Hosted by Mary Janes.
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!
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Homophobia; anti-choicery.]
"The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life."—Your progressive pope, making clear that he is not actually progressive at all. Again.
Two Important Pieces of News
1. As expected, the Supreme Court of the United States announced today that it will rule on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans:
The justices agreed to consider four cases from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. They will be consolidated and heard together.Don't fuck it up, SCOTUS. Don't fuck it up!
That sets up a schedule under which the court will hear 2 1/2 hours of oral arguments in April and issue a ruling before its current term ends in late June.
..."We've reached the moment of truth—the facts are clear, the arguments have been heard by dozens of courts, and now the nine justices of the Supreme Court have an urgent opportunity to guarantee fairness for countless families, once and for all," said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights organization.
The justices will consider two questions—whether the 14th Amendment to the Constitution requires states to license marriages between same-sex couples, and whether it requires states to recognize such marriages when licensed by other states.
2. Outgoing Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder has barred police forces from seizing property without evidence of a crime:
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without proving that a crime occurred.There are some exceptions (e.g. weapons) which make sense, but now people's cars can't be "Equitably Shared" away from them, even if they are guilty of no crime at all.
Holder's action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.
Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.
The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them "adopted" by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. The program allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of the adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.
"With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons," Holder said in a statement.
Unfortunately, "police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws," but this is very good news all the same.
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by granola.
Recommended Reading:
Luvvie: [Content Note: Terrorism; racism] #IamNigeria
Andrew: There Is Less Than a 1-in-27 Million Chance That Earth's Record Hot Streak Is Natural
Angry Asian Man: [CN: Racism; descriptions of violence] Three Teens to Stand Trial in Beating Death of USC Student
Indian Homemaker: [CN: Misogyny] What Are We Generally Thinking of When We Say 'Respect Women'?
Carla: [CN: Racism; class warfare] Racial Mismatch: Will White Seniors Support Today's Youth of Color?
Michael: [CN: Class warfare] State and Local Tax Systems Hit Lower-Income Families the Hardest
Atrios: [CN: Islamophobia] Do Any of These People Ever Leave the Country?
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Daily Dose of Cute
Ms. Olivia Twist, in the sunshine.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Just. Stop.
[Content Note: Appropriation; transmisogyny; disablism.]
Fresh off his Oscar nomination for playing a man with a disability, Eddie Redmayne will next play a trans woman:
Eddie Redmayne is the toast of Hollywood thanks to his acclaimed portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything – and the British actor will be taking on another challenging role in his next project. Eddie has revealed he will play the first transgender woman ever to have gender reassignment surgery in the upcoming film, The Danish Girl.No, the movie will be a "semi-fictionalized" (gross) look at the life of LILI ELBE. It's not enough that another cis man has been hired to play another trans woman, but the movie itself is being pitched as the story of a man who "became" a woman.
The 33-year-old actor spoke to E! News about the movie, which will be a "semi-fictionalised" look at the life of Danish painter Einar Wegener, who later became Lili Elbe after becoming the first man to have sexual reassignment surgery in 1931.
And, naturally, it gets worse from there:
He is approaching the role with the same intensity with which he researched playing Stephen, who was diagnosed with ALS in his early 20s.How neat! Are any of them actors, by any chance? Do any of them know any trans women who are actors? Are all of them thanking you for being so brave, the absolute bravest, for being the latest in a long line of cis men who claim to be amplifying trans women's voices by usurping them, and to be telling their stories by appropriating them?
"There are many people who have written Ph.D's on Lili's story," Eddie said. "Even though it is period and under completely different circumstances than today, I'm meeting many women from the trans community and hearing their experiences."
He continued, "I have put on dresses and wigs and make-up. I'm beginning to embark on that and trying to find out who she is."Oh my fucking god.
Listen, straight white able-bodied cis male actors: I get that you want to play "challenging" characters (and the fact that you consider the lives of marginalized people "challenging" is a whole other post), and I get that you win awards by playing People Who Overcome, and there aren't a lot of stories about straight white able-bodied cis men who overcome, because of the general lack of hurdles, and boo hiss boring stories about straight white able-bodied cis men who are working-class union organizers in fading steel towns in grody places like Illindianohiowa where they dig in the dirt growing soybeans for your no-whip lattes, but life is hard, what can I tell you.
If you want to play a truly radical role, how about this: The role of a real-life millionaire man who walked away from an industry that paid him handsomely to exploit people without his privileges.
Too brave?
In conclusion: A spike through my head!
[H/T to Eastsidekate.]
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Sexual violence] You know how anti-rape advocates like Lauren Chief Elk, and I, and others often talk about how maybe police aren't always the best answer for survivors of sexual violence? And how there are people who then accuse us of hating survivors, as if we aren't survivors ourselves? And talk to us like we just love rape and hate police and are such stupid-headed dum-dums? Yeah. Well. This is one reason we say things like that: "Manhattan SVU detective investigated for sex assault of rape accuser: 'You're my favorite victim.'" Note: This was a Special Victims Unit detective. You know—the unit tasked with helping victims of sexual assault.
I honestly thought this was a joke story when I first saw people tweeting about it: "Secretary of State John Kerry is in Paris after the White House apologized for not sending a high-ranking official to a massive unity rally after the terrorist attacks there. And he brought a friend by the name of James Taylor." To sing "You've Got a Friend." Seriously.
[CN: Climate change] 2014 was the hottest year on record, because of course it was. But the jury is still out on climate change!
Just blub: "Police in Florida are honoring a teenager whose quick thinking is being credited with helping to save the life of the officer who arrested him. While Officer Franklin Foulks was booking Jamal Rutledge, 17, [on a violation of juvenile probation] last September, Foulks suddenly collapsed and Rutledge began kicking the security fence and yelled to alert others to what had happened. ...[M]edical staff later said that Rutledge's actions and the officers' quick response were largely responsible for Officer Foulks surviving the incident." Rutledge, a black teen, had to kick the fence because he was already handcuffed.
Oh terrific: "Wisconsin's Republican governor Scott Walker hints he'll run for president." NO THANK YOU.
There is apparently not "a groundswell of support" for a third Mitt Romney presidential run. Huh. I'm so shocked by that. I thought everyone would be super excited about it.
Great heaving sigh: "I had friends that were writing on Lost... And I was watching football with one of them and I was telling them how much I loved the show…and I'm like, 'How are you going to pay all this stuff off?' And he looked at me and goes, 'We're not.' And I go, 'What do you mean you're not?' He said, 'We literally just think of the weirdest most f*cked up thing and write it and we're never going to pay it off.' And I look at him and I'm like, 'That's such bullshi*t! You are completely f*cking with the audience.' I want to bring a class-action lawsuit on behalf of everyone who watched Lost all those years."
Everything you ever wanted to know about eyeball tattooing!
Because everyone in the multiverse (and thanks to each and every one of you!) has sent this to me, here is an amazing collection of mini-portraits of David Bowie through the years. And, by the same artist, here is David Bowie through the years in one moving gif. Extraordinary.
And finally! This is an amazing story about Masha the Tabby Cat who saved an abandoned baby by keeping him warm for hours, until he was discovered: "After hearing loud cries, one of the residents opened her front door and spotted the baby on the floor, with the cat sitting beside it, licking it and trying to warm it, TV Zvezda reported. 'The residents are certain, if the cat hadn't taken care of it, the baby wouldn't have had a chance,' the channel's anchor said. ...When paramedics arrived and took the baby into the ambulance, Masha ran after them, REN TV reported. Vera Ivanina, a paramedic, told REN TV: 'She was so worried about where we were taking the baby. She ran right behind us, miaowing.'" Oh cats. You are the best.
What Are We Even Doing
[Content Note: Class warfare.]
This is what class warfare looks like:
For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation.
The Southern Education Foundation reports that 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade were eligible for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program in the 2012-2013 school year.
Above is a static screen cap of an interactive infographic at the WaPo, which provides state-by-state poverty rates. And, yes, you will surely notice a correlation between states which tend to be highly gerrymandered, have Republican state legislatures, and are thus less likely to have robustly funded state social safety nets.
But that doesn't tell the whole story. This is a national issue, and it speaks quite clearly to what our national priorities are. The United States is (nominally) the wealthiest country in the world, and we have a defense budget that could fund mansions built from recycled drones for every person on the planet, and we're fine with the fact that 51% of our public school students can't afford food.
Or many of their other needs.
The shift to a majority poor student population means that in public schools, more than half of the children start kindergarten already trailing their more privileged peers and rarely, if ever, catch up. They are less likely to have support at home to succeed, are less frequently exposed to enriching activities outside of school and are more likely to drop out and never attend college.They're imperative. And the Bootstraps Brigade shouts about how their parents are moochers, while making sure their parents don't have a livable wage, and sneers that you shouldn't have children if you can't afford them, while eroding at every turn the ability for women to control our reproduction.
It also means that education policy, funding decisions and classroom instruction must adapt to the swelling ranks of needy children arriving at the schoolhouse door each morning.
...[No Child Left Behind's] federal focus on results, as opposed to need, is wrong-headed, [Michael A. Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Columbia University] said.
"We have to think about how to give these kids a meaningful education," he said. "We have to give them quality teachers, small class sizes, up-to-date equipment. But in addition, if we're serious, we have to do things that overcome the damages of poverty. We have to meet their health needs, their mental health needs, afterschool programs, summer programs, parent engagement, early childhood services. These are the so-called 'wraparound services.' Some people think of them as add-ons. They're not. They're imperative."
What are we even doing in this country. This is intolerable.
Today in Eliminationist Racism
[Content Note: Eliminationist racism; police brutality; violent imagery.]
While people continue to protest in the streets, demanding justice on behalf of black men and women slain by police officers, police officers in North Miami Beach used mugshots of black men for target practice:
Members of the Florida Army National Guard showed up to a shooting range and found mug shots of African American men apparently used as targets by North Miami Beach Police snipers, who had used the range before the Guardsmen.There is an image of the target at the link; it shows mugshots of six black men, with bullet holes torn through their faces. The target was left behind, like so much trash, where it was discovered by the National Guard unit, including the sergeant who recognized the face of her brother.
The Guardsmen were angry and one of the photos on the target was a Sgt.'s brother, a mug shot taken years ago, according to NBCMiami.com.
This rank eliminationist trash is utterly contemptible and indefensible. And yet the police chief is pretty fucking sanguine about the whole thing:
Police Chief J. Scott Dennis admitted that his officers could have used better judgment, but denies any racial profiling.None of the officers who participated in this spectacle of grotesquery should be allowed to keep their jobs. And "racial profiling" is hardly the issue: This is straight-up fucking terrorism. How are black people in North Miami Beach supposed to feel safe, knowing police officers are using images of them for target practice? And who—WHO—could possibly believe that using black faces for target practice has zero effect on officers' disposition to see black people oppositionally, zero effect on officers' inclination to shoot at black suspects?
"There is no discipline forthcoming from the individuals who were involved with this," Dennis said.
This is not okay. None of this is okay.
[H/T to Jordan and Deeks.]
Question of the Day
Suggested by Jordan: "What animal would you like to be?"
I want to be a narwhal. So I'm basically a whale and a unicorn at the same time.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Islamophobia; oppression.]
"You go to a nightclub, and they don't let you in. You go to a party, they look at your beard, and say, 'Oh, when are you going to Syria to join the jihad?' Charlie Hebdo is a part of that, too. Those who are stronger than us are mocking us. We have high unemployment, high poverty. Religion is all we have left. This is sacred to us. And yes, we have a hard time laughing about it."—Mohamed Binakdan, a 32-year-old Muslim, who is a transit worker in France, a country in which "unemployment and poverty remain far higher among Muslims than in the nation overall."
The next time you hear someone say that it is stupid for Muslims to be offended by depictions of the prophet, remember Mohamed Binakdan's words, and imagine a ruling class marginalizing you on the basis of one facet of your identity, leaving you with little besides that identity, and then treating it with mockery and contempt.
It is a familiar dynamic: A privileged class regards something valued by marginalized people as important enough to use as justification for harming them, but ridicules those marginalized people for valuing it themselves.
I am not attempting to excuse or condone the attack on Charlie Hebdo. I am exhorting empathy with people being silenced under the cacophonous calls for unity, without any effort to extend solidarity or compassion in their direction.
SCOTUS & Same-Sex Marriage
The Supreme Court of the United States will be meeting this Friday to decide whether to hear a same-sex marriage case—and, if so, which case(s). At BuzzFeed, Chris Geidner has a primer on the likely "same-sex marriage showdown," and notes that "after Friday's conference, if a decision is made to take one or more cases, the decision is expected to be announced that afternoon."
So, by the end of this week, we could know whether SCOTUS will soon be ruling on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage.
Which is terrifying, because they could get it wrong, and exhilarating, because they could get it right.
I still think, and am hopeful that, SCOTUS will rule bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, and finally make a federal guideline allowing same-sex marriage once and for all. But they have surprised me in a bad way before, and I will be biting my nails all the way down to the decision.
Get it right, SCOTUS. Get it right.
Daily Dose of Cute
This is the face that Zelly makes when you ask her: "Who is a giant monster but also a little monkey dog with a piggy nose and teddy bear ears?"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Don't Mess with Hippos
[Content Note: Animal aggression.]
Via my friend Jordan, here is an amazing video of boaters on a lake in Africa narrowly avoiding getting hit by a large, aggressive hippo:
Video Description: The boaters are moving quickly away from a hippo in the water, trying to avoid it. The hippo moves through the water toward them incredibly quickly, then, as the video slows to slow-motion, the hippo's head bursts through the water very near the boat, and makes a huge splash as the boat continues to speed away.
The safari operator says: "We want to assure you that we were doing our utmost to avoid this animal and as you can see from the film it started well away from the boat. We hope that it perhaps goes some way to dispelling the perception that hippos are large lethargic herbivores...they are truly dangerous and as you will see in this film deadly fast through the water."
I told Jordan: "This video is why I am just fucking flattered when fat-hating trolls call me a hippo. HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT HIPPOS CAN DO?!"
I mean, seriously. If you're trying to insult me, you're gonna have to do better than comparing me to one of the most awesome, fearsome animals on the planet.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Today, President Obama is calling for "the passage of the Healthy Families Act, a bill that would require most employers to give workers paid sick leave. The legislation calls for businesses with 15 or more employees to let them accrue up to seven paid sick days a year to care for themselves or a family member who falls ill. On a call with press, adviser Valerie Jarrett said the White House estimates that it would give 43 million workers access to leave who don't already have it. The leave could also be used by victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking to recover or seek assistance." Good stuff. Where was all this awesomeness before the midterm elections, when they had a greater chance of passing?
[Content Note: Death penalty; torture] Despite a series of botched executions around the country, in which death row prisoners were tortured to death as prisons tried new cocktails of execution drugs, Oklahoma plans to resume executions today. "Attorneys for four death row inmates, including [Charles Warner, scheduled to be killed by lethal injection today], are asking the US supreme court for a stay." End the death penalty now.
[CN: Rape culture] Kids today! Get ON my lawn! "Two eighth graders in Toronto, Canada are pushing to overhaul their province's sexual health curriculum to include more information about healthy relationships, saying that combating rape culture involves creating a 'consent culture' among youth. Tessa Hill and Lia Valente, both 13 years old, are asking the Ontario Ministry of Education to add consent education as a topic in the province's health curriculum." LOVE.
US District Court Judge Mark Goldsmith has ruled that Michigan "must recognize the legal marriages of about 300 same-sex couples who were wed in the state in a one-day period last year after a federal court struck down a ban on gay marriage and before the decision was put on hold by a U.S. appeals court. ...'In these circumstances, what the state has joined together, it may not put asunder,' Goldsmith said in a written opinion." Yay!
[CN: Police brutality] Twenty-nine people were arrested by Massachusetts State Police this morning, after they "stopped traffic on two sections of a major highway into Boston during the morning rush hour to protest the recent killings by U.S. police of unarmed black [people]."
I'm sure you will be shocked to hear that USians trust in police varies significantly between people of color and white people, young and old, progressives and conservatives. Huh.
[CN: War on agency] Oh for fuck's sake: "Following Well-Worn Scripts, State Lawmakers Renew Assault on Access to Abortion Care." I honestly don't even know what to say anymore. These fuckers. These hateful, misogynist, consent-hostile fuckers.
[CN: Climate change] Shit: "Researchers have come up with a new and improved way of measuring the rise in the sea level, and the news is not good: The seas have risen dramatically faster over the last two decades than anyone had known."
LOLOL WHUT: "An anonymous advisor to Mitt Romney told the Boston Globe in an article published on Tuesday that if the former Republican nominee had been elected President, there would be no Islamic State terror group in Syria and Iraq, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin would never have invaded Ukraine." Uh-huh sure. And by now we'd all be living in gold moon mansions and have pet unicorns that shit rubies.
Speaking of Mitt Romney, there seems to be some kind of double-standard about the way the media talks about Mitt Romney's and Hillary Clinton's age and family status, even though they are the same age and Clinton only has one grandchild to "enjoy" while Romney has 22. Gee, I wonder what could explain that double-standard? We're definitely living in a post-feminist society, so it can't be sexism, that's for sure! OH WELL I GUESS IT'S ANOTHER MYSTERY LOST TO THE SANDS OF TIME!
The new baby Asian elephant born at the Oklahoma City Zoo last month has been named Achara, which means "pretty angel." And she is ridiculously adorable!
And finally! Here is a terrific story about a dog rescued by the ASPCA from a dog fighting operation, who found a happy forever home where she is loved and spoiled. Yay!
"Glory"
"Glory," from Selma, by John Legend and Common, which just won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song, is now nominated for an Oscar. If you haven't heard it yet, you need to, so here it is.
Lyrics here.
There is something about John Legend's voice that brings tears to my eyes. He could be singing the phone book, and I would be all choked up listening to him.
Dangerous Indifference
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
One of the things I write about here a lot is how rape is not, as it is often mischaracterized, a "misunderstanding" between two people. Rape is not an act committed by hapless men (or women, although female rapists are not typically the beneficiaries of this particular apologia) who just don't know any better. Rape is committed by predators, and predators prey.
In 2009, Thomas MacAulay Millar took a look at "who commits the vast majority of rapes, the nonstranger rapes." An except from that piece:
Lisak & Miller also answered their other question: are rapists responsible for more violence generally? Yes. The surveys covered other violent acts, such as slapping or choking an intimate partner, physically or sexually abusing a child, and sexual assaults other than attempted or completed rapes. In the realm of being partner- and child-beating monsters, the repeat rapists really stood out. These 76 men, just 4% of the sample, were responsible for 28% of the reported violence. The whole sample of almost 1900 men reported just under 4000 violent acts, but this 4% of recidivist rapists results in over 1000 of those violent acts.That rapists are not merely misguided boys who just made a mistake, but in fact devious predators who attack again and again and again, was underlined by the findings of a second study, led by Dr. Stephanie McWhorter:
If we could eliminate the men who rape again and again and again, a quarter of the violence against women and children would disappear. That's the public policy implication.
McWhorter used a Sexual Experiences Survey tool that has been in use for more than 20 years. Of her 1146 participants, 144, or 13%, admitted an attempted or completed rape — substantially higher than Lisak & Miller. But in another respect, her work very much matched theirs: 71% of the men who admitted an attempted or completed rape admitted more than one, very close to Lisak & Miller's 63%. The 96 men who admitted multiple attempted of completed rapes in McWhorter's survey averaged 6.36 assaults each. This is not far from Lisak & Miller's average of 5.8 assaults per recidivist. Looked at another way, of the 865 total attempted or completed rapes these men admitted to, a staggering 95% were committed by 96 men, or just 8.4% of the sample.This is an important context to bear in mind when we see news like this [video may autoplay at link]: "100 serial rapists identified after rape kits from Detroit Crime Lab are finally processed."
Also in 2009, more than 11,000 rape kits, "some dating back to the 1980's, were found abandoned in a Detroit Police storage facility." In the intervening years, 1,600 of them have been processed, and just in that frustratingly small number of tested kits, "about 100 serial rapists and ten convicted rapists" have been identified.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy "told reporters that perpetrators have moved on from Michigan to commit similar crimes in 23 other states."
Because of untested rape kits, at least 100 serial rapists have moved across at least 23 other states, continuing to rape people. Because of untested rape kits, because of the lack of political will to fund sexual assault investigations, at least 100 serial rapists have continued to victimize people.
And that's just from untested rape kits in Detroit. There are an estimated 400,000 untested rape kits nationally.
Again: The public policy implication of stopping repeat rapists is eliminating a quarter of the violence against women and children.
To continue to leave these rape kits untested, pathetically citing budgetary constraints, is dangerous indifference. It is a shameful facilitation of the rape culture, and a contemptible gift to rapists.
[H/T to Amanda Levitt.]
Oscars 2015
The 2015 Academy Award nominations were announced this morning. Here is a complete list of the nominees.
It's weird how only white people acted in movies again this year. Apparently.
It's weird how only men wrote and directed movies again this year. Apparently.
It's weird how there were no stories to be told about fat people again this year. Apparently.
It's weird how there were no stories to be told by and about trans people again this year. Apparently.
It's weird how there are no gay male actors who could have been cast as Alan Turing. Apparently.
It's weird how there are no actors with disabilities who could have been cast as Stephen Hawking. Apparently.
Etc.
Rinse and repeat every year forever. Apparently.
Mitt Romney: Still Terrible
Some things never change.
King Shit of Entitled Mountain has already decided to run for president for the eleventieth time, and now he's got to figure out why:
In private meetings and phone conversations, Mitt Romney has begun to answer the biggest question looming over his potential entry into the 2016 presidential contest.LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL oh my aching sides. I don't know what I love more: That this spoiled shitbird is so convinced he's owed the presidency that he considers a reason for running incidental to his campaign, or that he imagines he has a single fucking thing to say worth listening to on the subject of poverty.
Why?
...Economic stewardship would still lie at the core of a Romney campaign, as it did in 2012, but he also would seek to turn some past weaknesses into strengths. The candidate — once lampooned for his wealth and caught on video dismissing the 47 percent of voters on government assistance — has been telling supporters he would run on an antipoverty platform.
What is this $250 million mound of undiluted privilege going to make the centerpiece of his antipoverty platform, I wonder. "Let's all be rich!" Aces.
"If you believe in your heart that this country is going to hell in a hand basket and is worse than ever, you owe it to your country to think about this," one longtime Romney adviser said. "There's a burden there to think this thing through carefully."Oh, I think we got that Mitt Romney is the Turnaround Guy, once we saw him saying with as much integrity as he can muster that he cares about poverty then turn around and tell ha-ha jokes to rich donors about lazy moochers.
"But there needs to be a rationale," the adviser continued. "If we made one mistake — and we made more than one in '12 — it was in not making people understand this is the Turnaround guy."
Oh, that's not what you meant? Well, I've got 24 hours a day 7 days a week to photoshop shit and post it on social media saying otherwise. Let's go, players.
There's a lot more blah blah fart at the link, but you get the drift. Romney's the worst, and the worst will ride again. Apparently.
Quote of the Day
"I do my best to not spend too much time thinking about [living up to the Breaking Bad legacy]. And I'm always so careful when I say that because I would never want it to read like I don't care. But the trouble is that I care too much. The only thing we can control, and we've been working our butts off to do just that, is putting on the best show we know how to create."—Vince Gilligan, mastermind of Breaking Bad and showrunner for the prequel series premiering next month, Better Call Saul.
The quote comes from this Variety article about the soon-to-debut series, which is really interesting just from the standpoint of getting a peek into the creative process of people who take seriously the work and art of making good television.
So it might be worth your time, if you're interested in that sort of creative stuff, even if you don't care much about the show.
I am now officially excited for the premiere.
Random Aside: I am so old that I was a fan of Bob Odenkirk when he was on The Ben Stiller Show fully one million years ago. For those of you under 100, there was a time when Ben Stiller was funny and he had a sketch comedy show and it was actually very good. Hey, hey, we're The Grungies. LOL. The '90s, man.
Wowwwwwwww
[Content Note: Rape culture; clergy abuse; homophobia; misogyny.]
Wow wow wow: "Former highest-ranking U.S. cardinal blames 'feminization' for the Catholic Church's problems."
Last week, Cardinal Raymond Burke delivered a whopper of a manifesto in an interview with something called "The Emangelization," which seeks to restore a sense of manliness to men in the church. In the interview, Burke offered a lengthy meditation on what he perceives to be the problem with the modern church. Most of them began, he said, with the advent of the women's rights movement during the 1960s, which pushed for female participation in the Catholic Church. He derided it as "radical feminism."Got that? Radical feminists turn men gay, and gay men rape children. Which is a terrible tragedy that the Church mourns—presumably when the Church isn't busy covering it up and obstructing investigations and denying accountability and giving harbor to rapist priests.
When that happened, the "goodness and importance of men became very obscured," which gave rise to a "very feminized" Church, he said: "There was a period of time when men who were feminized and confused about their own sexual identity had entered the priesthood; sadly some of these disordered men sexually abused minors; a terrible tragedy for which the Church mourns."
These two reprehensible tropes—that homosexality is caused by advocacy for gender equality, and that gay men are sexual predators—have been debunked and exposed as the putrid garbage they are so many times that there is no way an adult human being alive in the United States today could possibly subscribe to these execrable notions out of sheer ignorance. They are promulgated exclusively by people with intolerable, hateful agendas built primarily around hating women and gay men.
While he directs most of his ire at "radical feminists," he also appears rankled by ordinary women doing ordinary Church activities. To him, that act alone constitutes the dangerous feminization of the Church that has alienated, disenchanted and made men sexually confused.How can men possibly be expected to participate in a space where the deity, his sacrificial son, that son's twelve BFFs, the author of every single book of their holy text, the pope, every cardinal, every archbishop, every bishop, every priest, every deacon are all men, but women are allowed to say things and wash dishes? No wonder men are running for the hills.
"Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women," Burke continued. "The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been influenced by women and become so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved. Men are often reluctant to become active in the Church. The feminized environment and the lack of the Church's effort to engage men has led many men to simply opt out."
Everything about this is spectacularly terrible, but I just want to underline that a prominent cardinal in the Catholic Church blamed the Church's institutional sex abuse cataclysm on feminism. Because omfg.
Daily Dose of Cute
I may have mentioned before that Dudley is very particular about when it's time to go to bed—that is, time for all of us to retire to the bedroom for the night. It's exhausting being a dog who sleeps all day every day; he needs his rest!
For Dudley, bedtime is usually two to three hours before we are anywhere close to actually going to bed. Which means that he spends two to three hours every night pitiably trying to shield his eyes from the dim light of our living room, in order to convey to us how tragic his life is.
Usually, he shoves his head under a pillow with a heaving sigh. Sometimes, he curls up beside me and tries to arrange himself so that his head is under my arm or leg, using me as his personal darkroom, while giving me Meaningful Looks: If you think this is annoying, just imagine how I feel!
Last night was the absolute zenith of pathetic:
OH THE HUMANITY.
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by snow.
Recommended Reading:
Kao: [Content Note: Racism] The Meemao Monster
Tasha: [CN: Class warfare; anti-choice harassment; racism] I Just Had an Abortion
TLC: [CN: Transmisogyny; sexual assault; harassment; carcerality] Transgender Asylum Seeker Faces Abuse in Immigration Detention
Adrienne: [CN: Self-harm; racism] Dear Native College Student: You Are Loved.
Mannion: [CN: Class warfare] Every Mitt for Himself
Jim: [CN: Homophobia] Northern Ireland Couple Challenges Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
Julianne: [CN: Racism] How to Tell If Your Memoir's Being Whitewashed for Network TV
Fannie: [CN: Misogyny] Theron Negotiates Pay Raise
Andrew: [CN: Images of creepy-crawlies] Release the Karaqan! How does Aquaman's latest foe stack up against real ocean giants?
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[Content Note: There is a strobe-light effect in this video.]
Gloria Estefan: "Get on Your Feet"
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Threats of violence; video may autoplay at link] The FBI says a bartender at a country club Speaker John Boehner frequented was planning on poisoning him. The man, who has mental illness and stopped taking his medications, has now been indicted. Because in the United States, prison is treated as a sufficient alternative to a competent mental healthcare facility.
[CN: War on agency] The Indiana General Assembly has introduced legislation that makes it a felony for a "a person who knows [zie] is pregnant" to "knowingly or intentionally consume a controlled substance commits endangering an unborn child [sic]." First of all, "controlled substance" is so broad; that includes most prescribed medications. Secondly, despite the fact that Indiana legislators are doing their damnedest to make abortion totally inaccessible, it is still a legal procedure in the state. No pregnant person is obligated to carry a pregnancy to term, and thus not obliged to protect a fetus by not taking medication that may harm one.
[CN: Misogynist terrorism] Over at BoingBoing, Jay Allen documents "How crowdfunding helps haters profit from harassment." Fucking hell.
[CN: Abduction; death] Jose Luis Abarca, the former mayor of the Mexican city of Iguala, where 43 students were abducted last year and are feared dead, has been charged with the kidnapping, along with 44 others. They are "the first charges filed against Abarca that are directly related to the students' disappearance even though authorities have said the mayor and his wife were the masterminds of the kidnappings since October."
[CN: Airline disaster] The fuselage of the AirAsia airliner which disappeared on December 28 has been found in the Java Sea. Hopefully, this discovery will allow more victims' bodies to be returned to their families, and help investigators determine the cause of the crash.
[CN: Climate change; video may autoplay at link] This is a real thing in the world: "Senate to vote on whether climate change is happening." Terrific. Maybe when they're done with that subject, they can vote on whether monkeys exist. Since there's nothing pressing going on in the country that needs the attention of the people elected to run it.
[CN: Close-up image of bat at link] In good news: Some bat populations are starting to recover from white-nose syndrome, which has been killing bats by the millions all over the US. The situation is still dire, but it's a little less grim than it was. Bats are so important to our ecosystems; we need lots of them, and we need them thriving!
And finally! This is a terrific instructional video on how to teach your dog how to hula hoop. (OMG SO CUTE I AM DED.)
The Vanderbilt Rape Case
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
In June 2013, four former Vanderbilt University football players participated in the rape of a 21-year-old female student, who was unconscious during the assault, and then orchestrated a cover-up of the crime. Here is a good primer on the case, which has a timeline at the top of the page and a story by the extremely knowledgable Tony Gonzalez below.
After many long months, the trial of two of the men charged with the assault began yesterday. If you want to follow along with the trial (and I direct you to all of these resources with the note that the material may be triggering):
* You can watch a live feed of the courtroom here.
* Follow the #VandyTrial hashtag on Twitter.
* Follow Tony Gonzalez's live tweeting of the trial.
This is a really visible case, getting a lot of attention because it combines the issue of campus rape with the issue of male athletes who rape. There has already been a metric fuckton of rape apologia around this case, and there will be even more as the trial moves forward.
Already, my favorite (ahem) thing from the trial is one of the defense attorneys seeking a mistrial after the prosecutor detailed the facts of the case. It's so darn unfair that the facts of the case are allowed in court, because that makes it so much harder for these poor accused men to get access to the usual swift acquittal for perpetrating sexual violence against a woman.
Goddamn.
#FiveWordsToRuinADate
[Content Note: Anti-feminism; misogyny; rape culture.]
Last night on Twitter, I was having some fun with the hashtag #FiveWordsToRuinADate, which is still trending. Since not everyone here is on Twitter, here's a thread for all of us to have fun with it.
These were my contributions last night:
"What about a humanist movement?" (link)
"Some rape jokes are funny." (link)
"Hitch is my favorite movie." (link)
"I rooted for Walter White." (link)
"I like playing Devil's Advocate." (link)
"You shouldn't feel that way." (link)
"Can't you take a joke?" (link)
"Have you heard about Jesus?" (link)
"I just don't see it." (link)
"I voted for Mitt Romney." (link)
"Have you read Atlas Shrugged?" (link)
"Um, actually, to be fair..." (link)
"As Richard Dawkins once said..." (link)
Have at it in comments!
Question of the Day
The obvious follow-up to yesterday's QotD: What was your least favorite subject in school?
"Wellness"
[Content Note: Fat hatred; disablism; exploitation.]
Via my pal Jordan, here is just a terrific article about mandatory wellness programs for USians who access healthcare via employers: "Coming soon to a workplace near you: 'wellness or else'."
Everything about this shit is fucking amazing (I am being sarcastic, in case I'm not laying it on thick enough to be readily discernible), but what I love most about it is how employers will straightforwardly admit they don't give a squirt about workers' actual health; they just want the money from collected penalties generated by people's failure to succeed at wellness programs that don't even work.
This is a total scam, wrapped in faux concern for fat people presumed to be unhealthy and genuinely ill and/or disabled people, who are being coerced into subsidizing the costs of a healthcare system from which they can't even meaningfully benefit.
Fuck this entire fucking system.
Fatsronauts 101: Confidence
[Content Note: Fat hatred.]
I have such a fraught relationship with confidence.
For much of my life as a fat woman, I have been caught between the punishments justified on the basis that I do not have enough confidence, and the punishments justified on the basis that I have too much confidence.
The amount of confidence I actually have is never right. The amount of confidence I should have is entirely dependent on always maintaining distance from the goldilocks amount that would magically inoculate me from hostility.
My confidence is a thing that is constantly being measured by people with their thumbs on the scale.
By people who want to "helpfully" alert me that I would get more and better in life if only I were more confident, who want to attribute my mistreatment encased in fat hatred to my own failing to demonstrate sufficient confidence. Their theory usually goes something like this: You have to earn being treated well by showing people you think you deserve to be treated well.
By people who want to belittle me, who want to make clear to me they don't believe I have earned being treated well, and do it by telling me what confidence I have isn't deserved. Their theory usually goes something like this: You are fat and thus have no justification for any confidence at all. Just who the fuck do you think you are, anyway, fatty fat fatso?
By people who ostensibly mean to compliment me, by expressing surprise and delight that I manage to have any confidence at all. You know, given how fat I am. And we all know fatties aren't meant to have any confidence. But here I am, with confidence in spite of my fat self! Good for me! How do you do it? You go, girl. This does not feel like the compliment it is intended to be.
Observations about my confidence always have a motive; they are never neutral observations—always intended as a compliment or an insult. Or both.
I hardly even know what confidence means, as its definition is a constantly moving target. Sometimes it means "thriving in spite of immense cultural abuse of fat women." Sometimes it means "thick skin." Sometimes it means "reflection of class status and evidence of having money to dress yourself reasonably well and the time and resources to locate clothing in your size that isn't total garbage." Sometimes it means "being able to get laid" or "being loved." Sometimes it means "demonstrating an ability to set boundaries." Sometimes it means, simply, not openly and shamefully hating myself for the comfort of thin people at all times.
It never seems just to mean holding the belief that I have value as a human being.
And, on the rarest of occasions when it does, it is still a political statement. I believe I have value, even though my fat marks me as someone who does not.
Confidence is thus ever radical.
And because my confidence is transgressive, by virtue of norms and prejudices created outside of myself, it is received as a challenge by those who detest the thought of its existence. Of my existence.
Who cannot see what confidence I have, or don't have, as the culmination of a life—as a person with both privileged and marginalized aspects, as a person with a complex history and a cluttered interior humanity, carrying the scars and stardust collected by any human walking through this world—but as a thing tied uniquely to my weight.
Because my fat is the most visible marker of where a void of confidence should be.
"Look at you—it's so terrific you have confidence even though you are fat!"
"Look at yourself—don't you know you're not supposed to have confidence because you are fat?"
In either case, the message is the same: Don't you know how we treat fat people? Don't you know what that's supposed to do you?
I am not supposed to have confidence. Except when I am.
"You know, no one's ever going to hire you or give you a raise or offer you a promotion or like you or fuck you or love you if you don't believe in yourself."
And if someone has hired me or given me a raise or offered me a promotion or liked me or fucked me or loved me, well, that's not because I am smart or talented or hardworking or tenacious or dependable or likeable and definitely not because I am attractive. It's only because I have confidence.
Which is a way of reminding me I shouldn't have and don't really deserve anything, because I am fat. But there's got to be some explanation for a fat woman's personal and/or professional success. It must be her confidence.
Which is also a neat way of victim-blaming fat women who are mistreated and denied personal and/or professional success on the basis of their fatness. It must be her lack of confidence.
And then I—any fat woman—who finds some modicum of personal and/or professional success, contentment, achievement, satisfaction, we are used against fat women who don't. I am held up as an Exceptional Fat Woman, to shame other fat women. See? It's not institutional, systemic, pervasive, soul-destroying fat hatred. It's you. You should try having some confidence.
Yes. We should all try that. And then we should see how long it takes until evidence of our confidence is used to demean us as delusional uppity bitches who don't even know how fat and ugly and grotesque we are. Don't we even own a mirror?
Can't fucking win. Can't ever fucking win.
The worst of it is this: Because my confidence exists in defiance of expectations that it should not exist at all, it is regarded—positively and negatively—as an act of resistance, an act of bravery, an act of bravado. A provocation.
And it is all those things, because it has to be. But it also simply an act of survival—a hard-won and carefully cultivated love of self, that helps keep me whole in a world that wants to tear me apart.
It's just something of use to me. (And not to every fat woman.) It is not something I project, but something I carry, alongside my other tools.
I am not obliged to be confident for anyone else's comfort, no more than I am obliged to be self-deprecating.
But I am never allowed to own it, no matter how hard I worked to get it, no matter how much it might mean to me, because it must be treated as public property, in order that privileged folks discomfited by that very confidence might use it to try to manipulate and harm me.
While they tell me with a smile to be confident. Without a trace of irony.
Shaker Gourmet
Share your favorite recipes, solicit good recipes, share recipes you've recently tried, want to try, are trying to perfect, whatever! Whether they're your own creation, or something you found elsewhere, share away.
I've had conversations with a couple of different people recently who are in search of good crockpot recipes. (This remains one of my go-to favorites.) So, particularly if you happen to have a good crockpot recipe, please share it!
But, as always, all recipes welcome!
Daily Dose of Cute
Queen Matilda
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
Here is some stuff in the news today...
California Attorney General Kamala Harris "has announced that she will run to replace retiring Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer in 2016. Good.
[Content Note: Nazi reference] A sitting Republican Congressman, Rep. Randy Weber of Texas, criticized President Obama for not going to Paris for the anti-terror rally by comparing him to Hitler in the most reprehensible way, tweeting: "Even Adolph Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn't do it for right reasons." What the everloving fuck? Get your party together, Republicans. Jesus Jones.
Speaking of Republicans: Mitt Romney is definitely running for president again. Paul Ryan is definitely not running. And Chris Christie is probably running. Watch this space for further developments on Republican White Men's Race to Be the Absolute Fucking Worst.
[CN: Rape culture] Amazon has decided it wants all of us to cancel our Amazon Prime subscriptions, apparently: "Woody Allen is to write and direct his first television series for Amazon's video-on-demand service. The 79-year-old film-maker has been signed up to make a full season of the as-yet-untitled series for Amazon Prime. It is the Oscar-winner's debut TV project after more than 40 films in a career spanning more than half a century." Fuck you, Amazon.
[CN: Rape culture] Ninety-five US colleges and universities are now being investigated by the Department of Education for Title IX sexual assault violations. Ninety. Five.
[CN: War; terrorism] During a five-hour clash with Boko Haram along the Nigeria-Cameroon border, Cameroonian troops killed more than 140 Boko Haram fighters. Yesterday's conflict started when Boko Haram attacked a Cameroonian military camp in Kolofata, as part of their ongoing attempts to gain additional territory outside what they've already grabbed in Nigeria.
[CN: Terrorism; death] In Baga, where Boko Haram massacred hundreds of people, with estimates ranging as high as 2,000, defense groups have given up trying to tally the number of dead bodies, because there are so many of them.
[CN: Terrorism; racism] The new issue of Charlie Hebdo features a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad on its cover, because of course it does. I know it's unpopular to hold multiple thoughts in one's head these days, but I simultaneously grieve for the people who were killed, rage at the people who killed them, fear for the Muslims who are being harmed by Islamophobic blowback, and have contempt for the people who feel that the response to all of this is a belligerent insistence on irreverence, because sensitivity is seen as weakness instead of strength.
In wildly different news, here is a cool photo, believed to be the first ever taken, of an oceanic shark giving birth.
Today, the trailer for Spy, the new Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy film, debuted on Yahoo. I love that part of the premise of the film is a fat woman's cultural invisibility becoming her biggest asset. Twisty.
Studley, the ASPCA's Cat of the Year for 2014, is a therapy cat who was rescued many years ago after being abandoned by a breeder. I tells ya: You rescue them, and they rescue us right back. ♥
Revelers vs. Rioters
[Content Note: Racism.]
Last night, Ohio State won the 2015 college football championship, and, as typically happens after a big ballsports game, fans poured out into the streets and celebrated by wrecking shit and starting fires. There were some reports of "celebratory gunfire." Around 1am, police in riot gear used tear gas to disperse the largely white crowds.
Here are some headlines about this event this morning:
"Unruly fans." "Crowds celebrating."
From NBC:
"Crowds of revelers."
From the New York Daily News:
"Celebrating fans." "Unruly crowd."
From Time:
"Rowdy fans."
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
"Revelers."
From the Columbus Dispatch:
"Revelers."
I could go on—and on and on and on—but you get the point. Black people who protest the extrajudicial killing of black people in the streets by police are all rioters, if one person damages property or sets a fire. A mostly white crowd celebrating their sports team winning a big game are all revelers, no matter how many people damage property or set fires.
Black people organizing for justice are dangerous provocateurs who will incite a race war. White people acting like fools for sports are just dumb kids blowing off steam.
We all know this double-standard exists. But here it is, the morning after white
[H/T to Mikki Kendall.]
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker DesertRose: "What was your favorite subject in school, if you had one? (Recess totally counts, LOL.)"
Quote of the Day
"Plaintiffs have a fundamental right to marry. South Dakota law deprives them of that right solely because they are same-sex couples and without sufficient justification."—Judge Karen Schreier, striking down South Dakota's ban on same-sex marriage today.
Schreier's decision was immediately stayed, pending an expected appeal by the state.
Because Republican state legislatures just can't waste enough taxpayer money fighting losing battles in the war for same-sex marriage equality.
#365feministselfie
A year ago, my pal Veronica Arreola invited anyone and everyone who was up for it to participate in her #365feministselfie project. The rules were simple: Post a picture of yourself every day for a year. I decided to accept the challenge, for a lot of reasons, not least of which just because I wanted to see if I could stick with it for a whole year. Which I did—huzzah!
I wasn't sure what I would take away from participating in the project when I started. After many years of posting occasional pictures of myself online, I knew that there would be positives and negatives: I expected that my pictures would sometimes be mocked and misused, which they were, and I hoped that my willingness to be a visible fat woman would be meaningful to some people, which it was, and I anticipated that taking selfies would serve to give me a better relationship with photos of myself, which it did.
What I didn't expect was just how much the project would make me feel even more comfortable in my own skin. How much more visible it made me to myself.
Part of my agreement with myself, when embarking on this project, was that I would not assess my own pictures with negative judgments I would never in a million years wield against another person.
With that resolve, I saw pictures of myself in a new way. I saw them through ever gentler eyes as the year went on. Without the filter of judgment my culture exhorts me to use, using the standards of love and acceptance I would extend to any other person, photos of myself actually looked different to me. Literally different. I saw myself in a way I had never seen myself before. It was a genuine revelation.
Even before the year began, I understood and appreciated the value of taking pictures of oneself in order to facilitate a realistic (and lovable!) self-image. But sitting inside of that, every day, challenging myself and resolving again each day to look at myself with love and acceptance, turned out to be a genuinely radical act.
I am radically changed.
We are taught to be afraid of seeing ourselves as we really are, but it is only really looking at ourselves that we see our true selves, and not a self onto which we project narratives of hatred and shame as we quickly look away from a photo, from the mirror.
I don't see things I want to change when I see a picture of myself anymore. I see only the things that are, and I am sublimely okay with those things.
(I mean, I still hate it when I have a zit, but I'm not going to beat myself up about that one too much!)
[Video compiling all 365 photos, set to instrumental music.]
Looking over the year in photos, I was also keenly aware of the spaces in which I felt comfortable documenting my life, and those which I wanted to keep private. These weren't conscious decisions at the time, but I see the ways in which even certain parts of my home are spaces that feel too intimate for me to casually document in a way that invites strangers inside.
And there were a lot of meaningful activities that aren't represented, often because I didn't want to share that part of my life with strangers. A #365feministselfie project just for me would have looked somewhat different from this one.
I notice, too, that my female friends are (unsurprisingly) more reluctant to have their photos posted on the internet. Were it not for the pictures with my friend Ari, one might imagine I have no female friends at all! That is, of course, not a criticism of my female friends, but a bitter commentary on the nature of women's feelings of safety online. Or lack thereof.
Mostly, I appear happy and/or content in most of the images, which is a fair representation of my disposition, but there are also photos of me sad, angry, crying, in pain, ill. I will say that I felt much less comfortable documenting negative emotions than positive ones, which isn't surprising. There were no instances, however, when I felt upset and feigned something else for a selfie; I mostly just tended to think about taking selfies when I was feeling okay.
Other random observations: There are selfies taken in five states over the course of the year—Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Maryland. There are lots of hats! And shoes. And it wouldn't be entirely unfair to suggest that the title of this collection of photos might reasonably be: Fat Lady with Increasingly Untamable Hair, lol.
Anyway! My thanks to Veronica for challenging me to participate in this amazing project. Which, by the way, continues this year, for anyone who wants to take part. In case it isn't abundantly obvious, I highly recommend it.
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by wheezing.
Recommended Reading:
Suzanne: [Content Note: Misogyny; violence] Our Top Wins in 2014
Cat: On Fat in 2014: The Year That Was
Prison Culture: [CN: Carcerality] Liberals Love Prisons #1000
Jim: [CN: Homophobia] Republican Illinois Governor-Elect Bruce Rauner Appoints Anti-Gay Pastor James Meeks to State Education Board
Jamilah: [video w/ partial transcript] Watch Gina Rodriguez's Tearful Golden Globe Speech
stavvers: Things I Read This Week That I Found Interesting
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Daily Dose of Cute
My convalescence team.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Number of the Day
[Content Note: War on agency.]
Five: The number of anti-choice bills introduced by Republican legislators in the first three days of the new session of Congress.
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) this week introduced four new anti-choice bills in the Senate, including a measure to defund Planned Parenthood at the federal level.Following the midterm election in November, Republicans have control of both the House and the Senate, meaning these proposals now have a greater chance of passing. Let's hope President Obama is ready with his veto pen.
...Vitter's proposed requirement that abortion providers obtain admitting privileges with a local hospital would likely close many safe, legal clinics for no sound medical reason, which has already happened in Texas and other states.
His proposed ban on sex-selective abortions is one that reproductive rights activists decry as being both unnecessary and racist.
And under the guise of "non-discrimination," another bill would allow health-care providers to refuse women abortion care even in cases of emergency.
Combined with the U.S. House's speedy introduction of a national 20-week abortion ban bill on Tuesday, Republican legislators introduced a total of five anti-choice bills in the first three days of the new Congress.
[H/T to Imani.]
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Terrorism; death] I noted on January 5 that Boko Haram had started the year by seizing a multinational military base in Nigeria and massacred hundreds of people. In subsequent days, reports began to emerge that Boko Haram had killed "as many as two thousand people in at least sixteen towns and villages in the last week. ...Today I spoke to Hamza Idris, a friend and senior reporter with the Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust, who has been covering the Baga massacre for the past week from the Borno State capital of Maiduguri. He had spoken with Baga residents and a district head who said that they had seen hundreds, but not as many as a thousand, bodies: people who were breathing and eating one moment and dead the next, from a grenade or bullet. ...I asked Idris if he knew what was happening in Baga. He sounded defeated: 'They've taken over the town, so we don’t know if they've stopped the killing or not.'"
The massacre in Nigeria has gotten comparatively little attention in the Western media, which has been obsessively documenting the attack in France on the staff of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
Though both attacks were committed by men who are Muslim extremists, here are some key differences between the two massacres:
1. In Nigeria, the victims are black, many of them women and children. In France, the victims are almost exclusively white men.
2. In Nigeria, many/all of the victims were themselves Muslim. In France, all but one of the victims were not Muslim.
These are the facts underwriting Western indifference to the massacre in Nigeria, which has exponentially more victims. As "reprisal" attacks on French Muslims are justified or contextualized with rhetoric about people being "fed up" with Muslim extremism or terrorist violence, we are not meant to question the yawning apathy directed toward Nigerian victims who don't fit into simple narratives of Muslims attacking non-Muslims, or dark-skinned people attacking white people, and who don't inspire calls for solidarity because they were killed for simply living their lives instead of something "heroic" like publishing reprehensibly racist cartoons.
Everyone definitely cares about Muslim extremist violence—except, apparently, when it's directed at black Muslim women and children.
I am not, of course, suggesting that we shouldn't care about the victims in France. I am saying that we should care, at least as much, about the victims in Nigeria.
* * *
Mitt Romney really wants to make sure my Photoshop skills stay in tip-top shape: "Romney forcefully declared his interest in a third presidential run to a room full of powerful Republican donors Friday, disrupting the fluid 2016 GOP field as would-be rival Jeb Bush was moving swiftly to consolidate establishment support. ...'I want to be president,' Romney told about 30 donors in New York. He said that his wife, Ann—who last fall said she was emphatically against a run—had changed her mind and was now 'very encouraging,' although their five sons remain split, according to multiple attendees." OH NO! I hope this Romney family discord doesn't ruin the next family retreat at the giant beautiful boat house!
In other 2016-ish news: Rick Santorum accuses his potential rivals of having thin resumes without a trace of irony. Rand Paul has hired someone yawn who cares. And Jay Leno says Hillary Clinton seems old and slow. Well, maybe some of us don't have time to dip our toes into the Fountain of Youth that is telling shitty jokes as a career and zipping around town in exhorbitantly priced cars while wearing head-to-toe denim, Mr. Leno.
* * *
President Obama has unveiled the America's College Promise proposal, which would "make two years of community college free for responsible students, letting students earn the first half of a bachelor's degree and earn skills needed in the workforce at no cost." That is definitely better than nothing!
In related news: "Senior Democrats, dissatisfied with the party's tepid prescriptions for combating income inequality, are drafting an 'action plan' that calls for a massive transfer of wealth from the super-rich and Wall Street traders to the heart of the middle class. The centerpiece of the proposal, set to be unveiled Monday by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), is a 'paycheck bonus credit' that would shave $2,000 a year off the tax bills of couples earning less than $200,000. Other provisions would nearly triple the tax credit for child care and reward people who save at least $500 a year. The windfall—about $1.2 trillion over a decade—would come directly from the pockets of Wall Street 'high rollers' through a new fee on financial transactions, and from the top 1 percent of earners, who would lose billions of dollars in lucrative tax breaks." Sounds great! Too bad it will never pass out of the Republican-controlled Congress.
* * *
[CN: Domestic violence] George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of killing unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, has been arrested, again, for domestic violence. It's almost like if you let a guy literally get away with murder, he acts like he can get away with murder. Huh.
[CN: Police brutality; racism] Extended video footage of the police killing of Tamir Rice has been released, and shows that his 14-year-old sister "was pushed to the ground, handcuffed, and then shoved into the back of a patrol car as her 12-year-old brother lay dying after being shot by a Cleveland police officer who mistook his toy gun for a real one." Honestly. None of these people should be police officers. None of them.
[CN: Rape culture] In a survey of 73 men by University of North Dakota researchers, 31.7% of the respondents said they "would force a woman to have sex with them if there was no chance of being punished." When asked if they would rape a woman if there were no consequences, only 13.6% said they would. I am pretty disturbed by the cognitive dissonance there, but I am way the fuck more disturbed that nearly 1/3 of men will confess to raping women (as long as it's not called rape) if they can get away with it.
[CN: Rape culture] Veterans who have been discharged from the US military after sexual assaults are fighting to get veterans' benefits, which are often denied to them on the basis that they didn't serve long enough to qualify for them. Got that? The military doesn't do enough to prevent sexual assault, then denies benefits to service members who are discharged after being sexually assaulted. Fucking hell.
[CN: Appropriation] The Golden Globes were last night, and of course Eddie Redmayne, an able-bodied man, won Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama) for playing Stephen Hawking, a man with a disability, and of course Jeffrey Tambor, a cis man, won Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series (Comedy or Musical) for playing a trans woman. Yeah, it's a real celebration for trans women, I'm sure, when someone playing a trans woman wins Best Actor.
RIP Taylor Negron, who was one of my absolute favorite character actors. The very first thing I ever saw him in was Better Off Dead, as the worst mail carrier ever, and I always got so excited every time I saw him in something, because he just had a droll style I adored, and the greatest face.
And finally! Please enjoy this ridiculous video of an adorable begging bunneh.
Open Thread + Update
Hosted by apples.
Well, I am still feeling incredibly shitty. I now have a relentless cough, which has left me with almost no voice, aching sides, and the inability to sleep for more than about 20 minutes at a time without waking myself with MORE COUGHING. Hey, do you want some coughing? BECAUSE I'VE GOT PLENTY TO SPARE!
I don't know what this hell-flu even is. My eyes feel like they have to sneeze.
Anyway, I am going to try to post a few things today, although my brain is utter mush from lack of sleep, so I cannot promise they will be terrific, and will probably contain even more typos than usual.
I HAVE ALL THE COUGHING AND ALL THE TYPOS YOU COULD EVER NOT WANT!
