS.
-1 for even MORE defensive PR-speak and swinging their Mighty Fundraising And Money-Spending Dick around for everyone to see. Do I give a shit about what else you've invested and how much? Not particularly, no. I was contacting you to address a particular issue, to which you've devoted a single small paragraph out of several so far. Stick to the point, please.
-10 for absolutely no hint of apology anywhere, not even a Politician's Nonpology of "we're sorry if it bothered you" or anything. If you're willing to back down enough to have the product reformulated, shouldn't you be willing to apologize for it? Of course, given the context of defensive PR and reformulating without pulling unsold stock of the old formulation, I'd bet the decision to reformulate is, in essence, a token "shut the activists up" concession. In which case, no, they're not going to apologize, because they're not sorry, they just want people to shut up and will do the absolute minimum required to make that happen.

It's good that they're having it reformulated. However, that's pretty much the only good part to this, and while that was the main goal of Raise a Stink, the manner in which Komen has responded has still left an unpleasant stench for me. I remain unconvinced of their value as a worthy organization. No donations for you, Komen.

Postsecret Strikes Again: Gendering the Desire for Marriage

2011-11-15T11:25:00.000-08:00

I read PostSecret, as I believe I've mentioned before here. Sometimes they're banal, sometimes they're annoyingly common - this week included "I don't shave my legs in the wintertime"; who the hell does if you don't absolutely have to, honestly? - many are less "secrets" and more just statements, and there are usually...hopefully...a few that touch a subtle nerve in you, striking up the feelings of poignancy and human connection for which this project became famous.

Of course, reading PostSecret - consuming any kind of media, really - becomes a lot more complicated and interesting once you've "taken the red pill", so to speak. Things your average person would find funny or scroll past without pausing catch the eye and poke at you. Like the "I always bring fat customers extra helpings of breadsticks" secret from a few weeks ago, or the few over the years that have admitted to covert feelings of racism, or the cissexist assumptions made about whether or not lesbian couples could ever become pregnant without outside assistance from a couple months back (here is a good roundup of several of the worst offenders). This week's Sunday Secrets included the following postcard:

A postcard depicting a black-and-white image of a man and woman in traditional Western wedding dress/tux holding each other and smiling in front of a church. Red text overlaying the image reads "This is what I fantasize about...I'm a guy."

Pop culture in this country makes endless jokes about a presumed male reluctance to commit in relationships with women, and with marriage being the biggest commitment to a relationship one can make, of course men are skittish, amirite? We understand - and teach young girls - that women long for marriage, that marriage is the pinnacle achievement of Relationship Rewards Points; we're expected to dream about The Big Day when we get to be the princess in the white dress with the church and the wedding cake, to have notebooks filled with pictures of the dream dress, etc. But we refer to a man's wife as a "ball and chain", bachelor parties are a last-gasp-of-freedom usually involving alcohol and nude women before you lose your freedom forever to your marriage, etc. Marriage, and weddings in particular, are constructed as a thing women desperately desire and men equally-desperately run from.

And that's what makes this secret a powerful enough thing to have shown up on PostSecret. A man is keeping his longing for a wedding (or marriage; it's hard to tell if it's the wedding part or the marriage part he's talking about from the image) a secret because fantasizing about weddings is a girly thing. And of course, in a culture where masculinity is defined and constructed as not-femininity, the worst thing a man can do to damage his masculinity, and thus his identity as A Man, is admit to being feminine in any way. For a man to have this girly desire for his wedding day is shameful, emasculating, and thus best kept secret.

I found this fascinating on a personal level, as well as a sociological level, because after being engaged my senior year of high school (and coming to my senses shortly thereafter, thank the gods), then coming to my "feminist awakening" in college, I decided I wasn't all that interested in marriage. I maintained that position for years, and probably would have been quite satisfied to remain unwed the rest of my life, whether partnered or not - yet I'm engaged now, and looking forward to the day when we can make it legal (we haven't yet, because I refuse to take advantage of a privilege of access gained purely by chance because we happen to have different gender markers on our driver's licenses, and he agrees and supports that choice). Yet when we got together, and our relationship turned deeply serious, he was the one who asked me to consider marrying him. Not just in the "he proposed, of course, because the man always does the asking (but it's for show and form, the decision is usually all but made ahead of time)" sense, no. He knew my feelings on marriage. And we had a serious discussion wherein he made it clear he would respect that if I said no, but he also explained that he strongly did want to get married. As in, it was a long-held wish of his, in the way that we teach women they should wish for marriage. So he was the driving force behind our engagement, out of genuine desire for marriage. (I've since warmed to the idea quite a bit, although the complexities of the vast war machine that is the wedding-industrial complex still make me want to run screaming into the night.) So to me, this secret provokes a "So what? I wouldn't even be engaged if not for the fact that my fiance feels similarly to this guy. This is a *secret*?"

But I understand why. It's our gendered expectations of what is an "acceptable" desire re: marriage and weddings that make this statement "I'm a guy who fantasizes about his wedding day" so taboo as to be a Secret one can only tell to an anonymous secret-gathering art project. I wonder if I could send in a complementary secret, confessing my disinterest in weddings and outright hate for "traditional" wedding gowns, and have it been seen as equally confessional-ish because I'm a woman...?

The Blame Game and #OccupyOakland

2011-11-14T20:55:00.000-08:00

I had heard last night that there was a(nother) planned eviction of Occupy Oakland set for this morning. Nothing much to do but hope and pray that the cops wouldn't turn violent again. Reading this morning's news, it seems that things were indeed relatively peaceful - legal observers and press observers were permitted to be in the camp unharassed by police, and while the encampment is gone again and there were 32 people arrested - mostly clergy and religious personnel from what I've heard, good job, I'm sure handcuffing priests is absolutely vital to the security of the nation - it did happen without the police brutality that has been the hallmark of these repeated attempts to quash the Occupy movement.

But this morning, in perusing my Twitter feed to catch up on the news, I came across this tweet from my local news channel, @abc7newsBayArea:

Screenshot of a tweet from @abc7newsBayArea reading "Mayor @JeanQuan said over 175 911 calls were not answered this past week because of police attention to #OccupyOakland"

This unfortunately follows the usual pattern of Mayor Quan's faux-populism attacks on #OO: point to various bad things in the city that are harming the people of Oakland, then blame the effects on #OO whether they're related or not. When there was a shooting near the camp that ended with one man dead, even though neither the victim nor the shooter(s) were affiliated or involved with #OO, Quan used it to call for the encampent to disband because "violence is unacceptable". It's Oakland, for fuck's sake! One of the most violent cities in the Bay Area! Shootings like the one that took place near #OO happen tragically often in Oakland, and statistically speaking it was just a matter of time before one happened in proximity to #OO. Even OPD declared it unrelated, but Quan tried to make out like it was Occupy's fault and used it to justify evicting the encampment today

And now, this tweet this morning, which holds the not-so-subtle implication that it's #OO's fault that the police are spending time harassing #OO and were thus unable to respond to other calls. Mayor Quan, you know there's a simple solution to that, right? Leave Occupy the fuck alone. All the cops have done around Occupy is stir up more trouble and escalate tensions. YOU are the one choosing to devote so many police resources - and spending $2.4 million the city could ill afford to cover the costs of evicting #OO this morning, too - to Occupy and thus depriving your other constituents of what little protection or help they might have gained from the cops this past week when those calls were going unanswered. Don't blame this on Occupy. Take responsibility for your own actions and your own choices and what they are costing the people of your city, all because you're feeling threatened by some peaceful but very visible protests.

More Imaginary "Rights" from the Religious Right

2011-11-11T11:41:00.000-08:00

The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Respect for Marriage Act this week, allowing the bill to go to the full Senate where they will vote on this DOMA-repeal act (actually, they probably won't, given the broken filibuster rules and Republicans' willingness to abuse them to the fullest, but still). The Religious Wrong have been predictably losing their shit over the vote, issuing forth hyperbolic blog posts and testerical "call to action" emails (with a "donate now!" link splashed in three places in the email, natch). The chip-chip-chip of marriage equality activists undermining their stranglehold on conversations about "morality" and "family" is really getting to them at this point, it seems.

I'm not going to bother with the roundup of reactions - RWW has that covered nicely. But there was one line out of the statement given to the media by Catholics for the Common Good (for some value of "common" meaning "het Christian etc", of course), that caught my eye.

"Children have a right to know and be cared for by their mothers and fathers, and government has an obligation to promote the recognition of that right by encouraging men and woman to marry before having children."

No. Just, no. That is a "right" you are pulling out of your ass, as your type are so often wont to do.

Children have rights, absolutely and certainly. Among them is the right to be raised and cared for by loving adults who will consistently and reliably act in the child's best interest. That does not have shit fucking all to do with "mothers and fathers". Not a goddamn thing. Children may be very well cared for by a single parent of any gender; two parents of different genders; two parents of same gender; three or more parents and step-parents; three or more parents in a poly family; a parent and the parent's extended family (aunts, uncles, older cousins, grandparents); extended family alone; non-blood-related friends of the family; and all sorts of other various configurations.

This insistence on "their mothers and fathers" is a slap in the face to "non-traditional" families everywhere. It shits on every family who doesn't conform to the nuclear married-man-and-woman-with-biological-children standard. It is arbitrary, and cruel, and unfair.

Children do have the right to a family, loosely defined. They do not have a right to married parents. They do not have a right to either or both biological parents. (Although frankly, if the fundies would back up off the contraception and sex ed suppression tactics, more children *would* have access to their bio parents, because fewer people would be having kids they didn't want and either giving them up for adoption or choosing to be uninvolved with the kid. People are more likely to hang onto/stick around with kids they *chose* to have, than ones they accidentally had or were forced to have because they had no other options.) And personally, I believe the government has an obligation to butt the fuck out of people's private family-organization choices.

Here's a novel idea: what if, instead of encouraging people to get married, we revamped the education system so that more people had the option for higher education and better salaries (kids and marriage are expensive, after all)? What if, instead of encouraging people to get married, we ended the War on ~~Poor People~~ ~~People of Color~~ Drugs, which forcibly removes so many low-income and in particular, black men from their communities and families? What if, instead of encouraging people to get married, we ensured that every child in this country, regardless of their family situation, had safe communities, good schools, good food, and health care? What if we, y'know, actually gave a shit about the living situations of children in this country and worked to improve them, instead of shaming and browbeating their parents and/or guardians for not being the "right" kind of family unit or not being married first?

Oh, but I forget, those things would require money. From the government. Going to help its most vulnerable young citizens. SOCIALISM I SAY! And where would this money come from? Are you suggesting making it impossible for this country's billionaires to make the payments on their seventh yacht in the Mediterranean by raising their taxes a fraction of a percent? You MONSTER! Suggesting that their hard-earned investment dividends and bonuses might be better used to feed, shelter, clothe, and educate children. The NERVE.

As for the jackasses at Catholics for the Common Good, I will simply leave you with this: WWJD? (Hint: I'm pretty sure it's not "attempt to police everyone's family structures and reproductive choices." Just sayin'.)

That Awkward Moment When Anti-Choicers Attempt to Advance Fetal Personhood Laws by Condemning Paternalism in Government

2011-11-08T11:54:00.000-08:00

It's a good thing I have that "Today in conservative hypocrisy" tag ready!

Via Right Wing Watch, I learned that the director of Personhood USA, the organization behind fetal personhood laws across the nation, had an editorial in USA Today yesterday which began,

Increasingly, the American people are being treated paternalistically by a government, media and public sector elite that stands in direct opposition to our traditional American values.

The only way I can make it make even a pretzel-logic-Glenn-Beckian sort of sense is by pulling another quote from later in the piece:

No greater example exists of this abuse of raw judicial power than Roe v. Wade, a decision by seven unelected men to impose abortion on all 50 states.

Ah. So I guess I can sort of squint and tilt my head and make it out now. If you accept the premise that Roe v. Wade "imposed" anything on anyone - as opposed to defining and protecting a fundamental right, which is what it actually did, but let's go with the right-wing bizarro-logic for now - then I guess I can sorta see it: the Ebil Gubmint unilaterally imposed this icky procedure on us because Father Knows Best, thus, paternalism.

Except that for those of us living in the reality-based community, who have not drunk unending gallons of anti-choice Kool-aid, it's flat-out hilarious that the organization operating at the far fringes of a movement whose sole goal is to tell other people what to do with their bodies is crying about government "paternalism".

I mean, we're talking about anti-choicers here! At its core, it's an explicitly paternalistic movement in which cis men spend lots of money and effort to be allowed to dictate what pregnancy-capable people can and can't do with their bodies. And then to go further and hear it from not just any anti-choicers, but *personhood* advocates in particular, whose pet cause would open the door to banning not only abortion, but certain forms of contraception and in vitro fertilization, along with potentially criminalizing every single miscarriage that occurs, well! "Hypocrisy" seems a mild and weak word to describe the epic whiplash you might get from trying to follow the abrupt about-face of logic they're employing.

PS: It's election day! Go forth and vote if you can! And if you're in Mississippi, for the love of all the gods, VOTE and VOTE NO ON 26.

I can only conclude that "religion" does not mean what I thought it meant.

2011-11-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

Because if saying that a governmental goal "cannot be achieved apart from reliance on Almighty God" is not imposing religion, I cannot even begin to fathom what their test is for defining something as "requiring religion".

This stems from a piece of Kentucky's Antiterrorism Act of 2002, wherein the legislature held that "the safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance on Almighty God as set forth in public speeches and proclamations of American Presidents...." In 2006, this was enhanced by regulations (PDF) requiring the state Department of Homeland Security to publicize this "finding" of the legislature by including the reliance-on-Almighty-God language in its training and educational materials. These were challenged by American Atheists; a district court judge struck down the provision - rightly concluding that "the General Assembly has created an official government position on God" - then the state took it to the appeals court, which inexplicably held that the language about "Almighty God" is not attempting to compel belief or participation in religious exercise.

Which, um. To borrow a turn of phrase*, I don't so much beg as command to differ.

The appeals court held that

The Kentucky legislature has not attempted to compel belief or participation in any form of religious exercise, nor does it seek to prefer one belief over another. A simple reference to a generic “God” acknowledges religion in a general way.

The notion of a phrase like "Almighty God" being a "general" reference to religion as a whole can only come from one's vast and unexamined reservoir of Christian privilege. It's the sort of thing a person would say if they've never really thought of the fact that "religion" is an extremely broad term encompassing dozens or even hundreds of distinct belief structures, only a few of which would use a phrase like "Almighty God" in that context.

Allow me to say this bluntly and explicitly for those who would agree with this finding: "God" is not a religiously-neutral term in any way, shape, form, or fashion, especially when "God" is capitalized and used like a name would be. The only possible way you could believe that would be if you defined "religion" as meaning "Judaism, Christianity, or Islam", all of which have at the center of their beliefs a singular male deity. Those are not, however, the only faiths to fall under the umbrella term "religion".

No, what you mean when you say "God" - especially a phrase like "Almighty God", which is straight out of Christian liturgy - is "religiously neutral" or is "acknowledging religion in a general way", is rather that "God" is nonsectarian, not explicitly indicating a specific denomination of Christianity. It does, however, explicitly exclude numerous pagan beliefs which either hold no gods (only goddesses), or many gods (none of which would be called capital-G God or Almighty God), or the Wiccan god who would be referred to as *the* God, not "Almighty God". It explicitly excludes Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism.

Really, the idea of "Almighty God" as "acknowledging religion in a general way" is utterly absurd, and attempting to defend it as such only shows how deeply ingrained your prejudice and privilege are, that you don't realize that "religion" does not mean "all the denominations of Christianity".

Furthermore, even if the phrase "Almighty God" were truly religiously neutral, to use it in the context it is in - to affirmatively declare that "reliance on Almighty God" is a requirement in order to secure the safety of one's country - is to attempt to compel belief. Especially when the phrase is then inserted in the training and educational materials given to state personnel, it is an explicit statement of government speech saying "You must believe in Almighty God in order to do your job."

It preferences belief over nonbelief - and what these Christian-supremacist judges seem to forget is that no matter how general a given acknowledgment of religion in government materials is, it will always exclude atheists entirely. There exists a "none of the above" response when it comes to religion, and that needs to be respected along with all the various shades of religious belief - which means NOT yanking phrases out of Christian prayers and sticking them in government documents.

This finding is absurd. It's expected that the case will be appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court. I wish them luck, and I wish for the Kentucky Supreme Court all the logic, reason, and perception that prejudice and privilege stole from the appeals court judges.

*From Inga Muscio's book, Cunt

Today In "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!"

2011-11-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

Continuing their obstinate refusal to actually do a single damn thing about the deplorable state of the economy and job market, despite campaigning on a job-creation platform, House Republicans spent $215,000 of our tax dollars yesterday to pass a non-binding resolution "reaffirming In God We Trust as the US's national motto."

The measure passed 396-9.

Of course it did.

I guess "E Pluribus Unum" (Out of many, one), the unofficial motto that has graced the national seal since the 18th century, wasn't good enough; we have to make sure the whole world knows that the Many and the One are CHRISTIAN GODDAMNIT. Whether they/we actually are or not appears to be irrelevant.

Personally, I'd rather trust in concrete solutions than a four-word talisman. But whatever ~~panders to your right-wing base~~ floats your boat, I guess.

Personhood Amendments Come To California

2011-11-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

Personhood amendments: that example of radical anti-choice ideology that goes SO far, even regular anti-choicers are like "Err, no, dude, not that way, okay?"

I mean, we're talking about a movement that gives only the barest of lip service to disavowing actual murderers in their midst, and they will actually come out and oppose these personhood amendments. Not because they disagree with the premise, more because they think it's too far too fast and the backlash will set them back in terms of PR.

Personhood amendments, for those without their fingers on the pulse of reproductive justice battles *preen preen, smug smug ;-) *, are amendments with Orwellian names like "Human Rights Amendment" and "Respect for All Life Amendment", which declare the legal term "person" to include "all humans at all stages of development from conception to natural death" or some variation on that basic wording. They're a blatant attempt to end-run around Roe by ensuring that laws against assault, murder, abuse, etc - designed to apply to born people - also apply to fetuses. They could have a whole host of fucked-up effects, from banning abortion (the core intent) to banning certain forms of contraception, like the IUD and the pill, and banning in vitro fertilization procedures. They're also intended to provide the vehicle for a case to go to the Supreme Court in the hopes that this court will overturn Roe entirely - which would then allow a number of states with "trigger measures" on the books to immediately go into effect and ban abortion entirely.

They are, in other words, the most extreme anti-choice legislation ever, and Really Fucking Bad News. (Also ridiculous, medically and scientifically speaking, as we have no way of identifying the moment of conception, only implantation; but then, we all know anti-choicers are not on speaking terms with science.)

Colorado overwhelmingly rejected their personhood amendment - twice. Ohio has a measure on the ballot for this coming year, although the Attorney General and Personhood Ohio are wrangling over the summary language to be included on the ballot - the AG refused to certify their summary because it was misleading, and Personhood Ohio is appealing. Mississippi is the "state to watch" for 2012 personhood amendments, with an amendment on the ballot and frighteningly high approval rate in polls. Personhood USA's stated goal is to get these awful amendments on the ballot in every state across the nation.

And now, it seems, California's time has come. The absurdly-titled "California Human Rights Amendment" has been submitted to the Attorney General's office for certification. The AG is to certify the proposed title, language, and summary, after which proponents can start gathering signatures to put it on the ballot.

Frankly, this is fucking California. We won't even pass a parental notification law (although they keep trying; 3 out of the last 4 elections. You'd think they'd eventually learn it's not going to happen). So normally I'd just scoff and write it off as anti-choice fever dreams. Except for the language they're using. Take a look:

"The term "person" applies to all living human organisms from the beginning of their biological development, regardless of the means by which they were procreated, method of reproduction, age, race, sex, gender, physical well-being, function, or condition of physical or mental dependency and/or disability. "

Compare that with the Mississippi version...

Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof."

Or the Colorado version...

Section 32. Person defined. As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the state constitution, the term "person" shall apply to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.

Not that I have no faith in my fellow Californians - okay, maybe I don't; sorry, y'all, but you *did* pass Prop H8 - but I notice they've padded out the California version of this crap with all the sort of anti-discrimination-law-language that will appeal to the "token liberal" type - you know, the person who believes in human rights but isn't inclined to do much research on things before voting? And I don't think it's accidental that they've sort of tucked this "*cough*beginningofbiologicaldevelopment*cough*" bit in among a whole lot of "age race sex gender disability protections yay" fluff, all of which is *already* covered in California's nondiscrimination laws.

No, this is pretty definitely an attempt to appeal to our collective liberal identity as The Right Sort of Person, you know, the kind of person who supports human rights and will vote in favor of them, by tacking on the name of "Human Rights Amendment" and adding lots of irrelevant reiterations of current nondiscrimination laws in the hopes that we won't look too hard past that.

I can't decide if I find it infuriating or amusing.

Actually, I take that back; I know exactly what I find it: frightening. It's a targeted message that shows an unfortunate level of understanding of the bulk of moderate voters here in California, and I am not at all sure of pro-choice organizations' ability to mount an extensive, expensive, well-publicized education campaign to combat the lazy feel-good vote in favor of something called a "Human Rights Amendment", no matter what that amendment would actually do.

Better To Desecrate It Than Remove It?

2011-10-31T11:46:00.000-07:00

A mayor in Tennessee has found a...unique way to respond to a potential lawsuit against the cross displayed on his town's water tower: he had one of the arms of the cross removed. (image via)

A white water-tower against blue sky, painted with the town's name of "WHITEVILLE", with a white cross with one horizontal arm missing atop the tower

This is, mind you, the mayor who called Freedom from Religion Foundation, who was handling the lawsuit against the town on behalf of an anonymous resident who complained about it, "terrorists" for attempting to force the town to remain religiously neutral.

His decision to remove one arm is intended to satisfy the legal requirement - it's no longer technically a cross, just an odd nightstick-shaped thing (which, given the increasing police power/abuse of power in this country, is probably a chillingly appropriate symbol) - while disobeying in spirit, as the three-armed un-cross serves as a reminder of what it used to be. His comments on removing one arm of the cross reiterated the accusation of "terrorist!" against FFRF and their anonymous client, also calling them "cowardly" and "shameful".

The lawsuit and the decision to desecrate the cross on the water tower to avoid removing it has sparked, in turn, a movement among the people in the town to put crosses in their yards, to "[symbolize] that we as a community still have faith. Just because you don't believe doesn't mean we don't." They say you can't go down a street in the town without seeing at least two crosses.

I hear that and all I can think is, who are the real terrorists now, if we're going to use that kind of language? These people are so invested in their public display of their faith, so convinced of their religion's supremacy, that they feel the need to put hundreds of crosses around town and make their town as unwelcoming as possible for anyone who's not a Christian - or even those who are Christian but prefer not to make gaudy display of it as a political point.

I think their own Bible says it better than I can (Matthew 6:5-6, New International Version):

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."

Not With A Bang, But A Whimper: How California's local governments' "moderate" response to #OWS might be more dangerous to the movement than outright crackdowns

2011-10-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

In Oakland, after the police used tear gas and rubber bullets on Occupy protesters, the mayor released a statement (PDF) apologizing for the excessive force and listing a "compromise" position which would ostensibly allow Occupy to continue without police opposition - so long as nobody stayed overnight.

The San Francisco mayor's office says he supports the protests but is citing "health concerns" and saying they can't stay much longer.

Fresno justifies their intent to remove Occupy protesters because they "failed to meet permit requirements" such as "limiting the gathering to about 20 people" along with, predictably, not staying overnight.

I read these stories and I wonder if, in a way, California's generally-liberal nature is actually working *against* the Occupy movements here. This is California, we love us a good protest, but do it quietly and only during park hours with a small number of people, if you please.

Oakland's "no camping" stance is ridiculous because...err, you do realize that the point of Occupy is to, well...occupy? To take over and hold a space in the name of the people, as a visible community together against oligarchic oppression? "Only during daylight hours" completely fails to address this. Without the community, without the living-together-encampments, Occupy is just another Tea Party.

San Francisco's "okay but not too much longer" stance misses the point again: an Occupy that lasts a couple weeks then goes home is just a blip on the radar; to do the work that Occupy is trying to do, it needs to make it clear that it's not just a passing fad, that it's a serious movement that will not just go away and cannot just be ignored. It's taken nearly two months for #OWS to gain even the piddly amount of mainstream media coverage it's gotten. It would have been no coverage at all if they'd gone home after a week or two.

Fresno's complaint about the protest being too big for a permit is basically a gentle request to defang your own movement; the point of the Occupy protests is to show a massive display of solidarity. To demonstrate the 99% principle, to show that we really do outnumber the 1%. Making sure only 20 people show up sort of defeats that purpose.

And that's the problem with these demands. They are so reasonable on the surface and designed to appeal to the moderate person's sense of compromise, but to comply with them would strip the essential meaning from the Occupy protests. They would see them reduced to a useless, token gesture, easily ignored and dismissed. But because they're framed as moderate, common-sense compromises, to reject them and continue to preserve the core principles of the Occupy movement leaves it open to being painted as "radicals" who refused to negotiate with the authorities. Bad PR, and fodder for mainstream media attempts to discredit the movement - "We tried to negotiate, but those hippies wouldn't budge!" And I am very much afraid that disregarding the pseudo-reasonable demands of local governments who are trying to compromise the movement into irrelevancy will set the stage for ever more violent clashes as they use that refusal as justification for "extreme" tactics out of "necessity".

I hope - and I think most likely it will happen - that the Occupy movements negotiating with the local governments stay true to their principles and refuse to conform to "acceptable" levels of protest. But I'm concerned what that refusal might do to the general representation and public opinion of Occupy and that it might provoke further police violence. And I'm not at all sure which path is best, in the end.

Thoughts?

How Not To Take Criticism: Ana of Lipsticks and Lightsabers gives us another lesson

2011-10-28T18:16:00.000-07:00

I've been staying quiet about the Team Pink Eye action going on in the beauty blogosphere this month - the premise is, a bunch of beauty bloggers have created a "team" on Susan G Komen for the Cure's fundraising website, and each week a half-dozen bloggers post pink makeup looks and host giveaways of pink products (sure hope you like pink, the Official Color of Cancerous Boobies!), which readers can enter to win by donating $5 via the Team Pink Eye page.

I've expressed my opinion of Komen here before. Between their suing for the cure and ignoring the fact that their commissioned perfume contains toxins shown to increase one's chances of getting breast cancer, I'm not a big fan. So every "Yay Team Pink Eye" post that's crossed my reader this month has made me grit my teeth. But I just ignored it, because beauty blogs tend to be pretty apolitical spaces and you'll get jumped on and/or banned for asking for critical thinking before they post (I've had this happen, back when I used to read Temptalia and called her out for promoting Ahava, a high-end beauty brand that advertises itself as based in Israel and using Dead Sea Minerals in their products, but which actually has its plant on Palestinian land and is using stolen resources to make their products - my comment was deleted, although she did eventually take the post down).

Until today, when Ana of Lipsticks and Lightsabers (no, I'm not giving her link traffic; google it if you want) tweeted her Team Pink Eye post by saying "Save the boobies!" and then following up with "Breasts are pretty much the best cause".

It was the follow-up tweet that got me. I was ignoring the first one, but "Lol breasts are an awesome cause" was too much. So I replied by saying "What about the people to whom the breasts are attached? Are they a good cause?"

And oh, the defensive snark that provoked! I had dared to question her sacred humor, and that is an affront not to be borne! I had bingo inside of ten minutes - humorless feminist, it's a joke, obviously we all *know* X is bad so why can't we make jokes about it?, but we're doing it *for a good cause*!, etc. Complete with several general tweets (ie, not @ me) saying "Wow, I guess some people don't know cancer=bad" and the true gem of the afternoon:

Two tweets from @JediAnastasia (edited to be read from top to bottom instead of reverse order), saying "I'm sure when people are dying from cancer they'll be really grateful we put a stop to the added funding from all those anti-feminist ... breast cancer campaigns and valued them all individually as entire people before they died."

So the message here is: as long as it's for a good cause, you can say and do whatever you want, and anyone who questions your methods obviously WANTS PEOPLE TO DIE.

The point, you are missing it. Rather badly, in fact. And my goodness, how terribly mature of you, to take one individual's disagreement with your tactics and publicly snark about it to all your other followers! Hell, I was even trying to be actually educational, too, as opposed to just snarky. Explaining how "it's a joke" is a terrible excuse, and neither "it's a joke" nor "but I'm doing it for a good cause!" insulates you from criticism.

Please, people of the internet, take note of several points:

Intent is not magic. Doing something shitty for a good cause does not make it not a shitty thing to do anymore. See: all criticism of PETA ever.
"It's a joke!" does not work as magical criticism-deflecting Kevlar, either. Not all jokes are funny.
How about, to make it simple, we'll just say: YOU ARE NEVER, EVER IMMUNE TO CRITICISM. No matter how funny you think you're being, or what cause you're doing it for, or how apolitical you think you/your space are.

It makes it really hard to inhabit and enjoy the super-sparkly magic world of makeup blogging, when people do shitty things and then expect it to be okay because LOL JOKING. You don't exist in a vacuum. Your blogs, your tweets, do not exist in a vacuum. Please, people on the internet, stop insisting that they do.

"Awareness" Has Officially Jumped The Shark

2011-10-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

At this point, campaigning for breast cancer "awareness" is kind of like asking people in America if they've ever heard of that one Jesus dude. A veritable sea of pinkwashing, ribbons, and Susan G. "Only we can use the phrase "For the Cure" and we will spend your donations suing everyone else who tries no matter what disease they're focused on curing - oh and our specially-commissioned perfume contains a toxin known to increase one's risk of breast cancer but we don't give a shit" Komen floods us every October. You would have to be living under a rock in the ass-crack of nowhere to be unaware of breast cancer by now.

Even so, there are less-offensive and -annoying ways to go about promoting "awareness" at which I will only roll my eyes... and then there are...well...this:

A kiosk in a shopping mall, displaying tote bags, shirts, and an assortment of other items, with pink heart-shaped balloons tied at each corner and a sign across the top saying "BOOBIES ROCK" flanked by pink ribbons

In case you can't see the sign clearly, here:

A close-up crop of the sign from the previous image, reading "BOOBIES ROCK for breast cancer awareness"

...*headdesk*

My mom and I went to the mall yesterday - thank you for buying me a massage, lunch, and a bottle of delicious alcohol, Mom! - and as we were meandering in the general direction of the entrance to leave, she said "Oh. My. God." and stopped. So I looked where she was looking, and dead ahead of us was this monstrosity of a kiosk. I grabbed my phone and started snapping pics of this awful piece of awfulness as we prowled around the kiosk, taking in the full force of the WTF on display. Because lest you think that the name of the kiosk is the worst part, let me reassure you: we have only just begun our tour of this thing.

A black t-shirt hanging on the kiosk, reading "i [heart] motorboating" in large print and beneath it in small print "for breast cancer awareness"

For the blissfully ignorant, "motorboating" refers to shoving one's face between someone's breasts and shaking it back and forth while making "pbbbbbbbth" noises. Fucked if I can figure out *why* you would do this, though. I think it's supposed to be funny? o.0

But I had no idea motorboating also had magical powers of increasing awareness of breast cancer! Magical, I say! Motorboat for breast cancer awareness! Shoving your face into someone's cleavage and making silly noises is the best way to make them aware of the potential for cancer lurking there!

Unless of course it's just a ~~eyeroll-inducing~~ lol-tastic excuse to give your motorboating jokes a sheer veil of legitimacy.

A black can-cozy emblazoned with the main logo for "BOOBIES ROCK! for breast cancer awareness", with pink sparkly tinsel coming out of the top

This was the main logo. There were stacks of t-shirts with this design, wristbands, tote bags, cup-cozies, everything.

I did a little research on "Boobies Rock" before I started writing this. It's apparently a company that purports to be, in essence, marketing breast cancer "awareness" (Fuck it, I'm going to make this post into a drinking game. Take a shot every time I say "awareness". With luck, I'll pass out before I finish.) to the younger crowd. Their Facebook is full of event invites to trendy cocktail parties "for the cause", and their mission statement, taken from their blog, reads...

Our mission is simple; to create awareness through fun, fashionable and humorous clothing and accessories.

Which I'm pretty sure translates to "Hey, we have an excuse to make boob jokes on t-shirts because AWARENESS you guys!" (take a shot)

Another hanging black t-shirt, this one reading "i [heart] hooters!" in large print, and in small print underneath "that's why I support breast cancer awareness"

Support breast cancer awareness (take a shot) because you like hooters, not because you give a shit about people struggling for their lives against a deadly disease! That's not dehumanizing at all!

A red t-shirt with the Kool-Aid jug guy and text reading "Nice Jugs!"

This one didn't even have word fucking one about cancer that I could see - there's a little black bar that had some kind of text but it's tiny and unreadable, you'd basically have to stick your face to someone's torso to read it if it were on a person. The AWARENESS (take a shot) excuse is wearing away, I see. And the Kool-Aid guy, really? Please stop mining my childhood for your shitty t-shirts.

The piece de resistance: a black vinyl tote bag with a big pink-and-white ribbon, with pink and white text overlaying it reading "ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING!"

So: boob joke, boob joke, boob joke, boobies! - and the one piece of merchandise that seems to be aimed at THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM ALL THIS AWARENESS (take a shot) STUFF IS DONE, you know, breast cancer sufferers/survivors, REMEMBER THEM? Yeah, the people this cause is supposedly supporting and helping? Lol, I know, it's so hard to remember PEOPLE when you've got BOOBIES on the brain. All the tiny violins for you. All of them. ANYWAY! The *one piece* of this crap that is actually *about* people directly affected by the disease you're cracking boobie jokes about...

...is a condescending piece of The Secret horseshit.

I'm not particularly surprised, but I am absolutely appalled.

Attitude is Everything? That's the "encouraging" message you want to send to those struggling with a deadly disease? Think Positive! while you're racing time to see if the treatment can kill the cancer before the cancer kills you. Attitude is Everything! so I guess if you are going broke from medical expenses you just gotta look on the bright side and everything will be better. What the cockjuggling fuck is this shit?

I will say that, flipping through their FB page, I see that they donate some of their profits (there's no specifics about how much or what percent of their income from sales is going to these donations) to a number of local- and state-based orgs who are focused on patient support, increasing access to quality care, etc. And these are absolutely good orgs, not the "AWARENESS" (take a shot) kind. So that's a definite plus.

But when you're making the money you donate by selling boob-joke shirts that completely eliminate the person in favor of LOL BOOBIEZ, I have to question whether the funds raised are worth their social cost. The more people see of this "Save the TaTas" type of crap, the more we turn breast cancer into a boob joke instead of a serious illness. The more we go "lol boobiez" the less we pay attention to the environmental causes and the less we focus on trying to hold accountable those whose products and manufacturing techniques contribute toxins that raise the incidence of breast cancer, even as they slap pink ribbons on their packaging for one month out of the year and reap the benefits of increased positive consumer regard. The more we think of breast cancer as threatening the all-important titties instead of threatening people's lives, the harder we make things for survivors who have had to have partial or total mastectomies to save their lives.

Because sometimes, with this disease, you have to lose the breasts to save the person. Because the person's life is more important than their breasts. And if you can't figure out how to raise money without turning that priority order around, it's probably better for everyone if you just stay out of breast cancer awareness movements altogether.

(take a shot)

Dear Personal Development/Life Coaching Community: We Need To Talk.

2011-10-13T15:57:00.000-07:00

[TRIGGER WARNING: ableism]

Look, I like y'all, I really generally do. I've found many awesome people, I've learned a lot, I've developed the tools to manage a lot of my depression and anxiety through tweaking stuff I picked up from personal development blogs and coaches. I firmly believe that everyone deserves to live their best life, filled with passion and energy and self-actualization and creativity and everything else you teach.

But then, I run across something like this. [TW on linked article for ableism; comments actually are fairly safe to read, plenty of people calling it out]

To an extent, I understand. Not everyone has the resources, physically, emotionally, or financially, to take on the extra struggles of raising a child with a disability - even if the only issue is trying to wrangle the system into giving your child the proper consideration, care, and accommodations they need. It's rough. It's different than raising a non-disabled child. And not everyone can do that. I do understand that, and I respect a person's knowing their limits and making decisions based on that knowledge.

However.

If your reasoning for not wanting to keep your baby if it turns out to have a disability is "I don't want to raise a child who will probably never be independent or contribute to the world/my vision of my future is of strong, healthy children, not limited in what they can do" (that's an almost-direct quote from the linked article, btw), YOU HAVE A SERIOUS ABLEISM PROBLEM TO CONFRONT.

You are making a choice about your potential future child based on a STEREOTYPE. A nasty, ableist stereotype of disabled people as non-contributing burdens to society, forever living with their parents, needing constant caretaking. Some people with disabilities are like that. Many more are not. Someone's diagnosis at birth does not tell you where on the normative-functionality spectrum they will fall. If you want to talk about how you're "being honest with yourself" and "honestly assessing your capabilities", how about you try also being honest about what the potential challenges and difficulties might be. Y'know. Do some research and make a decision based on facts instead of "icky disabled people I don't want one of those in my family".

Between guilt-based "pay what you can (oh but there's a minimum and I'm going to shame you for not being able to pay more than that)" sales, abuse of the word "gypsy" to mean "adventuresome bohemian hipster" (I'm looking at you, Gypsy Love Warrior), and now this, well...like I said, I love y'all, but I'm not sure I can keep this up. I would like to think that a group of people ostensibly dedicated to self-improvement and self-reflection would be self-aware enough to not fuck shit up like this, but y'all are not giving me a lot of hope.

Adventures in Profitable Misogyny: A Feminist Walks Into A Spirit Halloween Store...

2011-09-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

...pukes on their carpet, then turns right around and walks back out.

No, not really. That would have made for a much shorter post (although I still would have found it entertaining). No, my mood was more "horrified amusement" than "this is making me sick". Sometimes, you laugh to keep from crying.

Come along with me on a magical adventure through WTF Is This Shit Land, aka the Spirit Halloween Store, as documented with photographic evidence!

The "his-and-hers" versions of Harry Potter knock-off costumes hanging side-by-side. The male costume is a set of black robes (closed all up the front) with a not!Hogwarts badge on the chest and a red-and-yellow tie, while the female costume is a grey v-neck minidress with red-and-yellow trim, a tie, and a black short cape as a nod to the "robes" idea.

If you're a guy who wants to be not!Harry Potter for Halloween, you're in luck - a costume that's closeish to the movie, close enough to be easily recognizable anyway. If you're a woman who wants to be not!Harry Potter for Halloween, you'd best be ready to SHOW THEM ASSETS in a skintight minidress with lots of cleavage. Oh, you still want to look not!Hogwarts-ish? Eh. Toss on a token collar/tie/cape-thing, but make sure none of it hides the ASSETS that are meant to be the main event for a woman's Halloween costume! *hums "One of these things is not like the other ones..."*

Apologies for the blurriness; two different she-pirate costumes, one with the "for fatties" yellow stripe and one without. This pic was supposed to highlight the size ranges but you can't even see them, so I'll just tell you: the "regular" she-pirate costume says it's for sizes 12-14, while the "for fatties" costume says it's for sizes 22-26.

I'm curious. What exactly are those of us between a size 14 and a size 22 supposed to do? That's actually a *really* common size range, judging by which sizes we got most of/sold out of quickest when I worked at LB. Is there a "semi-fatties" version I can't find? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad there's at least one costume available for someone over a 20, which is where XL/XXL sizes seem to stop in these things, but the gap there struck me as really weird.


Avast! It be the Pirate Wall! Four columns of four hanging costume bags each, separated by a bunch of pirate accessories (eyepatches, plastic swords, etc) in the center.

I realize you can't see the specifics very well (click through for fullsize if you want to see details) but for those who don't want to bother with that, there are on this wall at least six different variations on she-pirate costumes in the "regular" size, along with a couple he-pirate costumes. (As an aside, I had no idea there could be that many versions of miniskirt-blousy sleeves-corsety thing-scimitar. Was it really necessary to have half a dozen different "types"?) There is precisely *one* plus-size she-pirate costume. Hope you fat ladies all have the same taste in color and detailing! Similarly, though I didn't get a pic of it, in the "vampire/witch/generic gothic-ish dress" section, there were a half dozen different dresses in crushed velvet with drapey sleeves and laced-up fronts labeled "vampire" or "witch", including one that was a truly gorgeous shade of cobalt blue which I might have been tempted to buy...except there was only ONE "plus-size" costume in the section and it was the generic black with red lining type. Thanks for saving me money by refusing to acknowledge diverse tastes among fat people, Spirit!

Two costumes side-by-side, "Sexy Venus" (a pink and white minidress with empire waist and drapey toga-ish fabric hanging from the shoulders), and "Venus Goddess of Love" (the plus-size version with "for fatties" yellow stripe; costume is similarly styled but has a full-length skirt and is cream and red instead of white and pink, with an actual wrap-shawl-thing instead of attached capelet)

If this doesn't perfectly encapsulate the attitude mainstream Halloween costumes take toward "plus-size" costumes, I don't know what does. The "regular" costume is the "Sexy X" and bears little resemblance to whatever it's supposed to be, inevitably consisting of a minidress embellished in some costume-specific way, while the plus-size costume is full-length (gods forbid anyone should have to see FAT LEGS on Halloween, amirite?) and drops any pretense of being "Sexy" anything (because duh, fat people can't be and wouldn't want to be sexy).

The military costumes section. A bunch of military-styled hats/helmets/caps, hanging beside two costumes, "Camo Pants" (which are apparently for men, pictured with a guy in the aforementioned pants and white t-shirt with dog tags), and below that "Camo Cutie" (the women's version, a olive-green camo print minidress with either over-the-knee black boots or black thigh-high stockings, I can't tell which)

Oh dear. For the record, there was a "camo jacket" hanging above the pants, also shown with a young man wearing it. So if you're a guy who wants to go as a soldier (and doesn't that seem vaguely disrespectful to actual servicemembers? Or is it just me?) you get a pair of pants and jacket. If you're a woman, you either buy the men's costume, or you buy the "cutie" costume that's, again, the standard template of minidress embellished for the specific costume. And of course, don't forget your dominatrix boots/sexy thigh-highs. That's totally practical for a soldier, and that's how all lady soldiers dress, duh.

The other side of the military section: Two men's costumes showing what seem to be Navy dress whites and, I think, Navy everyday officer's uniform (khaki suit-looking thing), hanging next to two women's costumes: "Naval [something] Doll" (glare covered the second word, sorry), and "Desert Dolly". "Naval whatever Doll" is a navy-blue minidress with red-and-white trim, a gold embroidered anchor on the flared skirt, and a white bustier-top, shown worn with white thigh-highs and a sailor's cap; "Desert Dolly" is a skintight digiprint-camo-print minidress and soldier's cap, shown worn with black fishnet tights and knee-high black boots and holding a black assault rifle.

Wow. I didn't think the military section could get worse, but here it is. The feminine versions of the military costumes are literally reduced to DOLLS. It's right there in the name. "Doll" and "Dolly". Fuck, how blatant can you get? "You are not a person in costume, you are a doll that looks cute in stylized versions of real uniforms." A doll. Wow.

I can't even imagine being a female servicemember going into a costume store and seeing this. I'd be ready to strangle people and burn the whole place down. Is this really all we see female soldiers, sailors, as? Dolls? Fuck that.

And in all of this, I didn't even touch on the rampant racism. The "Mexican Man" costume that consisted of a poncho-blanket-thing, sombrero, and fake moustache, with the guy on the package holding a beer and looking drunk; the "Pocahottie" (I wish I were kidding about the name, but I'm not; you can find the exact one here online) that followed the usual minidress-customized, in this case with fringe and beads and a feathered headdress.

Just as well I'm pagan and celebrate Samhain instead of Halloween. It gives me leeway to redefine Halloween as "That one night at the end of October when skinny white girls are ~~encouraged~~ required to show as much skin as possible while delighting in racist stereotypes and sexism in the name of "dressing up" and "fun"."

I think that's much more accurate. What do you think?

#TooMuchDoubt - RIP Troy Davis. I'm sorry we failed you.

2011-09-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

I have been glued to the DemocracyNow.org live feed from outside the Georgia prison all day, from before the original execution time, through the eleventh-hour delay while SCOTUS reviewed, when the denial of the emergency appeal came down, and now they are saying the execution has begun.

I keep tabbing between tumblr and my Seesmic page, where my Twitter and Facebook feeds are displayed side-by-side. And as I'm listening to the live feed and looking at the Seesmic page, I see a horrible, awful contrast:

[A screenshot of a browser page showing three columns of content, from left to right: Twitter feed, Twitter @ replies, and Facebook news feed]

I erased the name on my Facebook section because I use my legal name there and I have no desire to link my pseudonym and my legalnym, and blurred the @ replies because they're irrelevant. I want to draw your attention to the difference between the FB feed and the Twitter feed.

Twitter is completely full of tweets about Troy Davis, many using the #TroyDavis or #TooMuchDoubt hashtags.

Facebook is full of inanity about plans for the weekend and going out to dinner.

I want to take every single FB friend and acquaintance of mine by the shoulders and shake them. How can you not care? How is this not even a blip on your radar?

I need to post something to my Facebook feed. I don't know what. But I can't just let that silence, that awful, banal silence, continue like that.

Troy Davis was pronounced dead at 11:08 PM, EDT. May his God welcome his spirit home. May his family be comforted, as much as comfort is possible in such a situation. And may the family members of the murdered officer who called for this, encouraged this, "found solace" in this, find their grief unabated and closure escaping them for the rest of their natural fucking lives. If you will condone the murder of a man whose guilt is far from certain, in order to get your "solace", you don't deserve it. May your bloodlust haunt you.

Did you know, that on the coroner's certificate of death for a person executed by the injustice system, the cause of death is listed as "homicide"?

It seems fitting.

Meditations on a Word: Flattering

2011-08-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

Wherein I ruminate and ramble and share a brief moment of "ding!"...

I had this thought the other night. I've gained weight, you see, from my high school size of a 10/12ish (US) up to around a 16/18 these days. And I'll be honest, I'm kind of struggling with my self-image and how to feel beautiful in a body my culture emphatically and repeatedly tells me is UGLY and DISGUSTING and THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL IN THE VERSE. (The irony, of course, is that were it not for such messages that made me feel unacceptably big even at my smallest adult size, I wouldn't have dieted my metabolism into the ground and gained 100lbs over the past 7 years. Diet culture is what *made* me fat.)

Anyway, I was talking to myself about fashion, and clothes, and fit, and how to look good and more importantly, feel like I look good in my clothes at this size. And I tried on for size (pun fully intended) the cop-out line of "it doesn't have to make me look skinny, so long as it's flattering."

But then it occurred to me: what else is "flattering" code for, in this context, but "skinny"? We say clothes flatter us when they smooth our lumps and rolls, when they create visual illusions of height and a curve from waist-to-hip and fuller, higher, rounder breasts. Hmm. Smooth lines, height, hourglass figure. What does that sound like?

Why, our culture's oppressively narrow standard for female beauty, of course! What we really mean when we say clothing "flatters" us, is "it helps us to inch closer to The Beautiful Body by camouflaging the body that is actually ours, veiling our real flesh in illusion."

Wow. That's...not an improvement at all, is it? "It doesn't have to make me look skinny, so long as it ~~flatters me~~ hides my body and makes me seem closer to the idealized standard."

As they say, it's hard to fight the enemy when the enemy has outposts in your own head.

I still don't know, after years of jeans-and-tshirts, what I want my fashion and style to look like. But I do know, now, that flattering is not a concept I want anywhere near it.

Pretty Sure There's a Simple Answer to This...

2011-07-19T09:12:00.000-07:00

Frederick County, Maryland. Lancaster City, California. Chesterfield County, Virginia. Lodi, California. Houston, Texas.

All of the above-mentioned municipalities have something in common: they have all struggled with the issue of prayer at formal government meetings (City Council, County Board of Supervisors, etc). There have been lawsuits and nonbinding resolutions and voter initiatives in support, and above all, much semantic tap-dancing around the core issue of "We want to establish overtly-Christian prayer as the norm but we don't want to be noticed as doing so outright." Chesterfield came up with the so-called "Wiccan-proof invocation policy", which specifies that prayers must be nonsectarian, but those who offer prayers at meetings "must be ordained and affiliated with a monotheistic religion with an established congregation in Frederick County." There have been attempts at compromise, at "allowing" those of non-Christian faith to offer the opening prayers occasionally.

I have to wonder how much time, money, and energy is being spent on this issue in municipalities across the country, between litigation, drafting new policies, debating the policies, putting voter initiatives on the ballot, etc.

And having wondered that, I have to ask, am I the only person to have hit upon the obvious solution in my mental meanderings? Cause here's what I'd recommend...wait for it...

STOP FUCKING HAVING INVOCATIONS AND PRAYERS AT OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONS.

There. Was that so damn hard? Take a moment of silence in your office before the meeting, or at your seat in the meeting room, and pray for yourself if you so choose. No one can or will stop you in such a personal matter. But why, for the love of all that is, why is it so vital that it be done out loud in a group in front of everyone? For that matter, I'm pretty sure Jesus would have been less than pleased about this whole public-group-prayer-in-government phenomenon - Matthew 6:5-7, anyone*?

If you feel the need to be brought together and dedicated to your task together - for I can actually see the value in redeclaring one's dedication and purpose, to focus the group as a whole before undertaking serious communal tasks - then have a statement of purpose read or spoken before each meeting. Something that reminds the members of the ruling body why they are there, for whom they do their work, etc. Like, "As we begin this meeting, let us all be reminded of what we stand for and why we are here: to do the best we can for those people who have placed their trust in us. To work for the greatest good for the greatest number of our people. Let us keep this in mind as we go about our business." Simple, secular, nothing for anyone to be excluded by or harmed by.

I genuinely don't understand why the whole idea of pre-meeting prayer is so important. Why people cling to it so desperately. Why it's absolutely scandalous to suggest just NOT DOING IT ANYMORE, why people instead prefer to twist the rules into pretzels to try to allow it to continue without being open to lawsuits about it. Pre-meeting prayers serve no purpose that I can see, offer no concrete benefit that would make them worth fighting for like this.

Just LET IT GO already, and go about the business of governing, without wasting taxpayer time or money defending a practice that is both superfluous and oppressive.

*⁵“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. ⁶“But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

"Just"...Stop.

2011-07-06T16:13:00.000-07:00

"Just have it and give it up for adoption." Because pregnancy and childbirth are totally safe and easy and free of cost, and don't totally change your body and life forever no matter what happens to the child after you give birth, right?

"Just stop taking everything so personally/expecting perfection from yourself/thinking about things so much." I wish I could, but see, I have this brain that kinda doesn't let me stop doing those things. What, you think I *like* being obsessively miserable and hating myself for every tiny failure in my entire lifetime? Does that sound like fun to you or something?

"Just eat healthier and exercise more." I've never thought of that before! How incredibly simple! Except that I can't afford much produce, don't like or know how to cook more than the couple meals I eat all the time, can't force myself to enjoy vegetables despite trying and trying, and dislike the taste of water. Oh, also I have chronic back problems and low energy and am cripplingly self-conscious about exercising in front of other people, so any exercise I have to do has to be low-to-no-impact, easy, and something I can do in my house while my partner is at work, without boring the crap out of me.

JUST: (adv.) merely, simply.

I hate this word. It minimizes. It trivializes. "Just" do this, or that. It tells me the person speaking thinks the action should be easy. It ignores circumstances and individual capabilities in favor of a normative narrative of what "everyone" should be able to do. It also implies a moral judgment - the speaker obviously believes the course of action is not only easy, by their own arbitrary standards (usually heavily influenced by society's standards, of course), but the *right* thing to do. It erases conflicting emotions and tells you the choice should be easy, and therefore being conflicted about it is wrong. It invalidates peoples' feelings and experiences.

From a stranger or ideological opponent, it's sneering, condescending. From a loved one, it's even more damaging, a slap in the face. It is the worst word, a metric fuckton of condescension, patronization, minimization, trivialization, all wrapped up in four innocent letters.

So please. If you are ever tempted to 'splain someone's situation and the course of action you think they should take by saying "just do X", DON'T. No matter how obvious the solution seems to you. Just don't. Step back, think about why they might not have done that yet, and find a way to offer advice - IF they asked for it in the first place, which in my experience the object of this unfortunate phrase usually didn't - that doesn't imply that the person is stupid for how they've handled themselves and their situation so far. Respect their decisionmaking process. Try giving them the benefit of the doubt - try assuming that they *do* know what they're doing, and that they *do* have reasons for handling things the way they have.

But for the love of all that was, is, and ever will be..."Just" stop.

Feel free to add and vent about other "just" experiences you've had to deal with in comments.

Hiatus

2011-06-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

Alright, loves. I've been trying to avoid doing this, but I think it's gotten to that point anyway. Life has been kind of kicking my ass; depression's been a sneaky bastard who chose, this round, to just sap away my motivation and ability to do things, but without the usual accompanying mood shifts so I didn't recognize it right away. (Well played, you destructive fucker, you.) And though my usual impulse is to force myself to keep up "normal" output and soldier through, I'm learning that it's seriously detrimental to my *actual* recovery for me to do so.

So for the time being, Witch.Words will be on official semi-hiatus. I'll probably throw together a post about Dan Savage's epic bi-fail this week, and I plan on participating in the Shakesville/What Tami Said Planned Parenthood Blog Carnival, and I'm toying with the idea of setting up a reader survey to get clarity on some questions I've had about my readers and my blog's direction, but other than that, posting will be light-to-nonexistent for at least a week or two, maybe longer. I'll post if I feel the urge, but I'm not going to be forcing myself to anything.

It's time for me to rest and heal. I apologize for the interruption but, honestly, it's what needs to happen for me right now. I hope to be back to "normal" (where normal = my baseline condition, not some normative idea of mental health and productivity) in a few weeks, maybe a month at most. If you need me before then, my email is in my bio on the sidebar.

Love and light,
Jade

PS: To those readers who are so inclined, healing energy/prayers/thoughts/vibes/spells/whatever you do would be most welcome. Thank you.

Oh Look! Another Reason!

2011-06-23T16:04:00.000-07:00

Specifically, another reason to STOP FUNDING RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS to perform government functions. Cause they're allowed to use religious criteria in hiring despite the fact that they're paying those salaries with the dreaded taxpayer money.

This exception to federal anti-discrimination rules for government contracts was instituted under Bush (executive orders, how we love thee) but, surprise surprise, Obama has yet to take his thumbs out of his ass and do anything about it. So a coalition of 52 "religious, civil rights, labor, health, women's, and other organizations" sent a polite letter asking him to fulfill yet another apparently-forgotten campaign promise, quoted in the letter:

Restoring Executive Order 11246 for all government contractors would be an important first step toward fulfilling the campaign promise you made on July 1, 2008, in Zanesville, Ohio. In that speech you stated that you would reform the Faith-Based Initiative so that “if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion.”

Hell, who knows. It's campaign season again; maybe we'll actually see some response other than the cavernous absence of genuine progressive principles that has been the hallmark of this administration?

I kind of doubt it though.

I'm Curious...

2011-06-20T20:34:00.000-07:00

Presidential candidate Herman Cain (R-ampant Islamobigot) has said he ~~will not allow any Muslims in his administration~~ ~~didn't say that at all~~ ~~would have to be extra-cautious about hiring Muslims~~ wants Muslims to take a special loyalty test before being hired in his administration if he were to be elected President.

The No Religious Test Clause of the US Constitution (Article VI, paragraph 3) states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

So I'm curious. If it's not specifically a religious test, but it is a special test selectively applied on the basis of religious belief...does that cross that line into unconstitutionality?

I'm neither a lawyer nor a Constitutional scholar, so I can't say with any certainty. But I can certainly say it looks suspiciously like.

What do you think?

Suspiciously "Convenient"

2011-06-20T17:27:00.000-07:00

You hear a lot of shit about how women who get abortions* are getting them "for convenience". (Most recently brought to mind for me by this thread on tumblr. Yes, tumblr rules my life now.)

I've been pretty open around here about how I am childfree by choice and have no interest in ever having children. But here's the thing: even if I did want children someday, when I got pregnant five years ago, I would still have gotten an abortion. Because...

I couldn't afford prenatal care or other health-care costs associated w/pregnancy;
I was on antidepressants which are not compatible with pregnancy, which were keeping me alive and which I'd have had to discontinue taking for the fetus' safety, which would have had the effect of seriously destabilizing my already fragile hold on life and sanity, and which could have ended with suicide;
I was in college and already struggling, and any further detriment to my school efforts could have been the final straw that got me kicked out;
The man who donated the other half of the genetic material (he wasn't a "father" anymore than I was a "mother" simply by virtue of accidentally getting pregnant, so I refuse to use that terminology) lived across the country; it was a long-distance relationship and we had no plans to move closer together in the near future, so either A: I'd have been on my own without a partner, or B: we'd have had to have rearranged some very large life circumstances to be close enough together (and no, adoption wouldn't have been an option because of the above items and also I can't imagine giving a child of mine away, so no).

Do any of these sound like "convenience" to you? Because my definition of convenience includes things like the grocery store being only a few blocks away from my house, or a parking space close to the doors of the mall when I'm not feeling like walking much, or my local Starbucks having a drive-thru for when I'm in a hurry. Note that major financial concerns, life circumstances (the long-distance relationship), goals/plans (finishing college), and medical issues (depression) do not appear on the list of "conveniences". Wanna know why?

BECAUSE THEY HAVE FUCK ALL TO DO WITH CONVENIENCE.

Prioritizing one's plans for life and one's ability to provide for one's self and possible or potential family over a biological "oops" moment is not about fucking CONVENIENCE. Ask anyone who's had a child; having a baby, even if you don't parent, is a life-changing event. Often also a body-changing event, in ways both permanent and impermanent. It is a Big. Goddamn. Deal.

So if the fucknuggets who churn out anti-choice propaganda would please stop handwaving-away women's goals, dreams, plans, and life circumstances by dismissively referring to it as "convenience", I'd very much appreciate it and maybe not lose my shit so fucking often. Kthx.

*Women are not the only people for whom abortions are sometimes needed medical care; all people with uteruses may fall into this category at some point. However, the rhetoric of anti-choice groups centers on women, so I'm reflecting that in this response.

Let's Play Word Games

2011-06-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

I'm having a thought sparked by this post on tumblr, which crossed my dash a week or two ago. To quote the relevant bit for those who don't want to click through:

gaywitchpracticingabortion: Here's a quick way to check if you have a right to stop an abortion: Ask yourself, "Is it my body?" If the answer was no, then surprise! You don't have the right.

[some pro/anti-choice back-and-forth deleted for space]

iamabutchsolo: A fetus relies on someone else’s body to survive and therefore the actual person with that body has the choice to carry the pregnancy to term or terminate it. It’s not my job or anyone else’s to say otherwise.

just-smith: I’m fairly sure newborns or older fetuses still rely on the mother. Simply because somebody is temporarily dependent (and I mean temporarily, it would only take a few more months for them to be potential survivors), that is no excuse to suggest their rights are null.
If you have to have a heart transplant, you’ll be dependent - initially on a machine, and then on the organ of another person. There are thousands of people who couldn’t live without help, but you don’t go questioning their right to life. You wouldn’t kill somebody on permanent life support simply for your convenience and against their will, and you certainly wouldn’t if they had a strong chance of recovering within the year. But when they are young and innocent, you have no qualms. So is it just the age that makes them different for you, or is it the convenience?

Emphasis added to draw attention to the bit I want to talk about.

There's this difference in vocabulary that's a staple of the movements: where pro-choicers refer to abortion as "ending a pregnancy" or something similar, anti-choicers refer to it as "killing a baby". Mostly this just gets overlooked as rhetorical flourishes, either used to "dehumanize" the abortion process, or to falsely invoke infanticide-guilt, depending on which side you're asking. But I would argue that there's something underlying this difference of terminology, a real, qualitative semantic difference, and I'd like to try to poke at it and see what's in there.

First, to clear the air so I don't get accused of the "clump of cells" argument or whatever - yes, a fetus is a unique being, with its own DNA and physical being, and it is alive, in some sense of the word anyway. A fetus is "just a clump of cells" in the same way that we are all just very large clumps of cells*. For purposes of this argument, I'll even grant the premise that the fetus is somehow imbued with the nebulous quality we call "personhood", both legal and moral.

So. Given these premises, the logical conclusion is that abortion is killing (or murder, depending on if we're using legal terminology or emotional terminology), yes?

Well, yes and no. When pro-choicers talk about abortion as "terminating a pregnancy", we choose those words very deliberately, for their very precise meaning. Cause here's the thing:

Nobody enters into the abortion process because they want to kill the fetus.

Let me repeat that: Nobody enters into the abortion process because they want to kill the fetus.

Even in cases of elective abortion, uterus-bearing people (UBP) who could/would otherwise be able to carry to term and deliver the fetus do not do it to kill the fetus. They - we - do it to not be pregnant anymore.

What's the difference, antis say. The fetus is still dead.

Well, yes. If we're working from a premise that counts a fetus as a living being, a person, yes. When the abortion is over, it is dead, and the abortion has killed it. That is inarguable. But the abortion was not undertaken with the intent of killing the fetus. It was undertaken with the intent of the UBP to no longer be pregnant.

And when you take into account the intent underlying the process - when you refocus the lens to bring the UBP back into the picture, instead of imagining some nebulous uterine-support-machine, a cipher with no traits of hir own - the quoted comparison to "killing a person on life support" falls absolutely flat, as do comparisons to very young infants and toddlers as being dependent on their parents just like fetuses are (with the implication that, if you believe you have a right to abortion, parents should logically have a right to infanticide).

The only reason one would pull the plug from someone on life support is to end their life**. Actual infanticide is a form of murder, and the act of murder is undertaken specifically to end someone's life. Neither of these is something in which a non-life-ending aim simply has the side effect of ending someone's life. Therefore, the comparison with abortion cannot stand, because as I said, abortion is undertaken in order to not be pregnant/continue a pregnancy/give birth. It's just that with our current level of technology, we cannot sustain fetal life outside the uterus in which it was originally implanted. So the process of not being pregnant anymore ends the fetus' life, but that was not the aim, merely an associated effect.

Amazing what perspective does to an issue, isn't it? And really, what does it say about the anti-choice position, that I can grant you the founding premises of "it's a baby/human being/alive/etc" and still show how abortion cannot legitimately be compared to murder or killing in any sense?

Now, if only logical arguments actually worked on anti-choicers, I'd be in business. ;-)

*This is not to say that a fetus and a grown being are somehow morally equal, because I do not believe that, but I'm trying to give as much common ground as possible in establishing premises, because it doesn't actually affect the argument I'm building up to, and it gives antis less to work with in arguing back.
**Which may be done for a number of reasons, from the person having a directive requesting they not be sustained under certain circumstances, to moral beliefs about life and death, etc. The point remains that pulling the plug is an act undertaken specifically to end a life.

Religious Freedom! (Some restrictions apply; see conservative Christians for details)

2011-06-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

A double-standard on which religions get religious freedom and social acceptance? No, never; not in this country. Right?

So I'm sure there's some other, totally reasonable explanation for why religious-freedom organizations constantly have to take government entities to court in order to get Christian religious symbols removed from government buildings*, but a statue of Ganesha in a county art gallery in Idaho provoked calls to protest against "idols" approved by the "godless group of individuals" who approved the art display.

But for the life of me, I cannot figure out what that reason might be...

*I only linked one example, but it is by far not the only one out there. Or perhaps we could look to the atheist high school student in Louisiana who protested his high school's use of invocation/benediction prayers at the graduation ceremony, who then received death threats from fellow classmates and ended up not attending the graduation. Just in case anyone was inclined to accuse me of cherry-picking examples and doubted the existence of Christian hegemony in this culture.

Phobia != Bigotry

2011-06-16T17:50:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that my posts of late do not use the terms homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, etc. anymore*. Basically, I was informed that terms using the -phobia suffix, despite being in wide popular use, conflate mental illness with bigotry and violence, give inappropriate credibility to the "gay panic" or "trans panic" defenses when straight/cis people commit violence against queer/trans people, and, much like calling Glenn Beck or Michele Bachmann "crazy", smear people with actual phobias by appropriating their disability to describe despicable attitudes and people.

Terms like heterosexism (replacing homophobia), cissexism (replacing transphobia), monosexism (replacing biphobia), and Islamobigotry/anti-Islam bigotry (replacing Islamophobia), aren't all that hard to introduce to one's lexicon and convert to general use. Certainly no harder than learning not to use "lame", or "crazy", or other ableist slurs. I like them additionally because they put the focus back on the dominant/oppressive side of the dichotomy by clearly noting who the problem is right there in the word.

But even if all the other reasons were wrong**, it would still be better to change from -phobia language, because it makes it a lot harder for asshats to pull shit like this.

For many people “homophobia” is actually about “having a fear of being accused of being bigoted, prejudiced or discriminating against homosexual people”. This fear, which is increasingly common, causes people to take a defensive posture in order to avoid attracting disapproval or adverse publicity. ... For people who don’t hate, dislike or fear gay people, but simply believe that sex between people who are not married (including all sex between those of the same sex) is morally wrong, we need a new term. I’d like to propose the term “homoskeptic” - a term that is not yet in common use and hence arguably open to (re)definition.

Using -phobia language leaves a nice little loophole for the bigots to exploit. They can say "I don't fear gay people!" and thus deflect critique off into speculation of their *real* feelings about teh gayz, diverting attention from the oppression and bigotry they're perpetuating. It allows this jackass to turn the fear-connotation of using -phobia around and twist it into the Good Christian's fear of The Gay Mafia and their notorious jackbooted enforcers. It lets him pose bigots as the victim and their ideology as reasonable, not a phobia, but simply skepticism, which is a healthy quality, right?

But the last lol came from a comment to the post on NOM's blog, by commenter Anonygrl:

I would like to suggest that people who don't hate or fear African Americans but simply think that they are morally inferior should be called afroskeptics. And people who don't hate or fear women but think that they just shouldn't get paid the same as men or have control of their own bodies should be gynoskeptics.
No matter what you call yourselves, if you are doing so to justify denying rights to another group (and that is what you are doing with homosexuals) then the correct term you should be using is bigot.

Word.

*If you have seen me slip up in this, please do let me know, either in comments or via email, and I will change it.
**However, they are not wrong, and this will not be up for debate here. Additional commentary on the harms of -phobia language may be found here and here if you want or need further reading on the subject.

On Weiner

2011-06-16T14:16:00.000-07:00

Because I am ridiculously sick of hearing, and correcting, Weiner's liberal/feminist defenders, who are apparently really goddamn invested in painting Weiner as a good man who just made the mistake of getting caught in his extramarital wandering, I just want to crosspost a rant I tossed up on tumblr earlier this morning.

[In response to a post saying, basically, that what Weiner did isn't that bad, and it's not fair to be so mean to him when there are lots of other sexually immoral and otherwise unethical jackasses still hanging onto their political positions and power]

No. No no no no no no NO. He did not just “lie about racy pictures”. He lied about SEXUALLY HARASSING women over the internet. Two of the women have said that the sexual tone of the interactions was not consensual, that they did nothing to indicate they were receptive to receive sexual pictures or messages. Weiner’s pattern in these interactions is fairly clear, that he used his position and his fans’ admiration for him to SEXUALLY HARASS women online.

I get that the mainstream coverage of this hasn’t really focused on the consent angle. So maybe people don’t realize this. But for the love of all the gods can we stop fucking defending a man whose offense was not just “having an internet affair and/or lying about it”, but was instead SEXUAL HARASSMENT? Can we stop fucking acting like Weiner’s the victim here?

I agree, too, that there are quite a number of other Congressional douchefucks who ought to be thrown out on their asses, and they have not been held anywhere near as accountable for their varying types of fucked-up behavior, as Weiner is being held for his. BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN WEINER SHOULD GET A PASS.

I get that he was one of our heroes. I get that he did some very good shit. I loved his politics and his fiery speeches and his willingness to call Repubs out on their bullshit, with a flaming passion. THAT DOES NOT MEAN HE HAS A RIGHT TO SEXUALLY HARASS HIS FEMALE FANS. That does not mean we should defend him for doing so.

I have had to say this I can’t even count how many times in the past few days. For fuck’s sake, people. It’s not about the lies. It’s not about the “racy” pictures. It’s about his disregard for consent and boundaries, it’s about his taking advantage of his position and the goodwill of his supporters to HARASS women. It’s about holding Weiner to a standard of conduct that includes Do Not Sexually Harass People, and I see no reason why “But those other people didn’t get in enough trouble!” should be taken as a reasonable justification to NOT hold Weiner accountable.

Also, to the jackass on RH Reality Check who felt the need to mansplain to me that "that's not what sexual harassment is" when I made points similar to the above - according to Merriam-Webster online, sexual harassment is "uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical behavior of a sexual nature, especially by a person in authority toward a subordinate (as an employee or student)". I'd say sending unsolicited pictures of one's junk to someone with whom one was having a nonsexual conversation prior to the picture-sending counts as "uninvited" at the very least, and according to at least two of the women, it was also "unwanted". Add in that Weiner, as an elected official, was trading on political power and reputation and the admiration of his female fans who may also have been his constituents, and you have the power differential that makes it "especially" sexual harassment.

What it comes to is this: Anthony Weiner was a progressive hero. He used the power and fame and admiration that gained him to sexually harass women via the internet. No, that is not as bad as some other things politicians have done. But it is still a bad thing to do. I refuse to compromise my ethical standards around consent, simply because he who violated them was someone I really liked. And I genuinely don't understand why so many people who purport to be feminist, are willing to just brush those principles aside in order to defend Weiner. I really don't.

SO PLEASE FUCKING STOP ALREADY.

Catholic "Charities": Our Bigotry Is More Important Than Caring For Orphaned Children

2011-06-16T08:57:00.000-07:00

Remember what I wrote a few weeks back, about how government money going to religious organizations which insist on operating according to the dictates of their religious beliefs was kind of a Bad Idea, because it meant there would be gaps in service and people who couldn't access services that a government-run institution would provide, because the religious institution refused to offer it, meaning people not of a particular religion would be forced to live by the dictates of that particular religion in the absence of non-religious care providers?

Shit like this would be why. Adoption by same-gender couples in civil unions is permitted in Illinois, but the local Catholic adoption groups, which rely on financing from the state, want to be able to continue their exclusionary policy of "not placing children with unmarried couples". This is, of course, their workaround that lets them cover their anti-gay bias in a thin veneer of "it's not about TEH GAYS, it's about ALL unmarried people!" (This is also an excellent example of why civil unions are Not Good Enough as a "compromise" instead of full marriage equality.)

Anyway, the point is, these jerks are actually upset enough at having to treat same-gender couples almost-equally that they are suing the state of Illinois for religious infringement, and have said that they will stop offering their state-funded - state-funded! Taxpayer money! Let that sink in for a moment - foster and adoption placement services entirely if they don't get their Special Snowflake Jesus Said So exemption.

This is why I am leery at best (and actively hostile toward, at worst) when it comes to the idea of Faith-Based Outreach. I didn't like the federal office of faith-based outreach when Bush instituted it, and I like it no better now that Obama has kept and expanded and reworked it. (My ire is bipartisan! Are you willing to treat my objections as reasonable now, Mr. President?) If religious institutions want to offer charity and services, by all means let them do so, but let them do so with their own and their tithers' money. And do not treat them like a substitute for publicly-funded and government-run social services, because they are not. Spend the tax dollars that previously went to religious charities on building the bureaucratic infrastructure necessary to provide those services. (Yes, I realize it's a hair's breadth from COMMUNISM! to suggest that the government should spend any money providing any services, much less social services, but we all know I'm a dirty pinko leftist anyway, so.)

Look, if anti-choice extremists can get all huffy about "my tax dollars" going to fund Planned Parenthood, I'm entitled to make a fuss about my tax dollars going to fund religious organizations who would rather abandon their mission to help children in need of families, than be forced to treat same-gender couples as equal to mixed-gender couples.

These Catholic charities apparently need to give back the taxpayer money, find a fainting couch, and lie down to have the vapors quietly for awhile, cause obviously they can't handle the idea of putting the needs of children ahead of their bigotries. And in the meantime, why don't we see about finding those children some loving homes - no matter the genders of the adults providing them.

Nostalgia

2011-06-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

Presented without comment, an entry from my old Livejournal, posted Dec. 17th, 2008:

mood: hopeful

"I feel like the government's working for me. I feel like it's accountable. I feel like it's transparent. I feel that I am well informed about what government actions are being taken. I feel that this is a President and an Administration that admits when it makes mistakes and adapts itself to new information, that believes in making decisions based on facts and on science as opposed to what is politically expedient." - President-Elect Obama on what he hopes the American people will be able to say about his administration in two years, in his interview with Time magazine.

Accountability? Transparency? Decisions based on science not politics? Somebody find me a fainting couch, I am about to swoon.

This is like waking up from a terrifying nightmare to a beautiful spring morning outside your window. Excuse me while I take a brief break from cynical reality to bask in the sweet light of hope.

Rick Perry Just Needs To Stop Talking

2011-06-14T18:47:00.000-07:00

His little ~~hate~~ prayer rally with the AFA - an organization designated by SPLC as a hate group for their vicious lies about non-heterosexuals - is a full-on come-to-Jesus conversion event, it seems. The event's spokesman attempted to refute the idea that their rally is exclusionary of other faiths by telling American Family Radio that people of all faiths were welcome to attend to "feel the love...of Jesus Christ", and that they wanted to convey "that there’s hope if people will seek out the living Christ."

INCLUSION:

But that wasn't enough for Perry, who then tried to explain away his falling popularity rate in his own state (and apparently even among his Teabagger base) by saying in an interview on Faux News: "A prophet is not generally loved in their home town."

So Gov. Perry organizes a "prayer rally" by partnering with a hate group (which is also home to one of the most extreme far-right bigots in this country's media today), which has as its explicit goal "including" people of other faiths by converting them, and then tries to handwave away his unpopularity by declaring himself a fucking prophet?

Please, Rick Perry. Just...stop talking. It'll be better for everyone that way.

The Pagans Are Coming! The Pagans Are Coming!

2011-06-10T14:47:00.000-07:00

I like to imagine the preshow meeting going something like this:

Ed: Our anti-gay routine has been feeling pretty stale lately. I mean, Bryan's compared them to Nazis like a million times, and we've worked the pedophilia, bestiality, and fecal matter angles half to death. NOM's got the "they're coming for your children" angle covered. What can we do to keep this fresh and interesting? What possible tone can we take that will be something new, something they haven't heard before?
Buster: Hmm. You're right. Let's see...we could try to work patriotism in there? Paint gays as anti-American.
Ed: But we've done that before, too.
Buster: Oh! I know! We'll use the patriotism angle, but we'll make it about the Founding Fathers, specifically. Nobody can argue about the Founding Fathers, criticizing them is totally off-limits and everyone knows it, right?
Ed: I just don't know if that's enough, though. It's not scary enough.
Buster: Scary? What could be scarier than un-American Americans everywhere? It worked for McCarthy, didn't it?
Ed: Yeah, but...oh! Oh, I got it. We're talking to a really fundamentalist Christian audience here, right?
Buster: Of course. We've alienated pretty much everyone else who ever existed.
Ed: Well, what is this kind of Christian scared of?
Buster: ...non-Christians?
Ed: Bingo, buddy. Bingo. So we'll make it about being unChristian! Not just generically anti-Christian, cause that's been overplayed too, we will make it about...PAGANS.
Buster: Ooh, I like that! Paganism. It calls up mental images of the decadence of Rome...
Ed: ...and specifically, the fall of Rome. So we associate the gays with paganism, everyone thinks of Rome and falling empires, and bam! Scared shitless and ready to do what we tell 'em.
Buster: Falling empires...that's deep, man.
Ed: Thanks. So, that's our thing, then? Founding Fathers and paganism?
Buster: Yep. Let's do it.

Two middle-aged white men sit behind microphones and self-righteously mansplain at each other and the viewer. Relevant quote from 2:03:
Buster: Dr. Gary Gates at the Williams Institute, an arm of the UCLA School of Law, [says] an estimated 3.5% of all adults in the United States identify themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and an estimated 0.3% of adults recognize themselves as transgender. Ed, your thoughts on those figures first?
Ed: Well, 3.5%, of course, includes bisexuals in that estimate. [Yes, because they were measuring lesbian, gay, AND BISEXUAL, it was right there in the quote. I'm not sure I see the problem here.] Um, most of the recent surveys in this country show that those who self-identify as homosexual men or women is lower than that [with Very Serious Concern Troll Face]. It's actually closer to 2.5%. But some people say, well, you're just arguing over a few percentage points. [Because you are. Actually you're not; you're arguing over a single percentage point, and it looks very much like you're doing so just to make the queer community seem as small and easy to dismiss as possible, as if bisexual people somehow don't count as part of that community. Which makes you even more of an inane jackass. But do go on.] But the point of, the point we take issue with, is not the percentage, it is the ideology behind the normalization of sexuality. It wouldn't matter if it was 20% - if it was 20% we'd be in big trouble [yes, you would be; bigger communities have more voting clout, usually, and you'd have a lot harder time trying to stuff that many people back in the closet] - but um. We're talking about a return to pagan sexuality, a pagan view of sexuality, that says that it doesn't matter with whom you have sex, and uh, that God's laws do not apply to us and there are no absolutes when it comes to sex. And, frankly, even if you are not a Christian, you do not believe the Bible, or you have no real Christian viewpoint in this - we are talking about a departure from the view of our Founding Fathers, who held to the "Laws of Nature and Nature's God," as it says in the Declaration of Independence!

You know, the Founding Fathers (and can I just say, I'm ridiculously over that phrase and the patriocentrism it's got going on? Ugh ugh ugh. There were women involved in the founding of this nation, asshats) used the phrase "the Laws of Nature's God" to refer to freedom and self-determination as an independent nation. IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH TEH GAYS OR TEH BUTTSECKS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. It wasn't about sexuality at all. Y'all have seized on this one tiny phrase, taken it out of context, twisted it, and are milking the everloving fuck out of it to try to promote your Dominionist aims. For the record, it's part of a much longer sentence, called the preamble to the Declaration of Independence - you may have heard of it? - which goes like this:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

In this context, they're talking about more of a philosophical question of rights and freedoms and such, in contradiction to such philosophies of governance as the whole divine right of kings thing. It's not about Christianity. It's not about the Bible. It's about countering the idea that the Creator (science hadn't really gotten to the point of explaining how we could come into existence without a creator being, therefore it was assumed almost universally that there was *some* kind of Creator. This does not mean they all believed in the Bible or Christianity; most of the FFs were actually Deists.) had endowed certain special people with the divine right to rule, and replacing it with the idea that the Creator had endowed all people* with the divine right of self-determination and self-rule.

Which, y'know. HAS SHIT ALL TO DO WITH THE BIBLE AND DOMINIONISM AND AMERICA-AS-A-CHRISTIAN-NATION AND ALL THE BULLSHIT YOU KEEP TRYING TO MAKE IT MEAN! It's a POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.

Ahem. That aside (she says, three paragraphs and much swearing later), I am cracking the fuck up at the whole "zomg pagan sexuality" thing. This is...meant to be a problem of some kind? In case ye olde mansplainers were unaware, there are actual, real, live Pagans in this country. PRACTICING A PAGAN SEXUALITY ALREADY. So. Shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted, and has already jumped the fence and is in its partner's paddock and they're getting it on, to stretch a metaphor uncomfortably far, is not particularly effective here.

I'm also not getting why the idea that "God's laws don't apply to us" is such a thing to be afraid of. Shouldn't a particular deity's laws only apply to those who have chosen to follow that deity in some way? One of my favorite fantasy novels** takes place in a culture in which there are four main sub-deities, and when a person comes of age, they choose which one of them to be a devotee of, and there are different codes of law that apply to followers of each. Like, one character is struggling at one point with whether she should marry a guy from a different sect, because he wants her to marry him under the laws of his deity, which removes her right to divorce and makes her property his after they marry, while she wants to marry under the laws of her deity, which allow for free divorce and equitable division of property. This makes sense to me. I have never, and probably will never, understood why the laws of one religious tradition should apply to those not of that tradition.

Lastly, let me correct a misconception here. Saying that pagan sexuality has no absolutes when it comes to sex is deeply incorrect. This pagan, at least, has precisely one absolute when it comes to sex: consent. Affirmative, explicit, overt consent (in whatever form that takes for a given partnering) must exist prior to and during all sexual activity. That's it. That's all. And I even like to think this is an absolute we could agree on (although sadly I'm probably wrong)! So I propose an experiment: Let's try out this "pagan sexuality/pagan view of sexuality" that you're so afraid of. Based on the single absolute I've put forth here. Give it, say, ten years? Of this as the sexual norm. See if the Universe disintegrates or the Earth spins from its axis or anything catastrophic. If so, I will personally buy billboards all over the nation proclaiming how right you were. If not, you have to STFU and quit using my religion as a scare tactic to make people hate my sexuality. Okay? Okay.

Edited to add: Now that you've read the post, look at the title again. Am I the only one who giggles and goes "Damn right, we are" at that? ^_^
*In the sense that "all people" meant at the time, which is to say, all white landowning males, more or less.
**Talyn, by Holly Lisle. Trigger warnings for rape, sexual abuse, and torture. It does, however, pass the Bechdel test, multiple times over, and while the main love pairing is hetero, it involves them as equals sharing their different skills to defeat the Big Bad, so. Pretty awesome. Magic and war and infiltration.

Feed the Witch!

2011-06-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

So, those who actually pay attention to blog sidebars (a minority, I know ;-) may have noticed that I've added a donate button to this little blog of mine.

Let me first say, I do not ever want to push, pressure, or guilt anyone into donating. It's completely voluntary. I understand how it is when money's tight (or just not there at all), trust me - that would be why I have a donate button up, in fact - and I don't ever want anyone to feel like they *have* to give when it wouldn't work out for them.

That said, let me explain a little. I spend a fair amount of time - averaging about an hour per post, more for ones that require a lot of sourcing or are longer/more in-depth - writing here. I average between 3-5 posts per week depending on the week, and I'm working on upping my post frequency even further, because I love what I do here and I think it's important. I don't want to go to an ad-supported model because ads annoy the fuck out of me, and they only work insofar as you have lots of pageviews, which is what often prompts bloggers to set their RSS feeds to snippet-only to force people to click through, and I fucking *hate* that. So I won't ever do it. But, as I'm trying to transition from unemployed to self-employed, I could use some support of the financial variety.

Understand this blog will always remain ad-free and free to access. All I ask is, if you value what I'm doing here and your financial situation allows you to comfortably do so, toss a few bucks my way once in awhile.

The donate button takes you to Paypal, where you can type in your donation amount, then use your paypal account or a credit card to send it along to me. If anyone's interested in a subscription-type recurring donation, let me know and I can create a button for that, too.

Whether you can donate or not, whether you choose to or not even if you can, thank you for being here, for your support in reading, pageviews, and comments. I appreciate you, my readers. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

More Race-Based Antichoice Propaganda

2011-06-07T19:01:00.000-07:00

Remember these? And these, and these? Playing on the statistical discrepancy between rates of abortion for white and black women, they set out to demonize black women for making reproductive choices other than giving birth to EVERY PREGNANCY NO MATTER WHAT. Conveniently, they ignored the part about structural inequality and poverty and other issues which might explain why abortion is much more prevalent among black women than white women.

Welp, they're at it again. Only now it's Latinas under fire. Using the same phrase, "The most dangerous place for a Latino is in the womb," in both Spanish and English, with a silhouette of a child and smaller polaroid-style pictures of babies' faces and a pregnant woman's belly (curiously, the woman is headless/faceless; it's almost like they don't want people thinking about the woman, only her body and specifically her uterus), the campaign is unveiling this weekend in Los Angeles, CA.

The group behind it, as usual, cites statistics, showing that Latinas are 2.7 times more likely to get an abortion than non-Hispanic whites. And as usual, that's thrown out there without any discussion of racism, systemic inequality, poverty, employment problems, access to contraception, etc which might, just a tiny bit, maybe in some way contribute to a woman's decision to abort rather than carry a pregnancy to term.

As I said before, if you really want to address this discrepancy, work on the CAUSES of the disproportionate rate of unwanted pregnancy/inability to carry wanted pregnancies to term. Demonizing Latinas who choose to abort like this is just fucked-up, and it's not going to help*.

*You know who is helping? Planned Parenthood and all their low-cost/free/sliding-scale contraception and other sexual health services. Suck on that, anti-choice assholes.

Rick Perry: Still Not Getting the Difference Between Politicians and Priests

2011-06-07T15:52:00.000-07:00

Holding one's very own explicitly Christian prayer rally - even when one is an elected official - is one thing. Holding a prayer rally to which one invites the leaders of every state in one's purportedly-secular nation is kind of another thing entirely.

Not that that matters to Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas.

I have sort of the impression that Perry's mental representation of governing a state looks like this:

1. Pray really hard
2. ????
3. ~~Profit!~~ All the state's problems will be solved!

It's also the height of disingenuous to claim that it's an "apolitical Christian prayer meeting," when, as I said, Perry specifically invited all 49 other governors, "as well as many other national and Christian political leaders." Does that sound apolitical to anyone else? Bueller? Bueller? Protip: If you want to call your event apolitical, maybe you shouldn't feature dozens of political leaders as specially-invited guests. That tends to blur the line a bit.

But you know what really gets me?

That fucker put his rally on my birthday. >:-(

Rick Perry can go un-fuck himself. Anyone know if there are term limits in Texas?

At least we know he's gotten three no's from his fellow governors so far. Here's hoping the event falls flat on its church-state-conflating face.

Bleh.

2011-06-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry, all. Meant to be back posting on Tuesday, but it's been a shitty week. It seems I take longer to recuperate after a socially-intense four-day trip than I thought? Yeah anyway. Giving myself through the weekend for genuine mental health time (as opposed to flogging myself for not posting OMG WHAT ARE YOU DOING CHECKING TUMBLR FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME TODAY YOU HAVE POSTS TO WRITE - strangely enough, that doesn't actually help me recover faster) and will hopefully be back in full form come Monday.

(Of course, now that I've said this, tomorrow will be awesome and I'll be posting left right and center and be able to queue posts for all through next week by Sunday night. Because that's just how my life is right now. >.< /self-pity)

Love and light, hope everyone has an awesome weekend. See you Monday.

Don't burn the place down while I'm gone!

2011-05-25T18:37:00.000-07:00

I'm headed down to SoCal this weekend for my cousin's wedding. Sadly, there will be no open bar. (It's a Mormon wedding.) But it means I'll be gone from Thursday morning through to Monday night. No new posts while I'm away, and apologies if I'm slow responding to comments, since I'm not taking my laptop, just my phone.

Enjoy the holiday weekend, darlings! I'll see y'all next week. Try not to burn the place down while I'm gone, ok kids? ;-)

San Francisco's Circumcision Ban

2011-05-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

The City of San Francisco will have on its next ballot a measure that would ban circumcisions performed on minors in that jurisdiction. There is nothing in the proposed language that would allow for religious exemptions for Jewish or Muslim families wishing to circumcise their sons for religious reasons.

The legal blogs are all over this, discussing it in terms of both parental rights and religious rights. (It's honestly pretty dense reading, I didn't get through all of it, and they reference quite a number of other cases. But here's a good roundup for the curious.) I had declared myself cautiously in favor of the ban in conversations with friends/family, but in the ensuing discussions, I discovered I actually felt far stronger about it than I'd thought.

It still bothers me a little that there's no religious exemption. Being of a minority faith which is still struggling in many ways to be treated fairly under the law, I find the idea of laws that ban a practice originating in a particular religion to be troubling.

On the other hand, the vast majority of circumcisions in the U.S. are not done for religious reasons, but for reasons like "not looking different," or "so he looks like his father," or "just because that's what's done." Given that circumcision offers only minimal, mostly potential health benefits (the US Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend routine circumcision) and is generally a cosmetic procedure, why is it acceptable for parents to choose such an intimate bodily modification for an infant incapable of consent? When a mother was featured on TV last week for having had her 8-year-old daughter given Botox injections, there was a righteously outraged wave of condemnation. How can we logically condemn one parent for having a minimally-invasive, semi-permanent (Botox injections fade after about six months, IIRC) cosmetic procedure done on a child, while accepting a much more intimate and absolutely permanent *surgical* cosmetic procedure performed on days-old infants without comment?

And I even find it harder and harder to advocate for a religious exemption, the more I consider it. Those who would have female "circumcision" - more accurately described as female genital mutilation - performed on their children are not permitted to do so (it's legally banned in California, at least), deep-held cultural values notwithstanding. Which makes it logically inconsistent to advocate upholding the ban on FGM without exception, while wanting a religious exemption for a circumcision ban.

So I suppose in the end, it comes to this: I don't believe parents should be making permanently-body-altering decisions for their children, period. I don't care what religion the parents hew to, or what their cultural beliefs dictate they do to their kids. It's unethical, to perform such procedures on those too young to independently decide for themselves. If people choose to have body modifications made as adults, that's their prerogative. If you want to get circumcised, go for it. Have fun. But something like that should require active, informed consent, and an infant is absolutely incapable of giving such.

What do you think? I'd like to hear other perspectives on this.

Your Rights End Where Mine Begin

2011-05-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

How is this a difficult concept to grasp? I would think it would be pretty simple. Your right to do something ends where my right not to have my life interfered with in some way begins.

But apparently this guy doesn't get the idea. This preacher went to a local DMV in a town in Southern California one morning before it opened, and began reading the Bible and preaching to the people standing in line waiting for the office to open. After being asked to stop by a security guard and refusing, he, and the two elders of his church who had come with him, were arrested for trespassing and interfering with a public business. (Personally, I think he should have been cited for public nuisance, but that's just me.)

Cue, of course, the whining of the Poor! Persecuted! Christians! about how the ebil gub'mint is coming for their Bibles and soon it will be illegal to be Christian in this country. One of the linked articles is headlined, not kidding, "Christians Arrested for Reading the Bible in Public". Which, while technically factually correct, conveys rather a different message than what actually happened, which was that they were arrested for proselytizing, at a captive audience, on government property.

It gets better, of course. In the end, the three jackasses weren't actually charged, and now they're suing the state for infringement on their religious freedom and free speech rights!

What is this I don't even. Look, dudes, your right to free speech and freedom of religion does not include the right to harass people waiting in line at the goddamn DMV. That's just not how it fucking works. And no, as one of the linked bloggers claimed, the people in line couldn't "just" go away and come back when it opened. Have you been to a California DMV lately? If you don't have an appointment and you arrive after it opens, expect to wait at least an hour before you even TALK to anyone, and gods help you if there are more forms to fill out, because yes, they will make you wait through the line AGAIN to bring the forms back up (unless you get a really nice DMV person; they're out there, they really are. Sometimes.). So the only way to get in and out quickly, if you wanted to do anything else with your day or if you have an appointment or have to work later, is to get there at least half an hour before they open and wait in the pre-opening line. It's completely unfair to force people to choose between coming back later and thus spending twice as long at the DMV, and listening to you force your religion on them.

Your right to share your religion ends where their right to do business with the DMV without suffering religious harassment begins. Because that's what public preaching to a captive audience is: religious harassment. You give them no choice in whether to listen to you or not - that being the definition of a captive audience - and force them to listen to your religious dogma, which they may or may not share. That is not what is meant by either "freedom of religion" or "freedom of speech". You are absolutely, completely and totally making up out of whole cloth this imagined "right" to proselytize in this manner. It does not exist. Period the end.

(I can't decide if my lolsob is more lol or more sob at this; referring to captive audiences as "organic congregations" is just...just...words fail me. Fuck, I hope that was supposed to be a joke...)

Brown v Plata: The Humanity Of Prisoners

2011-05-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

To put it bluntly, California's justice/prison system is utterly, completely broken. Thanks to what is widely acknowledged as the most draconian three-strikes law (on your third conviction of a felony, the sentence is life imprisonment, period, no exceptions) in the nation, our prisons are overloaded with mostly-nonviolent offenders, most of them convicted of various drug possession or sale offenses. The state prison system was built to house around 80,000 prisoners; it currently houses nearly 150,000. Overcrowding of such epic proportions, combined with constant budget cuts, has led to a situation in which "on average, an inmate in one of California's prisons needlessly dies every six to seven days due to constitutional deficiencies in the medical delivery system."

SCOTUS has now stepped in with a ruling yesterday, Brown v Plata, which holds that the level of overcrowding and resulting deficiencies in care violate the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. That's how bad it is. The document describes unthinkable, mass-storage conditions, like cramming 200 prisoners into a gymnasium supervised by only two or three officers. It's just horrifying.

It made me remember a project I did, years ago in college, about health-care delivery systems in the prison system. (I took a course on "structures in clinical health care" or something like that as an "Oh, shit, I need credits." sort of elective thing.) The rates of Hep C were unthinkable, treatment was scarce, prisoners who were entering more or less healthy were leaving with lifelong diseases that the system had neither bothered to prevent nor treat. I was horrified to read about the complete disregard with which prisoners in my state were being treated - or rather, not treated.

And yet I remember a conversation with a coworker and a customer and I on a slow day last year, still fresh in my mind, where the customer was griping about how "those damn prisoners get organ transplants paid for by my tax dollars," and "they get better medical care than I do." And I said, first of all, that's not true, at least in this state; the medical care in our prison system is awful-to-nonexistent. But that aside, why shouldn't prisoners receive necessary medical care? We're not talking about cosmetic boob jobs here, we're talking about necessary-to-survive medications and operations and other forms of care. At which point my coworker jumped in and sided with the customer, saying that it's just not fair and they fucked up so they don't deserve anything (heavily paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it).

And I think of the criminal-in-chief of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio, too. His tent cities in the desert and his chain gangs, and how strangely, and horrifyingly, he has remained in power for nearly twenty years now. That people defend him, and reelect him, over and over, because his awful human rights abuses are "only" against prisoners (and immigrants, and anybody non-white, really) and they "deserve" it.

Why is this okay? Why is it commonly accepted that being convicted of a crime - without knowing what the crime was, mind you. People end up in prison for rape and murder, yes, but also for drug possession or other nonviolent offenses, and I hope people aren't trying to make those out to be equally bad - means you deserve whatever kind of treatment those in power dish out? Do we really want a culture where one bad decision is enough to completely strip a person of hir humanity, hir rights to decency and a certain minimum standard of treatment? I'm sure it's only a coincidence that these views coincide with a "justice" system that is heavily racist, so most of the time when one talks about "prisoners" it's also a sort of code for "lower-class PoC", right? /sarcasm

I can understand being angry at the fact that, for many people, prison healthcare *is* actually better than what we can access on the outside. It's galling to know that while I, having never committed a crime, struggle along without access to any healthcare at all, people who have committed crimes are having their health care paid for on the state's dime. So I get that envy and anger, I really do. But I don't think the solution is to heap further abuse on the prison population. It's not their fault our government has shitty priorities. When there is an inequality between haves and have-nots, the solution is not to tear down those who have, it's to raise up those who have not. And you know, maybe if we provided universal healthcare and a living wage and decent educational opportunities, not only would the people on the outside not have to be jealous of medical care afforded to prisoners, a lot of people in prison, who turned to the least-worst path available to them despite the illegality of that path, might not *be* in prison in the first place.

Scott Walker: Privatize ALL The Things!

2011-05-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

(For those not familiar with the "___ ALL the things!" joke, I direct your attention here.)

Scott Walker, Wisconsin's asshole-in-chief, best known for his lying scumbag tactics* during the union-busting fight a couple months ago, is back hard at work on his job of undercutting the government's ability to provide services. This time, it's through an expansion of the proven-to-be-a-failure school vouchers program in the state, while simultaneously cutting funding for public schools. No, seriously. Studies and testing have shown that the students in the voucher program actually did *worse* than their counterparts in public school. And yet Walker wants to cut funding to the better-performing program and pump public funds into the worse-performing program.

But it gets better! Not only does he want to cut funding and expand the failed voucher program, he wants to exempt voucher students from the testing and studies that revealed the program's failure!

Dear Republicans: You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts. The proper response to a study showing that your pet project isn't working like you insisted it would, is not to say "Well FINE then, we just WON'T STUDY IT ANYMORE, OKAY? (But let's give more money to it anyway.)"

*Sealing protesters inside the Capitol building, calling in the police, sheriff dept, and even the National fucking Guard to try to intimidate protesters, insisting the union-busting bill (I typed that "union-busting bull" the first time. Ahem, paging Freud.) was absolutely! necessary! for the budget! during this time of fiscal! crisis! and then, when it became clear that wasn't going to fly, blatantly violating procedural rules and forcing through a vote on the union-busting as a separate bill in less than 5 minutes in a secret meeting, among other abuses of power.

Bryan Fischer's Godwin on Steroids

2011-05-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

- Godwin's Law, the main corollary of which is that the first person to invoke a Nazi comparison loses by forfeit. I also use it as a verb, as in "to Godwin a discussion".

If we were holding to that standard, Bryan Fischer (and indeed the whole Teabagger movement) would have lost the debate by Godwinning long ago. However, on Tuesday Fischer, as he does with so many things, cranked the Godwin up to 11 with this epic screed [TW gratuitous Nazi comparisons and vicious anti-gay fearmongering]:

I mean, ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Homosexual activists, when it comes to freedom of speech, are Nazis. When it comes to freedom of religion, they are Nazis. ... Ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Do not be under any illusions about what homosexual activists will do with your freedoms and your religion if they have the opportunity. They'll do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany.

Wow. Just...wow. I mean, SIX instances of the word Nazi in six sentences. Clearly Fischer means business. Srs bizness. Of the bearing-no-resemblance-to-reality-or-logic variety.

The AFA yet again tried to get its pet runaway train under control; of course, since it was on his radio show, they couldn't just edit it like they do to his blog posts. So instead, they simply removed the video from their archive. Unfortunately, as I keep trying to remind people, once you're on the internet as having said something, it's on the record forever, no matter how much deleting or redacting you try to do.

Of course, Fischer didn't help matters by going on another unhinged rant Wednesday about DADT, how the "homosexual lobby" (immaculately decorated, natch) is "just like the Nazis", and how any soldier who "[says] a word of complaint about homosexual behavior" will be, I'm not even fucking kidding, "sent to a reeducation camp ... to get your brain washed ... you're not getting out of that room until you crumble and admit you support sexual deviancy ... that's where it's going in the military."

How long before AFA finally wises up and drops this fuckbag like a ton of bricks? How long before right-wing politicians stop appearing on his show? Why the fuck is anyone fucking legitimizing such raw hatred and bigotry?

Congressional Republicans: Still Looking For Jobs In Uteruses

2011-05-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

In contrast to their purported focus on the revitalizing the economy and creating jobs, Congressional Republicans continue to make the intimate details of uteruses and the decisions of those who have them their top priorities. For bonus hypocrisy points, this attack comes in the form of an overriding federal-level piece of legislation designed to standardize [lack-of-]access laws across state borders, yet is proposed by a member of the party which loves squawking about states' rights when it comes to things like gun control and health insurance regulations.

So what is it they want to restrict this time?

Minors' access to abortion services*. This new bill, proposed by Republican senator John Boozman (AR) and five co-sponsors, would institute a nationwide requirement of parental notification before a minor may get an abortion. According to the text of the bill, this means both parents, via certified mail with delivery receipt and "restricted delivery" (meaning the named recipient must be the one to sign for it; some quick googling tells me that means each notification would cost about $10, plus time for a staffer to handle the mailings and such), and a 4-day waiting period between notification and the abortion itself. It would also require that, if the parent chooses to seek a court order preventing the abortion, the court issue an injunction against it, disallowing the abortion "until the issue has been adjudicated and the judgment is final." How long does that take? Anyone more familiar with court proceedings than I? The bill also mandates a $1 million fine and 10 years imprisonment for any doctor found in violation. There is a medical-emergency clause, and one for "clear and convincing evidence" of parental abuse - which as I read that, leaves it basically up to the doctor to determine what constitutes "convincing evidence" - but none for rape or molestation by someone other than the parent, not even a judicial-bypass option.

[TW: mention of hypothetical rape and forced pregnancy scenario]

So. Imagine a teenage girl, let's say 17. Old enough to make her own decisions for the most part, in her senior year of high school, applying to colleges, all that fun stuff. Mere months from crossing that mystical line that transforms one from a legal child to a legal adult overnight. She is in a relationship, and her boyfriend rapes her. (Sadly, this is not at all a far-fetched scenario; 24% of teens in dating relationships have experienced sexual violence therein.) She broke up with him, but doesn't want to accuse him, for any one of a number of reasons. Because she still loves him, or because she's ashamed, or her parents are deeply religious and would punish her for it, or she's seen the gauntlet survivors are forced to traverse in the public eye in this culture and wants no part of it. For whatever reason, she doesn't feel she can or should report him. But a few weeks later, she discovers she's pregnant. Now what? Being pregnant doesn't magically make her ready to report him, or willing to talk to her parents about what happened if she wasn't before.

As things currently stand, she might live in a place that permits minors access to abortion services without requiring parental involvement. If she doesn't, she might be lucky enough to live close to a border with a state that does, and/or have the resources and time to make it possible to cross to another state to access a legal abortion.

And that is precisely the scenario Boozman and his cronies want to prevent, as they outright admit. By god, there will be no crossing of borders to obtain services! Those services will be the same level of inaccessible no matter where you try to go!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the major point of our system of governance, as a collection of semi-autonomous states able to make our own laws on a number of issues, largely about the ability to go somewhere else if you didn't like the laws of your area? Isn't that what state-level opponents of legal abortion like to claim, as they slowly tighten the noose? That if you don't like it you can go somewhere else where the laws are more permissive? And now this explicit attempt to make that impossible. Hypocrites; color me shocked.

Anyway, if this law passes, the girl of a few paragraphs ago will have no option. She will either have to accuse her rapist and face the victim-blaming gauntlet, or let everyone think she's irresponsible and face the judge-and-shame-pregnant-teens gauntlet. And if her parents so choose, they can force her to bear her rapist's child and there is not a damn thing she can do about it no matter where she goes. In what world is this a moral thing to do to someone?

Or another scenario. A teen gets pregnant via consensual intercourse when the condom breaks. Zie wants an abortion. Zie lives with hir mother, but hir father disappeared years ago and nobody has any idea where he went. With no forwarding address and the requirement being that both parents are notified via mail, what is this teen supposed to do? Again I'll point out that there is no provision for judicial bypass, as most parental-notification bills include. If a minor cannot locate and notify *both* hir parents, there is no recourse, and zie will be forced to have the baby or resort to illegal and unsafe abortion methods. Congratulations, Boozman: your fucked-up law could end up killing the pregnant person and, you do realize this, yes? The fetus in that case dies too.

I'll also add that (as has been pointed out many times before) by anti-choice logic on this issue, parents should be able to force pregnant teens to abort, too. If the parent can step in and make the decision about what to do with the pregnancy, irrespective of the teen's decision, well...that sword cuts both ways. Of course we all know pro-forced-birthers would be up in arms if a parent ever tried to use their parental override that way (and rightfully so; remember, pro-choice is not pro-abortion, and we respect the right of the pregnant person to decide, so *any* overriding of that in any direction is bad in our eyes), but again: Hypocrites.

Color me shocked.

*Typical Republican politics, to target the least powerful; first the poor via H.R. 3 and associated legislation, now minors.

Florida's Blaine Amendment Repeal

2011-05-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

Florida's legislature is in the midst of repealing the Blaine Amendment, an amendment to their state constitution which bars state financial support of any religious denomination or institution. They want to repeal it because it was originally rooted in anti-Catholic bigotry, and proponents of the repeal are upset that it means the state can't let funds go to religiously-affiliated hospitals, schools, and adoption agencies. The new law would read:

Except to the extent required by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, neither the government nor any agent of the government may deny to any individual or entity the benefits of any program, funding, or other support on the basis of religious identity or belief.

And is justified by a three-page-long list of "WHEREAS"es, like this one:

WHEREAS, religiously affiliated hospitals, schools, adoption agencies, and other benevolent institutions have been of longstanding service to the people of Florida and have provided numerous services to those in need, and

Which is all well and good, but the problem is, if an organization wants taxpayer money, they need to chuck their religious restrictions at the door and provide all the same services as the public schools/hospitals/adoption agencies. This includes adoptions by same-sex couples (where that's legal, anyway; I seem to recall Florida passed a law against it, but I also seem to recall it was challenged in court, and don't remember the outcome?), adherence to scientific standards in school curricula (this means no creationism), and providing reproductive services like contraception and necessary abortions (at a minimum). And religiously-based public service organizations are quite often loathe to do this.

The idea behind allowing government funding to go to private, religiously-affiliated organizations seems to be based in avoiding redundancy and waste by simply funneling state/federal dollars to subsidize the religious hospitals, instead of having to keep open a competing public hospital in the same region. But it's not a 1-to-1 conversion; government money handed to Catholic hospitals does not perform the same function that money would provide for if it were kept for a public hospital. Witness official Catholic hospital policy that would rather let a woman die than perform an abortion to save her life, so long as a fetal heartbeat is present. And I remember when I was in college, in Santa Cruz, and the hue and cry that went up when it was exposed that the only hospital nearby, without crossing the mountains to go into San Jose, was a Catholic hospital that refused to provide emergency contraception to rape victims. Also a recent ruling in Washington state that a Catholic hospital is not bound to abide by the same employment non-discrimination laws as other businesses in the state. Taxpayer money does not function the same when funneled to a religious organization, as it would if it were spent to support a public hospital. And I fail to see why taxpayer dollars should go to subsidize services only selectively provided, according to the religious strictures of one particular religion to which not everyone in the demographic they're supposed to be serving is beholden. Why should my healthcare options be restricted according to Catholic dogma, simply because I have the poor luck to live in an area where the only hospital is a Catholic hospital? I'm not Catholic.

So. Acknowledging a history of anti-Catholic bias? Good step! Religious freedom! Etc! But using that as a reason to spend taxpayer money supporting predominantly Catholic institutions that do not actually provide all the same services as the public equivalent would? Bad! Very bad! And especially sucky for low-income areas without a lot of mobility, which is where Catholic hospitals are often to be found, and from which most people don't have the capacity to venture further afield in search of actually-comprehensive medical care!

Damn Indigenous People, Wanting Their Stuff Back!

2011-05-16T16:33:00.000-07:00

Time for another round of Privileged People in Comments on the Internet!

A museum in Rouen, France is giving back some Maori skulls to be returned to New Zealand and buried. The giving back of indigenous peoples' stolen shit - especially human remains, bunch of grave-robbing fucks that European colonial powers so often were - is to be commended.

However, in comments there's a ridiculous "debate" going on about under what circumstances things should be returned to the cultures from which they were stolen, with an extremely strong "How dare they try to take back what we rightfully stole?" vibe going on. Several commenters were happy to 'splain how we can give the occasional skull or body back for reburial without having to give back the rest of their stuff:

I'm thinking the best compromise would be for France to rewrite their policy on returning artifacts to differentiate between human remains and other artifacts. ... That would let people honor their dead ancestors and treat/bury their remains respectfully without emptying France's museums and research collections.

Um, why should we be against the emptying of France's museums of stolen artifacts? Because the museums have some kind of *right* to the artifacts of other cultures stolen during imperialist expansions, so long as they're not human remains? Fuck that noise. I get that the point of museums is to allow ordinary people to have exposure to cultures and experiences beyond their everyday reach. But you know? Technology is a very cool thing. We can make reproductions, have multimedia presentations, all kinds of interesting ways we can give people the experience of a thing from another culture, without having to have the actual stolen item in question there for people to look at.

Maybe a better compromise would be that human remains would be "loaned" back to their native nations under the conditions that they be buried in keeping with the traditional burial rites either of the dead's era or of the current norm for what would likely be their descendants and if the conditions weren't met (the bodies weren't reburied promptly or properly or maintained inadequately) then France would be able to claim them back. That would make it so that people that felt like their ancestors were being denied a proper burial or their culture was being disrespected by the remains being displayed would be able to be pleased, but the nations that just wanted money makers for their own museums and specimens for their own researchers wouldn't be encouraged to take back remains. [emphasis mine]

Oh the horror! Those selfish cultures, wanting to be the ones to make money off the display of their own artifacts! The only thing worse than that, of course, is researchers wanting to be able to study their own ancient cultures! Apparently, if you are a formerly-colonized culture who had a bunch of your history stolen by zealous white archaeologists, the ONLY ACCEPTABLE REASON to want those things back is for reburial. Otherwise, France (and other colonial powers) is perfectly entitled to profit from and perform research studies on the things they rightfully stole, and to want those tourism dollars for your own economy is just selfish.

If we can teach children not to take things that aren't theirs, and tell them to give things back if they do succumb to temptation...why can't we act on these morals as adults, when it comes to the ancient treasures of whole other cultures?

Why Anti-Porn Feminists Annoy The Fuck Out Of Me

2011-05-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

So I've really gotten into this tumblr thing lately. It's like the ultimate in people-watching. I get to see all these amazing conversations go by, commentary from half a dozen people on very big issues - things like language reclamation, labels, sex work, sex positivity, etc - and it's fascinating and while I don't say much, I like being able to see all this happen.

One of my favorite tumblrs is fuckyeahfeminists. Last week, there was a series of posts that was basically a conversation between fuckyeahfeminists and this other person on the merits of sex work, and the porn/prostitution industries as inherently degrading to women. Well, I say a conversation on the merits, but basically it was this person sanctimoniously moralizing about how sex workers are only doing it because they've been abused and blah blah blah. Here's the first post that caught my eye:

comicbooksandallthatjazz: you didnt reply to my last post about the sex industry, for whatever reason, and thats fine - but do you not have any issue whatsoever with the fact that the sex industry IS opression? just because it looks as though the women are enjoying it doesnt mean its right, or that its healthy - its psychologically damaging and its wrong to sell a persons body and soul just to get money. Again, as i said in the last post i sent to you, i think because these women are humans above all, we need to respect them so much that we don't allow this industry to thrive. they deserve more than to have sex with random men for money, way more. to back this undustry up is to back up opression, and that is not true feminism. this blog cant claim to celebrate anti opression when you are celebrating it every time you post a sex inudustry positive post. a person is not a prude or anti woman for not supporting the sex industry, they are humanitarian, and it has nothing to do with 'to each his/her own'. once we start making excuses by saying that, nothing gets solved.

Let's go through this and pull out the most egregious fails, shall we? I'll start with this one:

just because it looks as though the women are enjoying it doesnt mean its right, or that its healthy - its psychologically damaging and its wrong to sell a persons body and soul just to get money.

"Bodies and souls?" I must admit I've never heard of a line of sex work in which one sells one's immortal soul as well as sexual services. Yeah, I would say that's a bit off, if I thought it actually happened. But what's really going on here, is someone making moralistic judgments that selling sexual services is the same as selling one's soul. Also the idea that a sex worker is "selling hir body". I hate that phrase, I really do. It's such bullshit. A sex worker is not "selling hir body". Zie may be selling sexual services, but that does not make one's body itself the item for sale, as if the body no longer belongs to hir anymore once zie has used it for sexual labor in exchange for money. Just...ugh. What a fucked-up approach to the issue. Also, "just because it looks like they're enjoying it"? So now you're psychic, and you can look past their apparent enjoyment and read the abject misery that is inherently a result of sex work, no matter how much they look like - or even think and profess and believe themselves! - they're enjoying what they do. Damn, can I hire your psychic powers please? It'd be really awesome to be able to look at total strangers and know for sure what they're really feeling accords with my worldview.

i think because these women are humans above all, we need to respect them so much that we don't allow this industry to thrive.

Why yes, let's respect these women so much that we take away their best or preferred or chosen or sometimes only means of making a living and supporting themselves and sometimes also their families! I know when I really respect someone, I show it by overriding their decisions about how to run their lives because I know what's best for them. It's a very respectful thing to do.

they deserve more than to have sex with random men for money, way more.

If they are only doing it because they must, then yes, I wholeheartedly agree. Everyone deserves better than to be stuck in a shitty job they don't want because they have to do what they have to do in order to survive. I just don't think the way to make that happen is by sanctimoniously sneering at what they have to do in order to survive, and advocating forcing them out of business without offering a decent alternative.

to back this industry up is to back up opression, and that is not true feminism. this blog cant claim to celebrate anti opression when you are celebrating it every time you post a sex inudustry positive post.

"Feminism: ur doin it rong, cuz u disagree with me." The funny thing is, I kind of agree with the point that the industry itself is fucked up. Most parts of sex industry are oppressive and kyriarchal. But I don't agree that they way to fix that is to shame women who take part in it.

fuckyeahfeminists responded, of course. Short and sweet and to the point:

I don’t think that I am celebrating oppression by putting a post that recognizes the humanity of others. If you think that I am, that is your prerogative, but I totally disagree that you think I’m celebrating anything except human beings.

Well said. Of course, comicbooksandallthatjazz couldn't just leave it there...

now, i agree that sex workers should be humanized - this is precisely what i am trying to do here, to humanize them so much that we are not seeing them as pieces of meat that just love to have sex so much that they cant wait to get payed for it. Every choice in life has a psychological root, and many take this choice in life because they have been conditioned to respect this action just as little girls have grown up wanting to be like disney princesses because it has been conditioned into us that this is what a REAL woman is like. Young women today are also being taught that if you do not agree with the sex industry or gratuitous sex in film and music videos, that you are anti sex or a prude. This is not the case, and i am getting pretty tired of this judgemental train of thought.

...

what i meant in fact was that many experience sexual abuse before going into the industry, which causes them to seek the industry out in the first place, as a kind of repetition compulsion. I personally don't think it's healthy, i think they need encouragement on how to get out of the industry, whether theyve had traumatic past experiences or not. The way forward isnt to encourage the trade, but to acknowledge that it is exploitative. I also know that people have differring experiences on this subject, and its kinda touchy - but coming from a humanitarian outlook i really cant stick by it as a positive choice for women..

Oh, dear.

this is precisely what i am trying to do here, to humanize them so much that we are not seeing them as pieces of meat that just love to have sex so much that they cant wait to get payed for it.

I, um...what? I can't even make this make sense. Has it ever occurred to comicbooksandallthatjazz to, I dunno, STFU and listen to sex workers assert their own humanity, instead of this weirdly coercive process of forcible "humanization", by which zie really means "push them to conform to my idea of appropriate sexual values and mores"? Probably not, and I find that actually kind of scary and gross in addition to headdesk-inducing. Also, whoever said that supporting sex workers who have chosen their trade means "seeing them as pieces of meat etc."? Personally, I think it's far more humanizing to recognize that people who engage in sex work are people capable of making their own decisions, who do so for a variety of reasons. Also why is it that we, as a culture, like to encourage people to "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" and all that crap, while treating people who enjoy sex and exchange those services for money like the lowest of the low? What's wrong with loving sex so much you want to get paid for having it, if that aligns with your values and works for your life? Why is this automatically a bad thing, a less-than-human thing? Because when you posit "humanizing" as the process of "no longer thinking sex workers enjoy sex so much they want to get paid for it", you are automatically and inherently implying that "enjoying sex so much you want to get paid for it" is a less-than-human position which people need to be "humanized" away from. Ick ick ick. I seem to have gotten coercive imposition of individual moral values onto other people regardless of their own beliefs all over me. Someone hand me a paper towel please.

Every choice in life has a psychological root ... what i meant in fact was that many experience sexual abuse before going into the industry, which causes them to seek the industry out in the first place, as a kind of repetition compulsion.

Oh. For. Fuck's. Sake. And here we have the old chestnut of "You're only doing it because you were abused." As if being a survivor/victim of abuse automatically invalidates any sexual choices you make thereafter - at least, any choices that the judging person disagrees with. This kind of weird savior complex comicbooksandallthatjazz has going on is getting creepier and creepier.

I personally don't think it's healthy,

How nice for you. Do you even stop to consider what actual sex workers themselves feel is healthy in their lives? Of course not...

i think they need encouragement on how to get out of the industry, whether theyve had traumatic past experiences or not.

Don't worry, sex workers! comicbooksandallthatjazz is coming to save you from yourselves, whether you like it or not! Zie doesn't care why you're doing what you do, it's not healthy and zie will make you stop for your own good! Moar exclamation points!!!

coming from a humanitarian outlook i really cant stick by it as a positive choice for women.

Then don't. But it's still not your fucking choice to make, so STFU. Also please stop claiming it's somehow "humanitarian" to devalue sex workers and overlook/deny their individual agency and choices. "Helping" people against their will is not actually helping.

Out of curiosity, as I reread through all of this bullshit, I wonder if this person has ever thought that there are, in fact, people involved in sex work other than women? That there are sex workers who are women, and also sex workers who are men, and who are non-binary as well? Given that, is it only women for whom sex work is badnastydangerouswrongunhuman? Or is it everyone? If it's everyone, then why the assumptive references to women throughout the conversation? If it's not everyone, but specifically women, well, yeah, you sound like a sexist douchewad who's perpetuating a sexual double-standard.

Honestly, now. Is it really that much to ask that we listen to and respect the voices of the people who actually do the work we're talking about, when we talk about sex work? This kind of talking-over bullshit absolutely epitomizes one of the worst failings of white Western mainstream feminism, the savior complex that utterly denies the work and feminisms of everyone but the mainstream capital-F Feminists. And it needs to fucking stop. Yesterday.

A Tale of Two Conversations

2011-05-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about stuff this morning, and thought I'd share. Enjoy.

It was about two years ago, when I was first coming to anti-disablism activism - albeit only in the most minor of language-based ways - that I decided to stop using "lame" as a pejorative. After a month or two, it felt natural, and I'd begun to develop the instinctive flinch response to hearing other people use it like I had already had with terms like "retard" or "bitch" or the n-word. It was around that time that two conversations took place.

Conversation A was with a young (20 at the time), cis, white, hetero, currently-able-bodied man I know. We were hanging out, and talking about something - probably politics, knowing us - and he said something like "Ugh, that's so lame." I flinched, and decided to speak up. "You know that's kind of offensive, right?" I asked. "Could you please not say that around me?" He looked at me, clearly startled and affronted by my implying that he was doing something Wrong. "No it's not," he replied. I blinked a couple of times. Um, I'm the one who actually studies and reads about and writes about and lives immersed in various kinds of anti-_ism activism, so who is he to be correcting me about something like that? I thought. Silly me, I should have known the answer was "a Very Privileged Dude", duh. But I argued back. "Yes, it is. It's like using "that's so gay", which I know you've stopped doing because it's wrong. Same kind of thing. Saying "that's lame" is prejudice against disabled people the same way as "that's gay" is prejudice against queer people." And he argued back, too. "No, it's not! It's not the same thing at all." And on it went, both of us getting quite loud and impassioned, I insisting that dammit you should probably be listening to someone who actually works with -ism stuff, please, and he insisting that he wasn't being -ist at all and I was just being oversensitive. I finally dropped it, he still uses the word to this day, and I just quietly flinch and let it pass.

Conversation B was with another young (25 at the time), cis, white, hetero, currently-able-bodied man I know. As we were driving somewhere one day, he sympathized with me describing some annoying situation by saying, "Oh, that's lame, I'm sorry." I flinched, and took a deep breath and said, "Using "lame" that way is really offensive actually. Can you not use it please?" He looked surprised, and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know. Um, could you suggest other words I could use instead?" And the request for alternatives wasn't made in a demanding "educate me nao!" kind of way or anything. It was simply that he trusted my judgment and vocabulary skills and hoped I might have advice for him on what to replace it with. So we brainstormed alternatives for awhile, came up with several, and I only heard him use it once or twice more - swiftly self-corrected each time - before he'd fully eliminated the phrase from his speech.

Two men, very alike in terms of privilegedness and upbringing. Two very similar conversations centered around the same request and the same word. And yet where one was stubborn and got all privilege-denying about it, the other was willing to learn and change. So I guess my question is...For the love of all the gods, why can't most call-outs happen like Conversation B? Where one person says, "Hey, you did this thing that is wrong/offensive/oppressive/bad," and the other person says, "I'm sorry, I won't do it again. Do you have any advice or education you would like to offer while we're talking about it?" (While remaining open to the possibility that the answer may just be "No", of course) How hard can this possibly fucking be, that it never just goes like that?

For the record, here's how it ended: Dude A and I are still close, but I don't feel entirely safe around him and I have to be careful what topics come up when we're talking. And it erodes our relationship a little every time something like this comes up. Dude B is my best friend, around whom I feel entirely safe and respected, and our relationship is strengthened every time something like this comes up.

So, privileged people*: which Dude would you rather be? Keep that in mind in your interactions with less-privileged people or allies.

*Which really means basically everyone, cause most people have privilege on at least one axis. Being oppressed on one axis doesn't negate your privilege on others. *cough*DanSavage*cough*

Apology and Blog Note

2011-05-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the light/sporadic posting the past week or two. Depression has come to play again - or rather, to stop me from playing. Posts may continue to be sporadic for another week or so. Hopefully not longer. Again, I'm sorry!

Stubborn Privilege and Trigger Warnings: The SexGenderBody Fiasco

2011-05-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

[TW on all links to sexgenderbody for potentially-triggering material with no warning (I don't know what they've posted since writing this), and a really shitty privilege-heavy attitude on why they refuse to use them]

I'm not, myself, particularly big on tumblr. At least not yet. I have one, and I follow a few of my twiends who have tumblrs, but that's the extent of it so far. However, as y'all may know, I am quite a fan of Twitter and spend a shit-ton of time on there (@WitchWords, if anyone cares). I find a lot of interesting reading material, often stuff I blog about, via links people post on Twitter. I used to get a lot of these from the @sexgenderbody Twitter account, which is linked to the sexgenderbody tumblog, which is as far as I can tell is curated and moderated by Arvan Reese, who founded it and the associated blog. (I used to think there was no more awkward word for "collection of crap on the internet" than "blog". I was wrong. There's "tumblog".)

Sexgenderbody's tagline is "A direct, honest and respectful conversation about sex, gender and body." They post links to blog posts and tumblr posts and images having to do with, you guessed it, sex, gender, and the body. My content has shown up in the sexgenderbody feed a few times, and I've really enjoyed some of the stuff I have found by clicking through on items in their Twitter feed. There was a bit of a furor over the inconsistent use of trigger warnings on the tumblr awhile back, and Arvan posted a big long justification that basically boiled down to "I don't object to them but I won't add them either." I only skimmed it at the time, as I wasn't following them on tumblr and only click through on perhaps a third of the links they post to Twitter, if that, so I'd never come across anything egregiously triggering to me that lacked a warning. It wasn't a big deal to me at the time. Rereading it now, it basically comes off as a hugely privilege-denying wankfest of "If you don't like it close the browser," with a side order of "let's conflate offensive with triggering and post topless pics of men and women to prove our point!" Also, "well with a name like sexgenderbody, you should expect to see NSFW stuff in the feed, I don't know why you're so upset." Honestly, that article alone could feed creation of about four different PDDs.

I say I "used to" get blog fodder from them, because as of today I've unfollowed and blocked them on Twitter, and if I can figure out how to do it on tumblr (I'm still learning!) I'll be blocking them there, too.

Yesterday, one of the things they posted was [TW: self-harm, open wounds, blood] an image of a patch of medium-tone flesh with the word "DYSPHORIA" carved into it, still bleeding. [END TW] Several people used the "ask" thing on tumblr to request a trigger warning be placed on the image, since such a graphic depiction of self-harm could be *really* triggering to people. Well, since their tagline says they're interested in "respectful" discussion, they immediately apologized and fixed it, right?

Lolno. The first person to ask for a trigger warning - very politely, I might add - got this reply:

I’m not about to put a trigger warning on someone else’s body. If the OP put a trigger, I’ve included that. But it’s not *my* place to make someone else’s body a trigger.

...Whut. What the fuck does "make someone else's body a trigger" even mean? Adding a TW isn't "[making] someone else's body a trigger." It's a triggery image whether it's got the actual TW on it or not. All an actual TW would do is help keep people from being ambushed by a disturbing image that might trigger them into anything, from a few minutes of deep focused breathing and needing to look at pictures of kittens for awhile to calm down, to sitting in a corner shaking and crying all day, to attempting fucking suicide. Why is the "respect" apparently all reserved for the person who posted it in the first place, and not the people who could have moments/afternoons/days/weeks/etc totally fucked up by seeing it without warning?

But it got worse. When someone replied saying it wasn't about making someone's body a trigger, but about the welfare of people reading who could be harmed, adding that they do self-harm sometimes and wouldn't want to trigger people, Arvan replied

"I respect your experience. You should unsubscribe from this feed and take care of yourself - always. Take care of yourself."

1: No, you don't. If you did, you'd take two fucking seconds and put a fucking TW on it. 2: It's hard to "take care of yourself" by unsubscribing AFTER being triggered by something like this. Saying "just unsubscribe" after the fact is singularly unhelpful.

At that point, the responses of "this is not a "respectful discussion"" started pouring in.

queeroctopus:

I think it's about time you changed your description. Your utter refusal to listen to anyone who finds some of the images triggering is NOT evidence of a 'respectful conversation' about anything. It would require very little effort on your part to put cuts or content warnings. And your reasons for refusal are ignorant. it is not shaming to put a content warning on cutting. It is, however, shaming to those of us with triggers to act like the existence of our triggers are somehow shaming people.

whatfreshhellisthis:

You seem to misunderstand what triggers are for. ... It's not to protect people's sensibilities, or to censor content. It is a tool to help protect people with disabilities.
Refusing to put trigger warnings on content is incredibly ableist as you are excluding or directly harming people with those triggers.
This isn't a discussion.
Refusing to put trigger warnings is ableist, and is absolutely not, even slightly, respectful.

Those two and at least two others got a copy-pasted response of "We are not going to alter our behavior or language. If this site or policy triggers you, please unfollow." Way to engage your critics, Arvan!

Well, of course people started to get angry. Which, as so many privileged people* do, Arvan took as proof that zie was in the right because, y'know, you all are being so mean and disrespectful and angry at me! And as we all know, being angry automatically means you forfeit the discussion and the calm person wins.

I'm not going to quote the rest of the answers Arvan gave to everyone's objections, cause this post is already long enough as it is. Suffice to say, if you want a blood-pressure-spike-inducing read, click through on the sexgenderbody tumblr link I provided up top, and scroll through the first page. On that page alone, I was able to check off the following bingo squares:

Requesting trigger warnings is linguistic oppression!
I'm not responsible for your emotions (Direct quote: "All of us need to be responsible for our triggers.")
If you might be triggered, stay off the internet. (Not kidding, that's a near-direct quote)
Calling me ___-ist is calling names! Now who's the bad guy?
Commenting anonymously means I don't have to take you seriously
You're taking my words out of context
Who are you to judge what's -ist and what's not?
You're bullying me! (Also a near-direct quote)

For fuck's sake, that's almost a double bingo. And throughout it all was the constant thread of "But if I put a trigger warning on that photo it would be mean/discriminatory/disrespectful/judging to the person in the photo!"

I genuinely don't understand the reasoning behind that. Nobody who asked for trigger warnings was in any way trying to harm or condemn the OP. A trigger warning on something is not a condemnation, nor a judgment. It's a reflection of reality in a world filled with trauma survivors, and a courtesy to people who have already suffered to try not to add to their suffering further. This is not, was not, has never been about the person in the photo. It is about being a decent fucking human being. It is about the photo itself and being responsible for the media one disseminates. It is not about the person in it, or the person who took it, or the person who posted it. It is about those who may see it. Arvan is putting the spotlight squarely on the wrong person's feelings here. (Why does that sound familiar? Oh, right. Rape culture. Victim-blaming. Whose feelings are important [the privileged person, in this case, Arvan*] and whose feelings can be discounted [the person actually being harmed]. This is a calculation we've all seen played out innumerable times.)

To repeatedly deny requests for trigger warnings on a photo like that one - I mean, shit, I'm not particularly easily triggered despite a history of self-harm in my own life, but that one was enough to make me take deep breaths and run through my "this is now, not then, you don't have to do that anymore" mental spiel to stay calm - is the height of rudeness and disconcern for your audience. Arvan Reese of sexgenderbody has, in effect, told all hir readers, "I do not give a shit about you. My intellectual high horse and misunderstanding of trigger warnings as censorship is more important than making sure the people who enjoy my tumblr aren't triggered into potentially killing themselves. I think people with histories of trauma and neuroatypical people don't belong on the internet because their need for warnings before potentially triggery content inconveniences the rest of us. People with trigger issues should be able to snap out of it and control their reactions, or else they just need to miss out on vast swathes of potentially-excellent content because typing two words at the top of a post is against my principles."

Well, Arvan, in that case, fuck you too.

And if you're pissed off after reading all that, and just need a righteous fucking rant about it, check this shit out. 14 instances of fuck in 5 paragraphs. Fuck yes. Also, here is an excellent post about what being triggered can really do to someone, and here's a very thorough explanation of how forcing marginalized people to constantly defend their access to discussions about their issues reinforces their oppressions.

*I posit Arvan as "privileged" in the sense of not suffering debilitating triggered episodes versus those who could be truly harmed by a triggered episode, because while zie claims to have triggers of hir own in one of hir responses to a calling-out post, I almost doubt it; I kind of think someone who has genuinely experienced being triggered as opposed to being offended or upset by a photo of something would understand that triggering isn't something you can "be responsible for". Zie's certainly acting like a PDD in this exchange, anyway. My referring to hir as "privileged" is a specific reference to the privileged/oppressed pair of not needing trigger warnings/needing trigger warnings. It is not meant to invalidate hir experiences of oppression on whatever other axes zie may experience.

The National Day of Prayer: Encouraging Christian Supremacists Since 1952

2011-05-05T12:22:00.000-07:00

[Cross-posted at Shakesville] Today, May 5th, is the National Day of Prayer here in the U.S. By law, enacted by Congress in 1952 (and amended in 1988 to fix the date on the first Thursday in May every year), the President is required to issue a proclamation declaring a national day of prayer. Obama's proclamation for this year can be found here. The main organization promoting the NDoP, and which organizes the vast majority of NDoP events throughout the country, is the National Day of Prayer Task Force (NDoPTF) chaired by none other than Shirley Dobson, the wife of James Dobson, founders of Focus on Your Own Damn Family, a nationally-known fundie Christian org. Which kind of makes it hard to believe that the NDoP is *not* a sectarian act of government-sanctioned proselytism, as its backers insist. When the main organization organizing events for a government-sanctioned observance is a fundamentalist Christian organization, and the events themselves are themed around a quotation from Christian scripture, well. Suffice to say the quacking is getting awfully loud, despite protestations that it is not, in fact, a duck.

The theme NDOoPTF has chosen for this year is "A Mighty Fortress is Our God", taken from Psalm 91:2, which reads: “I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.” They make the usual noise about the terrible state America is in - which, I agree with them, but I rather suspect our reasons for that belief wildly diverge - and have even given us the thoughtful gift of an absolutely terribad promo video:

[Calm but faintly ominous-sounding instrumental music over a montage of "heartland" shots: a farmhouse, a windmill over waving grain fields, a white one-room-schoolhouse style church, with the sky above all these showing gathering roiling clouds oddly lit from within. Panning across a carefully-planned-to-look-multicultural group of people (black guy, Asian woman, white child, but with all older white people in the background pews) sitting in a church pew with blank but attentive faces. Cuts to a black man standing at the pulpit of the church, gesturing and reading from the Bible. A shadow falls over his face and he looks up as if startled. The music suddenly shifts to full-on ominous disaster-movie-trailer and cuts to a dark cloudy background with all-caps text in gold reading "What if we didn't respond to the call to prayer?" The cloudy background flickers with reddish lightning. Cuts to wide shot of grassy plain with a single run-down-looking old house to one side, the sky increasingly full of those weirdly-lit boiling clouds. Then to a white teenaged girl sitting on her bed, picking up a Bible from the bed beside her as if going to read from it. She looks up consideringly, the room darkens suddenly and she looks worried. She gets up and walks to the narrow window in the room. This whole time, the music is sounding like it's been ripped straight from a 90's disaster movie trailer. She looks out at the weird, tumultuous clouds. Cut back to cloudy background with all-caps gold text: "What if we forgot the God of our fathers?" More reddish lightning. Cut to a Latino-looking young teenaged boy sitting on a couch with a Wiimote in hand as if playing a video game. The room darkens suddenly. He looks up, gets up and goes to the window to look at more weird clouds. Back to cloudy background and all-caps gold text: "What if we didn't care?" The music is really getting into it, adding wordless female chorus voices in descant over the throbbing drumbeat. This would be the part where the plane is plummeting in flames, or the earthquake opens a jagged canyon in the earth and people start falling in, in the trailer the music probably came from. Cuts back to the Latino boy, going to a table and picking up a Bible. Then to the white teen girl, opening her Bible. The music abruptly stops as she looks down, and it shows the page she's opened to in Psalms. Psalm 91 is shown up-close, then the page gets all weird and blurry and streams of light seem to be coming out from behind verse 2 "I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.", obscuring everything else. The music fades in again on a single-note crescendo until it bursts back into full disaster-movie glory and the video cuts to a blue sky with passing clouds and some odd dissolve-text effects resolving to read "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" in white. Cut to the one-room-schoolhouse church interior, pews cleared and a semicircle of white people kneeling on the wood floor with black guy and Asian woman strategically positioned off to one side. The two teens enter and go to the empty space in the center and both kneel, clasping their hands in their laps and bowing their heads with everyone else. Scene pans across the room of kneeling people, and we see that the Latino teen, black guy and Asian woman were the only non-white people there - yay, tokens! Cuts to the Capitol building, backlit by those dark roiling lighning-filled clouds. Then the Golden Gate Bridge, looking inward toward the Bay, also topped by those weird clouds. Fades to the kneeling teens, then immediately fades to the outside of the white church, where a hole slowly opens in the dark clouds, seeming filled with white light. Quick fade to a white family kneeling in prayer inside the church, then to a steeple with beams of white light breaking up the dark cloud behind it. The Golden Gate Bridge again with those beams of light starting to break through the clouds. Cuts to a time-lapse shot of some city on a body of water at dusk, clouds streaming over the sky and lights coming on along the shore, with white text reading, "He Created the Heavens." Text dissolves, image fades to a time-lapse shot of a mountain peak covered in snow with white text reading, "He Set the Mountains in Place". Cuts to a shot of an older white man who looks suspiciously like Dubya, face upraised in either a serious prayerful expression or an expression of constipation (it's kind of hard to tell. Can't the religious reich afford decent actors?), and hands clasped before his face, light shining on him. Text beside him reads, "There is Hope...In Prayer!" He bows his head, text dissolves. Cut to a loltastic created shot involving the Capitol, the White House, and the Jefferson Memorial all side-by-side and sort of layered over each other where they overlap, a pair of disembodied hands reaching up from the bottom of the frame and slowly grasping each other in interlocked-fingers-prayer-position, while an American flag with no apparent means of support waves from the left side of the frame, and lightning flickers across a strip of dark clouds above the Representing Washington DC building mashup. Text falls into place reading "Join With Millions in Prayer", then the NDoPTF logo reverse-dissolves into place below that, superimposed over the mashup. The music comes to a dramatic climax, cuts off for a dramatic moment, then comes slamming back as the screen goes black and "05.05.2011" written in glowy disaster-movie font zooms in, then flashes to "www.NationalDayofPrayer.org" backlit by a lens flare. The music finishes with a dramatic flourish and the whole thing fades to black. Fin.]

It's the music that really makes it, y'know? A day of prayer - which, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't prayer supposed to be a quiet, meditative reflection on and connection with one's deity? - is totes the same as an actiony disaster movie, amirite? Well, perhaps if you consider the NDoP to be a disaster. *rimshot*

But whatever happened to the ruling from last year, wherein a judge in Wisconsin found the requirement of a NDoP to be unConstitutional? If the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, why is it still being celebrated? Why has Obama issued the 2011 proclamation (aside from his terrible predilection for pandering to people who will never vote for him)?

Unfortunately, the 7th Circuit overturned the ruling on appeal last month. They ruled that since the law requiring declaration of the NDoP each year only directly affects the President (by requiring hir to issue the proclamation), only the President has suffered sufficient injury from the statute to challenge it. Thus, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has no standing to challenge the NDoP. The decision, which was 3-0, declared:

Plaintiffs contend that they are injured because they feel excluded, or made unwelcome, when the President asks them to engage in a religious observance that is contrary to their own principles.... [However] offense at the behavior of the government, and a desire to have public officials comply with (plaintiffs’ view of) the Constitution, differs from a legal injury. The “psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees” is not an “injury” for the purpose of standing.

The concurring opinion defended the decision by saying SCOTUS hasn't defined "injury" in the context of Establishment Clause cases well enough yet to give FFRF and other non-religious (or religious but Constitutionally-inclined) citizens standing based on "psychological injury" resulting from the blatant Othering of non-belief a Presidentially-declared Day of Prayer foments.

And so we have it that, in 20-fucking-11, President Obama - the only President to ever consistently include the phrase "believers and non-believers" in his speeches, yet who attempted to have FFRF's case against the NDoP thrown out before the initial ruling was given - has issued the yearly National Day of Prayer proclamation asking "...all people of faith to join me in asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our Nation."

FFRF has said they will seek en banc rehearing (review by the full court, not just the 3-judge panel). Welp. I know what I'm praying for today, then. And it's sure as fuck not "asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our Nation." If it comes to a contest between God as interpreted by Christian Dominionists, and "the forces of hell" as represented by those who would see the Constitution's Establishment Clause respected, well. I'm gonna have to side with the forces of hell on this one.

Biology: 3, Anti-Fat Techniques: 0

2011-05-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

So we know that diets don't work long-term. And we know bariatric surgery doesn't work long-term. Now, we know liposuction doesn't work long-term, either. A study recently released showed that over the year following liposuction on the hips and thighs, new fat cells were created to replace the ones lost, distributed over different areas of the body (they're theorizing that it's because the liposuction destroys the supporting structure under the skin where the fat cells would normally grow).

Fat bodies cannot be willed, fooled, or altered thin. When are we going to accept this? When are we going to stop shaming people for a product of genetics and biology? When are we, as a culture, going to take science seriously when it says, over and over again, No, this weight-loss thing just doesn't work, no matter how you do it?

But you know what the worst part of the linked article was? The control group had been promised a reduced rate on their surgeries if they still wanted them, in exchange for waiting the time of the study before getting liposuction done.

And when it was time, even after they had been told the study results, more than half of them went ahead and got the surgery anyway.

My heart breaks for them.

Wednesday WTF: Real Men Go On Dates Edition

2011-04-27T16:37:00.000-07:00

I haven't done a designated Wednesday WTF in a very long time - my WTF tag gets plenty of use as it is - but this seemed worthy of resurrecting it.

An ex of mine posted this on Facebook today (reminding me of *why* he's an ex [and dude, if you still read my blog, sorry, but yeah]): Stop Hanging Out With Women and Start Dating Them.

First of all, when the originating site is called The Art of Manliness, well. That's a yellow alert right there, especially as it seems to take itself quite seriously.

And then you read the article itself, which is chock-full of heteronormativity and marriage-pushing (it links to another article on the site called "The Case for Marriage", which hits the usual high notes of "married men are happier/wealthier/healthier" without noting why, and what that may be costing the wives in this equation, who are apparently invisible accessories one uses to gain happiness/wealth/health bonuses, not people with whom one has a fulfilling relationship). It gets bonus points for lamenting how many guys are "just hanging out" with women these days - because gods know you would never want to just be friends with women - and playing the "young'uns today have had their social skills ruined by the internet!" card. "Feminism makes boners sad" makes an appearance, too - damn us liberated women, making the questions of "who asks who out?" and "who pays?" a matter of conscious communication instead of assumptions!

The cure for these ills, of course, is a return to the days when men ask women out. And that's pretty much it. There's the "She secretly wants you to ask" bit, of course - "Despite the rhetoric you hear about the liberated woman, women still appreciate it when a guy asks her out on a date." - which...well, really. First of all, what is "the rhetoric...about the liberated woman" even supposed to mean? The idea that women are adults who are perfectly capable of approaching a stranger they'd like to get to know and asking him or her out, instead of helpless girls just waiting to be asked to dance? This is just rhetoric that you should disregard? Secondly, of course (most) women like to be asked out*. So do (most) men, and I would venture, most people in general. Being the askee is a confirmation that you are desirable and worth risking rejection for. That's a nice feeling - assuming the ask was respectful and appropriate in timing/wording/approach, and the asker was actually okay with "no" if that was one's answer - which I don't think is exactly gender-dependent.

"Be a man and ask these women out."

No. Please don't. Not if you're taking your advice from a shitty article on why gender norms ought to jump back a few decades.

And of course it ends with "So what are you waiting for? Quit reading this post right now and pick up your cell phone. Call a woman and ask her on a date." Just call a woman! Any woman! Doesn't matter if you're really interested in dating her or not! Doesn't matter if you're happy being single! By the transitive power of the uterus, all women are interchangeable, so just pick one and try to date her!

*Although not necessarily, and even if they do, not necessarily by men. Which this whole article completely disregards.

Jon Kyl Does Not Understand The Internet

2011-04-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

Jon Kyl, he of the infamous "not intended to be a factual statement" retraction after claiming 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion, has scrubbed the Congressional record of his 90% claim. Instead of reading "If you want an abortion you go to Planned Parenthood and that's well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does," it now reads, "If you want an abortion you go to Planned Parenthood and that is what Planned Parenthood does."

All this proves is the man has no idea how the internet works, or how the world's memory works in the age of the internet.

Dear Senator Kyl: When your misstatement and hilariously bungled attempt at retracting it have spawned a whole internet meme, complete with Twitter hashtag (#notintendedtobeafactualstatement, still going strong days after the incident) egged on by Stephen Colbert, no amount of scrubbing the official record is going to make people forget. It's like taking down a really dumb or offensive post. Google Cache will remember, and all you end up doing is looking like an ass who's trying to cover your tracks.

Which, of course, you are, but you don't want to draw attention to it by trying to hide it. Is it really so hard to admit you were exaggerating wildly for the sake of scoring rhetorical points in your ideological war on reproductive-care services for low-income Americans?

Too much honesty for you?

Want A Student Loan? Show Us Your Finances First.

2011-04-26T11:23:00.000-07:00

But of course, because low-income students really need more hoops to jump through before they can get government assistance to get an education. Tidewater Community College in Virginia is planning to implement a system whereby students seeking government loans for schooling will have to fill out and turn in two "budget worksheets" - one assuming their current income and financial situation "in case they leave school unexpectedly", and the other a projected budget for after graduation based on the starting salary for a job they can expect to get with the degree they're working on - before the financial aid office will disburse their federal student loans to them.

The plan itself sounds pretty fucked up, to me. I personally don't think the college's budget office - who is not providing the loan money themselves, mind you, just taking federal money and disbursing it to students who have already applied and been approved for it - has any goddamn business seeing my budget. Offering budget counseling or workshops for students who want it? A good idea. Making it mandatory to fill out worksheets and disclose the details of your finances to the loan office before they'll give you the money you've already been approved for? Not cool. Especially since "the college also plans to identify high-risk borrowers who are still enrolled and summon them for financial counseling." So if your budget doesn't meet with approval, you're going to be "summoned" to talk to someone about it, whether you really want to discuss the details of your financial situation with a total stranger at your college or not.

Further, the second budget worksheet assumes the student will have a job after graduation. Lolwut? Unemployment is still at nearly 10% nationwide, people. It's not like jobs are thick on the ground. I'm not sure I like the idea of having students work up a projected budget based on a job that may or may not be there when they've anticipated having it.

But the real fun part of this is the display of privilege in the comments thread. Right in the first few comments, someone pointed out the problematic nature of assuming immediate employment upon graduation, and the response was basically "Well, then maybe they shouldn't be taking out money to go to school." Effectively implying that the only people who deserve an education, which is pretty much necessary at this point to get ahead, are those who can already afford to pay for it out of pocket.

And when someone else pointed out that adding more work and required disclosure like this is putting further barriers in front of those people who need the help most, the answer from a few other commenters was basically "Good!" ...what?

Education is already a privilege in this country far more than it should be. Low-income students are already struggling, and to put further barriers between them and the help they need is reprehensible. It smacks of deliberately replicating and perpetuating the already-widening class divide by reserving all the bootstraps for people who own the bootstraps factory.

Cruel And Unusual "Pro-Life" Tactics

2011-04-25T15:47:00.000-07:00

This is just sick. A 14-year-old girl got pregnant - circumstances were not specified, so for all we know the baby was a product of rape or incest or other forms of coercion - and on her way into the clinic, a "pro-life" "activist" tried to talk her out of getting an abortion, got her phone number, and while she was in the waiting room, texted her to say "If you go through with this, we've named your baby Britney." When the girl went through with the abortion, the "activist" put up a pink cross with the name on it.

The wankstain who did it defends her actions and says she doesn't think she was being cruel, because "the sooner you deal with it the easier it is in the healing." What the fucking fuck? That girl might not have NEEDED any "healing" after the abortion, if that shitwad hadn't done her damndest to personalize and force an emotional connection to a pregnancy the girl didn't want, and emotionally abused her by trying to guilt her for "killing her baby" afterward!

Personal story time! In the six months or so following my abortion, I had a strange emotional dilemma. I felt guilty for not feeling guilty, if that makes any sense. As someone who, with her first unrestricted internet connection at age 18, dove headfirst into the contentious abortion debate message board on Beliefnet.com and would spend hours there arguing with people who really did believe all women who had abortions were murderers, I'd been exposed to a lot of anti-choice nastiness even before it was a personal issue for me. In the aftermath of it, although I didn't regret my choice, I had a tiny voice in the back of my mind asking what that said about me? If I could have an abortion and feel nothing but relief and gladness at having the matter taken care of, didn't that make me a terrible person? A terrible woman, specifically? And this was me at 21, intelligent, well-educated, informed about the issue and very well-practiced in the arguments surrounding it, and I still was able to be made to feel like there was something wrong with me because I wasn't unhappy or regretful or grief-stricken.

So when I think of a 14-year-old girl, having to make the choice that would let her keep her life as it was or change it forever, being cruelly manipulated into feeling guilty because of a total stranger's opinion of her decision, it makes me sick. Anti-choicers claim that abortion leads to guilt/regret/depression/etc - they've even named their made-up post-abortion condition "Post-Abortive Syndrome", despite the complete lack of evidence (and evidence to the contrary) that such a condition exists - but that's basically a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn't it? How many people out there who've had abortions suffer and struggle with guilt and regret not because those feelings organically arose in them - and they do, for some people, I'm not trying to say all abortion decisions are as uncomplicated as mine was - but because they feel like they should feel bad?

Anyone who wants to call themselves "pro-life" needs to concern themselves with the woman's life, too. That 14-year-old girl has a life, and trying to force her to feel guilty by forcing the pro-fetus framework onto her situation shows a distinct unconcern for the life of the girl.

Michigan Republican: Foster Kids Don't Deserve New Clothes

2011-04-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

This classist asshole takes the far-too-common rhetoric of "poor people deserve nothing nice ever" and steps it up another notch, by saying that foster children in his state should only be allowed to purchase clothes from Goodwill and Salvation Army.

You know, it's unfair enough to dump on poor adults and insist that adults struggling financially not ever spend a single penny on anything anyone watching might deem frivolous or pleasurable, but at least with adults in poverty there's a chance that it was their own choices that led them into poverty. Maybe they gambled a lot or ran up credit-card debt on shopping sprees or whatever. I still don't believe it's any of anyone's business to try to police their spending, as if the mere fact of their financial situation gives everyone better-off a right to pry and comment and judge. But I can at least see some kind of internally-consistent logic in the kind of mindset that believes people should suffer for their irresponsibility, whether that irresponsibility is real or imagined, even while I think it's a bunch of judgmental bullshit.

But it's another thing entirely to take out one's resentment at having to let the government help those who need help on foster children, who are in the position they are because of the choices and fuckups of the adults around them, not because they did something wrong.

Much like Wisconsin's union-busting fiasco, where Walker couldn't say how much money his union-busting would actually save the state despite claiming it was all about the budget, Sen Caswell has yet to give hard evidence that his plan would save the state any money or how much, despite claiming it's about the budget. Which is basically the modus operandi of the slash-and-privatize GOP: wait for (or manufacture, ahem) a crisis, then use it as a boogeyman to force through cuts in the name of "what must be done right now" while people are willing to put up with more without demanding much justification. Hand-wave in the direction of the Budget Gremlins, and most people will let it go.

So what it basically is, is Caswell using the excuse of the current economy to punish foster children for being foster children. For absolutely no reason that I can see, except mean-spiritedness. Because really, what's this going to save the state? A few thousand dollars, perhaps? Is a few thousand dollars really worth further stepping on children on whose necks Life has already stomped plenty hard?

It's not like foster kids are rolling in piles of state dough as it is. When you talk about foster kids, you are by definition talking about people who have already been pretty badly screwed over by life. Most of them have experienced some kind of abuse. They're already trying to move through the world and negotiate the process of growing up without any reasonable sense of stability - they can get bounced from home to home on the whims of the families, relocated from one county to another for no particular reason except overcrowding, constantly having to start over in some new place. What possible purpose could it serve to add another indignity by mandating that they buy hand-me-downs instead of spending a couple more dollars to buy a brand-new shirt at Walmart or Target?

Sen. Caswell: Your heartlessness is showing. You might want to do something about that.

More GOP Hypocrisy...

2011-04-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

Check this shit out...

Paul Ryan, who drafted the GOP's Road to Ruin budget for next fiscal year, was himself a recipient of federal Social Security money that he used to pay for college, which was the starting point of a career that has led him to a point where he has the power to draft a budget that would drastically cut the programs that helped him get his start.

What an epically clear case of the GOP's core value: "I got mine, screw the rest of you."

In Case You Weren't Convinced Yet That Koch Industries Is Evil...

2011-04-21T16:26:00.000-07:00

Freed by the Citizens United case, which granted free speech rights to corporations (in related news, I've figured out what I want to be when I grow up! A corporation. I wouldn't have to pay taxes, the government would listen to me, I could get bailed out...yeah, life as a corporation sounds pretty good.), Koch Industries has begun politically proselytizing its employees. A mailer was sent to the home addresses of all their U.S. employees this past fall, right before the election, containing a list of 19 Koch-approved candidates (16 Republicans and 3 "Blue Dog" Democrats, and a mix between state-level and national candidates) and urging employees to vote for those candidates. Padded out with 14 pages of teabagger propaganda masquerading as economic theory and history lessons (did you know that FDR and the New Deal *prolonged* the Great Depression? Me neither. Probably because it's manifestly untrue revisionist history.), the whole thing has an ominous feel of "We're not saying you have to vote our way, but..." Somehow I don't imagine anyone who complained about being told how to vote would have a job for long, y'know?

I don't even know what to say anymore. Talk about a hostile workplace. My sympathies to those employees who feel they have no choice but take this blatant political pressure quietly, or lose their jobs.

Texas' Rick Perry: Governor, or Priest?

2011-04-21T15:43:00.000-07:00

Given the proclamation he's just issued, either he's not sure himself, or he's desperately misinformed about what elected leaders are supposed to do in a crisis.

Pop quiz! When your state is in a long drought that's causing terrible fires and having bad effects on crops and livestock, what are appropriate responses a governor could undertake?

A: Declare a state of emergency
B: Redirect funds to additional firefighting equipment/personnel
C: Ask for help from the federal goverment
D: Issue an official proclamation declaring a three-day period as "Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas"

If you answered some combination of A, B, and C (or other paths of material help that I didn't think of), pat yourself on the back! If you answered D, you're either Rick Perry, or just as deeply confused about appropriate uses of elected office.

Here's a hint for those who picked D: there is no appropriate place in the secular government of a highly diverse nation (or state) for proclamations, or declarations, or whatever the hell else, promoting religious practice. Prayer, in case you're still confused, is a religious practice. And even if you slip in the little "citizens of all faiths and traditions" line to try to make it less sectarian, you're still privileging belief over nonbelief. This is, for obvious reasons, Not Okay.

Is it too much to hope that I might see an end to government promotion of religiosity in this country, in my lifetime?

Look, I get the desperation of long drought and bad wildfires. I'm Californian born and raised. As I used to joke with friends from other parts of the country about the difference in seasons from one place to another, "Sure, California has seasons. Fire season and water season." I live in a state in which fireworks are mostly banned because of the regular fire danger during the summer. My family adopted a dog that had come to a rescue organization during the really nasty fire season in SoCal five years ago or so, when she quite literally just came trotting out of the burning areas alone as if her family had left her behind when they evacuated, who couldn't bark properly because of smoke inhalation. So I really, truly do understand the devastation a bad wildfire season and a bad drought can cause to a state. I sympathize with the people of Texas who are having to deal with this right now.

That does not change the fact that declarations urging people to pray for rain are not an appropriate response from a supposedly-secular government in a supposedly-secular country. People who are so inclined will pray for divine intervention in a time of crisis anyway. To use an elected position of power to tell everyone they should be praying and what they should be praying for is deeply inappropriate. Period.

3 Simple Rules for Anti-Choice Politicians

2011-04-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

Since abortion, and laws intruding on women's ability to access it, is a hot topic this year (nearly a thousand bills impacting reproductive health so far this year in all 49 states whose legislatures are in session, 56% of which are restrictions on access in some way), and this has been, is, and will likely continue to be discussed rather vehemently, let's lay some ground rules to be adhered to from here on out, shall we? I'm really goddamn tired of the fallacies that saturate this "debate". So, anti-choice politicians, here are three simple rules to follow when discussing abortion-related legislation:

Rule #1: If it imposes something MANDATORY, it is not to be referred to as "allowing" women to do anything.

[The bill] would require the woman view the fetus and hear a detailed verbal description of it before undergoing the mandatory waiting period. "This bill just allows them to see the child inside of them, so it's not just out of sight, out of mind," said Alabama State Sen. Clay Scofield (R-Albertville).

In this situation, you are not allowing women to see the fetus. You are forcing them to. There is a vast difference there. Please to knock it the fuck off with this disingenuous pose of magnanimity toward those poor, uninformed women.

Rule #2: Unless you are, yourself, every single person whose potential pregnancy will be impacted by the law under discussion, you do not have the authority to declare what is or is not a necessary part of the decision-making process.

"This bill just allows them to see the child inside of them, so it's not just out of sight, out of mind," said Alabama State Sen. Clay Scofield (R-Albertville). "It's critical in their decision-making process."

I didn't need to see an ultrasound to make up my mind, and being forced to see one would only have pissed me off, not changed my mind. Major studies have shown that so-called "informed consent" requirements don't actually affect people's decisions on abortion. We know what we need to make our decisions. We know how to seek out information if we want it. It's no business of legislators to try to decide for people what they need for their decision-making.

Rule #3: Treat pregnancy-capable people like adults, goddamnit. Adults who know what pregnancy is, what it means, how it happens, and what it leads to. This "out of sight, out of mind" and "remind them of their natural relationship with their child" (can't find a citation, but I distinctly remember it; it was recent, and if anyone knows who said this please remind me!) bullshit has got to stop. Pregnancy does not remove one's capacity for reason. I know you actually *do* see pregnant people as walking incubators, but this is desperately inaccurate and obscenely insulting. Fucking stop it. Or at least keep that shit to yourselves. I'm tired of writing about this particular attitude.

There. Simple enough, yes? Now, if y'all anti-choice bastards can just do these couple little things for me, maybe we can make it through the rest of this legislative season without giving me too many headaches, mmkay? Thanks bunches!

Today In Conservative Hypocrisy: But The Children! Edition

2011-04-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

There's a J. Crew ad that's been causing some nontroversy of late - a photo of J. Crew's creative director with her preschool-aged son, whose tiny toenails are painted neon pink:

The text reads "Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon."

Well, the usual suspects have been up in arms over this. She's ruining him! She'll turn him gay! By the feminizing power of pink and nail polish, she's gender-confusing him! Blah blah etc. The gay agenda is at work here, whatever.

And then there's the recent, and growing, pushback from the self-proclaimed morality police against anti-bullying programs that try to teach kids not to beat up gay/trans/perceived-non-gender-conforming kids. Gay agenda! Indoctrination! Brainwashing! Alarmist nonsense!

I also distinctly remember a hue and cry when some same-gender couples in California brought their kids to anti-Prop H8 protests. It was "shameful" that us pervs would "use our children this way". No links, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers it.

So why are the bigots, who are so keen to label participation of young'uns in pro-gay and pro-equality movements as this horrible brainwashing abuse we're perpetuating on the innocent behbehs, okay with things like Peter LaBarbera's Youth Hate Camp? And why has there been no terrible outcry against these fucknuggets, who have filed about 50 lawsuits against various school districts across Ohio, Kentucky, Florida, and other southern states, for banning t-shirts saying things like "God Hates Whores." and "God Hates Muslims Gays.", when they made their daughter wear those shirts to school? That's a couple who is outright using their daughter to push their hateful right-wing agenda by making her wear controversial slogans and face punishment from her school administrators in order to give them cause to start another lawsuit. I eagerly await the disavowal and condemnation from Faux News and One Million Moms, over this shameful example of brainwashing and exploitation of a child for a degenerate cause.

Bueller? Bueller?

...*crickets*

Yeah. That's what I thought.

I Got Your Theocracy Right Here

2011-04-13T20:12:00.000-07:00

or, The Religion Clause Means Nothing To These People.

The Texas textbook dustup last year ended with the Texas Board of Education adopting new textbook standards that emphasize the role of conservative and Christian organizations/people like Phyllis Schlafly and the NRA in American history, stress the superiority of American capitalism, remove Thomas Jefferson as one of the philosophers to study (not Christian enough, y'know; he was replaced with several Christian theologist/philosophers), and require "teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders." Abused by your partner? Take responsibility for your life choices! >.< It was widely seen as conservatives attempting to rewrite history - or, if you listen to their version, "correcting bias." Damn history, all liberal and shit.

One of the things the new standards required, apparently, was emphasis on the phrase "the laws of nature and nature's god" in the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Now take a look at the following clip.

[A panel discussion in a large college classroom; three white men and a white woman sit behind the table at the front of the room. The woman, Cynthia Dunbar, is speaking.] We have a Biblically-illiterate society that does not even know...they're churchgoers only. I call them CHINOs - Christians in name only. [audience laughs] And that's what we have in our society, so that our laws reflect what our underlying worldview is. That's why we were framed as a nation, on the "laws of nature and nature's God." One of the things I required in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills education requirement was that they had to learn certain things from our Declaration of Independence, which by the way, textbooks have a shelf life of 10 years, and this will impact nationally, so for the next ten years, the students have to learn the Declaration of Independence, "self-evident truths," "inalienable rights," and "the laws of nature and nature's God." [break] What are "the laws of nature and nature's God"? Why did Jefferson pick that term, as opposed to "natural law", which was the Enlightenment/French Revolution standard? The "laws of nature" are the will of our Maker. And because of the fallen state of Man, we have to have the laws of nature's God revealed through the Holy Scriptures.

So because we have a "Biblically-illiterate society" full of "Christians in name only", and need "the laws of nature's God revealed through the Holy Scriptures" to combat the "fallen state of Man", Cynthia Dunbar and her compatriots on the Texas State Board of Education felt entitled to rewrite textbook standards to promote their God-centered worldview to every child in the state? What the unholy fuck? And I do mean unholy fuck. What about those who are not even "Christians in name only" but are deliberately and entirely UN-Christian? Do we need the "laws of [the Christian] god" revealed to us through their scripture, too?

Even if their answer is yes - and I'm sure it would be, with that whole "go forth and make disciples of all nations [whether they want to be disciples or not]" thing - while we're studying America's foundational documents, let's fast forward to the Constitution, Amendment 1, of which the first section reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Given that, using an arm of the government - which education systems funded by the taxpayer's money and run by elected officials certainly are - to promote "Biblical literacy", and defining "the laws of nature and nature's God" as taught in school classrooms as "the will of our Maker...revealed to us through the Holy Scriptures," is a pretty fucking blatant violation of the Constitution, wouldn't you say?

And the only way a person so deeply concerned with making sure the children of this country are accurately educated on our history and founding would be able to overlook such an egregious contradiction...would be if zie genuinely desires Christian supremacy and theocracy.

This is why I say the Christian Dominionists here in the US scare me more than the boogeyman of Sharia law. Sharia law is nowhere near becoming reality in this country. But Dominionists like Cynthia Dunbar are here, they are real, and they are already in power. And that is truly scary.

Kansas Anti-Choicers Think Women Are Stupid

2011-04-12T21:47:00.000-07:00

Kansas governor Sam Brownback (R, of course) has signed two anti-abortion bills today. They've got the fetal pain law - it's all the rage this season, spring's hottest legislative accessory - banning abortions past 20 weeks, parental consent - both parents, in fact, so if your mom is okay with it and your dad refuses, you're fucked - changing all references to "fetus" in the state's legal code to ~~"pwecious widdle behbeh"~~ *cough* I mean, "unborn child", and narrating the counseling a doctor must provide a patient seeking an abortion to say "[her abortion will] “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”"

I swear, I almost want to get pregnant and go to Kansas for an abortion, specifically so that when they let that bomb drop, I can do my best Macauley Culkin impression and freak the fuck out, all "Omg I had no idea! You mean it's a human baby? I thought I was going to have a litter of kittens! A human being? Oh, doctor, that changes my mind ENTIRELY! And knowing that magically changes the financial and social circumstances that brought me in here in the first place, of course." And then go to the lawmakers who voted for this shit, and the Governor too, and parade my "OMG I had no idea until you were so considerate and helpful as to inform me that I had a human being inside me!" performance all over the legislative offices. Just to be a pain in the ass and make a spectacle of myself. Call it performance art.

Really, I don't know what else to say that I haven't said a bazillion times before. Women know what being pregnant means, and they know what abortions do. That's *why* they seek them. Termination of pregnancy is a feature, not a bug, in the abortion process. Parental consent laws are fucking bullshit - the vast majority of young women who get pregnant *do* tell their parents, and those who don't generally have damn good reasons not to - not to mention, why is it that if she chose to have the baby, her parents couldn't force her to abort, but if she chooses to abort, her parents can override her and force her to have the baby? Seems a little imbalanced to me. Either the parents have the absolute right to override their progeny's medical decisions and minors must get permission for every medical decision they make - and yes, carrying a pregnancy to term is a medical decision - or they don't. And this changing of wording from "fetus", a medically- and legally-defined term, to "unborn child", just for the warm fuzzies of it, is first of all a stupid waste of time and second of all a fucking creepy attempt at language manipulation. It's like right-wingers use 1984 as a fucking *playbook*.

I was gonna blog about a whole bunch of other stuff today, but life got in the way. But good news! My partner is employed again as of Monday! I'll blog more tomorrow, I promise.

Until then, go fuck yourselves, anti-choicers. And my sympathies to the women of Kansas and every other state in which this retrofuck shit has been proposed and/or passed.