More Fun With We The People

Call me a glutton for punishment, but I do still occasionally sign petitions on the White House's We The People site - mostly for the frustratainment* value when I get silly non-responses like these:

On a petition calling on the White House to support changing the national motto back from "In God We Trust" to E Pluribus Unum (which was the de facto motto prior to the 1950's, McCarthyism, and Godless Commies as the Face of Evil), in order to promote actual inclusivity of all Americans over monotheistic-deistic-religious-supremacy:  "Lol shut up we only mention nonbelievers in speeches as a token acknowledgment, we aren't actually going to do anything to reflect that you are also Americans and that a religious motto referring to capital-G singular God might not represent the actual breadth of belief/non-belief in this country.  Hurrah for religion in the public square!"

On a petition calling on the IRS to reconsider automatic tax-exempt status for churches: "Lalala we can't hear you we like churches the end."

On a petition asking the White House to officially recognize the Occupy movement and acknowledge their grievances against corporate greed as legitimate: "Yeah whatever Obama mentioned you dirty hippies in a press conference, what more do you want?  BTW banks and financial sector are our BFFs and we made a video for you that helps spin our pandering to Wall Street more effectively."

On a petition against the overreaching "anti-piracy" internet suppression bills: "We have to protect the rights and innovations of businesses!  Individuals?  What are those?  Bipartisan!  All sides!  If you have a better idea, why don't you fix it yourself?"

Oh, Obama Administration.  Never change, you status-quo-loving bipartisan-browbeater you.  (Only kidding!  Please, dear gods, CHANGE.  Stop running the government you wish you had and start dealing with the realities of the government you do have!  Actually stand up for actual progressives!  Stop pandering to people who will never vote for you!)

Question for the audience:  Is there enough lol in the lolsobbiness to keep signing petitions and posting responses?  Or am I the only one finding these funny and I should stop boring you with them?  Yay, an excuse to play around with polls!

Should I keep signing petitions on We The People and reporting the results?

And if you ever want to bring a petition to my attention, please, feel free to email me (address in the sidebar) or @ me on Twitter, @WitchWords.

*As in, it would be frustrating, if I were taking it seriously/expecting actual progress from it.  But now that I've written it off as meaningless bread-and-circuses sideshow, it becomes entertaining in a lolsobby sort of way.

Ending Bullying Through Victim-Blaming (Bonus Poll Bomb!)

[TW: institutional gender-policing and gender-expression-policing in schools]

I would like everyone who has ever proposed or supported anything like this to take a deep breath and repeat after me:  The solution to bullying is not to force the victim to assimilate better.  The solution to bullying is to punish those who bully.

Prompted, this time, by a school district in Virginia that wants to add a section to their dress code for students, banning what news articles are referring to as "cross-gender clothing".  The actual language for it specifies clothing "that is not in keeping with a student's gender and causes a disruption and/or distracts others from the educational process or poses a health or safety concern."

The school board members who are proposing and supporting this transphobic bullshit are pretending it's a student-safety issue, citing "boys who wore feminine clothing" (the article doesn't actually say anything about the kids in question, whether they're cis boys who were cross-dressing or femme'ing, or trans girls being misgendered, or genderqueer individuals, or what; the "boys in feminine clothing" line is from the school board member, so I don't know how accurate a description it is) who apparently had to use a faculty restroom because they felt unsafe in the student bathrooms.

The solution to bullying is not to force the victim to assimilate better.  The solution to bullying is to punish those who bully.


There are two paths to ensuring student safety in this situation.  The school can either crack down on bullying and anti-trans* harassment among the student body (supporting the victims) or they can try to regulate away the trans* kids' gender expression so as not to make cis kids uncomfortable (supporting the bullies).  I think it's pretty clear which way is NOT how it should be done, y'know?  When your approach to student safety involves coddling the bigots and bullies and reprimanding/disciplining the victims for provoking the bullies' assaults, you are very much on the wrong side of things.  Case in point: the second comment in the comments thread following the linked article is by a person in support of the proposed rule basically saying that using violence to keep people in line with social expectations is totally normal: "People wanna be different and push society to accept them, sooner or later society will push back..just saying."  These are the people this rule would support, not the people who suffer violence or threats of violence at their hands.  (As a side note, DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS.  A couple of good ones are tucked in there, but mostly it's bigots showing their asses, and nobody needs to see that.)

Of course, I actually keep lol'ing a little bit at the way they're phrasing this shitty clause.  They repeatedly refer to "cross-gender" or "appropriate to the student's gender" or "in keeping with the student's gender".  Which, um.  If you're talking about an AMAB trans girl wearing a dress or something?  Is totally in keeping with her gender.  It's not in keeping with her assigned sex, which is what the school district is really referring to, but it is in keeping with her gender.  By doing this, the school is in fact trying to force her to wear clothes not in keeping with her gender.  The school district is trying to make themselves the arbiters of students' genders, when you come right down to it.

And out of curiosity, how are they going to define "appropriate to one's gender"?  That's a really subjective concept.  Some people believe that pants are inappropriate for girls.  Are we going to end up going back to the days when girls literally weren't allowed to wear pants to school?  (My mom has told me that it wasn't until she was in high school that girls were allowed to wear pants to school!)

This rule is a clusterfuck of cissexism, transphobia, and just sheer stupidity and ignorance.  So let's poll-bomb the news site!  Go here and vote "no", if you'd be so kind.  And let's hope that the school district sees reason and/or chooses to focus on the real issues of bullying at play in this situation, instead of trying to forcibly misgender trans* and gender-non-conforming kids under the banner of "student safety".

9th Circuit Rules Prop H8 Unconstitutional!

An animated gif from Babylon 5, a 90's sci-fi TV show, of a maniacally grinning man with very tall hair giggling and tapping his fingertips together in excitement

It will of course be appealed, and I'm not at all certain of SCOTUS doing the right thing on this issue, but it's pretty damn exciting that we're batting 2-for-2 so far!

Also, is it even possible for political orgs to celebrate a victory WITHOUT immediately tacking on a request for more of their supporters' money?  I've so far gotten "YAY VICTORY now give us money plz" emails from AFER, Freedom to Marry, and Courage Campaign, and I'm sure I'll see at least one or two more by the end of the day.  Can't we just enjoy the moment without being milked for more cash?

Bah.  Still going to enjoy the moment.  Prop 8 Trial Tracker has the text of the decision available here, if anyone wants to read it.

Karen Handel Resigns from Komen (Amid Copious Spin and Nonpologies)

The good news: Karen Handel, anti-choice politician and failed gubernatorial candidate-turned-VP of policy for Komen, has resigned.

The bad news: her resignation statement, which has been released, is a ridiculous batch of defensive spin and nonpologies, and there's no hint that Komen, as an org, has actually learned a single damn thing from this whole sordid affair.

However, Komen’s decision to change its granting strategy and exit the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood and its grants was fully vetted by every appropriate level within the organization. [...] I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it. I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve. However, the decision to update our granting model was made before I joined Komen, and the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization. Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology. Rather, both were based on Komen’s mission and how to better serve women, as well as a realization of the need to distance Komen from controversy. [...] What was a thoughtful and thoroughly reviewed decision – one that would have indeed enabled Komen to deliver even greater community impact – has unfortunately been turned into something about politics. This is entirely untrue. This development should sadden us all greatly.

TL;DR: Waahhhh, I'm the victim here, I'm being scapegoated for something the whole organization was on board with, and also pro-choicers who rallied around PP are a bunch of meanies who turned this into a political thing (because it totes wasn't before).

There are two ways we can take the claim that the whole organization was on board with and agreed to/encouraged the defunding of PP's grant.  It's either true, and the decision truly was "vetted at every appropriate level within the organization" (although the use of "appropriate" certainly lends that statement quite a bit of ambiguity; "appropriate" may just mean "my desk" for all we know), or it's a defensive attempt to deflect the hot spotlight of public criticism away from her own face.  Either way, it doesn't really win Komen back any points.  If it's true, and this was an org-wide decision, it just means the whole damn thing is riddled with anti-choicers and/or anti-choice sentiment, and ought to be tossed even harder out on its ass in the rain.  If it's the spin I suspect it is, it's a sad little lie that nevertheless means the org was infiltrated but good, and can no longer be trusted because if it happened once, it can happen again.

I'm also rolling my eyes so hard I'm surprised I haven't sprained anything at the contention that the decision "was turned into something political".  As if taking advantage of a spurious, vendetta-based sham "investigation" by a politician with an ax to grind in order to justify cutting off funding to one of the biggest providers of early detection exams to underserved communities was somehow an apolitical decision, and we who responded should be ashamed of ourselves for "making it political".  Yeah, how about no.  A former politician guided the org to make a move against another org which has been targeted by political maneuvering, and you want to claim it wasn't political?  Pfffft.

Oh, and by the way - if it was really about "distancing the organization from scandal" with a position-neutral change to grant rules, as opposed to a targeted move against PP, then why is Komen still giving grant money to Penn State, which is under very public, very visible investigation for covering up child abuse?  If you want to make the claim that your new rule is totes apolitical, you should probably make it plausible by applying the rule apolitically.

This is just more damage-control and PR from Komen, in a desperate attempt to save what little face they have left.  But I'm still going to hold out hope that enough has been shown of their unethical nature, to enough people over the course of the past couple weeks, that they will end up fading back from the public eye, making room for better orgs to carry on the work of researching cures and supporting patients and survivors, without all the drama and pink ribbon$.

The Latest Skirmish in the Birth Control Mandate Wars

Oh, Catholic Church.  Can't you ever just admit when you've lost and move on?

Rhetorical question, of course.  No, they really can't.

After the HHS ruled that contraceptive coverage was part of the definition of "preventative care" that would be a requirement without copay for all insurance plans, the Church threw a hissy.  They claimed that their religion was being disrespected.  Mind you, the churches themselves were covered by a religious exemption from the very start.  Nobody ever tried to force churches to offer contraceptive-covering insurance plans to their employees, despite what the Catholic Church claimed.  No, the problem was in Catholic-controlled hospitals and schools, which, despite being religiously-affiliated, did not meet the religious exemption criteria of primarily serving and employing those of their own religion.  So because Catholic hospitals and schools routinely employ non-Catholics, and offer services to the general public, they would be required, like all other employers, to offer insurance plans to their employees which cover contraceptives.  They appealed.  The Obama administration refused their appeal, but gave them an extra year to figure out the logistics of transitioning their insurance.

Apparently that's not good enough, and in a truly epic tantrum, they had letters from the bishops read in services across the country, condemning the administration's decision and framing it as a matter of religious freedom and civil disobedience in defense of their cherished rights to religious liberty.   Seriously, read it:

In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation's first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). ... We cannot--we will not--comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America's cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights.

Dramatic, isn't it?  "Cast aside the First Amendment"!  "We will not comply with this unjust law"!  People of faith as second-class citizens!  Stripped of our God-given rights!  Dramatic and scary and completely, totally, utterly, and in all possible ways, bullshit.

I know I've said this before, but obviously, it bears repeating: imposing your religiously-motivated will on others who do not share your faith is not an integral part of religious freedom.  "My religion says I have to be the boss of your underpants" is not a valid religious-liberty argument to compel the law to support your bossing of other people's underpants, and denying you the support of law in being the boss of other people's underpants is not "making you a second-class citizen" - not in any world except your fevered imagination, anyway.

And now, the next salvo has been fired - a petition is up on the We The People site, calling on the Obama administration to rescind the HHS ruling on contraceptive coverage by religiously-affiliated businesses.  (You can find it here, if you want to look - be warned, it doesn't even try to make sense in its reasoning.  Something about the government "deigning to represent transcendental truth", which, bwuh?)  NARAL Pro-Choice America has put up a counter-petition, available here, which you can sign if you have a WTP account, asking the administration to remain supportive of the ruling.

I never thought I'd say this - as the half-dozen lolsobtastic petition "responses" sitting in my inbox waiting to be posted here for the lulz can attest - but you know, for once I'm actually glad of the total ineffectiveness of We The People as a platform for petitioning the Obama administration to do anything.  They can sign all they want (and so can we); I doubt either petition will make even the slightest bit of difference.

In fact, I might be convinced to bet actual money that both petitions, assuming each makes the 25k signature minimum, would receive exactly the same copy-pasted response reasserting the administration's position on the mandate.

Any takers?  ;-)

The Komen Brouhaha is turning me into a hipster

It's all I can do to keep from saying "Well, I refused to support Komen before it was cool!"

At any rate, there's little I can say that hasn't already been said very well by many other people - this is some fucking outrageous bullshit, it is demonstrating yet again that anti-choicers do not deserve the moniker "pro-life" because they don't give a shit about any kind of life other than the fetal kind, etc.  What I can do, however, is make available some links I've seen in various places, so that if you had been donating to Komen, or were inclined to make a statement by starting your breast-cancer-fight donations with someone else because of this, you will have a list of alternatives.  I know that Komen's vastness and extremely effective pinkwashing efforts have made them often the *only* visible target for people who want to give to this cause, and a lot of people wouldn't begin to know where to look for alternative orgs, so here you go.  In no particular order:

• Directly to Planned Parenthood's Emergency Breast Care Fund
• African American Breast Cancer Alliance
• National Breast Cancer Foundation
• Breast Cancer Research Foundation
• Living Beyond Breast Cancer
• Breast Cancer Network of Strength

As always, do your due diligence before giving money to an organization; I haven't had time to research these organizations in particular, so they may have issues as well.  Some are more focused on patient and survivor support, while others use donations more for research, which handily allows you to direct your money toward the side of the cause you prefer, or split it however you like.

Special thanks to Bebinn on Tumblr, and the rest of the feminist Tumblr community for the various posts and reposts of links I saw today and from which I collected these.

Conservatives really do want to let people die

Bryan Fischer may not be the best barometer of general-consensus conservative thought (although I personally believe he's no more, or not much more, radical than the rest of them; he just doesn't filter his bigotry because he's not running for office himself), but when he's echoing a theme we've seen from right-wingers before, only in more blatant form, it's hard not to take it seriously.

This time, he was offering a proposal on how to fix the healthcare system in this country.  His solution?  Remove the legal requirement that emergency rooms treat people who can't pay, and watch costs fall as all the sickest and poorest people exit the system - by way of death!  Quoting from the transcript on Right Wing Watch:

Hospitals should be allowed to set their own policies for services just like all other businesses, none of whom are forced to sell cars, food, or clothes to people who can't pay for them.

Because buying a car you can't afford is totally the same thing, and is absolutely morally equivalent to needing lifesaving medical care you can't afford!  o.O  One of these things is not like the other ones...

He then went on to whine that the whole trouble with the ER system is that people are using it "like corner medical clinics, for routine, non-emergency care, because they know they can get care that somebody else will be obligated to pay for."

Okay, first of all, no, they're not.  Nobody is making the trip to the ER, to sit there for anywhere from one to eight or even twelve hours, just for routine, non-emergency care.  That is a flat out fucking lie.

Second of all, you have to wonder if Fischer has ever gone to an emergency room when he hasn't had insurance.  (The answer I'm sure is "no", mostly because I'm sure he's never not had insurance - if he had, he wouldn't be so much of an ass about it.)  Like, does he realize they will usually bill you anyway?  I have known someone who had to go to the ER in a true emergency, her insurance didn't cover it, and she was getting bills for $10,000 for months that she couldn't pay.  It's not like they just patch you up and send you on your way with a friendly wave and a smile.  They do actually bill you later.

So knowing that, nobody goes to the ER for "routine" care.  What you do is you walk a knife's edge, when you start feeling sick or noticing some kind of something wrong with your body.  You google it.  You use WebMD's symptom checker.  You talk to your friends, see if anyone knows anyone who has had whatever symptoms you have, and how that turned out.  You gather information, self-diagnose as best you can, hoping and praying it's nothing major; you track the minutiae of your physical changes, and you are always asking and re-asking yourself the Big Question: "Is it serious enough to need treatment?"  The hope is that whatever is wrong with you will go away on its own - and often, it does.  The body is an amazing self-healing machine, sometimes.  If it doesn't, that's when you walk the knife's edge, pushing on without treatment for as long as you can, while hoping that whatever it is doesn't turn out to be fatal, hoping you aren't doing permanent damage to yourself by waiting.

And then, if it reaches a point where you can't function anymore, you know where you go first (unless it's a real emergency, like broken bones or something)?  To an urgent care clinic.  Not the ER.  The urgent care is usually only a couple hundred bucks, and they'll usually see uninsured patients (which many doctors refuse to do, so if you don't have insurance, you literally cannot see a doctor even if you're able to pay for it out-of-pocket).  Even if it's something really bad and they can't help you, they can usually at least tell you what it is, which you can use to decide if it's bad enough to go to the ER.

So no, nobody is treating the ER "like a corner clinic".  Fischer, please, shut up.  You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts, and you are not entitled to make up scenarios in order to demonize people coping with a struggle you've never experienced.

Not that that's ever stopped you.

Pennsylvania House of Representatives Declares "Year of the Bible"

In a frighteningly theocratic gesture, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives just passed a resolution last week declaring 2012 the "Year of the Bible", with a list of "WHEREAS"-es that repeatedly refer to the Bible as "The word of God", and which explicitly states that studying the Bible makes you a better person.

No, seriously.  

They actually did this.

For bonus fuckery points, it was quietly introduced and quickly passed under a procedural rule that designates a resolution "non-controversial" in order to expedite passage.  For extra-super-bonus fuckery points, it passed unanimously!

Yeah.  Declaring the holy book of one religion to be the singular Word of God, and saying that "Renewing our knowledge of and faith in God through holy scripture can strengthen us as a nation and a people" is totally non-controversial.  It's not like there are any non-Christians in the state, right - like maybe a Jewish population that's fourth largest in the country?  And Pennsylvania's own Constitution totally doesn't say that "no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship." I mean, even if it does say that, passing a resolution endorsing a "...national need to study and apply the teachings of the holy scriptures" doesn't really count as a legal preference for Bible study as a mode of worship, right?

I just don't even know what else to say.  Other than to point out how well this would have gone over if it had been a resolution declaring a "Year of the Qur'an" or "Year of the Tanakh" or "Year of the Eddas" or "Year of the Vedas" or any of the other literally hundreds of holy texts for various religions around the world, and the clear double-standard that makes a resolution declaring one particular holy book the Bestest One Ever acceptable for unanimous - unanimous! - passage, which then gets so little media coverage you wouldn't even know it had happened unless you subscribe to certain religious-issues blogs, versus the media shitstorm and cries of "creeping Sharia law!" that would have ensued if they'd declared a Year of the Qur'an.  

Oh, and by the way - if this doesn't prove that Christians are not fucking oppressed in this country and there is no goddamn "war on religion", no matter how badly their persecution complex wants to invent one to cry about, I don't know what will.  

For any readers in Pennsylvania who would like to contact their Representative to ask them to please stop dabbling in theocracy and actually, y'know, fucking govern their state, the "find my Representative" tool may be found here, and here is a list of email/contact pages for all Reps.

Speaking of Lilly Ledbetter...

On Friday, I wrote about how I'm kind of tired of having the Obama administration/campaign constantly shoving the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in my face as the singular demonstration of their Super Awesome Totally Not Just Pandering Commitment To Teh Wimmenz, and how it is increasingly clear that it's really the only token women-centric thing they can (or for whatever reason, choose to) point to having done in the past few years.

Yesterday morning, I received a campaign email from Women for Obama, featuring Lilly herself retelling her story as a "call to action".

*headdesk*

To be clear, I have nothing against Ms. Ledbetter using her story and her voice to support whomever she chooses.  If she truly believes in the Obama campaign and wants to lend her name and story in support, that's her choice and I have no issue with it.  This is not about her, nor is it about her choice to support Obama in this matter.

I just find it lolsobtastic that, not even 48 hours after observing the Obama administration's over-reliance on her story, I had it shoved at me yet again, as if this time it might finally convince me that the Obama administration really has my womanly interests at heart.

Mr. President, I hate to say this, but...it's not like your administration's support of the LLFPA is really a secret at this point.  I have no idea how any woman who's ever had even the barest contact with your campaign might have avoided hearing about it at least two or three times as The Reason To Support You.  Why in the name of all that is holy is it really necessary to put the same story out there AGAIN?!

Please.  I'm begging you.  Find a new goddamn angle already.

Dear President Obama: You can only trot out the same show pony so many times before we start to wonder if you have ANYTHING else in your stable.

Look, I get that women in this country - at least, ones who like their rights - are pretty much up shit creek when it comes to voting options in major elections.  We either vote for the party that actively hates us, or the one that treats us like a reliable but disposable guaranteed vote, patronized in election years and used as a bargaining chip in between times.  So I understand that you're not going to try very hard to make us feel super welcome, because you just don't have to, and I'm sure you're right when you say it's much more important to focus on the coveted "independent" vote.  (Lol, no, I'm not.)

But if you're going to keep tossing out crumbs from time to time to make it look like you're paying attention, could please at least change out the bread in the crumbs bag every now and again?

Because yes, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was good and important and all that (although I've heard it was already basically in the bag before you took office, for all that you are perpetually taking credit for it).  But for fuck's sake, you have made it the centerpiece of EVERY. SINGLE. "WOMEN-FOCUSED". CAMPAIGN EFFORT. FOR. THE. PAST. THREE. YEARS.

And here it is again:

A screencap of President Obama's Facebook page, showing a status update that links to a video titled "President Obama on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act"; text accompanying it reads ""Policies that help women are policies that help our families - and our economy - grow stronger." President Obama reiterates a message from his State of the Union address: Equal work deserves equal pay."

When you push the same stale "victory" at us over and over again for three years, it sort of lends itself to the impression that you really don't have anything else to offer.  (As indeed you don't.)  You could have mentioned this past year's War on Women and how shameful the unrelenting onslaught of attacks on a Constitutionally-protected right are.  You could have talked about how your administration has been aggressively using the FACE Act to prosecute anti-abortion protesters who interfere in people's access to clinics.  You could have commented on your administration standing firm on the requirement that employers who provide health insurance include contraceptive coverage, even in the face of pressure from religious figures like the USCCB.  And yet you chose, yet a-fucking-gain, to parade the LLFPA as your token commitment to women.

Why???

It's not just that I'm sick of hearing about it, although I am.  I am genuinely wondering why you seem to think that fair pay is the ONLY women's issue worth mentioning, ever?

I am also more than a little annoyed at the defensive framing of the commentary on it - the emphasis on "it helps our families and especially the economy!" - as if simply doing the right thing to treat women fairly under the law isn't its own justification, isn't enough, but must be For The Families and For The Economy.  I also take issue with referring to it as "helping".  "Helping" implies optional, implies choosing to be nice to someone out of the goodness of your heart.  Fair pay laws are not "help", they're fucking justice.  They are an attempt to enforce a minimum standard of fairness and basic equality.  I realize that doesn't make as good a sound bite, but the paternalistic attitude of "We're helping women, because it helps their families, and because The Economy" is really starting to grate on my nerves.

I talked, not too long ago, about how token crumbs actually work to highlight the inadequacy of said crumbs, rather than being a true motivator of loyalty and positive regard.  At this point, trotting out the LLFPA show pony functions the same way.  It simply shows how little you are interested in either taking strong action to support this constituency, or even pointing out the other small ways in which you have actually done so, and by doing so, demonstrates just how little regard your administration/the Democratic establishment has for women.

We may have nowhere else to go, practically speaking.  But the more you distance yourselves from us on the assumption that having nowhere else to go means we'll stay with you, the more you risk losing us anyway.  We may not vote for your opponents - but many of us won't be particularly motivated to get off our collective ass and vote for you, either.

Patronize us at your own risk, Obama Administration.  You may find one of your most stalwart beams crumbling under you just when you need it most, if you keep this up.