Art at the Auction

On Yes Means Yes

2011-04-08T13:35:00.001-04:00

Feminists who postulate that boys must obtain a spelled-out "yes" before having sex are trying to establish rules, cut in stone, that will apply to any and every encounter and that every responsible person must obey. The new rule resembles the old good girl/bad girl rule not only because of its implicit suggestion that girls have to be protected but also because of its absolute nature, its iron-fisted denial of complexity and ambiguity. I bristle at such a rule and so do a lot of other people. - Mary Gaitskill, "On Not being a Victim"

A friend of mine sent me an article she said had made her think of me, and then casually mentioned it might be worthy of a blog post. It is, in many respects; but this is the one she's getting at the moment. I'm not sure if it's the one she expected. As some people know, I have a history of misinterpreting fairly clear-cut texts. I missed much of the conventional thought about Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and libertarianism, taking out of it a doctrine of selfishness that I feel has served me and my liberal-pinko leanings well. I missed the environmental lesson of the film Ferngully, seeing it instead as a feminist screed about men not being trustworthy. I was 15 and 5, respectively, when I came to these conclusions. So I can see how I could possibly be off-base regarding the feminist thought known, now, as Yes Means Yes. But I don't think I am.

I'm not aware of which feminists, exactly, the author was pointing to in 1994 who wanted boys to obtain a spelled out yes before engaging in sexual acts with women. I was 8 in 1994, so I think I have some excuse as to this particular hole in my knowledge. And it is entirely possible that, like in the anti-porn movement of the decade earlier, the mainstream feminist thought was, well, sex adverse. But this is the same argument that crops up now regarding this particular philosophy of sex, and I think those people making the author's claim now are missing out on a few key details.

Firstly, I don't see Yes Means Yes as a way to make sex and sexual actions more puritanical, or even to adhere to rules carved in absolute. I see this particular campaign as an attempt to change how we think about sex, and about how women relate to sex, and how men relate to women in the pursuit of sex. I'm of the mind that how we handle sex in America right now to be fairly unhealthy. I'm of the mind that in many instances, we are following the old rule book, where men are supposed to be the actors and women are supposed to passively accept sexual contact, or actively reject it. And when something comes up - like rape - we as a general society are quick to point to a woman's (or girl's) supposed deviation from this norm as a reason for that particular crime (case in point: Cleveland, TX). I see Yes Means Yes as a way of muddying up those rules. As a way of making the advancement of sexual acts more complicated, but the sexual acts themselves more fulfilling. As a way of turning the general thinking about women and sex from passively acquiescing to actively participating and actively seeking. As a way of making sex into a conversation, rather than a silent action. And along with that thought is this one: it is important to change the very structure of how we think about sex. Not just how we think about sex with our significant others, or with our flings, or with our friends with benefits, but in general.

We need to start having frank discussions about sex and sexual pleasure from a young age. We need to start not only telling women and men that both women and men have sexual autonomy, but supplying the language and the thought process for that very autonomy. That means changing the nature of the conversation from speaking up when things have become uncomfortable to having ongoing conversations about sex, sexual wants, sexual needs, and what we expect from our sexual partners. We need to change the conversation from a "I don't want that" to a "I want that, I want to try this, and I never want to touch that thing over there". And getting to the point where you know and can speak about that thing over there that you don't ever even want to try.

One of the more interesting points of Gaitskill makes in this article is talking about how she didn't have the ability to stand up for herself at specific moments, to stop what was happening at specific times. I'm not going to try and explain why Gaitskill herself was unable to do so; she explains it quite well enough on her own. But I will say that I think at least part of the problem is the fact (a) the rules to sex are nebulous (even now), but exacting if a person (a woman person especially) is perceived to have not followed them, and (b) the language of sex is shrouded and couched in euphemistic terms. Yes means Yes, for me, is about changing both of those things. It is about being able to say the word "uterus" on the floor of the Florida House. It is about not having overarching rules regarding what you should or should not do sexually, but about having your own set of rules that you can converse with your partners about.

I've been told that talking frankly about sex takes the, for lack of a better word, sexiness out of the act. That somehow the very act of verbal affirmation deflates sexual desire. I don't doubt that for some people that's true. But I think that's because, in general, we have this idea about what sex is. Sex is supposed to be an action. Sex is supposed to be wild and passionate and taking place in a moment of wild abandonment, and it would suck to put that sort of thing on the backburner to figure out exactly how your partner wishes to go about this, if your partner wishes to go about this at all. For my part, talking about sex in detail, talking about likes and dislikes, taking the time to figure out how to make talking about not-wants and wants, and still getting on with business (or, you know, not) is a sign that a person is ready to have sex. Not wanting to talk about it for fear that talking about sex makes sexy time go bye-bye is, for me, a strange concept. I want to talk about sex with my partner. Talking about sex with my partner generally leads to better sex. Talking about sex with my partner allows those times when the sex isn't so great to be understood better, so we can change things up for next time. Talking about sex with my partner makes sex that much more fulfilling, and more of a journey than simply an act accomplished.

The thing about changing the conversation from a "No means No" to a "Yes means Yes" one is that it has the ability to change the functionality about how we think about sex. If we change the model from a "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights" experience where we want to see how much we can do and how far we can go before our partner shuts us down to one where find out where our partner's boundaries are beforehand, we are less likely to violate those boundaries even accidentally. That's the place I want to get to.

Kohlberg, Morality, and Rape

2011-01-27T11:15:00.006-05:00

Two girls were raped in and around my home town a couple months back. I'm not going to link to the articles, because although almost no one who doesn't actually know me reads this I'm a little leery of being completely out based on what happened to various people who commented positively on Lena Chen's articles and also what happened to Sady Doyle and to some poeople who tried to defend her. But also because at least one of the victims is underage and easily identified as well. It it what it is, but apparently you can't get your face hit a bunch of times and then smashed into a sidewalk, raped, and then report it without being completely outed at your local high school. And, frankly, that girl (and the other girl I don't personally know of) has to deal with enough crap without her story being linked on various blogs.

So. You're going to have to take my word for it that two girls were raped in and around my home town a couple of months back. You're going to have to take my word for it that the girl I know of was told in the high school after the fact that she deserved to be raped, and you're going to have to take my word for it the accused rapist is being defended with the same old lines about how girls lie, about how he could get any girl he wanted, about how these girls probably wanted a relationship and he said no so now they're getting revenge.

As if beating yourself up and putting yourself in a situation where someone will come up to you and tell you that you deserve to be raped is really worth it.

There's another part of this, too. This isn't the first time sexual violence has hit my town, obviously. It isn't the first time the kids in this age range have had to deal with this sort of thing. Another girl in my town, someone who is close to my sisters and whom I actually actively know, was sexually assaulted by her mom's boyfriend. And when she told her mom, when her mom believed her and pressed charges, people at the school told her she must have liked it.

All of this rattles around in my head, and what comes out is how similar these reactions are to every other rape or sexual assault case. Those two girls above? They were violently assaulted. There is DNA evidence. The girl I know of was in the hospital, had black eyes, had choke marks on her neck, had the blood vessels burst in her eye. And you know what people wrote on the news reports? "What was she doing out there at 11 at night?" "I know him, and he wouldn't do that." "Those girls are ugly, and he could get any girl he wanted so why rape them?" "They're stories are too similar. They probably got together to ruin him." All of these, by the way, are paraphrased, because although any one of these remarks are probably present on any news story dealing with rape anywhere in the nation right now, I really am serious about keeping these particular girls as anonymous as I possibly can.

There were other people who pointed out that rape isn't exactly about sex, not always, but oftentimes about power. There were people who pointed out that these girls were minors, that the guy in question is not, that girls generally don't give themselves black eyes and get semen in them just as a way to secure a false rape conviction.

But the reactions from the deniers are exactly the same, if less prevalent, as the deniers in, say, the Julian Assange case. There is this same thread of "women lie, repeatedly", "women conspire with one another to screw over men", "women aren't to be trusted", "women are raped, but these women clearly weren't", "men may rape, but these men, men that we like, do not and have not". "Don't ruin this man's life just because these women said that this thing happened against their will".

Where did we get the idea that all women lie about rape? Where did we get the idea that innocent until proven guilty meant that it was okay to shame the victim, to call them sluts, to call them liars, to question their moral integrity?

I think it stems from two seemingly polar opposite places: (1) the idea that women are the moral arbiters of sexual action, and (2) that women are less than men, both as moral actors and as people. These two ideas come together in really weird ways.

There's the idea that a man's sexual attraction and sexual action is somehow based on a woman's presentation: her looks, her attire, her attitude. This is the "How could she not want it? Look at what she wears/how she looks/what she was doing with that lollipop!" defense. In line with this point is the idea that women should act in accordance with what will bring men the least amount of sexual attraction. These would be arguments for women wearing more clothing, being more modest, throwing away their sexy underwear and their mini skirts. The realm of sexual morality is, in this philosophical vein, the woman's purview, even if what women are and are not allowed to pursue, in the interests of not arousing men's attractions, are not wholly their own decision.

And that's where number (2) really comes in. Women are in charge of preventing men's sexual interests, but they aren't really in charge of deciding what is or isn't responsible for exciting that interest. That is the job for others.

Number (2) is also, I think, influenced by what we see as objective decisions regarding morality. I remember, freshman year of college I took a class in sociology - because my experience with a psychology class was so bad in high school. In that sociology class, I learned about Kohlberg's theory of the stages of moral development. In Kohlberg's five stages, women consistently only reached level 3, whereas men generally would reach levels 4 or 5, the more theoretical moral levels. Men, under Kohlberg's stages, are more advanced moral actors than women. And although Kohlberg's theories have been critiqued by the likes of Carol Gilligan and others, I do believe that there is this odd bit of thought that runs throughout our culture about women: how the ideal is that they are better moral actors than men because they, as an ideal, are self-sacrificing and the "fairer" sex; but in practice we see women as less reliable narrators of their own experiences, as less moral, as more likely to manipulate interpersonal situations for their own personal gain.

Add that with a propensity to grant more weight to men's opinions, thoughts, and ideas, and there is a volatile mix that leaves women being seen as untrustworthy. As liars. As manipulators trying to pull one over on the rest of society. By hurting a really nice guy. A guy who could go on to do great things. Or who has people who love him. As if those girls are automatically not nice, could not go on to do great things, and don't have people who love them.

As an ending, I can't think of a better one than this post by Sady Doyle, whom I typically quote from too much, on rape and rape accusations.

News Flash: I Don't Care What You Think About My Fashion

2011-01-15T08:39:00.003-05:00

So, you know those articles on Yahoo!, the ones that are forever promising to tell you how to get a date, how to keep your guy happy, the things your guy isn't telling you, is your relationship on the rocks, etc., etc., ad nauseum? Well, yeah, I read those. Like they're going out of style. Which, actually, would be a good thing, because then there would be less of them to read and my life would probably be a little better. I'm not saying it would vastly improve the quality of my life, but I'm sure there's something else I could do with those five minutes.

These articles always rub me the wrong way, even if they don't piss me off. Before we lived together, I'd call The Boy and quiz him about the validity of any number of points the articles made. Looking back, I asked many leading questions so he knew to support my outrage, but still. Now that we live together, I'd actually have to wake him up to do that. Which means I'll blog about it on my poor, neglected corner of the web. The latest one is titled, "What the guys think of your fashion"; and appropriately enough for the title, there are four guys who offer pithy critiques to certain articles of clothing (and, in one case, accessories). Funnily enough, I tend to agree with the boys on which items are horrible and which can stay. Except on the giant sunglasses point. Because I love (and wish I looked good in) those giant sunglasses.

So what's the problem?

Well, my main problem stems from the idea that men are the ultimate authority on women's fashion. This is directly tied to the line of thought that goes something like, "You wouldn't dress like that if you didn't want me to hit on you". (A) That's not why I'm dressing like this. (B) Even if I wanted guys to hit on me, I still have the right to reject you specifically. My mini skirt? Doesn't give you carte blanche access to my person.

So! Men as the ultimate authority on women's fashion. It rubs me the wrong way! Partially because of the point above, but also partially because this article stems from the premise that if these four guys don't like, say, Ugg boots, then you as a woman who do like Ugg boots should automatically trash them. Because these four guys - whom you in all reality probably don't know - say so. Because if these four guys hate your Ugg boots, that means every guy will hate your Ugg boots, and what's more, not date you because you wear your Uggs, potentially with skirts. SO! You like your (insert fashion item here). X, guy down at the end of the bar, does not. If he were to say, "Hey, honey, I'd give you the time of day if only you weren't wearing (fashion item), but that makes you look like a slag and not worth it", would you get rid of (fashion item) in an effort to please X? I hope not. I would think that kind of baseless attack on something you like, along with an arrogant notion of him hitting on you is somehow paramount to your emotional well-being, would be met with a drink over the head. Or into the face. I'm not picky.

Listen, I hate Ugg boots too! And shirts that have writing on them that have witty sayings about how hot the girl wearing said tee shirt is! And sweats that have words on them! You know what I do? I don't buy any of those items. I have friends who like that stuff. I have friends who wear that stuff. And I manage to not go into rants about the sociological and gender problems inherent with things like tee shirts that talk about boyfriend stealing when I am around them. Mostly. But I respect the fact that my friends have their likes, their dislikes, and their ehs when it comes to what they will put in their closet. And if Ugg boots make them happy, then Ugg boots make them happy. And I'm not going to judge that. Because if Ugg boots fulfill a little slice of making them feel good about themselves and their day, then that is enough. And if a guy won't hit on them directly because of the Ugg boots, (a) unless he lets her know, we'll never know, and (catch-22!!) (b) if he does let her know that's why he's not hitting on her, he'll be that asshole X from earlier in this post and not worth her time anyway.

Here's The Thing:

2010-12-18T23:07:00.003-05:00

I should be in bed. I should be sleeping. I just recently had my wisdom teeth out (like, on friday), and anyone who follows me on twitter or even just popped in over the last 2 days knows that I look like a deranged chipmunk and that I've been a little pathetic regarding the whole thing.

Plus, I get to go sign a lease for an apartment in the morning, all the while looking like a deranged chipmunk.

So, I really should be sleeping, both because signing a lease will require me to be somewhat awake and because nothing else seems to be helping the chipmunk effect I'm presently suffering from.

And yet what I keep getting drawn back to, again and again, is Sady Doyle and her #MooreandMe crusade on twitter. If you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend doing so. It is probably the only thing aside from the current condition of my face I'm tweeting about with any regularity.

The latest post by Sady is perhaps the one that truly demonstrates how Michael Moore's comments are merely the ones that broke the camel's back. But she does it beautifully when she writes:

We’re not backing down. We’re not disappearing. Because they scared and bullied and threatened and shamed and lied to and lied about and disappeared all of those women, all of those women who were scared enough to go away or too scared to report in the first place, they all went away, and somebody has to not go away. We have to not go away.

Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann are progressive men. But they are flawed progressive men and their flaw, in this case, is minimizing rape because the man accused of rape is someone they admire.

I am a Countdown viewer, and I gasped at loud in my car when I heard Michael Moore perpetuate the lie that Julian Assange is in custody merely because of a broken condom during consensual sex. I felt like I was kicked in the stomach when Keith Olbermann did nothing to correct that blatant misrepresentation of the facts.

But, and here's why I'm not sleeping, I have come to accept and expect that sort of feeling when I watch liberals and leftists and people with whom I am in agreement almost 99 percent of the time. I have come to accept that Michael Moore is going to call on the president to take off his tutu and fight, as if tutus represent all that is weak because tutus are feminine. I have come to accept that men I respect and admire are going to use gendered terms, are going to not quite get it, are going to come to the defense of other men at the expense of women.

This is (was) my nihilistic stance. That to ally myself, even just intellectually, with the progressive community is to acknowledge that, sometimes, women are going to get thrown under the bus. To listen to progressive podcasts like Best of the Left, I'm going to have to hear about how we should make flying an expensive venture again, with stewardesses we can all leer at. To listen to progressive shows like Countdown, I'm going to have to hear Keith Olbermann or a guest say something sexist, demeaning, or outright demoralizing, and know that it will never be corrected.

About two months ago, Hugo Schwyzer wrote "Keep quiet for the cause": on sexual abuse in progressive movements. That post is almost directly related to Sady Doyle's latest piece about standing outside Michael Moore's tower. A student of Schwyzer's was raped by a progressive leader and the response was:

“He’s helping so many”, she was told, “and he hurt you. Isn’t it better to just avoid him? We’ll warn him to shape up, but we can’t go further than that. He’s too valuable.”

He's too valuable. For too long, my nihilism was based in that: liberal voices were so precious to me that they were valued far and above their occasional mishaps. I was starving for intellectual nourishment that made me feel like I was not crazy to feel the ways I was feeling or to think the ways I was thinking. And for a long time, I was able to separate the, "but what about that whole 'feminism' thing?" from it. I was able to convince myself that every stumble, every statement that made me see red, every nonapology apology, was worth the price of admission. Because I had access to 'my people'. And because nobody's perfect.

Well, no one is perfect. But as @FeministSpock wrote,

To err is human. To acknowledge, logical. To apologize, evolved.

Julian Assange is no more Wikileaks than Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann are Progressivism. And because they cannot separate their false idols from that which they admire, I have to.

I stand with Sady Doyle. Not because she is an idol. Not because she is perfect. Because here and now, she is right. Women matter. Rape victims matter. Justice matters. And if Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann or anyone else is looking to be a prominent voice in progressive circles, then they are going to have to acknowledge that. They are going to have to acknowledge women, and the lives of women.

Rape and Wikileaks

2010-12-08T18:27:00.005-05:00

This morning, I woke up, checked twitter, and had this:

Rape is being used in the #Assange prosecution in the same way that women's freedom was used to invade Afghanistan. Wake up! #wikilieaks

by Naomi Klein staring at me. It galled me so much I sent my first "@" reply to someone marginally famous, and went on with my day. But my mind kept returning time and time again to this idea, the idea that Assange is being railroaded as a way of getting to Wikileaks. And what it came down to is this: I don't care.

Don't get me wrong, I'm more or less okay with Wikileaks as an organization. This last round of leaks left me fairly unimpressed, as it was mostly just gossip; and the leaks before that about the Afghanistan war effort had the potential to place the American troops on the ground in danger and I was definitely angry about that. But at this point, I find the idea behind Wikileaks to be something worth exploring. And Tom Merritt is right when he says, "It is not against the law to publish this information." In that sense, going after Julian Assange more vigorously than any other person accused of the same crime is exactly what Naomi Klein is saying: Assange has attracted more attention for this particular, often overlooked, crime because of who he is and because of what website he runs. But Klein is completely incorrect in asserting that we should wake up to this reality, and that because Assange is being pursued in such a manner we should defend him and decry the pursuit itself. Instead, the question we should be asking isn't why is this particular case getting so much attention, but why aren't all of the other cases out there getting taken as seriously?

This is an issue completely separate from a defense of Wikileaks. We can discuss whether or not the application of these charges were politically motivated. We can discuss if this is a tactic being used to attack Wikileaks. We can discuss how unbalanced the application of this law may be. What we cannot do, what we should not do, is defend Assange based on the unbalanced application of the law because he may be doing something we find admirable in other quarters. Whatever you think of Wikileaks as an organization, I think we can all agree that if its spokesman and editor-in-chief has charges brought up against him, he should stand trial.

This, right here, is what makes rape an insidious crime. Those we admire, those we respect, we tend to minimize, deflect, or outright deny such a charge against them. What we as a society have got to come to realize is that a rapist can do good in other areas and still have raped someone. A rapist can be someone who does works we admire. A rapist can be someone whom we have previously respected, and whose political and ideological beliefs mirror our own. Which is why an organization or political thought should stand alone, divorced from its most vociferous defenders and/or creators. Wikileaks needs to stand or fall on its own merits, and we need to defend or decry Wikileaks on its own merits (or lack thereof). What we cannot do is excuse Julian Assange from even having to defend himself against a charge because such a charge may hurt his organization. Which is where Klein is wrong again. Yes, women's freedom was used as a battle cry in Afghanistan. Yes, it was the wrong cry, not in the least because we have done a piss poor job of securing the safety and freedom of women since entering Afghanistan. But Julian Assange may have actually committed rape. And there are laws against rape. And he can and should be charged with the crime. This isn't some nebulous "protect teh women" battle cry.

I don't know if Julian Assange is or is not a rapist. I know he is being held in connection to a crime. I know that the support he is receiving from Klein is, to be frank, beneath her. As Jessica Valenti highlighted, one of the charges facing Assange is not merely that he had sex with a woman without the condom she required but that he engaged in sexual intercourse with a sleeping woman. That last one? That's describing rape, pure and simple. It's rape, because a sleeping woman does not have the ability to consent to sex. These two women deserve their day in court. If their accusations are true, they deserve every measure of justice that can be awarded to them.

It is a shame that Wikileaks can be undermined because its editor-in-chief and spokesperson is alleged to have committed an act of sexual assault. But it isn't our shame. It is Assange's own, and it is a bed of his making. Our shame comes from the fact that we do not take every allegation of rape seriously. Our shame comes from the fact that we leave rape kits untested, that we victim-blame, that we use horrifying and damaging excuses like "women don't do that" or "boys will be boys" or "what were you doing there, anyway". Our shame comes from the strange idea that to assent to one sexual act is to assent to all sexual acts, that anything less than "no" is "yes", that enthusiastic consent is too hard a criteria to meet, that enthusiastic consent is not sexy because it makes sex into a negotiation. Sex is a negotiation. Sex is about communication. Sex is about boundaries, about which ones can be crossed by whom and when. Sex is about recognizing that if your partner wants sex with a condom, you'd better damn well put on a condom. Sex is about recognizing that if you don't have an already established understanding that starting while your partner is sleeping is both okay and relished, you can't do that. Sex is about stopping when your partner asks you to stop, tells you to stop, for whatever reason zie does so.

Our shame is that people feel comfortable defending Assange because that we are taking this particular sexual assault seriously deviates from the norm.

My Road to Anarchy

2010-11-27T11:25:00.005-05:00

Years in the future, when I'm asked when I became an anarchist, I'll be able to point to this paragraph in an incredibly powerful and moving piece by Laurie Penny titled Inside the Whitehall Kettle:

They want to make you uncomfortable, and then desperate, putting your route back to warmth and safety in the gift of the agents of the state. They decide when you can get back to civilisation. They decide when the old people can get warm, when the diabetics can get their insulin, when the kid having a panic attack can go home to her mum. It's a way of making you feel small and scared and helpless, a way for the state's agents to make you feel that you are nothing without them, making you forget that a state is supposed to survive by mandate of the people, and not the other way around.

I'm being more than a bit hyperbolic. I'm not an anarchist, and I doubt very much that I'll ever actually be one. At the moment, I'm more afraid of the callousness of the average citizen than I am of the malicious strength of my government (or the governments of our Western European allies); and I don't see that changing any time soon - though I do recognize that a lot of that has to do with my own personal level of privilege. However, I have an ambivalence that is swiftly heading toward distrust when it comes to police and police action, especially large scale police action at the behest of the state. Any state.

There is something terrifying and immobilizing about recognizing how little recourse we as people have against our governments - even those that claim to be representatives of "the people", that large nebulous group that is always being trotted out with rhetorical flourish to assail or support a political point or a politician's plans and ambitions.

What enrages me the most about this particular incident is who this form of oppression happened to. These weren't seasoned and hardened political warriors. These weren't "professional" protesters. These were children - teenagers the age of or younger than my sisters. This is a group with little political capital, because they have yet to be able to vote. This is the group whose political activism we as a global community should nurture and encourage and recognize as being key to our good future.

What the British police did to these teens, who took the chance to try to make their voices heard and their presence felt, is despicable. The message they imparted was loud and clear - Sit down, shut up, and take whatever lumps we as a government decide to give you. Do not organize. Do not become politically active.

This is how states create apathy. This is how states destroy idealism. This is how states betray their citizens.

Notes From a Rally to Restore Sanity

2010-11-01T17:44:00.007-04:00

This past weekend, my boyfriend and I went down to Washington D.C. to be a part of Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity. We left early in the morning, got delayed due to traffic, arrived after the rally had started, and then proceeded to mill around the outer edges, searching for things like a spot where we could hear the PA system clearly, he could see the jumbo screen, and also some port-a-potties. Only one of those goals was a clear victory, and I'll leave that a mystery. We ended the day at a TGI Fridays with perhaps the best food of all the TGI Fridays in the world. Or I could have just been really hungry. The world may never know.

We also left pretty happy with our rally experience.

And then I came home, and listened to Best of the Left, a podcast consisting of the best clips from left-leaning media shows. And the host of BotL and the hosts of Citizen Radio took a bit of an opposing view to the the rally, and what it was supposed to engender among its participants. They came away from what Jon Stewart had said and from the written mission statement feeling as though the rally was anti-activist. I, well, did not have that reaction.

Let me start out by saying that the messages I get from media? Sometimes are not the messages media is trying to give me. FernGully is a prime example of this. The movie's message is ostensibly about conservation efforts and protecting nature. What I took away from the film at age 6ish was: never trust a man. And I tell you, I stand by that reading of the film because every guy except Batty was a jerk to Crysta and a liar besides. But that answer did surprise my mother, who was really anticipating that first, clearer, idea.

So, I'm going to break this down into three sections: what I thought the rally was about before I got there; the impressions I had of the rally while it was happening; and what I took from it later when I watched Jon Stewart's closing remarks on the computer machine.

When I first heard about Stewart's rally, I wanted to go for the simple fact that I wanted to combat the numbers that other television show host got for his rally. This rally could have been about how good cheese is, and I would have been there. However, what it was about seemed pretty cool on its face.

What it seemed to be about was two ideas: (1) anti-sound bite. Signs loaded onto the Rally to Restore Sanity site supported this first hypothesis, by saying things like, "If you only recite talking points, how can we have a conversation?(#14)" and "Signs are an impractical medium for discourse (#18)". (2) anti-demonization. This one can pretty much be summed up by the supposition that "the only time it is appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person actually is Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles".

I personally don't think either one of those positions is anti-activist. It may take more to make activist work flamboyant. But I don't even think that is true. It may make activist work less media-friendly, but maybe we can work to change the media. So, before the rally? Very little to suggest anti-activist tendencies.

During the rally, I couldn't hear much nor see anything that was happening on the stage. But what I did see were the people around me. And those people were polite, funny, and seemed to be having a good time. The signs they had created supported both of my original hypotheses, except for one that said on one side, "An Open Mind is the Devil's Playground" and on the other, "Fix the Metro System". That sign seemed to be a product of muddled messaging. On the other hand, the sign, "War is the Answer* (*As Long as the Question is Who Sang "Low Rider)" was witty and to the point. Also, what I saw was a whole bunch of groups handing out stickers and fliers for their causes. So, that didn't seem anti-activist.

Afterward, when I watched Stewart's closing address, I was left with those same two thoughts on the day.

It isn't that we shouldn't hold strong values and opinions. It is that those values and opinions ought to be based in fact and reported to others with civility. It isn't that we should compromise those values and opinions. It is that we have to live in a world where actual compromise is necessary to survive. It is that we have hair dressers and family members and friends and coworkers who are going to disagree with us, sometimes vehemently and sometimes on a lot of different topics, and we have to recognize that they are human and probably not evil. We have to recognize that just like we don't want to hurt the country, they probably don't want to either.

One of the things that resonated with me was the idea that this was a rally for people who normally don't go to rallies, because they don't have a hell of a lot of time to devote to any cause let alone a multitude of causes.

I have the time to devote to a cause. But I don't have the opportunity to shape my life so I only talk to people I agree with or so that I live my life fully in line with my ideological beliefs. I work with people I have fundamental political and social disagreements with. And I, for the most part, like them. They push me farther to my ideological extreme, but I can disagree with them and still not think of them as Hitler.

That is what I took away from the rally. That having a principled stance is good, but that as Americans we must recognize that those on the other side are also just people. That they are trying to make the world "better", even though their idea of better is diametrically opposed to our own.

"High Expectations"

2010-08-06T22:37:00.005-04:00

I’ve been hearing a lot about high expectations recently. Partially, it’s because I work in an office full of middle-aged women who find it funny that I expect a guy to cook and clean, and that I have a strict rule about not dating anyone who doesn’t. When they throw around phrases like “high expectations”, I get a little jolt of happy because it means my expectations are higher than theirs, and that I hopefully won’t have their marriages. Because their marriages, while working quite well for them, would make me miserable. Because I have high expectations.

I don’t really know if this is truly a feminist issue, the issue of expectations and when they become too high. It doesn’t really matter, though, because it is an issue.

Truthfully, I think the idea of having too high expectations to be pretty laughable. Not saying that there is no one in the world with ridiculously high expectations. Of course there are. And maybe they should be told to dial it back and not expect a guy with an actual white horse to come riding up to take them away. But for the average person, I think “too high expectations” may just translate to “different expectations”. As in, “those are expectations I cannot or will not meet, and therefore they are too high”. But that’s the point of expectations. To figure out who fits with who. Sometimes, the person you’re interested in won’t fit yours, or you won’t fit theirs.

I’m a big believer in coming to a potential relationship with an idea about negotiables and non-negotiables. I’m a big believer in coming to a potential relationship with expectations of behavior, and nonbehavior. I’m also a big believer in this potentially not being the first conversation you have with a person, but an evolving topic that has to be built into a relationship. And I mean any relationship. Important friendships as well as romantic endeavors. You have to know where you stand, and what you’re willing to put up with and what you’re not willing to put up with; and the other person needs to know those details as well. Otherwise, this stuff doesn’t work. And if you go into a relationship and say, “I expect X, Y, & Z”, and your potential person says, “I can do X and Y, but I can’t promise Z; oh and by the way, I need A, B, & C from you”, then you have a working knowledge of what’s going on. And later on, if the potential person becomes an important person who does do X and Y and also J through N but just can’t manage to get down Z, you can reassess how much you’re willing to fight for Z. How much of a nonnegiotable Z actually is.

I’m a big believer in this for a personal reason. I have been dating the same guy off and on (and off and on… and off and on, and… you get the picture) for the better part of 7 years. And in the beginning, I had little in the way of relationship expectations. Sure, I expected someone I could talk to, who would respect my passions (not that he had to be passionate about the same things, but he had to at least not belittle them). But I didn’t have the big picture ‘How I Expect To Be Treated’ stuff down at that time. And I had my ass handed to me in the form of major heartbreak. And over the past 7 years, I’ve gotten pretty down with the whole, “This isn’t working for me, and we need to change something” deal. It isn’t perfect. He isn’t perfect. I’m certainly not perfect. Our relationship has been at best dysfunctional in the past, and it takes a lot of work to lean toward functionality even now.

But what I have learned from the yo-yo effect of my relationship is that high expectations are key to happiness. Having high expectations, and having the self-respect to expect those expectations to be met, is the key to a healthy relationship. Having the self-respect and self-awareness to understand what will make you walk away.

The only time expectations can be too high is if you’re (a) single, (b) looking, and (c) miserable without a significant other. If you meet those three criteria, then maybe you should think about shelving that whole “He has to have voluntarily read Foucault and understood his theories” thing. If what you’re looking for is a boyfriend, and if you’re not happy without one, maybe you can overlook a detail like not knowing a lot about French post-modernist thinkers. However, if only (a) and (b) apply, if you’re happy – or at least content – on your own, you can hold out for a fellow post-modernist for longer. High expectations only become “too high” when you get tired of waiting.

Too often, I think, we have low expectations when it comes to relationships. Too often, having someone say, “Oh, you’ll never find someone who does X, or will commit to Y, or thinks Z” forces people to settle for someone who doesn’t fit their basic criteria of nonnegotiables. Because the worst thing is to be alone. Because the most important thing in the world is apparently to find someone, so you don’t end up dying alone. I can dig that. When I was little, we had a downstairs neighbor who frequently said, “You’ve gotta live with somebody”. It was a very Steven Stills, “Love The One You’re With” philosophy.

I just don’t think that’s automatically true. It may be simply dependent on the fact that I’m a loner. It may be that my family has an odd history of having singletons who live alone and enjoy it. It may be that I would much rather be alone than be in the marriages my coworkers have, and that I’d rather be alone than constantly feel as if my needs didn’t mean much to my friends.

If the most important thing is getting some friends or a girlfriend/boyfriend, high expectations and some semblance of standards are going to get in the way of that. If the most important thing is getting the optimal friends and/or boyfriend/girlfriend for you, then high expectations are the way to go. Because high expectations are what help create lasting, fulfilling relationships. It’s how we find people who go along with our idiosyncrasies, and whose idiosyncrasies we’ll alternately love and tolerate. It’s how we create a community. It’s how we create a place where we can be ourselves with abandon, and how we celebrate others’ true selves as well. It’s how we find people we can discuss crazy details of our shared favorite things. It’s how we get treated as people who matter, whose concerns and opinions and needs matter. That’s what high expectations are: they are the expectation that the other person is going to care enough to care about what makes us us, and to sometimes bend for us – just as we would bend for them. And if you find someone who shares your love of Foucault who is also interested in social justice and is willing to move with you through this thing we call life, all the better.

Sexism Impedes Good Grammar

2010-06-10T18:22:00.003-04:00

Lightning kills girlfriend

That? Right there? Is a Real Life headline. Granted, it's in the Winnipeg Free Press, but this is a headline that exists out in the world, and in a print version!

Now, reading that, you'd be excused if you thought the lightning had killed its girlfriend. And maybe wonder when it was that electric bolts could form interpersonal bonds - or you may be more open-minded than I am and have no problem with atmospheric forces-and-human relationships. Either way.

Except, as you'd probably figured out after a minute, lightning didn't kill its girlfriend. Lightning killed someone else's girlfriend.

And here's where sexism messes with grammar. It would have been just as easy to say, "Lightning Kills Hiker" or "Lightning Kills Woman". And both would be correct, and both would be immediately more accurate, because it wouldn't allow for the woman in question to be connected romantically to the weather event that caused her demise.

But there was a need to make the woman defined in relation to someone else. A male someone else. And the story told in blurb form takes shape mostly around this male someone else's story, and his plans to offer a ring of engagement. So, instead of being about the woman, and how she died before her boyfriend proposed, it becomes about the man, and how his girlfriend died before he could propose. Being that this was, I hope, supposed to be an article about the death of this particular woman, I would think it would make more sense for the writers to try to portray the former rather than the latter. I would think wrong.

That is sexism in action. And it leads to poor headline construction, which is a travesty in its own right.

H/T to superior olive at Shakesville.

If This Counts as Anti-Religious, I Must Be The Anti-Christ

2010-06-08T17:53:00.005-04:00

So, it's been nearly a month since I first heard episode 184 of Real Time with Bill Maher. And let me tell you, this was the episode that made me think, "Maybe I shouldn't be listening to Bill Maher at work". Because I was spitting mad. You wanna know how mad I was? Well, I'll let Madeline Kahn take it away:

That reminds me: I should probably buy Clue at some point.

So, what got me so worked up? Bill Maher's discussion of anti-religious sentiment in the "Liberal Media" with S.E. Cupp. Because nothing makes me more pissed off than the assertion that any media is anti-religion. Because, as an atheist, I can point out to you pretty damn quickly how not anti-religious media, in general, really is. Bill Maher is a somewhat less than stunning example of actual anti-religious sentiment in today's media, less than stunning both due to his anti-religion as well as the application of his anti-religion in his anti-religious arguments. So, first part of the conversation that had me responding to Cupp, out loud, in a cubicle, at my Very Religious place of work. So, hold onto your hats, folks, because this is going to be a doozy of a long post. Aaaaaaaand, start:

BILL MAHER: Let me give you your examples. This is the - I'm reading the - this is the end of your "A Decade of Lowlights From the Liberal Media".
S.E. CUPP: Yeah.
MAHER: These are your first three examples: Here's Joy Behar, she's tal - and this is one of your examples - she's talking about -
[Talking Over Each Other]
CUPP: And she's a friend.
MAHER: evolution. She said -
[Talking Over Each Other Again]
CUPP: I do her show.
MAHER: "You have to teach both. Darwinism is not some kind of religious fervor. Teach both." So she's for teaching both Darw-
CUPP: No. What she said was that teaching Creationism to kids should be akin to child abuse.
MAHER: No. She said you have to teach both.
CUPP: She said that facetiously.
MAHER: Well, that's interest that you can divine that.
CUPP: She said on The View - she said on The View that teaching Creationism should be -
[Talking Over Each Other AGAIN]
MAHER: Darw-
CUPP: child abuse.
MAHER: I have it - yes she did. She said, "Darwinism is not some kind of religious fervor thing. You want your children to go into the world being ignorant? That's child abuse". Yeah, it is.
CUPP: I-I-I don't think that's true. I think and-and-and-
[You Know The Drill, Right?]
MAHER: That's not an anti-religious statement.
CUPP: the majority of the people who teach their kids Creationism because it's a nice Christian allegory I don't think are guilty of child abuse.

I'm going to stop here, for a second. Because Cupp's argument here is bullshit, but what truly makes it crap is that last line: "the majority of people who teach their kids Creationism because it's a nice Christian allegory". She flips the argument on its head. She changes what Creationism is. Creationism, as something that is taught in schools, is not an allegory. It is being taught as fact, or at the very least a theory at least on par with Darwinism. Allegories are what Aesop used. Allegories are fictional stories we can cull wisdom or understanding from. I don't have a problem with allegories. I love allegories. I have a problem with people insisting their religious doctrine be taught in public schools.

Here's my problem with Creationism. It isn't that some people believe it, though I do weep for the state of the world when people can turn that much of a blind eye to scientific fact. It is that a segment of the population wants to insist that their version of the world be codified as scientific truth. It is that a bunch of powerful, bullying people want to push their vision of the world as it was formed onto every child in their community.

If a parent wants their child to believe that the world was created in seven days, that human beings have always been as we are now, and that the earth is significantly younger than any scientific test has led us to believe, they are welcome to teach their child that. Within the comfort of their own home. Or in their church. Or both. But they do not have the right to have that belief imparted within the confines of a public school in the guise of science. That isn't anti-religion. It is pro-education. It is pro-understanding. It is pro- "You can teach your child whatever the fuck you want outside these walls". For S.E. Cupp (who I keep wanting to call "C.E. Cupp", for some reason) to call Joy Behar's remarks anti-religion is either a fundamental misunderstanding of religion (in which case, I think she wasted a lot of money on her Masters in religious studies), or purposefully misconstruing "religion" with "Christian Fundamentalism". And that's because there are plenty of Christians who do offer up Genesis as an allegory, but don't believe in Creationism and do believe in the Theory of Evolution. Some of those Christians, I have even met.

And here's how not anti-religious the media is: whether or not she was being facetious, Joy Behar said "they" should teach both - and I'm assuming the "they" are the schools. No. The schools, and the teachers who have gone to institutions of higher learning in order to teach science at public schools, should teach the theory of evolution. Stop. They should explain what "theory" means in scientific terms. And if parents want their children to hold a differing view, they can either pull their children from those classes when evolution is being taught and teach them whichever theory of life on earth floats their boat, or they can allow their children to be taught evolutionary theory and then also teach them whichever theory of life on earth floats their boat. But that is the parents' responsibility. And, frankly, I find it quite ludicrous that after all the screaming the Right does about parental responsibilities, they want to foist this one off onto public institutions.

And, onward:

MAHER: Okay, the second one you quoted is John Meacham, the editor of the -
CUPP: Newsweek.
MAHER: Newsweek. We have - he's a religious guy.
CUPP: Yes, he is.
MAHER: He doesn't like -
CUPP: The cover of Newsweek declared the death of Christianity - on Easter [laughs disbelievingly].
MAHER: Are you kidding me.
CUPP: It's preposterous.
MAHER: Jesus or Mary is on the cover of Newsweek or Time, like, every other week [TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: I subscribe to Newsweek. This is pretty accurate.]. If Jesus had an office on Sunset Boulevard and you walked down the corridor, he'd have his magazine covers on every wall!
...
CUPP: But Bill - one of those - one of those - one of those stories -
MAHER [Talking Over Her]: You're crazy.
CUPP: was saying that you can actually read - if you read the Bible correctly - it actually supports gay marriage. I mean, it's one thing to show these covers, but come on!
MAHER: Well that's - you're picking out one little raisin in a giant piece of bread, there, lady.

Stopping again, because as much as I now love the phrase "picking out one little raisin in a giant piece of bread", this here highlights Bill Maher's mediocrity in actually winning arguments.

First, declaring the death of Christianity isn't anti-religion. At most, it can be anti-Christian, and only the most arrogant fuck would dare insinuate Christianity=Religion. Secondly, it isn't anti-religious to believe that a religious text can be read in a different way than the dominant view. That'd be like someone being anti-Shakespeare because they wrote an analysis alleging Antonio is gay in The Merchant of Venice. It is profoundly pro-Christianity to look to the Bible for guidance, and find helpful answers within. Lisa Miller's Newsweek article, the one Cupp refers to, makes several salient points, most notably:

Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.

In other words, Newsweek and Lisa Miller aren't anti-religion. They're just arguing against a certain tenet of certain people's religion. Miller's argument is very much rooted in her reading of religion itself (and she's not alone). So, what Cupp is arguing isn't that the media is anti-religion; just that it is anti-the-Right's-religion-of-choice. Because it isn't even anti-Christian. It may argue against the tenets of Fundamentalist Christian belief. But that isn't the long and short of religion.

Once more, into the breach:

[BREAK in the RELIGIOUS TALK]
MAHER: Let me get back to the premise that the liberals and the media are anti-religion. The pre - the things I talk about, are questioning, "Is faith good? Or that prayer doesn't work. That's the things I say. It's just me and a couple of cartoons -
CUPP [Interrupting]: No! You're so wrong!
MAHER: Who are saying that.
CUPP: No!
MAHER: Tell me one other person in the media -
[Talking Over Each Other]
CUPP: I'll tell you! I will go down.
MAHER: who ever questioned whether faith was good or prayer worked. Brian Williams?
CUPP: No.
MAHER: Keith Olbermann?
CUPP: I will go - I will go -
MAHER: Katie Couric?! None of them.
CUPP: Ohmygod! I can give you those examples right now!
MAHER: Tell me -
CUPP: Chris Matthews - Chris Matthews said -
MAHER: Chris Matthews is a devout Catholic!
CUPP: Chris Matthews said that Sarah Palin and Michael Steele praying on big decisions isn't normal. Rachel Maddow said that the National Day of Prayer infringes on her right to religious freedom.
MAHER: It does.
CUPP: Keith Olbermann called pro-lifers religious jihadists. I could go on.
MAHER: That's not - they're not questioning the essence of religion. This is a country that worships religion.
CUPP: Of course they are, Bill. Of course they are.

And there endeth the religion discussion.

And here is where Cupp is oh so very wrong. Well, maybe not about Chris Matthews; but even I, disliker in the extreme of Chris Matthews, is going to assume that what Cupp said and what Matthews stated probably doesn't meet up eye to eye. And I'm not even going to try to argue that Keith Olbermann never compared pro-lifers to jihadists, because I'm pretty sure he did. But there is a difference in criticizing the religious and how they practice their religion - like, by harassing pregnant women seeking abortions and celebrating the deaths of abortion providers or by claiming God has provided you with the answer - and being anti-religion. To equate the two is to wrap the religious in the protection of religion, because criticizing them and possibly how they demonstrate their religiosity is to suddenly become anti all religions, everywhere. And that is a ridiculous standard.

As for Rachel Maddow's position, I am pro-religion, including but not limited to gospel music, religious architecture, and church signs that say things like, "Now Open Between Easter and Christmas", "Our Sundays Are Better than Baskin Robbins", and "A Bible in the Hand is Worth Two on the Shelf". I'm a fan of the screed put by the philosopher Lennon, that being "Whatever gets you through the night, 'salright, 'salright". Unless what gets you through the night is telling me how to get through my night, because I've been getting through my night for 24 straight years fine and dandy. But the National Day of Prayer is something that makes me very uncomfortable, because it does infringe on my right to religious freedom. It is a day encouraging people to pray, and that doesn't just alienate me as an individual; it makes those with my beliefs alien. It makes us other. And for a people who are already pretty thoroughly othered, it is a bit of a blow to have an entire day dedicated to something that does that by my government. The government I voted for. And it comes down to one truth:

The absence of the mention of God is not the same as denying the existence of God. It merely gives those of us who do not believe a bit of breathing room.

Cupp, as an atheist, is choosing to defend the monolith of Christianity, and the section of Christianity that is Evangelical at that, for whatever the reason. But while the proof she pulls out may indicate that there are those on the left who disagree strongly with Evangelicalism, that there are those on the left who are anti-Evangelical, she has no evidence of anti-religious sentiment on the part of the Left or the media - again, aside from Bill Maher. Ironically, due to her constant defense of Christianity's privileged position in media matters, she herself is anti-religious, because she is anti-religious plurality. She is only pro-Evangelicalism. Hopefully, the next lefty she tussles with will point that out to her, and will point out that other sects of Christianity also exist. Because Cupp doesn't seem to recognize that fact.

Necessary Reading: "What Kind of Card Is Race?"

2010-06-06T14:04:00.003-04:00

Excerpts from Tim Wise's "What Kind of Card Is Race?", via Mandolin at Alas, a Blog:

Asked about the tendency for people of color to play the "race card," I responded as I always do: First, by noting that the regularity with which whites respond to charges of racism by calling said charges a ploy, suggests that the race card is, at best, equivalent to the two of diamonds. In other words, it's not much of a card to play, calling into question why anyone would play it (as if it were really going to get them somewhere). Secondly, I pointed out that white reluctance to acknowledge racism isn't new, and it isn't something that manifests only in situations where the racial aspect of an incident is arguable. Fact is, whites have always doubted claims of racism at the time they were being made, no matter how strong the evidence, as will be seen below. Finally, I concluded by suggesting that whatever "card" claims of racism may prove to be for the black and brown, the denial card is far and away the trump, and whites play it regularly: a subject to which we will return.

...

Nothing, absolutely nothing, has to do with race nowadays, in the eyes of white America writ large. But the obvious question is this: if we have never seen racism as a real problem, contemporary to the time in which the charges are being made, and if in all generations past we were obviously wrong to the point of mass delusion in thinking this way, what should lead us to conclude that now, at long last, we've become any more astute at discerning social reality than we were before? Why should we trust our own perceptions or instincts on the matter, when we have run up such an amazingly bad track record as observers of the world in which we live? In every era, black folks said they were the victims of racism and they were right. In every era, whites have said the problem was exaggerated, and we have been wrong.

Read the whole thing.

A Post With No Real Title

2010-06-06T11:16:00.006-04:00

**Disclaimer** This is not written to or about any guy in particular. But it is something I have been ruminating about, pretty much since I encountered the catalyst for this post.

A little while ago, my friend John wrote a piece on his (now defunct, as an act of protest and personal fulfillment best outlined here) Facebook page about how to react when a woman says something to him like, "men suck". It was, in short, a plea for men to not get their backs up about such a statement, to not feel personally affronted, and to not think that meant action was required. What I think was missing from an otherwise excellent and succinct piece is the meaning of a woman you're close to offering that (and, hopefully, the reasons behind it), to you. It means she sees you as a confidante, as an ally, as someone who is not going to take the experience that generated that response - her experience - and make it about you. It means you are included on a list - sometimes, a very short list - of Safe Spaces, and Safe People.

I'm not personally a fan of "men suck" exaltations, partially because I find, most often, that people in general suck, and also partially because I like to think better of men as a whole than to lump them all in with the assholes who on more than one occasion have made my gas-getting a hellish experience. That's one of the reasons why I'm a feminist. Because I believe men can be better, and should be expected to be better. Just like women. Here, in this space, I feel that it is unproductive to the max, because this is a place where at its best (and oftentimes, it is not at its best), I try to figure out why the things that irritate me about the world we live in are the way they are. And, in short, it isn't because men suck. A lot of men sucking is just one symptom of a larger kyriachical system, and it is that system that needs examining and dismantling on a large scale.

But what I am a fan of are safe spaces. I'm a fan of allowing members of a marginalized group to release the tension and anger and fear they hold toward a group with more systemic privilege (and whose members wield that privilege), in a non-violent, fairly benign fashion. Sometimes, that's saying something along the lines of "members of ______ group suck. A lot". And sometimes, as a woman, it really does feel like men really do suck. I don't mean, "Those guys don't want to date me. All men suck". I mean, "This is the third guy in as many hours who has conversed with my breasts instead of with me. Men suck." I don't mean, "That guy over there didn't hold the door open for me. Men suck". I mean, "I can't hold the reasonable expectation I will not be forcibly groped if I go see my friend's boyfriend's band. Men suck". The difference between those two thoughts are huge. The former in both cases is myopic and petty, and if that is why the girl in front of you is saying "men suck", then she, indeed, is a jerk. Just like a guy would be if he said "Women don't want to date me. They suck". But if it is the latter, if she has chosen to share with you how men suck when you are indeed of the male persuasion, then it means something about you. It means, she believes you are someone who will be sympathetic. You're going to be someone who isn't going to take this moment and say, "Not all men suck. I don't suck". Because, hey, this moment isn't about you. This conversation isn't about you. This conversation isn't about how, in order to not hurt your, Guy She's Talking To's, feelings, she needs to frame it as "The People (Because It Isn't Only Guys) Who Behave This Way Because of the Kyriachy Suck". It's just about her.

And if she's a friend, then sometimes the thing you as a guy have to realize is, what she needs is someone on her team. Someone who will understand that sometimes unwillingly being part of a dominant group of people is a no-win situation, because being enlightened means you (hopefully) are not a random bar groper; but at the same time, you don't have a sticker that says, "HI! I'm An Enlightened Non-Groper!" That is a problem for you, the man of the enlightened non-groper sect, because you automatically get grouped in with those who do grope. That's truly a serious problem. It means that you may not be able to approach a woman in a bar, on the street, after a class, at the library, in an elevator, or a bookstore. It can make it extremely difficult to foster interpersonal interaction with the opposite sex. Because, well, speaking from experience, women may be suspicious of you. Because you are a man. That? Is not fun, and also not fair. And it is logical and completely reasonable for you, as a genuinely nice guy who is a non-groper, to get a wee bit pissed and hate that women may lump you in with those other guys who do those things. It may lead to being pissed that your friend is saying, "Men suck, because they do things that lead me to feeling small, insignificant, and afraid" - because you aren't one of those guys who does that. But, as long as the "men suck" stems from something of significance, generally the "men suck" isn't so much a personal philosophy (unless they're of the Mary Daly persuasion) than a moment of utter personal frustration. A moment of personal frustration she thinks you can handle, because you are her Safe Space. And that ends up sucking doubly for you, because instead of getting a cookie for being an Enlightened Man, what you get sometimes is access to the fear and anger and hurt that the women closest to you may hold, from time to time, toward men, because of the debasing things some men do and say to them. That can become your cross to bear, and it isn't a fun or stylish cross at all.

Now, my view on what "men suck" means comes primarily when it exits a woman's mouth who has an interest in gender and gender construction, or is uttered in response to a sexist act.

There's another side, a side John didn't touch.

And that is the side of women who are either jerks, or who demonstrate a want for men to behave in the traditional masculine way, and who then claim that men suck when they do, actually, act in that traditional masculine way. That? Isn't what I'm talking about here. That "men are stupid because they can't make dinner, so I'll go home and make dinner" bit needs to be challenged, anywhere and any way it can be. Same thing with the jerky, "Those guys won't date me, so all guys suck", and it should be challenged in the same way a guy saying that same thing about women should be challenged. Because the first is a reinforcement of male inadequacy as dictated by gender norms, and the second is a personal myopic moment that has no baring on whether the greater gender in question does suck. Or even if the people who rebuffed the asker-outer suck, because they may not.

Those women are complications in an already complicated matter, because gender inequality is that strange conundrum where men and women are certain to interact. Men have mothers. Straight men have (or want) women as significant others. Women have fathers, and straight women have (or want) men as significant others. Since boys and girls are oftentimes socialized together, due to the phenomenon of schooling and also of the possibility a sister may have a brother, the dynamics are incredibly interwoven. And that's part of why men hear how much their fellow men suck. Because unlike some other groups - where whites can limit their interaction with people of other races (and thus not hear, unless they go poking around, how much they suck), and straights can oftentimes limit their interactions with people who are out and proud (and thus, again, not hear how much they suck unless they make an effort) - men and women are fairly bound together.

Because of that, in the end, I think the guy on the receiving end of "men suck" have the ability to suss out the situation at hand, to see if it is of the "a guy did something untoward, and now I'm hurting" persuasion, or if it is of the "this guy I'm dating can't do his own laundry, and instead of taking him to the washer and teaching him, I'm doing it for him and complaining about how much men suck because they can't do simple household tasks". And from there, decide if this is really the correct moment to go, "But I don't do that" or to be the Safe Space. The choice is, ultimately, yours. As it is for all of us who carry some bags of privilege around.

My Favorite Photo I've Taken

2010-06-05T13:45:00.003-04:00

So, I went out the the Southwest. You know how you can tell where you belong? By going other places, seeing them, and experiencing them. I belong pretty much where I am, in New England, or at least in the Northeast.

Reason? The Pacific Ocean smells wrong. When I got out of my car on the monday morning after my return, I could smell the ocean. It smelled like home.

Also, the West is beautiful. Vibrant, even. And going out to California, it reminded me of Joni Mitchell's song California, how she sings that she doesn't want to stay where she is, "It's too old and cold and settled in its ways here". But I like the oldness and the coldness.

It was like sensory overload, with the sky seemingly so expansive and the mountains being so tall against the sky, and I wanted to go back where the sky seems sometimes close enough to touch and the mountains are smaller, and full of a lively green.

At the same time, though, moments like my friend frantically pulling over on a major roadway to get pictures of the setting sun illuminating the Joshua Trees on the ridge kind of made it all worth it.

Quote of the Day

2010-05-27T14:27:00.002-04:00

And I don't know about you, Cristen, but swimming with weights on doesn't sound like much fun. It sounds like a recipe for disaster.

- Molly, from "The Not So Skimpy History of the Bikini" episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You

Keith Olbermann: Today's Worst Person in the World

2010-05-25T19:24:00.003-04:00

Look, Keith, I like you. I listen to your show as I drive into work daily, and I would watch you live if I had access to a television at 8 o'clock on any night except mondays, when Chuck is on. Actually, I probably wouldn't, because I'm bad with commercials. I get all restless. And my method works fine for me, because it gives me something that is approximately as long as my ride to listen to, and while you're on television, your show isn't exactly on the cutting edge of the visual medium. Except for Oddball. I kind of regret not being able to see things like Justin Bieber run into glass doors.

Anyway, I think we've established, through my semi-frequent posting about how much you and your suits rock, that I am a fan. I enjoy the sports talk! I enjoy your random freak outs! I follow you on twitter! Your pictures from various baseball stadiums are cool! I even read your blog!

So. The thing that I don't expect? Really ever? Is to be hit by some weird hardy-hars about sexual harassment on my way into work. From you. Because, dude, you are a progressive. And I know, I know. Progressive≠feminist. Progressive≠good on gender issues. Progressives can sometimes be sexist dipshits. Progressives can sometimes not be sexist dipshits, but still say some really sexist dipshitty type stuff. You, yourself, have said some sexist dipshitty type stuff in the past.

I should probably let you in on what has brought on my ire, shouldn't I?

It's this:

KEITH OLBERMANN: Billo replied, "Yeah, I thought that they - basically, in the very beginning - should stuff every member of NBC News in that hole".

Maybe we should listen, Bill, because based on the Andrea Mackris lawsuit, I gather that you were the expert on unsuccessful attempts to stuff things into holes.

Whoa. That is a lot of misogyny in a very teeny tiny space!

First, there's the problem of exactly how the alleged sexual assault is framed here, ie: referring to a woman's vagina as a "hole". Problematic, for that whole "dehumanizing" aspect. Also, for separating the vagina from the woman, and vice versa.

But let's move right on the the part wherein Bill O'Reilly is subject to your derision not because he allegedly repeatedly sexually harassed a member of his staff, but because he didn't succeed in having sex with her.

No.

Seriously, no.

Let me spell this out for you: the problem is that O'Reilly allegedly repeatedly made sexual comments to someone who worked for him. O'Reilly should be derided and looked at as less of a human being because he did that. Not because he failed in his ultimate goal to loofah Mackris up.

You are mocking him as being less of a man because he didn't seal the deal. He isn't less of a man because of that. He is less of a worthwhile human being because he sexually harassed someone.

And for that, Keith Olbermann, you are Today's Worst Person.... IN THE WORLD!

Because You're a Woman

2010-05-05T18:44:00.002-04:00

It occurred to me, whilst I was showering (which is where a lot of my good ideas percolate and then go on to die quickly because I have no way of keeping them alive because there is NOWHERE TO WRITE THEM oh my god why don't I have those shower crayons my roomies and I had in college?!) that privilege is a hard thing to fully recognize because it is essentially a passive power. You can't walk into a room and go, "I'm white, I'm a guy, give me a job!" Well, you could. But that probably would make them not want to give you a job. What you can do is walk into a room, hand them a good resume, and then have that person interviewing you be influenced by the fact you're white and a guy and then give you the job over someone who may be just as qualified but is not white and a guy. This is the problem with privilege. You could walk out of that room thinking it was your excellent interviewing skillz and a well put together resume that got you the job - when in reality it may have been those things plus.

There is nothing wrong, on the individual level, with getting a job based on a plus. Well, there might be. But for sake of argument, say there isn't.

When things get hairy is when getting jobs based on a plus happens a lot, and for the same group of plus people.

And it is very hard to recognize when that plus comes into play - when the privilege you unintentionally wield influences the events around you.

I have a lot of privilege. That privilege helps me get away with doing a lot of things and saying a lot of things someone who didn't look like me wouldn't get away with. I've always told my friends that I get away with a lot of crap because I act like I'm right; I act like I should get away with, say, yelling at a cop or telling my Old White Guy boss that we need to hire more people who aren't Old White Guys and who won't become Old White Guys as part of our sales force - in those terms. And I'm convinced that is part of it. But the other part, and why I've been conditioned to feel like I have the right to do X or Y, is what I am. I am middle class. I am white. I am small, both in height and in size. And I look like I'm twelve. These things don't help people take me seriously, but it does help me when it comes to getting away with telling people they're idiots.

And I don't think I should get away with something because of any of those factors; but I also don't know when it does and when it doesn't. So I can't really mitigate the effect that has on my life, and what it does for me. And if I weren't annoyingly obsessed with myself, I may never have examined the fact that when everyone says I look like I'm twelve, and that my nicknames at work are "Little Girl" and "Little One", those along with the other aspects give me a certain amount of protection and privilege I otherwise would not have.

Now, some of my privilege will be mitigated by age. Hopefully, when I'm in my mid-forties, no one will be calling me "Little One", although I appreciate the affectionate name now. But I have no way of truly taking that perspective others have of me and dismantling it myself. I have no way of telling a person, "Don't react to me as you would a small child". Because, like the "I'm white, I'm a guy" thing, it would probably not elicit the desired reaction.

Which takes me to this: I listen to Stuff Mom Never Told You, because Molly and Cristen are awesome. The last podcast of theirs I listened to was "Are political quotas bad for women?", and in there a couple of interesting questions were asked.

Cristen posed the question,

Is that at the same time not only dismantling our ideas of equal opportunity and democracy but also almost categorizing women once again into this, like, ind of separate, special little corner that they need to hang out in and, you know, work on their, like child care, etc., types of issues rather than allowing us to, you know, jump in the fray and get in there right beside, um, elbow our way in alongside men?

And I like the question, because it is a good one. Is forcibly making space for women in different arenas the best way to get women into those areas? But I also like the question, because it demonstrates an issue of framing. Same thing with Molly's quandary:

You'd always have to wonder if you were in power because you're a woman, or if you really had something to contribute to government.

The problem I have with how the question is framed is that in the first question, Cristen herself is separating so-called "Women's Issues" like child care and equal pay from societal issues. It is the age-old problem where men are seen to speak universally and women are seen to speak only about women.

And the problem I have with Molly's quandary is that we very rarely reverse that question and look at the invisible privilege held therein. We almost never ask of (white) men, "Are you in power because you're a man, or because you really had something to contribute?" We'll ask if there was some sort of dynasty thing at play (like with Bush the Second), but we rarely ask if a man got the job because he's a man.

So, when Molly is worried about people looking at women in power, is worried about women in power looking at themselves, and wondering if the fact that they are women was the necessary plus to push them into power, she is demonstrating something profound. We worry about whether or not women, or African Americans, or Latinos, or [fill in your minority here] got to where they are because of Political Correctness. Because they had some Plus that pushed them above the deserving White Guy. Very rarely, do we as a society, ponder whether some white guy got to where he is because he is a guy, and white. That is one of the essences of privilege: your plus not factoring into the general consciousness of why you are where you are. And because that is one of the essences of privilege, it is incredibly difficult to recognize it as such, in general and on the individual level. Because unless something egregious happened (or unless the Peter Principle is to blame), a lot of people who have the jobs they have deserve them. And the question then becomes whether or not the plus that pushed them over the edge to jobhood was earned, or was a function of an unearned quotient like gender privilege or racial privilege or even religious privilege.

Jeans, and Consent

2010-05-04T18:50:00.002-04:00

When I was around the age of twelve, I read a quote from some judge in some rape case somewhere that basically amounted to "girls can't get raped if they're wearing jeans, because you need help to get someone's jeans off". I, for my part, was thrilled. Jeans were already an essential part of any outfit, and to learn that they were practically a sure-fire way to not be raped, ever, was just awesome. I should also mention that 12 was the age I was when I was first cat-called, so the possibility of sexual violence being done to my person was probably more present than it would have otherwise been. I excitedly told my mother the news: Jeans Prevent Rape!!

And she scoffed at me.

I was a bit confused, and she never truly explained the nature of her scoffing. Presumably, because she thought I'd figured it out in that moment. Because, well, how stupid would I have to be to think that JEANS prevented someone from being raped?

Apparently, as stupid as a judge in Australia.

I've since become aware that jeans do not stop rape. That the idea that jeans could stop rape was referenced in my Newsweek because it was just that crazy everyone reading the quote would recognize the complete lack of validity without explanation. Everyone except twelve-year old me, that is. Because twelve-year old me was still trying to figure out the magic equation that would prevent anyone from touching me in a way I didn't want, ever. It saddens me that the rest of the world hasn't caught up; that Newsweek was wrong. That the idea doesn't seem as ludicrous to a whole host of people as it should.

Long, Rambly, Stream-of-Conscious Thought

2010-04-15T20:44:00.003-04:00

I'm not the hugest fan of J.K. Rowling. Don't get me wrong - I've read all of Harry Potter. I've read all of Harry Potter several times. One of the sweetest gifts my sister has ever given me was, using her own money, preordering Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, so I could have it The Day it came out. I got it, and read it all in about 8 or so hours. Straight. And bawled like a little baby.

Which, actually, brings me to what made me not the hugest Rowling fan. She kills so many of her damn characters! Which, yes, ironic, coming from a Whedonite. But Whedon always makes me feel like that character just *poof* died, and there was nothing anyone could ever do about it, seriously, it wasn't even his idea - it totally just happened, just like in life, ya know?Rowling's deaths always seemed a little... forced. And then, I started recognizing some bad gender themes, plus the whole "Dumbledore was always gay!" thing with little going on in the text to truly back that up, going down and I was less of a fan.

That being said, maybe I am a huge fan of Rowling as a person. Maybe I'm just not the hugest fan of her authorship of children's books. Which, you know, is always possible. Why? Because I am in love with this piece written by her, especially this part:

I had become a single mother when my first marriage split up in 1993. In one devastating stroke, I became a hate figure to a certain section of the press, and a bogeyman to the Tory Government. Peter Lilley, then Secretary of State at the DSS, had recently entertained the Conservative Party conference with a spoof Gilbert and Sullivan number, in which he decried “young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing list”. The Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood, castigated single-parent families from St Mellons, Cardiff, as “one of the biggest social problems of our day”. (John Redwood has since divorced the mother of his children.) Women like me (for it is a curious fact that lone male parents are generally portrayed as heroes, whereas women left holding the baby are vilified) were, according to popular myth, a prime cause of social breakdown, and in it for all we could get: free money, state-funded accommodation, an easy life.

An easy life. Between 1993 and 1997 I did the job of two parents, qualified and then worked as a secondary school teacher, wrote one and a half novels and did the planning for a further five. For a while, I was clinically depressed. To be told, over and over again, that I was feckless, lazy — even immoral — did not help.

It isn't that I think everyone on any country's welfare is automatically someone who could become Rowling, or that we should have a welfare state because Rowlings are possible from it - that if only we support the poor, they could become multibillionaires themselves. Instead, it is about worth. It is about what we think we owe the most vulnerable in our societies. It is a "there but for the grace of the mysteries of capitalism go I" thing, too, but it is also something else.

The poor are easily knocked down. I don't mean, you can easily knock a randomly specific poor person down. I mean that, good economy or bad economy, the poor are easy targets of anger and derision. Because, well, it is the easiest way to separate the poor from us. If the poor are poor because they are lazy, they are not like us. If the poor are poor because they are shiftless, they are not like us. If the poor are poor because they choose to be uneducated, they are not like us.

Here in America, there's an awful lot of race baggage that gets mixed in with the class and - yes - gender baggage. There's the "welfare queen" stereotype, for one, and that is one that still holds strong today. As in, a woman where I work, just today, told me that there were women out there who were popping out kids in order to get state assistance and were "working the system instead of just working". My response? There have got to be easier ways to game the system. And, the women my co-worker was describing are almost assuredly minorities, because she did the "Those (Name of City) people" thing that the less uncouth people in my office do when they are saying something with racist undertones that they don't want to just say with racist tone-tones. Which I, on one hand, appreciate because, hey, it means that these people understand that saying "all (blank) people are like X" is unacceptable. But on the other hand, it makes it harder to say, "whatever do you mean, 'those (Name of City) people?" Because the only answer to that seems to be, "You know...."

Sorry, tangent there. Anywho. What I'm saying is this: those on the edges of our society - and that society over there across the pond where Rowling lives and is commenting on - are generally the ones pushed totally off the grid when someone decides we need to tighten our government's financial belt. And it makes short-term political sense. You don't want to do anything that could anger people who actually have money and power, because those people with money and power can come back and make your political career a living hell. Because they have money and power. I mean, look at what happens when you decide to not make an expensive, unnecessary, and unwanted military plane! It riles up a whole bunch of powerful people. Including one Chris Dodd! Who should know better!

Which is why J.K. Rowling wrote this piece. Because there are a ton of people on that edge. And she has been there. And they are routinely made to be less important, the dredges of society really; and because of that, cuts to the very social net that keeps them afloat are seen as being perfectly reasonable.

Other parts of the budget - the military budget, for one, or Medicare and Social Security - are more sacrosanct. Not saying they'll never be touched, but one is seen as the way to prove you are a tough politician who would never, ever endanger the country and the others are services used by huge swaths of the country, swaths of the country who have money and power. This is true to the point where Republicans (Republicans!) were defending Medicare last summer in an effort to derail health reform.

And what does that mean? Well, it means that I think we need to stand up by our poor. I think it means we need more people like J.K. Rowling - people who those regular folks respect and like and admire - to stand up and talk about what it is like to be poor. What it is like to need those government programs, and how much it can hurt when they are not there. It means we may have to reevaluate who matters, and who should be taken care of.

Who Is Like The Beast?

2010-04-13T20:13:00.004-04:00

Remember when Speaker Pelosi walked arm and arm in a Civil Rights March across Independence Avenue, from the House buildings over to the Capitol. In three years, I have never seen Nancy Pelosi cross the street the way that you saw in that picture. They deliberately went through that crowd, perhaps to try and incite something.
- Michelle Bachmann

If she was really worried about violence and she thought these people were violent, why would you grab a big hammer and walk into a sea of people?

Did anyone say to Nancy Pelosi, "You're inciting violence. You're slapping them across the face"?
- Glenn Beck

They faked - they were trying to provoke an incident. There's no reason to walk above ground to get to the Capitol building from their offices. There's tunnels underneath with trains, subways, and so forth. They're purpose - send the Congressional Black Caucus to walk over, send Pelosi over there with a big gavel, trying to provoke an incident.
- Rush Limbaugh

Listen, I know the three people listed above can in no way really be described as serious people in search of an honest debate on the issues. But one of the things I found so interesting in their various statements was how close these come to some classic rape apologia statements - you know, the ones that go, "She shouldn't have been there", "Did you see how she was dressed?" "She obviously wanted it", etc.

I especially find it interesting how the act of crossing the street, whether or not Speaker Pelosi does so often, is deemed indefensible here.

There is something happening in this vision of reality that seems to claim any and all negative actions taken against a person should be that person's responsibility. Even if all she did was cross a street when a bunch of protesters were out there showing their might.

There is something else that I find strange here as well, and that is this idea that not allowing a protest to effect your actions - or to not respond in the manner desired by the protesters - is suddenly a call to incite violence.

If Michelle Bachmann is right and Nancy Pelosi truly never has "cross[ed] the street the way that you saw" before, then what she seems to have been doing is creating a demonstration of her own. Not a show of force, no matter what Limbaugh and Beck think about her big gavel. But a demonstration of determination, a demonstration that she and those with her were not going to be bullied or be shamed for what they saw as a necessary vote for needed legislation - no matter how much they wanted/didn't want that was left out/put in the bill.

In effect, Nancy Pelosi seemed to be giving a clear message to the protesters, and to those people like Beck and Bachmann. That message was that she was proud of her accomplishments and her vote, and she was not going to be scared underground because there were people above ground who didn't like it and who didn't want to see her walk to the Capitol Building.

Frankly, it was a message that she deserved to walk up to that particular building in the light of day just as much as they deserved to demonstrate outside that building in the light of day. That she and her rights weren't dissolved simply because this group didn't like her and her ilk very much.

And if that very action was seen as a provocation, if hanging onto a giant gavel that was first used when Medicare was passed while walking was a horrible indignity those protesting and those commenting favorably on the protests, then the problem lies more with them than with her.

She was just, you know, doing her thing. Walking along. Being proud.

Too often, doing your thing, walking along, being proud, carrying a giant gavel is used as an explanation for someone else's actions.

Hopefully, enough people will see how silly this line of thinking is when it comes to someone like Nancy Pelosi and the passage of healthcare, and think back on that giant gavel. Hopefully, enough people will see how silly this line of thinking is when someone is walking down a street, and recognize that simply the act of living is in no way something that prompts an angry, violent response.

There are the things Nancy Pelosi talks about, when she brought up her experiences in 1970s San Francisco, that could be used, by some, as a balance, a sort of, "You're all hypocrites" and "the Left talks about provocations to violence too, so she shouldn't have walked there".

For the record, Pelosi has said, "I think we all have to take responsibility for our actions and our words. We are a free country and this balance between freedom and safety is one that we have to carefully balance... ...But again, our country is great because people can say what they think and believe. But I also think they have to take responsibility for any incitement they may cause."

And a person could claim that Pelosi is simply getting hit from the Right with essentially the same stick she advocates for here. I don't think so, though. Because there is a difference between walking to a place you have to go anyway, and speaking in such a way that could incite violence. There is a difference between carrying a comically large gavel, and, say, a blogger who urges his readership to break DNC office windows in an attempt to avoid a larger - armed - conflict.

I happen to agree with Pelosi's statement. I'm a free speech advocate, but I also believe in a speaker's responsibility - along with the responsibility of the rest of us to call out speech we find to be unsavory. I am a fan of verbal self-restraint, though that may astonish anyone who has heard me babble for any length of time. I'm a fan of recognizing the power your words hold, and realizing the effect those words may have on an audience. I'm not a fan of the government making that line, and forming those distinctions.

I started this out by making allusions between rape apologia and what these three right-wing people said about Speaker Pelosi's march on the Capitol Building. But what I find interesting is that in these cases, it isn't merely that there are more often than not marginalized bodies involved. It is the weirdly fatalistic viewpoint. In rape apologia, a lot of the criticism comes down to Doing Something While Female. And in this, there may be more than a little of Being Speaker While Female.

But there is also this idea that we should beware of waking the foul Beast. Because the Beast cannot be controlled, should not be expected to control the urge compelling violence. All we can hope to do is not anger the Beast, to not draw the Beast's attention to us, to creep around as quietly as we possibly can and make as few waves as possible, lest we attract the Beast's attention. And if you do? If you awaken the Beast, if you are attacked or hurt or raped? It is obviously your fault. Because the Beast is nothing but a force compelled to action. To hold the Beast accountable would be foolhardy, and besides, only those people stupid enough to not follow Teh Rules get attacked. There's never this compulsion that maybe, just maybe, we should do something about the Beast itself. That maybe walking to work, even if there are angry people afoot, shouldn't be something that can be used to scold someone for provoking some sort of negative action, should that negative action arise. But no.

Oh, Women and Their Emotionality!

2010-04-12T20:01:00.000-04:00

"Look at Rachel Maddow. She comes at me on the basis of emotion. She demonizes me. I don't want conservatives to win on the basis of emotion. If we lower ourselves to the level they operate on, we hurt ourselves and our arguments."

-Tom Coburn.

I happen to think Rachel Maddow's initial response to this is top notch, that being:

I was trying to do my work. But then that pops up in my Google Alert, then I read it and I become alternately so blindingly enraged and then hysterically upset and then inconsolably morose and then hyperactively giddy and then happy and then sad and then mad and then happy again that I couldn't make sense of any of the facts that I was gathering. All of which I was trying to read through the tears of joy and anger and anxiety that I just can't control! Can't you tell I'm falling apart right now? So I promise - hold on, I'm getting emotional about this promise. I promise that tomorrow, I will gather myself and offer a full analysis of today's Tom Coburn news.

But, probably given that Rachel Maddow runs a newsish show where she discusses things that are actually happening out there in the world and then giving her opinion about that stuff, she didn't really delve into what the fuck just happened there. So, being that I don't have a newsish show and just this little blog, I'll do that.

First things first: there is the belief out there that women are emotional. I know, shocker. There is the belief out there that being emotional makes women less capable. Double shocker! There is this belief that by being emotional, women are therefore also irrational. Crazy, right? Who'd ever think that?!

Truth is, I think most people believe that. Maybe not consciously. Maybe not full on, full frontal "woman=emotional=irrational=unreliable=bad! men=logical=rational=reliable=good! men≠women!"

But it is there. And it is there because it is all around us. It is there when we talk about hiring a good worker, or hiring a woman. It was there during the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings, when someone made the comparison between having a heart surgeon who'd had to struggle to get where he is, or the best surgeon one could find, even if that surgeon had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The idea that the first (the guy (or girl) who had to work really hard) could beget the second (that guy could be the best because he had to work so hard) is missing.

There's this thing with prejudice - all kinds - that make it hard for those of us who consider ourselves to be good people to recognize it within ourselves. It isn't just that we cognitively know that prejudice is bad and we are good, and thus we can't be prejudiced, though that's definitely a part of it. It is that in order for us to recognize our own prejudices, we have to be able to recognize when our most reflexive thoughts contain prejudice. That's extraordinarily difficult to do. It is incredibly difficult to puzzle out if you find some woman emotional because she is, in fact, being overly emotional - or if it is because we are conditioned to see women as emotional, as attacking on the basis of emotion alone. And when we're confronted about our underlying assumptions, whether by friends or by articles or by blog posts, it is essentially difficult to accept that what this other person is saying may be correct. Because what we thought felt so natural and so right, and what that other person is saying - that calling women you don't know emotional and attacking on the basis of emotion - is both historically and inherently sexist - is so foreign and so obviously wrong. Plus, it probably feels like a personal attack, because you, good person that you are, would never say something prejudiced. Because doesn't that other person know this is just how the world is?

Because of that, I don't think Tom Coburn is consciously eliciting the dog whistle of "women, crazy, huh?" But that doesn't mean his remarks aren't fused with the premise that a woman's actions are borne out of emotionality, and that emotionality is bad. It doesn't mean that he is playing a really old hand of sexism, and it doesn't mean that because he's ignorant of that (because to him it is just true), his remark isn't sexist. It doesn't mean it doesn't play into the grander metanarrative about women, and their intellectual oomph.

How I Became Who I Am: My Most Influential Reading List

2010-04-04T15:31:00.004-04:00

I'm totally stealing this from a friend of mine, but I'm going to do that whole shebang ten thing. I'm doing it because at first I wondered what books, if any, helped influence who I became - how I became who I am. As much of a bibliophile as I am (and I am), the writers who most influence my actual perceptions of reality tend to be on that TV machine. Books tend to be an enjoyable escape, because as much as I love Pride and Prejudice and James Thurber, I'm pretty sure they have not formed the very backbone of who I am. But then, I thought about the books I've read. And then I wondered how I would whittle that list down to ten. So, away we go:

Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett. I found Waiting for Godot in high school. It was my first, aside from Whedony works, exposure to that wide world of existentialism. I loved it. There are lines in works, moments, that blow your mind. In the first act of the play, Vladimir's ponderings about the two thieves mentioned in the Gospels was that moment for me:
VLADIMIR: But all four were there. And only one speaks of a thief being saved. Why believe him rather than the others?
ESTRAGON: Who believes him?
VLADIMIR: Everybody. It's the only version they know.
The play wasn't necessarily introducing anything new to my life: I was already an atheist, I already was suspicious of metanarratives, I was already bemused and intrigued by the absurd. But it was the dream-like quality of the play, and the follies of the various participants, the obvious allusion to an absent, if not outright fictional, god, that really struck me.
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand. Now, years later (YEARS), I've come to the conclusion that I've read this book all wrong, that the philosophy Ayn Rand was expounding probably wasn't what I took out of it, and that all those people who were like, "Oh, The Fountainhead is awesome!" probably got the wrong idea about what I'm about, politically, ethically, and philosophically. And plus, there's that whole rape apologia thing surrounding Roarke and Dominique that makes the book fairly unsavory for me. Don't get me wrong, after reading The Fountainhead I had a period where I read up a lot on Ayn Rand. I knew she was a dogmatic free market capitalist, I knew she was all about the individual. I knew she was if not the than pretty close to it quintessential "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, cuz I'm not giving you one of my dimes" person. And yet. When I read The Fountainhead, I... ...not missed, but pretty much overlooked a lot of that. What I took from the book was, in no particular order, architecture=cool, selfishness=awesome, looking to society for vindication=stupid idea. All of that? I was totally down with. And then, no more than a couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me that the scene I'd always thought meant "to do charity work for society's praise is just stupid" probably was meant to be expanded to "to do charity work at all is just stupid". So, The Fountainhead influenced me greatly. But I took from the book, "Act selfishly. Actions solely to please others will end up, in the long run, being unworthy of your time and energy, and will get you down in the process". I took, "Do the right thing, even if others look down on you for it, even if doing the easy thing will bring you short term praise and success". But, for me, doing the right thing isn't really about a totally free market capitalist system. It may be about making pretty buildings. I'm not totally sure yet.
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys. I was going to put The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir here, because I love that book, because it intersected my feminism and my existentialism well, and because it was a lightbulb moment for me, a moment where what I had previously felt was brought into sharp relief via words on the page. But. The Second Sex, although I love it for articulating a matter that had long danced at the back of my skull, didn't really change who I am. It simply gave me another tool to utilize when I myself already knew and tried to explain to other people. Wide Sargasso Sea did something else. One, it made Jane Eyre, a book I have always despised, palatable. Two, did something The Second Sex did not. It took me beyond myself. It was like "The Yellow Wallpaper" in its gradual destruction of its protagonist. It taught me a new way to critique existing works. And, pathetically enough, it brought the issue of race in Jane Eyre into the equation. It was a book that was (I think) better written than the book it was inspired by, and it made me recognize other ways that original text failed, by fixing that failure. By illustrating the other voices in the world we would never recognize if we merely stuck to what is in the accepted literary canon.
A Wrinkle in Time (series) - Madeline L'Engle. I would be remiss if I were to leave this book, and the subsequent books, off my list. Much like The Fountainhead, it occurs to me years later that I again culled something from its pages the writer did not intend, though in this instance it was a bulwark for my atheism. A Wrinkle in Time, having reread it, is an extremely spiritual - and outwardly religious - book. You'd think I would have gotten that from Many Waters being about two characters meeting Noah and interacting with Seraphim, but my obliviousness (and the fact that a majority of my religious education comes from musicals) blocked that reading entirely. Instead, I took from it themes of interdependence, of looking at problems and people through love and not hate and fear, and that being weird was a pretty cool thing to be. That, and the knowledge and the first dimension is a straight line, and the second dimension is a square. Beyond that, Meg Murray was (and is) one of my favorite girl/women characters. She preceded Buffy by about a year. She was so awesomely real, strong and yet flawed, it was incredible. I should also mention that I could recite the entirety of the book A Wrinkle in Time until a couple of years ago, and I could still probably do a couple of the more major passages.
West With the Night - Beryl Markham. My father gave me this book when I was in 6th grade. My copy has the note he wrote to me, explaining why he was gifting it to me specifically, on the inside cover. That alone may explain why this book makes the list. My father introduced me to a lot of books - among those, The Fountainhead. And those all had personal reasons behind his love of them, and wanting to share them with me. But Beryl Markham and her story captured my dad, and made him think of me. So, I read it. And if this were merely a list about books that influenced me because of how well they were written, West With the Night would also make that list:
How is it possible to bring order out of memory? I should like to begin at the beginning, patiently, like a weaver at his loom. I should like to say, 'This is the place to start; there can be no other.'
But there are a hundred places to star for there are a hundred names - Mwanza, Serengetti, Nungwe, Molo, Nakuru. There are easily a hundred names and I can begin best by choosing one of them - not because it is first no of any importance in a wildly adventurous sense but because here it happens to be, turned uppermost in my logbook. After all, I am no weaver. Weavers create. This is a remembrance - revisitation; and names are keys that open corridors no longer fresh in the mind, but nonetheless familiar in the heart.
This book, and Markham, however, make the list because she is an inspiration. The first woman to fly east to west, from England to Nova Scotia. She is attacked by a lion as a girl. She is a one time (literally, one time) horse racer. She is the first licensed woman horse trainer in Kenya. And although I still have that note in the book, I'm in awe that she made him think of me, still strive to be as cool, as confident, as ground-breaking as Markham herself was.
On the Road - Jack Kerouac. Yes, it is enormously cliche. And yet. I loved the book. It probably helps that I read it on a long train ride, so it felt like I was actually a part of Kerouac's philosophy and adventure. On the Road is why I spent the summer and the semester of my '50s class obsessed with the Beat and the Beat Generation.
Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life - Dolores Hayden. Every so often, a book comes along that makes me think, a la Chicken Run, "But we've always been egg farmers. My father, and his father, and all their fathers, and they was all..." And then the author fairly hits me on the head and says, "And wouldn't it be so much better if we looked at why, and what that's done for us, and maybe try to do X?" This book is that. This book is when I started thinking about how the structure of our lives and our environments shape our lives and our expectations. How we are, essentially, coveting little boxes on the hillside that are all the same. And how we can maybe go along making a different world, if we'd just change our expectations regarding neighborhoods and soccer moms and mini vans.
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge - Jean-Francois Lyotard. I don't mean to sound like a braggart, but I have an exceptional memory for words. Not names, and not faces, and definitely not tasks I was assigned two minutes ago, but words. Sometimes, that means I can quote what I want out of a book or television episode from memory alone. Sometimes that means I know exactly where to find the exact line I'm looking for in the book or episode. Believe me when I say, I can give you none of this work back. I couldn't even really remember the name of the book, just the author. Maybe it's because it was originally written in French. All I can say is that it has deepened my personal understanding of the world. Lyotard writes about the totalitarian nature of the metanarrative, and about the worth of the more democratic micronarrative. And, as I discovered in my quest to discover which book made the micronarrative something I believe in and agree with, I discovered something else. Before college, I was someone who believed in a reachable, objective truth. I hated anything that touched upon relativism with a passion (that may have been due to all of the moral arguments against my atheism starting with, "If you don't believe in God, there is no moral structure. And if there is no moral structure, then nothing can be immoral"; I'm just saying, those religious zealots trying to convert me kind of fucked me up). And yet, now I still despise moral relativism, and am passionately for micronarratives. Wha?! The answer, as I discovered, also lies with Lyotard. He postulated that there is an objective truth that we humans shall never fully understand. Which is basically my position. High five to Lyotard.
Full Frontal Feminism - Jessica Valenti. I was thinking about putting one of my favorite authors of all time, a Mr. John Steinbeck, on this list. But then I decided he is more of a Jane Austen type of person in my life: a writer I would not willingly live without, but one who has not had a profound influence on my being - aside from making me more of a snobbish reader than I was prior to picking up Cannery Row in high school. Instead, this spot goes to Jessica Valenti. It's like this: I was raised in a feminist household, so Full Frontal Feminism wasn't introducing me to anything I hadn't heard of before. But it was witty and well-written, and so not academic. And since I was reading Lyotard, I deserved some not quite academic-but-progressive reading. And if it had just been that, this book would not be on this list. But Jessica Valenti is the founder and an editor of feministing.com. And feministing led me to other, more substantial feminist sites, which then led me to womanist sites, which then led me to reading multiple blogs daily. And eventually, that led us all here. Without Full Frontal Feminism, I may never have gotten to this particular place.
The Short Stories of J.D. Salinger. I am one of the few people I know who did not appreciate the angst of Holden Caulfield in their own teenage years. One of those other souls is one of my 17 year old sisters, so maybe that inability to be charmed by him is genetic. Because of that, I avoided Salinger's short stories like the plague. I was wrong to (incidentally, my mother was the person who told me I would enjoy them). The first one I ever read was "A Perfect Day for Bananafish". From there, I was hooked. I quickly gobbled up "Franny and Zooey", and then moved on to the rest of "Nine Stories", and then to "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction". I loved the style of writing, the restless and unsatisfied nature of it, the people populating these stories being genuine in a way I'd never felt was true for Holden, and yet all quietly broken. Perhaps more than the short stories and the people yearning to live a life of meaning within them, it was Salinger's ability to retreat from public life that makes these stories precious to me. Salinger managed to both give me, in all, 13 stories I prize. And then, he articulated my belief about writing when he said, "I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure." I write, a lot. Some of that writing is here, the nonfiction stuff, the stuff that is separate enough from myself to share with both the people I know and potentially the people I don't who manage to stumble upon it. But my fiction is all my own.

And there it is: my list. Hopefully, in ten to twenty years, some of those books will have been bumped down the influence chain, with other books taking their place. I'm looking forward to the John Kenneth Galbraith memoirs possibly doing that.

James Thurber

2010-04-03T13:49:00.002-04:00

I have a horrible habit of not listening to my mother's recommendations, of avoiding reading the things she says to read or watching the things she says to watch or listening to the things she says to listen to until I'm driven to doing it simply because I've gotten bored with the things I've been reading or watching or listening to over and over again. She is the person who first thrust The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler into my hands, the person who gave me The Secret of NIMH, the person who insisted I watch The Sound of Music and Dirty Dancing, the person who told me I'd really like Elton John and The Band, the person who introduced me to Simon and Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

And yet, with all of that, it still took me months before I read A Wrinkle in Time after she gave it to me and told me I'd love it. She gave it to me along with The Mixed Up Files and NIMH, in fourth grade, and it took me until midway through fifth to bother with it. It, and the other three books in the series, became my veritable Bible from fifth to eighth grade. It, among other things, gave my shop teacher a reason to not let me actually participate in shop class after a fairly harrowing experience with a drill, because he'd lived next to the author, Madeline L'Engle, while growing up and talked to me about this worn out book I insisted on carrying everywhere with me.

In eighth grade, I was spending the day with my father. We were driving around the state, visiting his various clients, talking, and listening to this book on tape he'd gotten out of the library, My Life and Hard Times. I knew of the book. A chapter had been in a compilation book series my parents owned and I'd poured over. Another chapter had been in my seventh grade Lit book, and I'd poured over that one as well. Listening to My Life and Hard Times with my father made me appreciate it, and the author, all the more. It was hilarious. And when I acquired the book-book, it took the place of A Wrinkle in Time as my new Bible.

I've been to the Thurber House in Columbus, OH several times. One time, my father got them to open the house early for us, because I loved it so much and because at some point we were going to have to leave Ohio, and he preferred that to be sooner rather than later. I have several James Thurber tee shirts, a lot of his books, and I still read portions of My Life and Hard Times on a weekly basis. James Thurber's Is Sex Necessary? is the book that I took out with my best friend and roomie's library card whilst in college, and then failed to return promptly (or rather, at all), and ran up a significant (around $200 or so dollars) late fee/replacement cost.

There are problems with James Thurber, as there would be with any white, straight, middle-class male author born in 1894. There are problems I've only begun to assess in my continued and continual rereading of My Life and Hard Times, with regard to race and gender and where the two meet. But his humor oftentimes comes from the ridiculousness of people, and more often than not from himself. And so, I was abso-freaking-lutely thrilled when Keith Olbermann professed to reading James Thurber to his father, because James Thurber is one of those authors who helped shape my life (and this whole beginning part is at least in partial reference to this meme), and who I feel is underappreciated - or at the very least, too much of an unknown. My happiness increased exponentially when the final segment on friday's Countdown was, in point of fact, Keith Olbermann reading a short story of James Thurber's, "A Box to Hide In". And because I love Thurber more than possibly any other author, I had to share. This story doesn't come from my personal Thurber Bible, but I do love it:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Letters to my Editor (Pt 2)

2010-03-28T17:36:00.002-04:00

Another letter that kind of needs nothing but itself:

My US flag now flies upside down as a protest of unacceptable, unconstitutional injustice when representatives did not represent the people they were supposed to represent.

I kind of love the people who write to my paper.

Letters to my Editor

2010-03-28T17:01:00.003-04:00

Just the letter, with minimal comment:

I have lived under 17 presidents, since Woodrow Wilson. I don't know that I will see anothe r [sic]. Our present president's style is to stride purposefully to the lecturn, jut his chin out, FDR style, and with much rhetorical skill, tell us what we want to hear but rarely see. This is proven.
Think of his campaign and presidential promises, not of his charm. I don't want my descendants to have to wonder at and ruefully pay for my mistakes.

One question: "proven", how exactly?

(Short) Saturday Sesame Street

2010-03-27T18:39:00.002-04:00

Because I love Madeline Khan:

To Be Fair...

2010-03-25T18:41:00.000-04:00

Here's a thing that's been bothering me for a while. It is the "to be fair" defense. I went off on David Brooks about the "to be fair", and I feel pretty confident that I was right and my righteous tone and angry face I was making whilst typing was totes justified.

But here's the thing about "to be fair". It either takes the place of an actual critique (instead of "that soup was horrid; why did they mix chocolate with salsa bits and a beef broth?", we get "to be fair, I've never had good soup here"), or it qualifies that critique and thus makes it less forceful ("that soup was horrid; but to be fair, I've never had good soup here").

There's another thing about "to be fair". Life isn't. Seriously now. Life isn't fair. Life is hard, life is not fair, and life sometimes kicks people in the gonads for things other people have done before and gotten away with.

My sisters and I played a version of the "to be fair" game throughout their childhood and my adolescence. One of us, it didn't matter who, would do something known as "starting shit". Needling the others, picking at old wounds or fresh ones, or just generally being a pain in the ass. The other person would retaliate pretty damn quickly, because we all had thin skins when it came to each other's needling. Because that is the power siblings hold - the knowledge of how a precise word in a precise tone of voice can wreak havoc with someone's emotional well-being. Anyway, this sniping would continue, consistently elevating in tone and in emotions, until one or both of my parents would become aware of it, and then try to shut it down - generally with a "That's enough!" directed at one sib in particular. It was our less deadly version of Russian Roulette. Someone was going to get a "that's enough". Someone would get some pretty serious yellage if they continued to pester the point (which, of course, we all did; cuz we were stupid). And that someone could or could not be the person who originated the circle of recrimination and doom. And the argument would be, from the person hit, "I didn't start it!" Sometimes, if the person did start it (or even if they didn't), the argument would be, "they were doing it too!"

Those arguments? Were true. Truly, we all three were responsible for the shit storm of badness that made dinner such a fun occasion in my house lo those many years. And for whomever was on the receiving end of of parental wrath, it was less than fun, even unfair.

But. We all played the game. We couldn't help ourselves, being sisters and knowing the most profound injury to hit. And having been hit, absolutely needing to hit back. And we all knew that at some point, the game would end and the arrow would be on one of us.

What does this mean, in terms of "to be fair"? Well, it means that life isn't. And if you're doing something that is profoundly unfair, it can't be mitigated by the defense that other people are doing it.

In other words, The condemnation of the action taken can be - and should be - separate from the condemnation of the system in which that action takes place.

In other words, it is perfectly reasonable to call someone out on their shit and then move on to calling everyone out on their shit.

And sometimes, there really is no "to be fair". Take things like racism. There have been claims of "reverse racism", and someone somewhere may try to take the mainstream approach to having a panel, and have someone who claims racism still exists on a panel with someone who claims that whites encounter "reverse racism" in order to make the panel "fair". The truth is, whites still, categorically, hold so much power that there is no real other side to that story in terms of race. There is no "to be fair" if someone says, "Hey, that thing you did/said/Digged? That was racist". Sometimes, fairness isn't possible.

I think oftentimes the "to be fair" is deployed by someone looking to be judicious, someone looking to be seen as impartial. It is a function employed within the lie of objectivity. I used to believe in Objective Truth, that we could someday reach it. I now believe that there is Objective Truth about certain things, and that we as imperfect beings with points of view that are skewed by the psychological things such as beliefs we hold and physical things like imperfect eyesight will never, ever be able to actually obtain that truth. The most we can do is recognize where we are blind. "To be fair"ers tend to try to obtain that objective stance. They tend to want to believe that they can be fair, that they can accurately assess the situation and impart unbiased understanding to the rest of us. I don't believe they can.

Instead of "to be fair", given those constraints to actual fairness, I would rather if we simply acknowledged that there were people we would like to defend, and give those reasons for defending them. It seems better than expecting impartial judgements from people who will never be able to deliver.

A Horrifying Tale of Parental Notification Laws

2010-03-21T15:38:00.001-04:00

Read the whole thing. Please.

I Kind of Love...

2010-03-16T21:36:00.005-04:00

...This tampon commercial:

It is the height of awesomeness (h/t The Sexist)!

Also, this print ad:

I kind of feel compelled to buy Kotex products now. Power of advertising, huh?

Be sure to read the backstory of the ad, and how three networks rejected it when it contained the word "vagina". Yeah, I know. How crazy to discuss the "v" word when you're advertising tampons. I'd totes reject that ad too, because I can't see the connection.

On pretty much the same note, these ads remind me of this Clear Blue Pregnancy Test commercial:

I, however, don't want to buy this one. Advertising (in general) still isn't that good.

Both the Kotex ads and the Clear Blue ad eschew what normally find their ways into tampon and pregnancy test ads. They're interesting. They're fun. They're engaging in a way women twirling around in white really very rarely are. And the tampon one even takes on the weird blue liquid factor.

Stamp of approval!

Playground Politics, David Brooks, and the Al Qaeda Seven

2010-03-16T18:51:00.004-04:00

JIM LEHRER: Let's go to another dispute, the so-called Al Qaeda Seven. Liz Cheney and her group criticized some justice department lawyers, because they once represented some Guantanamo detainees. Where do you come down on that?

DAVID BROOKS: Ah, well, I think the ad, which sort of accused whose values do they have - do they have Al Qaeda or Taliban values, I thought it was tremendously unfortunate. I mean, it's just part of a long range of corrosive language. And to be fair to Liz Cheney, if you Google "Taliban" and "Liz Cheney", millions of people have called her a member of the Taliban and made similar charges.
PBS Newshour, 3/12/10

You know what mentality I have always hated? Since elementary school hated? The idea that just because someone once picked on you, once kicked your lunch box, once pushed you down, once cut you in line, once made your life hell, it somehow gave you license to do the same. In elementary school through high school, the idea was as soon as you got to the exalted grade of the kids who were picking on you, you could then pick on the kids who occupied the grade you were in now. It was, and is, a stupid idea. Picking on the freshman as a senior does nothing to the senior who picked on you. It just continues a cycle of meaningless and ridiculous abuse, for no other reason than because you had to deal with it and you refused to be the last one.

It is a simple-minded, mean mentality. It depends on making someone else a victim in order for the former victim to be the victor, to feel powerful.

It is an immature philosophy and displays a distinct lack of empathy. It is also what David Brooks suggests we use in order to "be fair" to Liz Cheney.

Brooks is probably right; any other week, if you were to Google "Liz Cheney" and "Taliban", you would probably garner a lot of hits comparing the two. Right now, though, most of the hits are about the ad itself and Brooks' defense of Cheney. In a normal week, a lot of those would be malicious. Most would be blatantly false. I'm saying "a lot" and "most", because I'm sure there are also pages ripping apart those other pages and defending Cheney.

You know what else? I'd bet my teeth that none of those people calling Liz Cheney a member of the Taliban are from the Department of Justice. You know, the people Liz Cheney is now directly comparing to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Funny thing, that. Funny how the school mentality can still be defended by those well into their forties when employed by people getting toward the middling of their own fortieth decade.

There is no "being fair" to Liz Cheney when she blatantly uses her non profit to disseminate the exact same tactic being so egregiously used against herself and her own father.

There should only be condemnation for so spectacularly failing to progress past the idea that passing along this sort of mean-spirited and completely baseless accusation to a whole new wave of victims. David Brooks thinks there is some sort of balance that has been reached here: Liz Cheney was attacked by someone, so she gets to attack someone else with that as part of her excuse. Sorry, but no. And that sort of rationalization calls Brooks' own assessing skills into question as well.

The other thing that gets me is how neither Jim Lehrer nor Mark Shields makes this argument; Shields should have mentioned that the DoJ lawyers probably weren't the ones slandering Liz Cheney all over the interwebs. And then he should have mentioned that even if they were, that still does not excuse Cheney's sinking to their level.

Because that is the other very real issue here. When has it become appropriate in the public discourse to pull what is essentially a "I know you are, but what am I?" smack down? This is beyond concerning. This says that somehow, no one progresses past elementary school (a thought I've often had and feared, and now discover may be the abject truth of the matter). And that? Is unacceptable.

Making excuses for Liz Cheney, calling an ad tremendously unfortunate instead of calling it out for what it is - a baseless, fear-mongering attack ad - does not make one a member of polite society. Couching one's statements and one's bets doesn't make one the better person.

And, no, the ad in question doesn't sort of accuse. It does accuse, full stop. The fact that Brooks can't even make that statement without waffling, and the fact that no one corrects him, makes me worry.

Chuck vs The Women

2010-03-14T06:14:00.000-04:00

My monday evening routine is to wait anxiously for 8 o'clock to roll around so's I can watch some Chuck goodness on NBC. Typically, I then go on-line and look up all of the music I want to get that I heard on Chuck, get it, load it onto my Chuck playlist, and then stare and my iPod in confusion when, on shuffle, one of those songs is independently played. Because, sometimes, hearing Hall & Oats without any explanation is just odd. Actually, that should be an "always".

However. Loving Chuck is problematic. It's problematic for a multitude of reasons. Chuck had ten characters credited during the theme for its first two seasons, and then nine in its third season. Three of the ten were women in the first two seasons. Two of the nine are women in the third season. This isn't good. For me, and in general. Sure, one of the central three characters is a woman, and she gets a decent amount of attention focused on her. And yet, purely by the function of who she is and what her character brings to the series, we know very little about her. And so, we're left with 3 women who function as accessories to the male characters, as love interests and, for one, simultaneously as a sibling.

Because there are, at most, three women on the show, they don't often interact. And when they do interact, the moments don't typically pass the Bechdel Test. Sarah and Ellie discuss Chuck; sometimes, Sarah and Ellie discuss Devon (aka, Captain Awesome); Sarah and Anna discuss Morgan; a couple of times, Anna flips out on Ellie about Morgan. They talk about weddings and boys, and once, how Sarah had never been close to a gun before. But they don't talk about anything else, and thus we learn almost nothing about them. We know that Jeff and Lester enjoy playing in their band, Jeffster. We know more about Morgan than is necessary, including that he sleeps in the nude. But we don't learn much of anything about the women that does not in some way connect to the men.

But there is another issue with Chuck, almost a more serious issue. A lot of shows don't have great male-to-female ratios. A lot of shows don't have the women talking about much else but the men in their lives. It wouldn't be great, but I would be able to live with it. But Chuck fails women far more egregiously than simply not being able to pass the Bechdel Test.

Chuck, as a show, suffers from an almost chronic urge to delegitimize threats women face in the world and the workplace. It often uses stalking as an impish thing these specific guy characters do. And no other character calls these stalkers out on it. In Chuck vs Tom Sawyer, we (and Chuck) are given witness to Jeff's music video dedicated to Anna Woo, complete with stalker-footage from when Anna is leaving the women's bathroom. Later in the episode, Jeff's request that Anna fan him while wearing a hula skirt is granted. And both Chuck and the store's manager Emmett make no mention to Jeff about the completely illegal and inappropriate actions he has taken. No one mentions the tape to Anna, so she can press charges (not that she would, because stalking is totally cool!). Later in the season, Morgan begins stalking Anna as well, in vs The Best Friend. And although Chuck calls him out on it after both Anna and a group of mobsters discover him, Chuck's reasoning is less about shaming Morgan for his actions toward his ex-girlfriend than trying to save his life. Afterward, he even complains that he had to sacrifice Morgan's dignity in order to protect him. Chuck doesn't even begin to contemplate that stalking your ex is a pretty solid way to demonstrate you've given up much of your dignity anyway.

Stalking isn't just relegated to the creeps of the show, either. Chuck, himself, has been known to stalk his fake girlfriend Sarah. The one day she has off, he follows her as she goes to meet her father, because she had the temerity to not alert him to her plans. And when she discovers him, she doesn't yell at him or give him the cold shoulder. She doesn't discuss how following her is completely ignoring a boundary she has set for her own personal reasons. She invites him to stay.

And the stalking is just one part of the equation. From Morgan and Jeff and Lester using the store's electronics to get video footage of various (faceless) girls' butts and cleavage, to Jeff and Lester setting up a casting couch and then exposing various models to Jeff's penis, the show takes a light-hearted "boys will be boys" mentality when it comes to violating the various women who make the mistake of working, shopping, or knowing someone at the Burbank Buy More.

It is that light-heartedness that makes this all the worse. If the behavior was seen and treated as wrong, as being a violation of these various women's autonomy, if it were called out as being inherently disrespectful to women, then the show may be something other than regressive. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Morgan, Jeff, and Lester are seen as weird, losery guys, but they're also portrayed as lovable (in the case of Morgan), unthreatening (in the case of Lester), loyal (in the case of Jeff (and Morgan)) guys. These guys, the show demonstrates, are doing little wrong. After all, the women don't complain about it! These guys, the show demonstrates, are impotent geeks that girls don't have to worry about!

And then that is the other edge of this sword. There have been two girls who have been Nerd Herders (the Geek Squad of the Buy More). Both of them have been subject to sexual comments and what would be, in the real world, sexual harassment. They were Herders at two different times, so women have never made up more than 1/4 of the Herder staff. But what really seems to be happening here is the show doesn't only go for the "boys will be boys" and "stalking really isn't that serious" and "harassment is just playing", but is either negatively commenting on the nerdish men among us or - and I think it is the second one - giving one nerdish perspective on women and men. Perhaps it shouldn't be that surprising that only two of the nine writers are women.

A large portion of the Chuck series has been full of geekish and nerdy delights, too many to count. And that, along with Chuck being absolutely adorkable most of the time and zany writing, is one of the things that makes me love Chuck oh so very much. Well, that, and a propensity of the writers to rip off whole scenes from their other series, The O.C., and have those scenes play for more often than not comedic value. And that makes the marginalization of women within their world even harder to bear. Because it isn't just that women are absent, or that women get to discuss parts of their lives other than the men; if that were the case, this post could have (and almost was) been called Chuck vs The Bechdel Test. No, it goes deeper than that. It goes to having geeky guys consistently treat women as sexual objects, and as something other than the norm. As a girl, as a geek, and as a nerd, it feels less than welcoming to have that play out as a theme on this show that I love.

Saturday Sesame Street

2010-03-13T19:49:00.001-05:00

I like how there were originally 1776 cherry trees in the orchard:

Rape & Sex Education, A Two-Part Rant

2010-03-13T11:36:00.002-05:00

So, yesterday, at lunch, the women I work with were discussing their families. I generally like these discussions, since they so rarely veer off into political speak or declarations about how Fox News is just so unbiased. They're a bit on the boring side, but they also make my coworkers happy. And I'd rather have a happy coworker when I need help than the opposite. But every once in a while, a subject comes up that veers us close to the third rail of office discussion.

Yesterday was one of those days. A woman's niece, age 12, was staying after school to finish a test, and was left alone for a few minutes with two boys in her class - also age 12. One of the boys then said, "Let's rape _____". The girl asked the boy why he wanted babies (which seemed like an odd reaction to me, but wevs), and then told her mother after she got home.

Here is the first part of my rant. Everyone at lunch agreed that this was inappropriate. Everyone agreed that the mother, my coworker's sister, should report the incident to the principal. And I was one of those agreeing.

But at the same time, the incident was profoundly disturbing to me. Part of it is because in recent months, a 12 year old girl was raped, by a fourteen year old, and that rape was not seen as a serious matter by school officials. It was also because I happened to sit across from a jerk of an 8th grader at lunch, and his continuous barrage of sexual-type comments were not taken seriously by my school officials, up until I hit him with his own lunch tray. And then I was told "boys will be boys" (yes, seriously, that exact phrase was used). It is because when I was in high school, my regulation tank top was deemed as being "distracting and exciting to the boys" by my gym teacher. And it was only because I have a father who is actually pretty damn scary when he's pissed that I got an apology for that. In other words, we live in a world, even us in the liberaler states in the Union, where schools like to protect their own asses, and where the culture of boys will be boys and girls have to endure sexual comments doesn't stop at the doors of an educational facility.

It is terrible that my coworker's 12 year old niece was threatened (jokingly or not) with rape. On an individual level, it is horrible. Her mother should report the incident to the principal, to the teacher, and maybe calling up the boy's parent(s)/guardian(s) and telling them what their son said. But on a more meta and less micro level, shouldn't we be focusing part of our attention on why this statement could and is casually uttered? I know kids and teenagers and young adults say shocking and controversial things, sometimes in order to seem more sophisticated, sometimes to lash out, and sometimes simply to be seen as shocking and controversial. I'm Facebook friends with a large portion of my sisters' high school, and they have taken to FormSpring like ducks to water, so I know. Trust me. And that could segue into a post about how being gay (or bisexual, or assumed to be gay) is still ZOMG, the WORST thing to be EVER in high school, but I'll just restrain myself. The thing is, something must make it seem like it is okay for this 12 year old to talk about raping his classmate, and it isn't something that affects just this 12 year old. And we should prevent individual 12 year olds from saying such things, but shouldn't we impress upon everyone that rape isn't, actually, something to casually throw around? That it is, actually, a serious offense? That it isn't, actually, something that should be used as a threat, fake or not, faux-funny or not?

But instead, we switched over to sex education, where the second part of my rant comes in.

Mother to the 12 year old girl decided that her daughter's response to a rape threat should probably not be, "Why do you want babies?" So, she sat said daughter down for a sex talk. And talked about how much sex hurt. Always. And about how sex was bad, how sex was unpleasant, and how if you kissed someone, you were kissing every single person he ever kissed (being gay really isn't seen as an option in that house).

First my sister's reaction to the kissing line: "I would have said, 'Well, then I guess I've kissed a lot of people'". Which was, especially if you know her, hilarious.

Secondly, I understand the impetus to discuss sex and what sex is when your daughter is sheltered at age 12. I don't understand the impetus to discuss sex and not touch upon what rape is, why it is a horrible thing to say to someone. It seems that if your sex talk is happening because a kid in your daughter's class talked about raping your daughter, some discussion about rape would be in there. But, no, apparently not.

Third, though, is this: if you decide to have a discussion with your twelve year old about sex because you feel that she is sheltered and needs to have some understanding of it, what the fuck does telling her lies about sex do for her? Seriously now. And here is the crux of the post. As much as it isn't an aberration for a 12 year old boy to feel like joking about rape is acceptable, it is also not aberrant for people to not actually have solid, true information about sex. What benefit is gained from telling a 12 year old girl that sex always hurts, that sex is bad, that sexual contact is something to be avoided? None.

I'm not suggesting that parents should begin telling their children that sex is wonderful, is the best thing ever, and you should totes be open to it. What I am suggesting is that misinformation about sex is troubling, that painting sex as bad or dirty or a necessary evil is problematic, and that telling little girls that sex hurts always is wrong. Morally as well as factually.

This isn't just a problem for this specific 12 year old. This is a problem for all of the twelve year olds who do have parents who aren't open and honest with them, who go to schools where the answer to any sex question is "don't".

And that brings us to this question: is the problem teenagers having sex, or is the problem teenagers having sex irresponsibly?

I would prefer to think of my 17 year old sisters as 5 years old for the rest of their lives. I would prefer to not think about their sexual predilections or habits. But what I want is for them to have the information, to know about sex, to not feel shamed for having it or wanting it. I want them to know about contraception, and also more of the fun stuff. I want them to feel comfortable asking questions, and for them to have the reasonable expectation of honest answers. And I want that for their friends, and their friends' friends. I want sex to not be a mystery to them, not something their parents squick away from discussing, and their school refuses to touch. And I want that for my coworker's niece as well. I want sex education to contain some education about sex. And I don't think that's too much to ask.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 13th Anniversary

2010-03-10T20:02:00.003-05:00

Thirteen years ago, I was eleven. That seems odd to type. Thirteen years ago, I was yet to reach actual teenage years. I was a preteen. My favorite shows, if anyone is interested, were Caroline in the City and Suddenly Susan. At least one of those shows were on at the same time a weird show about a teenage vampire slayer premiered. And my father made me miss whichever one that was, because he wanted someone to watch this new weird show about a teenage vampire slayer. That? Is probably a decision he's regretted for the full 13 years that have followed.

I've written a lot about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I've written a lot about Joss Whedon. I've been profoundly, scarily, affected by both.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is probably one of the reasons some people in middle school and high school were under the mistaken impression I was a lesbian (note to any other 12-17 year olds out there: if you're going to wear shirts that are black and predominately feature women, even if those women are show-specific, be prepared for questions).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer may have skewed my perception of who and what is cool. For instance: like Joss Whedon? You're cool. Mock Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You're so not.

But Buffy the Vampire Slayer has done a lot more than that. And on this, its anniversary, I'm going to list some of those things out.

BtVS was a show that fully encompassed the geeks inheriting the earth thing. It was a weird show, in that the geeks and the losers seemed to not care that other people thought of them as geeks and losers. Sure, Buffy was bothered by it, from time to time. She had, after all, previously been cool. But Xander? When Rodney Munson beat him up every day for years, he hated Rodney Munson. This was a good thing for me, being that I have odd parents, an odd name, and am both geeky and nerdy. It was validation when I hated the kids who made fun of my name, instead of hating my name. And that was good, at eleven.

BtVS was a show that had tons (and I mean tons) of kick ass women, who were powerful and righteous and strong - and emotional and screwed up and flawed in a myriad of different ways. It was also a show that had a lot of kick ass men who were emotional and screwed up and flawed in a myriad of different ways - and who were also powerful and righteous and strong.

BtVS has probably shaped my philosophical outlook more than any other singular thing. It has done more for how I see the world than Alexander Hamilton, than Thomas Jefferson, than Sartre, than Steinem, than de Beauvoir. And on things as far ranging as friendship, militarism, the role of government, atheism, feminism, ethics, life, and family.

When I want to reference why I feel a certain way, I may break out a BtVS quote. I may - in fact - point to a certain scene. Which leave those around me who have not seen the show or who are not totes obsessed more than a little confused. And I'm okay with that.

Thirteen years on, I'll still cry when I see Becoming Pt 2. Thirteen years on, I'm still in awe of what the show is. Thirteen years on, I'll still spend a day watching season 1, and loving it.

And while it is a little pathetic to pull myself out of my blogging rut by writing about this particular topic, it is also a testament to the show that I still care this much about all of these characters, thirteen years down the road.

So, happy anniversary, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'll write about you again - next year.

Dear Blog,

2010-03-01T16:40:00.003-05:00

Wow. It's been a long time. A long, long time. I have reasons! Reasons for my sudden and prolonged absence, reasons that would probably bore you and leave you feeling insecure about your place in my life. You're probably wondering whether I simply abandoned you like I did the iTunes/iPod Genius function, only without the part where I explained why and what went wrong.

As an aside, that function and I made up. I've been working through the fact that it likes to pick Conor Oberst songs for everything, and that one song from the Whip It soundtrack I don't particularly like, and it... hasn't made any concessions. It does have three or so playlists on my iPod at the moment, though.

No, blog! I have not! I have often thought about coming here, writing my thoughts, engaging with the world, and I am coming back. Seriously. I know, I've been a bad blogger. I know, I promised I'd be back about a month ago. I know, you have no reason to trust that I will remain true to my word.

I have, however, made a twitter account. For some indiscernible reason. But twitter is kind of confusing. There's the whole being pithy and witty thing, for one. I can be pithy, and I can be witty, but it turns out that it is exceedingly difficult for me to be both at the same time.

(Which, what a sales pitch, right? Aren't you just dying to go there now? Don't answer that. Unless the answer is yes.)

No, blog, we both know that I am at my best when I am allowed to ramble and rant at length (sometimes great length). We both know that I am to return to your familiar and helpful format, where there are no hashtags that rudely take up needed space to be both pithy and witty. Where an @ sign is more of a way to send a message to someone than a way to immediately get down to business. Where there are no whales being carried by little birds.

I am back. And I will post, and post again.

Yours,

petpluto

Quote of the Day

2010-02-03T19:14:00.002-05:00

Hi! I have had a pretty full two or so weeks, what with life and work, and a document-management system that manages to not manage my (and others') documents all that well, so I've been pretty profoundly absent. That is sad for me, and I plan to correct it tout suite. Also, I have a post percolating in my head about militarism in the works of Joss Whedon, so hold onto your hats. Until then, QotD!

But language is a symptom, not the disease. Language is a product of thought, not the thought. Language is an act, not the motive underlying the act. Language is an effect of the structure, not the structure. And although language shapes thought, gives us the tools we have to understand the world and thus limits and informs what we can know – you can get all French-theory with me in the comment section – changing language isn’t going to take us anywhere unless we change the structure itself.

Via Sady. I love the post this quote came from, and I absolutely love the theory of language and the way words are used. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, and at some point my scanners at work will actually scan and separate documents, and I'll be able to think about something other than bar codes again.

Saturday Sesame Street: Birthday Edition

2010-01-23T13:09:00.004-05:00

For John, because unlike Bert, it is his birthday:

Happy birthday, John!

Also, a virtual cake for you:
(Stolen from Cake Wrecks)

I also highly recommend checking out John's project, Operation Backlog Slog, Days 1-5, 6, 7-9, 10-16, 17-27, 28-30, 31-33, & (so far) 24-43. Check out his explanation for liking Lady Gaga on that last one. It makes me fully embrace my own love for her music, and feel more secure in my decision to not be embarrassed about it.

Dear Mr. Douthat,

2010-01-21T09:27:00.001-05:00

You write,

I find it hard to believe that you’d be seeing this level of right-of-center enthusiasm if Obama had postponed cap-and-trade, avoided taking over GM, compromised more significantly on the stimulus, and taken the incremental route to health insurance expansion that Reihan Salam discusses here.

Really? Are you sure, Mr. Douthat? Because considering the amount of "Obama is gleefully bringing us to the end of the world!1!11!!1!!" expressed in some corners of the cable news channels and in the blogosphere, and how that has continually happened since the man first began making real headway in the polls en route to becoming president, I call bullshite on this. I'm not going to say that all of the right-of-center enthusiasm is due to race; I think a lot of it is due to fear of The Other - the same thing that made John Kennedy a suspicious figure in 1960.

In other words, what is energizing the Right and the Far Far On the Fringes Right isn't the fact that Obama is a liberal. It is that they perceive him to be an Ultra Liberal, one step behind being a socialist, Marxist, atheist; the truth of the matter is that Obama is left-of-center, but far more interested in reaching centrist solutions than he is in making the world in his Liberal image. The man is a compromiser. That is the reason the single payer proponents didn't even get a seat at the table when the healthcare discussion began. That is the reason he has tried to woo people like Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snowe. That is the reason he chose to simply bail out the banks, instead of using their teetering as the reason to break them into smaller entities; or initializing a government take over as liberaler economists like Simon Johnson (formerly of the IMF and current blogger at The Baseline Scenario) said was the only solution not guaranteed to fail (he later admitted his error on This American Life, after being called on it by one Adam Davidson). This could just be a crafty political move; but in truth, I think Obama hangs by the adage that the best solution is the one that leaves everyone at the table a bit grouchy.

So, what is energizing the Right isn't Obama, but the specter of an Obama that doesn't truly exist. For a long time now, I've pretty much thought that since Obama is going to be seen as Liberaller than the Liberalist Liberal by swaths of those on the right and those who just don't like him very much (unless the reason for not liking him lies in the fact that he isn't, actually, Liberaller than the Liberalist Liberal), he should have just gone hog wild and been that liberal hero of which the left has often dreamt. But that just isn't who he is; or, at the very least, it isn't how he has chosen to govern. And really, Mr. Douthat, if you think that Obama's liberalish impulses are what is causing the huge upswell on the Right, how do you explain this:

What’s really killing the Democrats, and what’s likely to hurt them the most come next November, is the growing enthusiasm gap — and its implications for candidate recruitment, fundraising, turnout, and all the rest.

If Obama really was the liberal candidate the left had dreamed of and the Right is using as a boogeyman, then there would be no enthusiasm gap. The progressive base would be just as enthusiastic about getting out the vote as the right is now. The problem is, again, that Obama just isn't that guy. He was never that guy. He is a capable guy; an inspiring guy; a guy who has acted as a change agent just by being elected, due to his heritage. I'll bet dollars to donuts he's going to be a great president. But he isn't the liberal's dream. And so, the liberal, knowing this, isn't too excited. The progressive isn't going to get comprehensive banking reform; isn't going to get a Public Option; isn't going to get a dismantling of a broken healthcare system; isn't going to get supports for the middle class; isn't going to get a bill that doesn't start out already compromised; is upset by the Stupack-Pitts Amendment; and is pissed that Don't Ask, Don't Tell still has not been repealed.

Obama's problem isn't that he is too liberal or isn't liberal enough - though I would definitely prefer if the man were to enact policies that were inherently more liberal, myself. It is how the world perceived him, and how part of that world perceives him still.

Obama's problem isn't that he is too liberal and if he'd only moved incrementally, he wouldn't have a backlash. It is that people like Sarah Palin are the idols of the Right; and their prescriptions tend to be, "Do nothing. Wait. Repeat".

Obama's problem is that the only people who seem to be riding high right now are those in banking, when the conventional wisdom is that banking is what brought the world to its economic knees, when banks are still foreclosing on houses and turning ordinary people out into the streets.

Mr. Douthat, you say,

I think it would behoove liberals to give serious consideration to the more direct explanation — namely, that some of the anti-Obama backlash has to do with Americans discovering, after an enormous Democratic sweep, that they preferred liberalism much more in theory than in practice.

I say, helping maintain the status quo, in terms of the banks especially, isn't a particularly liberal philosophy. You say some of the anti-Obama backlash is due to people figuring out they don't really like liberalism. I say the anti-Obama backlash is because the guy didn't turn out to be the messiah. I say, the anti-Obama backlash is because ordinary people still don't feel as if their interests are being served, and yet they see bankers walking away with million dollar bonuses. And what they see is the status quo in politics, the status quo on Wall Street, and the status quo in the big firms where the hot shots make the money. And the only people who are not reaching that status quo is what they see as the ordinary citizen.

Democrats were swept into Congress as much because they weren't Republicans as because they were Democrats. Democrats had to prove, and prove quickly, they were different than the Republicans, that they weren't beholden to the same moneyed interests, that they could make a difference and that they would make a difference for the average citizen. Democrats are, I'm sad to say, failing that test. More than not liking big proposals, I'm willing to wager the ordinary American citizen doesn't like big proposals that dawdle in the halls of Congress, not getting passed and then becoming progressively worse until they pass with absolutely no one happy, or just fade away.

But really, Obama's real problem, the real reason there is an enthusiasm gap, is because it is frickin' hard to govern. Especially when the other side won't play. And so, it is infinitely easier to work up enthusiasm when your side is out of power - because you don't have to make compromises and can tell tales about how much better your side would be handling things without having to offer proof. Meanwhile, the other side is stuck actively making and eating the head cheese. Which, honestly, is much, much harder to be happy about.

Chris Matthews Gets It Half Right

2010-01-20T19:33:00.003-05:00

Well, maybe a quarter right.

First, I have to say that MSNBC's new feature on their websites to shorten video segments is brilliant. I love it (transcript below):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You know what, I'll tell you something, and we'll get to this over time. It came up in the Hillary campaign. And that is this: women in the workplace have to have what's called a professional manner. Men have a little more history in the workplace, in certain work places, and they have a little more, uh, range in the way they presents themselves. Women are expected to perform professionally. An attorney, a doctor, you want to see a game face to some extent, right? And now, when they get into politics, they're-they're expected to do a lot of grabbing and holding and baby kissing, and a lot of it, sort of - intimate exchanges with total strangers. An availability for intimate exchanges. Like, come up to me, grab me, you know what I mean? And if you show any kind of, uh, guardedness or what you call in the workplace professionalism, you're cold... ...So, what we're finding out now is it's harder!

Okay, so I'm not the world's biggest Chris Matthews fan. Scratch that. I strongly dislike Chris Matthews. I think the man is, simply put, an ass. Or, a jackass.

Which is why my first impulse upon hearing this was to say (to myself, while I was alone in my car), "REally, Chris? Women in politics are maligned for maintaining the professionalism they need to acquire in order to succeed and progress in a number of business environments? Who'd have thunk?!" The second was, "We're finding that out NOW?! You f***ing JACKASS!"

The "finding out now" part is where Matthews was downgraded from getting it half right to getting it a quarter right. Because, seriously, those of us in the know have known this for years. Hell, I'm 24 and I've known that for at least half of my life.

This whole post, actually, could be about how this remark may be Matthews obliquely offering contrition over his continually stated negative opinion about Hillary Clinton in during the 2008 presidential race, his remarks about how she was "cold", how she was "sharp", etc. And that would turn into a post about how much I ha... strongly dislike Chris Matthews. Especially when I get to the part where he's talking to Rachel Maddow as if this is some grand revelation he's letter her on, when I'm pretty sure this ain't news to her.

But instead, I'm going to talk about where Matthews got it right, and where he got it wrong.

He's right. He's absolutely right that women have to perform in a certain way, act in a certain way, in the work environment - especially certain types of work environments - in order to get ahead.

He's wrong if he thinks that is the only negative women face. If a woman isn't cold, then she is ineffective - in the workplace, and I'll bet on the campaign trail. Lest we forget the reaction Secretary of State Clinton arose from varied political corners when she had the audacity to tear up in New Hampshire. Some (Andrew Sullivan) called it a calculated, crass effort to gain voter sympathy. And anti-feminist to boot. Some asked if we wanted a woman who cried dealing with our enemies. There is very few ways women can win without being critiqued for how they express (or don't) their femininity.

What Matthews is also wrong about is why (white) men are allowed more expression in the workplace. It isn't because they have been there longer; it is because they are automatically seen as competent. Women (and let's face it, minorities of any stripe) have to prove they are competent. Them's the facts, Jack.

I'll give Matthews credit where credit is due: he's teetering on the edge of a rather big revelation, namely that there is actually sexism in the world and it affects women in politics - just like it affects women everywhere else. I'll give Matthews that credit because I actually think he's made a fairly large step. When he says, "we're finding out", I think he means "I'm finding out". Unless he thinks a lot of his brethren are on the cusp of this realization as well. I hope so.

Allies' Education: A Rant

2010-01-20T09:55:00.003-05:00

After a couple of months of it hanging around under the Recent Editor's Favorites at Feministing, I decided to actually read Allies asking questions. And it wasn't exactly the post I was anticipating. I don't know what kind of post I was expecting with that title, but this far exceeded my meager expectations. It offered a measured, sympathetic look at why would-be allies ask the question, "How am I supposed to learn if you don't teach me?" It looked at how we are told throughout our lives there is no such thing as a dumb question. It delved into why someone of a certain group may not want to be on call to answer the would-be ally's question. And it talked about a better way to become not only better educated, but a path toward becoming a better ally.

And yet, the comments section was filled with comments that seemed to bypass the whole, "Here's a better way to handle this situation, person with a question!" and moved directly on to the "How could you suggest that the thoughts in my head, the very ones that have only now occurred to me, have been asked multiple times before? And even if that is true, how could I possibly know that? And if I don't know that, how could it possibly be my fault? Hmmm?!" A sampling:

Pantheon:
But the person asking doesn't know that you've been asked it over and over. If its been asked over and over on the same thread that the person was presumably reading, that's one thing, but if this is the first time they've thought of that question, they don't know you've answered it enough to be sick of it, or where to find the same kind of answer you would give.
Spiffy McBang:
when you say, if you're privileged you need to go learn, even though you may not know you're privileged, it sounds like you're throwing that out there at anyone who wants to ask something... but how is somebody supposed to figure that out if they don't see a post like this explicitly stating as much?
rebekah:
I personally would much rather have to take the two minutes to write a response to an honest question from someone who just wants information from the source than to have them google it and come across a site that is run by some ass hat and have them be misinformed.

There were comments that thoughtfully engaged with the post from the other side, like:

Flowers:
I feel a responsibility to answer Commenter A's questions, even though it gets very taxing and annoying. Answering privileged people's questions is a duty I owe to other non-privileged people, so that there will hopefully be one more knowledgeable person in the world, and our cause will advance just a little.

And I specifically do NOT want peple going to Google or Wikipedia to learn about an issue that I live out everyday, when they should be asking me directly. If I think that there is a particularly good article online, I will refer people to that. But so much of the internet is utter bullshit -- I would never just cite it as a general source.

But generally, a lot of the response was, "But why can't I ask questions?" and "But where else am I s'pposed to find the answers?"

Even though I think SociologicalMe's original post was fairly compelling and not out of the boundaries of the possible and the polite (and I wholly suggest reading it), I think s/he may have missed a few key points. Namely:

• Commenter B has already educated Commenter A. The post went into formal schooling and how blogging is not equivalent, but the analogy it didn't make was that of the research paper. As in, not all schooling is in the passive learning style. So, say would-be ally is on a site; would-be ally sees a term s/he has never seen before, or reads of a theory s/he has never heard of. S/he has already been educated. S/he has been educated to the fact s/he is entirely ignorant of a subject/subject matter. And, if would-be ally is truly interested in learning about the subject at hand, s/he now has something to go on, something to Google. And, like a research paper or homework, the would-be ally now has the ability to go off and do some of the hard work hirself.

• Commenter A may not be a known entity to Commenter B. rebekah made mention of writing an answer to an "honest question". The problem with blogs and with pseudonyms is that there is no interpersonal relationship between Commenter A and Commenter B. Due to that, Commenter A has no reasonable expectation that Commenter B knows the question asked has been asked in good faith. If the only people who ever stumbled upon a blog and asked a question were people who were honestly interested in learning, then perhaps the dynamic would be different. That is not the case. But even if it were, it doesn't change the fact that Commenter B owes Commenter A nothing.

• Commenter B owes Commenter A nothing because Commenter B has a life of hir own. Commenter B may have answered the question at hand a thousand or so times. Commenter B may be looking to get into the nitty gritty of a specific issue on a specific thread without the whole of the conversation being brought back up to a 101 level. Commenter B may have little interest in figuring out if this particular Commenter A is different from all of the others and really wants to learn, when Commenter B has other things going on - kids to play with, dogs to walk, food to eat. But mostly Commenter B may just not care about making the learning process extremely easy for Commenter A, because the living of it hasn't exactly been peachy keen for Commenter B.

• Commenter B may actually have been asked the same exact question a thousand times before. This goes to Pantheon's point, that "the person asking doesn't know that you've been asked it over and over". And that's true; no one can possibly know what another person has been asked before, let alone how many times. However, a person would have to be fairly obtuse to not even consider that the question s/he wants to ask has been asked before; possibly on that very site, possibly to that very poster, and possibly not that far in the past. Only a Very Special Snowflake indeed would assume the opposite, that this is an original thought only occurring to them. Which leads to the two last points, and ones I think SociologicalMe definitely should have mentioned.

• Many, many sites that encounter this problem have a handy-dandy search bar, or some other search tool to aid in the quest for knowledge. Feministing has a search bar, handily labelled "Search Feministing". Shakesville has one, helpfully labelled "Search: • Shakesville, • Google" with the option to search either Shakesville or Google. Feministe has both the option to "Search Feministe" or to browse the archives, category or tag. Many other sites employ the "cloud" technique of making available labels used on posts. So, if the would be ally wants to know about feminism, s/he could search that very site that prompted the question via search engine or tag. Amazing!

• Also, many, many sites have links on the side. So, if would-be ally has a question about, say, feminism, s/he could take a few seconds and scan the available blogs linked and take a gander at one called Feminism 101. Voila!

• In order for one to truly become learned in a subject, one cannot be spoon-fed the answers. One has to think, to work, to do a lot of the heavy lifting hirself. Commenter A denies hirself an education when s/he fosters all of the expectations upon Commenter B. Learning takes work. End of story.

In this time with more information available to each person with an internet connection than in any other time in history, with Google (kind of scarily) archiving all of the books under the sun, the idea that the only way we can learn is by getting the crib sheets from another in Real Time instead of actively reaching out to gain the knowledge ourselves is not only ludicrous but insulting. And the idea that others exist within cyberspace for the sole purpose to service our educational needs on the spot when directly questioned is also insulting, to both our ability to look into the problem ourselves and to the people upon which we impose.

In order for one to truly become learned in a subject, one cannot be spoon-fed the answers. One has to think, to work, to do a lot of the heavy lifting hirself. Commenter A denies hirself an education when s/he fosters all of the expectations upon Commenter B.

The Song Currently Playing Loop-De-Loop In My Head

2010-01-19T18:23:00.003-05:00

So, for the Christmas before last, my mother got me a record converter. It seemed like a present more for herself than me; but since I do have a sizable record collection for someone whose buying power didn't come about until a while after the record was the convenient and popular way to store music, it wasn't a complete bowling ball moment.

Skip to this year. We've been slowly, stintingly, sputtering along with the record conversion process. Mostly, because it takes a lot of time and you see little results. So, this last time around, we broke out the 45s to convert between full length records. And that's when my mom broke out this song:

James, James hold the ladder steady
James, James I'm packed tonight I'm ready
James, James hold the ladder steady
I'm a'comin' down to your ar-ar-ar-rms
I'm a'comin' down to your arms.
Now James and I we went to mama and showed her my diamond ring
She said "my poor little baby, you must be crazy, to think of such a
thing"
So James, James hold the ladder steady
James, James I'm packed tonight I'm ready
James, James hold the ladder steady
I'm a'comin' down to your ar-ar-ar-rms
I'm a'comin' down to your arms.
Now James and I we went to daddy and said that we want to be wed
Daddy said "nope, you'll just have to elope" and laughed as he went to
bed
But James, James hold the ladder steady
James, James I'm packed tonight I'm ready
James, James hold the ladder steady
I'm a'comin' down to your ar-ar-ar-rms
I'm a'comin' down to your arms.
I'd hate to see 'em in the morning when they both completely flip
He'll be sayin' "they cain't", she'll be feeling faint
And I'll be kissing my husband's lips
So James, James hold the ladder steady
James, James I'm packed tonight I'm ready
James, James hold the ladder steady
I'm a'comin' down to your ar-ar-ar-rms
I'm a'comin' down to your arms.
FADE
James, James hold the ladder steady
James, James I'm packed tonight I'm ready
James, James hold the ladder steady

It has been going around and around in my head for, literally, the last day and a half.

Lesson learned: Never let my mother pick out the 45s to play.

Opening Doors

2010-01-19T10:17:00.000-05:00

Now, there is something that really bugs me. That really pisses me off. That, at times, has led to me flying off the handle. And that is having doors held open for me. Not all of the time, mind you. If I didn't get to the door first, I am grateful the person who did get to it first has seen fit to hold it open for me. The degrees of gratefulness are different depending upon how the person has held the door - I prefer it when the person is in the process of walking through and keeps it open for me to walk through after hir as opposed to the person physically holding the handle and urging me to walk in front of them. I could go into the reasons why and the anecdotal evidence I have that has women mostly doing the first and men mostly doing the second, but I understand that most people don't get as deep into door-holding politics as I do.

What I hate is when I get to the door at the same time or before someone else, and that person (who is most often of the male persuasion) insists on holding the door open for me. This creates a bad situation, even if it were in no other way but logistical. Now, we have to swap positions. Now, the time it would take for me to get through that door has lengthened. This has done absolutely nothing to help me, and in fact hinders my own process.

I also hate it because it is chivalry at its worst. It implies that the man holding the door open for me is performing, even if just in that moment, as my servant; and yet the true dynamics of the situation are far different. He still controls the situation, because he is insistent; he controls the situation by making me accept his brief servitude. His wants, desires, and impulses still take precedent over my own. I want to hold open the door for myself, and for him, because all equality measures aside, that is what makes the most sense. That is what is easier for me. And, truly, for him.

Part of why the door holding thing annoys me so much is because it is not my natural order of things. That, and the whole ease of access thing. Throughout my life, I've been able and allowed to hold open whatever door I've gotten to first, even if there is a guy trailing me. Because it is not the natural order of things, I tend to be sharp on when things have started to not go well for me. It gets under my skin in a way it probably wouldn't to someone who has had the experience of doors being held open for them throughout their life, for someone for whom the hindrance of having a door held open in such a fashion is merely life as it has always been and will always be. For that person, if they decide that the door-held-open thing is actually annoying or sexist or just inefficient, the warning bells may not go off as frequently still - because this is the life they have always led.

Why am I going on a huge ass rant about my issues with doors and the men who hold them? Well, it comes down to the idea of infantilizing women. No, seriously, it totally does. In one of the links I posted yesterday, this one, one of the arguments that came up in the comments is that rape statistics - and the way those rape statistics are measured - infantilize women. This is an argument I've heard before, and I'm sure I'll hear it again.

See, in my life, it is obvious that having a door held open for me when I got there first is a pain in the neck, and sexist to boot. If a guy refuses to walk through the door I'm holding open, how could it be anything but?

However, there are people for whom this realization won't come naturally, because it is what they live with. Which leads me directly to a post by Thomas, who, in reviewing C.J. Pascoe's Dude, You're a Fag, has demonstrates exactly what it is that makes cases of rape and/or sexual harassment and assault difficult for a lot of women to recognize in talking about this particular high school climate:

This is a culture where:
- boys’ physical abuse of girls who shut down and barely complain is normal;
- boys’ pursuit of sexual activity that girls do not want is normal;
- boys’ sense of entitlement to date women of their choice is normal;
- girls’ assertion and determined defense of bodily boundaries is not normal.

This is the world a lot of girls inhabit. This is the world we have to recognize as being the norm, as being as natural as having a guy insist on opening a door. Obviously, the situations are more disparate than the same, in terms of the overall affect. But we can't ignore the effect of growing up with the understanding that "boys will be boys" is a legitimate excuse for half of the behavior on the list. And how we - as girls, as a society - tacitly accept that. And how that acceptance leads to girls not having the words or the understanding of the situation at hand to say, "He raped me; he touched me where he shouldn't have; his verbal intonations have become sexual harassment". Because "boys will be boys" - and girls walk in jungles they shouldn't.

I had a boy sit at my lunch table when I was in 8th grade. He constantly sat next to me or across from me, and although he never touched me, he described scenes from porn movies he'd watched in detail, knowing I didn't want to hear it. He described his own masturbation habits. And the one day when he went "too far", when my already short fuse was shorter still, I threw my lunch tray at him. We were both hauled up to the principal's office, and I told her what had happened, how the only advice I had been given by teachers and lunch aides to this point was to move to another table. Which, by the way, didn't exactly work for me. That had been MY lunch table. It wasn't my fault some pervy kid had decided to sit there. It wasn't my responsibility to move from the table I'd been sitting for the past year and a half. And she told me, again, to move my seat if he bothered me, and that "boys will be boys".

And here's the thing - I knew she was wrong. After all, I knew plenty of boys who weren't doing those things/saying those things. But did I fight it? Not so much.

And I have and have had the resources to properly articulate what was happening. I have two feminist parents. I have been well-versed in sexual matters since I first asked where babies came from at the age of 4. And yet, in many moments, throughout my life, I have lacked the ability to say, "This is what happened to me".

So when someone says the feminist movement is a rape crisis movement, or that it infantilizes women, I say this:

It doesn't. Some feminists may; some feminists do. But recognizing that we rarely give women the tools to properly label what has happened - and in some cases, is happening - to them is different from saying, "You will never know what the truth is, so I'm going to take your experience and make it into what I want the truth to be". It is also an acknowledgement that what we say and how we act can be eons apart. We can tell women they have the right to body autonomy - and then we read lists compiled about what guys in high schools get away with. How that assertion of body autonomy melts away in the face of "boys will be boys". How that doesn't necessarily change when we exit high school. How all the theoretical tools in the world (no means no; if anyone touches you in a place normally covered by your bathing suit, it is sexual assault and you should tell the nearest grown up; etc) come up short when you are constantly inundated with concrete evidence that those tools are as solid as a paper kite in a rain storm. That concrete evidence makes it all the harder to recognize when those tools are appropriate - when it was rape and not just sex you didn't want. When it is sexual assault and not simply boys being boys.

Monday Reading List

2010-01-18T08:36:00.003-05:00

I Don't Care If You're Offended:

Now, I think many people who write about and try to fight structural bias are just accustomed to using “offensive” as something of a shorthand for this notion of harmful-because-it-reinforces-pernicious-memes; I know I generally have. But offense is only defined in terms of how the offended person feels, which means it’s an insufficient concept. It actually obscures the real problem.

The Looting Lie

For example, I was watching CNN, and there was a CNN reporter that was talking about a Haitian hotel that brought a hose out for people to take water from if they came by. Were those people looting water? I’d say no. The norms changed. What if people are together in a group and they decide that they need to go get some rice. Is it looting to get rice and feed your family in desperate situations? No. It’s a new norm developing in the midst of a very extreme situation.

Remembering National Tragedies: The U.S. vs Germany:

Plantations were many other things, but they were also the engine of slavery. It is this that should stand out as the most important thing about them. Concentration camps were many other things as well (e.g., a military training site, a daily job site for German soldiers, a factory producing goods, and a strategic part of the war effort), but we have absorbed the important lessons from them so thoroughly that it is difficult to even imagine what an alternative tour might look like. In contrast, one can visit the Lara Plantation and come away not really thinking about slavery at all, in favor of how pretty the china was and oooh did you smell that candle as we walked by? Delicious. I need a coke, you?

At War With Our Bodies:

We live in a society that makes money off of making us feel bad about ourselves, after all people who are 100% content with their body don’t go on expensive fad diets or purchase tons of expensive beauty supplies.

Female Sexuality As A Weapon:

With the recent release of Bayonetta, I was reminded of female sexuality being used as a weapon or a power in games. This is not an original idea. Having not played Bayonetta I will only mention some other games that use this mechanic.

Rape Analogy Redux: The "Stroll In The Jungle" Theory:

What is the fate of the man-eating bear? Many of the past decade’s person-eaters were either shot, killed in some other way, pepper-sprayed, lured out of the wilderness with elaborate traps, or quarantined in animal training. Sixty percent of rapes are not even reported to police, which seriously impedes the government’s ability to trap rapists. Why aren’t these women reporting their rapes? Oh, perhaps it has s0mething to do with jungle rape theorists who suggest that everyone who gets raped is a big ‘ol dumbass.

Also, Felicia Day, otherwise known in these parts as that girl who lives through Epitaph One and the girl who doesn't live through Dr. Horrible's Sing Along-Blog has her own blog! In it, she is as witty as one could hope. I highly recommend reading her, and I defy you from coming away fantasizing she'll be you're new BFF. And Stuff You Should Know's Kiva team, of which I am a part, has raised $64,225 so far. Go Team!

And comic:

toothpastefordinner.com

Dear iPod Genius Function:

2010-01-17T13:55:00.004-05:00

Little less than three days ago, I thought you were the most brilliant thing ever. I thought you were the savior to humanity, that you would make me complete in ways I had not even fathomed were possible. Three days ago, my exaltations of your wonderfulness rang about the land - or to the four or so people I physically talked during those three days that would care/indulge me.

After a whirlwind courtship, I regret to say the bloom has fallen from the rose. The reason? You are obsessed with Conor Oberst. I know! I, too, am obsessed with Conor Oberst. I think he is brilliant. I love him. I listen to him constantly! Several of his songs are among the most played on my iPod. You seem to agree this was a good choice. Very well.

However. As much as I would normally agree that Conor Oberst goes with everything, I was hoping we could branch out a little bit. Or, if we constantly played Conor Oberst stuff, it wouldn't be the same Conor Oberst stuff - unless that is truly the cream of the crop. Which, no, is unfortunately not always the case.

Listen, I love Bowl of Oranges as much as the next person. But three times? In three different Genius playlists? Also, Eagle on a Pole? If we must have a Conor Oberst song on every Genius list you create, could we at least switch it up a bit? And could we dial back the Oberst love to only one song of his per playlist generated? That would also be swell, because my current Genius creation has five - count 'em, FIVE - songs by this man on it. Out of twenty-five! Even I, with my love for him, recognizes this as a bit excessive.

Once we handle the Oberst Overload, I think we should discuss how you seem to only pull the same artists and the same songs by those artists regardless of playlist generated. I understand that I listen to a lot of music that sounds the same. I understand that Conor Oberst can sound country, so if I pick a Ryan Adams country song or a Willie Nelson country song or a Johnny Cash country song, some Conor may show up. But what's the excuse for throwing in "Annie Waits" by Ben Folds? Or the same three She & Him tunes? Or the Shins?

I have a massive, massive amount of music to choose from, to go hog wild with and make a myriad of interesting and wonderful and exciting mixes. Mixes that will once again win my love and admiration. Mixes that include music I have forgotten I have! I'm not going to forget I have The Shins. Or Ben Folds. Or She & Him. Or Rilo Kiley. Really. I'm not. I listen to those guys on my own.

I'm sorry, Genius. I think we may have to break up. I'm leaving you for your more erratic cousin, Shuffle. Sure, I am often frustrated and skipping song after song I don't want to listen to in that moment. But at least it sometimes gives me The Clash, or Buffy Sainte Marie, or K.D. Lang. You do not. Maybe we'll see each other around.

Friday Random Ten

2010-01-15T06:36:00.004-05:00

1) Rosie - Joan Armatrading

2)Natural Mystic - Bob Marley

3) Baboom/Mama Said - The Vaughan Brothers

4) Air Mattress - Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band

5) There's A Place - The Beatles

6) Rock N Roll - Ryan Adams

7) Crying In The Chapel - Elvis Presley

8) More Than A Woman - Tavares

9) Tell All The People - The Doors

10) Trolley Wood - Eisley

Letters To My Editor: No One Deserves A Trial Edition

2010-01-13T18:49:00.003-05:00

So, I'm going to write about a letter to my paper's editor, and you're going to have to take in on faith I'm not making it up because in order to pull it on-line you need a user name and password. And I'm pretty sure you have to subscribe, so... Here's the letter, entitled Terrorists Don't Deserve U.S. Justice:

How does U.S. government figure the Christmas bombing attempt on Northwest Flight 259 was a failure? It accomplished what al-Qaida wanted. Whether it brought down the plane, Americans will spend millions to put the would-be bomber on trial.
He, shoe-bomber Richard Reid and those wackos in Gitmo do not deserve American justice. They should be executed as soon as the plane lands. We could use the money on more important things.

First, some minor grammatical grievances. This sentence:

Whether it brought down the plane, Americans will spend millions to put the would-be bomber on trial

makes very little sense.

It could read:

Although it did not succeed in bringing down the plane, Americans will spend millions to put the would-be bomber on trial.

An added sentence about how one of al-Qaeda's stated goals is to bleed America dry would have really improved the sentiment.

But the real problem, aside from the fact that the letter writer seems to be cribbing off of Bill O'Reilly without giving O'Reilly his proper due, lies in the philosophical assertion of the letter, that being:

He, shoe-bomber Richard Reid and those wackos in Gitmo do not deserve American justice.

I'll let Keith Olbermann - because I am into giving props when props are due - take the reins about one of the real problems with this argument (relevant part transcribed below):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

KEITH OLBERMANN (SPEAKING AS BILL O'REILLY): "Simply put, al-Qaeda thugs have no rights, none. They should be killed on the spot. And they are being killed by the drones. So if they're captured, they should undergo harsh interrogation and be placed in military prisons."

KEITH OLBERMANN (SPEAKING AS HIMSELF): Okay, were you planning to still put them in the military prisons after you kill them on the spot, or do you need to rephrase your plan? Seriously, Bill, we need to walk you through the idea of why we have trials? Ultimately, why we ask questions first and shoot later? It's not about rights, it's not about who's a thug, it's not about how much sadistic joy you and the sickos like you from the thought of "harsh interrogation". It's so we get the right guy. Mankind figured this out thousands of years ago, and we replaced that old method of "kill them then ask them if they're guilty" because the dead men proved to be mediocre at answering questions! And then it also turned out that often we were killing the wrong guys which is inconvenient! Especially for them!

But, aside from the inconvenient aspect of killing the innocent, there is a not so insignificant fact that applying an impartial judicial system is one of those key things that sets us apart from those who wish to terrorize us. Applying our rule of law to those who would indiscriminately kill, allowing for the fact that our values system is strong enough and significant enough and, perhaps most importantly, sacred enough to try and convict those who are guilty, and try and set free those who are found not guilty.

Because even though Olbermann is right that it isn't wholly about rights, it is at least somewhat about rights. Because the judicial system isn't set up for the government to reign supreme. It has been set up in favor of the defendant. Because the guilty aren't the only ones accused; but also because the guilty have the fundamental right of due process as well. Partly, that is to protect the innocent, because if the guilty are not worthy of trial by jury then the whole process by which we decide who is indeed innocent gets a bit truncated. And then we circle back to a lot of the wrong people dying, which - again - is inconvenient.

Perhaps my Letter Writer means only al-Qaeda terrorists don't deserve American justice. Perhaps those others who break the law are still subject to the rule of law, as long as they aren't Islamic extremists. That may be where his line is drawn. But that doesn't mean that's where everyone's line is drawn. Maybe someone else's line for which crimes deserve a fair trial is less broad than "everyone who isn't engaged in terrorism for the benefit of al-Qaeda"; maybe someone else's line encompasses those who drive while texting, or who kill anyone for any reason. And that's really why denying the American system of justice to one group you personally don't like, even if it saves a bundle of cash, is one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard - because it rests predominately on the idea that everyone else will agree that this subset of criminal is the subset that does not deserve to go through due process and be subject to Amendments 5 through 8.

Let's take in that number for a sec, shall we? Our Founders felt that the whole criminal and civil trial thing was so important, they chose to utilize four whole amendments out of the original ten to explicitly setting down rules for how trials should be set up. Four. It is inconceivable to me that those who purport to love our country so much they want to kill anyone on our soil immediately who allegedly engaged in an act of terrorism could so willfully ignore the very words of our Constitution. For all the talk about how actually trying these people plays into the terrorists' hands, those same people do little to engage with the notion that ignoring those parts of our society that makes it our society because we're scared or angry or vengeful does more harm than it does good. Because it fundamentally alters our society, and not for the better. Because it ignores that the justice system isn't there to exonerate the innocent. It is there to provide rights to the guilty.

Double Standards, And Their Absence

2010-01-11T06:28:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to go into Senator Harry Reid's comments regarding the electability of then-Senator Barack Obama. But what I am going to talk about is the "double standard" talk emanating from some members of the GOP.

There is no damned double standard. Why? Well, for one, in order for it to truly be a double standard, the parties would have to be on equal footing. Guess what? They're not.

There is a long-standing tradition within the GOP to use dog-whistles, in their ads and in their robocalls. Like the Willie Horton ad, used against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. Like the poll calls in 2000 asking South Carolina voters if they would be less likely to vote for John McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate African-American child, based partially on the fact McCain and his wife had adopted a little girl from Bangladesh. Ronald Reagan used the specter of the "welfare queen" in order to win the support of white America.

Then there is this: the person Harry Reid is being most compared to on an individual level within the GOP camp is Trent Lott. Lott, who said that had Strom Thurman been elected president, the country would be in a better place, that we wouldn't have all the problems we have now. Some nice remarks for an elder statesman's birthday? Perhaps. But the question becomes, better for whom? For the African-Americans who were left out of Thurman's America? No. It would not be better for them at all.

And that's what it comes down to - policy decisions and reaching out to a minority community. I'm not going to say that the Dems don't house racists. I'm not going to say that the GOP is totally bad on issues of race and the Dems are totally wonderful. What I am going to say is that the GOP has continually made a home for itself in the high places, and have perpetually attacked policies that are designed to help minorities in our nation. Sometimes, out of a sense of political theory, but just as often it seems that it happens out of bad faith.

So, they don't get the benefit of the doubt when one of their members runs his mouth. So, they don't get the cushion that comes with having an amiable history with the community in question. So, they get hammered harder because there is no trust there. There is no sense that these guys are trying to do right, that they've stumbled and fallen because they're idiots and not because they just don't care.

That's why there is no double standard. Because, in general, the GOP and the Democratic Party start from two entirely different ledges. And to wipe that clean in an effort to win some scant political support is from the preschool pool of political wisdom.

Monday Reading List

2009-12-28T06:43:00.004-05:00

"We Are Not Animals in the Hood":

Lisa Gray-Garcia says the tours “zoo-ify” poor people and people of color, who will clearly not be paying $65 to drive around looking at projects, tags and bullet holes.

Single-Minded:

Does that go back to the idea that being single is seen as a threat to those in relationships? The idea seems laughable, but somehow it always come roaring back. There are also still so many (namely lumped into the category of “relatives”) that find it strange when you don’t bring a love interest to the Christmas party every year.

Why I Hate Label-Hating:

What is a label? It’s a description. It’s a name. Words are the primary tool our species uses to communicate and “labels” are just that: words we use to explain ourselves and others. The wrong word, especially when it is instituted upon a person by the entire culture, can do tremendous damage, and I understand that most queer people are walking around with considerable baggage because of this, myself included. But that isn’t an argument against labels per se. Once again, it’s an argument against coercion.

When Men Were Men, And Burned To Death:

When men were men and film was in black and white, race car drivers died and were injured in crashes with what now seems like shocking regularity. European motorsports resumed after a nearly decade-long hiatus caused by the Second World War, with sports car and Grand Prix racing adopting advances in engines, materials and aerodynamics spurred by military technology, and the cars went faster and faster from the early fifties on. The speeds quickly outstripped the cars’ rudimentary abilities to protect drivers in a crash, leaving ever thinner margins of for lightweight machines with hundreds of horsepower on tracks made of winding public roads.

From Cute Overload:

Friday (Not So) Random Ten, Christmas Edition

2009-12-25T11:38:00.004-05:00

I was originally planning on simply posting my 10 favorite Christmas carols. But then I thought, why not do a list of my favorite Christmas albums?

And so, in no particular order, and some choice tracks:

1) A Charlie Brown Christmas - Vince Guaraldi

"Linus & Lucy"

2) Barenaked for the Holidays - Barenaked Ladies

"Elf's Lament"

"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (feat. Sarah McLachlan)

3) Joy - A Holiday Collection - Jewel
"Ava Maria"

4) The Christmas Song - Nat "King" Cole
"O Come All Ye Faithful"

5) Pretty Paper - Willie Nelson
"Pretty Paper"

6) Christmas Island - Leon Redbone
"Christmas Island"

7) Have a Holly Jolly Christmas - Burl Ives
"Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer"

8) White Christmas - Bing Crosby
"White Christmas"

9) A New Thought For Christmas - Melissa Etheridge
"Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)"

10) Christmas in the Heart - Bob Dylan
"Do You Hear What I Hear?"

"The first couple of songs, I thought were horrible but fascinating. Then it grew on me." - My mother's review.

My Favorite Christmas Song (not on any of the albums):
"Little Drummer Boy" - Bing Crosby & David Bowie

There are a couple of other albums I consider essential. Unfortunately, one of them is a Victorian Christmas cd and the other is a Japanese Christmas cd I picked up one year, and I can't track down either of them. So I can't tell you what they are. Sorry about that.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Watching

2009-12-25T09:05:00.003-05:00

(This is a recycled post, made out of two from last year)

Christmas is probably my favorite holiday, and one of the reasons why it is my favorite holiday are the specials - the Christmas movies, the television specials, the Christmas episodes of television series', I love so many of them. Throughout the Christmas season, I watch my favs, and ignore the ones I don't love. So, just like Thanksgiving, here's my list:

1) A Muppet Family Christmas: The 1987 television special featuring all of the different muppet creations and Jim Henson is my absolute favorite Christmas special ever. We had it on tape for years and years, until my father recklessly threw out a bunch of VHS tapes and lost it forever. Now, I watch the subpar legal release, which is missing such classic scenes as Fozzie singing with his snowman and the muppet babies in movie form and part of the ending medley of songs. But even the subpar Christmas special still has memorable lines, and Doc seeing the muppets and asking Sprocket if those were anything like those Fraggles he was always talking about. The Sesame Street gang is all there, and make "small talk"; the Fraggles are in the basement, and pass around a lucky yellow pebble. And it is full of good, Christmas fun.

2) The Nightmare Before Christmas: This is both a Halloween movie and a Christmas film. It works as both, and it is brilliant. Jack visiting Christmastown is wonderful, and the very idea that a holiday would get tired of doing the same thing year after year is exciting - especially when he steals someone else's holiday. Santa Claus is wonderful, and the kids reacting to their "presents" are great too. It also manages to be both creepy and oddly heart-warming, so kudos to Tim Burton for that.

3) The Santa Clause: I like Tim Allen; and although vaguely morbid (a woman at work had to explain to her five year old that Santa doesn't really die like that and that it was just a movie), it is fun and spreads good holiday cheer. Yes, Santa can be crassly commercial; but he also inspires kids to leave out soy milk because he's lactose intolerant. And Christmas, at its best, is really about family. The way Scott Calvin reconnects with not only his son but his ex-wife and her new husband warms the cockles of my heart.

4) Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer: No list is complete without Rudolf. Bumbles that bounce, the island of misfit toys, Rudolf lighting the way and getting all of those misfit toys new homes, and the message of accepting differences in others is holiday joy. Plus, it has Yukon Cornelius, one of the best creations ever. We certainly quote him a lot in this house. Throw in a story where the mother and girlfriend set off to find the young buck even in 1964 and an extremely tall elf in sunglasses, and I'm there.

5) A Christmas Story: Jean Shepherd's childhood tales are timeless. Just today I labelled a gift "FRAGILE: It must be Italian". Electric sex, laying there like a slug to avoid bullies, not getting in trouble at school after making your friend stick his tongue to a pole, "You'll shoot your eye out", manipulative and disheartening advertising, and Chinese turkey make A Christmas Story beyond awesome. It has sweetness, but it isn't cloying. It is about Christmas, but not just about Christmas; it is about life in that particular family and community that just happened to take place in that time of year. I'm sure Ralphie and the others could have run from Scut Farkis in the spring or fall as well (and that they did), but having it in the constant snow of the Christmas season just further highlighted the juxtaposition of life.

6) Sports Night's "Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee Tech": Aaron Sorkin delivers on Christmas; not only does the logo get a little Santa hat, but I think this end scene sums it up:

Casey: That's all for tonight, but before we sign off, we felt that with Christmas only a few days off and people making up lists and checking them twice, it was as good a time as any to mention some people who are important to us here at the show. It seems that quite a few of you, for instance, like the way Dan and I dress on the air, and you should know that we're dressed by Maureen Gates and Joseph Roveto. Maureen and Joseph are assisted by a young woman named Monica Brazelton, and Monica is not to be trifled with.
Dan: Our camera operators are Ray, Wayne, Bruce, John and Jerome, who wishes we'd do more features on hockey.
Casey: Not gonna happen, Jerome. Every time I pick up a pencil or put down a coffee mug, that's Jody Mann, and her trusty aide John Frantz, and if you've ever wondered what a gaffer was, or a best boy, you should ask Keith and Mark.
Dan: We've got some people who don't get paid much, but that's okay, 'cause the hours are terrible. They're our PA's, and their names are Lauren, Victoria, Jake, Lee, Ashley and Brad.
Casey: This is a script. Dan and I write it and then two people come along and put it together so that we can also read it. Their names are Joan and Chris and they, us and everyone else here are pretty much at the mercy of the script supervisor, Carol McKechnie, who's got
a little thing for me, and I think it's time she admits it.
Dan: Keri McIntyre--
Casey: Nicole Burke--
Dan: Shawn Manley--
Casey: Jeff Wheat--
Dan: Mark Johnson--
Casey: Cajun.
Dan: Cajun.
Casey: How 'bout Skip Cook--
Dan: How 'bout Phil Heath--
Casey: How 'bout Karen, Julie and Angela in make-up--
Dan: How 'bout Brenda, Cammy and Jody in hair-- We've got film on this show. You know who cuts it?
Casey: Janet Ashikaga. You know who her assistant is?
Dan: Laura the Wonderful.
Casey: We've just named a small fraction of the people who put this show on television, which means we've left out many more and we'll try and rectify that as we head toward December 25th. But for now, I'm Casey McCall alongside Dan Rydell, wishing everyone in your home, along with everyone here at my home a very happy Christmas.

Sorkin has a tendency to get meta, to draw directly from his life; and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I know that I disliked Kristin Chenoweth before I worshipped her due to Harriet Hayes of Studio Sixty being based on her, and Harriet not containing one iota of the sparkle and poise and charm and sweetness Chenoweth herself has. But some of his best moments come from that meta-tendency as well. Isaac's stroke stemming from Robert Guillaume's own stroke; fights with the network over Sports Night; and this. Those names Dan and Casey rattle off there at the end of this episode the show within a show Sports Night are names of people who worked on the actual show Sports Night - the one that did air on ABC. That is incredibly sweet and very cool, especially coming from an atheistic Jewish man.

7) Studio Sixty on the Sunset Strip's "The Christmas Show": I've got two words for you, and those are "Nazi Santa". Seriously. It is awesome and funny. Actually, I've got a couple of more for you. An atheistic Jewish man bringing Christmas spirit to a sketch comedy show that doesn't want any, leading to fun and friction. Also, Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. And for the sweet and moving part, a storyline involving band members from various TV shows taking sick days in order to get musicians displaced by Katrina work - and a band made up of New Orleans musicians displaced by Katrina playing "O Holy Night" at the end:

It also brought attention to Tipitina's Foundation, an organization meant to foster New Orleans' continued musical heritage. Those musicians? Are from Tipitina's.

8) Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Amends": Okay, so it's hokey. But it is BtVS, and no holiday of mine is complete without it. Plus, I'm a sucker for miracle snow and Buffy and Angel's romance. I also love Willow's Jewishness, Xander getting the Channukah spirit, and the fact that not everything is white-washed. Xander's still sleeping outside of his house in an attempt to avoid his family's drunken gatherings because his home life sucks, and the snow isn't going to change that. Angel's still guilt-ridden, and snow isn't going to change that. After all, "Strong is fighting! It's hard, and it's painful, and it's every day. It's what we have to do. And we can do it together". But Christmas, at its best, offers a respite from the fight and from the hard painfulness of life. It isn't about the presents or nog or what religion your giving and charity come from, but about the people we surround ourselves with and whom we choose to buoy up and who we are buoyed up by. And that is what Amends, even with its saptastic ways, gives me.

9) A Charlie Brown Christmas:

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you this day is born in the City of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men'." That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

I'm with the guy on NPR's Talk of the Nation: that sounds better being spoken with a bit of a lisp. Or maybe it just sounds better by Linus.

10) The West Wing's "In Excelsis Deo": The choir boys singing Little Drummer Boy intercut with the burial of Toby's homeless soldier is incredibly moving. And its The West Wing.

11) The West Wing's "Noel": Yo-Yo Ma and Josh dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder makes an interesting Christmas episode combination. But it works, especially with the interconnectedness of Josh and Donna, and Josh and Leo.

12) Chuck's "Chuck vs the Crown Vic": Lester cheating at dreidl makes the entire episode; but Sarah and Chuck sweetly deciding to be friends and not letting Jeff pressure them with the mistletoe is also great. Plus, it includes Casey's prized car getting blowed all up.

13) Rugrats' "The Santa Experience": I love how Angelica gets a little piece of coal in her Cynthia dream house thing.

14) Rugrats' "Chanukah": Yeah, not Christmas; but it is still in the holiday spirit, and I personally love the pop up Torah and lines like "A Maccababy's gotta do do what a Maccababy's gotta do" and "It's hard to find the meanie of Chanukah". Plus, I love Santa versus the Aliens - which is very much like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

15) The Muppet Christmas Carol: This one is from John, and he's right. No list is complete without Gonzo reciting the back of his hand, and Statler Waldorf as Marley. Michael Caine is pretty terrific as well as Scrooge. And the Spirit of Christmas Day is awesome.

16) Bones' "The Man in the Fallout Shelter": The Jeffersonian gang gets stuck in the lab due to the bio-hazard alarm going off. And Christmas is celebrated through a glass partition, and later at a Chinese restaurant. Between a solved murder and a fortune given to those left behind and Bones opening the Christmas gifts from the year her parents disappeared under Angela's holographic Christmas tree.

17) Bones' "The Santa in the Slush": Santa's dead. And apparently people have made shanks out of Christmas trees. Plus, Caroline's feeling Puckish. Also, it is not morally wrong to lie around the Christmas holidays. It is kind of wrong for the death of a Santa to be so much fun.

18) Doctor Who's "The Christmas Invasion": Another John recommendation! Now, I'm a fan of the 9th Doctor; but Rose having to deal with the newly regenerated 10th Doctor being out of commission during an invasion and homicidal Christmas trees.

19) Frosty the Snowman: A holiday classic, for a reason. Even if Frosty is a moron for going in a greenhouse.

20) Elf: My family loves this movie, but I think it is worth watching for Zooey Deschanel and some great quotes.

The Coolest Thing

2009-12-24T06:44:00.001-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I wish my high school had been, or in this moment was, that cool. Alas, no.

Monday Reading List

2009-12-21T09:29:00.002-05:00

From 'Vibrator' to 'Cougar Town', Sex Is Still A Man's World:

“Men comprise the majority of the creative community,” said Martha M. Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, and one result is “male fantasies of women’s sexuality.” Dr. Lauzen studied the 2008-9 television season, surveying more than 2,100 of the most powerful jobs in prime-time network broadcasting, and found that only one out of four was held by a woman.

Bending Gender Online for Fun, Profit, and Faux Feminism:

Ironic, but not surprising. Sociologist Shelly Correll has demonstrated that women with kids face a “motherhood penalty.” They’re less likely to be offered jobs and less likely to be paid well. When Correll gave potential employers fake resumes that varied only in subtle references to parenting activities, she found that supposedly childless women were twice as likely as mothers to be called for an interview.

Back!:

What I like about the atheist reactions to these pieces is that they are not down with the sexism in them. What I don't like is that atheist authors are more likely to see misogyny as a problem of these authors and religious folks, and thus not our problem. But sexism is alive and well among atheists, and while it shouldn't be tackled by people like Lofton, who are clearly hostile towards atheists, it can't just be projected onto religious folks and ignored in our own community.

Disability Symbology:

Notice how the second symbol represents people with disabilities as active and independent. There are motion signs and the figure is pushing its own chair.

An organization called Not a Doll is taking the human trafficking element of Dollhouse and bringing attention to it (via Stephanie, who also says, "if Whedonites can get a giant studio to make a high budget movie out of a show that didn't even get a full season, they might just be able to create quite a bit of real life change.")

The How Stuff Works Kiva team has raised $46,950 as of this morning.

And comic:

Pink Sportswear

2009-12-20T19:00:00.006-05:00

So, I'm watching the UConn Women's Game on CPTV, and they're doing a pledge drive, due to the loss of several corporate sponsors due to the economic downturn. And what do mine eyes see?

These lovelies:

What is wrong with this picture?

Could it be that UConn's colors are not, in point of fact, pink and white but blue and white:

Now, you could ask, "Why is this a problem?"

And the answer would be, because this isn't a UConn only issue. Almost every team I can think of offers their team merchandise in pink. And the problem with that, from a pragmatic perspective, is that it totally eliminates the whole "wearing your colors" aspect of buying your team's merch.

But then there is this other issue of making sports feminized. Especially, like in the case of UConn Women's Basketball, sports women are playing. Maya Moore and Tina Charles and the rest of the UConn Women's team aren't out there in pink jerseys, maintaining their femininity as they throw down on the basketball court. They are women, and they play basketball. They are women, and they give up none of their femaleness by wearing the blue and white jersey. And yet, in order to make liking sports and expressing a love of a sport or a specific team acceptable to some women, the very distinguishing characteristic has to be pink-washed.

I'm not against women liking pink. I'm just not a fan of pink-washing. I'm not a fan of signifying "women fans" from just fan-fans.

Saturday Sesame Street

2009-12-19T08:49:00.001-05:00

One part of one of my favorite Christmas specials:

Risk and Poor Judgement

2009-12-16T06:43:00.003-05:00

In the wake of the Amy Dickinson drama, there is a mindset that concerns me greatly, and that is the correlation between risk and poor judgement. Risk is inevitable. Every action holds with it a certain amount of risk, and at certain times the risk offered by a situation far outways the rewards. But that doesn't mean unnecessary risk automatically is a symptom of bad judgement, and your unnecessary risk is going to be different from my unnecessary risk. I'm sure there are places where most people's unnecessary risk overlaps; but there are people who also don't lock up their guns when there are children in the house, so I'm not betting on anything.

In terms of the financial crisis, I'm willing to say some poor judgement went down; but more than that, unnecessary risk was present in droves. And it was a situation where more than just the primary, or even secondary, players were to be greatly and acutely and intimately affected. That is a risk I am not willing to take, but that is because until I got to college, I had a tendency to shake after making a very large purpose and have immediate buyer's remorse, even for things that were necessary. However, it is also a greater risk because its effect went beyond those making the original assessment. The amount of risk in terms of life-destroying financial decisions should be, I think, couched in part by how many lives will be destroyed. It's an inexact science, to be sure.

But then, there is the risks that, generally, affect only ourselves. The risk of wearing a miniskirt in 1960s America. The risk of riding the subway whenever as a woman. The risk of talking to a stranger at a party.

There are all sorts of risks that are both greater than the average and exhibit poor judgement, without being immoral or criminal. Lighting one's own head on fire. Taunting a group of Hells Angels with your police badge. Yelling at a police officer. Getting a piggie back ride from an extremely drunk friend. Doing anything ever first demonstrated on Jackass.

Talking to a stranger at a party, going to another room with a new acquaintance at a party isn't on that list. Even while drunk. There is a risk factor, yes. But there is (a) also the risk of reward, and (b) the assumption your companion isn't about to break the law. Does (a) or (b) always hold up? No. But it is there, and it is the counterbalance. It is the thing that makes the risk worth the reward, meeting someone new.

Rape is frequently compared to muggings or walking down dark alleyways. And while a post by someone else I can't find at the moment details the problems with comparing a violation through sex to the removal from your possession of your wordly goods, there is a deeper issue at hand. What happens if your life includes that dark alleyway? I don't mean, "Oh, I'm going to wander down a dark alleyway I don't know tonight!" but "That dark alleyway is in my neighborhood, and it is a way of getting from place to place". You could still say it is stupid to take it, but is it really? If it is your neighborhood, if walking through all of the other streets is just as risky? Women get drunk. Women drink. The people women drink around are not always going to be people they know. And women are, generally, in the presence of men. If a drunk man is a dark alleyway, the chances are a woman has been alone with multiple ones over the course of her life. Because she has to interact with that dark alleyway sometimes. Because rape doesn't happen with strangers leaping out at us from dark alleyways. Rapists are most often the people close to us, and the people close to the rapists are most often their victims. And because, all things considered equal, talking to a drunk guy alone isn't that much more risky with talking to any guy unfamiliar to her alone. Which is to say, it could go rather poorly - or he could be wonderful and end up as her not-boyfriend before the week is out, and everything in between.

I don't go to parties, and I never much enjoyed them in college. My risk ratio was that I don't like people, I don't like large gatherings of people, even among those I know, and I'm not the most fun person to meet at parties. I prefer to hang out with my friends, the people I know and can talk to. But, if I were someone who enjoyed people and hanging out with a whole host of them when we were all drunk, the risk-reward ratio would shift. A lot.

And then there is the other part of this, and that is that with all of the concern Amy and others have placed on how this girl exhibited poor judgement, the actual criminal and his criminal act gets lost in the shuffle. We're not talking about his risk-ratio, his poor judgement, his criminal actions. We're not talking about how to talk to men about rape, committing it and how to not. We're talking to a woman, and to all women, about their poor judgement, and the rapist suddenly disappears from the conversation.

No.

The rapist should be front and center. The rapist should not have as a comfort the "rape is always wrong - but" going on. The rapist needs to be the focus, because otherwise we're just having another conversation about women and how they get raped. Women don't "get" raped. Women are raped, by other people. Most often, by men. And the way we help victims isn't by foisting upon them some idea of agency, some idea that if we can teach them how they've done wrong and they have to own their poor judgement. We have to talk about how, by being raped, someone didn't acknowledge their agency, didn't recognize their humanity. We have to change the conversation. Because for too long, it has been about women, and what they do or don't. For once, it really is a "what about teh menz?!" issue.

Monday Reading List

2009-12-14T06:32:00.003-05:00

Clothing: The Newest Weapon Against Sexual Assault:

Adam Whiton, an MIT student, and Yolita Nugent, a clothing designer, are leading a research project to develop sensor-studded clothing for women that will record data about an attack in real time and store that information on a computer. Having such hard evidence about an attack may persuade more women to turn to the authorities in crisis situations, and this evidence may make it easier to prosecute and convict offenders.

Just How Pro-Choice Is America, Really?:

...in late 1995, a Florida Republican congressman named Charles Canady had a stroke of insight that would shift it to the realm of both the metaphysical and brutally physical, which is precisely where the pro-life movement wanted it all along. On the floor of the House, he introduced a bill that would ban so-called “partial-birth abortions,” a second-trimester surgical method previously known as intact dilation and extraction. The procedure was extremely upsetting to behold. In it, the fetus—or is it a baby?—is removed from the uterus and stabbed in the back of the head with surgical scissors. It’s a revolting image, one to which the public was ritualistically subjected on the evening news as the debate raged on the House and Senate floors. Defending it was a pro-choice person’s nightmare. Pat Moynihan compared it to infanticide. Clinton still vetoed the ban in 1996, but it was eventually signed into law in 2003 and withstood a Supreme Court challenge in 2007. More important, women were spooked. “A lot of our patients started asking whether or not the fetus felt pain after that, even if they were early along in their pregnancy,” says Albert George Thomas, who until two years ago had spent eighteen years as the head of the family-planning clinic at Mount Sinai.

Ads Gone Bad: The Dockers Man-ifesto:

Once upon a time, men didn't have anyone questioning their shit. They wanted to be congratulated for opening doors and walking across streets. Men were in charge because they kept everyone else down. But somewhere along the way, women wised up and were like, these dudes are fucking assholes and we'd like some freedom and autonomy now, please.

Three Examples of Rape Culture in Nice Guy (tm) Breast Cancer Activism:

Do you feel safer yet? Oh, but this is hilarious, right? Because no-one ever ACTUALLY touches breasts against their owner’s will! See? It’s SATIRICAL. Don’t you get it? The threat is just a JOKE! Lighten up, chicks! God, you’re so SERIOUS.

John's working on a new project, Operation Backlog Slog, Days 1-5, Day 6, and Days 7-9:

Beginning December 1st, I swore off purchasing any new music, movies, TV shows, video games, graphic novels until I finish my existing stockpile of each. I haven’t done a full inventory yet, but I’ve got at least 10 video games, 10 graphic novels (here, plus hundreds back home), two high-capacity DVD binders full of movies and TV shows and several albums to go through.

Stuff You Should Know's Josh and Chuck have a Kiva Team, of which I am a part, has raised $38,600, well on their way to the $100,000 challenge they've set for themselves.

And Toothpaste for Dinner!

toothpastefordinner.com

Charity Via Cake Wrecks

2009-12-13T20:44:00.003-05:00

I like mocking the unfortunate results of other people's faulty creative output and I also love looking at pretty things, so I really love Cake Wrecks, the site featuring horrible, professionally made cakes days Monday through Saturday and really fantastic professionally made cakes every Sunday. Also, I have a love for passive aggressive notes, which, while not fulfilling the "pretty things" quotient more than makes up for that in the hilariously creative ways people passive-aggressively communicate via the written word.

Anyway, Cake Wrecks has a large following, due in part to the heinous cakes and in part because of the snark that accompanies them. And so, the creator(s) of the site have decided to do this really cool thing, charity-wise. And that is this:

So here's the deal: instead of buying gifts or trees or decorations this year, John and I are going to donate a minimum of $200 to a different charity or worthy cause, every day, for the next two weeks.

Which ones?

Well, that's where you come in.

See, we have a few organizations in mind, but certainly not 14. So, I'm asking for your recommendations.What are you passionate about? Where do you volunteer your time, talents, and money? Who do you know that needs help? Tell me in the comments (not e-mail!), so that we all can read and learn and maybe even give a little together.

Oh, and if you're worrying that CW is going to turn into a charity-pushing propaganda site for the next few weeks: don't. I'll just be adding a footnote to each day's post giving you the name of the organization, a one-sentence summary, and a link if you want to learn more.

Now, John and I will be choosing each day's charity based on our own individual passions - which might not match up exactly with your own - but even so I'm going to issue you a little challenge. Ready? Here 'tis:

Give one dollar to each day's charity.

If you each give one dollar - just one solitary smackeroo - together we can raise over $80,000 each day. BAM. Just like that. Imagine that 14 times over, all for worthy causes. Imagine the number of lives that could impact. Imagine, if you will...the bragging rights.

Yeah, you heard me. When you get involved in something that awesome, you get major bragging rights.

Ok. So. You pumped? You with me? You...ready for this post to be over? Heh, I hear ya.

I, for one, am pumped! I am ready and willing and able to give one dollar per day to a charity for the next 2 weeks! And I've decided to spread the word! They've already got three charities up. Those are:

Charity: Water

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Heifer International And, for ease of payment, Cake Wrecks has set up a Firstgiving page.

So, if the Christmas spirit grabs you, stop by Cake Wrecks, check out the wreckage (or wonder), and peruse the charity o' the day.

Yes, Virginia, It IS Victim Blaming

2009-12-13T18:14:00.004-05:00

There has lately been a big stink raised about Amy Dickinson's advice to a college girl asking if she was raped at a frat party. I let most of it pass me by in spite of my antipathy for advice columns of late, because, frankly, faster and more precise fingers flew on the issue. But then, a friend was shown an article criticizing Dickinson's advice. And although I've already commented on the post itself, something naggled at the back of my skull. So, in the midst of rewatching A Love Supreme for review purposes, I was compelled to respond to my friend's response.

First, the letter:

Dear Amy: I recently attended a frat party, got drunk and made some bad decisions.

I let a guy take me to "his" room because he promised that he wouldn't do anything I wasn't comfortable with.

Many times, I clearly said I didn't want to have sex, and he promised to my face that he wouldn't.

Then he quickly proceeded to go against what he "promised." I was shocked, and maybe being intoxicated made my reaction time a bit slow in realizing what was happening.

We were soon kicked out of the room by the guy who lived there, who was pretty angry.

I guess my question is, if I wasn't kicking and fighting him off, is it still rape?

I feel like calling it that is a bit extreme, but I haven't felt the same since it happened.

Am I a victim?

-- Victim? in Virginia

Dear Victim?: First of all, thank you. I hope your letter will be posted on college bulletin boards everywhere.

Were you a victim? Yes.

First, you were a victim of your own awful judgment. Getting drunk at a frat house is a hazardous choice for anyone to make because of the risk (some might say a likelihood) that you will engage in unwise or unwanted sexual contact.

You don't say whether the guy was also drunk. If so, his judgment was also impaired.

No matter what -- no means no. If you say no beforehand, then the sex shouldn't happen. If you say no while its happening, then the sex should stop.

According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network Web site (rainn.org):

"Alcohol and drugs are not an excuse -- or an alibi. The key question is still: Did you consent or not? Regardless of whether you were drunk or sober, if the sex is nonconsensual, it is rape. However, because each state has different definitions of "nonconsensual," please contact your local center or local police if you have questions about this. (If you were so drunk or drugged that you passed out and were unable to consent, it was rape. Both people must be conscious and willing participants.)"

Go to your college's health department to be tested for STDs and pregnancy. See a counselor to determine how you want to approach this. You must involve the guy in question in order to determine what happened and because he absolutely must take responsibility and face the consequences for his actions, just as you are prepared to do. He may have done this before.

My friend agrees with Dickinson's advice, saying:

In her letter, the alleged victim initially states that she "made some mistakes." And, based on her story, she's right. Despite what Dickinson's critics say, it is risky for a girl to get drunk at a fraternity party and go off with a fellow she doesn't know very well. This decision reflects poor judgment.

To say I disagree is an understatement. In the aftermath of a sexual assault, it is fairly normal to assume much of the blame. "I made some mistakes" is not an admission of anything more than the feelings of assumed guilt of someone who endured a traumatic experience. "I made some mistakes" is a qualifier for someone who is feeling ashamed and confused and violated. "I made some mistakes" is not, strictly speaking, the mark of mistakes being made. Is it possible she actually did make some mistakes? Sure. Are any of them outlined in her description of the event? Not really.

And why? Because trusting people is not a demonstration of "poor judgement". Because what Amy Dickinson, and my friend, is suggesting something that is not possible.

What my friend and Dickinson are suggesting is that it is poor judgement for women to drink, and for women to meet men while drinking. Sorry, but that's a whole huge swath of human interaction - especially in college - being denied to women on the basis that participating in this type of fun is an exercise in poor judgement.

Look, rape is a difficult crime. You can say that women (and men) should abstain from taking certain risks. But risk is a part of life, and interactions between women and men unfamiliar to them is how one gets to interactions between women and men who are familiar to them.

The same thing that makes rape a hard crime to get a conviction for is the same thing that makes simplistic "well, you shouldn't have gone there with him, and if you did you were a victim of your own poor judgement" absolute bullpucky. And that is this: women like sexual contact. Not always and not always all the way to sex, but a lot of women are attracted to men and a lot of women like to do things like kiss men, and fool around with men, and sometimes they even like to have sex with men. And in order to get to the kissing, the fooling around, and/or the sex, women have to meet men and spend time alone with them. And to be told that spending time alone with strange men is a product of our own poor judgement, but don't you dare think of all men as rapists because that is misandry at work, is such a piece of work.

And then there's this. Say there was a second girl at this precise party. She meets a guy. They're drinking. They're laughing. She lets him take her to "his" room. She makes it clear she doesn't want to have sex. He makes it clear he isn't going to do anything she isn't comfortable with. And he doesn't. They don't have sex. They go precisely as far as she is comfortable with. They're giddy, and having a good time. Soon, they are kicked out of the room by the guy who actually lives there. She laughs at her companion, he explains that he just wanted to spend some alone time with her. She finds him sweet. They see each other again. They end up dating. Was she the victim of bad judgement? Or is the bad judgement of the first girl in the situation contingent upon the events that transpired after she entered the room? I think, it is the second option. I think we foster ideas about bad/poor judgement on women who have already been victimized, when if after 50 years of marriage, the second girl were to write into whomever was Ask Amying it up in the future to tell her "funny, romantic" tale, there would be no "And you were lucky he wasn't a rapist!" anywhere in Future Ask Amy Columnist's response.

Rape isn't like other crimes. We generally don't want our money stolen, our houses broken into, our noses broken, etc. We do, generally, want to converse and mingle and have sex with those who have the power to rape us. And there are no easy answers for why rape occurs or how we can stop it from occurring, if we want to be serious about either. Thomas from Yes Means Yes has written something in the past I find to be quite right, so I'm going to quote it now:

We will also surely see remarks from people who don’t want to be called rape apologists, and who may even think they are not rape apologists while they gyrate wildly to turn the focus on the victim instead of the rapists and their crowd of aiders and abetters where it belongs. These people will almost always start with some version of “of course I’m not blaming the victim and what the rapists did was wrong and all that …” And then will come the key word, BUT.

Then they will make their real argument. And their real argument is that they are unwilling to actually take rape seriously or do anything to hold rapists accountable. What they believe and argue (but will avoid saying outright) is that the rapist’s behavior is unavoidable, as much a natural disaster as a hurricane or an earthquake, and so the only sensible thing is to plan for its inevitability. The argument will proceed from the dreaded BUT to focus on what SHE did, and how wrong and stupid it was, and ultimately conclude that if women just curtailed their behavior in one or several additional ways, the problem would be solved.

My friend, who is a good, kind, and decent human being, is guilty of the same thing I myself have been guilty of, and will continue to be guilty of in the future when I first hear of these events. And that is the "but":

Rape is never the victim's fault, but that doesn't mean that the victim's prior decisions are always value-neutral.

The victim's prior decisions are, in many ways, value-neutral in that the value we assign tends to correlate to the outcome of the situation. And they are value-neutral precisely because those "risky behaviors", those exercises of "bad judgement", are living. Simply living. They are what men get to do, almost automatically. They are what women should be able to do, with the patronizing "Silly women, living's for men!" hanging over their heads. And they are in the course of normal human interaction. The "but" is easy, because it allows us to assign a certain action for a certain outcome. Of course, she was raped. She did X. Of course, she was raped. She didn't do Y. Of course, she was raped. She was wearing Z. She just shouldn't do X, should do Y, and should never, ever wear Z.

Except, that doesn't do anything to answer for why he did A. And why men rape is, I think, a more important question to answer than instructing women on how to not be raped. Because The Rules for that are arbitrary and dependent upon the situation. Because The Rules for that are limiting, and confine women too much. Because The Rules accept the inevitability that if a woman is "stupid" by the dictum of The Rules - that is, if she doesn't conform to what we would consider 'good girl behavior' - she is likely to be raped. Because if every women ever followed The Rules, mini skirts would not be the thing and women would barely be able to exit their homes without being accompanied by a male companion. I like my independence. I like my mini skirts. I like knowing that The Rules are more about the illusion of safety than the promise of ensuring it. What I would like is for more people to recognize that too.

A Post In Which I Review Dollhouse's "Meet Jane Doe, Part 1"

2009-12-13T13:24:00.002-05:00

Bennett has twice the resources I have. She thinks she runs that House. And she might, for all I know. But there is one thing of which I am certain. I have a cooler office.

This is something I didn't touch upon in my review of The Left Hand, and that is this. Topher does have a very cool office. But it also does a couple of things. One, it reinforces the very large God-complex Topher has. It is literally an office encased in glass, situated above those he has complete power over. He can make any Doll whomever and whatever he chooses. Bennett's office is farther removed. It is an actual office-like area, filled with books and music and tea. It is more analytical. It doesn't create the same sort of Doll-Programmer familiarity Topher's arrangement allows. It doesn't create a bit of emotional pull; it doesn't facilitate getting to know the Dolls, their personalities and their grouping patterns. Topher has the cooler office for any number of reasons; his is more like a day care center in terms of toys than any actual office. But what really makes it so that he has the cooler office is how it pulls him into the overall Dollhouse community. He is not separate. He is above, but not aloof. He is apart, but still included. Because of that, his reaction to things like "grouping" is different than those who are separate, who are not a part of the overall community. It is what allows him to call Echo a friend, and it is what leaves him less than thrilled at the end of this exchange:

HARDING: Are they grouping?
TOPHER: Oh... They, uh, technically...
HARDING: They're grouping, aren't they?
TOPHER: I'm sorry to say, yeah.
HARDING: Oh, it's okay. It happens all the time.
TOPHER: It does?
HARDING: Yes. It's very common and easily dealt with.
TOPHER (looking a bit apprehensive): It is? Of course it is, yeah.
HARDING: Split them up, place them in separate Houses. They'll be fine. The girl would be perfect for Dubai.

And this exchange allows us some other insight. Victor and Sierra aren't special. The Los Angeles Dollhouse isn't the only breeding ground for un-Doll-like behavior. Dolls naturally gravitate toward each other. The need for true companionship, for interaction is still present and strong. There have been many studies about the human need for socialization, for friendships. Dolls aren't too separate from that. Even if Sierra and Victor are particularly adorable in their personal grouping.

What also comes through clearly in the episode is that Dolls are not simply a Tabula Rasa of the person they were before being Dollified. Ballard had been working from that basic assumption, and it didn't seem too far off in the early episodes of the show. What we knew about Caroline, her altruism and her bend towards justice, seemed to be mirrored in Echo's more child-like attempts. But the Doll is separate, and Echo isn't necessarily too keen on the possibility of Caroline coming back:

BALLARD: You said Bennett gave you her own memory.
ECHO: Of Caroline. And it wasn't... I didn't like it.
BALLARD: Well, that's Bennett's perception, and she doesn't sound remarkably stable.
ECHO: But the idea that Caroline might not be... I've been saving this body for her, but I'm not her.
BALLARD: You don't know that. You've resisted the wipes from the start. You tracked down my cell and you couldn't remember my name. You knew that I would help you, keep you from DeWitt. DeWitt was Caroline's enemy, not Echo's. Maybe it was Caroline picking up those shells.
ECHO: I'm not her! My name is Echo.
...
...
ECHO: You think I'm a freak - or a child.
BALLARD: I think I don't have the right.
ECHOL It's not my other... personas that make me feel what I feel.
BALLARD: The Dollhouse made you fall in love over and over. You told me that.
ECHO: They also made me aggressively sexual and phenomenally creative in bed.
BALLARD: Now, that's just cruel.
ECHO: Also, sociopathic, inexperienced, blind, and - at least seven times - gay. There's a lot of noise from the Chorus Girls, but they're not me. There is a me. This is me.

There are couple of issues I have with this part of the episode. Part of it is the reverse Florence Nightingale effect, what with Echo falling in love with Ballard as he's devoted himself to taking care of her and helping her get ready in her quest to take down the Dollhouse. But part of it is the fact that Paul Ballard has, in essence, been chasing after Caroline from episode one. It is creepy, because just four episodes ago he was leering at her recently college-decked out body in Belle Chose. It's creepy, because Echo has been programmed to trust and rely on Ballard.

But what it also highlights is Ballard's concern that he doesn't have the right to the body Echo inhabits, even if there were no creeptastic factors, because it is in actuality Caroline's body. Here's where the problem lies. Because it is a violation of Caroline's body, just like a person can rape the comatose. But it isn't just Caroline's body anymore. It is now also Echo's. She is a person, separate from the other personas in her head and separate from Caroline. She doesn't have a body of her own, and being in Caroline's body may have helped form her. Does she have some say? Is she independent of thought? Does she have the right to a romance, to a love affair, to a sexual release? The Dollhouse, by creating someone who was intended for nothing more than caretaker and not for personhood in hir own right, denied the Doll in question the right to a full existence, and that is as cruel a thing as every other despicable action they have foisted upon these Dolls. Echo, Whiskey, others who come to consciousness, seem to live in the agonizing in between where they are aware their bodies and lives are not truly their own, and have to ponder their own mortality in a way few of us ever do or ever shall. They have to face the possibility of voluntarily disembarking, ceasing to exist, so another could live the life interrupted.

Which leads us back to Topher, who lives the agonizing life of being a friggin' genius. And one who has seemingly backed away from the "progress is always a-okay!" viewpoint he held not two episodes ago. It's no secret 'round these parts that Topher is my favorite. And this week he's my favorite because he is absolutely in way over his head, and he knows it. He's my favorite because he is just so bad at the whole moral thing, and yet keeps on trying. I also love how profoundly desperate he is becoming in his attempts to figure out how to prevent the future he foresees as the inevitable conclusion of the tech he develops from coming to pass. And how he turns to the one person he probably shouldn't for guidance and conspiracy:

ADELLE: I've been hearing about your new device all day. I don't need to see it. I'm sure it's very impressive. But with the resources at your disposal now, I'm surprised it took you this long.
TOPHER: It didn't. I finished it two months ago. I spent the rest of the time trying to come up with another way to do it, a stupider way, a parlor trick... that wouldn't lead to anything else, anything bad.
ADELLE: What else, Topher? What "bad"?
TOPHER: Harding's got me working on a portable remote wipe, right? I saw Bennett working on a somatosensory system override. And there are what? 22 Houses, right?
ADELLE: 23, now.
TOPHER: Each working on their own small, specific, relatively harmless technology. So I got to thinging -
ADELLE: It's a component. It is a piece of a larger whole.
TOPHER: The next question is...
ADELLE: For what?
TOPHER: I think they're hoping to build a portable device that will be able to imprint anyone without any Active architecture implants. Any innocent on the street with a new personality.
ADELLE: That's unnerving.
TOPHER: No. What's unnerving is I figured out how to do it.
...
...
TOPHER: Are you out of your British mind?!
ADELLE: I acted in the best interest of the House.
TOPHER: You gave Rossum the deadliest tech I've ever heard of.
ADELLE: Which you designed.
TOPHER: I was trying to figure out what they were up to!
ADELLE: You were fascinated. You were playing.
TOPHER: No. Don't put this on me. I trusted you!
ADELLE: Well, who thought that was a clever scheme?

Which, wow. No wonder Adelle feels responsible for Topher in the aftermath. I had originally thought it was more of the maternal instinct mixed in with a healthy bit of the belief she was just as complicit in the Dollhouse meltdown. Now, it seems as though more than a little bit of guilt is also there. What is also interesting to me is how Adelle characterizes Topher. I'm sure she's not wholly wrong; I'm sure Topher messed because he was revolted and intrigued by the idea. But I'm also sure she isn't wholly right. I'm sure Topher is revolted by the tech. There's a reason he didn't roll out the remote wipe tech once he was done with it, a reason why he didn't deliver the plans that would give him the title of Harding's (and Rossum's) Golden Boy for all eternity. The amoral Topher we originally met probably would have; but this Topher has grown. He grew through his disastrous attempt to save Sierra. He grew through his interaction with Echo. He grew from the belief that there is no such thing as morality. He accepts that there are such things as innocents. And he sees the big picture well enough to understand that doing what is in the best short-term interest for the House is not what is in its best long-term interest, nor in the best interest of the whole "world not ending" scheme.

Random Observations:

Why does Galena trust Echo? I would totally not be prepared to put my faith in the person who got me into jail in the first place.
Wow, does this show borrow from the Matrix.
Wow, Tahmoh Penikett is really good looking.
He also can't really act.
The whole "moving between personas" would be better if Enver Gjokaj were the one to do it.

Grade: B

A Post In Which I Review Dollhouse's "The Left Hand"

2009-12-13T11:21:00.002-05:00

I'm kind of depressed about how long it has taken to write this review, partially because after Hulu kept crapping out during the episode I broke down and bought it for 3.99 on iTunes. Of course, I now have one of my favorite scenes ever on my iPod constantly, so maybe it's all a wash in the end.

So, I'm going to do something I've been avoiding since this Healthcare debate thingy started in Congress, and that is talk about the state of Healthcare and those Congresspeople making the laws. Because Joss Whedon told me to. Seriously. Don't believe me? I offer Evidence A (which is actually from The Public Eye):

No one is saying the work these corporations do isn't vital, but there must be accountability. The health of our citizens cannot be held hostage to a profit motive.

Sounds like some healthcare angst to me. Evidence B is the fact Perrin is a man made and supported by the very industries he is supposed to be going after. Say, that's kind of like my own state senator, a Mr. Joe Lieberman! Who is a guy I voted for, in part because he campaigned in 2006 on the promise of fighting for a Public Option! Which, in turn, has made me into the schmuck of my immediate family! Who, of the two other members who are legal voting age, voted for Ned Lamont! Damn Lieberman! Oh, this also goes for a whole bunch of other people in Congress. Perrin, who is very much a demonstration of false consciousness, is used to validate and prop up the very industries that are going to bring about the end of civilization, Epitaph One style. Which, in turn, makes me think those Whedony people are probably pretty pissed and concerned with the way the Healthcare fight is going. Also, kind of like they think our elected officials are bought and paid for by Big Corporations, which is also the tale of today's Non Sequitur. There's probably a lot more to say about this issue and Dollhouse's handling of it, but I'm going to move on, now.

To Cindy Perrin. Who kind of gets the bad end of every stick. I know I'm not supposed to sympathize with someone who is clearly not on the Moral Train, but Cindy does stir something in me resembling empathy. And that is because she is pretty much in the exact same position as the Dolls, except she doesn't have the benefit of being a True Believer. She is used as just another object for the Dollhouse's purposes. And she is trapped by her role as a wife:

I can't stand you. Having to be your wife, letting you touch me, pretending that when it doesn't disgust me, it doesn't bore me? That has been really hard.

She is being forced to have sex with a man she does not love, forced to allow someone she doesn't even like, to touch her. And while I think her anger and hatred is more than a bit misguided - it isn't Perrin's fault, after all - it is also entirely realistic to rail against the person trapped with you in this type of farce than the nameless, faceless decision-makers that put you both there. And then, she dies. Cindy Perrin's situation just drives further home the idea that the Dollhouse - and Rossum - don't actually see people, merely opportunities to do what is best for their own self-interest. Which is, actually, yet another arm of the "corporations are soulless and need to be controlled for our own good" argument the entire show seems to be making.

What I really want to discuss, though, is the geekiest love affair known to man, and that is the mutual lovefest between Bennett Halverson and Topher Brink. Mostly for this:

BENNETT: How do you work it? The disrupter?
TOPHER: How'd you know it was called that?
BENNETT: What else would you call it?
TOPHER: A signal goes out for 50 feet, but everywhere. That's what messed up your senator and ruined your evil plan.
BENNETT: If you route the signal through here, it becomes directional. Not like a bomb. More like a taser.
TOPHER: Huh! (Tries To Tase Bennett) Huh.
BENNETT: Did - did you just try to tase me?
TOPHER: No? No, No! That would result in - you'd be unconscious. Why would I want that?
BENNETT: And it only works on Actives. I'm concerned that you may have just tried to tase me.

If only there were more times in life when one could say, "I'm concerned that you may have just tried to tase me". But it is their geekitude, their giddiness when bouncing ideas off one another, and their ultimate betrayal of each other - Topher by stealing Perrin's brain scan, Bennett by trying to kill Echo - that truly makes the episode for me. Well, them and:

VICTOR-TOPHER: What you're not getting, man-friend, is that this whole operation is dependent upon me. Not, uh, brain-constructy me, but "Bond, James Bond" me. Which is, not so me.
BOYD: Vic-Topher. All you hae to do is stay calm.
VICTOR-TOPHER: This from the guy who had to dismember my last little outing?!

Whedon has done the one person in two bodies before with Xander Harris on Buffy, being played by Nicholas Brendon (who was normally Xander) and his twin brother (who normally was not). This was better. Giving Enver Gjokaj opportunity upon opportunity to shine makes Dollhouse an incredible actor's vehicle - just not the actor it was designed for. Gjokaj's ability to go beyond mimicry, to actually embody the character created by another actor, is incredible. I was beyond impressed when he became Dominic last season. His Topher was even more superb, possibly because Topher is a exaggerated character to begin with. The concept could have become a gross parody of itself, but instead it was both masterfully written and acted. It was fun and self-aware and perfect, for the show and for the two actors. And my favorite moments were their interactions, possibly because two Tophers are always going to be better than one in my world.

But, again, it is Topher-Topher who truly makes the episode for me. From his:

I'm just here for Echo. My last ethical quandary was... unhelpful.

to his:

This isn't about Caroline! This is about Echo!

to his:

It wouldn't be a second opinion! It would be the same opinion twice!

It is Topher's emerging and continuing humanity that keeps me engaged. It is his continuing moral development that makes him still profoundly interesting. The fact that both he and Victor-Topher are still so focused on his last "ethical quandary" makes him a person with real regret and remorse. The fact that he sees Echo as a distinct person, as a friend separate from Caroline, makes him someone for whom the Dolls are becoming more and more, as themselves, actual people. And then there is the continuation of the idea he first expressed in the season opener to Whiskey/Saunders. What Topher is concerned about intellectually isn't so much having someone who agrees with him, who thinks like him and who will come to the same conclusions he has, but someone who will be able to see where he is blind. The fact that he doesn't want himself around for help analyzing Perrin's brain map could just be an ego thing, until it is related back to the idea that he is terrified he is going to miss something, and that someone will get hurt.

And yet, the most important part of the episode may be something Bennett herself was blinded to. She tells Topher:

I have a theory that the human brain can hold multiple imprints and still function... ...Not a composite. Something new.

This is what Echo is. This is what Echo develops into. This is what Bennett herself doesn't see when she at first tells Echo, and then Topher, that Echo is merely a shell - and at the same time Caroline. Topher seems to have a better handle on the fact that the person Echo is now is separate from who Caroline was, but the implications of that statement are far-reaching. What it does is offer a bit of hope for humanity even as it explains Echo's own existence. It offers up a new kind of humanity, after we have been ravaged by the world of Epitaph One. It is the series' optimistic rallying cry, that all is not lost. And, it creates a whole host of coolness we'll never have a chance to see fully examined.

We do see it examined partially, though, through the experiences of the escaped Perrin and Echo:

PERRIN: Even if I could, I don't know if I want to be the man I was before.
ECHO: I understand.
PERRIN: You do, don't you?
ECHO: I'm afraid of Caroline. If she comes back, where do I go? I don't want to fall asleep, even for a little while.

Echo is probably afraid of Caroline at least in part because she saw what Caroline did to Bennett, but the underlying fear that coursed through Whiskey/Saunders is also present here. These are people, and they exist. But the bodies they exist in are not, strictly speaking, theirs. And what we see through Perrin and Echo is this desire to continue to live on, to not disappear into the night. And it makes Echo into what she needs to be, a character in her own right and not just a placeholder for a person we have yet to truly and deeply meet. It creates just that one more level of moral and emotional conflict. And that, along with the fun, makes The Left Hand possibly my favorite episode of Dollhouse.

Grade: A+

Quotes of the Episode:

VICTOR-TOPHER: She's going to look at my 1.0, and she'll know!

BOYD: I have to track down Ballard. You just run the house and wait for yourself to call.

TOPHER: I poo you not!

BENNETT: I'm concerned that you may have just tried to tase me.

BENNETT: You hacked into my system. Stole Perrin's brain map.

TOPHER: You're trying to kill Echo!

BENNETT: So we're even?

Friday (Not So) Random Ten

2009-12-11T17:31:00.004-05:00

This is a special edition of Friday Random Ten, inspired by a (short) conversation I had with a friend regarding Conor Oberst and how he is depressing. I, in fact, love Conor Oberst. So, here are my ten favorite Conor Oberst songs:

10) "I Don't Want To Die (In A Hospital)" - Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, Conor Oberst

Rowdy and slightly raucous, I can bounce around to this one like no one's business. Ironically, this one isn't my favorite based on any sort of lyrics that made my spine tingle. This one is all about the fun. Which is strange, since it is, after all, a song about death and dying. Just to get us started, though, I laugh at these lines every time:

Can you make a sound to distract the nurse
Before I take a ride in that long black hearse
I don’t wanna die in the hospital
You gotta take me back outside

9) "Devil Town" - Bright Eyes, Noise Floor (Rarities: 1998-2005)

This isn't actually a Bright Eyes penned song, but it's an awesome cover (you can listen to a snippet of the original here).

8) "Another Travelin' Song" - Bright Eyes, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

There are two subjects above all others where I enjoy Conor Oberst's musings, and those are religion and spirituality, and the very state of writing itself. This one is all about the latter:

Now I'm hunched over a typewriter
I guess you call that paintin' in a cave
And there's a word I can't remember
and a feeling I cannot escape
And now my ashtray's overflowing
I'm still staring at a clean white page
Oh and morning's at my window
she is sending me to bed again

7) "I Must Belong Somewhere" - Bright Eyes, Cassadaga

And, lyrics:

In truth, the forest hears each sound
Each blade of grass as it lies down
The world requires no audience
no witnesses, no witnesses

6) "Waste of Paint" - Bright Eyes, Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

So now I park my car down by the cathedral,
where the floodlights point up at the steeples.
Choir practice was filling up with people.
I hear the sound escaping as an echo.
Sloping off the ceiling at an angle.
When the voices blend they sound like angels.

5) "From A Balance Beam": - Bright Eyes, Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

This one's a little more depressing:

It was in a foreign hotel's bathtub
I baptized myself in change
And one by one I drowned all of the people I had been
I emerged to find the parallels were fewer
I was cleansed
I looked in the mirror
And someone new was there
But, I was as helpless as a chess piece
when I was lifted up by someone's hand
And delivered from the corner
my enemies had got me in
But in all of my salvation
I still felt imprisoned inside that holding cell
that is myself

4) "Moab" - Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, Conor Oberst

I don't like comparisons between musical artists. I hate it when bands are described as "Bigger than the Beatles" (because, clearly, if we're still comparing them to the Beatles, they weren't/aren't); and I hate it when music critics call Conor Oberst the next Dylan. Because (a) Dylan isn't done being Dylan yet, and (b) there is only one Dylan. And then there are songs like this one that make me think, "Yeah, that's pretty Dylanesque". It's pretty much all in the vocal delivery. Anyway:

You can't break out of a circle
That you never knew you were in
And there's nothing that the road cannot heal
Nothing that the road cannot heal
Washed under the blacktop
Gone beneath my wheels
There's nothing that the road cannot heal

3) "First Day Of My Life" - Bright Eyes, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

Songs like this are what make me astounded when people talk about Bright Eyes being incredibly depressing. Because when I hear this song, I hear something full of love, and hope, and optimism. Nothing demonstrates that better than the second verse:

Yours is the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
Now I don’t know where I am
I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go

2) "Four Winds" - Bright Eyes, Cassadaga

Cassadaga is my absolute favorite Bright Eyes album, and I've been knocked out by this song since I first heard it. Some of the lyrics that did it for me:

Well I went back by rented Cadillac and company jet
Like a newly orphaned refugee retracing my steps
All the way to Cassadaga to commune with the dead
They said, "You'd better look alive"

1) "Bowl of Oranges" - Bright Eyes, Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

This is my favorite Bright Eyes song; it has been since the first time I heard it, and that's because I loved all of the lyrics. But if I had to pick my favorite of the song, it would be:

But if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall.
Then I think we would see the beauty.
Then we would stand staring in awe at our still lives posed like a bowl of oranges,
like a story told by the fault lines and the soil

Honorable Mention:
"Classic Cars" - Bright Eyes, Cassadaga

This song has some of my absolute favorite lyrics ever:

And I keep looking for that blindfold faith
Lighting candles to a cynical saint
Who wants the last laugh at the fly trapped in the windowsill tape
You can go right out of your mind trying to escape
From the panicked paradox of day to day
If you can’t understand something then it’s best to be afraid

As an apatheistic atheist, I don't have these sorts of pained moments of religious soul-searching. But I love the way religion moves people; I love the art and books and buildings that come out of it.

Quote of the Day

2009-12-11T06:45:00.000-05:00

I'm one of ten girls in a room with 700 guys, and I'm not prepared for that. It doesn't feel comfortable for me to sit there and watch that.

- Natali Del Conte, summing up in under 30 words the problem with using female nudity to generate excitement at a tech event.

(From Buzz Out Loud, CNet's podcast of indeterminate length, episode 1121).

Seriously, though, Del Conte is discussing an event for the Boxee where the Suicide Girls (just linking the Wiki article for that one) performed. Her description of the actual offending event is about 3 or so minutes into the BOL podcast, but the gist is that there was full frontal nudity and a couple of girls making out with each other.

What this does is set a clear line of delineation about who the tech product (in this case, Boxee, but this is hardly the first time some geekery has gone awry in its gender presentations) is designed for, and who they don't particularly care about building as their demographic. Because even if some of the other 10 girls in the audience were gay or bi and would enjoy a Suicide Girls show, that doesn't change the underlying assumption - and that underlying assumption should, actually, make the gay or bi girls just as uncomfortable.

The underlying assumption isn't "This is for people who enjoy women making out with each other". The underlying assumption is "at a tech event, this is what women are good for". It turns women into objects, and - as Del Conte flat out says - makes the event an uncomfortable space for those women who dare to venture in. Because even if a girl in question is attracted to women, she's still sitting near a couple of dozen guys who are not aware of her inner life or thoughts, and for whom the Suicide Girls show has been performed for.

I'm not all that interested in tech. I buy what Apple tells me to buy, and I go on my merry way. I don't have an e-Reader, and I'm not exactly entirely sure what makes a good or bad interface. But if I were interested in tech, if I wanted to get a job writing about tech for a tech site and talking about tech on tech podcasts, the last thing I would want is to have my minority status demonstrated so blatantly at any event, but especially an event I was supposed to be covering for my work. The last thing I would want is to see that at the very least the product I was about to be covering, if not the rest of the men in the room, didn't recognize me as a journalist or as a potential consumer. I would not be prepared for that, either.

Monday Reading List

2009-12-07T07:14:00.000-05:00

The Company We Keep:

We rely on gay-rights groups to battle it out alone for marriage rights in Maine. We expect feminists to secure abortion rights in health-care reform legislation. We look to the NAACP to effectively respond to racist statements about Obama. And yes, those groups will work hard for those goals. But when they fall short, they are not the only ones to blame. It's fair to look at the entire progressive coalition and ask the hard questions about our movement: What's the use of having a community, a coalition, if you aren't going to fight for each other?

13 Year Old Girl Commits Suicide After Classmates Spread Nude Photos:

As Veronica Arreola said on her Twitter, while the media insists on calling this a “sexting-related suicide,” it’s much more accurately referred to as a “slut-shaming suicide.” Because the photograph she sent is not what drove this poor girl to kill herself — the non-consensual spreading of the photograph, and the subsequent reaction that her classmates and all adults in positions of authority had to it seems to absolutely have been what drove her to despair. And that is a truly vital distinction to make if we actually care about the fact that a 13-year-old girl is dead, and why.

The Real Obesity Crisis:

...even though we tend to believe that children this young are living in their own little fantasy universe in which the actions of adults are only momentarily relevant, this study makes clear that children live in the adult world as well, where diet-talk, body-bashing, and constant, constant hand-wringing about what we look like affects them, and quite deeply, too.

Romance and Sexuality in Harry Potter:

Harry Potter is a bit of a sore spot for me. How much I loathe books can be expressed by the formula L = TP, or Loathing equals Terrible (how terrible it is), times Past (how much effort I put into it when I used to like it). So for that reason, Twilight, whose P is zero, also has an L value of zero–doesn’t matter how bad it is, I don’t happen to give a shit. As it happens, Harry Potter is no slacker in the T department and has the highest P of any book series in existence. You do the math.

So without further ado, I present “Things that come to mind as examples of the twisted sexuality in Harry Potter.“

Yes, I Will Always Play Zoey:

An article on Forbes.com cites research firm Electronic Entertainment Design and Research’s numbers on the subject: of the games on current generation consoles, female characters star in only 3% of games, versus 46% with male protagonists (the remaining are games with a customizable lead character or none). In action games specifically, it’s 3% female, 51% male, and if you venture into shooters, it drops to an abysmal 1%-73%.

Should We Remember Mike Penner or Christine Daniels?:

Penner never spoke publicly about his motives for transitioning back to Mike. But when Penner chose to “detransition”—when he stopped identifying outwardly as Christine Daniels—several experts weighed in on the latest development in Penner’s public persona. According to psychologists, most transgender people who choose to “detransition” do so as a result of external pressures resulting from their public gender transition, and not because they no longer internally identify as transgender.

And, instead of a comic, Twilight's New Moon in Lolcats. A taste, and then just follow the link:

A Post In Which I Review Dollhouse's "The Public Eye"

2009-12-06T14:48:00.000-05:00

CINDY: Remind me why I love you so much.
PERRIN: I'm your white knight.
CINDY: And I'm your beautiful damsel.
PERRIN: Ever after.

Whoa. Whoa! Dollhouse, how I've missed you!

First, I have to alert everyone that I did not see the Perrin reveal coming and merely thought Whedon had decided to play against trope simply by letting us in on the secret of Cindy being the Doll instead of having a Mellie/Angel(us) situation overtake us and giving me a heart attack in the midst of that process. This led to me going, "Oh, Daniel, you're going to be soooo surprised when you find out your wife is a --- HOLY MOTHER OF GOD YOU'RE TOTALLY A DOLL!!!!!!!!!"

That was pretty much my reaction exactly. Luckily, as the Monk series finale was going to be on at 9 and I didn't feel like switching televisions mid-stream, I was alone with my outburst.

Now, let's unpack that one interaction, the one that happens multiple times over the course of the episode(s). Whoa!!! Dollhouse is totally calling out the prince-princess phenom! I'm totally going to try to limit my use of the word "totally" (that may or may not happen)! Let's discuss. Perrin is, literally, a made man. He is, literally, imbued with a cultural mindset regarding princes and princesses and happily ever afters. He is, well, us. All of us. All of us Disney-lovin' folk out here. He is existing within the false consciousness of traditional gender norms, as exemplified by the prince-princess meme! Whoa, I say!

This may be where I should note that at the age of 18 or so, I was completely against the idea of false consciousness in philosophical terms. My mind is my mind, right? What I'm thinking, I decide to think. My thoughts are my own, my feelings are my own, and I am totes an individual. Yeah, not so much with that mindset any more, and I love Dollhouse for exploring that same "awakening", that same idea that we all think we are masters of our own destiny and space - and how we are more than influenced by the world in which we live in. Dollhouse takes it a bit further, what with the whole "actually wiping people's brains and making them other people" thing, but the premise is still the same. And right here, we have the constructed romance portion of our journey; plus, it really highlights how much the White Knight construct has played a part in the journey of various characters thus far. But there's another side to this construct too, and that is the paternalistic nature of this philosophical theory (and, in fact, one of the reasons I railed against it at first):

MADELINE: I almost wish I hadn't seen it. But then I wouldn't be here. And there are still people being held captive by the Dollhouse. They don't even know they need help. So, that means we have to help.

In the world of the Dollhouse, it is easy to see Madeline as someone who once was blind but now sees, just as it is easy to see Echo in that role. It is easy to see how all of the other Dolls - Victor, Sierra, Kilo, etc. - really don't know they need help and who need outside forces to come and rescue them; to open their eyes to the fact they are being used and manipulated and are trapped in the Cave, staring at shadows on a wall. But the question immediately becomes, "Who are you, to tell me I am blind and you can see?" And that question is hard to answer; it is hard to answer because all are blind. Madeline is not free, no matter how much she believes it or Ballard wishes it. She still contains the underlying architecture of a Doll; she is still not truly an actor of her own free will. She is still one who doesn't see the whole picture. As is Perrin; he is a True Believer; he sees himself as that White Knight, that guy who will ride in and rescue the Dolls and lead them back to their true selves. He will be the one to show the world the evils of the Rossum Corporation. But he is not free; he is one who is also being held captive by the Dollhouse, one who doesn't even know he needs help. And so, Dollhouse the show both demonstrates the idea of false consciousness and questions, seriously questions, our ability to find a White Knight who will lead us out of such a situation. Because the White Knight, whomever he or she may be, is just as ensnared as ourselves, except perhaps in a different way. As Ballard says, "Nobody ever really leaves here, do they?" None of us are free of the Dollhouse.

And then there's this:

PERRIN: Listen to me. You've been manipulated. You were probably desperate and alone, and they used that against you. Forced you to be a slave so the wealthy can have a play toy. It's despicable.
...
...
BREE: Look, you're very sweet, but you should know - I like what I do. You're not the first john who thinks he can save me.

If Bree really was Bree and not Echo, she could very well be right. That is the problem with a paternalistic approach to an issue. Even if 9 out of 10 people in Bree's exact situation would possibly want to be saved, there is always that 10th Brie out there making an informed decision, and who is in a position she, to the best of her ability, chooses to be in. This obviously goes for sex workers. But it also goes for other things. Paternalism, because it is based in the belief that the actor knows better than the acted upon, limits the ability for the acted upon to say, "Hey, not me! Go save those people over there. I know what I'm doing." And paternalism, the "poor souls" aspect of it, is what offers the justification for the Westernization of nations who were probably doing okay before Europeans or Americans decided to come in, "civilize" the nation, and take as payment a whole host of natural resources. So, is Dollhouse saying we should ignore people's own wishes and instead work off the premise that everyone who doesn't think like us is obviously hideously deluded? I think, no. And I think that, because the show has been rather clear about the absence of White Knights and of the fallibility of those who hold themselves up as saviors. I think that, because of Perrin's reaction to when he discovered he himself was a Doll. And, I think that because of DeWitt's reading of the situation:

With Perrin under his power, Harding controls how far the damage goes. The Senate Subcommittee will clear Rossum of any contact with us. And Perrin will be hailed as the conquering hero who's rescued all these poor souls. He'll have the political capital to pass whatever laws and regulations Rossum's programmed him to.

One where altruistic White Knight impulses are really hiding something much less about saving the victims and much more about profiting. With that, it becomes somewhat more clear that there is no easy "I know best" answer to this question.

Onto Topher, who is, of course, my favorite. This week, what makes him my favorite comes mostly in the second part of this two-part episode extravaganza, but he still has moments of note here in the first act. Most notably,

It'll knock out any Doll in a ten-foot radius, including a pesky Sleeper like Cindy, without actually harming real people like us.

Which is a bit of privilege harboring there that is still present in Epitaph One, the idea that there are real people, Actuals, and then there are fake people, those people who have had the misfortune of becoming a Doll - or a victim of errant and randomized Doll-making technology. And it is troubling. We know he listens to Echo and worked to protect Sierra when she was in trouble. We know that he has referred to the Dolls as people in the past. But are these (Sierra, Echo) flukes, the "I have a friend who's a Doll" of Topher's life that allows him to think he thinks of Dolls as people because he interacts a few that he does see as people? Or does he actually see Dolls, as a whole, as "real people", and this bit of "real people" is just a bit of unconscious "I haven't had my architecture Activized" privilege seeping through? I tend to think it is more of Column A than Column B, and that is partially why I like Topher. He's a person, and he has prejudices and biases, and one of the interesting aspects of Dollhouse is watching Topher evolve.

Now, for some issues.

ECHO: She's not right.
TOPHER: We got that the first time, Echo.
BALLARD: She doesn't mean Madeline.

Why does no one see this, that Echo can sense or tell or reason out in just a glance when people aren't right, as a problem? Isn't that bizarre? Shouldn't they all be going, "oooo"? But no. These three guys just accept that Echo can do this, and go on their merry way working on the assumption she's right. Which is good, because she kind of is. But it is bad, because (a) they didn't ask her to elaborate ("Not right, how?" would have been my first question), and (b) obviously the wheels on the controlling-Echo train have come completely off. I guess I can explain this one away by it being Ballard and Boyd and Topher, with one person who knows exactly how much Echo is evolving, one person who is aware Echo is evolving, and one person who considers Echo a friend and because of that seems to accept Echo's evolution implicitly - but it still seems like something that should generate some sort of pause for one of them.

Also, why are there books around for the Dolls to find and read? I mean, really. If you don't want your Dolls to start developing, why put around things that will help them develop? If you don't think your Dolls will ever be able to retain, why shove something out there into their world that requires retaining?

I have to geek out about a few things as well. First, the fight between Cindy Perrin and Echo-Bree. It was pretty cool how the scene kept jumping to previous instances of people attacking Echo, and to see her respond.

But foremost is this: Summer-freakin'-Glau. Summer Glau is one of my favorite Whedon-actors; that is, she is among my favorites who have been in various Whedon projects. Alan Tudyk is up there as well, but I think Glau is number one on the list. I'm so happy to see her. And I love Bennett, in that weird "I really shouldn't but I do" way.

Grade: A

Quotes of the Episode:

ECHO: I'm on your team!
PERRIN: I love her.
ECHO: I know. (Hits Perrin) But I don't have that problem.

PERRIN: You want to take me to them? They're all bad guys, Bree!
ECHO: I think her bad guys are badder than my bad guys!

BENNETT: I assumed we'd fill him with travel memories - a layover in Milwaukee, some turbulence. And something to explain any dehydration or disorientation. Bad shrimp or... or a film with a dog.

Saturday Sesame Street

2009-12-05T13:46:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, on my way home from work, It's Not That Easy Being Green came on my iPod. And so I knew exactly what video I was going to pick:

I always always always tear up when I hear this song. Because I'm more than a little pathetic. But also because it makes me think of this version:

This one, I don't have on my iPod. For what should be obvious reasons.