NY Marriage Equality Voted Down; Repubs Blame Dems???

(I know this happened yesterday, but I was having a Why Fucking Bother? day by that time; my teaspooning arm was too tired to move.)

So New York State had an opportunity to legalize same-sex marriage yesterday. Democrats in the state Senate had been fighting to bring the bill to an up-or-down vote, and for awhile it looked like it wasn't going to happen. But then yesterday, it finally came to the floor, and...lost. 24-38. The fun part? All 30 Republicans in the Senate voted against it. So, apparently, did 8 Democrats, who had previously said they would vote for it. Lying fucks.

But the best part comes in a press release from Log Cabin Republicans (via):

"Today we share in the frustration and disappointment that the Senate did not pass the marriage equality bill. We are deeply saddened that the Democratic Conference failed to secure the votes they promised, undermining the possibility of a credible bipartisan vote of conscience on the merits of marriage equality.

Winning marriage equality in New York requires the Democrats to keep their promises, and Log Cabin will continue to work to ensure that Republicans vote their conscience when that finally happens."

Wait...what? The party of NO, who could muster NOT ONE SINGLE VOTE for marriage equality, is going to blame the party that brought the bill to vote (over Republican opposition, mind you) and who got all 24 yes votes? Even if the Dems had "secured the votes they promised", that still leaves NOT ONE SINGLE REPUBLICAN voting yes. So who the fuck are the LCRs to lecture on this? "You get every one of your people behind it, and then we might, maybe, stick one or two votes out on this. Maybe. If you're good."

Oh, and for the record? Those Republicans who voted against marriage equality? They WERE voting their consciences. The Republican party is as anti-gay as the pope is Catholic. What makes you think that's going to change?

Nativity or Nothing

It's that time of year again. The air is cold, the carols are incessant, the lights displays are extravagant, and anything that isn't specifically Jesus-oriented is going to be decried by the ever-persecuted Religious Wrong as part of the "War on Christmas". Stores that use "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" go on the Naughty List for daring to acknowledge the existence of more than one winter holiday. Towns that have Holiday Parades or Holiday Trees (the shite at that last link deserves a post of its own, frankly) face protests from the vocal minority that demands that THEIR holiday be THE ONLY holiday. And the battles rev up again over where one can place nativity scenes visible to the public.

On the surface, that would seem to be a simple enough issue. Private property is fine, so long as it doesn't violate local size-of-display laws. Public or government-owned property can go one of two ways. The easier way is to not allow religious holiday displays of any kind, so as not to favor any one religion over another in violation of the Establishment Clause. However, if a town wants to display a creche on public land, they can, so long as they also allow displays from other religions so as not to show favoritism. It's an all-or-nothing situation. And honestly, I can respect either choice.

Except in a situation like this one. The city of Chambersburg, PA, recently changed their policy to restrict all holiday displays. Fine, right? Except they only did so when, after 14 years of happily displaying a nativity on their memorial square, a local atheists group asked permission to put up a sign of their own about celebrating Solstice. Immediately the Borough Council unanimously voted to remove and ban all signs from the square in question. So the city in essence admitted, through their abrupt policy change spurred by the terrifying specter of enforced non/religious plurality, that the previous "inclusive" policy was really only intended to allow for Christian displays.

Council member Elaine Swartz argued before the vote that her concern, shared by her fellow members, lay more in the anticipation that groups of all viewpoints would suddenly bombard the square with their own signs and messages if council were to allow an atheist sign.

Oh noes! Quelle horreur! Groups of all viewpoints might want to put up signs if you let the atheists do it! Give a mouse a cookie and Christianity will no longer dominate the landscape, and we can't have that.

The atheist group in question intends to pursue legal action against Chambersburg for their sudden and discriminatory change of policy. I wish them luck. And a great big fuck-you to Christian hegemony as personified in incidents like this; the faster it falls the happier I'll be.

Let the Victim-Blaming Begin!

[trigger warning]

The six defendants in the absolutely horrific gang-rape case in Richmond (where as many as ten men raped a 15-yr-old girl for around two hours at the homecoming dance while as many as 20 people looked on and quietly passed the word around to their friends to come watch too) have entered not guilty pleas today.

The linked story is, for a mercy and a wonder, quite free of the usual shit reporting about rape. The assault is called what it is, not "forced sex" or any of that crap. But they include a quote from one Shyan Mason, a friend of one of the defendants, that literally made me cry.

"As far as with the girl, I'm not saying she is a bad person, but I feel that there had to be something that attracted them if they did it"

I'm sorry. WHAT? What. The. Fuck??? "Something that attracted them"? So you're not saying she's a bad person, of course, just that she brought it on herself somehow and so it's totez her fault that she was brutally gang raped for hours. She attracted them, that temptress; they couldn't help their poor widdle selves. Right.

How about we try something new for a change? BLAME THE FUCKING RAPISTS. Instead of blaming the victim of a crime, let's just go ahead and blame the perpetrator instead. Novel concept, I know.

And you know what? Even if there was "something that attracted them," that does not give them a green light to rape her! Her attractiveness is not her consent. You are not entitled to her body just because she attracts you. How is this a difficult idea to grasp?

Excuse me; I need to go watch videos of adorable kittehs to restore my faith in the world now.

...And Suddenly, It's Personal

So it seems that Courageless Campaign has backed out of the 2010 Prop H8 repeal effort. (via) That leaves Love Honor Cherish as the only major organization still working on the 2010 repeal effort. Right off the bat EQCA ignored public sentiment and opted to wait for 2012; Courageless Campaign, however, said they would go forth with a repeal effort in 2010, following the will of their constituency. They asked their members and the community at large, and an overwhelming percent - I don't remember the exact numbers anymore - said do it NOW. Waiting is not acceptable.

But now they've folded. The analysts say chances aren't good, so they're turning tail and running to wait on the sidelines with the other big kids - EQCA and Lambda Legal - for 2012 to roll around. To hell with what the community wants, to hell with the people who want their goddamn rights back already. Just wait. The numbers don't look good for this year. So sit tight with your thumb up your ass just like we are, and put up with being second-class citizens for two more years. It's not that hard, right?

And this time it's personal for me, in a way it wasn't before. I mentioned in my last post that I'm engaged. I also mentioned that I refuse to take advantage of the institution while it remains a heterosexual privilege. So this? It means I have less chance of getting married soon, too. Where before I would have just been pissed off, this time I read the news and started to cry. This doesn't guarantee defeat, no...but without ANY of the state's major organizations on board, things are looking pretty dismal. Thanks a whole fucking lot, Courageless Campaign. I stopped working with and donating to EQCA when they chose to wait; guess this means I'm going to quit giving my time and money to you, too.

But I will not stop working toward the repeal of that hateful law. My teaspoon will not stop. I am all. fucking. in. With or without the big kids on my side.

Wednesday WTF: Lessons in Gaming While Female

Over the past few days, I've introduced Fiance (a gamer, like most of my friends and Others) to the hilarity that is Zero Punctuation. ZP is a video game review series, in videos where the narrator - Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw - talks reallyreallyfastasiftheresnopunctuation ("punctuation" apparently including spaces between words), illustrated by cartoons and little black monsters. ZP is known for heavy snark, sarcasm, ridicule, and general misanthropy. We watched reviews on Tomb Raider (good gods, the boob jokes!), Mirror's Edge, Sonic Unleashed, the GTA series, Prototype, and a few more. Now, ZP isn't perfect for a progressive to watch by any means. "Lame" gets used a fair bit, and Yahtzee is fond of gay jokes. But today we decided to look up his review of Sims 3...and wow, did all misogynistic hell break loose.



Transcript (punctuation added back for readability and irrelevant bits omitted in ...s):

Well, fuck. I really didn't want to end up in this position. The only reason I bought The Sims 3 - after dark and while no one was watching, obviously - was as an emergency fallback for when the summer games drought kicked in. I was hoping to have Ghostbusters by now, but I guess time makes fools of us all. Australian release times, to be precise.

...

I have to admit, I'm surprised that The Sims 3 even exists, considering that EA's usual policy of releasing a new fraction of a game every time the cocaine bucket runs dry seemed to be serving them perfectly well. [black monster with a bow on its head, denoting "female", sits in front of a computer with a bottle in hand] But I guess even Sims fans occasionally demand something more every now and again, when they're not drinking Bacardi Breezers and having periods. [blood shoots out from beneath the desk]

I know what you're thinking: "Yahtzee, you inappropriate menstruation joke, why the reluctance? The Sims is more popular than a chocolate cunnilingus machine [a row of monsters-with-bows carrying a lump of chocolate with a tongue marches by], and afterwards doesn't make you feel fat and ashamed! [one bloated-looking monster-with-bow lays next to the tongue, chocolate smeared around, seeming to cry] It's introduced millions of people to gaming and has made enough money to buy a lapdance for every depressive in the Western world!" [monster-with-bow wags its "ass" toward a cartoon emo dude] But this exercise assumed that you are the president of The Sims Fan Club.

Well, I could say that the majority of its audience are casual gamers, [a monster-with-bow standing next to a Bejeweled game screen pops up] pronouncing "casual gamers" the same way I pronounce the word "tapeworms", [a picture of a tapeworm pops up next to the m-w-b and Bejeweled screen] but that argument's a bit "no true Scotsman." Truly, my objection comes because what I am is a critic of games, not a critic of computer programs that you just fuck around in.

Ok, let's try to be professional about this. [in a mocking, girlish voice] "Oh, boy, The Sims 3! It's like The Sims 2 but plus another 1!"

...

I couldn't find any snooker tables or jacuzzis for my planned entertainment lounge, and there's very little variety of hairdos! Yes, my new vagina is growing quite nicely, thank you for asking.

...

But the most evil thing is the player. [arrow points to a monster-with-bow sitting in front of a computer, then shows a monster-with-bow dropping a cage over two tiny Sims] Trapping Sims, Truman-Show-style, to toy with their lives, not even for fun, but to indulge a twisted power fantasy [m-w-b starts boinking the Sims together in a manner to simulate sex] without having to go through all the trouble of birthing children of their own to abuse. [m-w-b runs toward a trio of miniature monsters pushing a lawnmower] So I guess what I'm saying is that all women are evil. Bewitching innocents with their insidious emotions and absorbing our manhoods into their rank, blood-streaked spam sandwiches. Who needs 'em? Incidentally, I'm still not gay.

So from this, we can learn:

1. The Sims is a game one should be ashamed of playing. Okay, fine, a lot of people feel that way. Whatever. Just personal opinion.

2. The Sims is only played by women. Also, the defining characteristics of women are drinking of girly drinks and bleeding! Or, no. Fiance plays Sims, so did my brother for awhile. And I happen to like rum-&-cokes and will do tequila shots with my friends; Ex-Boyfriend liked the "girly" drinks and the only alcohol I've ever seen Fiance drink was Smirnoff Ice (which is more or less the same as a Bacardi Breezer). So this means my ex and my fiance are women, and I'm a man. Right. Extra misogyny points for the contempt positively dripping from Yahtzee's voice as he refers to these Bacardi-Breezer-drinking-crotch-bleeding people.

3. Women love chocolate and cunnilingus, but it makes them fat and ashamed, as they well should be! Many women do like chocolate. Many women also like cunnilingus. However, chocolate doesn't make one fat, and there's no shame in eating it or in receiving oral sex. Besides, plenty of men like chocolate and oral sex, and you don't hear "fat and ashamed" jokes being made about that.

4. "Casual gamer" is code for "woman who thinks she's a gamer", and also those "casual gamers" are equivalent to tapeworms. If A=B and B=C, then women gamers are about as worthy of respect as tapeworms! Wow...just...fuck a whole bunch of that shit. I guess all I do as a woman gamer is play Bejeweled and The Sims, and that makes me as deserving of contempt as a tapeworm.

5. The Sims is not a game. It is just something to fuck around with. Therefore playing it is not a Gamer Activity. 'Scuse me, Mr. High Horse, can you come down and talk? Cause I'm reasonably certain that all your precious video games are also "just" programs to fuck around with. What makes The Sims less worthwhile than your fucking-around-programs? Oh, that's right. Because it's played by WOMEN. Who, remember, are like tapeworms. Of course you don't have to respect it.

6. Only women care about things like furnishing a house or hairstyles. Having a vagina is a prerequisite for this. A man loses Manliness Points if he cares about Woman Shit. Ah, gender stereotyping/reinforcement of prescribed gender roles. Always good to see you. Again.

7. Women. Are. Evil. I'm sorry, that last paragraph is just...words fail me. Sims are a substitute for giving birth to children purely to abuse them??? What in the..."blood-streaked spam sandwiches"? This is just the most egregiously gratuitous display of "EW GIRL COOTIES" I've seen in a damn long time.

Fuck you, Yahtzee and ZP. I really did love ZP reviews. Now all I can hear is "I'm a raging misogynist!" over and over again when you talk.

I'm Back!

'Ello again! Personal circumstances took a huge nom out of my life for a couple of months there - three breakups (including the 6-yr relationship with Boyfriend), one new relationship, an ex getting nasty about the new one, moving into a new place, getting engaged...oh, and I wouldn't even be alive save by the grace of whatever gods sent me Fiance, who with my mom's help kept me alive through the worst suicidal period I've ever had and nursed me back to sanity afterwards - but I am back to the blogosphere and ready to dive in once again.

Look for tomorrow's Wednesday WTF! It ruined my evening, so I'm getting revenge by blogging about it. ;-)

CA Passes Equal ID Act!

So it turns out California can still do SOME things right. (via) Our Legislature passed the Equal ID Act yesterday, providing a means for California-born transpeople (living in state or elsewhere) to use a court order gotten in the county of their birth to have their CA birth certificate reissued to reflect their gender accurately. With a 22-14 vote in the CA Senate, the bill now moves on to the Governator's desk. After his repeated vetoing of bills that would have legalized same-sex marriage that made it to his desk (Congratulations Vermont for being the first to do it the right way, but I'll always be bitter; it should have been us. Thanks for nothing, Governator.) I'm wary of trusting Schwarzefucker to do the right thing for our community. But we shall see.

But while we're at it, why don't we lean hard on the 14 "no" votes? Just because it passed, doesn't mean we should be complacent. Teaspoons ahoy! If you're a California voter, go here and click on "Your Senator" in the sidebar to go to an interactive district-finder.

Sam Aaenestad
Roy Ashburn
John J. Benoit
Dave Cogdill
Dave Cox
Jeff Denham
Robert D. Dutton
Tom Harman
Dennis Hollingsworth
Bob Huff
Abel Maldonado
Tony Strickland
Mimi Walters
Mark Wyland

Caster Semenya's Chromosomes: None Of Our Business

Everyone and their sister in the progressive blogosphere has posted about the fucked-up way the International Association of Athletics Federation is treating Caster Semenya. Short recap, if you haven't heard: Caster Semenya is an 18-yr-old runner from South Africa, who just took the gold in the 800m at this year's World Championships in Athletics. Her time was so impressive, and she herself so lacking in our normative ideas of "appropriate" femininity, that the IAAF decided to force her to undergo gender testing on the suspicion that she isn't "really" a woman. For a more thorough explanation of just why this is fucked-up, try here, here, or here (read the comments, that's where the gold is).

Now, there is a petition going about taking IAAF to task for their shameful treatment of Semenya. Tell the IAAF to stay out of Caster Semenya's pants!

Remember Tranny-Alert, and how fast they scuttled away before the righteous blaze of our progressive fury? Let's do that again, shall we? Add your name. Tell the IAAF it's not ok to demand gender-testing of Caster Semenya.

Wednesday WTF: Snapshots in WTF from a weekend at the cabin

I'm going to do something a little different for this week's Wednesday WTF.

This weekend past, I was invited to join a group of friends and family in going up to their cabin in the mountains. It's very isolated, requiring about 20 miles on a dirt logging road to even get to the nearest town, and then another mile or two on what amounts to a trail better suited for horses and pack-mules than cars. I, my mother, and my younger brother joined our friends Don and Cindra to drive up. At the cabin we met Don's father, Earl, who had built the cabin back in the 60's, his best friend Dwayne, and Earl's girlfriend Cathy.

Mamana had warned me ahead of time about Earl and Cathy and Dwayne. They are very traditional in their thinking, she'd said. The men do Important Outdoor Things and the women sit around playing dice and cooking for the men. The older group are sexist, racist, and homophobic, she told me, and I needed to be prepared to deal with that.

She wasn't wrong. So I present: Snapshots in WTF from my weekend at the cabin!

Afternoon, Day 1: Cathy, sloshed on two Bloody Marys and three vodka/waters, leans close to me during a political discussion and says, "I voted for Obama. But I have to tell you, I just don't like n-----s." When I look at her, stunned, she says, "Oh, it's just my generation." I'm too startled at the outright admission of racism to say anything, and the conversation moves on without me.

Evening, Day 1: Earl and Don are teasing my brother about getting into physical fights with a woman (in the hypothetical). Earl says, "If you win, you haven't proved anything, cause all you did was beat a girl. But if she beats you, you're humiliated for life!" I shake my head, close my book, get up and walk toward the cabin to go hang out with the women in the kitchen. Don thinks this is funny, and calls toward my retreating back, "Right, J?" I pause and shoot him a dirty look, then go inside. I can't think of anything to say that won't get me in trouble. In the kitchen, Mamana takes one look at my face and says "How bad are they being?" I say, "Bad enough." I am no help in the kitchen, and we both know it, but I'd rather stay in with the women where the explicit sexism won't be so rife.

After dinner, Day 1: The women start clearing the table while the men sit and talk. Earl starts telling some hi-fucking-larious story about having dinner with a woman who asked his help with the dishes: "I told her, I'll throw them out the window and buy you a new set first!" He finishes by giving a Very Serious Pronouncement that, "I'll do my own dishes if it's just me. But if there's a woman around at all, I don't touch them." Because all women = self-motile dishwashing appliances. I hiss between my teeth and shoot a dark look at Mamana; she shakes her head. It's Earl's cabin, and he's the patriarch here. I can't challenge him.

Night, Day 2: After a particularly lucrative game of dice, Cathy folds her increasing stack of dollar bills into a thick wad. She waves it over her head and exclaims, "Look, I've got a n----- bankroll!" I look incredulously at her. She says, "What, haven't you ever heard the term before?" I reply coldly, "No. I don't normally hang out with the kind of person who uses that word, you see." My patience is wearing thin, but I am still a guest here and don't have the standing to be any more outspoken about it.

Dinner, Day 3: During a discussion of older actors, Rock Hudson, closeted gay actor who died of AIDS in the 80's, comes up. Earl decides to share another hi-fucking-larious piece of wit:

Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
If he had liked girls
He'd still be with us!

Thankfully, I didn't actually hear most of that at the time, just the last couple words. I asked my brother about it after the fact and got the rest. If I'd heard it at the time, I don't think I could have managed to keep myself from flipping the fuck out at him. As I wrote in my notebook that evening: "Hah, hah, fucking hah. Cause AIDS is totez about being gay, and people dying of an incurable disease is comedy gold!!!" Who the fuck makes a goddamn JOKE about that shit? *incoherent noises of rage*

If that isn't enough for a Wednesday WTF, I don't know what is. Next week will resume the usual WTFery of the world, I just had to vent my personal WTFery this time around. Ah, it's good to be home, with access to the feminist blogosphere and reality-based discourse once more.

Words Mean Things

Words Mean Things.

This is a phrase that comes to mind with increasing regularity these days. It seems to me that certain unscrupulous people like to play games with words, to make them mean things they do not actually mean. I am going, therefore, to start tracking these incidents, in order to remind people that words do, in fact, mean things. And that perhaps they should be more careful in how they use those words to mean things.

Let's start with feminism. In the comments at Liss' reprint of The Terrible Bargain (which, by the way, is the most stunningly brilliant bit of writing I have ever read. Read it now.) at CiFA, some idiot said:

For example, if a woman driver cuts me up, I might think, 'Stupid bitch!' in anger. This is clearly a gendered insult -- but I don't think it's misogynistic. I consider myself a feminist and still use these terms.

Um. Really? Dear commenter, let me introduce you to feminism, wherein it is not acceptable to use gendered insults, even in anger. You acknowledge that "bitch" is a gendered insult, but you see nothing wrong with using it and still calling yourself a feminist? Feminism: you do not haz it.

In case your enlightened feminist brain cannot think of a single alternative to shout at a woman who's upset you on the road, let me supply some ideas: Stupid fucker! Fucking asshole! Shithead! Idiot meatwad! Mindless fuckwit!

Now that you have these alternatives, I invite you to continue upon your merry way, and either mend your gendered-insult habits or stop calling yourself a feminist. Because Words Mean Things, and for so long as you're willing to use gendered insults, you are not a feminist.