The Religious Reich: Without Lies, What Would They Be?

...Just a whole bunch of silence and trousers, that's what.* Via Right Wing Watch (what would I do without you?), comes a clip of some right-wing assholes talking about their strategy for getting SCOTUS to reinstate Prop H8.  In essence, their belief is that if they just bring enough public opinion to bear on their side, the justices will capitulate to the tyranny will of the people.  But really, the best bit is right at the beginning:

The Supreme Court has not, ever, handed down a decision which flew into the face and teeth of a strong moral consensus against it.

Wow, really?  So Brown v Board of Education was totally uncontroversial, with massive public moral consensus on its side, and the National Guard was called in to escort the black students into newly-desegregated schools as an honor guard!  Also, Roe v Wade was and has always been supported by a strong moral consensus, which is why certain segments keep on attacking it and trying to have it overturned.  Oh, and Loving v Virginia was a total no-brainer, despite more than 40 states having anti-miscegenation laws on the books at the time.  No moral consensus against interracial marriage there!  


I mean, really.  This is one of the stupider boldfaced lies I've seen come from the Religious Wrong.  Someone please do correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, the function of SCOTUS is to scrutinize contested laws through a Constitutional lens and decide if the law in question is permissible under the Constitution, yes?  Not to have a popularity contest and say "Well, most people feel strongly against this, so we'll have to rule against it."  The popularity-contest part is the voting which enacts the law; SCOTUS is supposed to stand independent of public opinion and decide pure questions of the Constitutionality of the laws.  Sure, there's a "moral consensus" against same-gender marriage, although it's not such a strong one as they'd like to claim, and its hold has been diminishing considerably with the passage of time.  And with that moral consensus, they won the popularity contest that is voting, and enacted their law.  That part has already been decided.  The question now is not whether it's popular or in step with a "moral consensus", but whether it abides by the strictures of the Constitution.  Which Judge Walker held it did not, and which is the question the 9th Circuit Court and, eventually, SCOTUS will be deciding on, not whether or not there's a "moral consensus" about the issue.


No wonder they're getting all the wrong answers here.  They're asking the wrong questions.



*Gamer joke; from a Zero Punctuation review for Dragon Age in which Yahtzee asked, "What would a Bioware RPG be without text?  Just a whole bunch of silence and trousers, that's what."

To Correct Some Misapprehensions The Right-Wing Seems To Be Laboring Under

PROP H8 HAS BEEN OVERTURNED IN FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT!  

Judge Walker issued a 136-page ruling (available here) declaring that Prop H8 was a violation, separately, of BOTH the due process AND equal protection clauses of the federal Constitution, AND that the claims of the anti-equality side couldn't even stand up to the "rational basis" standard of review, which is the least stringent standard!  Additionally, he set forth a wonderful list of "findings of fact" tearing apart the secular arguments against marriage equality ("findings of fact" in a case are given very heavy weight in appeals to a higher court, while "findings of law" are basically tossed and redone from scratch on appeal, so these findings are a lasting gift to our side).  This is an absolute, unqualified win for the forces of equality in this state and the country.  No word yet (that I've heard) as to whether or not Walker will issue a stay pending appeal, as requested by the anti-equality side.  [EDIT: Walker has issued a temporary stay pending hearings on a longer-term stay]  So far, it seems that Prop H8 has been overturned entirely.  Next step is the 9th Circuit, then after that, SCOTUS.*

It's been highly entertaining, if a bit predictable, watching wingnut heads explode over the decision.  I've been following the coverage on Right Wing Watch (available here; refresh for updates as they come available) and it is every bit as over-the-top and panicky and filled with hateful bile as you might expect.  Some select quotes:

Focus on [Your Own Damn] Family:

Judge Walker’s ruling raises a shocking notion that a single federal judge can nullify the votes of more than 7 million California voters, binding Supreme Court precedent, and several millennia-worth of evidence that children need both a mom and a dad.

Concerned [Self-Hating] Women for America:

Judge Walker’s decision goes far beyond homosexual ‘marriage’ to strike at the heart of our representative democracy. Judge Walker has declared, in effect, that his opinion is supreme and ‘We the People’ are no longer free to govern ourselves.

CWA CA Chapter:

Today Judge Vaughn Walker has chosen to side with political activism over the will of the people. His ruling is slap in the face to the more than seven million Californians who voted to uphold the definition of marriage as it has been understood for millennia.

Family [Discredited] Research Council:

It's time for the far Left to stop insisting that judges redefine our most fundamental social institution and using liberal courts to obtain a political goal they cannot obtain at the ballot box.

Alliance [of Hateful Heteros] Defense Fund:

It’s not radical for more than 7 million Californians to protect marriage as they’ve always known it. What would be radical would be to allow a handful of activists to gut the core of the American democratic system and, in addition, force the entire country to accept a system that intentionally denies children the mom and the dad they deserve.

American [Hetero, Monogamous, Childbearing] Family Association:

This is a tyrannical, abusive and utterly unconstitutional display of judicial arrogance. Judge Walker has turned ‘We the People’ into ‘I the Judge.’ “It’s inexcusable for him to deprive the citizens of California of their right to govern themselves, and cavalierly trash the will of over seven million voters.

Notice a pattern here?  It's all variations on one theme: the Activist! Judge! overturning the Will! Of! The! People!  And after reading these, it becomes quite clear that this wingers need a remedial course in American gov't and various types of governing systems.


As a Twiend of mine pointed out after seeing Walker's ruling, now is a good time to ruminate on the difference between a raw democracy and a constitutional republic.  The USofA is a constitutional republic.  Features of a constitutional republic include: a founding document which lays out a meta-framework of guidelines and principles for establishing the rules and laws of the land, and a limited type of democracy that allows the citizenry at large to elect representatives, who then go on to do the actual lawmaking independent of direct interference by the citizens who elected them.  A raw or pure democracy, on the other hand, is characterized by every decision being made by general election, or "the will of the people is the law".  


Since the US is a constitutional republic, the directly-expressed "will of the people" (mind you, that's the will of 52% of the people, not exactly a resounding majority; I wonder why they're not screaming about the will of the 6.5 million people who voted against Prop H8 in between shrieks about the 7 million who voted for it?) cannot overrule the meta-guidelines laid out in the foundational document.  And I don't know what Constitution they're reading while they're having their little headsplosions, cause my copy has these nifty bits about the government not impeding citizens' rights without due process, and having an obligation to protect the rights of all citizens, and it seems like Walker's copy corresponds with mine.  


I mean, really, when the judge's decision extensively cites not only the Constitution (with which conservatives seem determined to wipe their asses *coughBushAdministrationcough* right up until a progressive does something they don't like, at which point it's all THE!CONSTITUTION! YOU!CAN'T!DO!THAT! whether or not the document in question supports their freakout) but a not-insignificant body of established case law as precedent, the whiny bile of right-wingers is pretty clearly exposed for what it is: petty bigotry trying to cover itself with the flimsy shield of deliberate misinterpretation of and selective inattention to the Constitution under which all our other laws fall.


So here it is, right-wingers: Go and reread the fucking Constitution.  Nowhere in there is there a right, either explicit or implied (and no, you cannot pull the 10th amendment on this one, because due process and equal protection are in the federal Constitution, and the 10th says all powers/responsibilities not enumerated herein go to the states), of the people to vote to deprive other citizens of their rights in violation of the Constitution.  Period, the end, that is all, THE GENTLEMAN WILL SIT!

*According to a legal-issues reporter who's been following the Prop H8 trial and who I've been following on Twitter, @FedcourtJunkie, the State of CA is not going to appeal this decision, and the 9th Circuit may decide that the pro-H8 campaign doesn't have standing to appeal, saying: "Btw, Yes on #prop8 has serious standing problems for an appeal. This will become a huge issue very shortly- they might not be able to appeal".  So we may or may not see this go any further.  

The Bible Is Not Cut-and-Paste, kthx.

I was reading a post at Right Wing Watch (bringing me the best of wingnuttery daily since...whenever I RSS'ed them) about some jackhole (Rick Barton of Wallbuilders, if anyone cares) laying out a Biblical case for industry deregulation (for the love of all the gods, the Bible laid out rules for a tribal society in the Bronze Age.  We are not there anymore.  Can we stop trying to pattern our laws on that?)...and this bit caught my eye.  He was quoting the Bible, a few verses in 1 Timothy that describes who the laws should be applied to:

So it says "we know the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, and homosexuals, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine."

That caught my eye.  I haven't read the whole Bible, but I'm fairly well-versed in the arguments for and against a Biblical treatment of homosexuality, and one of the things I know is that the Bible is really, really nonspecific about homosexuality per se.  There's much talk of "sexual immorality" but it's not really defined as a homosexual thing.  It seemed odd to see it in this context, so I went to one of the many Bible-verse-lookup websites out there and searched.  This is the version of this passage that I found, 1 Timothy 1:9-10:

We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, ¹⁰for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine

Funny.  I don't see "and homosexuals" in there.  Even in a discussion of Biblical economic policy, the gay-hating was SO IMPORTANT that this asshole felt the need to insert homosexuality into the list of Bad People.  


Dude.  It's your holy book, which you believe was inspired by your omnipotent God.  If he'd meant for homosexuals to be on the list of Bad People, don't you think he would have put that there himself?  And since he didn't, who the fuck do you think you are to do it for him?  If you're going to claim the excuse of religion to support your bigotry, you could at least have the courtesy to work with the religious text as-is, not your edited version of it.  I seem to recall that the God of the Bible was not a huge fan of arrogance.  You might want to re-think yours.

Wednesday WTF is this I don't even...

Last week it was partial clitoridectomies on intersex children and/or girls deemed to have "abnormally large" clitorises, and doctors using a vibrator on them to "test sensitivity".  


This week?  Experimental, off-label use of a drug contraindicated for pregnant women, given to women pregnant with fetuses suspected of having congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) - an intersex condition whereby a female (XX chromosomes) fetus develops "masculinized" genitalia - *without* the oversight or approval of an IRB. They allege that this off-label usage will "...restore this baby to the normal female appearance...compatible with her parents presenting her as a girl, with her eventually becoming somebody’s wife, and having normal sexual development, and becoming a mother."

So these doctors, and these parents-to-be, are willing to give/take potentially dangerous drugs that have *not* been approved for this activity, purely so that their daughters' bits will "look right" according to their definition of what women's bits should look like.  As if a child born with "ambiguous genitals" is incapable of growing up, having "normal sexual development" - and who defines "normal" for this, anyway? - and, if she chooses, getting married and having children, unless the doctors "fix" her with potentially dangerous medication before she's even fucking born.  Intersex people are not "broken", they do not need to be "fixed", and that's the assumption this non-clinical trial is working off of.  Truly worthy of a Wednesday WTF.

But wait!  It gets worse!

A few researchers in particular believe that this drug could not only prevent "ambiguous" genitalia...it could prevent lesbians and tomboys.  It seems that higher prenatal exposure to the androgens this drug suppresses correlates moderately with homo- or bi-sexuality in women - and also with insufficiently-womanly behavior, such as "...lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”  Oh noes!  How terrible!  Women who don't want to be housewives and girls who don't spend their childhoods fantasizing about having babies!  Get me to a fainting couch so I may clutch my pearls in safety!

But I think this is my favorite quote from this metric fuckton of FAIL:

“Gender-related behaviors, namely childhood play, peer association, career and leisure time preferences in adolescence and adulthood, maternalism, aggression, and sexual orientation become masculinized in 46,XX girls and women with 21OHD deficiency [CAH]. These abnormalities have been attributed to the effects of excessive prenatal androgen levels on the sexual differentiation of the brain and later on behavior...We anticipate that prenatal dexamethasone therapy will reduce the well-documented behavioral masculinization . . .”

You've got to be fucking kidding me.  So low maternalism and "career and leisure time preferences" that have "become masculinized" are abnormalities to be cured?  This is, quite literally, doctors saying that they want to *medically treat* female fetuses in utero to be "more appropriately feminine".  And where is the line drawn?  How do we define "low maternalism" here?  I'm sure a woman like me, who doesn't even like children and is vehemently opposed to ever having any, would be considered insufficiently maternal.  But what about a woman who hasn't thought much about it beyond the "Eh, maybe someday" point?  Is that maternal enough?  What about a woman who knows she wants kids, but not until she's 30?  What about a woman who assumes she'll have kids someday, but who never thought about it as a child?  Remember, they were worried about childhood fantasies of pregnancy and babies as a marker of appropriate gender behavior. 

Talk about playing God.  These fuckers are literally trying to change future women's personalities, desires, and bodies before they are even born, in order to better enforce our society's vision of "appropriate" gendered behavior.  This is absolutely sickening.  I desperately hope our sense of ethics catches up to our sense of technology SOON, for all our sakes.

3 Months of Nickels - What Price Misogyny?

Remember a couple of months ago, I blogged about Nickels For Change, the pair of college students who were committing to setting aside $.05 per incident of misogyny they experienced in their lives, while writing to those media sources and others who perpetuated it, to raise awareness of their campaign?


They've just posted an update on the Feministing Community blogs.  Between the two of them, in three months, they have raised...


...$75.55

At a nickel per incident, that's 1,511 incidents of "victim blaming, rape jokes, gender binary bias, and racial discrimination."  In just three months.  Let's break this down:

$75.55 in three months.  Thats...
1,511 incidents in three months.  Which means...
503 incidents per month.  And dividing by 30 gives us...
16.8 incidents per day.  So between them, they experienced...
an average of approximately 8 unique incidences of sexism/racism per person per day.

And I'll point out, that's the incidents *they noticed*.  Most of us are familiar with needing to turn our brains half-off just to get through the day without bursting into an incandescent ball of rage, so that only the more egregious (and everyone has their own "wtf threshold") moments make it past the filter to piss us off. 

So the next time someone pulls the "post-feminist" or "post-racial" bullshit, point them at the Nickels for Change project.  And ask them to imagine what it might feel like if they had to endure an average of 8 slurs against some deeply important aspect of their identity every day.  Post-feminist my ass.

What About Teh MENZZZ, Part Eleventybillion

I was linked, on Monday morning, to this PSA about conflict minerals and the situation in the Congo, sponsored by Raise Hope for Congo, an organization that focuses on the horrible rape epidemic in that region.  

 (It's a video in the style of the Mac vs PC commercials.  The Mac guy [young, white hipster-type dude] asks the PC guy [older white man in a business suit] what he's got in his pockets, and he pulls out some rocks, listing them off as tungsten and other minerals that have fueled the conflict in the Congo, and the Mac guy says "Oh, I use those too.  I guess we have more in common than we thought."  A title card at the end is the logo of the agency that made the PSA, Raise Hope for Congo, in which the "O" in "Hope" is replaced by the Venus symbol.)


It's a good PSA, I think.  A cute spoofing of the well-known Mac vs PC commercials, easily understood, etc.  And oh, I should really know better than to read the comments on ANY YouTube video...but there you go.  When I clicked over the first time, the top-rated (and thus promoted to the top of the comments thread) comment was:

I think it would be more universally appealing if your logo didn't make it seem like it only helps women.

Ahem.  To quote from RHfC's website:

The RAISE Hope for Congo campaign aims to build a permanent and diverse constituency of activists who will advocate for the protection and empowerment of Congolese women and girls.

So, some fuckwit on YouTube couldn't be arsed to take TWO FUCKING SECONDS to go to RHfC's website and see that, in fact, it *is* an organization focused on supporting and helping women, before he got his pants in a bunch about "Why are you so focused on women, what about teh menz, huh?"  Because 
helping women is totally not universally appealing, amirite?  Who wants to help women, ew?


Listen, random douchbro: that sting of being left-out you are feeling right now?  That twinge of unwantedness that is making you all pouty, because you are not obviously the Person This Is Meant For?  That is a feeling that positively fucking HAUNTS women.  And also PoC, and queer people, and trans people, and disabled people, etc. etc.  So before you lose your shit over one goddamn PSA, kindly remember that you get 90% of the rest of society's messages that explicity make you feel wanted and targeted and paid attention to, and back the fuck up off of insisting that you get all 100% of it, ok?

Bryan Fischer's Stupid Is Showing. Again.

You know, I could probably start a separate blog dedicated solely to chronicling the AFA's Bryan Fischer's unchecked headlong rush into offensive obsolescence, and never run out of material.  I'm almost ready to at least add a "Bryan Fischer" tag so it'll be easy to sort for specific instances of his bullshit around here.


Last week and over the weekend, there's been much discussion of a new study showing the rise of childlessness among women, and particularly that it seems to be correlated with educational level - the higher a woman's educational level, the less likely she is to have children.  Mind you, this is correlation, not necessarily causation; it could as easily be that higher education (grad and postgrad work) is more attractive to women who never intended on having children anyway, or that women who want children realize the unfortunate truth of how difficult it is in our society to balance childrearing with the time necessary for advanced degrees and the career that usually goes with them, as it could be Fischer's hypothesis that education "...is leeching the maternal instincts right out of the female lemmings...".  Direct quote, by the way.  Apparently, Fischer thinks we eeeevil feminazis have gotten our vicious claws into higher education and are using it to brainwash women out of fulfilling their godly duty as mothers.  

In his usual fashion, Fischer then goes about rambling through two or three unconnected subjects, trying to tie them all together.  This time it's some incoherent nonsense about a "general environmental theory" supposedly shared by all liberals, that humanity is simply a blight upon the earth...don't ask me, it doesn't make sense to me either...and Margaret Sanger's infamous position on eugenics that we need fewer babies born to the "unfit", so therefore liberals are less fit for babies than are good Christians who properly view babies as God's blessings, QED.  Or something like that.  


At any rate, his point is that therefore, conservatives can win the culture wars by just "outbreeding" (his term, not mine) us.  Which is patently stupid.  The political/religious beliefs of a person's parents are no guarantor of a person's own political/religious beliefs as an adult.  I am a case in point; my father is a proud Teabagger and a Christian, and here I am, a heathen queer progressive activist.  Not that the plural of anecdote is data or anything, but flip through any thread on Shakesville discussing one's family, and you'll see quite a number of progressives who grew up inculcated with conservatism and yet broke out of it as adults.  The children of Christian parents may grow up to embrace that faith themselves.  Or, they could just as easily grow up to become atheists, agnostics, Jews, pagans, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, etc.  Fischer's ridiculous notion of "outbreeding" his way to victory in the culture wars is predicated on the notion of infallible transmission of values from parent to child, a concept eminently not supported by reality.

Oh, and the other little, tiny, minor, inconsequential problem with this "surefire strategy"?  The study made no mention of the religious or political beliefs of those women who did have children.  Absent any data on that point, Fischer just conflated "higher education" with "evil librul", leaving his entire premise ("Libruls aren't breeding anymore!") without even the slightest scrap of factual support.  And of course, when one's premise is trashed, it can no longer support one's conclusion.


But hey, his closing sentence is funny enough to make the stupid worthwhile:

Let them fume in their childless rage while we celebrate the joys of parenthood and along the way implement a sure-fire long range strategy for taking our country back.

And to that, all I have to say is: CHILDLESS RAGE SMASH!!!

Quote of the Day, Too Long for Twitter Edition

Seen at Pam's House Blend, in comments on a guest-post from a lobbyist telling us we "ought to thank the President" - in other words, shut up, you impatient queers, and be grateful for the crumbs we've tossed you! - a beautifully succinct description of the real difference between Dems and Repubs (and why I'll be voting Green from now on, until the Dems actually grow a spine and start keeping their campaign promises and getting shit done):

The choice between Republicans and Democrats...

... is a choice between being deliberately murdered and being locked out in the bitter cold until exposure does their dirty work for them.

Yeah.  Sadly, this really does sum it up.  /sigh

Dove's "Real Beauty" Campaign - Not TOO Real, Please

For those who aren't aware of Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, it's a marketing effort by Dove, a bath&body brand owned by Unilever (which also owns the Axe brand of male scent products, with its stultifyingly misogynyst advertising; make of that what you will) to combat the effects of an increasingly-narrow airbrushed "perfection" standard of beauty, and particularly the effect that has on girls and young women.  They have workshops on self-esteem for girls, and their ads feature a *relative* variety of skin tones and body types.  Mind you, I've never seen an actually *fat* woman in a Dove RB ad, and it's still primarily young women, about 2/3 of them white.  But baby steps, right?  Women a little thick around the hips with thighs bigger than sticks and a greater than 1:10 ratio of WoC to white women is a start, right?  I would be terribly cynical and demanding to see even such meager signs of progress and get cranky and start pushing for *real* change, right?

If you're inclined to support the Dove RBC, and tell me to hush and not interfere with their worthy work, just read this casting call and then tell me that again.

DOVE “REAL WOMEN” PRINT CASTING JUNE 28-30, 2010 in NYC
ABSOLUTELY NO ACTRESSES / MODELS OR REALITY SHOW PARTICIPANTS or ANY ONE CARRYING A HEADSHOT!!!!
REAL WOMEN ONLY!
LOOKING FOR 3-4 REAL WOMEN for a DOVE PRINT CAMPAIGN!

AGES 35-45, CAUCASIAN, HISPANIC, AFRICAN AMERICAN, & ASIAN!
SHOOT: SUNDAY, JULY 18 in NYC! MUST BE AVAILABLE FOR THE SHOOT!
RATE: $500 for Shoot date & if selected for Ad Campaign (running 2011) you will be paid $4000!
USAGE: 3 years unlimited print & web usage in N. America Only
YOU WILL BE PHOTOGRAPHED FOR THE CAMPAIGN IN A TOWEL!
BEAUTIFUL ARMS AND LEGS AND FACE WILL BE SHOWN!
MUST HAVE FLAWLESS SKIN, NO TATTOOS OR SCARS!
Well groomed and clean...Nice Bodies..NATURALLY, FIT Not too Curvy Not too Athletic.
Great Sparkling Personalities. Beautiful Smiles! A DOVE GIRL!!!
STYLISH AND COOL!
Beautiful HAIR & SKIN is a MUST!!!
PLEASE SUBMIT SNAPSHOTS of FACE & BODY ASAP & WE WILL CALL YOU IN FOR A CASTING NEXT WEEK 6/28-6/30 in NYC!

Wow.  So, uh...first of all, to whoever typed this, there's this button on the far left of your keyboard, right next to your left pinky finger.  It's labled "Caps Lock".  Please to press it, make sure the little blue light on your keyboard goes OUT, and then type this out again.  >.<


But on to the substantive criticisms, of which there are oh so very many...

• ABSOLUTELY NO ACTRESSES / MODELS OR REALITY SHOW PARTICIPANTS or ANY ONE CARRYING A HEADSHOT!!!!
  REAL WOMEN ONLY!

Can I just say how very sick I am of the "real woman" thing?  All women are real women, period.  Being an actress or model or participating in a reality show does not strip a woman of her womanhood.  Actresses, models, and reality show participants, are still "real women".  I mean, what are they implying here?  That one turns in one's "woman card" when one begins a career in the aforementioned areas?  What is a female model or an actress then?  A nonwoman?  An unwoman?  A fake woman?  Plus the history of the term "real woman/man" as a slur against trans people.  Please, just stop using the term "real woman" entirely.  (Oh, and "anyone" is one word.  Not "any one".  Grarr.)

• MUST HAVE FLAWLESS SKIN, NO TATTOOS OR SCARS!

Apparently real-women™ have flawless skin, and tattoos and scars are flaws that unacceptably mar one's flawless real-woman™ skin.  Speaking as someone who is woman, real or otherwise by these standards, and who also has one tattoo (more to come someday when I have money and an artist to work with) and numerous scars from a variety of sources, fuck you very much.  I LIKE my scars.  I like the character of them.  I like the slashing one across my right calf, which really came from a slip of the razor in the shower, but which I like to think looks like the kind of scar that could come from a rock-climbing accident or some other kind of cool badassery.  I like the knobbly scar across the base of my middle finger's knuckle on my right hand, courtesy of a moment of lost temper when I was 16 and punched a tree really really hard after a fight with my then-boyfriend.  My scars tell where I've been and what I've survived.  Frankly, I think it's a lot less realistic to expect a grown woman to have gotten through life WITHOUT scars.  (This is not to say women who have no scars are any less real; just a lot rarer)  And that's not even getting into the tattoo question.  I'll just quote the sign at the shop where I got mine done: "The only difference between people with tattoos and people without tattoos...is that we don't care that you don't have any."

• Nice Bodies..NATURALLY, FIT Not too Curvy Not too Athletic.

Ahhh, I see.  So when Dove says the RBC is attempting to "[widen] stereotypical views of beauty" (from their about page), they forgot to add "...but not too far."   Don't kid yourselves; they're still looking for a certain beauty standard here, one nearly as narrow as the one we've already got. 

• Beautiful HAIR & SKIN is a MUST!!!

Because if you don't have "beautiful hair" - and how are they defining that, btw?  Particularly for black women, "beautiful" hair is a concept fraught with problems.  Do they mean straightened hair or natural hair?  Would an afro count as beautiful hair?  Dreads? - you're not a real-woman™ either. 

I guess Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty is just more of what we've already got.  Be "real", but not too real.  Curvy, but not too curvy.  Naturally fit, so your figure better not be the result of dieting or working out.  Of course, you still need to be fit, but not too athletic.  Your hair needs to fit our definition of "beautiful" and life had better never have marked you and left you with scars.  Flawless skin only.  This shit is, at best, slightly less worse than the current level of restrictiveness in our beauty standard.  It's certainly not the beacon of transgressive self-acceptance Dove likes to pretend it is.  I was a little wary about this already, given that Dove purchases fund Unilever, which also spends its money on Axe's egregiously horrible sexism-fests...but after seeing this casting call, I can safely say I'm *really* not a supporter of the Campaign for Real Beauty, or of Dove as a brand. 

It's a great theory...just a really, really shitty execution.

A Blogger's Simple Guide To Fucking Up, Gracefully

I just recently saw a textbook example of How Not To Respond To Being Called Out, that I wanted to share with you as a way of setting out a guide for How To Fuck Up Right.

Readers who know me outside of this blog might know that, over the past year, I've developed a sudden interest in makeup.  Specifically, bold and bright makeup looks (vehemently NOT the "natural look", which I might explain about why I find that approach to makeup to be anti-feminist in another post if anyone's interested) using products purchased from indie mineral makeup companies like Fyrinnae, Meow, Aromaleigh, and Spell.  My ex-girlfriend recommended a couple beauty blogs to me so I could learn about it by example.  These days, I mostly follow - reading and commenting, taking product recommendations from, etc - Fresco Phyrra and Grey's Gothique.  Phyrra and Grey both run giveaways/contests from time to time, sponsored by various indie companies, and I almost always enter.

Last week, there was a post on Gothique, a giveaway opening with the following text (all hail Google cached pages):

 Gypsy Style, free flowing, carefree and colorful.  Although once a derogatory term, gypsy has come to define and entire style of not only life, but of fashion and beauty.

"Gypsy" is a term with a fucked-up history, a racial slur used to refer to Romani and other similar ethnic groups.  It's where the term "gypped" comes from, which means to cheat someone.  Some Roma do use the term to refer to themselves, but as I understand it, that's meant in a reclamatory fashion, like the way I use "queer", and shouldn't be assumed to be ok as a general use word.  And Grey even acknowledged the problematic nature of the term in her contest text, but without any awareness of the fact that, although apparently plenty of people have appropriated it as a term to reference an "entire style...of fashion and beauty", it's not thereby magically washed clean of its bad history and fine to use.


Well, several people apparently emailed Grey about her usage of the term; I wasn't one of them, but when I went back to it and refreshed to check on the comments a couple days later, I discovered she'd changed the description to say "modern bohemian" instead of "gypsy".  In comments, a few people had noticed the change as well and asked Grey about it.  She said she'd gotten "angry emails" and people had been "nasty" to her about it, so she'd changed it.  She also said she'd been hurt by people "nitpicking" when she was just trying to be nice by hosting a giveaway.  (I can't quote exactly, as Google's cache seems to be from before any comments were posted, so this is all from my memory.)


That minimizing of a very legitimate complaint of racial insensitivity as "nitpicking" bothered me, especially with the "But I'm being NICE here!" defensiveness.  So I replied, first thanking her for taking the criticism to heart and changing the description, and then adding in a second paragraph that racially problematic language is significantly more important than a "nitpick" to a lot of people, myself included.


Now, I don't know what happened in comments after I said that, because I wasn't able to check back until the next day.  For all I know, shit really *did* get nasty after I posted.  But lo and behold, when I did get to go back and check again...the entry was gone, with a 404 error in its place, the giveaway apparently canceled without a word.  This was over the weekend, and so far, not a single acknowledgment of the situation has been forthcoming.  Not even an "I've taken down the contest cause it was too much drama" or anything, much less an apology of any kind.  Which leads me to conclude that, called on her accidental screwup, her response is to pretend it never happened.


Incidentally, the last time I saw this happen, it was another makeup blog, and another makeup blogger.  Wonder if that's coincidental...?


But all this is to say, that in almost every possible way, this was handled Wrong.

1.  Instead of making a tone argument about the people calling you out - "angry emails" and saying they were "nasty" to her - understand that you made a mistake that has harmed people, and they have a right to be angry or upset about it.
2.  Instead of using intent as a defense - saying she was hurt because she was called out while she was "trying to be nice and give away stuff" - acknowledge that intent is not a shield from the effects of your words and/or actions, and don't try to hide behind it.
3.  Credit where credit is due - she *did* change the offending word, which was the right thing to do.
4.  However, instead of deleting the evidence by removing the blog post entirely when things got too much to handle, just close comments or declare the contest canceled.  It looks less like there's something to hide that way.
5.  For the love of all the gods...APOLOGIZE.  It is possible to apologize and admit fault without losing face, and in fact, I know I personally respect a person a great deal *more* for having the maturity to acknowledge their fuckups instead of hiding from them.


I don't post this intending to pick on Grey.  I love her blog, I follow her on Twitter as well, I think she's a great person with an adorable kitteh.  However, I also think she handled this really badly, and as a general principle, I really wish people were taught how to fuck up and apologize for it with grace, instead of (as most people do, including myself sometimes - no, I'm far from perfect in this respect) getting defensive and reacting by pretending nothing ever happened.  So based on this, and the other experience I had with a beauty blogger and drama, here's my Blogger's Guide To Fucking Up Gracefully:


1.  If you accidentally write something offensive, don't bother trying to change the offensive bit without acknowledging what used to be there with an editor's note or something.  Google cache will have the original, odds are, and all it does is make you look like you're trying to hide what happened.  This is the internet.  Once it's up, it's out there forever.  Work with that, not against it.


2.  Short of personal attacks - and no, saying you're being racist/sexist/homophobic/etc is not a personal attack.  I'm talking about personal name-calling, threats, harassment, etc. - do not make any attempt to police the tone of people calling you out on your fuckup.  If they're calling you out, it's because you did something that hurt or pissed off other people.  They have a right to their feelings.  Do not try to minimize that.

3.  Do not try to use your intent as a defense.  No "But I didn't mean it like that!" or "Hey, I'm trying to be nice to you here with this review/giveaway/whatever, how dare you not appreciate that and call me on things instead?"  If you bump into someone and knock them over, does the fact that it was accidental make their bruised butt hurt less?  Intent is the difference between an inconsiderate privileged person and an -ist asshole.  It is not the difference between offensive and not offensive.


4.  If your readers offer you links in support of their argument against whatever you said, click through and read them.  Read the pages those pages link to, too, if applicable.  And I mean, really read.  Don't just skim and huff to yourself that "I'm not like that, so this totally doesn't apply to me." and then close the tab and put it from your mind.  If you can't do all that reading right away, at least reply saying you've seen the links and will get to them asap.

5.  Examine your reaction.  Defensiveness is natural - nobody likes being called on shit, after all.  Be honest with yourself, though.  Do you feel that nagging shimmer of "oh, shit...I think I really did fuck up..."?  Remind yourself that it's ok to fuck up, that a fuckup is not the end of the world, and that you will actually gain respect for handling it with maturity and grace.  Face your emotions.  Try not to let them overwhelm you too badly.  It'll be ok.


6.  Once you have a good grasp on what you fucked up and why it was wrong, fix it and/or apologize.  Change the offending word/sentence/etc, if applicable, and leave an editor's note about the change.  If people contacted you individually, reply to them personally with an apology.  Also post a public apology on the offending post, and if it was egregiously bad, create and post a separate apology.  DO NOT give the Politician's Nonpology ("I'm sorry if you were offended").  That's a cop-out, and will just piss people off more.  Remember that an apology is a sign of strength and responsibility, not weakness, when it's done right.


7.  DO NOT EXPECT PRAISE FOR APOLOGIZING.  Acknowledging, fixing, and apologizing for your fuckup is a minimum standard of decent human behavior (and it's a sad, sad commentary on our society as a whole that well-handled fuckups are so rare that people think they are owed special treatment for magnanimously apologizing, but I digress), not a superhuman feat of generosity for which you are owed praise-songs and cookies on a silver platter.  People may thank you for apologizing and dealing with the issue, if they are so moved.  Then again, they may not, and that's totally up to them - and you will undo all the good stuff you've done in handling it up to this point if you turn around and get pissy because your apology and restitution aren't garnering you the adoration you think you should have for it.


8.  Lastly, integrate the lesson and carry it forward with you.  If, for example, you fucked up by saying "penis-bearing people" when you meant "men" (which marginalizes trans men and women who have not undergone GRS and essentializes gender to genitalia, and which is something I've been called out on before), next time you're writing about gender and want a pithy way to refer to men, figure out another way and catch yourself if you start to use genital definitions of gender.  When you write on a topic you've been called out on before, reread it BEFORE you hit "post".  Fucking up out of ignorance, if you handle it well and apologize and everything, is understandable and usually forgivable - ONCE.  You get a lot less clearance for the same maneuver if it happens again.


So there you are.  A blogger's guide to fucking up gracefully, without alienating your readership through obstinacy and defensive posturing.  While I imagine most of my usual readers are progressives who could have written this just as well as I could - fucking up, both well and poorly, are often-discussed topics among many privilege-aware people - my hope is that this can be a post you can point people to from outside the feminist/progressive blogosphere.  Like, for example...makeup bloggers.  ;-)