Making the rights of children dependent on their grades, Part 2

Just yesterday I posted about the Senator in Tennessee who wants to make TANF assistance payments to families conditional on how well the children are doing in school.  Today, the Universe saw fit to deliver Round Two of this sort of fuckery to me, in the form of a school in Maryland making religious accommodations for Muslim students conditional on their grades.

Gosh, why didn't anyone ever tell me that the human rights of children - rights to food, shelter, and religious expression - are contingent upon how well they please the almighty public education system?  "Get good grades" is not as simple as it generally sounds, for a variety of reasons ranging from developmental disabilities, different learning styles, difficulties with particular subjects, or simply being the kind of kid whose unconventional personality and academic style is "unacceptable" by the rigid standards of the public school system.  (Show of hands, who here got in trouble, repeatedly, for not showing your work or for using alternate methods to get your answers, because it made more sense to you than the "right" way of doing it - even if you still got the correct answer?  *raises hand*) 

This comes down to ageism and Islamophobia, pure and simple.  Islamophobia because they're certainly not requiring Christian students to get good grades before being allowed to wear a cross or pray before class.  Ageism because I'd love to see a workplace try to make legally-required religious accommodations contingent on your latest performance review.  Just imagine the shitstorm that would kick up! 

For bonus fuckery points, this "accommodation" - and I hesitate to call it that, because can you call a conditional concession that must be earned a real accommodation? - only came about after some Muslim students began praying during the day at school, and teachers got upset and tried to make them stop, telling them "this is a Christian school".

By the way, Parkdale High School is a public school.

At which point the principal stepped in - good for her, I guess?  Really I shouldn't have to feel approval of that course of action, it's the bare minimum requirement of school management, caring for the needs of all one's students equally, but there are plenty who wouldn't have said anything, or would have supported the teachers in their harassment of Muslim students. - and came up with this "compromise".  I just want to ask, why was a compromise necessary?  Why could she not have just told the teachers to STFU and look up the 1st Amendment as pertains to education, and given Muslim students the accommodations they needed without making it conditional? 

Oh.  Right.  Because fuck fairness, when it comes to children, Muslims, or Muslim children.

Quote of the Day

What will religion look like in the year 2060? Conservative Christians will be treated as second class citizens, much like African Americans were prior to civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Family as we know it will be drastically changed with the state taking charge of the children beginning at birth. Marriage will include two, three, four or any number of participants. Marriage will not be important, with individuals moving in and out of a 'family' group at will. Churchbuildings will be little used, with many sold to secular buyers and the money received going to the government. Churches will not be allowed to discuss any political issues, even if it affects the church directly. Tax credit given to churches and non-profit organizations will cease. Christian broadcasting will be declared illegal based on the separation of church and state. The airwaves belong to the government, therefore they cannot be used for any religious purpose. We will have, or have had, a Muslim president. Cities with a name from the Bible such as St. Petersburg, Bethlehem, etc. will be forced to change their name due to separation of church and state. Groups connected to any religious affiliation will be forced out of health care. Health centers get tax money from the state, making it a violation of church and state. Get involved! Sign THE STATEMENT."

- The [White, Straight, Rich, Nuclear, Christian] American Family Association, in an email designed to make privileged asshats very, very afraid indeed.

There is only one possible response to this.

A screen-cap from the old Spiderman cartoon. Spidey is pointing urgently at something off-screen, and two policemen beside him are laughing.  Macro-style text on the image reads "LOOK AT HIM. LOOK AT HIM AND LAUGH."

Microaggressive Naming

[This is dredged up from the drafts folder, so context-dependent time references are no longer correct, but I'm too lazy to fix it.  Sorry for the lack of posting, some personal life shit has been going on and it has fucked me up but good.  Even with meds, I'm only just managing to be mostly functional; blogging is often beyond me, cause it takes too much focus, concentration, interest, and energy.  Well-wishes, good vibes, prayers, etc are welcome for Ozz's and my relationship, and for me personally if you want.  Sorry again and thanks.]

It's bid day today!  I work for a general contractor, and we have not one, but TWO jobs bidding today.  Which means that, since a major part of my job includes handling the incoming faxes and making sure everything gets to the right people, I'm pretty busy today with the dozens and dozens of bids subcontractors are faxing in.  (Not too busy to write irritated posts, though!)  Because in the last batch of faxes, there was this lovely little gem of a company:

The header of an incoming fax from a company named "Shutter-Up Window Coverings", whose logo seems to be two stylistically-drawn people, one in a skirt with hands on hips, the other in pants casually leaning against the skirted figure with an arm draped around her neck.

Now the name itself was irritating enough when I saw it that I intended to post about it already, considering that it basically boils down to a creaky old "joke" about lol women talking amirite?

But the fun part was when, after I'd printed this fax off and given it to John, our lead estimator, I heard him laugh a few minutes later and poke his head into our general manager's office.

"Hey Tracy, did you see this sub bid?  I love the name!"

And Tracy looks at the copy I left on his desk and cracks up, and I overhear them reminiscing about another misogynistically entertainingly-named subcontractor from a few bids ago, "Gutter-Done" (a play on git-r-done).

Yeah, because play-on-word names that reference silencing women and fucking them are soooo hilarious, amirite?  Not like there are any women in your office - or working for those companies, for that matter - who might end up feeling excluded and demeaned by it, by the reminder that when it's convenient, y'all are quite pleased to assert your male privilege and participate in sexism, and even find it funny.  I know I totes feel like a valued and equal person to my coworkers while they're laughing over shutting women up.

(And this is not even mentioning the latest fuckery from yesterday, which I ranted about on tumblr here.)

Willow Smith's Hair: Gender, Race, and White Feminism

Over the holiday weekend, this quote from Will Smith on his daughter Willow's choice of hairstyle flew about the intertubes, making the rounds of the feminisphere on tumblr, twitter, and showing up on a few of the bigger blogs as well:

“We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it’s like how can you teach her that you’re in control of her body? If I teach her that I’m in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she’s going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can’t cut my hair but that’s her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she’s going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives.”

I reblogged it when I saw it, with a comment about "Parenting, ur doin it right," as did most of the other people I saw reblogging it.

But this morning, as I was reading through my daily un-newspaper (the collection of blogs from which I get my news on a daily basis), I found the above-linked post by Renee of Womanist Musings, which addressed the quote in a context that focuses on the racial dynamic at play when you're talking about a young black girl's hair like that.

And I realized, as I read her commentary on the way white feminists picked up and passed around this quote, treating it as a statement on gender equality and encouraging a young girl's sense of bodily sovereignty while ignoring the girl's race and how that intersects to give the statement a totally different meaning and context...that I had done exactly that.  I read that quote and got excited about what it meant in terms of gender only, without taking into account the additional politics of black women's hair and how that was really the bigger issue being addressed here.

So I wanted to A: apologize for my personal intersectionality fail in how I viewed/addressed the issue when I saw it this weekend (though I didn't do it *here*; I will however be cross-posting some version of this to tumblr), and B: signal-boost a great post about the racial+gender politics of it, for those who similarly heard about this but forgot to look beyond our own immediate gendered oppression.

Some Parallels Should Never Be Drawn. Ever.

Presented without comment: a snapshot of my Google Reader this morning, as I was going through catching up on everything I'd missed over the weekend:

[image description: A screenshot of Google Reader's interface, with two items displaying one right after the other, both from the same source blog, their headlines circled in red.  The first item's headline reads "Catholic Church In Sudan Torched By Several Hundred Muslims", and is a story about geopolitical tensions between mostly-Muslim Sudan and mostly-Christian South Sudan resulting in a destroyed church.  The second item's headline reads "National Catholic Prayer Breakfast Speakers Focus On Religious Liberty", and is a story about Catholic speakers at a prayer breakfast "drawing parallels" between violent persecution of Christians in other regions of the world and the recent refusal of various government entities in the U.S. to continue to accommodate and fund religiously-motivated  discrimination by Catholic institutions.]

Dick, Pussy, Cunt, and "Die Cis Scum": Why Some Insults Are More Equal Than Others

I see this issue make the rounds occasionally, on tumblr, on twitter, on feminist blogs, and it bugs the crap out of me.  Usually because it's someone trying to discredit or deflect requests that people not use misogynist insults like "pussy" and "cunt" by saying "well if that's bad then why aren't you asking people to stop using "dick" as an insult, too?!?"  Which is manifest horseshit on several levels.

Firstly, many of the feminists/progressives I know actually *do* frown on all genitalia-related insults.  I know plenty of feminists who don't use pussy, cunt, or dick as insulting terms.  Quite often, the person at whom the "But what about dick?" (henceforth BWAD) argument is being directed falls into this category already, and the person trying to defend their use of misogynist slurs just hasn't bothered to ask before making arguments based on their assumption.  Moral of the story: ask before you base your whole argument on an assumption.

Secondly, context fucking matters.  When the use of insults based on genitalia is taking place in a culture that systematically values maleness and denigrates femaleness, using slurs based on the penis (which our culture associates exclusively with masculinity) does not have the same damaging impact that slurs based on the vulva (which our culture associates exclusively with femininity) do.  Using "dick" as an insult does not contribute to longstanding, systemic oppression of men, because such oppression simply does not exist.  For the same reason that naked dude pictures are not the same as naked lady pictures, "dick" as an insult doesn't do the same kind of cumulative cultural damage that "pussy" and "cunt" do as insults.

Thirdly, are you (where "you" = someone who has asked or is asking BWAD) seriously trying to say that "dick" as an insult is of the same level of severity and carries the same connotation as "pussy" and "cunt"?  Really?  I'm sorry, are you some kind of pandimensional being speaking to me from an alternate universe?  Because that's really the only explanation I can think of for trying to treat all three insults equally.

"Dick" as an insult ranges from mild to moderate intensity depending on the tone of the speaker, and simply means mean or rude, perhaps overly pushy or aggressive.  "Pussy" is also mild to moderate, but has a more specific connotation of cowardice and weakness, and going simply on personal observation, a man will be far more offended/upset if you call him a pussy than if you call him a dick.  Especially considering that masculinity is actually *supposed* to be aggressive and, to a point, abrasive in this culture, "dick" can be the sort of insult that signals you're doing something to be proud of, in a fucked-up sort of way.  "Dick" is still an insult, but it's the sort of insult that leaves one's all-important Masculinity Cred intact.  "Pussy", on the other hand, is deliberately calculated to cut deeper by undermining said Masculinity Cred.

And then, of course, there's "cunt".  One of the Big Bads of the insult dictionary.  Widely acknowledged as the worst thing you can call a woman - or, really, anyone.  One of the very few cuss words that is still unacceptable among most people, even people who regularly pepper their (our, cause I'm totally one of them, in case you couldn't tell) speech with "fuck".  The one you pull out when you really want to make your point that you have an epic amount of disdain and hate for someone - usually a woman.

One of these things is not like the other ones...

[TW: implied/verbal violence against trans* people]

This is actually an old draft that's been kicking around the Unfinished Thoughts black hole for awhile now, until this post on tumblr revived it the other day.  Because it basically expresses the same context-free viewpoint that makes the BWAD argument specious, and I just could not let it go without comment, especially given it dovetailed rather well with an already-mostly-written post.  Behold:

Two identical Venn diagrams stacked on top of each other, with blue and red circles and overlapping purple section.  Text used to read (it doesn't show up against this background, sorry) "If this is okay" over the first diagram, where the circles are labeled "cis" and "scum" and the overlap "cis scum", then "Then so is this" over the second, where the circles are labeled "trans" and "scum" and the overlap is "trans scum"

For those who don't know the "die cis scum" history, it's a phrase that many in the trans community on tumblr have taken to use as a rallying cry/pushback against ciscentric culture that literally kills a whole fucking lot of trans people.  I'm not going to lie, the phrase makes me mildly uncomfortable, but I absolutely understand where it's coming from and am not going to begrudge anyone their anger against a vastly more powerful group that stands a much-higher-than-is-comfortable chance of killing them, because it's not my place to police people's expressions of anger against oppression.  It was said in a moment of frustration and anger, got picked up by a lot of people, and became A Thing, with the inevitable result of a whole lot of cis people having very hurt fee-fees over it.  A backlash developed, with far too many cis people saying that Die Cis Scum makes the trans* people who use it "just as bad" as the cis people who murder and abuse trans* people.  (O rly?  Just as bad?  You have an...interesting morality scale.)  The response from many trans* people has been "It doesn't say "die cis people".  It says "die cis scum".  Are you cis, but not scum?  Then you're safe, now shut up."  Of course, backlashing cis people couldn't let it rest there.  Hence, this graphic.

Apparently, there are a whole lot of people in this world who have never heard of context before.

Following the same logic, and for the same reason, as the argument against comparing "dick" to "pussy" or "cunt" as insults, "die cis scum" and "die trans scum" are not insults that carry the same social weight.  One is an oppressed group basically shouting "fuck you" up at their oppressors, while both groups know full well they don't have the power to do much harm.  The other is the group in power, shouting "fuck you" back down the ladder as they continue to kick the people below them in the face.  They are not equivalent.  They are not equal.  Just because they use the same syntactic structure does not mean they are expressing the same kind of sentiment, because the power differential changes things.

Or, to quote an acquaintance of mine on tumblr: When we say "die cis scum", you have your feelings hurt.  When you say "die trans scum", we literally end up dead.

Not.
The.
Same.

If you're going to lecture me on my lifestyle, you could at least use facts.

There is this image set that makes its way around tumblr every so often, generally being thoroughly debunked (which may not speak to tumblerites as a whole, but simply that I follow some very quality people), comparing the price of a fast-food meal for four people to how many! groceries! you! could! buy! for the same amount.  The prices they cite are unrealistic to the point of ridiculous, and the whole thing has that finger-wagging, paternalistic tone to it, as if poor people are just children who don't understand how to food and need to be taught so they can Make Proper Choices.  So it annoys the crap out of me every time it goes around, but I usually just reblog it with ranting of my own appended and let it go.  But this time, I saw the whole set go by - I'd only ever seen one or sometimes two of the fast-food meal ones before.  The whole series, I discovered, also includes shamey comparisons between types of grocery-store food, frozen/processed versus fresh ingredients, produce, and meat.  And that pushed me over the edge.  It's not enough that they misrepresent fast food eating on a budget (because no, nobody buys the fucking whopper meals when you're eating cheap, okay?  You buy four burgers off the dollar menu.  Or you go to Taco Hell and get a dozen tacos for $10.  When the point is to eat cheap, you eat fucking cheap, not the overpriced meals.), vastly underprice a basket of groceries, and say SEE YOU SHOULD DO THIS INSTEAD.  Now, even if you're shopping at the grocery store instead of getting fast food, you will still be judged, this time on exactly *what* you're getting!

So I decided on a whim to see what their grocery lists would actually cost if I tried to live by them.  I wrote down what all was on these lists, and today I went to the store and pretend-shopped for all of it.

For context:  I live in a smallish town on the outskirts of the Bay Area, California.  This is widely (and correctly) regarded as a really fucking expensive place to live.  The particular town I live in is a middle-to-upper-middle-class old-white-people town that sits cheek-to-jowl beside one of the poorest primarily-PoC towns in the area.  I don't shop at expensive grocery stores, however.  This is not Whole Foods or something.  I do my grocery shopping at Raley's, which is a midrange grocery chain common in this region.  (I might have done this experiment at the Safeway that's also nearby, as Safeway is generally considered to be the more bargain grocery store, but I have found over time that I spend about the same at both for the same amount of food, and often actually save better at Raley's, so.  Also I know the Raley's better and it would have taken me much longer to do this at Safeway.  What?  My time is valuable, y'all.)  So we are looking at prices at a mid-range grocery store in a middle-class area of a region that has a very high cost of living.  These grocery lists may actually cost closer to what the graphics quote them at in other regions - they feel less inaccurate to me when I consider what that would have cost when I was living and buying groceries in Tennessee, although I still think they're vastly underpricing the meat and produce.

With all that said, here are the comparisons; in the lists, their price is listed first, with my price following in parentheses; when my price includes a range, it encompasses the cheapest store-brand price or sale price, up to the brand name or non-sale price:

Image 1: Four Burger King Whopper meals ($21.76) versus this grocery list:

• 1 box Morningstar Farms meatless burgers, $2.98 ($5.29)
• 1 lb 96% lean ground beef, $2.98 ($5.49)
• 16 oz cashews, $4.18 ($7.99-11.96)
• 1 lb strawberries, $1.67 ($2.50-4.99)
• 10 lbs potatoes, $2.97 ($5)
• 1 gallon 100% orange juice, $3.26 ($3.88)
• 1 lb bag frozen vegetables mix, $0.98 ($2.00)
• 1 bunch broccoli, $1.58 ($1.99)
• 1 lb bag dry pinto beans, $1.08 ($1.69)

Their total, $21.68.  My total, $37.83-42.29.  Literally as much as two times as much as they're claiming!  It's not a perfect one-to-one comparison: my grocery store doesn't carry Morningstar, so I used the price for an equivalent box of Gardenburgers; the highest lean percentage beef they had was 93%, not 96%; and there were no 16-oz jars of cashews - my price range reflects, at the low end, a 16-oz bag of almonds (which tend to be cheaper than cashews, judging by equivalent packages of the two at other sizes), and at the high end, 2 8-oz jars of store-brand cashews.  Strawberries were on sale today, 2 for $5, but are normally $5 per one-pound package.

Image 2: A large pepperoni pizza from Domino's with an order of breadsticks ($19.98) versus this grocery list:

• 1.25 lbs sweet Italian turkey sausage, $3.82 ($5.49)
• 1 lb frozen tilapia filets, $3.98 ($4.99)
• 1 lb 93% lean ground turkey, $1.98 ($3.98-5.49)
• 1 16-oz jar Smucker's Natural Peanut Butter, $2.38 ($3.89)
• 1 box (40 bags) green tea, $2.58 ($3.79)
• 1 lb bag dry lentils, $0.94 ($1.59)
• 1 box Kashi Heart to Heart crackers, $2.98 ($2.99-3.79)

Their total, $18.66.  My total, $26.72-29.03.  Not as dramatic as the first one, but still definitely not in the under-$20 range.  My store didn't have frozen tilapia filets, so I substituted a 10-oz bag of frozen flounder, which was the cheapest of the frozen fish filets.  The Kashi crackers were on sale this week.

Image 3: An 8-piece KFC fried chicken meal bucket, with four biscuits and two sides ($19.61) versus this grocery list:

• 2 lbs chicken breasts (fresh, not frozen), $1.96 ($6.49-9)
• 10 lbs potatoes, $2.97 ($5)
• 8 ears of corn, $2.00 ($4-12)
• 1 lb of peaches, $0.98 ($2.99)
• 1 gallon skim milk, $2.00 ($2.79-3.29)
• 1 lb 96% lean ground beef, $2.98 ($5.49)
• 32 oz tub Yoplait fat-free yogurt, $2.27 ($3.59)
• 18 oz rolled oats, $1.18 ($1.98)
• 2 lbs frozen sweet peas, $1.98 ($5)
• 1 lb dry kidney beans, $1.22 ($1.99)

Their total, $19.54.  My total, $40.92-47.82.  More than twice as much, this time.  There are a few interesting disparities in this list, too.  The chicken breasts at my grocery store were available either in 1-lb packages for $6.49 per pound (ouch), or in a "family size" package for $1.88 per pound, but with a total price ranging from $8-10.  The corn was even worse, because the options were prepackaged four-ear-packs for $6 per pack, or the pick-and-choose selection, which was only $0.99 (per pound or per ear, it wasn't clear), but which was really gross-looking and meager (I'm not even sure there were eight ears available, total, and most of them were off-color and had chunks of corn missing from them) because it's very much not in season.

Image 4: A box of TGI Friday's jalapeno poppers and a bag of breaded cheese sticks ($10.76), versus the following grocery list:

• 1 box Morningstar meatless burgers, $2.98 ($5.29)
• 1 lb dry pinto beans, $1.08 ($1.69)
• 1 lb dry kidney beans, $1.22 ($1.99)
• 1 lb brown rice, $0.72 ($1.35
• 2 cans Hunt's no-salt diced tomatoes, $1.84 ($3.90)
• 18 oz jar Jif Natural Peanut Butter, $2.18 ($3.89)
• 4 ears of corn, $1 ($2-6)

Their total, $11.02.  My total, $20.11-24.11.  I also discovered that their price estimate for the two frozen food items was about a dollar higher than I'd have paid for those same things here.  Which is...interesting, given that everything else has been more expensive for me than their graphics claim.

Image 5: A box of Delimex frozen chicken taquitos ($6.87), versus the following grocery list:

• 1 loaf Brownberry (Oroweat) 100% whole wheat bread, $2.50 ($3-4.99)
• 1 lb chicken breasts, $0.98 ($6.49)
• 1 lb baby carrots, $1.44 ($1.58)
• 1 lb bananas, $0.47 ($0.68)
• 4 ears of corn, $1 ($2-6)

Their price, $6.39.  My price, $19.74.  I substituted Oroweat bread for Brownberry, because I recognized the packaging as it's the brand I normally buy; Brownberry must be the brand name in another region (why do companies do that, anyway? Dreyer's ice cream here has another name I've forgotten out in TN, Carls Jr. is Hardee's.  I've never understood why).  It's definitely not the budget bread, anyway - it's usually $5 a loaf, but you can catch it on sale for $3 or sometimes 2-for-$5.  Again, I found that their price for the "bad" food was actually higher than what I found; at my grocery store, Delimex brand taquitos were only $4.99, and the off-brand was $3.99.

Image 6:  A bag of Ore-Ida brand "golden crinkle" frozen french fries ($5.44), versus the following grocery list:

• 1 lb frozen mixed vegetables, $0.98 ($2)
• 10 lbs potatoes, $2.97 ($5)
• 1 lb bananas, $0.47 ($0.68)
• 1 box whole-wheat spaghetti, $0.88 ($1.69)

Their price, $5.30.  My price, $9.37.  Again, their price for the "bad" food was higher than what I found; I could buy a bag of Ore-Ida fries, same size as the one pictured, for only $3.50.

Image 7:  A 1-lb bag of Twizzlers ($1.68) versus a 6-oz bag of dried cranberries ($1.68).  I found the Twizzlers for $2.69, and the dried cranberries were either $2.59 for a 5-oz package of Ocean Spray, or $2.87 for a 6-oz bag of store-brand.  So they were still pretty close to equivalent, although I'll point out that you're getting less than half the total amount of product for the same price if you go with the "healthy" equivalent (which speaks to the sad state of food politics in this country), so if you're looking to get a tasty snack that will last you the whole week without running out, fuck it, Twizzlers it is.

Conclusion:  Their price comparisons may be accurate, if you are shopping at Walmart for all your groceries (Great Value is Walmart's store brand), and if all produce is magically always in season, and if you live in a region where the cost of living is this low.  But when you have to tack that many conditions on to make your admonition, which is addressed to the general public without any of these qualifiers, halfway believable, maybe you shouldn't be trying to generalize quite that far.

This is especially true when you're making a comparison between the price of fast food, which remains relatively constant across regions (those prices for BK and KFC ring pretty true to what I'd be paying if I bought the same stuff - maybe a few dollars cheaper, but not much), to the price of grocery store food, which is much more variable.  Under one particular set of circumstances, buying the listed groceries might actually be cheaper than buying the listed fast food meals.  But what about everyone else?  And it's in especially poor taste to chirp "No excuses!" when you put these images on your blog, without taking into account the variation in human circumstance that may make this completely implausible for a huge chunk of your audience.

And then there are all the other criticisms to be made of this approach...

1:  There are no cooking necessities included in these lists.  Not at all.  No butter, no oils, no spices, no vinegars, no cornstarch or dressings or heavy cream or flour or any of the things people use to make raw food taste *good* when it's done cooking.  Even if someone does shop off these lists, unless your kitchen is pre-stocked with accessories (which are fucking expensive to get started with, those little bottles of spices are at least $5 a pop, which adds up fast when you want a basic variety of things like garlic powder, onion powder, italian seasoning, thyme, rosemary, seasoned salt, etc.), anything you make from these ingredients is going to taste like shit because you had no way of adding flavor to them or enhancing their natural flavor.

2:  Can we talk about how much more time and effort is involved in cooking?  Especially when you're talking about things like dry beans and lentils and raw whole potatoes!  Beans and lentils have to be soaked, often overnight, and then cooked for hours on end to make them soft enough to eat.  Potatoes have to be washed, peeled, cut up, boiled, and then mashed (for mashed potatoes), washed and cut up and coated with spices and oil and roasted (for roasted, and the kind of bulk potatoes you can get cheaply don't really turn out well that way), or put in the oven for like a fucking hour to make baked potatoes.  Take those frozen crinkle fries, for example - they are the same price or less than a big-ass bag of potatoes, and you can pop them in the oven for fifteen minutes and have hot food ready to eat, where raw potatoes will take you *at least* half an hour to render suitable for consumption - and that's half an hour of actively working on them, peeling and cutting and such, while the fries you can just spread on a cookie sheet and pop in the oven to bake while you work on making your main dish.  If you are a person with a busy life - like, say, someone who works multiple jobs or has children to care for or both, and who would be the kind of person who would need to shop most cheaply in the first place - time and effort are major factors in what kinds of food are viable for you.  Sometimes you just need to throw food at your family and fall into bed, which is a situation which does not lend itself to peeling potatoes and soaking beans and cutting up chicken (and then doing all the resulting dishes, which I've always found to be the more time-consuming, exhausting, and annoying part of "real" cooking).

3:  Produce goes bad quickly.  If you use a lot of produce in your cooking, you will need to go to the store several times a week to get fresh stuff.  If you work multiple jobs, or have to take public transit to go shopping, for example, that would be a gigantic pain in the ass and frankly not worth it when combined with the amount of extra effort raw ingredients require before being able to eat.

4:  I want to know on what planet the maker of these graphics is buying their meat.  Because I have NEVER, not even on the best sales in the cheapest area I've ever lived, seen fresh chicken breasts for under a dollar a pound.  Thighs, maybe.  Not breasts.

5:  What about people with food aversions?  Either for sensory reasons (many autistic people, for example, have strong sensory aversions to certain foods, to the point where trying to eat or even handle them will make them throw up) or simply because a certain food tastes gross to you.  Bananas make several appearances here, because they're reliably the cheapest fruit you can get, and they're reasonably good for you.  However, I hate bananas with a flaming passion.  I bought some this week, actually, because Ozz has been having muscle cramps and bananas are high in potassium, which helps with that.  I forced myself to eat one on the logic that I could probably use the vitamins too, and the other three of the bunch of four are turning brown on my counter as I type this, because neither of us likes them.  Peppers and onions often appear on "healthy on a budget" types of grocery/meal lists, because they're very flavorful and can be used to impart that flavor into a wide variety of dishes.  Problem being, I can't eat anything that's got peppers in it, because the taste disgusts me so badly.  I would never buy baby carrots or nuts if I were trying to stock my mom's house with snacks, because she's allergic.

People are different, is what I'm trying to say here, and many "cheap and healthy" foods are not an option for a lot of people.  Finger-wagging graphics pitting "good" food choices versus "bad" food choices are ridiculous for about eight billion reasons, but they all pretty much begin and end with "You have completely failed to take into account the lived realities of people who are not you."

Of course, this is not something the makers of these graphics want to consider, because having to consider the actual facts would mean that there is no pithy oversimplification that looks good on a poster that they can use to shame people into doing what they think is Right and Good.  And where would the diet/food-policing industry be without their pithy oversimplifications?*

*In the dust bin of history where they belong, that's where, and good riddance.

Fat Acceptance Is Not A "Passive" Act

Last week, Jen of Fat And Not Afraid linked to a post by a friend of hers, The Rogue Priest, about Fat Acceptance (FA), in which he voiced a couple of "concerns" about the merits of FA:

There are two concerns I have with the idea of fat acceptance:

• There are health problems associated with obesity. Some are exaggerated or imagined and advertisers definitely hit the button too hard, but I question whether people should be told to accept a higher-risk health condition.
• I tend to favor self-development. There is a type of happiness to be found in accepting circumstance, but also a type of happiness in overcoming adversity or personal obstacles and achieving something hard.

The first is the usual "fat is unhealthy therefore you're encouraging people to be unhealthy" BS, which commenters pretty thoroughly debunked, along with the notion that FA is "telling people to accept" anything, rather than presenting fat people with the novel idea that there is another choice outside of self-hate and celery sticks.  The second concern he voiced is less usual, and actually bothered me more, as a person who is deeply into self-development and who has also actually done the self-development work that FA requires of a person.  So I hopped over to leave a comment, basically summing up my own struggle with FA and how I count my increased self-acceptance and self-love and the stronger mental state that followed from that to be a big accomplishment from a personal development point of view.

To which he replied:

 [...] 

To me, having lived both of them, I do consider the proactive, demand-a-change, self development approach to be a very different kind of thing than the acceptance, self-love, take-me-as-I-am approach.

...way to completely sidestep addressing the point I just made, in favor of reiterating the point I was just debunking, but okay.  Let's take this point-by-point.

Look, here's the thing.  People don't just fall into FA, you know.  It is very much "proactive".  It requires dedicated work on rummaging through your preconceptions and your self-talk scripts and all kinds of internalized bullshit, to find it all and slowly, gently, without damaging yourself through further self-hate (OMG how could you have thought this for so long, STOP IT RIGHT NOW is not exactly the most productive way when the goal is long-term improvement of one's self-esteem), root it all out and replace it with healthier, more evidence- and reality-based conceptions of body size, weight, health, worth, and the relationship between those things.  (The short answer is, body size and weight are *sort of* connected, although not directly - some people pack a higher poundage into smaller space, simply by virtue of their build, and some people weigh less but take up more space, because of how they're built.  Health and worth?  Not even remotely connected, neither to each other nor to body size and weight.  Healthy fat people exist, as do unhealthy thin people, and all of us are worthy of dignity and respect because we are all people, the end.) Not to mention that because the anti-fat position is so vastly overrepresented in the media and culture, most people have never really been exposed to FA, so you have to search out blogs and books and people to talk to - again, very much a proactive thing.

So that takes care of the "proactive" assertion.  Next: you want to talk about demanding a change?  What do you think FA is and does?  As several other people pointed out in the comments there, FA as a movement is half self-acceptance and self-love, and half political/social activism to make it so that fat people don't NEED to undertake epic journeys of deprogramming and reprogramming their brains in order to stop the shame and self-hate!  We got Disney World to close its fat-shaming "exhibit" aimed at kids.  We raised over twenty thousand dollars to buy billboards countering the fat-shaming of children in Georgia.  Just because we're not demanding an unreasonable and unlikely physical change out of our bodies, and are instead demanding a change in how the world treats our bodies at the size they are, doesn't make it any less "demand-a-change".  

Lastly, given that my comment was explicitly describing how my journey from self-hate and disordered eating through to a fairly stable self-acceptance and HAES approach has been a massive accomplishment for my self-development, I find the contrasting of weight loss as a "self development approach" versus FA as a "take-me-as-I-am" approach to be deeply fucking insulting.  Look, bro, unfucking one's deeply dysfunctional culturally-ingrained mental patterns of internalized bigotry IS FUCKING SELF DEVELOPMENT, OKAY?  I consciously and deliberately sought out my mental patterns and slowly, painstakingly rewrote them to help me be a better person - stronger, happier, more fully myself in the world.  If that's not self development, I don't know what is.  Maybe you're working from a definition of self-development that reads "changing your external presentation to the world to increase public perception of your worth", but that is definitely not in the same realm as my definition, which reads roughly "consciously interacting with one's whole Self, mind/spirit/body/etc, in order to make deliberate changes that will make you happier, stronger, and healthier in every sense of the word"*, and I'm not inclined to grant that other definition any legitimacy as a valid meaning of "self development".

I cannot say enough how not-okay I am with this implicit framing of weight-loss as "active" self-development, versus FA as a "passive" approach.  It may have "acceptance" in the title, which is usually conceived as a fairly passive thing to do - accepting what you can't change, and all that.  But when what you're working on "accepting" is a trait inherent to your body, which is vehemently and violently reviled by the entire culture in which you live, "acceptance" is no passive, easy thing.  It requires work - a lot of it, and over a long period of time.  It requires struggle, as you chip away at internalized negativity you didn't even know was there - only to have the same issue pop up in slightly different clothing again a few weeks later, leaving you frustrated and angry because oh my god didn't I already work through this part how am I here again?  It requires strength - the kind of quiet, subtle strength that our culture never really talks about, because it's much more fun and dramatic to talk about and depict displays of overt, aggressive strength, but strength nonetheless.  It requires determination and persistence and consistency, especially during the awful, long slog through "well it's fine for other people to be fat but I still need to lose X lbs" territory - I'm pretty sure we all get stuck there for awhile, and the cognitive dissonance is nasty and yet still so hard to shake!  And above all, it requires courage, so much courage.  Because what you are doing, when you make the switch from a diet-and-thinness mentality to a FA mentality, is nothing less than flipping the finger to several very large, very loud, very well-funded and well-supported industries, which have conspired to build around you an entire culture which bombards you with repeated, painful, dangerous messages about your body and your worth as a human being.  You are explicitly rejecting the dominant narrative, openly refusing to participate in a game that 99% of the people around you are throwing themselves into playing.  Hell, in some ways, continuing to diet or attempt weight loss in some other way might actually be easier: less challenging, less personally-developing, because it allows you to go with the flow and it pretty much guarantees that everyone around you will support and encourage you in your efforts, while FA requires you to buck the trend and risk social backlash for it.

So don't ever, ever tell me that FA is some kind of passive deal, less of a worthy challenge than weight loss.

Maybe I should cut the guy some slack - after all, in other parts of the thread and with reference to the whole fat=unhealthy thing, he actually did seem interested in learning more about what FA actually is, as opposed to clinging to his preconceptions.  But at the same time, even ascribing the best of intent to his comments, the most charitable conclusion I can draw is that he has no fucking idea what the hell he's talking about when it comes to this shit, and should really, really, really just step back and listen and read and learn before trying to pass judgment on us again.

*I've never really tried to define my approach to personal development before; that was both harder and easier than I thought it'd be.

Final Words on PantheaCon 2012

As the fire dies down to ashes around the PantheaCon 2012 trans-exclusionary ritual by Z. Budapest, I want to leave one last post here - this one, to highlight some of the best voices I've seen raising some really excellent points about just how wrong Budapest and her apologists are, and why.

Firstly, blogfriend and regular commenter here, Sonneillon, wrote a fantastic post about some more of the common apologia for trans-exclusionary rituals, and this particular paragraph, addressing certain people's claims that to draw attention to such things is "politicizing" a religious practice, leapt out at me.

What struck me the most about Gus's piece was his assertion that he thinks Trans* rights are political, and therefore have no place in religious discussion. As if religion is not political. As if the personal is not political, and the political is not personal. This speaks to an ignorance of the root of these issues that is so astounding I'm not even sure where to begin fighting it. If Gus, and others like him, do not accept that Paganism can and should wrestle with such issues as trans* acceptance, then Gus and others like him do not think we can and should be a community. Any community, politicized or not, has to wrestle with those issues, because trans* people are people and they exist in our communities. To imply otherwise is the height of naivety. It's the height of privilege, much like "I can't be a homophobe because I have gay friends!" which also shows up in that essay. It means that you think trans* people are too minor and too invisible to be part of a greater dialogue.

(Emphasis mine.)  Yes.  A hundred times yes.  Issues of identity cannot be confined to neat little boxes marked "politics" that have no intersection or interaction with the other facets of life and community, because identities are borne by people, and people make up communities, therefore the politics of various identites are present because people who live those identities are present.

Secondly, longtime Twitter (and now Tumblr) acquaintance Katie, a trans pagan woman who has written a fair amount about the PantheaCon fail, addressed the "well then trans people should just have their own exclusive spaces, so it will all balance out" fallacy so many apologists have trotted out.

To me, “trans only” spaces feel hurtful - they feel like being exiled to a leper colony. I need space to unpack my transness and let my transness be sacred - but I need that sacredness - need - to be firmly within the context of my womanhood. The first grows off the second - I cannot be trans without being a woman.

And thirdly, paganism and sexuality blogger who I deeply admire, Meliad the Birch Maiden, on how misogyny and oppression of women is not actually about vaginas, so we really don't need to be defining womanhood by that particular organ:

As a cis woman who knows that my reproductive system and the primary and secondary sexual characteristics[1] are used as justification for trampling my human rights in every single arena from legislature to the bus stop, from the school system to my own damn marriage bed, and punishing the audacity of my existence with every conceivable form of violence from micro-agressions to murder. (Stay with me here folks, I’m getting to it); as a cis woman in the context of a seriously woman-hating culture… yes, I absolutely found the treatment of cis-female biological functions like menstruation as Good and Powerful to be a really big, really wonderful deal. 

The thing is… trans women? They get exactly the same bullshit[3], exactly the same trampling of their human rights, exactly the same systemic violence from micro-agressions to murder as cis women do, but in their case, it’s justified because of their lack of a bleeding, baby-growing, factory-direct vagina + reproductive-system. 

So. Big reveal here: It’s not about vaginas.

Whether the assholes are assuming we have them, or assuming we don’t, we’re all systemically hurt, disempowered, and generally down-trodden by a culture that says, at every possible volume, in every possible way, that Girls Suck.

(The endnote [3] does reference a comment about how oppression of trans women is not *exactly* the same as the oppression of cis women because intersectionality, lest anyone think she was erasing that distinction; I read it as meaning how, specifically with reference to misogyny, we get shat on in the same way.)

So there it is.  Thank you to those who have read, those who have commented, and all those who have stood on the right side of things in this issue.  And I will leave this issue for the time being with the wish that, unlikely as it might be, we come out of this round with actual substantive change in our community, instead of a shiny anthology and nonpologies.

On PantheaCon and "Respectful Dialogue"

[Continued TW for transmisogyny, misgendering, genital-essentialism, and for the love of all the gods do not read the comments anywhere without a stiff drink handy.  Possibly also some tranquilizers.]

I wrote a post about the genital-essentialist Dianic Wiccan elder Z. Budapest's "for genetic women only" ritual at PantheaCon 2012 last week, which was apparently one of the first-off-the-mark posts about the incident.  In following the other posts and commentaries that have run like wildfire through the pagan blogosphere in the week following, I have encountered again and again and again calls for "calm/peaceful/respectful dialogue", asking us all to treat this as a teachable moment, a learning experience, asking us to "work from love" and seek healing for our community.

The problem with that is that we are responding to an act of emotional violence - that it is psychic and verbal violence, rather than physical, does not change the violent nature of the act - that was in no way calm, respectful, peaceful, from love, or seeking healing.  (Calling trans women "transies" and describing them as "men who just won't respect women's boundaries" is pretty much the fucking definition of not-respectful.)

So why is it incumbent upon trans women and their allies to "work from love" and "engage in respectful dialogue" to "bring healing to our community"?  Why is it unacceptable to be visibly, openly angry at this bigotry on display from one of our community elders?  To quote from one of my favorite writers: "When someone engages in divisive behavior, any resulting division is that person's responsibility."  Z. Budapest engaged - repeatedly! - in the divisive behavior of excluding and misgendering trans women, an act which causes explicit mental, emotional, and spiritual harm*.  Any resulting division in the community, then, is her responsibility (and to a lesser degree, her supporters').

So why is there so much tone-policing going on in the form of these calls for "respectful dialogue"?

I am not a Wiccan, and so I do not adhere strictly to their notions of dualistic balance in things.  But I do feel that this is a situation that is terribly imbalanced.  Anger is a valid response, too, just as valid as any calm, reasoned, respectful choice to engage in dialogue, and yet it is being rejected as "making things worse", in favor of framing respectful dialogue as the One And Only True Way to make any progress on this issue.  To add one's voice to the repressive drumbeat of CALM RESPECTFUL DIALOGUE ONLY is to visit a second harm on those who have already been harmed - to add insult to injury, as it were - by saying, in essence, "You are not allowed to be angry at this violation of your right to feel safe in this community.  You are not allowed to be angry at the bigotry and hateful rhetoric this person and her supporters have used to exclude you.  If you want to participate in the conversation, you must choke down your anger, swallow the hurt, and gently, quietly, politely reply, educate, and dialogue with someone who has no interest in being educated or entering in mutually-respectful dialogue with you."

Because here's the thing: quietness and respect are not synonymous.  Z. Budapest may not have raised her voice when she read her statement to those who sat in silent witness on behalf of those excluded at this year's ritual, but that does not make her words respectful.  She may not have screamed in the face of a trans woman "YOU'RE A MAN AND I HATE YOU", when she posted her little transphobic screed in response to the uproar last year, but there was no respect in what she said.  So why, why on Earth are we expected to respond with respectful dialogue and education to someone who has shown no interest in reciprocating?

In particular, in going back through links to the various pieces I've read in preparation for hitting publish on this post, The Wild Hunt's continuing declaration of being "a place where all voices can be heard" struck me.    I respect that, as a large pan-pagan news blog, there's a natural desire to both be and appear neutral on contentious issues like this one.  But the problem with being "a place where all voices can be heard" is that, to be quite blunt, not all voices deserve to be heard.  When some voices are spreading misinformation and causing harm, they don't need to be heard.  To use a worn-out old example, if someone stomps on your foot, and you want to say "Ow that fucking hurt," does a counterpoint "No, it didn't!" really need to be heard, honored, and respected?

Productive dialogue is not always possible in every situation.  And indeed, it is a manifestation of privilege to insist that it should be.  As Sonneillion said on last week's post, we have HAD dialogue.  Tons of it.  Oodles of it.  An entire anthology, "Gender and Transgender in Modern Paganism".  A conference.  And this still happened again.  We are still having the same damn conversation, the same "dialogue" all over again.  It hasn't worked.  What's that saying, about doing the same thing over again and expecting different results?

Respectful dialogue is not possible, will not be possible, until those who have caused this divisiveness in our community, and those who have supported and defended them in doing so, are willing to back down and listen, which they have shown no signs of.

Respect is earned.  Dialogue is not an obligation on the part of the oppressed.  If the pagan community wants respectful dialogue, hold the oppressors accountable to that standard first.


*I have spent the past week and a half watching an acquaintance of mine (you know, that awkward grey space where you're mutual followers on Twitter and Tumblr and have spoken briefly about inconsequential things but never really interacted more directly, even though you actually like the person and think you might be able to be friends), a pagan trans woman, hurting over this.  I have watched her speak on her blog about how psychically hurt and emotionally weary she is, and how much harm this exclusionary bullshit has done to her, while my heart has ached in sympathy for her pain.  So anyone who wants to argue that this kind of public misgendering and hateful statements isn't *really* harmful, or isn't *really* violence, can GTFO.

I hear that shoe pinches, when you put it on the other foot.

Or, that awkward moment when a member of a social group which doesn't give a shit who feels marginalized or excluded when they insist their beliefs be observed everywhere, suddenly finds himself feeling marginalized by having to make room for someone else's beliefs.

Via a friend of mine on tumblr, I found this story about a Christian high school student who's Very Upset Indeed that, as part of a multicultural music concert, the school choir is singing a song penned by a Muslim composer that includes the phrase "There is no truth but Allah".

It's not like it's the only song in the concert lineup that references religion, mind you.  They're also singing, for example, a Christian song called "Prayer of the Children", which has lines like "Jesus, help me to see the morning light of one more day".  Nor is the student's participation required; it's an after-school activity for no academic credit, so participating in the concert or not isn't going to affect his grades or anything.  But he was still so upset at the inclusion of a Muslim song in the program that he quit in protest.

His quote to the local news is entertainingly honest:

This is worshipping another God, and even worshipping another prophet … I think there would be a lot of outrage if we made a Muslim choir say Jesus Christ is the only truth.

Except that you're not attending a Christian school, dude.  I looked up the high school in question, and it's a county-run public high school.  So this is nowhere near analogous to "making a Muslim choir say Jesus Christ is the only truth".  The fact that you're comparing it to that is a manifestation of your religious privilege, which makes you assume that everything in the world around you is de facto Christian until specified otherwise.  Not to damage your delicate worldview or anything, but it's not.  The school choir at a public school is not a Christian choir, even if some, many, or even all of its members are Christians.  That's sort of how public school works in this country.

I can't help but compare this self-righteous jackass to the recent situation with Jessica Ahlquist, the atheist teen who went to court to have her high school remove their giant "school prayer" banner, and who received rape and death threats, people threatening her family, and her fellow students threatening to jump her at school, for her trouble.  These threats all came from "Christians" who were so angry that she wasn't okay with having a Christian prayer in her face all day at school that they felt it was okay to threaten personal violence.  And yet the moment they have to make room for someone else's beliefs to take a tiny sliver of the spotlight, they want to whine and cry exclusion and quit the club in protest.

Really, people?  Really?

If you want religious content in school settings, then you need to be prepared for more religious content than just your own.  And if you're not okay with that, then maybe you all owe a fucking HUGE apology to Ms. Ahlquist and her family for subjecting her to such hate over doing the same thing you're supporting this boy in doing.

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

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

Better To Desecrate It Than Remove It?

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."

"Just"...Stop.

"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.

More Race-Based Antichoice Propaganda

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.

Damn Indigenous People, Wanting Their Stuff Back!

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? 

A Tale of Two Conversations

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*

Stubborn Privilege and Trigger Warnings: The SexGenderBody Fiasco

[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.