The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
BushQuotes!
Chapter 4, page 53: "The goal was to learn to use the plane as you used your hand, instinctively, without having to think about it."
I picked that quote originally because I thought it was a genuinely interesting quote about learning to fly. But now that it's sitting there all out of context, it kinda looks like a masturbation joke. Which is okay, too.
[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]
"Judge Not" Is So Gay
[Content Note: Homophobia.]
Jonathan Zeng, a music teacher, was offered a job at a Christian school in Cincinnati only to have the offer rescinded when he answered a question that tipped off his new employers that he might be gay.
In a letter to the school board's trustees, Zeng wrote that he was called back to answer some questions after he noted on his application that he believes "in Christ's unconditional love and that we as Christ's followers are to show that love to all without judgment.So believing in "Christ's unconditional love" and being non-judgmental is as gay as pink shoes. Sheesh.
Apparently it was his response that "prompted [school administrator David Thompson] to ask if I was a homosexual."
When Zeng asked Thompson why his private sexuality would present a problem for the school, the administrator cited proximity to children and "the sanctity of marriage" as factors in the academy's policy not to hire homosexuals.
Mr. Zeng is hoping the school will reconsider, but why the hell would you want to work for douchebags like that?
It's Delightful, It's Delicious, It's De-Lovely...
...it's De-lurk Day! We haven't had one of these since December (!), so all you Shaker lurkers who rarely or never pipe up, don't be shy; say hi!
Cheeky devils!
Daily Dose of Cute
[Part One]
Video Description: Matilda the Cat, with her new lion cut for summer, sits on the bathroom sink. "What is it, Tils?" I ask her. "What do you want?" She rubs her face on the faucet (pausing momentarily to listen as Zelda can be be heard trotting by in the hallway). "What do you want?" Rubs. Looks at me. "What?" Rub rub rub. Looks at me. "I can't tell what you want—I'm sorry," I tell her. Rub rub rub. "Can you make it a little more clear what you want from me?" She mews at me. "I don't—I don't know what that means." Rub rub rub. Looks at me. "I don't know. Tell me, Matilda." Rub rub rub. She mews. "Yeah, I mean, I kinda think that maybe it has something to do with the sink, but I'm really not sure." Rub rub rub. "Do you need to use the toilet?" Rub rub rub. "Do you wanna brush your teeth?" Rub rub rub. "Do you need to wash your hands?" Rub rub rub. "All right." I reach out and turn on the sink for her. She mews. "Okay." Mew! She dips her paw into the stream then licks the water off her paw. "Somehow I managed to figure it out," I tell her. She leans in and begins to lap at the stream.
Below the fold, pictures of all five furry residents of Shakes Manor, in ascending age order...
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Misogyny; body policing; fat hatred; ageism.]
"[In 2016, Hillary Clinton will] be 69 years old. And as you know—and I don't want to sound anti-feminist here—but she's not looking good these days. She's looking overweight, and she's looking very tired."—Commentator, conspiracy theorist, former editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine, professional Hillary-Clinton hater, and world-class dipshit Ed Klein, on Fox News.
My exact thought when I first read this quote was: And what, pray tell, would you say if you wanted to sound anti-feminist, Ed Klein?
Later, I read Ragen's piece on this quote: "Out of curiosity Ed (can I call you Ed?), what would you have said if you DID want to sound anti-feminist?"
LOL. I'm guessing there are somewhere between ten and two million more feminist bloggers who have thought and/or written the same thing.
Back to Ragen: "Just a suggestion but maybe instead of worrying about sounding anti-feminist, you might consider worrying about actually being anti-feminist or, you know, a complete jackass."
Indeed.
Anyway! I have three things to say about Klein's comment about Clinton looking fat and old:
A. Looking fat and old, and even being fat and old, are not disqualifiers for the presidency. There are a lot of extremely productive people who are fat or old or both.
B. Hillary Clinton is not fat, nor does she look older than anyone would reasonably expect. What Klein means, of course, is not really that Hillary Clinton literally looks fat and old. What he means is that she looks bad, because "fat and old" is shorthand for saying women look bad.
C. Really? Hillary Clinton looks bad? OBJECTION!
Istanbul, June 7. [Getty Images]
Batumi, June 5. [Getty Images]
Batumi, June 5. [Reuters Pictures]
Oslo, June 1. [Getty Images]
Beijing, May 4. [Getty Images]
Cartagena, April 13. [Getty Images]
Awesomeville, Eternity. [Source]
I rest my case, Your Honor.
Photo of the Day
June 7, 2010: First Lady Michelle Obama visits Mom's Apple Pie Bakery in Occoquan, Virginia and gives six-year-old Sydney Trapp of Fredricksburg, Virginia, a hug after Trapp played the violin for her. [Getty Images]Look at her excited wee face! I love this picture so much.
[Related Reading: Obama; Girls 4 Obama.]
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by pencil cases.
Recommended Reading:
FMF News: DHS Bill Includes Anti-Abortion Rider
Kendra: Race + Fandom: When Defaulting to White Isn't an Option
Anita: Harassment, Misogyny and Silencing on YouTube [Content Note: This post contains screen caps of awful YouTube comments directed at Anita because she is fundraising for a series "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games."]
Helen: Trans United for Obama Launches Nationwide Volunteer Effort
Andrea: Unnecessary Restrictions on Abortion Care: How Democracy Side-Stepping Sausage Is Made, Texas-Style
Andy: Rick Santorum Launches 'Patriot Voices', Hits Speaking Circuit
Laurel: Denmark Passes a Marriage Equality Law
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Fatsronauts 101
Fatsronauts 101 is a series in which I address assumptions and stereotypes about fat people that treat us as a monolith and are used to dehumanize and marginalize us. If there is a stereotype you'd like me to address, email me.
[Content Note: Fat hatred; disordered eating.]
#4: Fat people eat enormous amounts of food.
This is closely related to Part One, but, beyond the notion that all fat people consistently "overeat" to get fat, there lies another myth that all fat people routinely binge on massive amounts of food.
After I wrote about a trainer who gained and lost 70 pounds to "understand fat people," several Shakers noted that another trainer who did the same thing—and achieved his weight gain by eating 20,000 calories a day.
That is flatly not how the vast majority of fat people get fat.
And yet not only is that considered a close enough approximation that someone who "gets fat" eating that way is regarded as having something profound to say about the experience of fatness, but it stands to reinforce the narrative that fatness is primarily a function of disordered eating, especially binging.
There certainly are fat people who binge-eat, or formerly binge-ate, but there are also fat people who have never binge-eaten, have never had disordered eating, have never eaten occasionally or routinely the enormous amounts of food associated with fatness.
I have never, in one sitting:
• Eaten an entire gallon of ice cream.
• Eaten an entire pint of ice cream.
• Eaten an entire bag of potato chips.
• Eaten an entire box of cereal.
• Eaten an entire cake.
• Eaten an entire pie.
• Eaten an entire bag/box of cookies.
• Eaten an entire pizza.
• Drank an entire 2-liter of soda.
• Drank an entire 6-pack of soda.
• Drank an entire 6-pack of beer.
• Drank an entire bottle of wine.
• Et cetera.
Which is not to say I've never "overeaten" at a meal. I have. I've eaten more bites than I needed to be full. I've eaten dessert I didn't need. I've eaten too fast and thus too much when I'm really hungry. I don't feel obliged to hide these things nor do I feel ashamed of them; I've seen every person of every size I've ever known do them at one time or another. I'm not going to beat myself up about it any more than I do when I get wrapped up in writing and lose track of time and forget to eat anything until I'm woozy with crashing blood sugar. (Whooooops!)
I don't compulsively binge-eat, but, if I did, I would openly admit it. I am not invested in the idea that fat people who binge-eat are "bad" and fat people who don't are "good." I don't attach moral judgments to fat.
The thing is, other people do. And those moral judgments are starting to influence policy, from accessing health care to junk food restrictions.
So while I don't really give a flying flunderton whether anyone thinks I personally sit around eating whole loaves of pathetic anger bread all day every day, I do care, very much, about the fact that the erroneous belief everyone who looks like me got that way by unfettered gluttony (NB: disordered eating is not unfettered gluttony) underwrites the bigotry used to marginalize us.
Naturally, even if every last one of us was fat by conscious choice, it still wouldn't justify rank hatred and bigotry.
But as long as the proponents of that bigotry continue to claim it's a response to our alleged lack of good choices, I'mma keep challenging the veracity of that allegation, until finally, one day, that bigotry is exposed as nothing but the sneering aesthetic displeasure for difference that it really is.
President Obama on the State of the Economy
The live broadcast will begin shortly (10:30 Eastern)...
[video removed]
Today in Mitt Romney Stands in Front of Something
Also among Mitt Romney's appearance rider: A gold-plated bidet, a 1987 edition of Monopoly, and at least one year's worth of back issues of Boy's Life magazine.
Big News today! Rand Paul has endorsed Mitt Romney. I hate to say it, y'all, but his son endorsing Mitt Romney while his dad's still technically running for president does bolster the terrible case for Ron Paul being dead.
I don't know, y'all. I'm not convinced. I really hope that Ron Paul is just keeping busy building a rocketship out of first editions of Atlas Shrugged to take his libertarian pilgrims to their tax-free space paradise. No Big Government on Planet Freedom 4 Realz.
In other news, Mitt Romney has a promise for you: "As your president, starting on day one, I will do everything in my power to end these days of drift and disappointment. I will not be that president of doubt and desperation. I will lead us to a better place."
I'm worried about Mitt Romney, Shakers. Someone check on Mitt Romney and make sure he knows he's not running against George Bush.
A Thing on the Internet, and My Thoughts About It
So, there's this conservative kid, who's 14, and he has his own talk show and a book, and he's beloved by conservatives, big-name conservatives like Rudy Giuliani and Glenn Beck, who love that he says outrageous things—like, most recently, that President Obama is making kids gay, which is currently getting him lots of attention across the internet, where he's considered either a hero or a bozo.
I am not going to link to this kid, or post his video, even though he is saying terrible things.
When I was 14, I knew some 14-year-olds who said terrible, conservative, homophobic things.
Some of them probably still say them.
Some of them, in years hence, deeply regretted the things they said only because that's what they'd been taught by their families, their churches, their culture.
Some of them later came out.
I don't know in which one of those categories that boy might find himself two or twenty years from now. So I will only say this: If it's in either of the latter two, a space as safe as I know how to make it will be waiting for him.
Question of the Day
After yesterday's epic QotD about creepy "romantic" pop songs, I thought we'd do the flipside as suggested by Shaker LunaMichelle: What pop song(s) meant to be romantic do you find to be genuinely romantic instead of creepy?
I'm going to throw my vote to Travis' "Flowers in the Window," which is a lovely song about finding someone uniquely suited to you, someone whom you "help with the load" as you go through life together, and feeling happy that you're both content in your relationship. I really love this song, because there's no bullshit about rescuing each other or completing each other or living a perfect life. Nope, life is a slog, but it's better with a person who complements you (if that's your thing), and if you want flowers in the window, you've got to keep planting seeds.
[Lyrics here.]
I first heard this song after Iain sent me a copy of the single through the mail, when we still lived on different continents. It was the first song he ever sent me, and it means more to me with every passing year that I know him. He has always loved me in a way that makes me feel safe.
Quote of the Day
"Economic crises of the kind we are in are costly tragedies, and it takes dedication, sacrifice, and hard work on the part of business elites, labor organizations, political leaders, and ordinary consumers and voters to make it through. Historically, the gumption has been found."—Jack A. Goldstone, in "It's Worse Than You Think: Halftime Between Two Lost Decades," for The Atlantic.
Let us hope we find the gumption once more.
BushQuotes!
Chapter 4, page 52: "I studied hard."
That is definitely a real quote from page 52 of Privilege, Balls, and Things I Did That Were Hard (That's What She Said).
A portrait of the hard-studying study-harder.
[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]
Number of the Day
[Content Note: Misogyny; gender-based discrimination.]
1,975: The number of charges filed with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that Walmart discriminated in pay and promotion decisions on the basis of gender.
Nearly 2,000 current and former Walmart employees filed claims of discrimination on the basis of gender with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Complaints were filed in all but two states - Montana and Vermont - but at least one complaint was filed in every US Walmart retail region. The lawsuits were filed in response to last year's Supreme Court ruling on a class-action lawsuit, Dukes v. Walmart Stores, Inc., in which the Supreme Court overturned a lower court's certification of a national class of women.Indeed.
Brad Seligman, one of the lawyers for the women in Dukes v. Walmart Stores, Inc., said that "the fact that EEOC charges were filed in every single Walmart region in the nation demonstrates the widespread and pervasive nature of Walmart's pay and promotion discrimination against its women employees."
In related news: "Walmart's outsourcing of jobs is driving down wages at American factories, according to a report from the National Employment Law Project."
What a great company. We should give them more tax breaks.
Walmart's garbage employment policies underscore the speciousness of waxing rhapsodic about "job creators" without any kind of qualifications about what kind of jobs are being created. Walmart's increasingly expansive presence across the nation creates retail jobs—but does so at the expense of US factory jobs. (Not to mention the jobs lost at the smaller and/or independent retailers Walmart drives out of business.) Meanwhile, the jobs Walmart creates lack protections, benefits, and equal pay.
The US needs fewer jobs like the ones Walmart is creating, and more like the ones Walmart endeavors to destroy to maximize profits.
Reproductive Rights Update: Montana
[Content Note: War on agency; reproductive rights; dehumanization; Christian Supremacy.]
There are two issues happening in Montana. One will definitely be on the ballot in November, the other is currently getting signatures to be able to be on the ballot.
First, on the ballot is LR-120 (HB 627), which requires parental consent for a minor to obtain an abortion. It will read (.pdf):
LR-120 prohibits a physician from performing an abortion on a minor under 16 years of age unless a physician notifies a parent or legal guardian of the minor at least 48 hours prior to the procedure. Notice is not required if: (1) there is a medical emergency; (2) it is waived by a youth court in a sealed proceeding; or (3) it is waived by the parent or guardian. A person who performs an abortion in violation of the act, or who coerces a minor to have an abortion, is subject to criminal prosecution and civil liability.The other issue is CI-108, a "personhood" initiative. CI-108 reads:
And what of the right of the person with the uterus to not be forced by law to carry a pregnancy to term? *crickets*CONSTITUTIONAL INITIATIVE NO. 108
A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT PROPOSED BY INITIATIVE PETITION
The due process section of the Montana Constitution provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. CI-108 amends the due process section of the Montana Constitution to define “person” as used in that section to apply to “all human beings at every stage of development, including the stage of fertilization or conception, regardless of age, health, level of functioning, or condition of dependency.” It grants due process rights at every stage of biological development, including fertilization or conception.
There are no exceptions written into this initiative for, well, anything. The "rights" of a blastocyst are foremost to the rights of the person with the uterus.
The sponsor of the initiative is Dr. Annie Bukacek, an outspoken anti-choice activist. A couple years ago, Dr. Bukacek was under investigation for Medicaid fraud, the doctor was apparently asked to leave a group practice because she refused to stop praying with patients, and was a force behind the previously-failed attempt to get "personhood" on the ballot two years ago in Montana (6,000 signatures short). She said:
"The killing of innocent humans is not compatible with a civilized society. We have barely begun the fight for the rights and liberties of unborn babies, and we will keep working at it until their personhood is established in our Montana Constitution."But what is "compatible with a civilized society" is negating the rights of people with uteri? I see.
The status of the initiative so far is:
Signatures received and tallied by SOS: 3,270 of 48,674 total signatures needed; qualified in 4 of 40 legislative districts needed.October is the deadline for signatures.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelda is very particular about the times she wants to play and the times she wants to cuddle. (Fair enough! So am I!) Earlier today, after coming back in from running around in the backyard, I offered to play Get the Squirrel with her (rules: I have the squirrel; Zelda gets the squirrel), but she was not interested in plushy squirrels (which are actually chipmunks). She was interested in butt-scratches.
Video Description: Zelda the Black-and-Tan Mutt stands in front of me, grinning. I offer her the squirrel. She ignores the squirrel and sits in front of me with her back to me, tilting her head up at me. "What are you doing?" I ask, laughing. I offer her the squirrel again. "Get that squirrel," I tell her. She takes it gently from my hand, plays with it half-heartedly for approximately one second, then walks it over to her bed, lays it down very deliberately, then walks back and stands in front of me with her butt tilted toward me. She wags her tail and looks up at me with a grin. "What—you want butt-scratches?" I ask her. I scratch her at the base of her tail. I stop. She looks at me. "What—do you want MORE butt-scratches?" She tilts her head and grins. "Okay." I scratch her butt. I stop. Her tail wags. She sits in front of me and nudges my hand so I'll scratch her head. (This is the ritual. Butt-scratches, head-scratches, butt-scratches, head-scratches.) "What?" I ask her, scratching all around her head and ears and chin. She looks blissed-out. "Such a good girl." She grins.
Full Disclosure: This video was followed by extensive cuddling and face kisses.
Zelda McEwan: Power Cuddler
Today in Mitt Romney Stands in Front of Something
In the news today: Mitt Romney out-fundraised President Barack Obama in May, and Newt Gingrich's sugar-daddy Spencer Adelson is about to cut a Romney SuperPAC a huge check.
Once again, I'd like to commend the Supreme Court on that excellent Citizens United decision. Great job, assholes.
Also stop by Digby's place to read all about how Mitt Romney used to like to impersonate a police officer in order to "play pranks" on people.
Whooops Your Vatican-Condemned Bestseller!
[Content note: this post contains negative statements about human sexuality.]
The story, Monday:
The Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday denounced an American nun who taught Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School for a book that attempted to present a theological rationale for same-sex relationships, masturbation and remarriage after divorce.
The story, Wednesday:
After the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog condemned an American nun for a book she wrote on human sexuality this week, the book shot up Amazon.com’s bestseller list, becoming the #1 best selling religious studies book by Tuesday.On Wednesday , Sister Margaret A. Farley's "Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics," was the #16 best-selling book on Amazon overall, just ahead of Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption,” which has been on Amazon's bestseller list for well over a year.
Farley's book has been on the list for three days. The Washington Post reported that the book was #142,982 on Amazon as recently as Monday.
Whooooops!
Among Sister Farley's sins: suggesting that " 'many women' have found 'great good in self-pleasuring — perhaps especially in the discovery of their own possibilities for pleasure — something many had not experienced or even known about in their ordinary sexual relations with husbands or lovers.' "
The Vatican response: “ 'Masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action,' the church said in a statement Monday."
I don't know about you, but nothing suggests that me that the Vatican leadership is really well-informed about human sexuality more than telling the laydeez not to play with their naughtybits or they're going to hell.
[Commenting note: Please take care in comments to distinguish between Catholic hierarchy and ordinary Catholics, many of whom disagree with the actions of their leadership.]
The Tyranny of OH HELL IT BURNS: 3. NO LABELS
In other words, liberals are smart enough to use the word socialist intelligently but conservatives aren't. - Jonah Goldberg, explaining what liberals think
Van Jones, President Obama's erstwhile "green jobs czar"... explain[ed] in a 2005 interview that he was going to give up openly proselytizing Marxist-Leninism while still pursuing the ends: "I'm willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends." - Jonah Goldberg, using words intelligentlyIf you had two in the "number of pages until Jonah Goldberg invokes Nazism" pool, you win! Go you, and go Goldberg, way to get back on the horse! You're back on the trolley to Godwin town!
Where were we? Ah yes....
Introduction: Who the fuck cares?
Chapter 1: Liberals say "ideology" like it's a bad thing, but everyone believes in junk!
Chapter 2: Liberals are pretentious liars that won't let you argue with them.
Chapter 3: NO LABELS.
At first I was excited, because Naomi Klein, but then I realized I was thinking of a) No Logo, which was b) a book.
This is a chapter devoted to the organization No Labels.
Jonah Goldberg, let me put this in terms you'll understand. Writing an entire chapter about No Labels is the moral equivalent of centering an essay on Allen Gregory.
(In case you missed them, Allen Gregory was an animated series on Fox, and No Labels was a press conference attended my Michael Bloomberg and Arianna Huffington.)
Bloomberg, Huffington and David Frum (one of the "intellectuals" of the movement) are just in denial of their liberal-Marxist ways.
(Here's a joke: Michael Bloomberg, Arianna Huffington, and Karl Marx walk into a bar. Michael Bloomberg owns the bar, but he sells it to Arianna Huffington who then lays everyone off as Karl Marx watches and laughs.)
NON-SEQUITOR!!!
If I call you a racist for opposing reparations for slavery or for opposing statehood for Washington, D.C., my offense is not in using the word racist but for using it inaccurately... However if you propose restoring slavery because blacks are unworthy of citizenship and I call you a racist... I should be applauded for committing the simple yet noble act of telling the truth.First off, I have no idea where that came from. (I know exactly where that came from.) I think the idea is that liberals live in a topsy-turvy world where up is down and systemically disenfranchising a city with a huge black population is racism. So, if a hypothetical intellectual (let's call him Gonah Joldberg) were to advocate against giving residents of a traditionally black-dominated city the vote, yet fall short of calling for the enslavement of the city's black residents, you shouldn't call him a racist. (Liberals, I'm looking at you on this one.) You should throw him a parade.
Liberals are afraid of the awful truths that up is up, Gonah Joldberg is not racist, and Michael Bloomberg is a socialist. I think that's the point of this chapter. Also, there's more John Dewey, because the kids, they love the John Dewey.
One more quote:
Indeed in their own publications [citation needed] and conferences [citations] they [liberals? Like David Frum?] routinely say the favor socialism or "social democracy," [quotes original] which is socialism [citation needed]. But the moment critics say liberals are socialists, it's considered [by liberals? Like Mike Bloomberg?] a slander [citation needed]. But remember, these liberals don't dislike socialism. Even the ones [YOU KNOW WHICH ONES] who don't embrace it fully themselves admire the social democracies of Europe [citation. fucking. needed.] and want to emulate, say, [say?] the Labor [Is the Labor Party the big socialist party in the UK? I'm not sure. The Labour Party sure as hell ain't.Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this u!] Party in Britain [citation needed].
"I realized those issues are real."
[Content Note: Fat hatred; eating; anti-fat myths.]
CNN is featuring the story of Drew Manning, the fitness trainer who purposefully gained 70 pounds only to lose it again, and is now promoting a book titled Fit2Fat2Fit, documenting the process. When Manning started his journey to prove that losing weight is just about diet and exercise, WHICH HE HAS DEFINITELY PROVEN FOR SURE, he didn't expect to learn that fat people have emotions, or something.
Always a fitness junkie, staying in shape comes naturally for Manning. He's that guy at the gym the rest of us love to hate, the one who likes to use his biceps for pumping iron instead of changing channels, and who prefers sucking down a spinach shake to indulging in a brownie sundae.Manning could certainly have taken a more direct route to the realization that "mental and emotional issues" around fat are "real" than gaining and losing 70 pounds. He could have tried treating fat people like human beings, listening to us, believing us, and giving empathy a shot. That he found it easier to change his body than to relate to a fat person on a basic human level, that he could not trust us to be experts on our own experiences, but had to become fat himself, underscores the depth of the dehumanization and marginalization of fat people by people with fat bias.
Because of that, Manning was a "judgmental" trainer, his wife says. "He would look at someone who was overweight and say, 'They must really be lazy.'
"I was convinced people used genetics or similar excuses as a crutch," Manning writes in his new book, Fit2Fat2Fit. "You either wanted to be healthy or you didn't."
That point of view wasn't helping Manning help his clients. When he failed yet again to push someone over to the light side, he knew something was wrong. In order to better understand the struggles his clients were facing, he had to face them himself.
He gave up the gym and started consuming junk food, fast food and soda. In just six months, he went from 193 pounds with a 34-inch waist to 265 pounds with a 48-inch waist.
Lynn saw the difference in her husband in less time than that. He became lethargic, stopped helping around the house and was less than eager to play with their 2-year-old daughter.
"He was so insecure -- saying 'I'm so fat. I look so horrible,' constantly complaining about how he looks," she said.
Manning says he didn't realize the effects of his weight gain would be more than physical. It altered his relationships and his self-confidence. Returning to the gym after the Fit2Fat portion of his journey made him nervous. The fact that he had to do push-ups on his knees was almost humiliating.
"The biggest thing [I learned] is that it's not just about the physical. It's not just about the meal plan and the workouts and those things. The key is the mental and the emotional issues. I realized those issues are real."
And now he is being treated as though he's a reliable "expert" on fatness and fat people, because we are still not allowed to be experts on our own experiences when there's a thin fitness trainer with an agenda and a book to sell, who treated gaining weight like some 17th century ethnographic adventure to exotic shores, only to return to the civilization of thinness to report his findings about the savage fatties.
It turns out they have feelings! Oh, DO TELL, Dr. Livingstone.
This was a stunt. A gross, dishonest, appropriative stunt. And the fact that Manning has tacked on an infantile moral about how he learned that fat people have emotions to his conclusion that we could still be thin if we really wanted to (because he did it! so everybody can do it!) does not turn this stunt into something profound.
He set out to prove that a thin, able-bodied fitness trainer could "let himself go" and then reclaim his rock-hard physique through diet and exercise, and that's what he proved. That's all he proved. Because not everyone's body is capable of doing what his did—not everyone can gain weight like he did, and not everyone can lose weight like he did.
This: "He gave up the gym and started consuming junk food, fast food and soda. In just six months, he went from 193 pounds with a 34-inch waist to 265 pounds with a 48-inch waist."—is not the experience of most fat people. Fat people are fat for a variety of intersecting reasons. We are not fat by virtue of a deliberate weight gain through strategic abandonment of exercise and all healthful food.
The article, of course, doesn't even bother attempting to address that not every fat person is fat for the same reason, because that would undermine the entire premise of this absurd stunt, which only works if we all buy into the narrative that fat people are all fat because they don't eat right and don't get enough exercise.
There is no acknowledgment that not every fat person consumes nothing but "fast food, junk food, and soda." There is no answer to the obvious question of what fatties who don't eat nothing but "fast food, junk food, and soda" are meant to do, since the magical solution of cutting "fast food, junk food, and soda" out of our diets isn't an option.
That's because we don't exist. Not in the world in which a thin, able-bodied fitness trainer is considered a more reliable spokesperson for fatkind than a person who actually lives life in a fat body.
Manning has "proven" that it's all just an issue of willpower to go from Fit2Fat (love how those are once again positioned as mutually exclusive concepts). Except, here's the thing about willpower and weight: It was an act of significant willpower that resulted in my most significant weight gain in my adult life. On Thanksgiving 2006, I smoked my last cigarette after a 14-year two-packs-a-day habit that I loved and considered an integral part of my identity. And after quitting cold turkey, I have since been and remain still a nonsmoker almost six years later.
Willpower is not my problem.
After quitting smoking, I did not change my eating habits, increased my exercise, and still gained weight, for reasons most likely having to do with the one billion chemicals I was inhaling on a constant basis having fucked up my body in weird ways. I am fatter now, but I am also healthier.
(Look for my upcoming book Smoker2Fatter2Healthier.)
Other than that, I have basically stayed at the same weight, give or take a few pounds in one direction or another, for more than a decade. I still have—and wear—clothes I owned when Iain and I met in 2001. During that time, I've eaten worse and better for me, exercised more and less, sometimes way more and way less, and it was only the quitting smoking that resulted in any sort of discernible flux.
My fitness changes when I eat better for me and get more exercise, but my weight doesn't.
Sure, I'm one person, but I'm not extraordinary. There are all kinds of fat people with stories like mine, whose voices aren't being heard because opportunistic showmen like Manning are given bullhorns to shout bullshit that talks about fat people like some slob monolith who just need more condescending evangelizing to inspire us.
If Manning actually cared about the emotional lives of fat people (ha ha he doesn't!), then he wouldn't be hawking some exploitative garbage book about the time he turned himself into a human fat suit for awhile. He has no idea what it feels like to live in a body you can't change, and he doesn't even believe those bodies exist.
He's going to be all over the media, peddling his book which is dependent on that belief. And he's going to be making life that just much harder, entrenching bias against fat people just that much more, while simultaneously claiming to have had a compassionate breakthrough about the difficult emotional life of fatsronauts.
What a jerk.
[H/T to Iain.]
Culture Shocks
Last week, I was a guest on Culture Shocks, the radio show hosted by Rev. Barry Lynn, whose name you probably recognize from his longtime position as Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. We discussed using "satire" as a defense of misogyny, among other issues.
The episode is now available here, if you'd like to listen to it.
My thanks to Barry Lynn, who was incredibly nice both on and off the air.
The Munsters Being Rebooted
There are already at least five things wrong with this idea:
1) Jerry O'Connell as Herman Munster.
2) The new version will be a one-hour drama.
3) The show will be called "Mockingbird Lane."
4) Mason Cook.
5) The pilot episode will be directed by Bryan Singer.
Question of the Day
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
What supposedly "romantic" pop song has the creepiest lyrics of all time?
There are sooooooo many pop songs with super creepy lyrics. "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is like an ode to date rape; "Young Girl" is like an ode to statutory rape; "Every Breath You Take" is like an ode to stalking (about which Sting only realized in retrospect "how sinister it is" whooooooops). Not all creepy songs are so creepy, but it's truly amazing how many pop songs just get played on the radio, and sung along to, and remain standards and favorites for decades, despite their being truly and deeply hostile to the concept of consent (or romantic agency of any kind, e.g. the Nice Guy anthem, "Cooler Than Me").
Photo of the Day
[Click to embiggen. Via the Telegraph. Photo by Paul Grover.]
This is literally the only part of the Queen's Gold Car Elevator Jubilee that I am likely to give a shit about, because GRACE JONES. (Also because: Seriously? Nobody in the UK government is allowed to say the word "austerity" for ten years without being thrown in jubilee jail for a sentence of no shorter than ten Grace Jones seminars on Being Awesome.) So please feel welcome to use this as a general Diamond Jubilee thread.
You can watch Grace's performance here.
Another Day, Another Judge Strikes Down DOMA
Igor at Think Progress:
Another federal judge has struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), finding that the law "should not be presumed to be constitutional, and should instead be subject to a heightened form of judicial scrutiny." The victory comes in the case of Edie Windsor, who was seeking a refund of the federal estate tax paid by the estate of her late wife. It's another loss for Paul Clement and House Speaker John Boehner's (R-OH) Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the House of Representatives ("BLAG"), who had claimed that her homosexuality was a "choice."Poor Boehner. It mustn't be fun to feel like a dinosaur, looking into the night sky and seeing a meteor.
From the ruling: "It does not follow from the exclusion of one group from federal benefits (same-sex married persons) that another group of people (opposite-sex married couples) will be incentivized to take any action, whether that is marriage or procreations."
<--So, so tiny.
Wonderful Web
[Content Note: Animal endangerment.]
Very few things make my teeth grind like the old "everything is terrible on the internetz" chestnut, as a way of dismissing the urge to expect more. Partly, that's because of how I make my living, but, partly, it's because of stories like this one:
Beth-Andy Kohn Gresham was on a work break in Memphis on Friday when she noticed a nearby dog with its head stuck in a jar. "[I] got within 15-20 feet and it raised its head but went into the woods," she said.Yay!
Luckily, Gresham had just enough time to snap this pic, which she promptly posted to Facebook. By the next day, the photo boasted more than 300 comments and had inspired a dozen would-be rescuers.
After a Saturday of searching in woods where "you sink to your ankles" and that were thick with briars, brush, and "other obstacles," Gresham said, she and her team finally located the dog and used container cutters to set him free.
Gresham posted a video of the dog — called Miracle — to Facebook [yesterday]: "Thanks everyone. Miracle is worth it !!! She is just precious. Was able to visit with her at the vet's office yesterday."
BushQuotes!
Chapter 4, page 51: "I had never flown an airplane but decided I wanted to become a pilot."
That is definitely a real quote from page 51 of Privilege, Balls, and Aeroplanes.
[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]
Daily Dose of Cute
Video Description: Zelda the Black-and-Tan Mutt stands in the middle of the garden, looking into the thicket. Her head swivels and her ears twitch. Suddenly, something catches her eye, and she trots off to the back of the yard to investigate. As she goes, she passes Dudley the Greyhound, who is lying in the grass and blinks disinterestedly as she cruises by.
Watch Dog
Not-Watch Dog
As you can see by the the latter picture, Dudley has plenty of energy for things like digging holes, when he wants to, lol.
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by cameras.
Recommended Reading:
Pam: Ninth Circuit Denies Request to Re-Hear Prop 8 Case; Clears Path to Appeal to US Supreme Court
Samhita: The Morning-After Pill Is Not an Abortion Pill
Rachael: The Revolution Will Not Be Polite: The Issue of Nice versus Good [Content Note: This post contains discussion of oppression and includes some slurs among its examples.]
Ellen: Why The Pretty White Girl YA Book Cover Trend Needs to End [Content Note: The post at this link contains a specific and potentially triggering incident of racism related to diversity in eye-shapes.]
Jessie: Ending the Institutional Racism of NYC's Marijuana Arrests
Andy: CNN Poll Shows Massive Shift in Acceptance, Understanding of Gay People
Melissa: The Awesomeness That Is Shonda Rhimes
AP: Janet Jackson to Produce Global Documentary about Trans People
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
"There Are Other Ways to Deal with Situations."
[Content Note: Violence; racism; eliminationism.]
So far this year, 30 black people have been killed in the US by police, security, or "neighborhood watch" vigilantes. And that doesn't even include cases like the murder of 13-year-old Darius Simmons, who was shot in the chest by his white, 75-year-old neighbor John Henry Spooner, who believed Simmons to be a thief who'd stolen weapons from him.
Not that it would in any way justify the shooting if he had, but Simmons was in school on the day of the theft and a police search of Simmons' family home turned up nothing. So, on what basis Spooner suspected Simmons is a total fucking mystery. (Sure.)
John Henry Spooner was charged with one count of first-degree intentional homicide, use of a dangerous weapon. Spooner was arrested Thursday after waiting for police at the crime scene on Milwaukee's south side.One might be left with the impression that Spooner was simply a confused elderly man who didn't know or understand what he was doing, except for this:
...According to the complaint, Spooner approached Simmons as the boy retrieved a garbage cart from in front of a house Thursday morning. The boy's mother, Patricia Larry, who saw the shooting, said Spooner told her son he "wanted his stuff back and that he wanted his shotguns back," the complaint said.
Simmons and his mother told Spooner they did not have his property. Spooner then pulled a gun, pointed it at Simmons and fired one shot from about five feet away, the complaint said.
Spooner fired a second shot at Simmons as the boy was running away, according to the complaint. An autopsy found the boy suffered a gunshot wound to his chest, and the bullet damaged the ventricles of his heart before exiting his back. Police recovered a weapon as well as two spent casings.
Alderman Bob Donovan had breakfast with Spooner earlier in the day at a George Webb restaurant. Donovan said the man told him he had lost $3,000 worth of shotguns in a burglary this week, was frustrated with police and was dying of lung cancer.Apparently, no call to police was placed to warn them of this potential threat of violent vigilantism—something that may or may not have been taken seriously, even though Spooner had "called 911 at least 15 times in five years."
"He seemed burdened, truly burdened," Donovan said. Spooner also said something about "there are other ways to deal with situations" the police couldn't resolve, Donovan added.
Does that sound familiar? George Zimmerman also had a habit of calling 911 to report "suspicious activity" in his neighborhood before shooting Trayvon Martin, who, like, Darius Simmons, was unarmed and minding his own business.
I note that even if the Alderman had made a call to police, it might not have been taken seriously, because, even after admittedly killing Simmons in cold blood, Spooner was reportedly treated like the victim and Simmons' family like criminals by investigators:
After police arrived, Darius's body remained on the sidewalk, while police questioned his mother, Patricia Larry, in a squad car for approximately two hours.At least it didn't take a national fucking referendum to get Spooner arrested. That's not exactly meaningful progress, though. Meaningful progress will be when paranoid white racists with arsenals of loaded weaponry stop killing black people. Fuck.
During the police investigation of the shooting, they searched Ms. Larry's home again. Finding nothing, they then proceeded to arrest his older brother for having truancy tickets.
In contrast, Spooner's family was allowed to go into the home and remove "items" despite it being [part of] the crime scene.
John Spooner was given a $300,000 bail, (only $30,000 would have to be posted for him to be free). This is uncommon when the charge is murder in the first degree.
RIP Ray Bradbury
Author Ray Bradbury has died at age 91. Fuuuuuuck. He was not a perfect man, nor a perfect author, and we sure wouldn't have agreed on a lot of things, but there are few books I've revisited like I have Fahrenheit 451.
There are maybe only two books I've read more often. It is a deep part of me, and I never fail to be amazed how often I think about it, in relation to everything from censorship to the increasing enormity of flatscreen TVs. It has even featured centrally in several key moments in my life, because of shared appreciation.
Three days after we met online, Iain fatefully asked me, "Fancy a game of Fahrenheit 451? Which book would you memorize for posterity, and which would you throw onto the pyre?"
I didn't answer the former with Fahrenheit 451, but it wouldn't have been a bad alternative.
* * *
Bradbury was famously an irascible critic of "political correctness," so perhaps he would have found it ironic that it was Captain Beatty's treatise on "political correctness" in Fahrenheit 451 which really started my thinking on the difference between "political correctness" and meaningful sensitivity to marginalized people:
Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.This, I knew from the first time I read it, was wrong—though I wasn't certain precisely why yet. What I knew, viscerally, but could not articulate as a teenager, was that disappearing materials that reflect institutional harm, without or instead of any examination of systemic bias, is a solution to legitimate criticism of privilege, not a solution to harm. And trying to find a solution to legitimate criticism of privilege is the real partner to the anti-intellectualism also at the root of the tyranny in Fahrenheit 451, not the imagined (even by its author) solution to harm.
...Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator.
Bradbury got that wrong. But its wrongness worked on me, and challenged me to figure out why it was wrong. It made me more sensitive. It helped me build my argument against careless rants about "political correctness" delivered by people of privilege who specialize in willful ignorance. It informed the charter for this space.
That would probably make Mr. Bradbury very grumpy indeed. Which makes me grin.
My condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.
Random Nerd Nostalgia: #GothamProblems
[Description: Square-jawed, square-haired 1950s Bruce Wayne looks at pearl-wearing 1950s Kathy Kane, who is looking out at the viewer with a finger to her lips and clenched teeth. Bruce thinks: "So she admires Batman! If only I could tell her I'm Batman -- BUT I CAN'T!" Kathy thinks: "Bruce is so good-looking-- and he admires Batwoman! If -- sigh-- he only knew I'M BATWOMAN!"]
Oh my gosh, kids. IT'S A BAT-DILEMMA!
Seen
[Content Note: Body policing.]
On the cover of the always-reputable Globe tabloid, by Shaker Carleigh, who sent me this photo:
[Full cover of issue can be viewed here.]
I'm not sure if this cover is trying to imply that Clinton has stopped wearing make-up and shaving her legs because she's "melting down" from an impending divorce, or that there is an impending divorce because Clinton is "melting down" and has stopped wearing make-up and shaving her legs. I really wish the Globe would be more clear in the absurd fantasy headlines its editors pull out of their asses!
It's interesting (no it's not) how Hillary Clinton is routinely attacked for being a feminist, and then simultaneously attacked for (allegedly) failing to conform to the Beauty Standard, as well as routinely attacked for having stayed with her husband after an infidelity, and then simultaneously attacked on the basis that they're getting divorced.
You know, if I didn't know better BECAUSE POST-FEMINIST AMERICA FOR REALZ, I would think that women who live public lives can't fucking win.
And one again, I wish I could meet Hillary Clinton just to say thank you for existing.
Today in Mitt Romney Stands in Front of Something
In news that isn't really news but I'm sure glad that people with big platforms are pointing this out in such a concise and straightforward way: Mitt Romney is really just a shameless liar about President Obama's jobs record.
Walker Survives Recall Vote
And he is just as enormous a d-bag as ever:
Gov. Scott Walker, fresh from becoming the nation's first governor to survive a recall election, wants to go about mending Wisconsin's political divide in an egalitarian way: over brats and beer.Oh! I have an idea! How about restoring collective bargaining rights for your state's public employees? I mean, not that everyone doesn't love brats and beer (not everyone loves brats and beer), but collective bargaining rights are pretty awesome, too.
...Now the rising Republican star is focusing his message on what lies ahead. His term runs through 2014 in a state that is still bitterly divided over his move to end collective bargaining rights for most public employees.
"It's time to put our differences aside and find ways to work together to move Wisconsin forward," Walker said in an interview minutes after his victory. "I think it's important to fix things, but it's also important to make sure we talk about it and involve people in the process."
Walker planned to invite all members of the Legislature to meet as soon as next week over burgers, brats and "maybe a little bit of good Wisconsin beer."
"The first step is just bringing people together and figuring out some way if we can thaw the ice," he said.
The biggest loser in this election is worker rights. "Union" is a dirtier word than ever in the United States, even as US workers (quite rightly) complain bitterly about the lack of employment opportunities offering a livable wage and healthcare benefits, the lack of job security, the lack of pensions, the lack of paid sick leave, the lack of paid maternity leave, the lack of paid vacation time, the lack of meaningful amounts of paid vacation time, the lack of equal pay, the lack of effective workplace protections against harassment, the lack of effective workplace protections against exploitation of salaried employees, the lack of effectively policed workplace safety regulations, and on and on and on, all of which are the sorts of things that unions used to work to provide for US workers.
Which is not to say there weren't abuses in some unions, especially in certain industries, but the solution to a lack of perfection among unions has been to buy wholesale into the corporate demonization of unions and virtually eradicate them, rather than to reform them and make them work for their members again.
Now we're in a situation where workers are on their own, trying to navigate individual solutions to systemic abuses in which exploitation of labor is so routine that companies openly discuss without any fear of consequence how to reclassify workers so as to avoid paying overtime or providing benefits.
We have sold away our right to not be exploited, and, instead of reclaiming that right last night, in Wisconsin, our foolish decision was celebrated and the architects of the US workforce's destruction richly rewarded.
What a truly terrible thing.
Question of the Day
Suggested by my friend Ms. A: If you could change one thing about your home, what would it be?
For the purposes of this question, it doesn't matter whether you're technically allowed to make this change. Just pretend you are for this one.
Quote of the Day
"It is a very sad day here in the United States Senate, but it's a sadder day every day when paycheck day comes and women continue to make less than men. We're sorry that this vote occurred strictly on party lines."—Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), after the Paycheck Fairness Act failed in the Senate today on a procedural vote.
In a 52 to 47 tally the Senate defeated the Paycheck Fairness Act. The legislation aimed to increase protections for women filing gender-discrimination lawsuits, as well as create a federal grant program to improve women's salary negotiating skills.Sigh, etc.
The vote came down strictly along party lines, with the two independent senators voting with Democrats and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) not voting.
...The bill's defeat came after Democrats made a tightly coordinated media blitz to call for the bill's passage. President Obama, Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Barbara Mikulski (D-M.d.) and Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Rosa Delauro (D-Conn.) all held conference calls expressing strong support for the legislation. But Republicans strongly opposed the bill, leaving Democrats short of the seven votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Democrats said the paycheck bill's defeat is the latest example of a Republican "war on women."
...President Obama accused Republicans of putting "partisan politics ahead of women and their families."
"It is incredibly disappointing that in this make-or-break moment for the middle class, Senate Republicans put partisan politics ahead of American women and their families," Obama said in a statement.
I love, ahem, how Obama "accused" Republicans of prioritizing ideology over women, their families, and fairness. No, I'm pretty sure he just stated the manifestly fucking obvious.
Photo of the Day
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili (R) and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hold a news conference at the Public Service Hall in Batumi June 5, 2012. [Reuters Pictures]I didn't crop this image; this is the original wire photo.
All right then!
BushQuotes!
Chapter 4, page 50: "My inclination was to support the government and the war until proven wrong, and that only came later, as I realized we could not explain the mission, had no exit strategy, and did not seem to be fighting to win."
He's talking about Vietnam, by the way.
[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]
Rational Empathy
In 2009, a Wall Street Journal editorial headlined "The 'Empathy' Nominee: Is Sonia Sotomayor judically [sic] superior to 'a white male'?" included the following passage (background):
In the President's now-famous word, judging should be shaped by "empathy" as much or more than by reason.Here, then, was the conservative view laid bare: Empathy and reason are mutually exclusive concepts.
This dichotomy is once again at play during this election, as President Obama is cast as a socialist (if only!), a bleeding heart wealth-redistributor who wants to uplift the downtrodden at the expense of hard-working job creators. He doesn't understand the cold, hard realities of the world, Republicans are fond of saying. He is out of depth. He ignores facts. He is not reasonable. He, instead, has empathy. Which is even worse than cooties.
In the conservative frame, it is never reasonable to be empathetic.
And, truly, if one's worldview is structured principally of self-interest, empathy isn't reasonable, but is, in fact, a catastrophic risk to the privileged beneficiaries of an ideology built upon their informed lack of compassion and their rank-and-file's ignorant lack of compassion.
Empathy is what happens when racist white parents discover their child's best friend at school is black, and they begin to revisit their prejudices. Empathy is what happens when a homophobic woman finds out that male coworker she really likes is gay, and she begins to reconsider all those biases she's held for so long. Empathy is what happens when real life, real people, prove obviously, demonstrably wrong all those conservative bedtime stories about gays and immigrants and castrating feminazis that go bump in the night.
Empathy is what happens when good conservatives, who have long mistaken patronizing pity for compassion, suddenly realize that being white, or male, or straight, or cisgender, or Christian, or rich, or thin, or able-bodied, or USian, or educated, or in any other way not Other, doesn't make them better people; it merely makes them privileged people.
Empathy is what turns people into progressives.
Lest one imagine I am positing that progressives are somehow selfless martyrs with nary a shred of self-interest, I assure you I am not. To care passionately and wholly about others does not require an abdication of ambition nor a subjugation of agency; it requires, rather, a determination to achieve and succeed and have and be without exploiting or marginalizing others in the process. That is no small thing, but it is not the stuff of saints, either.
Progressives, at our best, merely recognize that we're all in this together—even the people who won't get our backs, the bullies who attack us just to feel less put upon themselves, the self-loathing enablers who harbor foolish dreams of being invited to the table of privilege one day, the barrel-chested barons of a new Gilded Age who stand astride the bodies of those condemned to less fortunate fates, singing the praises of social Darwinism, bellowing about the superfluity of a social safety net, and declaring "The government never gave me anything!" as they deposit seven-figure bonuses made possible by a taxpayer-funded bailout.
Progressives know we are all in the same leaky, creaky, unreliable boat. And knowing that means understanding even the most voracious self-interest is best served by egalitarianism: A fortune is worth nothing at the bottom of the ocean, less than a single penny carried safely to shore.
Empathy is what happens when people turn away from the gossamer promise of a treasure that never materializes, and turn to their neighbors and say, "I don't care about our differences; I'll help you carry the penny."
It's a totally rational decision to make—really, the only rational decision for most people. And once they come upon it, a space in which empathy and reason are regarded as an either-or proposition is no space in which they can comfortably exist. One mustn't be a raging altruist to appreciate both the decency and pragmatism of empathy in a diverse culture.
But one must be a conservative to fail to see either.
[Originally published in similar form in May 2009.]
Random Nerd Nostalgia: Lube Your Cube!
[Description: Cartoon of hands rotating a Rubik's Cube. " Even if you've got all the right moves, sometimes your cube can be tough to move. And that's why there's new CUBE LUBE--an incredible lubricant specially formulated for the cube and other mind-boggling puzzles that move. With CUBELUBE, your cube twists more freely, turns more easily, changes faces with the kind of lightning-fast speed that can really reduce your time. And CUBELUBE's great for all kinds of toys and puzzles with moving parts.Even bikes and cycles roll faster and coast longer with CUBELUBE.Send for some today.Because until you try it, you just don't know how fast you can go." There is also a coupon for ordering.]
Scanned from Wonder Woman # 292, June 1982.
Zimmerman Lied Because We Made Him
[Content Note: Violence; racism.]
As I mentioned last Friday, George Zimmerman's bond was revoked after it was discovered he had lied about having a second passport and failed to disclose the $200,000 raised via his website.
Yesterday, his legal team was back in court, arguing "that Zimmerman should be allowed to post a new bond because 'in all other regards, Mr. Zimmerman has been forthright and cooperative.' The statement also suggests that part of the blame for Zimmerman's misstatements rests on the many activists who worked to ensure that Zimmerman's guilt or innocence would be evaluated by a court of law."
The audio recordings of Mr. Zimmerman's phone conversations while in jail make it clear that Mr. Zimmerman knew a significant sum had been raised by his original fundraising website. We feel the failure to disclose these funds was caused by fear, mistrust, and confusion. The gravity of this mistake has been distinctly illustrated, and Mr. Zimmerman understands that this mistake has undermined his credibility, which he will have to work to repair.Protip: If you don't want to be "thrust into the national spotlight as a racist murderer" by people who have the agenda of seeking justice for victims of racist murderers, then don't murder black teenagers in cold fucking blood.
At the point of the bond hearing, Mr. Zimmerman had been driven from his home and neighborhood, could not go to work, his wife could not go back to a finish her nursing degree, his mother and father had been driven from their home, and he had been thrust into the national spotlight as a racist murderer by factions acting with their own agendas. None of those allegations have been supported by the discovery released to date, yet the hatred continues.
Ugh, this guy. Ugh.
How's This for an Endorsement?
[Former President Bill Clinton] praised President Barack Obama, saying that "the alternative would be in my opinion calamitous for our country and the world".LOL! Calamitous. Awesome.
The former President also noted that the current President "has a pretty good Secretary of State, too," to laughter and applause.
Wisconsin Recall Open Thread
"I'm a jerk!"
So today is The Big Day! In Wisconsin, voters will head to the polls to decide whether Republican Governor Scott Walker is recalled after less than two years in office, following his decision to rescind collective bargaining rights from most public employees, or whether his Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, will assume the governorship.
What a fun political system we have!
Consider this your Open Thread for all Wisconsin Recall related stuff today. Please feel welcome and encouraged to drop in links to good stuff you're reading.
Question of the Day
[Content Note: Eating.]
What's your favorite snack?
OMG baby carrots. Sweet and crunchy. I generally eat them plain, but, if I want to make them more meal than snack, I will dip them in hummus or peanut butter. Drool.
[Commenting Note: "I don't snack," is a legitimate reply, but policing other people's choices (including whether they snack, or on what they choose to snack) is not welcome. Keep it judgment-free. Thanks!]
An Observation
We might get more authentically feminist films if nearly the entirety of the film industry didn't mistake the "exceptional woman" trope for a feminist narrative.
Number of the Day
One: How many fewer houses Mitt Romney has than John Kerry, according to Mitt Romney.
Video Description: Mitt Romney, in a split-screen interview on Fox News with Neil Cavuto laughs and says, "Well, I was asked today how many homes I had, and I said, 'Well, I have one less than John Kerry.' Didn't seem to bother the Democrats when they had him." Cavuto and Romney laugh.
* * *
I'm not sure how many houses John Kerry had when he was running (or how many he has now, for that matter), or how that compares to the number of houses Mitt Romney has. I do know for sure that John Kerry does not own a gold-plated moon mansion. I cannot say the same for Mitt Romney.
But it's a moot point: Those homes were not purchased by millions John Kerry made as a corporate raider; they were purchased by the inherited wealth of his wife Teresa Heinz. There's no equivalence.
So, yes, Mitt Romney: Democrats weren't bothered that John Kerry had X number of homes when he was the Democratic nominee, because Democrats don't disappear women and their autonomy to make stupid, mendacious points.
[H/T to @BuzzFeedAndrew.]
BushQuotes!
[Content Note: Racism.]
Chapter 4, page 48-49:
The next year brought big changes. The events of 1968 rocked our previously placid world and shocked the country, Yale, and me. In many ways that spring was the end of an era of innocence. The gravity of history was beginning to descend in a horrifying and disruptive way.Let us all raise our tiny violins and play the Yale fight song in a minor key to mourn the lost carefree days of the most privileged people in the country.
...I was shocked by the Reverend King's assassination and stunned by the violence. I watched, appalled, as racial riots escalated across the country. Militant groups such as the Black Panthers argued that the Reverend King's assassination also put to death the notion that civil rights could be achieved in a non-violent way. I disagreed and hoped America could remedy civil wrongs in a peaceful way.
Television brought vividly to life the discrimination that existed in many parts of America. I was horrified, as I watched the snarling dogs and billy clubs directed at America's own citizens. It was hard for me to imagine a society that would treat my friends as harshly and unjustly as what I saw on television. I was the president of our fraternity; the vice president, Paul Jones, was an African-American. So were my good friends Calvin Hill and Roy Austin. Ours was an easy, natural friendship. I was reared by parents who taught me to respect others. I had been taught, and I believed, that all people are equal, that we are children of a loving God who cares about the quality of our hearts, not the color of our skin. I was surprised by the depth of the racial hatred I saw on television. Although I came from the South, that was never the attitude at my house. As a very young boy, I had once repeated a racial slur I heard at school; my mother washed my mouth out with soap, and delivered such a stern lecture that I knew immediately I had done something very wrong. I remember my dad teaching us that every individual mattered and that each individual had a shot at the American dream... [This paragraph goes on for a million years.]
...We were young men trying to enjoy what should have been the last carefree days of youth. But we could no longer be the same cavalier college students.
Everything about this passage is infuriating—the talking about "America" and people of color as mutually exclusive groups; the privilege thick as pigshit that allows him to talk about violent discrimination as "shocking" and a cruel truncator of what "should have been the last carefree days of youth," without even a hint of awareness that young people of color had no such privilege; the temerity of his haughty "disagreement" with the Black Panthers; his "I totes have black friends" shtick; the sickeningly familiar assertion of white people that disallowing racial slurs in their home is evidence of their lack of racism, never mind the void of actual people of color in their homes. Et cetera.
This sickening display of privilege and ignorance was published six years before Bush sat idly by as the 9th Ward drowned.
[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]
Today in Misogyny: Online Gaming Edition
[Content note: This post contains sexually harassing language, descriptions of harassment, bullying, threats of rape, stalking, and other violent assaults, as well as discussion of rape culture and examples of misogyny in online gaming.]
The BBC World Service has a good article up about the problem of misogynist harassment and threats in online gaming culture. It includes a number of examples collected by female gamers, highlighting the work of Jenny Haniver at Not in the Kitchen Anymore as well as Grace and her colleagues at of Fat, Ugly, or Slutty. I highly recommend the BBC article. If you have the teaspoons for it, you may also want to visit the sites collecting examples of harassment. If you don’t, let me assure you that you probably know the general content, since the insults are about as fresh and cutting edge as Hammurabi’s Code: Women are insufficiently attractive! Women deserve violence! Women should restrict themselves to beer-brewing and papyrus-making labor in the kitchen! Ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
The article also discusses the specific harassment of Miranda Pakozdi, who quit the gaming competition Cross Assault after enduring days of vicious sexual harassment from fellow gamer Aris Bakhtanians. Bakhtanians defended his misogyny by claiming it was just part of fighting game culture; he eventually apologized for his five days of bullying, calling it “a mistake.” While that might strike some as an inadequate description for five days of relentless body-shaming, rape jokes, and other misogynist cruelty, never fear. There are still rape-culture apologists who think Bakhtanians shouldn’t have apologized at all:
Jonathan Quamina, an avid gamer, expressed his support for Bakhtanians, telling him not to apologise."As a female you can't get upset if something is said that is obscene if you're hanging out in a room full of guys," he says.
"It's like going to a strip club as a female and getting upset that the chicks are all naked. For me it goes back to freedom of speech. We're a harmless bunch of people. This is just guys being stupid guys."
I’m sure I don’t have to explain to regular readers of this space what the problems are with this response, but I must admit I am kind of impressed at HOW MUCH FAIL is condensed into five short sentences. It’s like the Campbell’s Soup of gaming misogyny, condensed for your convenience! Let’s have a look at the ingredients:
As a female you can't get upset if something is said that is obscene if you're hanging out in a room full of guys
Conflating objections to harassment with prudery.
“Something obscene.” Speculation on one’s breast size. Rape jokes. Sexual assault. Yep, those are all just “something obscene,” in much the same way that the Battle of the Somme was just “something violent.” Ladeeeez need to get over the naughty words, amiright?
Nope!
I am fully conversant with obscenity in two different languages. I served in the Navy and studied profanity under true masters of the art. My dissertation draws on 17th century English theatre, and there is no culture on earth with has more synonyms for farts, genitalia, and putrefaction. These experiences allow me to wield “naughty words” in a fashion to make Andrew Dice Clay blush. So trust me when I say: I know the difference between mere obscenity and sexual harassment. So do most women who have experienced it. So do the decent people who haven’t experienced it, but actually listen to what women say, rather than trying to silence us with accusations of the vapors.
Next sentence:
It's like going to a strip club as a female and getting upset that the chicks are all naked.”
Drawing false equivalencies between harassment and other experiences.
Oh, does this ever bring back memories. Of Sesame Street. Because one of these things is not like the other.
I am not quite sure how to explain this, but going online to play a game is really, really not like going into a club where some human beings are displaying their bodies in various states of undress for other human beings. I mean, I get that it’s confusing and all—one involves walking in, paying a fee, dealing with a bouncer, buying ridiculously overpriced drinks, tipping the waitstaff and watching the dancers who are paid expressly to perform for the sexual stimulation of patrons. The other is going online, logging into a game, interacting with other human beings who are also there to play said game, and being viciously bullied and attacked on the basis of perceived gender.
Wait, that’s actually not similar at all!
For me it goes back to freedom of speech.
Claiming that the right to free speech ensures that threats and harassment can never be criticized.
I must have missed one of the Federalist Papers. Because I’m having a hard time understanding how the First Amendment guarantees the right to not be called out as a misogynist for making rape threats, jokes, and misogynist hate speech that makes gaming spaces unsafe for women. Not all speech is free of social, or even legal, consequences. What you’re calling “free speech” is actually an alleged “right” to threaten women until they go away. That’s hate speech. Don’t be surprised when you get criticized for it.
We're a harmless bunch of people
Positing the impossibility of harm done by people in your group.
If I had a penny for how often I heard one of my fellow gamers defend this kind of shit with the “we’re harmless geeks!” line, I would be able to compete with Mitt Romney in the elevator department. Dude, when a woman is in tears every night because of the bullying and harassment she receives from male players, they are not a “harmless bunch.” That is pretty much the definition of doing harm. This defense doesn’t make any sense.
And if you are of the vile opinion that psychological damage “doesn’t count,” then let’s take the odds that among your gaming group there are perpetrators of physical violence, shall we? In the United States, the CDC estimates that 1 million women are raped each year. That’s 1 in 5 in their lifetime. 1 in 6 have been stalked and 1 in 4 have experienced violence from an intimate partner.
Survivors of violence aren’t rare, and neither are the perpetrators of that violence. It’s pretty difficult to logically dismiss any group of people as blanket harmless. There are gamers who rape. There are gamers who stalk. Can you tell which online harasser is “just” talking shit, and which is a stalker? Nope. Women who respond with fear to online threats aren’t panicky nincompoops; they are responding rationally to a world which contains far too many abusers and rapists.
Which brings me to:
This is just guys being stupid guys.
Claiming that misogyny is natural or normal behavior for all men.
Nope! If you’re conflating “guys” with “raging asshole misogynists” and “being stupid guys” with “sexually harassing and threatening violence against women,” then there’s a problem. Plenty of men manage to get along just fine without actively oppressing the female-identified people they encounter online. And plenty of men who have done such things stop doing them once they learn about the harmfulness of such behaviors. So please, stop with the man-hate, and recognize that these behaviors are neither inevitable nor inherent to masculinity.
Because the sooner we can recognize that “normal” is actually extremely fucked up, the sooner we can start changing the culture.
