What Rush Has *Not* Apologized For - And It's Not What You Think

It's all over the everywhere, this Rush controversy, sweeping up even those people who hadn't ever paid much attention to his outrageous racism and sexism before.*  And in an unusual twist for these sorts of situations, Rush's "apology" to Ms. Fluke has actually been seen and shown for the total non-apology that it is.  Which is pretty cool.

But most of the criticism I'm seeing about his nonpology is that he apologized "for the words" but not the sentiment, and/or that he called them "poorly chosen" even though he repeated the statement several times over the course of a few days, which rather gives the lie to any protestation that they were chosen in haste and he just hadn't thought it through, oops.  Which are absolutely valid criticisms of his piss-poor half-assed attempt to shut his critics up "apology", by all means.

What I haven't seen much of, on the other hand, are the aspects of the whole controversy and subsequent nonpology that I actually found to be far more insulting, infuriating, and offensive than the slut/prostitute/poor word choice bit.

Firstly, everyone is talking about the fact that he apologized very specifically for those two words.  Nobody seems to have mentioned his complete lack of an apology for the demand for a sex tape, as if having a hand in subsidizing someone's birth control (no matter how far removed - it's not like you pay your taxes by handing over $50 to the pharmacist and then hand the bag of contraceptives to the person taking them) entitles one to turn them into a porn star against their will.  Honestly, of the two parts of his horrible spew of misogyny, I found Rush's demand for a sex tape posted on the internet to be far more offensive, far cruder and far more vitriolic than calling Ms. Fluke a slut and a prostitute, because of the way it framed and highlighted the "women's sexuality as public property" trope that is foundational to rape culture.  Where is the apology for that?  Where is the outrage that he hasn't apologized for it?

Secondly, I have seen surprisingly little commentary** that repudiates his assertion that he, as a taxpayer, was paying for Ms. Fluke's contraceptive medication in the first place, the premise on which his testerical little rant was based.  Because it's flat out bullshit - bullshit that he actually reiterates in his nonpology, no less!  "I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability?"  Except that Fluke's testimony was not even remotely about being on taxpayer-subsidized insurance like Medicaid or any such assistance program that would mean taxpayer funds buying her contraceptives.  It was about private insurance that she and other students were paying into through their fees to the university.  That's their money, and the organization's money, not taxpayer money!  So his whole premise for demanding she produce porn for his enjoyment, as punishment for the audacity to want to protect herself from pregnancy***, was fallacious from the first word onward.

I'm glad Rush is finally getting the backlash he has so richly deserved for so long.  I'm frustrated that it took this long, that it only finally happened when he called a white woman a prostitute and not, say, when he called the First Lady of the United States "uppity", and that even in this backlash many people are allowing a goodly chunk of his true fuckery to go unacknowledged and unexamined.  So please, I am asking everyone who reads this: the next time you get into a conversation with someone - or an argument, or a screaming match, whatever, I'm not picky - about this, please, don't just argue that it was wrong to call Fluke a slut and a prostitute.  Remember that those words are only about a third of the real problem here, and bring these other issues to light for other people as well.

*Which says a lot about our priorities, as a country and in particular the media's priorities in never really covering his more outrageous racist attacks, often against women of color, up to and including the First Lady (calling her "uppity", speculating on her "authentic slave blood", etc), enough to ever provoke this kind of backlash.


**Lol.  So pretty much as soon as I finish writing this and hit queue to publish it tomorrow, I come across this on my tumblr dashboard.  Okay, so not everyone is letting him get away with the lie within the lie, which is good - but I've been following this since it broke, and this is literally the first I've seen of someone calling it out, so.  I still stand by my assertion that there's very little commentary calling out that aspect of it.


***Her testimony wasn't even about using birth control for contraceptive purposes, anyway - nor was it even specifically about her own experiences needing contraception.  It was a compilation of stories of other women she'd spoken to, about using it to control PCOS and other medical conditions that have nothing to do with having sex and not getting pregnant.  Moar fallacies!  Moar lies!  Bullshit for everyone!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bryan Fischer Didn't Mean It. Except That He Does.

Remember on Friday, when I posted about Bryan Fischer's horrible "convert or go home" sentiment for Muslim/non-Christian immigrants?  I mentioned at the time that I could only use Right Wing Watch's quotes from the article, as the link to the original wasn't working, almost as if the article had been taken down...

Well, guess what?  It was.  And then it was put back up, but with the offending paragraphs scrubbed and re-written to say the exact opposite of what they originally said.  Where before, Fischer wrote that Muslim immigrants who "insist on clinging to their religion...will need to exercise their freedom of religion in a Muslim country," and that "Someone with a Muslim background who wants to become an American had best be prepared to drop his Islam and his Qur’an at Ellis Island," now it says:

 Does this mean that folks need to convert before they immigrate? No, but at a minimum, it would mean making sure that immigrants to the United States affirm and believe in the superiority of the Judeo-Christian system of values and truth claims over alternative value systems such as sharia law.

Hmm.  That's a nice little logic pretzel you've got yourself in, Fischer/AFA.  First it was that Muslims who wish to immigrate have to convert to Christianity in order to enter, now it's "Do they have to convert?  No, but..."  And that nasty little "but" in there leads to a sentence I'm still trying to extract a coherent meaning from.  They don't have to convert...but they do have to believe in the superiority of euphemistically-phrased "Judeo-Christian values"?  You don't have to convert, but you do have to believe my religion is superior before I'll let you in my clubhouse.  How incredibly asinine.  Also, can you stop with the "Judeo-Christian" euphemism?  We all know you mean fundamentalist Christianity.  You're only adding "Judeo" on there to make it look a little less sectarian, and it's not fooling anyone.

Since this is the third time so far this year that the AFA has had to take down and scrub Fischer's articles (the other two times were for claiming Native Americans "deserved" colonization and nearly being wiped-out for not converting to Christianity, and for criticizing welfare programs as promoting African-American families who "rut like rabbits"), perhaps they should, I dunno, stop giving him a platform to spew his bullshit from?  Let him get his own damn blog like the rest of us, where he can be one more ranty bastard in the sea of ranty bastards that is blogging, without having the title of Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association and the media reach that goes with it.  After all, these censorings aren't going to stop him.  Bryan Fischer means every word he writes [link goes to video of Fischer pontificating].  If the AFA isn't willing to stand by that, it's time to cut him loose like the offensive, loose-cannon liability he is.

An Addendum To The "Depression Is A Crock" Debacle

I posted last week in response to some fauxpert on AOL news calling post-partum depression a "crock" and then further claiming in response to criticism that all depression is just "people who don't want to cope with life".  As a survivor of depression for more than half my life, and specifically a survivor who resisted antidepressant medication for far longer than was safe for me precisely *because* of attitudes like that, I was furious and jumped on her statements about depression as a whole.  But in my anti-ableist fervor and my anger over the generalized stigma against viewing mental illnesses as real illnesses, I missed a seriously huge (and very feministly-relevant) aspect that I'd like to go back and revisit now.


Because while I focused on the "depression as a whole is bullshit" part of her statement, that was actually only in her response to the controversy, when she "clarified" her position.  The original dustup was over her statements regarding post-partum depression specifically, and so in the grand scheme of responses to her, I am an odd childfree voice arguing about depression amidst a sea of mothers arguing about post-partum depression.  I am kind of feeling like I missed the forest for the trees, or the trees for the forest perhaps, and I just wanted to clarify, because I feel like I focused on my own experience and the ableism against that, to the exclusion of a discussion of the misogyny in Pat Brown's position.  .  


See, the thing is, when a person talks shit about survivors of depression, that's a feminist issue because of intersectionality, and because women suffer depression at higher rates than men, and because of the way women are portrayed as overemotional, blah blah blah...but it's also talking shit about male survivors of depression, so it's more than just a women's issue.  Post-partum depression, on the other hand, is a women's issue in a way general clinical depression is not, because PPD is a thing which happens to childbearing persons.  While not all women are childbearing persons, all childbearing persons (with the exception of a scant few rare transmen who chose to exercise their gestational capability post-transition) are women.  Thus, talking shit about PPD survivors is talking shit about an experience which happens specifically to women.


And in that context, the stigma against survivors of PPD is just another facet of Women Can't Win.  Be thin, because fat is ugly and you don't want to be ugly, after all, your primary value is your beauty...but eww, too skinny, you're all skin and bones, go eat a cheeseburger!  If you're a virgin (past a certain age), you're a pathetic prude, but have sex in any context other than your first time on your wedding night with the only husband you will ever have and you're a slut, a whore, dirty, used...  If you work, you'd better be totally devoted to your career because you'll have to be twice as good to get half as far as the men in your field, but if you're devoted to your career at the expense of dating or having children, you're a selfish bitch and probably also a lesbian (and remember, lesbians are Bad).  If you don't have or don't want children, you're sick and selfish and not a real woman, but if you have children, you are unequivocally NOT ALLOWED at any point to be anything other than happy and grateful for EVERY SINGLE MOMENT of your child-raising life, and if you fail that in ANY WAY AT ALL, including pregnancy-related mental illness like PPD, you are RUINING YOUR CHILDREN and you are a BAD MOTHER.


Stigma against depression is ableist and privileges a neurotypical experience of mood and happiness.  But stigma against post-partum depression is both ableist and uniquely misogynist.  It is deeply sexist to dismiss the experiences and suffering of thousands of women by telling them that their specific form of a debilitating mental illness is bullshit and doesn't exist.  It's a diagnosis of "hysteria" for the modern age, and it is. not. okay.

Sarah Palin Has Left The Building (In Which Reality Resides)

I normally don't read @SarahPalinUSA's tweetstream.  First of all, why the hell is it @SarahPalinUSA, not just @SarahPalin?  There can't be that many Sarah Palins in the world that she needs to differentiate herself from, and it strikes me as childish conservative posturing - "Real Amurricans" and all that.  All she needs now is an American flag and a bald eagle in the back window of her pickup truck...  And second, reading it gives me a headache, and I have yet to figure out if it's the bizarre use of txtspeak (yes, I realize 140 characters is short, but Roger Ebert and I manage to be grammatical within that constraint; why can't you, Sarah?), the breathtakingly unabashed conserva-bizarro-world "logic", or simply the repeated thudding of my head on the desk that's the cause.  But today, someone RT'd a genius satire account into my timeline, @SP_Translator.  SP_Translator's twitterstream consists of RT's of a Palin tweet, followed by a "translation".  For example, this morning:

SarahPalinUSA: Now headed to ANWR; 20,000,000 remote acres of US oil & gas;we'll show you what it really looks like,unlike extreme enviro's fundraiser pics 12:42 PM Aug 16th via Twitter for BlackBerry®

SP_Translator: I'm heading to the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve. I might kill something. And, if I'm really lucky, I'll kill everything! @SarahPalinUSA 12:48 PM Aug 16th via web 

It made me laugh, so I followed.  The "translations" dilute the stupid enough that it's not a toxic dose, so even seeing the original Palin tweets only makes me roll my eyes, because I know something funny will shortly follow.  With a couple of exceptions, of course...


...So you've been following the Dr. Laura thing, right?  She went off at a black woman on her radio show, who had called in asking for advice in dealing with her white husband and his white family and friends who were sometimes racist around her, including using the n-word (which I will not type out in full for any reason, period the end.  You know which word I'm talking about).  Dr. Laura yelled at her about hearing black people use the word themselves and by god if you people can use it, so can us white people!  Basically.  But it included Dr. Laura actually saying the n-word something like eleven times at the woman, to prove her point.  Many many people were very very angry about this, complained, Tweeted, blogged, called her advertisers, and she announced today that she's ending her show.  Good fucking riddance to her homophobic, transphobic, fauxminist, gender-essentialist bullshit.  


Of course, what controversy with a conservative woman at its center would be complete without the Palinator weighing in?  Sure enough, on Twitter this afternoon, she said...

Dr.Laura=even more powerful & effective w/out the shackles, so watch out Constitutional obstructionists. And b thankful 4 her voice,America!

Dr.Laura:don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American,not fair")

Head, meet desk.  Again.  Not least because of the odd use of quotes in the second tweet.  See what I mean about her fucking bizarre txtspeak?  Worse than a 12-yr-old on sugar, that woman is, with a phone's keyboard in her hands.


Anyway, eleventy-billionth verse, same as the first, a whole lot louder and a whole lot more fucking annoying because ye gods, do you people not get it yet?  What have you got in place of your brain pieces, spent brass and a copy of Atlas Shrugged?  Sing it with me, progressives:  The 1st Amendment guarantees that the government will not censor you for reasons of content suppression.  It has NOT ONE FUCKING THING to do with what OTHER PEOPLE think of you and how they express that opinion.  We are well within our rights to criticize an out-and-proud bigot for her bigotry.  If she weren't saying something that is completely unac-fucking-ceptable according to polite society (and her advertisers) there wouldn't be a damn thing we could do to her.  It's not us that's the problem, it's her racism that's gotten her in trouble.  


The other thing that gets me about that pair of tweets is the whole "unshackled=more powerful!" crap.  It strikes me as trying to turn a frown upside down, only it's totally bizarre (I use that word a lot when I'm talking about Palin, don't I?  Heh.) because, um, without her radio, sure, she's not "shackled" by the need to be marginally polite and not (too much of) a raging bigot...but she also has no platform.  Which was kinda where that power came from, yes?  How is a woman willing to yell the n-word at a black woman to make a point going to be "powerful and effective", cut off from the major platform for her message?  


Well, she might try getting a job at the AFA.  If they're willing to give Bryan Fischer a platform, Dr. Laura should fit right in.


PS: What's a "Constitutional Obstructionist" anyway?  The only way I can make that work out, semantically, is that she means people who obstruct her agenda by following/using the Constitution.  Which is hilariously, and probably unintentionally, accurate.  I think I'm taking that for my new title.  "[MyLegalName], retail wage slave by day, blogger and Constitutional Obstructionist by night!" ^_^

This Is Why I Resisted Medication (And Could Have Died From It)

[Trigger warning: descriptions of depression and suicidal ideation] [TMI warning: family who would rather not hear the raw details of my suicidal periods, turn back now]

First: holy shit, AOL still exists?  I thought that ancient behemoth died off by the time I'd graduated from high school.  Apparently not, given that the customers at work give me @aol.com email addresses fully half the time.

And AOL is even around as an internet news service these days, publishing ridiculously offensive content like this article (it's been scrubbed of the offensive bits already; here's a response to it that quotes the bad parts before they were taken out) about a woman who killed her children in South Carolina.  The short version is, a woman who may or may not have been suffering from post-partum depression (PPD) killed her children, and the police are looking at PPD as a potential motive.  The AOL article included quotes from a so-called "expert" - an expert in criminal profiling, mind you, not a doctor or anyone who would know two shits about how chemical imbalances in the brain *actually work* - basically saying that PPD is "a crock" and it's just an "excuse" for women who are whining about how they don't like their new babyified life.


Several mommybloggers got righteously outraged and called the "expert" on her shit, including an open letter posted here, which cited the author's own experience of PPD and describing the environmental, psychological, and physiological causes/triggers of PPD as best understood by current science.  She ended her letter by saying:

The women suffering from PPD/PAMD [Perinatal Anxiety and Mood Disorder], and those of us who have survived it, do not need any more blame and judgment.  Believe me when I tell you that we blame and judge ourselves quite enough.  We need compassion, help, and access to treatment.  We do not need to be told that our disorder is "a crock."

And lo and behold, a response appeared in the heavens...

I am not ignorant of your argument for PPD and I am not saying in some rare case such a thing could exist based on chemical issues. Generally speaking, I don't buy the chemical imbalance theory for any depression; I believe people just don't want to deal with real life issues and the fact that sometimes life is simply depressing and damn difficult. It isn't about chemical imbalance but tough times and our own issues.

Pat Brown
Investigative Criminal Profiler

Wow.  Not content with dismissing PPD/PAMD survivors, she's upped the ante to include ALL depression.  Let that sink in again...

I don't buy the chemical imbalance theory for any depression; I believe people just don't want to deal with real life issues...

I guess I spent most of my college years hiding in my apartment, barely able to get out of bed and face the world at least one or two days out of every week, battling on a daily basis the tantalizing thoughts of suicide that floated around in my mind, hating myself and picking apart my every tiniest flaw, terrified to go to class and be around people, sinking ever further into a desperate spiral of emotional/psychological agony not because I have a diagnosed mental illness, but because I just didn't want to deal with real life issues.


You know what?  Fuck you, you sanctimonious meat nugget.  I desperately wanted to deal with my real life issues.  I WANTED to be able to go to class, to keep my house clean, to have friends and a social life, keep up with my homework and get my degree.  I WANTED those things with a desperate hunger.  But I COULDN'T.  I wanted to deal, I tried to deal, but my brain kept getting in my way, dousing my efforts in fear and hurting until I could do nothing more strenuous than curl up under the covers and cry and wish I were dead.  You think that's fun?  You think fantasizing about one's own death in meticulous detail is preferable to dealing with real life issues?  What the fucking fuck.  


I wrote my first suicide note when I was 11.  I started self-injuring when I was 13.  I received some (ineffective) counseling when I was 15, then some better therapy when I was 17.  I didn't get onto medication, despite having very good insurance coverage that could have gotten it for me for free/low copay, until I was fucking TWENTY, nearly a DECADE after the first onset of depression.  You know why?  That stigma right there, that attitude the "expert" is showing.  Because I bought that shit wholesale, in Costco-sized quantities.  Medication was a sign of weakness.  There was nothing wrong with me except that I wanted there to be something wrong with me.  If I tried hard enough, I could just "snap out of it" and be ok.  I just had to think positive, buy a day planner, do my homework, and everything would be ok.  It was all in my head.  I just wasn't trying hard enough.  Antidepressants are just happy pills for people who can't cope with life.  You don't want to be the kind of person who relies on happy pills instead of her own strength, do you?  Be strong.  Be tough.  Suck it up and keep going.  Smile, even if you don't feel like it.  You thought yourself into this, you can think yourself back out.


Finally, finally, my therapist talked me into giving meds a try.  It took a therapist that I trusted and liked THREE FUCKING YEARS to talk me into trying meds for my depression, that's how strong the stigma against depression-as-illness had me in its grip.  I contacted a psychiatrist through the campus health center and began Lexapro.  It lessened the suicidal thoughts and made them easier to cope with, except it completely blocked my ability to orgasm, and after three weeks of that I stormed into my appointment and said "Find. Me. Something. Else. NOW."  Me - orgasms = REALLY REALLY UNHAPPY.  So we tried Wellbutrin instead.  And something happened.


Three or four weeks into taking it, I was walking home from class (a hell of a thing in and of itself; I was going to class more or less regularly!) and I realized I was smiling up at the sun for no particular reason, and I hadn't thought longingly about suicide once all day!  I was afraid to trust this sudden thing called happiness.  What if it was just a fluke?  What if it disappeared again?  I enrolled in a cognitive-behavioral therapy group - me, who was terrified of being around people! - and made friends.  One of my favorite memories of college was planning a day out together with three other women in the group, where we went to breakfast in town, then to the campus art department's Open Studios day together.  I was having a social life!  With other people!  It was amazing to me.  


So I have a question for this unmitigated fuckwit: if you "don't buy" that depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain - ie, you don't believe that it's a real mental illness (and why the fuck is it any of your business to buy or not buy the categorization of depression as a mental illness anyway?) - how do you explain my experience, and the hundreds of others who could tell you similar stories?  If we don't have an illness, what good could medication possibly do?  And yet medication has clearly helped many, many people.  So how do you explain that?


I wonder if she, and those who hold similar views, realize the very real damage they do by perpetuating that stigma?  It is purely by the grace of a few very, very good friends that I am still alive today.  Friends who talked me down from the ledge over and over again, once or twice a month, like clockwork, when the desire for death became too much to stave off again.  Friends who, at times, literally physically restrained me from attempting suicide.  Friends who helped keep these episodes a secret from the rest of the world, because I didn't want anyone else to know how broken I was.  I could have died, several times over, because I refused to accept medical treatment for my illness.  Because of the stigma.  Because of that "I don't buy it" attitude.


To Pat Brown, and those who believe as this fauxpert does, who would dismiss all depression as people who "just don't want to deal with life":  

YOU ARE CONTRIBUTING TO A SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE THAT QUITE LITERALLY KILLS PEOPLE.  PLEASE FUCKING STOP.


No love,
A depressive in remission

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?

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.

Just Call Her Uppity And Be Done With It

Remember last year, when during a Congressional hearing, Sen. Barbara Boxer got a bit annoyed at an Army brigadier general calling her "ma'am" and directed him to refer to her as "Senator" the same way he was referring to her (male) colleagues?  Much like Hillary Clinton's "outburst" at being asked about her husband's opinion during an appearance as the US Secretary of State, most people flipped out about those angry women and their habit of demanding respect rather than meekly requesting it, while feminists defended the women in question and their stances as totally reasonable.  Listen, if I had gotten as high and powerful as those two women, I, too, would be pissed at some guy referring to me differently than my male equals or asking me for my husband's opinion.


Now, Boxer's seat is facing challenge from Tom Campbell, a Republican.  And he has just released an attack ad against Boxer, featuring the clip from the hearing.  (Sadly, I couldn't find it on YouTube; if someone knows where it's posted online, please let me know in comments and I'll add it.)  The fun part, though...is how he frames her request.

"There's an arrogance that I see right now in the federal government," Campbell says, before the ad cuts to the Boxer footage.

So...it's "arrogant" for a woman in political office to request that she be referred to by the title of that office, just like her male colleagues are?   That's quite the misogyny dogwhistle.  Damn uppity woman, thinking she has the right to be called by her title.  You don't want to be represented by a woman who thinks she's entitled to respect, now do you? 

If you've got some cash burning a hole in your pocket, or some funds earmarked for political donations yet unassigned to a political candidate, might I suggest donating to help Boxer keep her seat against this douchenozzle?

Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss...

Police closed Lafayette Park and chased the media back about two blocks away from the White House today, to prevent them from covering the DADT protest in which six servicemembers in full uniform chained themselves to the WH fence, a la Lt. Choi a couple weeks ago.  
 

Looks like the White House is in full damage-control mode, now that our community has gotten sick and fucking tired of waiting for movement on DADT repeal and has started holding feet to the fire.  What's the matter, Obama?  Don't like your "fierce advocate" facade being exposed for the cardboard cut-out it is?  You've tried to keep us quiet with the odd crumb here or there - partner benefits for federal employees (still hasn't been put into effect), Medicare/Medicaid hospital visitation (with no timeline for enforcement), a throwaway half-a-sentence in the State of the Union (even as you spent five or ten minutes per topic on other subjects, like terrorism! and war! and Main Street v Wall Street!) for DADT repeal - but we're not stupid.  We've noticed the total lack of leadership on the issues.  Even if it weren't for the rumors that your Congressional Liaison office is actively working to quell any DADT movement in the defense budget bill, we've still seen how utterly silent your administration is willing to be on our issues, like ENDA and DADT.  

But this?  Closing Lafayette Park entirely, and chasing reporters away from a protest?  Looks like the Obama administration is taking directions out of the Dubya-era PR book.  Am I the only one who remembers the promises of openness! and transparency! and change in the way Washington works!?  Because this is not something that inspires hope, and it's definitely not the change I believed in.

Rated "W", for WTF?

I present this review/rant in honor of St. Patrick's Day.  If you are a fan of the second Boondock Saints movie, TURN BACK NOW.  This is your last warning.

I want to start by saying, I really liked the original Boondock Saints movie.  I only watched it for the first time this past year, and that because my ex made me - it's his favorite movie and he wanted to share.  But I really, really enjoyed it.  Enough that I introduced Ozzmodious to it this past month or so, and he loved it too.  So when we found a copy of Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day on Blu-Ray at Target over the weekend, we had to get it RIGHTNOWOMG.  So I'm not someone who's hated both of them, or who hates gun-porn movies, or whatever, just looking for excuses to tear this movie down.  I went into this with high hopes, I really did.


I. Want. Those. Two. Hours. Of. My. Life. BACK.  Now, please.  Someone give me a time machine so I can go back in time to yesterday afternoon and spend my evening doing something more productive.  Like reading MRA blogs.  Or watching YouTube of Palin rallies.  You know.  Something that would enrich my life more and piss me off less than this movie did.


The entire thing might as well be replaced by scenes of men screaming at the top of their lungs, "OUR PENISES ARE ENORMOUS AND ENGORGED AND ALSO WE HAVE BALLLLLLZ THE SIZE OF CANTELOUPES, DO YOU NOT SEE HOW MANLY WE ARE YET?  DO YOU NOT?  WE ARE MEN, DAMMIT!  MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN!" interspersed with scenes of random gunfights in slow motion, and the occasional shot of a stripper doing the "sexy businesswoman" look in towering stilettos while making sexyface and/or grinning seductively at the camera while her hair blows around her in slow motion a la Victoria's Secret commercials.  Seriously.  I have just described the movie, so if you haven't seen it, you can now spare yourselves the trouble and headache.  Toss a buck in the tip jar on your way out.  ;-)


For example.  When the ONLY female character in the entire fucking movie is introduced, it's with a getting-out-of-car stilettos-and-stockings slow-motion strut to sexy music, which lasts for an egregiously and unnecessarily long 30 seconds before you even get to see that hey, she is not just a pair of perfectly-stockinged legs with black stripper heels on, walking around without a body!  The first crime scene she does, she puts one of the (male) detectives on his knees in front of her, after taking down her hair and shaking it out all sexy-girl-like for no discernable reason, to "illustrate" a point.  There are several his-face-her-crotch shots to make sure we get, HEY HE'S ON HIS KNEES IN FRONT OF SEXAY-LADY!!  Her cleavage and legs are emphasized at EVERY. POSSIBLE. MOMENT.  She is absolutely the Token Badass Sexy Lady.  Yes, she is quite competent.  But that takes a backseat to her being sexy.  UGH.


But I think the worst part, the most ridiculous 3 or 4 minutes of film I have ever witnessed IN MY ENTIRE LIFE THUS FAR, was the Anxious Masculinity Montage, about 3/4 of the way through.  In it, the two brothers are in a dream sequence with their dead friend Rocco, from the first movie.  And they go on a rant about "real men" that is just...fucking.......there are no words.  Seriously.  Words fail me to describe that monstrosity.  Just read it for yourself.  

Connor MacManus, Murphy MacManus: Sláinte
Murphy MacManus: You know, he was sort of a badass though, wasn't he?
Connor MacManus: Shades of Eastwood. Charlie Bronson.
Rocco: Duke Fucking Wayne!
Connor MacManus, Murphy MacManus: Duke Fucking WAYNE!
Rocco: Men build things, then we die. It's in our fucking DNA! THAT'S WHAT WE DO!
Murphy MacManus: And when it all falls down?
Rocco: We build it right back up again.
Connor MacManus: But this time bigger. BETTER!
Rocco: Look! Look what we can do. Look how fuckin' beautiful we are. You think the men that built all this had it easy?
Murphy MacManus: Hard men!
Connor MacManus: Doing hard shit!
Rocco: and that gives me a hard on... But not in a gay way or anything like that.
Murphy MacManus: No, 'course not
Connor MacManus: Yeah it goes without sayin'
Rocco: I am so sick of all of this self help, twelve step, leftover hippie generation bullshit!
Connor MacManus: Now they don't want you to do anything, right? Just sit there. Don't drink.
Murphy MacManus: Don't smoke. Don't drive fast.
Connor MacManus, Murphy MacManus, Rocco: Kiss my ass!
Rocco: Fuck it! Do it all I say! Do you think Duke Wayne spent all of his time talking about his feelings with a fuckin' therapist?
Connor MacManus: There's no fucking way he did!
Rocco: John Wayne died with five pounds of undigested red meat in his ass. Now that's a man! Real men hide their feelings. Why?
Connor MacManus, Murphy MacManus, Rocco: Because it's none of your fuckin' business!
Rocco: Men do not cry. Men do not pout. Men jack you in the fuckin' jaw and say...
Detective Greenly: Thanks for comin' out.

And then they wake up and go kill more people.   That chunk right there advanced the plot not a bit, contributed nothing to the pacing, seriously had NO purpose whatsoever except to make sure, in case you hadn't absorbed it well enough yet, that every single viewer understood that THIS IS A MEN'S MOVIE.  And that by MEN they mean ONLY ADHERENTS TO TRADITIONAL VIOLENT-TOWER-OF-STOICISM MASCULINITY NEED APPLY. 

If you wanted to be able to name a movie that perfectly encapsulated the Cult of Anxious Masculinity and the anti-feminist backlash, and Judd Apatow's body of work wasn't doing enough for you, this should be at the top of your list.  I doubt we'll ever watch it again.

Well If You'd Just Go Back In The Closet, This Wouldn't Be A Problem

I just love conservadouche logic.  And by "love", I mean "it makes me want to smash things and bang my head against the wall."  


So at CPAC recently, there was a bit of a dustup over the fact that GOProud, a gay conservative group, was one of the event's sponsors, and the fact that one of the speakers was kind of an asshole about that.  The ensuing discussion in the blogosphere resulted in this absolute gem of a quote, from the AFA's Bryan Fischer:

And why is it that defenders of natural marriage are always the ones who get told to shut up? If advocates for special rights for homosexuals would just shut up, this controversy would go away tomorrow.

"Well, we wouldn't have to work to actively deny you equal rights [because I would REALLY, genuinely like to know what "special rights" it is we're trying to get.  They keep saying this, but what is so "special rights" about wanting to be able to live and work and love and marry just like they do?  We're literally trying to do the exact same things they're doing.  I don't get it.] if you would just be good little queers and go back in the closet.  Then we could deny you your rights quietly, without fuss, the way we used to.  Ahh, the good old days..."

Argleblargh!

The Bizarro-World of Anti-Gay Activists

So Prop H8 finally goes to federal trial this month. And there was the discussion of whether or not to allow the trial to be televised; federal cases usually aren't, but they've begun to allow televising of non-criminal trials recently, and since the Prop H8 case affects the lives of so many, wouldn't televising it be a good thing? Transparency of the courts and all that. Well, we got a partial ok on it; the judge has conditionally allowed proceedings to be filmed and posted online the next day, but not broadcast live.

Of course, there was no question about it not being televised, until the pro-H8 bigots spoke up and asked for cameras to be barred. Their excuse? They fear a backlash against their bigotry from same-sex marriage supporters. Apparently we were so mean to them after the election they're scared to testify if they have to do it publicly. What they really mean is, they don't want their bigotry exposed for what it really is.

But what got me was, they're afraid of us. Let me say that again. Anti-gay bigots, people who actively strive to take away the rights of hundreds of thousands of people (millions if you're counting nationally, not just here) and have us legally designated as second-class citizens in a variety of ways, people who compare gays to pedophiles and donkey-fuckers, whose rhetoric incites hate and violence against our communities here and the world over...THEY'RE afraid of US? Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of bizarro-world do they live in, where the super powerful Ebil Gays are oppressing the poor, righteous Christians for daring merely to speak their hateful beliefs? I bet it's the same world O'Reilly and the War On Christmasers live in, where black is white and up is down and Christians in America are just so, so persecuted.

If they're so convinced they're Doing The Right Thing For Society, they should damn well have pride in their work and be willing to do it in the public view. And yet they're not, instead claiming victimization by the people they're trying to oppress in a pathetic attempt to hide their bigotry from scrutiny. Somehow, that just doesn't add up, does it?

No Body Part Is Safe...

So it seems that no part of a woman's body is safe from scrutiny, disapproval, and the Need! to Fix! It!!



I've seen this infomercial a few times. And every time, my response is a resounding WTF??? Are beauty companies really THAT hard-up for ways to make women feel insecure? Or are they just that greedy, that they need to manufacture a new kind of "workout" for a totally un-work-out-able body part in order to sell women one more bit of shit we don't need to "fix" our bodies a little more?

Oh, for fuck's sake. Why am I surprised? Women can never be perfect enough. This is just one more way to capitalize on that, and the free market never misses an opportunity to profit from misogyny.

Wednesday WTF: CNN's Definition of "Activism"

So Scott Roeder, the alleged murderer of Kansas' only abortion provider, Dr. Tiller, is set to stand trial in September. CNN chose to report this with the following headline:

Trial set for anti-abortion activist in Kansas doctor's death

W. T. F??? No. Not even fucking close. Activism means things like protesting, organizing, donating, speaking out, calling legislators, blogging, all sorts of things. One thing that is not included under activities described in the term "activism"? MURDER, you spineless whitewashing fuckwits! Also, for the record, Dr. Tiller didn't just drop dead. He was fucking MURDERED. Remember that part?

Activists don't kill people. Murderers kill people. Learn the fucking difference, CNN.

Wednesday WTF (Part II): Just slap some boobs on there and call it a day.

Came across this via Sociological Images, which you should be reading if you aren't already. Following is the chronological progression of online ads for a game called Evony:


Pretty innocuous, right? Dude with sword and armor. Standard for the genre. But it goes on:


Sadly, also pretty standard. Pretty maiden enticing assumed-to-be-male player. Bleh, yeah, reinforces idea of gamer=man, woman as prop, etc. But still not bad, as far as these things go. Until it continued:


Still playing the "my Lord" game, and you notice that though it uses "lover" singular, there are two fainting decolletage-y women waiting for you? Don't worry, we're not done yet:


Um, ok. Off of real-ish women and onto plainly cartoonish ones, but this one is kneeling and gazing at you piteously, begging you to save her! Also there's a suspiciously phallic phantom half-a-sword dangling over her cleavage. Seriously, are they even trying anymore? Why not just put a big red arrow and say "Look! Boobies! Right here! And the sword stands for a penis!" Sadly, however, we have not yet reached rock bottom. With increasing desperation:


So now we have a woman with an expression that could pretty easily be read as the transports of post-coital bliss, with the kind of cleavage that makes even me sit and wonder "Is that a hint of areola I see?" And the text, which no longer makes any pretense of talking about the game, but rather borrows phrasing and tone from the late-night "singles chat" ads: "Talk discreetly with other singles in your area, NOW!" See, this woman here, she stands for a hot and available real-life woman. And our game stands for you having sex with her. Don't you want to play? NOW? But we have STILL not reached the end in this race-for-the-bottom! Perceive:


Are. You. Fucking. Kidding me? Having given up even the pretense of anything to do with the game, in terms of background, font, lighting, costuming, anything at all, Evony goes for the slap-you-with-a-brick style of marketing: LOOK BOOBIES, NOW PLAY OUR GAME. BECAUSE YOU LIKE BOOBIES. EVERYONE LIKES BOOBIES. EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TOPIC AT HAND.

And after all that boob-heavy marketing? There are no queens and no women characters in the game. At all. In fact, it's apparently come up so often that Evony's FAQ had to address this:

How do I get my queen?
There is no queen in this game, the ad you saw is for marketing purposes and seems to be highly effective by the number of times this question has come up.

That sound you just heard? Was my forehead and my keyboard meeting in a glorious dance of WTF. That is all.