Or, How Many Condescending and Belittling Synonyms for "complain" Do I Have In My Vocabulary?*
The Miter Mafia (which is what I'll be using to refer to the Catholic hierarchy from now on, to distinguish between my ire at the Church as a sociopolitical corporation as opposed to blaming the Catholic faithful as a whole) has submitted 21 pages (PDF) of crying about the fact that the government wants to make contraception available to people who want it, to the HHS's official notice of rule change regarding the the "contraception compromise". Remember, the shitty insurance-company workaround the Obama administration offered to salve the Miter Mafia's hurt fee-fees when they threw their shit fit and held whole cis-male-only Congressional panels to discuss how the idea of people being able to access low-cost or free contraception was making their boners very sad?
Basically, they're still whining about the fact that contraception was not completely removed from the list of mandated preventative services. (They also include "education and counseling" as part of contraceptive services. So not only do they want to deny us access to ways to control our fertility, they want to keep us completely in the dark about the fact that said options exist and how they work!)
Failing that, they're stomping their little feetses because the exemption criteria weren't reworked to their specifications. (Never has there been an organization in this world with more hubris than the Miter Mafia, truly. In a country with an explicit separation of church and state, where you are far from the only religious organization, what on earth could possibly make you think you get to be the one to dictate the terms of exemption or inclusion from religiously-referential regulations??) They believe that restricting the exemption to religious organizations is too narrow. They want any person, or organization headed by a person, who believes that birth control is dirtybadwrong to be able to deny their employees coverage for it. This is, of course, perfectly in line with their ongoing attempts to widen "conscience clause" protections to an absurd extreme such that bus drivers can refuse to continue their route if they believe a passenger is going to an abortion clinic, nurses can refuse to interact in any way with abortion patients even for mundane things like processing paperwork or checking vitals after the fact, and pharmacists can deny medication to stop bleeding if they think it's because the person had an abortion: they really do believe that nobody should ever have to do anything even tenuously connected with Teh Badz (abortion and b/c), even if that thing is extremely indirect AND within the bounds of something they have consciously chosen to do. Like, say, being a pharmacist, or a nurse, or a bus driver, or owning/running a company that employs people who may or may not share your beliefs.
And then there's the pouting that the compromise is just Not Good Enough Anyway So You Should Just Rescind The Rule Completely, because it still allows employees to access contraception, even in a way that bypasses the employer, because the employer-provided insurance plan acts as the "conduit" by which access is gained, and thus the employer is tainted by association or some bullshit like that.
It is literally not enough, and will literally never be enough, for them, until they are able to make completely certain that every single person who needs contraceptive services has to go to completely independent third-party agencies for it, and pay full price out of pocket. And I would not be particularly surprised if they argued against even that, on the basis that the out-of-pocket cost was paid out of wages earned from an employer, so the employer should be able to veto an employee's decision to use their money that way if that employer doesn't want their wages to go to such things.
And of course, they want to force us all to rely on third-party services and pay out-of-pocket while we're still in the middle of a recession, as they oversee giant cuts and defunding efforts to the sorts of places that offer that kind of care.
This is nothing more nor less than an attempt to forcibly impose their moral beliefs on contraception on the entire country, with a series of targeted workarounds that don't directly challenge established law and precedent, but which would have the effect they want anyway. (Sound familiar?) Restrict access to contraception on employer-provided health plans --> Expand conscience protections so any employer anywhere for any reason can choose to bar access --> Defund the organizations that help subsidize those (expensive) costs for those who don't have money to burn --> Millions of people completely unable to access contraception and therefore forced to live by the moral dictates of a religion they may or may not subscribe to which teaches that all contraception is bad --> Continue/increase the Church's immense power over the secular world and nonbelievers --> Profit!
(Oh and for bonus fuckery points they describe birth control as "not health care" because it "[disrupts] the healthy functioning of the human reproductive system". So if you're not conceiving, it ain't healthy. MOAR BABIES FOR EVERYONE! I wonder how they can describe as "healthy functioning" the pregnancies that endanger people's lives?)
5.13.2012
A Pro-Choice Poem for Mother's Day
This Mother's Day, as the antis try to use it for propaganda
(as they always do)
I want to thank my mother.
I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for waiting until she was ready to have me.
For having me when she wanted to have a child.
For bringing me into a home and a situation where I was planned,
wanted,
loved.
I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for all the twenty-six
(and counting)
years that have followed.
For making Halloween costumes and prom dresses,
lunches and dinners and Christmas cookies,
and in the process, teaching me.
I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for all the times she went to bat against an unfair world,
stood up to bullies,
taught me I deserved better.
For instilling in me a love of reading that has made me into the writer I am today.
For quietly, subtly - just by being the person she is -
instilling in me a budding proto-feminist sensibility,
So that when, in college, I made my first fumbling steps into formal feminism
it was less like learning
than simply coming home.
(And that, too, has made me who and what I am today.)
And with these more usual gratitudes,
I want to thank my mother for something else.
Something the antis would see as directly antithetical to the spirit of the day.
But which, I feel,
is exactly right.
I want to thank my mother,
For helping me to not be a mother.
For taking me to her doctor to get on birth control when I started having sex at 15,
for making it so that I wasn't one of the teens who had to sneak around and buy condoms under cover of shame and darkness.
For taking me at my word when I said for the first time, at about age 12,
"I don't ever want to have kids."
For never pressuring me to produce grandchildren,
and for waving off family members who might have.
(It helps that I have lots of cousins who have had lots of babies already, I suppose.)
And, six years ago this past week,
For driving two hours down at 5 in the morning to my college apartment,
so we could get breakfast before my appointment.
Sitting with me in the awkward hush of the waiting room.
Then, six years ago this very weekend,
Laying in supplies of favorite foods and movies and lots of very thick pads,
shooing my brother out of the house to go hang out with friends,
so that I could bleed out the baby I wasn't ready to have -
will never be ready to have -
in privacy, and safety, and comfort, and support.
That year, we celebrated Mother's Day by keeping me from being a mother.
And I have been grateful, every single year since.
So the next time the antis throw out that tired line,
"Aren't you glad your mother was pro-life?!?!?!"
I will laugh,
as I always do,
because they don't know my mother.
I do.
And she has shown herself, in a thousand thousand ways, a wonderful mother,
and part of that has been in her respect for my body,
my choices,
my life.
That's her pro-life stance.
She's pro-my-life. Pro-her-daughter's-life.
Pro-the-life-of-every-person-who-could-face-this-decision.
So I think, when I laugh in the face of the next anti to assign a political stance to a woman they have never met,
based purely on the fact that she has given birth,
I will also say,
"Yes, she is. But not in the way you think."
Happy Mother's Day, mamana. I love you.
(as they always do)
I want to thank my mother.
I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for waiting until she was ready to have me.
For having me when she wanted to have a child.
For bringing me into a home and a situation where I was planned,
wanted,
loved.
I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for all the twenty-six
(and counting)
years that have followed.
For making Halloween costumes and prom dresses,
lunches and dinners and Christmas cookies,
and in the process, teaching me.
I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for all the times she went to bat against an unfair world,
stood up to bullies,
taught me I deserved better.
For instilling in me a love of reading that has made me into the writer I am today.
For quietly, subtly - just by being the person she is -
instilling in me a budding proto-feminist sensibility,
So that when, in college, I made my first fumbling steps into formal feminism
it was less like learning
than simply coming home.
(And that, too, has made me who and what I am today.)
And with these more usual gratitudes,
I want to thank my mother for something else.
Something the antis would see as directly antithetical to the spirit of the day.
But which, I feel,
is exactly right.
I want to thank my mother,
For helping me to not be a mother.
For taking me to her doctor to get on birth control when I started having sex at 15,
for making it so that I wasn't one of the teens who had to sneak around and buy condoms under cover of shame and darkness.
For taking me at my word when I said for the first time, at about age 12,
"I don't ever want to have kids."
For never pressuring me to produce grandchildren,
and for waving off family members who might have.
(It helps that I have lots of cousins who have had lots of babies already, I suppose.)
And, six years ago this past week,
For driving two hours down at 5 in the morning to my college apartment,
so we could get breakfast before my appointment.
Sitting with me in the awkward hush of the waiting room.
Then, six years ago this very weekend,
Laying in supplies of favorite foods and movies and lots of very thick pads,
shooing my brother out of the house to go hang out with friends,
so that I could bleed out the baby I wasn't ready to have -
will never be ready to have -
in privacy, and safety, and comfort, and support.
That year, we celebrated Mother's Day by keeping me from being a mother.
And I have been grateful, every single year since.
So the next time the antis throw out that tired line,
"Aren't you glad your mother was pro-life?!?!?!"
I will laugh,
as I always do,
because they don't know my mother.
I do.
And she has shown herself, in a thousand thousand ways, a wonderful mother,
and part of that has been in her respect for my body,
my choices,
my life.
That's her pro-life stance.
She's pro-my-life. Pro-her-daughter's-life.
Pro-the-life-of-every-person-who-could-face-this-decision.
So I think, when I laugh in the face of the next anti to assign a political stance to a woman they have never met,
based purely on the fact that she has given birth,
I will also say,
"Yes, she is. But not in the way you think."
Happy Mother's Day, mamana. I love you.
5.04.2012
Putting Words in God's Mouth
By this time, I am fairly well inured to the theatrics of the Fundamentalist Dominionist Christian Right in this country. As a result of writing for this blog for...gods, what, two years now? Three?...I read a lot about what the Religious Reich and their puppets the Republican Party are up to.* I've actually reached a point where as I'm reading through Right Wing Watch, quite often I see the headline, laugh bitterly and say "of course they did" and scroll to the next item without even bothering to read it, because very little they do shocks me these days, and I can't (and don't want to) write about every single case of right-wing bullshit I see.
But even I am thoroughly taken aback by the brazen combination of ego, disrespect for the divine, colonialism, and nationalism in this video. In it, Lou Engle of the Eagle Forum prays over a group of young people at Awakening 2012. I honestly can't make out most of what he says right until the very end, when he says the last few lines of the Lord's Prayer, with one very interesting difference:
See, I'm familiar with the traditional form of the Lord's Prayer. You know, the one that ends with "On Earth as it is in Heaven", not "in America".
I wonder if he meant to say it that way? I can't imagine that someone with as much experience in public speaking and public prayer as Lou Engle would slip like that without meaning it, at least on some level.
Which says all kinds of ugly things about his intent here. On a purely theological level, it strikes me as deeply disrespectful at best, to alter a crucial word in such a fundamental prayer of one's faith, especially in such a dogmatic religion as right-wing fundamentalist Christianity. I would be less bothered by, for example, an eclectic Wiccan making changes to the Charge of the Goddess to have it better suit them, because many pagan traditions are largely syncretic by design, and accept a wide variety of what we call "unverified personal gnosis" as valid, for the person receiving it if nothing else. It's sort of different when you have a single holy book that is purportedly the outright dictation of the Lord himself to mortal scribes, in essence, and this is a very specific prayer listed therein. To change that? Is basically to say "Thanks, God, but I am going to change the words of the prayer You gave us to suit my own political purposes." I'm not a Christian anymore, but if I were, I would be horrified to see the Lord's Prayer used this way.
On another level, it smacks of neocolonialism and a truly absurd level of American Exceptionalism. He is basically expressing a desire that the world be remade in our image. Yeah, in case you hadn't noticed, Lou, we've tried that. We're still doing it. And it has resulted in a lot of pain and death and deliberate genocide, and the irretrievable loss of cultures and languages and belief systems, all eradicated in the name of Christianization. That is a terrible history. That is not something to aspire to or ask your god's blessing to make it happen (more/again).
It also occurs to me that just replacing one word with the other like that conflates America and Heaven (most likely by design). Which is more than a little disingenuous, especially that when you judge the U.S's situation by the metrics of Jesus' dictates - love one another, care for the sick and the poor, etc - we are a truly epic failure. Even if there actually were somewhere on this planet where things are "on Earth as it is in Heaven", it sure as fuck isn't in this country.
And this is why we say things like, "The Christian Right is neither."
*Which is why I laughed myself silly at one of my father's attacks in our last angry altercation over his political proselytizing: he accused me of "not being able to handle hearing what the other side has to say" as an attempt to undermine my response because I had flat-out refused to watch Glenn Beck videos he wanted me to see. Sorry, Papa, I am on the Outrage Watchers program. I only get a limited number of Rage Points to spend every day, and I'm not going to blow them all on one Glenn Beck video just to prove a point to you. But it certainly makes it an absurd assertion that I'm "insulating myself from honest debate" or some such.
But even I am thoroughly taken aback by the brazen combination of ego, disrespect for the divine, colonialism, and nationalism in this video. In it, Lou Engle of the Eagle Forum prays over a group of young people at Awakening 2012. I honestly can't make out most of what he says right until the very end, when he says the last few lines of the Lord's Prayer, with one very interesting difference:
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,*record screech* Wait. What?
On Earth as it is in America.
See, I'm familiar with the traditional form of the Lord's Prayer. You know, the one that ends with "On Earth as it is in Heaven", not "in America".
I wonder if he meant to say it that way? I can't imagine that someone with as much experience in public speaking and public prayer as Lou Engle would slip like that without meaning it, at least on some level.
Which says all kinds of ugly things about his intent here. On a purely theological level, it strikes me as deeply disrespectful at best, to alter a crucial word in such a fundamental prayer of one's faith, especially in such a dogmatic religion as right-wing fundamentalist Christianity. I would be less bothered by, for example, an eclectic Wiccan making changes to the Charge of the Goddess to have it better suit them, because many pagan traditions are largely syncretic by design, and accept a wide variety of what we call "unverified personal gnosis" as valid, for the person receiving it if nothing else. It's sort of different when you have a single holy book that is purportedly the outright dictation of the Lord himself to mortal scribes, in essence, and this is a very specific prayer listed therein. To change that? Is basically to say "Thanks, God, but I am going to change the words of the prayer You gave us to suit my own political purposes." I'm not a Christian anymore, but if I were, I would be horrified to see the Lord's Prayer used this way.
On another level, it smacks of neocolonialism and a truly absurd level of American Exceptionalism. He is basically expressing a desire that the world be remade in our image. Yeah, in case you hadn't noticed, Lou, we've tried that. We're still doing it. And it has resulted in a lot of pain and death and deliberate genocide, and the irretrievable loss of cultures and languages and belief systems, all eradicated in the name of Christianization. That is a terrible history. That is not something to aspire to or ask your god's blessing to make it happen (more/again).
It also occurs to me that just replacing one word with the other like that conflates America and Heaven (most likely by design). Which is more than a little disingenuous, especially that when you judge the U.S's situation by the metrics of Jesus' dictates - love one another, care for the sick and the poor, etc - we are a truly epic failure. Even if there actually were somewhere on this planet where things are "on Earth as it is in Heaven", it sure as fuck isn't in this country.
And this is why we say things like, "The Christian Right is neither."
*Which is why I laughed myself silly at one of my father's attacks in our last angry altercation over his political proselytizing: he accused me of "not being able to handle hearing what the other side has to say" as an attempt to undermine my response because I had flat-out refused to watch Glenn Beck videos he wanted me to see. Sorry, Papa, I am on the Outrage Watchers program. I only get a limited number of Rage Points to spend every day, and I'm not going to blow them all on one Glenn Beck video just to prove a point to you. But it certainly makes it an absurd assertion that I'm "insulating myself from honest debate" or some such.
4.23.2012
Warning to Goddess-Worshiping Women in SoCal: The Goddess Temple of Orange County is Actively Transmisogynist
[TW: transmisogyny, misgendering/third-gendering, biological essentialism]*
Via The Wild Hunt's weekly Unleash The Hounds linkspam post, I found this blog entry by Tracie Welser, a pagan woman in Southern California, about her experience with transmisogyny at the Goddess Temple of Orange County. The short version is, at a women-only service honoring Cybele - which gives this story an extra layer of fuckery, as several Hellenismos friends of mine have pointed out that Cybele had one of the most famous orders of trans priestesses in history** - the Temple's "Presiding Priestess" Ava (I don't see how that's different from High Priestess, but in comments to the linked post she disavowed that title, so I will respect her expressed identity, which is a damn sight more than she is willing to do for trans women) made a series of comments about "the truth of womanhood" that referred to trans women as "mutilated", "not truly women" and "denying the truth of who they are". According to Tracie, who was at the service in question, it was spoken dogmatically by a person in a position of spiritual authority, and members were then asked to "meditate on this unreality [of trans-ness versus cis-ness]". This was not a dialogue. This was dogma.
So, with Tracie's permission, I am sharing this information for the benefit of any pagan female readers I have who are in that area, or who may be there at some point. The Goddess Temple of Orange County is NOT a safe space for trans women or their allies. It is headed by a 2nd-waver who defines womanhood by the possession of a uterus (apparently, even if you have had yours removed, if you were born with one, she considers you to have an "etheric womb", which begs the question of why she doesn't consider trans women to have the same sort of "etheric womb"...).
If you want to head over to Tracie's post and jump into the conversation, be warned that Ava has showed up in comments and is defending her bigotry with the usual litany of bullshit (which she asked me to post on here when I commented to ask Tracie if she would mind me blogging about this, lolno).
*I swear to fucking god I almost feel like I could TW for "2nd-wave bullshit" at this point, and it would be pretty easily understood. Although it might be unclear as to whether I'm referring to their cis-supremacy or their racism, so...maybe not.
**Much like the fact that it was a rite to Lilith that was the site of transmisogynistic exclusion at PantheaCon 2011, which...just read this fantastic post about the absurdity of holding a trans-exclusionary ritual to Lilith in particular.
Via The Wild Hunt's weekly Unleash The Hounds linkspam post, I found this blog entry by Tracie Welser, a pagan woman in Southern California, about her experience with transmisogyny at the Goddess Temple of Orange County. The short version is, at a women-only service honoring Cybele - which gives this story an extra layer of fuckery, as several Hellenismos friends of mine have pointed out that Cybele had one of the most famous orders of trans priestesses in history** - the Temple's "Presiding Priestess" Ava (I don't see how that's different from High Priestess, but in comments to the linked post she disavowed that title, so I will respect her expressed identity, which is a damn sight more than she is willing to do for trans women) made a series of comments about "the truth of womanhood" that referred to trans women as "mutilated", "not truly women" and "denying the truth of who they are". According to Tracie, who was at the service in question, it was spoken dogmatically by a person in a position of spiritual authority, and members were then asked to "meditate on this unreality [of trans-ness versus cis-ness]". This was not a dialogue. This was dogma.
So, with Tracie's permission, I am sharing this information for the benefit of any pagan female readers I have who are in that area, or who may be there at some point. The Goddess Temple of Orange County is NOT a safe space for trans women or their allies. It is headed by a 2nd-waver who defines womanhood by the possession of a uterus (apparently, even if you have had yours removed, if you were born with one, she considers you to have an "etheric womb", which begs the question of why she doesn't consider trans women to have the same sort of "etheric womb"...).
If you want to head over to Tracie's post and jump into the conversation, be warned that Ava has showed up in comments and is defending her bigotry with the usual litany of bullshit (which she asked me to post on here when I commented to ask Tracie if she would mind me blogging about this, lolno).
*I swear to fucking god I almost feel like I could TW for "2nd-wave bullshit" at this point, and it would be pretty easily understood. Although it might be unclear as to whether I'm referring to their cis-supremacy or their racism, so...maybe not.
**Much like the fact that it was a rite to Lilith that was the site of transmisogynistic exclusion at PantheaCon 2011, which...just read this fantastic post about the absurdity of holding a trans-exclusionary ritual to Lilith in particular.
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.]
4.18.2012
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:
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.
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" |
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.
4.15.2012
PSA: Rape Culture
[Crossposted from my tumblr]
Dear everyone,
When someone says you are doing something that is perpetuating or upholding or contributing in some way to "rape culture"? Here is a list of things they are not doing:
Nobody is saying, or even attempting to imply, that you are singlehandedly responsible for this social climate. Your actions or words may be small enough that you think they are insignificant in the grander scheme of things. But that's how these things work - a million, billion small actions, jokes, words, tropes, media depictions all act together to form a wider social climate, in much the same way that an avalanche is made of billions of individual snowflakes and a sand beach is made of billions of individual grains of sand. Your contribution may be something as small as a lip gloss with a rape joke for a name. Your contribution may be as eyeroll-worthy as some creeper running a public opinion poll to try to manipulate his ex into taking him back. The size of your personal action is not the point. The point is that you are, in some small way, contributing to the creation and maintenance of this toxic culture that really fucks people's shit up, and we are going to need you to stop doing that now, for our own safety and for the safety of others.
No, stopping you from doing your one little thing won't magically erase rape culture. We know that. But that's how such huge things are dismantled. One tiny bit at a time.
This public service announcement brought to you by defensive jerks Not Getting It.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast.
Dear everyone,
When someone says you are doing something that is perpetuating or upholding or contributing in some way to "rape culture"? Here is a list of things they are not doing:
- Accusing you of being a rapist
- Comparing you to a rapist
- Saying you don't think rape is bad
- Saying you don't care about rape victims
- Claiming that your actions will literally cause someone to go out and rape
Your words and/or actions are in some way participating in the creation and maintenance of a social climate in which consent is minimized and/or mocked, the bodies of all people who are not men are considered public property/disposable commodities, the boundaries of people who are not men are routinely violated in ways large and small, people who are not men are actively discouraged from having and holding firm on personal boundaries via negative social feedback ("bitch", "frigid", etc), and an ever-shifting and -increasing set of required behaviors are shoveled onto people who are not men in order to prevent themselves from being raped, and if they are raped it is presumed to be because they failed in some way to meet every single one of the required behaviors and therefore they are at fault.Or, to put it more concisely, your behavior is contributing to a cultural phenomenon that hurts and even kills a lot of people. This is a Bad Thing. You don't want to contribute to something that harms people, do you?
Nobody is saying, or even attempting to imply, that you are singlehandedly responsible for this social climate. Your actions or words may be small enough that you think they are insignificant in the grander scheme of things. But that's how these things work - a million, billion small actions, jokes, words, tropes, media depictions all act together to form a wider social climate, in much the same way that an avalanche is made of billions of individual snowflakes and a sand beach is made of billions of individual grains of sand. Your contribution may be something as small as a lip gloss with a rape joke for a name. Your contribution may be as eyeroll-worthy as some creeper running a public opinion poll to try to manipulate his ex into taking him back. The size of your personal action is not the point. The point is that you are, in some small way, contributing to the creation and maintenance of this toxic culture that really fucks people's shit up, and we are going to need you to stop doing that now, for our own safety and for the safety of others.
No, stopping you from doing your one little thing won't magically erase rape culture. We know that. But that's how such huge things are dismantled. One tiny bit at a time.
This public service announcement brought to you by defensive jerks Not Getting It.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast.
4.13.2012
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:
Image 2: A large pepperoni pizza from Domino's with an order of breadsticks ($19.98) versus this grocery list:
Image 3: An 8-piece KFC fried chicken meal bucket, with four biscuits and two sides ($19.61) versus this grocery list:
Image 4: A box of TGI Friday's jalapeno poppers and a bag of breaded cheese sticks ($10.76), versus the following grocery list:
Image 5: A box of Delimex frozen chicken taquitos ($6.87), versus the following grocery list:
Image 6: A bag of Ore-Ida brand "golden crinkle" frozen french fries ($5.44), versus the following grocery list:
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.
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.
3.28.2012
NOM Uses "Some Of My Best Friends Are Black!" Excuse
Yesterday morning, some documents were released as part of an investigation into the National Organization for [Hetero Christian] Marriage's campaign financing, which showed explicit divide-and-conquer strategizing that revolved around pitting Black and Latino communities against the gay community (because, I guess, there are no queer Black people or queer Latinos? lol your intersectionality failure) in an effort to break apart core Democratic constituencies.
Well, after such damning evidence of their unethical race-based manipulation strategies emerged, they had to respond, didn't they? How could they spin this to come out looking, if not like the good guys, then at least not like total and complete assholes?
Pokemon references aside (I don't even play Pokemon. I never have. Goddamnit, internet memes, what have you done to me?), this is basically the organization-level version of "...but I have black friends [therefore this racist thing I said/did can't possibly be racist]". It's name-dropping certain PoC who are anti-marriage equality, as if to make the case that they do, or should, speak for all of their community (oh, look, that old trope of minority-groups-are-monolithic), while continuing to further erase the existence of PoC who are also part of the LGB community, and their allies.
So I have to wonder: how, exactly, was this supposed to make the case that NOM is not a bunch of terrible, racist assholes, in addition to being homophobic bullies? Put down the shovel, kids. You're in deep enough as it is.
Edited to reflect which day stuff was released. Self, please remember that if you're queuing a post, you need to make sure the conditional references are accurate for the scheduled post time, not for the time when you were writing it. >.<
Well, after such damning evidence of their unethical race-based manipulation strategies emerged, they had to respond, didn't they? How could they spin this to come out looking, if not like the good guys, then at least not like total and complete assholes?
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) was formed in 2007 and has worked extensively with supporters of traditional marriage from every color, creed and background. We have worked with prominent African-American and Hispanic leaders, including Dr. Alveda C. King, Bishop George McKinney of the COGIC Church, Bishop Harry Jackson and the New York State Senator Reverend Rubén DÃaz Sr., all of whom share our concern about protecting marriage as the union of one man and one woman.NOM used My Best Friend Is Black! It's not very effective...
Pokemon references aside (I don't even play Pokemon. I never have. Goddamnit, internet memes, what have you done to me?), this is basically the organization-level version of "...but I have black friends [therefore this racist thing I said/did can't possibly be racist]". It's name-dropping certain PoC who are anti-marriage equality, as if to make the case that they do, or should, speak for all of their community (oh, look, that old trope of minority-groups-are-monolithic), while continuing to further erase the existence of PoC who are also part of the LGB community, and their allies.
So I have to wonder: how, exactly, was this supposed to make the case that NOM is not a bunch of terrible, racist assholes, in addition to being homophobic bullies? Put down the shovel, kids. You're in deep enough as it is.
Edited to reflect which day stuff was released. Self, please remember that if you're queuing a post, you need to make sure the conditional references are accurate for the scheduled post time, not for the time when you were writing it. >.<
3.19.2012
What About The Doctors' Rights?
In the overwhelming tide of anti-choice legislation (honestly, don't these people have ANYTHING else to do?), we've seen a trend of being focused on legislating what goes on in the exam room, what words are exchanged between doctor and patient, what specific techniques the doctor has to use. As Melissa over at Shakesville has pointed out a few times, these "state-sanctioned rape" bills (laws mandating transvaginal ultrasound prior to abortion) not only enforce a requirement of coerced penetration on the patient, they require that the doctor administer said non-consensual penetration. In essence, they victimize the doctor as well as the patient, by coercing them both to engage in an act of penetration to which neither has the option of not consenting to.
We've also recently seen a rise in striking-back bills - ones that declare "sperm persons", ones that would require a person seeking medication for erectile dysfunction have a variety of invasive medical tests before receiving care, etc.
So here's a fun one that combines those two angles: A doctor in Alabama has crafted a piece of legislation that would declare that the physician's judgment and medical necessity supersede any legislation requiring specific procedures or services. Here's the text:
I wasn't able to find bill-tracking information for it. RH Reality Check said that it was offered as an amendment which was voted down after only 10 minutes of debate, but also said to check the legislative calendar for the Judiciary Committee to see when it comes up, so I'm unclear on the status. (If anyone knows more, please let me know in comments.)
Also, I found this sentence at the end of the RHRC piece to be hilarious in a lolsobby sort of way:
We've also recently seen a rise in striking-back bills - ones that declare "sperm persons", ones that would require a person seeking medication for erectile dysfunction have a variety of invasive medical tests before receiving care, etc.
So here's a fun one that combines those two angles: A doctor in Alabama has crafted a piece of legislation that would declare that the physician's judgment and medical necessity supersede any legislation requiring specific procedures or services. Here's the text:
No physician or health care provider licensed to practice in the State of Alabama shall be forced by state or local regulatory authority to perform any medical service or component of medical service if the service or component of service is not medically necessary or would be harmful to the patient and the patient does not desire the medical service. The right to practice within the scope of a medical license supersedes any existing or future legislative act.It's basically the good twin to the "conscience clause" bills that allow people working in healthcare (often including not only the doctors themselves, but everyone from the intake and discharge nurses, to the person who cleans the room or preps instruments or fills prescriptions in any way even tenuously related to abortion or end-of-pregnancy care) to refuse to participate in any level of the abortion process. If they're allowed to refuse to do certain medical procedures because of their conscience - and even, in many cases, allowed to refuse to refer for those services - why shouldn't doctors of a different ethical bent be allowed to refuse to do other medical procedures that they find offensive? I think this is a fantastic idea, and every state plus the federal government ought to have one. And if they vote it down, we should play "zombie bill" with it and keep bringing it back over and over until it passes. ^_^
I wasn't able to find bill-tracking information for it. RH Reality Check said that it was offered as an amendment which was voted down after only 10 minutes of debate, but also said to check the legislative calendar for the Judiciary Committee to see when it comes up, so I'm unclear on the status. (If anyone knows more, please let me know in comments.)
Also, I found this sentence at the end of the RHRC piece to be hilarious in a lolsobby sort of way:
...action is needed to protect the rights of [people] seeking reproductive health care in statehouses across the country.I know "in statehouses across the country" is meant to modify "action is needed", but I'm cracking up at how the proximity to "seeking reproductive health care" implies that they are seeking reproductive health care in statehouses across the nation. Well, shit - if this trend keeps up, it may well be the only way to *get* reproductive health care. You'll have to petition your representative for a permission slip.
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