Hosted by the Stranger.
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!
Catching Up with an Old Friend
James Franco, at the Cannes Film Festival last week.
What—did you think James Franco wasn't going to promote and premiere his newest film, an adaptation of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying that he wrote, directed, and stars in, wearing a fedora and reflective sunglasses? You're so weird.
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I'm keen to see this film at some point. Whether it's good or bad, I suspect it will at least be interesting. (See: Generally why I am fascinated by James Franco.) I adore this lede in an LA Times piece about the film:
Even by the standards of 20th-century postmodernists, William Faulkner is considered a difficult, if not unfilmable, moviemaking challenge. His sentences can be fractured, his action can be interior and his points-of-view often splatter in 10 different directions.Because James Franco.
So of course James Franco thought this was good movie material.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by leather.
Recommended Reading:
Tara: Five Ineffective Policies Our Lawmakers Are Pushing Under the Guise of 'Keeping Women Safe' [Content Note: The post at this link includes an image of a woman firing a gun; included in the post is discussion of hostility to consent and agency; guns; misogyny; transphobia.]
Hannah: A Teen to Obama on Emergency Contraception: Stop Patronizing Me
Joaquin: Sexual Violence Prevalent in Juvenile Justice System [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of sexual violence and grooming victims.]
Andy: Kristin Beck, Transgender Former Navy SEAL, Gives Powerful Interview to Anderson Cooper [The full transcript will be here, when available.]
Transgender Law Center: Arizona Bathroom Bill Flushed Away—For Now [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of transphobic legislation.]
Isabella: Vote to Get More Female Lego Minifigs Made!
Angry Asian Man: Surprise! Runner Goes to the Hospital for Back Pain; Gives Birth to a Baby
Trudy: Black Women Who Love Beyoncé!
Melissa and Kerensa: The Hobbit Gets Some Female Power with Evangeline Lilly
Taegan: Anthony Weiner's Still a Jackass
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
The Most Adorable Hero Ever
[Content Note: Home fire.]
I love this girl so much I don't even know what to do with myself:
Reporter Gus Rosendale in voiceover, over image of 11-year-old Janixia Sota, a brown-skinned girl wearing a pink hoodie with her hair pulled into a ponytail, talking to a white man and a white woman on the sidewalk of a NYC street: Janixia Soto says instinct took over when she woke up to the smell of smoke.That the fire escape failed in a crisis is unconscionable bullshit. But given that circumstance, I am awed by Janixia's calm under pressure, quick decision-making, and general competency in getting shit done. She is so smart, and so brave, and so precocious! I love her. And I'm so glad she and her family are safe.
Janixia Soto, onscreen: I don't know what I thought. I just, I was like, I was shocked, and I had just woken up, and I'm like, I never, like, I guess I never thought this would actually happen.
Rosendale in voiceover, over video of building: The fire started in the ground floor of this four-story Brooklyn building on East 18th Street, near Church Avenue, around six in the morning. The smoke swallowed the homes above. Janixia woke up her mom and younger brother, Walter [photograph of three-year-old Walter, a brown-skinned little boy with curly hair, wearing an orange shirt and holding a toy]—all of them trapped in their top-floor apartment. The eleven-year-old helped her family, including a pet dog and cat, get to the fire escape.
Soto, onscreen: I was thinking in my head, I was like, I hope this works; I hope this works; I hope this works!
Rosendale, in voiceover, over video of building: They made their way down, but then—another problem. The ladder was stuck. So Janixia looked down and made a tough call for a sixth-grader: She threw her younger brother to safety. She hoped and prayed neighbors down below would catch him. They did.
Soto, onscreen: My main concern, I guess, was to get him to safety. 'Cause I know how damaging smoke can be to, like, younger children.
Rosendale, in voiceover, over video of Soto holding the photograph of her brother Walter: Now Janixia is being called a hero. She says she's just a big sister—who knew what to do when every second counted.
Soto, onscreen: There was no time for me to, like, just stress and cry. No time at all. The main point was just: Get outta there and get safe.
[H/T to BYP.]
This garbage doesn't only happen in Texas, but I am Texan, and I am angry.
[Content Note: Rape culture; gun violence; death; devaluing of sex workers.]
Via San Antonio news -- Jury acquits escort shooter:
A Bexar County jury on Wednesday acquitted Ezekiel Gilbert of murder in the death of a 23-year-old Craigslist escort. [...]I don't know how to begin to express how horrified I am by this acquittal and the laws surrounding this case.
Had he been convicted, he could have faced up to life in prison for the slaying of Lenora Ivie Frago who died about seven months after she was shot in the neck and paralyzed on Christmas Eve 2009. Gilbert admitted shooting Frago.
“I sincerely regret the loss of the life of Ms. Frago,” Gilbert said Wednesday. “I've been in a mental prison the past four years of my life. I have nightmares. If I see guns on TV where people are getting killed, I change the channel.”
The verdict came after almost 11 hours of deliberations that stretched over two days. The trial began May 17 but had a long hiatus after a juror unexpectedly had to leave town for a funeral.
During closing arguments Tuesday, Gilbert's defense team conceded the shooting did occur but said the intent wasn't to kill. Gilbert's actions were justified, they argued, because he was trying to retrieve stolen property: the $150 he paid Frago. It became theft when she refused to have sex with him or give the money back, they said.
Gilbert testified earlier Tuesday that he had found Frago's escort ad on Craigslist and believed sex was included in her $150 fee. But instead, Frago walked around his apartment and after about 20 minutes left, saying she had to give the money to her driver, he said.
That driver, the defense contended, was Frago's pimp and her partner in the theft scheme.
The Texas law that allows people to use deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft was put in place for “law-abiding” citizens, prosecutors Matt Lovell and Jessica Schulze countered. It's not intended for someone trying to force another person into an illegal act such as prostitution, they argued.
I am horrified that I live in a state where there is a law that allows people to use deadly force to recover stolen property, as if a television or a car or $150 is worth the cost of a human life. I am horrified that this law is being used (and of course it is being used) to justify homicides over what essentially amounts to business transaction disputes, as though someone taking money and then failing to provide an agreed-upon service is the same type of "theft" that was invoked in order to sell this law, which I can almost guarantee was instead marketed as a home invasion deterrent.
I am horrified that I live in a state where (apparently) the prostitution laws are written such that being a sex worker is illegal and profiting from sex work is illegal, but actually paying for sex work is either legal or of such dubious illegality that the prosecution in this case either couldn't or wouldn't or chose not to charge this murderer with soliciting prostitution even though his entire defense rested on the fact that he was paying his victim for sex and she was refusing to provide it. I am horrified to live in a state where sex workers -- who are routinely victimized by members of our society and by our laws -- are criminalized, but their clients are not, even when those clients commit crimes against them.
I am horrified that I live in a world where "he said, she said" is frequently invoked as a flippant defense for why rape cases should never be prosecuted because how can we ever really know, yano? but a man can be acquitted for murdering a woman simply by claiming that she wasn't providing the service he paid for in a timely fashion. I am horrified that apparently no one on the jury felt that a man who admitted to shooting a defenseless woman in the neck might not be motivated to tell the whole truth of the matter, or that it might be entirely plausible that this man judged the situation incorrectly and that the woman really was going to pay her driver and come back up, or that there was a whole other side to the altercation that we can never know because the victim is dead.
I am horrified that the jury took only eleven hours to acquit. I am horrified because I recognize it is not incidental that the victim in this case was (or is claimed to be) a sex worker, that she appears to be a woman of color, that her murderer appears to be a white man. I am horrified because no one on this jury or in this case apparently cared that Ezekiel Gilbert shot Lenora Ivie Frago with a gun because she didn't have sex with him in the time and manner that he demanded. For all that this is being spun as a case about theft or property or stolen goods or burglary, this case boils down to a man shooting a woman because he wasn't getting the sex he felt he was owed at the moment and in the manner that he wanted it. And now that woman is dead.
And because she was a sex worker, and because she was marginalized and he is privileged, a jury has ruled that it's okay. No harm. No foul. It's not like anyone important was killed today, it's not like anyone important was hurt by her death, it's not like anyone important will be terrorized in the wake of this blatant ruling that men can murder women and after the fact with no living witnesses to contradict them claim that they were sex workers who weren't performing according to expectations and thus get off free and clear. No, the important thing is that Ezekiel Gilbert will be able to move on from this terrible tragedy and begin to heal and maybe be able to watch television again someday.
Today, I'm ashamed of my state and afraid for the women in it.
Daily Dose of Cute
"Don't hate me because I'm adorable."
Did you know that June is the ASPCA's Adopt a Shelter Cat Month? It is! If you've been thinking about rescuing a cat or kitten from a shelter, June is a great time to do it. Many shelters across the country have adoption specials on cats during the month of June, because overcrowding is a real problem this time of year with lots of kittens being born. On that note, if you have a cat who isn't fixed, June is also a great time to find lots of shelters and vets offering free or low-cost spaying and neutering.
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As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
"Ladies, Want That Promotion? Then Quit Your Cheerful Demeanor." Subtitle: "Authority Doesn't Smile."
Fannie, brilliant as always, makes this observation about what is definitely the worst line in the piece:
Anyway, I want to end by noting an irritating line from the "cheerful demeanor" article.The rest of her takedown is also great.
"But before we start pointing fingers, know this: women too are guilty of holding these stereotypical views about female peers.""But before we start pointing fingers"? What a truly strange, inapt thing to say immediately prior to pointing fingers at "women too."
It's not like there's not another way to report the findings of yet another study concluding that women lag in workplace authority and/or promotions because of male privilege. There is. "Ladies, Want That Promotion? Then Let's Challenge and Dismantle Misogyny in the Workplace."
Because, ultimately, even coding this issue as one of "fe/male behavior" is a red herring. After all, women who "act like men," who are ambitious and assertive and confident and expect what they are owed, are not rewarded. They are demeaned as bitches who aren't acting enough like women.
Authority doesn't smile. Ha ha sure. And as soon as a woman stops smiling, we know what happens.
In The News
[Content note: Violence, homophobia, fat hatred]
Friday Stuff:
A California anti-obesity campaign has Photoshoped kids in their ads to make them look fat.
Southern California Edison has announced it will permanently shut down the San Onofre nuclear power plant.
The Salvation Army believes gay parents deserve to be put to death.
Justin Bieber is going into outer space. Neat!
Esther Williams, a teenage swimming champion who became an enormous Hollywood star in a decade of watery MGM extravaganzas, has died. She was 91.
I Write Letters
[Content Note: Discussion of fat-hating tropes.]
Dear Population Action International:
I really admire your advocacy on behalf of global access to modern contraceptives. I'm writing you this letter in good faith, as someone who values and supports your advocacy, in the hopes you will hear this criticism and use it to make your work even stronger.
My concern is about the infographic "The Dollars and Sense of Family Planning," which makes an excellent case for how logical and decent it is for the US to allocate funds to international family planning. Specifically, this part, intended to show how little, in the grand scheme of national spending, $1 billion really is:
Three of your four examples here are what is commonly referred to as "junk food" (a term I don't like because no food is "junk" to someone who needs the calories). And "junk food" is commonly associated with fat people—and increasingly associated with fat people, as the "war on obesity" is waged via public initiatives like Mayor Bloomberg's soda ban.
The intent of this graphic may not have been to suggest that spending $1 billion on candy, or Superbowl snacks, or potato chips, is profligate and self-indulgent spending, but it certainly reads that way to me.
I think there's a problem with focusing on what average people spend on anything, when US government spending on war and weapons, often in countries with low birth control access, is a more pertinent issue. But that problem is exacerbated when the specific implication is that people are spending money on a type of gluttony associated with fat people.
In a country where fat people are (wrongly) being blamed by their First Lady for higher healthcare costs and lower productivity, where we are blamed for the rising cost of airfare, for higher insurance premiums, for all sorts of financial burdens on "taxpayers" (as if we are not taxpayers ourselves)—and, further, in a country where we are often denied access to healthcare on the basis of being fat—it is not okay to even obliquely suggest that if only fatties weren't eating so many potato chips, woman would have better access to contraception.
I am quite certain that was not your intended message, but this graphic doesn't exist in a void. It exists in a culture of pervasive and harmful blaming of fat people for wrongful spending, in a culture rife with narratives that it is only fat people who eat "junk food," and that consuming "junk food" is immoral.
I beg you to reconsider using these sorts of examples in future.
Best regards,
Liss
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Elvis Costello & The Attractions: "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding"
Richmond Rape Case Trial
[Content Note: Descriptions of an attack of sexual violence; rape culture.]
In October 2009, a fifteen-year-old girl in Richmond, California, was gang-raped. It was an especially brutal crime: She was assaulted for more than two hours by as many as 20 young men, each of whom committed multiple sexual assaults, while as many as 15 other young men stood and watched, none of whom made any attempt to help the victim, who was incapacitated from alcohol. The attack happened on school grounds during a high school Homecoming Dance, and as witnesses went back in, they would tell other young men, who went out to watch and/or participate. Another fifteen-year-old girl called police, who found the victim just before midnight, lying under a bench where her rapists had abandoned her, unconscious and in critical condition.
Although not a single one of the men who participated in or witnessed the assault used their cell phones to call 911, many of them used them to take pictures of the crime. And one of them used the victim's cell phone to call her father, "using vulgar language to describe how she had performed well sexually."
The girl who survived this attack is one of the people about whom I have written who stays with me. I think about her a lot, hoping she is getting the support she needs, wishing for her both peace and justice.
An undisclosed number of men whose DNA was recovered as evidence have never been identified. Two of her assailants pleaded guilty and were sentenced, respectively, to 27 and 32 years. Two other men are awaiting trial. And two men are currently on trial.
Yesterday, a witness to the crime took the stand to testify against them.
He was a reluctant witness. The assailants were his acquaintances, and he is afraid of retaliation. He knows how the rape culture works, and he knows that his role is meant to be silent complicity. He "twisted and fidgeted in his chair" as he testified that his pals "were 'laughing and joking' about how they participated in the assault," and bragging about the precise ways in which they assaulted the girl. One of them boasted about peeing on her.
During his testimony, he said: "I was uncomfortable talking about the situation because it made me feel like that type of thing should never happen at any schoolhouse."
Not: Rape should never happen. But: That type of thing shouldn't happen at a school.
The grief and rage I feel about this case will never end.
PRISM
So. Mobile phone spying was only the tip of the iceberg:
The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.PRISM was launched after deatails of former President George W. Bush's warantless wiretapping program were made public in 2007, and the program supposedly imploded, but naturally with no accountability for a grave breach of public trust and privacy laws, and with a FISA bill passed by Congress granting retroactive immunity to participating telecom companies, thus shutting down any avenue for civil suits. At the time, then-Senator Hillary Clinton, who voted against the bill, outlined the problem with the legislation:
The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley.
Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: "Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple."
[E]ven as we considered this legislation, the administration refused to allow the overwhelming majority of Senators to examine the warrantless wiretapping program. This made it exceedingly difficult for those Senators who are not on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees to assess the need for the operational details of the legislation, and whether greater protections are necessary. The same can be said for an assessment of the telecom immunity provisions. On an issue of such tremendous importance to our citizens...all Senators should have been entitled to receive briefings that would have enabled them to make an informed decision about the merits of this legislation. I cannot support this legislation when we know neither the nature of the surveillance activities authorized nor the role played by telecommunications companies granted immunity.Clinton warned that without a full understanding of the program, and without meaningful accountability, there was no guarantee that the same type of surveillance would continue, without oversight or accountability. She argued that "any surveillance program must contain safeguards to protect the rights of Americans against abuse, and to preserve clear lines of oversight and accountability over this administration." That legislation did not ensure this would happen. And it hasn't.
Congress must vigorously check and balance the president even in the face of dangerous enemies and at a time of war. That is what sets us apart. And that is what is vital to ensuring that any tool designed to protect us is used – and used within the law – for that purpose and that purpose alone.
Back to details of the PRISM program:
In four new orders, which remain classified, the court defined massive data sets as "facilities" and agreed to certify periodically that the government had reasonable procedures in place to minimize collection of "U.S. persons" data without a warrant.Oh. Sure. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to see here. Move along.
...An internal presentation of 41 briefing slides on PRISM, dated April 2013 and intended for senior analysts in the NSA's Signals Intelligence Directorate, described the new tool as the most prolific contributor to the President's Daily Brief, which cited PRISM data in 1,477 items last year. According to the slides and other supporting materials obtained by The Post, "NSA reporting increasingly relies on PRISM" as its leading source of raw material, accounting for nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports.
That is a remarkable figure in an agency that measures annual intake in the trillions of communications. It is all the more striking because the NSA, whose lawful mission is foreign intelligence, is reaching deep inside the machinery of American companies that host hundreds of millions of American-held accounts on American soil.
...The Obama administration points to ongoing safeguards in the form of "extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons."
And it is true that the PRISM program is not a dragnet, exactly. From inside a company's data stream the NSA is capable of pulling out anything it likes, but under current rules the agency does not try to collect it all.
Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade, Md., key in "selectors," or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target's "foreignness." That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by The Post instruct new analysts to make quarterly reports of any accidental collection of U.S. content, but add that "it's nothing to worry about."
The companies who are reportedly part of the PRISM program are denying their involvement, issuing carefully worded statements that say they participate with the government in accordance with the law. What we know for sure is that the details of this totally-not-a-dragnet surveillance program were not disclosed to US citizens, and that there has not been meaningful oversight or accountability to ensure that data collection does not infringe on the privacy of law-abiding US citizens. But that's "nothing to worry about." Naturally.
Instead, we are getting the usual rigmarole about how what we should REALLY be worried about is the dire threat to national security that exposure of the PRISM program constitutes.
In a statement issue late Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said "information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats. The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans."The same goddamn refrain that has been used by the Bush administration and the Obama administration to justify every overreach of executive power and unconstitutional intelligence-gathering—not to mention torture, extraordinary rendition, and indefinite detainment—for the last 13 years.
During the same vote for the 2008 FISA legislation, another Senator, in defense of his (curious) yea vote, said:
Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.If only President Barack Obama felt as passionately about presidential overreach as Senator Barack Obama did.
...Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Ms_Elise: "If you could go back and relive one day of your life (but not change it), what would it be?"
FYI
[Previous FYI: Rick Astley; Eddie Murphy; The Eurythmics; Eddie Rabbit; Sinéad O'Connor; Was (Not Was); Bon Jovi; Kenny Rogers; Bobby McFerrin; Starship; Dead or Alive; Right Said Fred; Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians; Salt n Pepa; Nelson; The Cure; The Soup Dragons; Europe/BushCo; Elton John; Eddie Money; Human League; Glenn Frey; Van Halen; Alanis Morissette; Depeche Mode; The Beatles; The Proclaimers; Bruce Springsteen; Meat Loaf; Cyndi Lauper; Cole Porter; Tina Turner; The Jets. Hint: They're better if you click 'em!]
Tweet of the Day
Fortunately I’ve been communicating exclusively via Twitter and angry glares since 2007, so the NSA’s got nuthin’ on me.
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) June 6, 2013
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Religious supremacy.]
"They don't believe anything. I can't imagine an atheist accompanying a notification team as they go into some family's home to let them have the worst news of their life and this guy says, 'You know, that's it—your son's just worms, I mean, worm food.'"—Texas Representative Mike Conaway (R-Idiculous), during a House Armed Services Committee debate over an amendment to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act proposed by New Jersey Democratic Representative Rob Andrews "that would allow humanists or members of ethical culture groups to join the chaplain corps. Andrews' idea was to help members of the military who don't believe in god, but want someone to talk to about problems without having to seek a medical professional."
Conaway isn't the only Republican on the committee who is Deeply Concerned about letting atheists into foxholes. His colleague from Louisiana, Representative John Fleming, added: "This I think would make a mockery of the chaplaincy. The last thing in the world we would want to see was a young soldier who may be dying and they're at a field hospital and the chaplain is standing over that person saying to them, 'If you die here, there is no hope for you in the future.'"
Ha ha that is definitely a perfect representation of atheists and atheism. These guys are wasted on the House Armed Services Committee. They should be on the House Total Fucking Genius Committee.
Child in the Box
As part of my occasional series on the Finnish hellscape, here's a cool story about Finnish babies sleeping in cardboard boxes.
[There's also a video version (it starts playing automatically) of the story. It doesn't contain as much information, but it does have a baby playing with a book.]
Since 1938, the Finnish government has given expectant mothers a box of essentials for their young ones. Better yet, the box doubles as a crib.
Here's what's in this year's box:
* Mattress, mattress cover, undersheet, duvet cover, blanket, sleeping bag/quiltHere's what some Mark guy had to say:
* Box (doubles as a crib)
* Snowsuit, hat, insulated mittens and booties
* Light hooded suit and knitted overalls
* Socks and mittens, knitted hat and balaclava
* Bodysuits, romper suits and leggings in unisex colours and patterns
* Hooded bath towel, nail scissors, hairbrush, toothbrush, bath thermometer, nappy cream, wash cloth
* Cloth nappy set and muslin squares
* Picture book and teething toy
* Bra pads, condoms
"We now live in Helsinki and have just had our second child, Annika. She did get a free box from the Finnish state. This felt to me like evidence that someone cared, someone wanted our baby to have a good start in life. And now when I visit friends with young children it's nice to see we share some common things. It strengthens that feeling that we are all in this together."This seems like the sort of thing other countries should be doing (although CONDOMS FOR BABIES?!?), but wev. Finland was able to pull together the program when it was dirt poor, and managed to continue the program during the wartime. Of course, with austerity sweeping the land (including Finland), I doubt we'll see other nations pick up on the program anytime soon. It's a shame, because THOUSANDS OF BABIES IN MATCHING MARIMEKKO ONESIES*!
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*Onesies not necessarily provided by Marimekko.
Rodham!
So, this dude is making a movie about former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Rodham. Personally, I think it should be a musical called Rodham! featuring lots of jazzhands and the Rainbow Pantsuits Dancers, but that is why the Weinsteins don't give me silly money to make movies.
Anyway!
Rodham is an "indie drama [which] portrays Rodham as a young lawyer on the committee involved in President Richard Nixon's impeachment, and her juggling a diverging career path with her unresolved feelings for future president Bill Clinton." Sounds perfect.
Carey Mulligan, whom you may know from An Education or Never Let Me Go or The Great Gatsby or some other film I haven't seen, is rumored to be leading the competition to be cast as a young Hillary Rodham.
What say you? Good (potential) casting? Yay? Nay? Who would you cast in my version of Rodham! which would definitely be the movie you wanted to see, if you wanted to see any movie about Hillary Rodham Clinton at all?
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelly. Begging politely for snuggles, playtime, a treat, whatever I've got. (Spoiler Alert: All of the above.)
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In The News
[Content note: Racism, terrorism, misogyny]
Thursday News:
Records show that the IRS targeted Jesse Tyler Ferguson's marriage equality organization Tie the Knot.
Meanwhile: The IRS approved tax-exempt status for twice as many conservative groups as liberal groups.
A bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks nationwide was approved by the House Judiciary Subcommittee yesterday. Whut? The fuck.
Scientists have discovered pockets of water that have remained in isolation for 2.6 billion years. Wow!
A new poll reveales more than half of Americans support allowing same-sex couples to marry. Yay!
No more skidmarks: Wet wipes, now available for men!
A federal appeals judge in Texas says minorities are more apt than other groups to commit crime. She sounds nice.
The two men identified by the New York Post as "bag men" in the Boston Marathon Bombing have filed a defamation lawsuit against the tabloid.
Here are some neat maps for all you amateur linguists out there.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo introduced the long-awaited Women's Equality Act which is designed to strengthen women's rights in New York in several key areas.
Childfree 101: Cultural Reproductive Coercion
[Content Note: Emotional auditing; reproductive coercion; racism.]
Reproductive coercion is an abusive dynamic in intimate relationships in which one partner "pressures the other, through verbal threats, physical aggression, or birth-control sabotage, to become pregnant." The instinct behind reproductive coercion is not primarily (or at all) a desire to create a baby, but to create a dependency in their partners. A woman (and it is overwhelmingly women who are victimized by reproductive coercion) is easier to control, if her independence and ability to make choices that exclusively prioritize her own needs are compromised in some way.
Even for women who enthusiastically choose to parent, the dramatic change in decision-making from "what will be best for me?" to "what will be best for my child/us?" can be challenging. Many mothers struggle to navigate finding a balance that prioritizes the needs of her child(ren) without abandoning her own needs and losing herself.
For women who do not enthusiastically choose to parent, who have a child in an environment in which self-subjugation is the intended result, with little or no support for maintenance of self, it can be debilitating. Which is the whole point.
Like other forms of abuse and iterations of hostility to consent, reproductive coercion does not happen in a void. It happens in a culture which supports institutional reproductive coercion, a culture in which every person with a uterus is expected and urged and cajoled into reproducing, and in which there are strong disincentives against telling stories of being happily childfree.
This is cultural reproductive coercion.
I have previously mentioned that I have known since I was very young that I did not want to be a mother. And yet my entire life, my statement of intent to be childfree has been met with resistance. I have heard, for at least 30 years, often most assertively from people who purport to love me, that I don't know my own mind. As a child who said she didn't want children, I was considered an amusement—a precocious little women's libber whose pronouncements about her childfree future were cute. As a teenager who said she didn't want children, I was considered rebellious—a defiant reactionary who wasn't stating a fact of examined self, but rejecting bourgeoisie institutions like family in a fit of angst. As a young woman who said she didn't want children, I was simply told I was wrong, in all the ways that young women are: "You'll change your mind."
And when I didn't change my mind, I was needled with coercion masked as compliments. But you would make such a great mother! But you're so great with kids! But you have so much to offer a child! Sure. Everything but the will to parent hir.
And when I still didn't change my mind, I was subjected to all manner of shaming narratives trying to convince me there is something wrong with me if I choose not to parent. I am a traitor to my womanhood. I am an incomplete woman. I am a selfish woman. I am a frivolous woman. I am barely a woman at all, if I refuse to use my fertile, cis, female, male-partnered body for what I am told is its natural (and only) purpose. I am a traitor to my race—a white woman partnered with a white man refusing to have white babies when the white birth rate is dropping in the US. I am a traitor to my country—an educated middle-class woman refusing to make a contribution to the future of the great society which has provided her with so much. The ultimate taker among makers.
And when I still didn't change my mind, I was implored to consider my lonely death following a slow decline bereft of children to care for me. (As if all children care for their elderly parents and such is their obligation.) I was urged to imagine my terrible, empty, lonely life if Iain dies before me. (As if his death would not be precisely the same heart-shattering misery if we had children.) I was asked to consider that I may one day regret not having had children. (As if it would be better to have children just in case, despite the possibility I might regret having them, once they were here.)
And when I still didn't change my mind, I started finding my family was not enough of a family to be included in events marked for "families," which is understood to mean "parents and children." I was presumed to dislike children. I was presumed to disdain parents. It was whispered, even among my own family members, that my first marriage probably dissolved because I refused to "give him children." It was whispered that Iain would eventually leave me for the same reason. Whispered loud enough for me to hear.
And when I still didn't change my mind, I was told that I would once my biological clock started ticking—an admonishment delivered with such certainty that I began to fear and mistrust my own body, expecting it to betray me someday, for my biology to overwhelm my will with an undeniable urge to be a mother.
That has not happened.
I am now 39 years old. I am still childfree. The frequency of questions about when I will have babies has dropped precipitously. I have spent a lifetime fielding confident predictions I would change my mind about being childfree, and now I am reaching an age where those who were so certain are coming to the realization, at long last, that I really don't want children and I'm really not going to have them.
So now I am no longer a Woman Who Will Definitely Have Kids Someday, and instead I am a Woman Without Kids.
One might imagine that becoming a Woman Without Kids would put an end to the coercion. But it has not.
Now it is recommended to me that I can adopt. Now it is explained to me that it's "not too late." They're doing amazing things in fertility science these days, you know. Now I am told I don't even have to have kids to be a mother, because if I care about any living thing, it's because I secretly want and need to be a mother.
And at the very end of it all, in the long shadow of mountainous evidence that I knew my mind all along and that I will remain childfree, with little room left to try to cajole, shame, or coerce me into parenting, I am told what a pity it is I never had children. Because pity is the only way left to convey that my choice is wrong.
This is such a fun story!
[Content Note: Misogyny; hostility to agency; rape culture. NB: Not only women are in need of access to a full spectrum of reproductive services, nor are only women victimized by sexual violence in the US military.]
Politico has just a terrific story about the return of the "war on women." Ha ha the return?! I didn't realize it had gone away! Probably because it hadn't!
Not every Republican learned Todd Akin's lesson from 2012 – and Democrats noticed.It goes on like that for two more pages.
This week alone: Sen. Saxby Chambliss blamed sexual assaults in the military on hormones, conservative pundit Erick Erickson credited biology for male dominance in society and Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said working moms are making kids fail in school.
Democrats and liberal groups are seizing on these comments to reignite their 2012 strategy — rally the base to raise big money and put Republicans back on defense with women voters ahead of the mid-term elections.
"Women voters are paying attention — this week was a big reminder that the GOP assault on women's rights continues," said Jess McIntosh of EMILY'S List.
The group, which helps pro-choice women get elected to office, is planning to use Chambliss' remark in an email blast and social media campaign called "Great Moments In GOP Women's Outreach."
Inside the Senate, Democrats are beginning meetings to strategize their messaging on the issue, according to a Senate Democratic aide.
"This is not an issue for Harry Reid or Chuck Schumer to jump into. This is an issue for Patty Murray and Claire McCaskill and the women senators to jump into," the aide said. "We will take advantage of it, but this is the mold of the Planned Parenthood fight and the Blunt amendment fight. The female senators will take the lead. Part of the advantage of having a large number of women in your caucus is having people who are effective messengers on issues like this."
Republicans pushed back at the moves, accusing Democrats of politicizing issues like military sexual assault that should be bipartisan.
At the National Republican Senatorial Committee, GOP operatives sought to squash the controversy, trying to head off a rehash of lessons learned from the last election cycle, after which Republicans promised to be more sensitive when talking about women's issues.
"As a woman, the politicization of sexual assault or rape is offensive in and of itself. This is an important conversation to be had in congressional committees – it shouldn't be used as a page in Democrat politicos' playbooks looking to exploit this tragedy for political gain," said Brook Hougesen, NRSC spokeswoman.
"If Democrats want to debate the 'war on women', look no further than the agenda set by Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer," Hougesen said, turning the issue to the economy. "Women have had a difficult time finding work, and juggling multiple jobs and their personal lives with Democrats controlling the economy and the government for the last five years."
The Republicans are totes misogynist, gender essentialist, consent-hostile dipshits! The Democrats are totes gonna point that out! But they're definitely gonna let the female Senators do it, because feminism is woman's work! I mean, the best reason to even HAVE female members of your Congressional caucus is so they can do feminism when it's politically expedient! And the Republicans are SO MAD about all this haymaking! OMG IT IS SO TOTALLY OFFENSIVE TO POLITICIZE ISSUES THAT DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECT WOMEN! I mean, have you even LOOKED at the Democrats' agenda and how it disproportionately affects women in some way?!
Everyone is SO MAD about how everyone else treats women! That's for sure!
It's pretty cool how none of them actually seem to give the tiniest, infinitesimal speck of shit about women, though.
That institutional indifference while pretending to care SO MUCH about women, but really just treating us like a political football, is the real "war on women." And it never returns, because it never goes away.
The NSA Is Probably Spying on You
That is, if you live in the US and have a cellphone which you have the terrible sense to actually use. (HA HA I LIVE ON MY CELLPHONE WHOOOPS!) Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans:
Today, the Guardian newspaper confirmed what EFF (and many others) have long claimed: the NSA is conducting widespread, untargeted, domestic surveillance on millions of Americans. This revelation should end, once and for all, the government's long-discredited secrecy claims about its dragnet domestic surveillance programs. It should spur Congress and the American people to make the President finally tell the truth about the government's spying on innocent Americans.This should be no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention. The Bush administration enlisted telecoms to spy on USians, and the Obama administration happily kept up the practice, after then-candidate Obama supported (and voted for) legislation giving telecommunication giants "retroactive immunity" from civil lawsuits.
In a report by Glenn Greenwald, the paper published an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISC) that directs Verizon to provide "on an ongoing daily basis" all call records for any call "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls" and any call made "between the United States and abroad."
In plain language: the order gave the NSA a record of every Verizon customer's call history -- every call made, the location of the phone, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other "identifying information" for the phone and call -- from April 25, 2013 (the date the order was issued) to July 19, 2013. The order does not require content or the name of any subscriber and is issued under 50 USC sec.1861, also known as section 215 of the Patriot Act.
There is no indication that this order to Verizon was unique or novel. It is very likely that business records orders like this exist for every major American telecommunication company, meaning that, if you make calls in the United States, the NSA has those records. And this has been going on for at least 7 years, and probably longer.
But at each step of the way, the government has tried to hide the truth from the American public: in Hepting, behind telecom immunity; in Jewel, behind the state secrets privilege; in the FOIA case, by claiming the information is classified at the top secret level. In May 2011, Senator Ron Wyden, one of the few courageous voices fighting against the government's domestic surveillance program, said this in a debate about reauthorizing Section 215:Welcome to America 2.0.
I want to deliver a warning this afternoon: when the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.Today is that day. The American people have confirmed how the government has secretly interpreted Section 215. And we're angry. It's time to stop hiding behind legal privileges and to come clean about Section 215 and FISA. It's time to start the national dialogue about our rights in the digital age. And it's time to end the NSA's unconstitutional domestic surveillance program.
More here.
UPDATE: In other news, the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has found that a majority of Americans (56%) now own a smartphone.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I CAN'T WAIT! (But I'm gonna have to. Time-space continuum, etc.)
P.S. Walt is terrible.
People Are Different; They Make Different Choices
[Content Note: Emotional auditing; hostility to choice.]
This is part three in a day-long series: Part One is "Pro-Choice: Choosing Not to Parent" and Part Two is "The Happiness Police."
A final observation on the subject of making choices that are different from the majority and different from the overwhelming expectation, specifically the choice to not parent: The judgment and policing that goes on around this choice (and others like it) is deeply hostile to the very basic idea of individuality.
Every person has a set of privileges and marginalizations, which may remain static (ex: white privilege) or change (ex: disability with which one was not born), many of which are relevant in making the decision about whether to parent. Physical health, mental health, finances, employment stability, relationships with extended family, the existence of and desire for romantic/sexual partnership(s), legal considerations governing parenting and adoption, access to healthcare, job flexibility, the interest in having kids at all—this is not a comprehensive list of considerations that influence the choice whether to parent.
(Which is to say nothing of the privilege that even having a choice is.)
We are urged not to examine these considerations—"If everyone waited for the perfect set of circumstances, no one would ever have a kid!" is a common refrain. But there is a lot of space between a "perfect" set of circumstances and an ideal one, or even a manageable one.
(But ooh watch those considerations become ALL OF THE IMPORTANT once a kid is already here. "Why did you have a kid if you couldn't afford parenting? would pass on a genetic condition? had to risk tenure? weren't sure your marriage would work? blah blah shaming blah!")
And the exhortation to ignore what are, for many of us, crucial considerations is not merely a denial of privilege, but also a denial of the way that privilege—and the lack thereof—operates in every individual life.
It's just the same old bootstraps bullshit, swaddled in a fuzzy yellow blanket. Bjornstraps!
Because, although we talk a lot about how many of us can't live the way conservative fantasists tell us is the One Right Way, the fact is that a lot of us don't want to live that way, even if we could.
The intersection of opportunity and desire is the same, no matter who's telling you what way you should live.
And so is the attendant refusal to acknowledge that, even among people with the same privileges and access, there will still be a diversity of choices, because people are different.
That's such a self-evident observation, so simple, so easy, so much the stuff of a Sesame Street segment, that hardly anyone would bother to try to refute it, and yet treating people as though we are all the same is what underwrites every kind of garbage policing from "calories-in, calories-out!" rhetoric to "anyone can achieve anything in America!" codswallop to "everyone should be a parent!" admonishments.
That sort of hostility for individual circumstances, for individual competencies, for individual preferences, for individual choice, is dehumanizing. Central to every person's humanity is their individual agency, a self that is unique.
This stuff is more than annoying. It's harmful. It's resistant to the most basic kindness that is recognizing I am different from you, and you are different from me, and that is okay.
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by typewriters.
Recommended Reading:
The Guttmacher Institute: New Infographic: Contraception Is Highly Effective
Pam: Pondering Action, ENDA, and Speaking Truth to Power [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of LGBT marginalization, privilege, racism, and misogyny.]
Zainab: Why White Guys Hate My Hijab [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of xenophobia, misogyny, objectification, policing, and harassment.]
Ruth: Of Scalps and Savages: How Colonial Language Enforces Discrimination Against Indigenous Peoples [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of racism, colonial language, and violent rhetoric.]
Transgender Law Center: Jesse Tyler Ferguson Supports Transgender Students [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of transphobia.]
BYP: Study Finds Blacks Are Nearly 4 Times as Likely as Whites to Be Arrested for Pot Possession [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of racism and police malfeasance.]
Jess: We Need a Better Way to Talk About Cunnilingus
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Racism; gun violence; victim-blaming.]
"Right now, we can't stop. If we stop, the world will stop. We've got to keep fighting."—Tracy Martin, father of murdered teenager Trayvon Martin. From an MSNBC article titled "For Trayvon Martin's parents, a journey of grief and advocacy." Advocacy necessitated because of bullshit gun laws and racist victim-blaming by people who seek to put their slain son on trial.
George Zimmerman took their son, and his defenders and sympathizers oblige them to be activists while they mourn.
[Via Jamilah.]
Daily Dose of Cute
"All's I'm saying is: I'm not planning on getting up, but if you're getting up to get me a treat, then I will get up. However, if you are getting up to take a leak or something, I'm staying right here. Bone's in your court."
* * *
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Shocking News
[Content Note: Racism, invasion of privacy]
On A17 of the New York Times there's this news that is definitely less important than the IRS hullabaloo:
The Transportation Security Administration has little evidence that an airport passenger screening program, which some employees believe is a magnet for racial profiling and has cost taxpayers nearly one billion dollars, screens passengers objectively, according to a report by the inspector general for the Homeland Security Department.(And by "little", and "some employees believe", The Times actually means "no" and "definitely.")
In August, The Times reported that more than 30 officers at Logan International Airport in Boston had said that the program was being used to profile passengers like Hispanics traveling to Florida or blacks wearing baseball caps backward.I never thought I'd say this, but maybe this country has a problem with racism.
The Happiness Police
[Content Note: Emotional auditing; shaming; fat bias; religious supremacy.]
In my earlier piece about being child-free, I mentioned the common experience, shared by most people who choose not to parent, of being told I can't really be happy—or even understand what TRUE HAPPINESS EVEN IS!—if I am not a parent.
This is a common refrain in my life, because I am part of several populations where Happiness Policing is routinely used to calculate as invalid any professions of happiness.
* I am not a parent.
* I am a fat person.
* I am an atheist.
There's other Happiness Policing that goes on in my life—"You can't possibly be happy living in a conservative state," etc.—but none that is quite so persistent, nor reinforced by a foundation of systemic marginalization, as the above. It goes like this:
* You cannot possibly be happy if you are not a parent, because being a parent is the greatest joy any human being can ever know. And even if you are happy, it's not as happy as you would be if you were a parent. Your happiness is inferior, if it even exists at all.
* You cannot possibly be happy if you are fat, because fat people are gross and ugly and unhealthy and no person could be happy being so gross and ugly and unhealthy. You are definitely unhappy and probably depressed.
* You cannot possibly be happy if you are an atheist, because you don't believe in anything and can't even understand goodness and are just mad at god. Your heart can't be full if you don't know god(s). No one who fails to nourish their soul with faith can be truly happy.
(These are, of course, only my experiences, based on my life and cultural identity. There are similar Happiness Policing narratives based on rejecting even the possibility for happiness used against people in same-sex relationships, trans* people, people with visible disabilities, etc.)
What we have here is a failure of imagination.
Some people cannot imagine themselves being happy without children, or a particular body shape, or religion, and so they cannot imagine that I am. They have put my lived experience through their validity prisms and decided that if I say I am happy in circumstances in which they could not be, I must be lying. Or in denial. Or using a bit of bravado in order to mask a secret unhappiness. Accusations of some flaw in me, to obfuscate a failure of basic empathy.
Sometimes, it's people who are themselves childless, or fat, or have had a crisis of faith—and the unhappiness they feel because of those things is so profound that they cannot imagine anyone being happy in similar circumstances. It may be genuine disbelief, or it may be envy, that invites their suspicion and repudiation of my happiness.
And some people who have children, or are thin, or go to church every week, claim these things make them happy, when in fact they are deeply unhappy. They hate parenting; they live a life of restriction and self-denial and hunger to unnaturally maintain a thin physique; they go to church only because they feel like they should. And they resent that they sacrifice so much shit to do what society tells them is "right" yet remain miserable, while I reject the imperatives to reproduce, to hate myself, to engage in religious ritual, and feel happy and free as a result.
There's no effective response to Happiness Policers, because there's no way to convince someone of your happiness when they are determined to believe otherwise. If you ignore them, they will interpret that as PROOF! that you are unable to refute them and thus they are right. If you insist you are happy, they will accuse you of "protesting too much" which is PROOF! that you are secretly unhappy and thus they are right. It's a losing game. Which is entirely the point.
It's tiresome. But the only thing to be done is to speak your truth about being happy in who you are, knowing the Happiness Policers will do their thing, and knowing that their hostility toward your emotional integrity says something about them, not about you.
Building Collapse in Philadelphia
[Content Note: Injury.]
A four-story building in downtown Philadelphia collapsed this morning at the corner of 22nd and Market streets. Ten people have reportedly been taken to local hospitals, and rescuers are searching through the rubble for at least two more people and maybe more.
The 4-story building, which was connected to a Salvation Army Thrift Store on the southeast corner, collapsed at 10:45 Wednesday morning.Holy shit. I am reading as-yet confirmed reports that the building being demolished essentially collapsed in the wrong direction.
The collapse brought down part of the thrift store and what appears to be converted row homes attached to the back of the building.
Bystanders immediately jumped into action, helping first responders to locate and assist the wounded.
... Emergency crews are on the scene continuing to work feverishly to find survivors.
It appears the building at 2136 Market Street, located next to where the collapse happened, was being demolished. However, there is no word if work there had any role in the incident.
My thoughts are with everyone involved—the people who were in the building, the people who love them, emergency crews, the hospital workers, helpful bystanders, the building's owner(s). Fuck.
Please feel welcome and encouraged to share additional/new information as it becomes available in comments.
In The News
[Content Note: Gun culture]
Show me show me show me how to do that trick:
A marriage equality bill has passed UK's House of Lords in a landslide vote. Neat!
Speaking of House of Lords, remember these hair farmers?
Soul singer Sharon Jones has postponed recording her next album after being diagnosed with cancer.
All that technology and it's still a shitty pizza.
In Steven Seagal news: The former movie star will appear in a new campaign to promote Russian weapons. Obviously.
The Wizard of Oz will be converted to 3-D and IMAX for a one-week theatrical run in September. Okay.
Welp: Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dolby perform She Blinded Me With Science.
I Get Letters
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
Once upon a time, two dudes who write a web comic called "Penny Arcade" posted a strip that included a rape joke. Some people objected to this. It got nasty from there, in the same infuriatingly predictable way these things always get nasty. And then it got nastier, and more awful, and uglier, and more horrible, and worser, oof just so horrendo like whoa.
(The whole history is detailed here.)
The only thing that was certain is the only thing that's ever certain, which is that feminist survivors of sexual violence who don't find rape jokes funny are stupid, hypersensitive, rage-seeking missiles who want to censor the world. [sic]
Anyway. That was more three years ago. Last night, this arrived in my inbox:
I know this is really old, but I only ran across the post recently.Ran across what post? Who knows. Obviously none of the posts in this space that detail the joke (and subsequent jokes deployed in a double-down defense strategy). But even though this guy doesn't know to which joke I objected, he is certain that I'm wrong. Perfect.
When was there a "rape joke" in Penny Arcade? I only recall a joke about a guy in a video game having a horrible life that the player character didn't care about. In what way did that joke diminish or endorse rape? Rape didn't seem to be the punchline or object of mockery. In fact, the target of the joke seemed to be the player character's insensitivity. Isn't that the exact opposite of laughing at rape?
The fact that I am still getting emails about this shit three years later is pretty rich, considering that "get over it" is the go-to mantra of rape apologists.
See also: Fat Princess.
Pro-Choice: Choosing Not to Parent
So, you know that parenting narrative, the one about how being a parent mother is the most fulfilling thing ever and is totally fulfilling in and of itself and if you disagree, you're basically a child-hating monster…? Yeah. That narrative stinks.
It stinks for people who are already mothers, who find that they need more out of life than parenting to be happy and fulfilled, and are treated like traitors to their own children for saying so.
It stinks for people who never want to be mothers, whose choice is demeaned and whose lives are devalued with the invocation of the assertion that only motherhood begets true fulfillment.
And it stinks for people who aren't yet sure if they want to be mothers, who have access to all sorts of testaments to the comprehensive fulfillment of motherhood, but far fewer critical assessments of modern parenting from those navigating it, and fewer still stories of lives that are better because they have been parenting-free.
"I wish," said a female coworker of mine once, after a particularly rough day with her three kids, "that I had heard anyone say, even once, that happiness without kids was possible."
She is a great mom—the kind of mom that we should all be so lucky to have. She loves her kids, and she likes them, too, most days. And she wishes she'd never had them.
When she got pregnant with her first, soon after getting engaged at a young age, she'd never even considered not having kids. Having kids was just what women like her did. Even having been raised in a politically moderate suburb in a not-churchgoing household, born a decade after Roe was legal fact, she'd never encountered the idea that a straight, middle-class, cis woman who was married might elect to not have kids.
And be happy with that choice.
My life was full of aunts and older second-cousins who never had children. Aunt Betty. Aunt Lil. Aunt Marsha. Cousins Jane and Joy. And my Aunt Judy—a fat feminist executive who took her nieces on trips around the world, to make sure we knew what it looked like. She worked her way up from a mailroom to a vice-presidency; she traveled; she refused to be obliged; she spent lots of money (and saved lots of money); she drove a cherry red convertible with a guffaw for a backseat. She owned herself. And she told me, plainly, she didn't want children, even while I still was one.
Judy didn't worry about being cautious, lest an eavesdropping parent infer she was impugning their choice. She didn't worry about my potentially inferring she didn't like me, or my sister, or my cousins, just because she didn't want children of her own. If she worried about anything at all, it was making sure I knew that her life, a life that she knew I admired, was fundamentally incompatible with parenting.
Her life wouldn't have been what it was if she had been a mother.
"Having it all" is a questionable concept to begin with, especially when conjured outside a framework that meaningfully addresses privilege. But if among the things you want to "have" are tons of flexibility and lots of freedom, it's a comprehensively useless concept. Freedom and flexibility inevitably necessitate trading something.
I can't know precisely what my life might have looked like if I'd chosen to parent, but I know that building a career that took me from a reception desk to an executive office in six years would have been harder, if not impossible, if I'd had kids. I know that ending my first marriage would not have been as easy if we'd had children—both making the decision to end it, and the legal mechanics of ending it. I know I couldn't have picked up and moved to Scotland on a whim. I know I could not as easily hold firm boundaries with close family members, if I had children who needed and wanted to see them. I know I could not have built and maintained this space, because the demands on my time are too great.
There are people vested in shaming any woman who chooses not to parent who tell me that I can't really be happy, or that my happiness pales in comparison to the incandescence of the happiness uniquely conveyed by motherhood. But motherhood doesn't make everyone happy. What makes people happy is being able to fashion their lives into the shapes they want.
This is a reproductive choice we don't talk about so much, because it's inevitably inferred to be implicitly censurous of parenting and/or children. I am not anti-parenting. I don't dislike children. I am, however, deeply contemptuous of the bad faith interpretations that misconstrue child-free advocacy as one of many reproductive options to be inherently anti-parent/child. I talk about my happiness being child-free because I support a spectrum of equally valid reproductive choice, which includes parenting, too.
It's important for us, collectively, not to silence women who choose and are happy to be child-free—and not just because we're a useful demographic to defend the need for comprehensive reproductive choice and undermine bullshit gender essentialist, cissexist narratives about "natural instincts" and "what women are meant to do." It's important because there isn't really meaningful choice without a public discussion of all those choices, by the people who made them.
And an honest discussion: I am not going to be obliged to acquiesce that, sure, my life might have been even better with children. Never mind whether it's (in)accurate: It's irrelevant. My life is what I want it to be, as much as it can be, given my particular set of privileges, marginalizations, talents, and opportunities. And I am not going to be obliged to pretend that my choice is neutral: It isn't. I wanted to be child-free, and I am, and that is a better choice for me. We talk about these choices in a frame that exhorts us to recognize parenting as The Best Choice! and not-parenting as another choice. That isn't honest. Choosing to be child-free is the best choice, the happy-making choice, for a lot of people.
So. Let me be one voice for anyone, of any gender, who doesn't have an Aunt Judy to tell them the same: It is possible to be happy without children. It is possible your life will be better without them. It's not true that anyone who chooses not to parent and says they don't regret that decision is "protesting too much." Not parenting is an option, and sometimes it's a very good one.
Question of the Day
What's your favorite movie poster?
My favorite is the French poster for one of my all-time favorite films, Harold and Maude:
I mean, that's just fucking spectacular. Of course, it's enhanced by how much I adore the film, too.
FYI
[Previous FYI: Rick Astley; Eddie Murphy; The Eurythmics; Eddie Rabbit; Sinéad O'Connor; Was (Not Was); Bon Jovi; Kenny Rogers; Bobby McFerrin; Starship; Dead or Alive; Right Said Fred; Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians; Salt n Pepa; Nelson; The Cure; The Soup Dragons; Europe/BushCo; Elton John; Eddie Money; Human League; Glenn Frey; Van Halen; Alanis Morissette; Depeche Mode; The Beatles; The Proclaimers; Bruce Springsteen; Meat Loaf; Cyndi Lauper; Cole Porter; Tina Turner. Hint: They're better if you click 'em!]
Saxby Chambliss is the worst.
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
Shut the fuck up, Saxby Chambliss. You are the worst.
THE WORST!
Photo of the Day
[Content Note: Gun violence.]
Figo, the canine partner of fallen Kentucky police officer Jason Ellis, paid his respects at the officer's funeral by placing a paw on his partner's casket. A photo of the moment, taken by photojournalist Jonathan Palmer, went viral over the weekend. [Via]Officer Ellis was "shot in an apparent ambush in the early morning hours of May 25. Police believe the suspect laid debris on an exit ramp, and then shot Ellis when he got out of this car to remove the debris." Figo was not with him at the time he was killed. He has been retired and will live with Ellis' widow and their two sons.
All the blubs.
My condolences to Officer Ellis' colleagues, friends, and family, including his dog.
Welp
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
So, Republican Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant said today that working moms are responsible for US educational failures. Ha ha of course they are.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said Tuesday that America's educational troubles began when women began working outside the home in large numbers.Yes, women working is a terrible thing blah blah yawn.
Bryant was participating in a Washington Post Live event focused on the importance of ensuring that children read well by the end of third grade. In response to a question about how America became "so mediocre" in regard to educational outcomes, he said: "I think both parents started working. And the mom is in the work place."
I especially love this dinosaur scat being dragged across the carpet of public school education, given that nearly 80% of full- and part-time public school teachers in the US are women, most of whom are also mothers.
Well, Governor Bryant, I guess we could send all of those teachers back to their kitchens, but, gee, then you'd have to replace them with men and actually pay teachers what they're worth, and I know how much Republicans hate paying teachers. WHAT A CONUNDRUM.
Whoops the UNM Psychology Department Response to Fat Hatred
[Content Note: Fat hatred.]
Yesterday, I posted a (quickly redacted) fat-hating tweet published by an evolutionary psychology professor at the University of New Mexico. In comments, Shaker ladydreamgirl shared that the tweet's author, Geoffrey Miller, has since claimed the tweet was part of "a research project" which consisted of sending out "provocative tweets" in order to gauge people's reactions to them.
Even if that's true (and I am extremely dubious that it is), given the demonstrable capacity for harm of public body shaming, such a project would be extremely unethical. Personally, I find a psychology researcher claiming he was deliberately provoking fat people by publicly shaming them significantly more disturbing than publishing an insensitive tweet reflecting personal bigotry.
UNM Psychology Chair Jane Ellen Smith has given a statement in response to the controversy, in which she notes that Miller's claims of a research project are being investigated. She also had a few other things to say:
Text Onscreen: Prof. Jane Ellen Smith, UNM Psychology Department Chairwoman.Okay. I don't know anything about Professor Smith or her work, but I would be surprised if whatever work she's doing "in the body image and eating disorder and obesity area" is Health at Every Size-based, given her use of "normal weight" as distinct from "underweight" and "overweight," thus suggesting it's never "normal" to be fat. I also note that her Center for Health Policy at UNM bio notes: "Dr. Smith specializes in both substance abuse and eating disorders/obesity." Which suggests that fat is pathological and all fat people are compulsive eaters.
Text Onscreen: What was your reaction to Prof. Miller's tweets?
Smith, a middle-aged thin white woman, standing in front of a bookshelf: I started getting lots of emails from very concerned people yesterday afternoon, and, when I discovered what it was about, I was really surprised, I have to say. Um, the idea that the psychology department here at the University of New Mexico, or any department at UNM, would be discriminating against people because of their size or shape—it's just outlandish. That's nothing we would ever do.
Text Onscreen: How does this tweet touch on your own area of research?
Smith: Actually, one of the main areas of my research is in the body image and eating disorder and obesity area, and so it really hits close to home, because not only do I do research with people who have a lot of concerns about their body, you know, regardless of their size—underweight, normal weight, overweight—but you can see the devastation it causes.
Text Onscreen: Is UNM planning to take any action?
Smith: Well, we're first going to find out exactly what happened—um, I've had some contact with Professor Miller about this; he claims it's part of a research study. He's a social psychologist, um, does work in the evolutionary area, and, uh, claims that he's been sending out provocative tweets over a number of months now to measure people's reactions to them, and so we'll be investigating that.
And then there is her incredible claim that it's "outlandish" to imagine there's any discrimination against fat people in any department at the entire University of New Mexico. I've never been to the University of New Mexico, so I had no idea it exists in a void! How truly extraordinary that there is no fat bias to be found anywhere at a university that operates in a culture otherwise rife with institutional fat hatred, including well-documented employment discrimination!
Claiming that X bigotry doesn't exist in a community where a member of that community just expressed X bigotry is: 1. Bullshit; 2. Hostile to the basic concepts of how culture works and how bigotry is transmitted; 3. A deflection of communal accountability; 4. A pretty good indication that no meaningful examination of community standards will happen; 5. A harbinger of a failure to facilitate institutional change.
Somehow I don't feel reassured.
