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September 18, 2008

Okay. I’m Going to Take a Deep Breath, and . . . Palin.

I have been so gobsmacked by this whole Palin thing that I’ve been completely unable to write anything about it; all I can do is splutter. I have many objections to Palin, but I suppose that if I am to articulate the one, basic thing that has so deeply angered me about the way in which she was presented to the American people, it’s the massively insulting suggestion that women who were excited about the idea of a Hillary Clinton presidency might be anything other than utterly dismayed by the idea of a Sarah Palin vice presidency (and very possibly, presidency).

I personally define feminism quite broadly, and while some readers of this blog will disagree, I think it is entirely possible for a person to be both a political conservative and a feminist (although I’m unlikely to agree with such a person on the particulars of women’s rights). And these people may very well be thrilled with Sarah Palin (although frankly, I think even they ought to see she is a poor candidate), because she represents (I guess?) their values and their interests. But she does not represent the values or interests of Hillary Clinton supporters, and she does not represent the values or interests of liberal feminists.

Feminism holds that what is between a person’s legs ought not to overrule, or in any way reflect on what is between a person’s ears.  Clearly, Sarah Palin has a neoconservative ideology firmly lodged between her ears, and my opinion about that is not the more favorable because of what she has between her legs.

As for the rest of what’s wrong with Palin, here’s what a lot of much smarter people than me have to say (sorry for the very lengthy quotes, but I don’t think anybody really clicks on the links):

Katha Pollitt:

. . . Palin, who went back to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review, who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic, harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating working mothers. Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old, Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens for having sex–and blaming their parents for letting it happen.

If there were an Olympics for hypocrisy, the Republican Party would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. And Palin would be wearing quite a few of them. It takes chutzpah for a mother to thrust her pregnant teen into the world’s harshest spotlight and then demand the world respect the girl’s privacy. But then it takes chutzpah to support criminalizing abortion and then praise Bristol’s “decision” to have the baby. The right to decide, and privacy, after all, are two of the things Palin wants to deny every other woman, and every other family, in America.

Cintra Wilson:

We’ve been shanghaied. This is sick. We need to slap the face of our bad frat-boy date and walk home from this drive-in movie. Sarah Palin may put out to be popular, but the rest of America’s women don’t need to do the same.

If not, what the hell? John McCain should go the whole Hugh Hefner route and have eight V.P.s that all look exactly like Sarah Palin.

It’s McCain’s world, girls: You’d just live in it.

Ann at Feministing:

. . . Bill Kristol was claiming McCain would pick Palin — and that would prove that Republicans are “much more open to strong women.” Frankly, that’s bullshit. Republicans are more open to a certain type of woman — one who is strongly against things like equal pay, universal health care, and reproductive freedom. In other words, the party is pro-woman-candidates, as long as they enact anti-woman policies.

Rebecca Traister:

In this “Handmaid’s Tale”-inflected universe, in which femininity is worshipped but females will be denied rights, CNBC pundit Donny Deutsch tells us that we’re witnessing “a new creation … of the feminist ideal,” the feminism being so ideal because instead of being voiced by hairy old bats with unattractive ideas about intellect and economy and politics and power, it’s now embodied by a woman who, according to Deutsch, does what Hillary Clinton did not: “put a skirt on.” “I want her watching my kids,” says Deutsch. “I want her laying next to me in bed.”

Welcome to 2008, the year a tough, wonky woman won a primary (lots of them, actually), an inspiring black man secured his party’s nomination for the presidency, and a television talking head felt free to opine that a woman is qualified for executive office because he wants to bed her and have her watch his kids! Stop the election; I want to get off.

Latoya at Feministe compares Palin to Rice:

You can hate someone’s policies and still defend them from ad hominem arguments. I hate when people say that Condoleezza Rice is a sellout and that she isn’t black. That’s a ridiculous assertion to make. However, that does not make Condoleezza Rice a civil rights leader just because she is black and in a position of power.

I hate when people say Sarah Palin is not a woman, or she is a tool of the patriarchy, or any of the other non policy related attacks I’ve seen leveled at her from all kinds of places. But that doesn’t mean you need to start sipping the “this is a victory for women” kool aid. It isn’t. Sarah Palin does not magically become a champion for all women, everywhere, just because she happens to be a woman in a position of power.

Courtney Martin in The American Prospect:

And, in perhaps the most offensive display of her “wimp factor” agenda, she attempted to discredit community organizing by feminizing it. She sarcastically told conventioneering Republicans (along with millions of Americans watching on television), “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” It was an eerie echo of what oblivious men in positions of traditional power have been saying for centuries: that the work of community building — whether it be child-rearing, elder-caring, teaching, nursing, social work, or, yes, community organizing — isn’t really work at all. That, despite being the backbone of our economy and the heart of our civic life, it doesn’t count because it doesn’t involve power suits and bottom lines. What makes this ridicule of community-building even more ironic is that the GOP is simultaneously glorifying Palin’s role as caregiver of her own sprawling family.

(via Feministing)

Jessica at Feministing, on the various MSM journalists who leapt to praise Palin’s feminism:

Take Wall Street Journal reporter Naomi Schaefer Riley, who writes that progressives should rest easy about Palin’s candidacy because “most American evangelicals have wholeheartedly embraced the idea of women in the workplace.” A radical feminist sentiment if there ever was one! But perhaps one should take Riley with a grain of salt, considering she’s the same reporter who wrote that murdered NY college student Imette St. Guillen should have known better than to be out drinking at 3am. Victim-blamers aren’t exactly bastions of feminist thought.

Similarly, Bitch Ph.D. responds to the WSJ article on why feminists hate Palin:

[The argument] isn’t that Sarah Palin is “too good at having it all.” It’s that Sarah Palin has the same needs other women do, but that she refuses to support policies that would supply them to women who, unlike herself, don’t have large extended families, husbands with good-paying flexible work, jobs of their own that pay well and require very few hours, and lots and lots of money to pay for help if and when those other things aren’t enough.

On the other side, Camille Paglia, bless her, is predictably cuckoo for Palin:

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

So, okay, feminists (always excepting Paglia) aren’t wild for her on women’s issues.  But what about the rest of her positions?

Well, there are the scandals. That whole Troopergate thing:

Josh Marshall:

We rely on elected officials not to use the power of their office to pursue personal agendas or vendettas. It’s called an abuse of power. There is ample evidence that Palin used her power as governor to get her ex-brother-in-law fired. When his boss refused to fire him, she fired his boss. She first denied Monegan’s claims of pressure to fire Wooten and then had to amend her story when evidence proved otherwise. The available evidence now suggests that she 1) tried to have an ex-relative fired from his job for personal reasons, something that was clearly inappropriate, and perhaps illegal, though possibly understandable in human terms, 2) fired a state official for not himself acting inappropriately by firing the relative, 3) lied to the public about what happened and 4) continues to lie about what happened.

Also, see this update.

More here at Feministing.

…and the rape kit stuff:

Bitch, Ph.D.:

First, the story breaks that under Palin’s watch, Wasilla women who went to the police saying that they had been sexually assaulted by a man, were charged for the rape kit. In case anyone doesn’t know, a rape kit is an exam done for the purpose of collecting and preserving evidence–it’s not a medical procedure. And yet, despite the fact that it’s similar to collecting fingerprints, taking photos of a crime scene, or doing ballistics analysis, the city of Wasilla insisted on charging women, or their insurance companies, for the kit, rather than using city funds. As of today, neither McCain, Palin, nor anyone on either of their staff teams has commented on this story. What’s the problem-too ridiculous to dignify with a response? Hardly, especially when the former Governor, Tony Knowles, has acknowledged that Wasilla was the only town in Alaska doing it. Prompting the state legislature to pass a law forbidding them from doing so.

Yglesias on both issues.

…and TPM on earmarks.

Juan Cole, on Palin’s religion:

The most noxious belief that Palin shares with Muslim fundamentalists is her conviction that faith is not a private affair of individuals but rather a moral imperative that believers should import into statecraft wherever they have the opportunity to do so. That is the point of her pledge to shape the judiciary. Such a theocratic impulse is incompatible with the Founding Fathers’ commitment to tolerance and democracy, which is why they forbade the government to “establish” or officially support any particular religion or denomination.

Well, and but here’s Christopher Hitchens:

She has inarticulately said that her gubernatorial work would be hampered “if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with god.” Her local shout-and-holler tabernacle apparently believes that Jews can be converted to Jesus and homosexuals can be “cured.” I cannot wait to see Obama and Biden explain how this isn’t the case or how it’s much worse than, and quite different from, Obama’s own raving and ranting pastor in Chicago or Biden’s lifelong allegiance to the most anti-”choice” church on the planet. The difference, if there is one, is that Palin is probably sincere whereas the Democratic team is almost certainly hypocritical. The same is true of the boring contest over who can be the most populist, and of the positively sinister race to see who can be the most demagogically anti-Washington. With this kind of immaturity right across both tickets, it’s insulting to be asked to decide on the basis of experience, let alone “readiness.”

As to the actual issues, there are no pithy quotes to extract, plus she hasn’t done that much yet:

Many liberals are concerned about picking on Palin the person as opposed to attacking Palin the politician. One of the problems with Palin is that her executive resume is so thin there isn’t a whole lot to critique.

…but if you’re interested, here’s a summary of Palin’s views at Firedoglake, which comes to the conclusion that:

Underneath her attractive and youthful exterior, Sarah Palin is no different from the old white guys running the Republican Party. She doesn’t care about good government, she doesn’t believe in science, she wants everyone to live in accordance with her Old Testament Christian values. Basically, she’s Tom Coburn with boobs.

And finally, and most substantively, Lindsay Beyerstein summarizes an in-depth NYT article on everything Palin.

__

In conclusion, I cannot get excited about a woman who plans to use the power she has attained to make it more difficult for other women to follow in her footsteps.  Beyond women’s rights (which is certainly a significant enough issue to stand all on its own, half the population being women and all), I am of course uninterested in a candidate who fully intends to take this country further in a direction which I believe is bad for all of us.

At the end of the day, I guess that’s all I really need to say.

(If you haven’t already seen the Fey & Poehler SNL bit, click here and watch it nowrightnow.)

Posted in Feminism, People, Politics, Rants | 2 Comments »

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August 21, 2008

Bodies In Motion

It’s the grand reinstatement of Feminist Thursday!

First of all, let me just say I finally found a beer I can drink in good conscience. I’m less thrilled to say that it’s Fosters, as Fosters isn’t that good or widely available, and generally comes in giant oilcans that I’d rather not admit I can drink by carrying around with me. But regardless, I’m tickled pink with them for this, and happy that at long last, here’s a beer company that doesn’t feel it can afford to alienate half the population.  (Although, none of the above is really true, as Fosters advertising is just as offensive to women as all the other beer ads.)

Also, the Olympics have been going on; they’ve provided all manner of things for everybody to get pissed off about, and feminists are not left out:

First of all, are the uniforms too sexy? I don’t know, actually. While I do understand the point here, and while it’s certainly not okay for female athletes to be treated like objects. . . on the other hand, the skimpiness of women’s Olympic uniforms doesn’t really make me angry. Athletes are walking representations of what bodies can look like and what bodies can do, and you know, of course people are going to ogle them. What really upsets me is when men like (or are encouraged to like) ogling undernourished, undeveloped, weak, hairless, diminished women – listless, helpless waifs who closely resemble (or are) prepubescent girls, and whose “sexiness” lies entirely in their powerlessness. Frankly, I think the ogling of Olympian bodies is a huge step in the right direction. If only all young girls could think the best way to be sexy is to look like you can fling your date across a parking lot.

Finally, All Them are upset about this, which, yes, it’s bad, but it’s not like it’s an outrage particular to China. In the U.S., ability completely takes a backseat to attractiveness across the entertainment industry. Okay, so China was more blatant about it, choosing a pretty girl to lip-sync to a less-attractive girl’s singing. But in the U.S., we would have just had the pretty girl sing with her own crappy voice – the less-attractive good singer wouldn’t have gotten the job in any event.  What isn’t a beauty pageant, really?  America has absolutely no tolerance for the uglies – even off-camera civilians here are expected to look like movie stars.

In other (non-Olympics related) news, the UK courts decided that women who were raped while drunk deserve less compensation than those who were raped in all sobriety. Of course, there was a huge public outcry and the decision was reversed. I can’t comment on this any better than these two posts do (one and two), so everyone should just read them.

On a lighter note, how did I not know Hedy Lamarr was so cool? Apparently, she co-invented a torpedo-guiding device. She also said this:

“Any girl can be glamorous,” she said. “All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.”

Holla!

Posted in Advertising, Feminism, Health, People, Politics | Leave a Comment »

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July 24, 2008

Flicks and Lit For Boys and Girls

Bitch Ph.D. explains The Bechdel Rule:

The rule is that movies should have 1) at least two women, 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something other than a man.

. . . Few movies pass the Bechdel test–most of the dialogue happens between men, or between men and one woman. Most movies who have extended conversations between women tend to be under the umbrella of “chick flicks,” or the newly-minted term, “RomComs.” But even those movies don’t pass the Bechdel test; not only are the conversations about men, the movies are driven by what men do or don’t do, what they want or don’t want, even when all the principal characters are women.

Movies, yes, and television, and this rule should also really be applied to plays. I mean, it is just incredible how few women are in anything, and how little they do when they’re there. What they mostly do is (a) be all about the men in the thing, and (b) be the one to blame for everything that goes wrong. Women are almost always the “out” for why there’s a problem – it’s the mom’s fault because she tries to smother everyone because she’s timid, controlling and Puritanical. Or, it’s the girlfriend’s fault because she tries to smother her boyfriend because she’s controlling, domineering, bitchy and usually whorish. Or whatever. When the question is, what’s wrong with this swell male protagonist’s life, the answer is almost always a hysterical, shrewish, controlling woman.

The amazing thing is, you can point this out to men who write or do comedy, and they’ll agree with you and talk about how they are very careful not to do that, and really enjoy writing strong, sympathetic female characters, and then you read their stuff…and the women are all hysterical, shrewish, controlling bitches (I’m sure that the writers of Everybody Loves Raymond fully believe that the characters of Deborah and Marie are sympathetic, whereas to me, that show is a perfect example, among many, of women being horrid, unreasonable, humorless nags for no reason).

Obviously, until women start writing everything, we’re going to be stuck playing unreasonable, stupid, evil bitches on the one hand, or boring, sweet, ever-affectionate straight-men on the other.

I’ve been watching DVDs of ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’ lately (which is hilarious), and I just watched a special features short where the cast was talking about casting Kaitlin Olson as Sweet D, and what they mostly talk about is how these three guys had written this show, and all the one female character did in it was be like, ‘You guys!’ all the time. And they didn’t like that, and Olson wouldn’t take the part if it was like that. It took them awhile to convince her to take the job. On her final audition, she read a hilarious scene and decided to do it, because she had so much fun at that audition. Except, she found out at the bar later that the scene was actually between two of the male characters – they were all like, ‘oh, well, yeah, we didn’t have anything interesting written for Sweet D to audition you with, so we had you read a guy part. But you won’t be doing that in the actual show.’

Eventually, however, they did make an effort to write that part in a more comedic way – in large part, I’m sure, because it’s obvious Olson is not at all afraid to say what she thinks about things, and she seems to flat out refuse to be pushed into a boring, supporting role, which is awesome. She’s one of my heroes now.

Women are used to being interested in movies, books, plays and so forth that are by men, starring men and all about men. I love all kinds of culture that’s aimed at men and meant to appeal to them. All women can get into dude-flicks or dude-lit (oops, there’s no equivalent condescending term to use), and even patiently overlook the blatant misogyny it almost always contains. But just hint to a guy that he try watching, reading or enjoying anything at all that is written by, staring and/or primarily about women (whether it’s truly silly and superficial on its own merits, or merely automatically dismissed as silly just because it’s concerned with women), and he’ll immediately dismiss it on all levels and call you a fool for liking it yourself.

Because women are niche. Even though we constitute the majority of the population.

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Oh, and while I’m on this subject Estelle Getty has died.  Here’s Feministe on Golden Girls:

Where else have you seen a popular sitcom (or any show) that revolves around women who actually kind of look like average women, who aren’t young and fabulous and beautiful, who have interests other than finding male companionship, who put their female friendships first, and who have sex after menopause? More to the point, where can you find a TV show or movie that revolves around women like that, and those women aren’t the butt of the joke?

It’s certainly a rarity, and Golden Girls remains a bright spot in TV history. Estelle Getty was a class act.

Posted in Books, Feminism, Humor, Movies, Rants, Television, Theatre | 3 Comments »

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July 23, 2008

Fury Thrives In a Crowd

This in response to an interesting story about someone who stood up to a line jumper:

Norms are not easy to enforce when then target of the enforcement is insouciant or otherwise resistant to the threat of being shamed or embarrassed. Lance’s experience (suddenly feeling like he’s the jerk, anger channeling into embarrassment, etc) is likely very common.

This strong, unpleasant emotional reaction could be thought of as part of the cost of enforcing a general norm when you personally don’t have much to gain from doing it, and thus a reason to pass it by. But there seems to be more to it than that, as the emotional upset also pushes the interaction forward.

Living in NYC, I find myself in an environment where social etiquette is far more crucial to everybody’s happiness than anywhere else I’ve ever lived.  Everyone here is so continuously amongst each other, and every good and service so sought after by throngs of people, that there’s no putting social transgressions aside, knowing that you’ll go home and forget about it.  Home is nothing but a small eye in the middle of a continual hurricane, and there is never a moment of silence and space in which to decompress from the constant pushing and shoving of everybody else.

It’s pretty unlivable, especially for somebody with my temperament, but it will teach you to be assertive.  Six years ago, I’d never have dreamed of calling a stranger out for anything.  Now, if someone jumps me in line, I can’t keep from saying, ‘Excuse me.  I was here.’   Or, on grumpier days, ‘We-ell, go right on ahead, then!’

People always get embarrassed and pretend they didn’t see me there, but they saw me.  They just thought I wouldn’t say anything if they bowled right over me.  Which is another thing about NYC – not only is it not ok to let people jump you, it’s also not ok to let them get away with thinking you’re the sort who’ll suffer a jumping.  It’s a point of pride.

The other day, I was in a very crowded subway train, and there were two young, cute girls in summery dresses right in front of me.  This guy, who was in the center with nothing to hold onto, sort of grabbed or pushed up against one of the girls, and when she glared at him, he smiled in a smug way, and said, ‘Can’t help it.’  Referring to the crowded train and lack of hand-holds.

‘Oh, you can’t help it?’  cried the girl (and you can always just see it in someone’s face when they’ve had it – I really pay attention at these times, because it’s bound to be awesome).  ‘You can’t help it?  Well, I can’t help this:  I’m gonna slap the shit outta you!   Think you can just grab me – I will slap that smile right off your face.  Look at him, some smarmy little asshole, oh, he’s smarmy, too, look at him, think he gonna grab me.  I will kill you, fool!’

And on and on she went, giving a very loud and accurate description of all the various ways in which this fellow was not desirable to any woman anywhere, until her friend grabbed her by the shoulders and told her to stop.

I was so thrilled!  It was the best thing I’d seen in weeks.  I managed not to applaud, but couldn’t suppress my ear-to-ear grin, which this guy also saw, as he got more and more trounced in front of this train packed with strangers.  By the time he got off, his head was so far down in his neck, all you could see was his bald spot sticking out of his collar.  It was glorious.

If only every woman eviscerated gross guys like that, we’d have no more issues in the subways.

Posted in Feminism, Misanthropy, New York City | 3 Comments »

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July 17, 2008

How Are Things In Your Country?

Where to start?

In the U.S., Bush wants health care programs receiving federal aid to sign certificates promising they won’t refuse to hire health care workers who won’t provide or discuss abortion and/or birth control and other forms of contraception.

Meanwhile, birth control isn’t something McCain really cares to discuss. He’d rather keep it light, I guess.

–

A pregnant illegal immigrant gave birth under custody, and then had her baby taken from her, because of local charges on driving without a license:

Weikal said the sheriff’s office knew the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency planned to release Villegas on her own recognizance because of the pregnancy, but she had to stay in jail until she had seen a judge on the local charges.

Villegas’ attorney, Elliott Ozment, said Villegas was still in jail awaiting a hearing on the driving charge when she went into labor on the night of July 5. She was taken to Nashville General Hospital at Meharry, where she was handcuffed to the bed by her right wrist and left ankle until shortly before the birth.

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Indian sanitation workers were invited to walk the catwalk by the UN:

Today Sharanya at the Indian feminist blog Ultra Violet has a post about a recent UN conference in which Indian sanitation workers walked the runway alongside professional models at a charity fashion show. (Sanitation workers, also called scavengers, are usually Dalit women whose job it is to remove the human and animal excrement from the homes of higher-class Indians.)

What a treat.

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This is amazing: some very young children in Yemen are standing up for themselves against the grown men their families have sold them off to:

Together, the two girls’ stories have helped spur a movement to put an end to child marriage, which is increasingly seen as a crucial part of the cycle of poverty in Yemen and other third world countries. Pulled out of school and forced to have children before their bodies are ready, many rural Yemeni women end up illiterate and with serious health problems. Their babies are often stunted, too.

The average age of marriage in Yemen’s rural areas is 12 to 13, a recent study by Sana University researchers found. The country, at the southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

(via Feministe)

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And we complain about taking our shoes off:

NPR covered a story about security in Baghdad’s Green Zone, which centered specifically on one woman’s protest against the type of body scanning used: it doesn’t see hair or clothing, but sees the body, (I’m assuming metal) jewelry, and any prospective weapons. The body is rendered essentially naked (pictured here; picture from NPR).

Farah al-Jaberi’s objections (which are shared by other female workers) are mainly to male guards seeing their bodies through the scanner, and the worry that “images of their bodies can be saved and viewed by anyone later.”

(There’s an image at the link of what the scans look like.)

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And, as always, to “rape” is not to “have sex with” – and the media should respect the distinction.

Posted in Feminism, People, Politics | 1 Comment »

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July 10, 2008

Media To Women: You’re Not Having Sex Right

Slate has a long article summarizing all the various reasons why the science behind various studies and books asserting inherent differences between the sexes is thin at best. The article covers familiar ground – a lot of it restates the Mark Liberman posts I’m always linking to over at Language Log – but hopefully, this will help to discredit some of the more oft-repeated (and baseless) claims:

Even on the most hotly contested questions—like whether women have better verbal skills, or are hard-wired for empathy, or have cognitive differences that limit their advancement in math and science—the case for large, innate disparities is messy and, for the most part, underwhelming. This is especially true when it comes to neural and hormonal claims, which tend to be controversial. These writers offer canny caveats about culture and its role in gender difference. But they tend to imply that if a difference has innate roots, it’s likely to be relatively fixed. And that’s not necessarily so. In crucial ways, the mind is malleable. Ultimately, the evangelists aren’t really daring to be politically incorrect. They’re peddling one-sidedness, sprinkled with scientific hyperbole.

And while we’re on the differences between men and women, a nice rant all about orgasms – having them, not having them, faking them and who’s to blame – in response to a totally stupid column by MSNBC’s Brian Alexander:

But the thing that pissed me off the most is how Alexander wants us to look at his “roughly one-third” of straight women always have an orgasm statistic and be impressed by it. Clearly, the language he uses around it tells us that he’s saying WOW! One whole third? What a big number – especially when so many women are sexually defective!

As everyone knows, women love jerks, who, it seems, get laid a lot more. Why might that be?

It’s not always a matter of bad boys wooing vulnerable women into bed and then leaving them; it’s often two people who are both interested in just sex picking each other and calling it a day. Of course, there are no doubt some women who are suckered in by narcissistic jerks; there are also some dudes who are suckered in by narcissistic jerks (just as a Nice Guy). But sex isn’t always a trick men play on women.

What? Women might have different criteria (like looks and availability) for a one-night stand than they do for an actual relationship? No way!

One of the (many) things that really pisses me off is when guys go on about how women don’t like them because they’re too nice. I realize that everybody has to tell themselves something to get over rejection that puts the blame on the rejector and off themselves – women do the same thing (“I’m too intimidating/smart/successful”) – but I hate hearing guys go on about how their whole trouble is they’re just too swell for their own good. You know what? Usually “too nice” really means “unattractive and obnoxious.”

Hey, did you hear anything about these girls who had a pregnancy pact? And then, did you hear about how they actually didn’t?:

In short, the actual news item isn’t TODAY’S TEENS ARE SO IRRESPONSIBLE OMG. Rather, it is PREGNANT WOMEN REALLY WANT TO DO THE BEST THING FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR CHILDREN, EVEN WHEN THEY THEMSELVES ARE PRACTICALLY CHILDREN, AND IF YOU REMOVE THE STIGMA AND GIVE THEM SOME ACTUAL FUCKING SUPPORT IT HELPS A LOT. But that doesn’t fit in a headline, and it doesn’t give people an opportunity to feel morally superior.

Apparently, the problem is knocked-up teenagers aren’t being mocked and derided sufficiently anymore:

When the same girl shows up at the school clinic for five pregnancy tests in one month, shouldn’t somebody be mocking her for it? In fact, isn’t promoting shame through mockery our civic duty?

(via Feministing)

Just…wow.

More on keeping daughters in line:

“Authorities allege that Rashid killed his daughter because he feared that her resistance to a recently arranged marriage would disgrace the Pakistani-American family.”

Sounds so simple right? He killed her because his “culture” made him. Not because he might be mentally ill or pathological. There is no denying that in basically every culture there is pressure put on women to act a certain way and especially with regard to marriage or the ownership of her sexuality. But the way that “honor” killing is discussed in the media you would think it is some normal cultural phenomena, when it is not. It is a sign of illness, culture gone awry and patriarchy at its most exaggerated.

Speaking of other cultures, here’s a few utterly sickening photo shoots in which black women are used as props for white models. Can we please, please, please just completely be done with the fashion industry now? Please?

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I didn’t mention Michelle Obama once! If you need your fix, Michelle Obama Watch is a new blog entirely devoted to the subject. (via Feministing)

Posted in Advertising, Dating, Feminism, People, Politics, Science | 1 Comment »

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July 7, 2008

FISA and American Girls, or, How the Obamas Disappointed Me This Week

Get disappointed by someone new, indeed. Everyone’s talking about Obama and FISA. TPM has a good summary of his statements on the matter, and how his position has changed:

Viewing his statements, it’s striking how forcefully he argued in the past that the choice between civil liberties and safety is a false one.

Let the disillusionment begin.

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Here, the women of Slate discuss the American Girls line of dolls. The general opinion seems to be that the dolls, while promoting consumerism, are at least an improvement on Barbies and other bubble-headed bimbo lines, what with the AG’s emphasis on historical context and self-sufficient and adventurous characters.

Well! Trust me to crap all over that! Frankly, I think anybody who buys their kid a $90 doll ought to be ashamed of themselves. If that’s too rigid an opinion, I’m sorry, but I can’t fathom how anyone could argue it’s a positive thing to purchase this hugely overpriced luxury line of dolls and doll-related items for their kid. I loved looking at the AG catalog when I was little – I wore holes in it. But even back then, I saved my breath about the possibility of actually getting one. My parents bought me all kinds of dolls and undoubtedly spoiled me toy-wise, but even if we had been billionaires, I doubt they’d have entertained the idea of spending $90 on such a thing.

To be fair, my opinion about the AG dolls is entirely colored by a specific episode in my childhood that left me with a very bad impression of both the dolls and the families who value them. I went to an elementary school in a hugely wealthy neighborhood, and in third grade, one of the most well-off girls in my class invited everyone to her birthday party. The party was at the Sequoyah Hills Country Club, and it was an American Girls doll party. Everyone was to bring their American Girls doll. This ignoring the fact that most kids did not, of course, own an American Girls doll. I brought my little baby doll that probably cost around $12, and I went with my best friend, who was one of two black kids in my grade. I mention this because at the time (and possibly still, for all I know) the Sequoyah Hills Country Club, in the grand tradition of country clubs everywhere, did not offer membership to black people. It was, however, staffed by them.

The party had big tables for the kids, and little tables for the dolls. The table settings matched – there were big dishes, and matching doll dishes. There was real-people food, and matching fake doll food. There were big-girl party favors, and matching tiny doll party favors. The girl hosting the party wore a sailor suit that matched her Samantha doll’s sailor suit. I wasn’t really friends with anybody at the party, other than my best friend. And I don’t remember much about it, other than that the (exclusively black) men in butler outfits waiting on us were required to go around and pour air tea for the dolls.

I shit you not.

You know, to each their own and all that, but personally, I don’t want to have anything to do with anybody who is even remotely a part of the world I observed that day. Because of this experience, the AG dolls have become a sort of symbol of extravagance and snobbery to me, and as a result, I don’t think much of them, or mothers who think they’re precious (I’m disappointed Michelle Obama is one of them). Samantha may be promoting a more positive message than Barbie, but it’s entirely possible the little girl who threw that party resembles nobody so much as Barbie in her adulthood. The “message” is lost (because the message is beside the point); the consumerism, however, finds its intended audience.

Massively overpriced consumer items have one purpose, and one purpose only – to create and encourage desire and greed (in part by establishing themselves as status symbols: the enjoyment of having a $90 doll depends upon other girls having $12 ones – how else do you know yours is worth $90?), and to profit from it. Period. I don’t care if the dolls are a line of miniature Susan B. Anthonys and Betty Friedans – there is nothing progressively feminist about encouraging your daughter’s desire for a ridiculously high-priced doll and its accompanying outfits, accessories and furnitures.

Rawr! My daughter will have a flour sack with a face drawn on it for a doll, and she’ll damn well like it!

Posted in Advertising, Feminism, People, Politics, Rants | 2 Comments »

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July 3, 2008

I Wouldn’t Burn A Good One

As those of you paying close attention might have noticed, Thursday is generally feminism day here at Accismus. I have to run off this morning, but wanted to call attention to three things, all from Feministe:

About human trafficking:

A distant relative of mine was trafficked. Depending on what you’ve read and seen in the media, you may not expect this story to look like this: he is male, and wasn’t destined to become a sex slave, but a construction-site slave. Desperate for a job in Western Europe, he left his Ukrainian village with some sketchy individuals, was forced to trek through a marsh in freezing weather, and was eventually discovered on a train by police, still determined to reach his destination. This spring, an article on modern-day slavery was published in the L. A. Times – it warned readers that slavery is far from over, that, in fact, there are more slaves today than before, and that slavery has many faces and many forms.

…on 88% of violent crime in the U.S. being committed by men:

…The fact that, as the headlines above show, perpetrators of violent crime are assumed to be male unless stated otherwise shows just how normalized male violence is. Imagine how much we, as a culture, would be analyzing the socialization of girls if over the course of the past 10 years, 28 young women and no men had gone shooting up schools.

I’m often amazed at how invisible we make the identity of dominant groups in analyzing the behavior of their members, as opposed to the way we imagine that every member of a marginalized group is representative of the entire population of that group.

…and finally, on the male-heavy op-ed pages of our major newspapers:

Apparently a new study shows that academics chosen to write op-eds for three major newspapers are overwhelmingly male. The Wall Street Journal was the worst of the bunch, with 97% of their op-eds by academics written by men.

The study doesn’t get into the fact that this gender bias isn’t limited to op-eds by academics. At the New York Times (which features 82% male writers of op-eds by academics), two out of 11 regular op-ed columnists are women. At the Washington Post, two out of 16 columnists are women.

Now, I don’t necessarily think that having more women write op-eds would be helpful to women. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is a woman, and her ramblings seem to alternately expound on how ridiculous she thinks other women are and questioning the masculinity of any man who doesn’t act like a complete asshole.

I’ve said it before about Maureen Dowd: I suspect the Times hired her on purpose, precisely so that people, when observing how light the Times is on women columnists, would say just what is quoted above. There are tons of women who’d make fantastic columnists for the Times. I read their op-eds every day, both on blogs and in other publications.

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And one more thing – Silence of the City posts short pieces rejected by The New Yorker for its Talk of the Town section, and this particular piece (no permalink, but it’s ‘Measuring Up’ by Sari Wilson) is about a bra shop in SoHo that sounds heavenly. I am no longer a particularly bosomy lady (for now), but over a decade of my life was spent in wrestling with a pair of absolutely unmanageable breasts, which I’m convinced actually conspired with each other to make my life a living hell. One weird thing about boobs is that they seem to fluff up, like bread rising, as the day goes on. Has anyone else noticed this? You leave the house in the morning with everything all tucked in and your shirt spread smoothly over it, but then around 11:00 a.m., you look down . . . and you have four breasts. It’s the most peculiar thing. At any rate, I would have appreciated this:

At one point in the fittings, the Birkinstocked woman found herself maneuvered into a complicated, gargantuan paisley apparatus. After all the straps were adjusted and tightened and she was pushed and pulled into place, the model slipped on a trial T-shirt and it was revealed why there was a need for bra school. Her breasts were wholly transformed: no longer heavy and uncomfortable-looking, they appeared sprightly, lively, and well-formed. As she admired her slimmer, sleeker self in the mirror, the model smiled for the first time that evening.

Posted in Feminism, People, Politics | 3 Comments »

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July 2, 2008

On Small Fees and Donated Funds

Well, since Wesley Clark brought it up, does military service make for better presidential leadership, or no?

. . . [H]istory is agnostic on whether great warriors make great presidents. In the “yea” column you’ll find George Washington. Because I’m feeling generous . . . I’ll thow in Teddy Roosevelt. And if you insist that I expand the column to include borderline cases, we could also talk about Andrew Jackson. . ., Harry Truman, and Ike. The “nay” column is far longer, so I’ll just hit the highlights: Zachary Taylor, U.S. Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, John Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and, of course, George W. Bush.  Perhaps more interesting than any of the above, though, is this: the nation’s two greatest commanders in chief, and, not coincidentally, two greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, never served in the military.

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Much about Obama’s tax plan here:

. . . [I]n a better world, the findings from the TPC report would squelch the anti-Obama chatter around his tax plan vs. McCain’s. In that distortion chamber, the fact that Obama raises taxes on families with incomes above $250,000, and only on those families, morphs into a big tax increase on the middle class ($250K and up gets you in the top 3-4 percent, by the way). The report (compare tbls 1 and 6), in fact, clearly shows how topsy-turvy that critique really is. Obama’s middle-class tax cut, about $1,000, is three times that of McCain’s, about $300. Obama cuts the taxes of 81 percent of families; McCain, 56 percent.

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Why the SC’s decision on the D.C. gun ban might be great for the Democrats:

. . . [T]he Court went and struck down the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, a decision that, for reasons cultural and chronological, will cast a shadow over every other case this term. And that, I’m convinced, is one of the best gifts the Court has given a democrat since West Coast Hotel. The reasons are simple: D.C. v. Heller takes the Court off the table as an electoral liability, and it takes the National Rifle Association off the table as an electoral threat. The first part of that claim is easy enough: a term that ends with a landmark conservative decision will not be easily spun into an urgent need to remedy what McCain has called federal judges who have “little regard for the authority of the president, the Congress, and the states.”

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And, too, this:

It is possible that Obama does not realize this because he has been imbibed by so much of the propaganda of quislingism and if that is the case as I believe it to be then I tremulantly recommend we halt the malmish adulation heaped upon wretched misfits. If anything Obama has hair in his brain and even though we all are to some extent as hairy Obama sets the bar on the curve that much higher up the mountain.

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Speaking of being pedantic, y’all:  apparently, we’re not supposed to say “correlation does not imply causation.”  Oops.

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The U.S. is suffering from a decline in foreign tourists.  To remedy this, those tourists will now be charged $10 upon their arrival on U.S. soil.

I just want to say that I was charged an exit fee when I went through the Bangkok airport, despite a layover there being the only time I spent in Thailand (about two hours, total, never leaving the airport).  I had gone from one terminal to the check-in desk, and back again, after somebody wrongly told me this was the only way to change from the small Malaysian airline I’d flown in on, to another, larger flight for which I’d booked an entirely different ticket.  When I tried to reenter the terminal after checking in, not only was I forced to pay an exit fee, but in order to do so, I had to exchange money into freaking baht at an airport currency exchange counter.   Man, was I pissed.

I don’t know what that has to do with anything, really, but it feels good to share.

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Humanitarian intervention is one of those complicated issues:

Contrast this with the economists’ way of approaching matters: will intervening do more harm than good? Would this law or that do more harm than good? Sociologists would be another case for comparison: whilst political philosophers (of the Rawlsian/Kantian variety) are predisposed to see democratic institutions as a requirement of justice, sociologists are likely to ask hard questions about whether this or that society has the social structure or culture that makes democracy possible. Historians might ask whether democracies intervening in non-democratic cultures have more often tended to be benign or, alternatively, genocidal.

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Battered animals have 3,800 shelters.  Battered women have 1,500:

A woman who fundraises for a charity dedicated to helping battered women recently told me about her challenges raising money. Called the Retreat, the charity is located in East Hampton, a posh beach community, full of people who make philanthropy a part of their financial and social lives. Yet she struggles to find donors. In response to her requests, she often hears, “Well, no one I would know would be a victim of domestic violence. Besides, I already give money to the animal rescue charity.” The animal rescue charity is one of the best endowed in the area.

I actually have a lot to say about philanthropy focused on animal abuse in general (please don’t infer from my not going into it that I am against such efforts overall), but I’m too tired this morning to articulate my opinions on the matter in an intelligent and mature way.

So, I’ll just limit my remarks to VOMIT!!!!

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Finally, the Phelps family is a good example of just how nuanced hatred can be:

Whence the hatred of a fellow Baptist, a man who seemed to share so many of Westboro’s grotesque views? The answer lies in the past of Falwell himself and of the Phelps family. Falwell was a shameless racist, and the Phelps family were, incredible as it may seem, pioneers of integration in their hometown of Topeka. The Phelps family’s law practice, headed formerly by the patriarch himself, Fred Phelps, took civil rights cases, often for black plaintiffs who had failed to find representation elsewhere. The Phelpses viewed racial discrimination as un-American and contrary to Biblical teaching, and their work helped to effectuate the Brown decision.

See?  Just because somebody’s entire life consists of waving ‘fag-enabler’ signs at funerals, does not mean you should assume they’re racist, as well.

Posted in Do-Gooding, Feminism, People, Politics, Travel | 2 Comments »

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June 26, 2008

Lady News

A week ago, the U.N. recognized rape as a tactic of war:

Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert, a former U.N. peacekeeping commander, told the meeting: “It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict.” Speakers identified former Yugoslavia, Sudan’s Darfur region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Liberia as conflict regions where deliberate sexual violence had occurred on a mass scale. U.N. officials have said the problem is currently worst in eastern Congo. But a recent survey of 2,000 women and girls in Liberia showed 75 percent had been raped during the West African country’s civil war.

(via Feminste)

How fantastic.  I’m sure this problem will get much better, now that the U.N. has passed a resolution – that is, if its peacekeepers can stop raping girls long enough to read it.

Malaysia’s pretty sick of its rape problem as well, so from here on out, women will be fined for going around in lipstick and/or heels:

So not only are women supposed to prevent their own rapes by not wearing high heels or lipstick – which are apparently irresistible invitations to assault, or something – they’re fined if they don’t buy into it. If the Kota Bura Municipal Council is actually interested in preventing rape, perhaps they should focus on the rapists.

Well, really, women wouldn’t keep getting raped if they weren’t so insistent on walking around with breasts and things.

Related, here’s a truly horrifying roundup of everything to do with Islam, virginity fetishism, hymen repair surgeries, etc. (jumping-off point = an annulment in a French court):

I dislike virginity fetishism, but people make their own arrangements and their own marital choices. Fine. But part of living in a country with a secular legal system is abiding by that system; as I discussed in the previous post, maintaining your individual religious beliefs is great, but expecting a secular society to re-shape itself to fit you is not.

…I sure as hell reserve the right to blame the jackasses who peddle virginity as a virtue of utmost importance, and who pin a woman’s personhood and value on her sexual status – and that certainly includes the abstinence-only crowd in the U.S.

Speaking of, Time Magazine has a cover story on that stupid pregnancy pact thing, and I couldn’t agree more with this:

This story is getting a lot of play, and I can’t help but think that it’s in the category of rainbow parties and Satanic cults at daycare centers – that is, it’s a bullshit story published to scare the fuck out of parents.  Did a bunch of teenagers at this one high school actually have a “pregnancy pact”? Sure, maybe. But… why does this merit a story in Time Magazine?

Well, any excuse for America to focus on the sex lives of teenage girls, in such a way that can be dressed up as concern for girls’ welfare, rather than mere prurient obsession, is absolutely guaranteed to saturate the media for awhile.

Moving on from vaginas, I’ve been meaning to link to this post about shared parenting and housework:

Interestingly, the messiness of the house actually bothers me, now, a little less than it does him–at least when it comes to inviting friends in. I’ve decided that fuck it, the mess is my Feminist Statement that keeping a beautiful house is Not My Damn Job, so I invite people in (with a little tummy-tightening and a warning that we do not keep a clean house) and let them deal with it.

This is not entirely on topic with the rest of the above-quoted post, but it’s interesting to me:  it’s difficult to discuss the arbitrariness of household standards, because there are still so many stay-at-home moms who view their life’s work as essential to the health and happiness of their family.  Nobody wants to involuntarily dismiss a woman whose priorities include keeping a nice home for her family (or devalue the lives of their mothers, grandmothers and so forth, who often were stay-at-home moms).  But the very relaxing of standards in itself is sometimes taken as an insult to women who dedicated their lives to upholding the old, ridiculously high ones.

Speaking of women in the ’50s, on Ethel Rosenberg:

Her emotionless mask in public made her seem more unnatural, more evil even than Julius. “There is a saying that in the animal kingdom, the female is the deadlier of the species. It could be applied to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,” wrote the World-Telegram and Sun. The Journal-American told its readers that Julius’s “deceptively lumpish” wife had been “even more immersed in communism and its requirements for regimentation” than her husband.

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What patriotism looks like in the American Indian community:

In this, America’s season of intense patriotic display, those of us who are not Indians may be able to learn a few things about patriotism from the Little Bighorn celebration. The first is that American patriotism is not something that you simply have or do not. What that flag means to you will depend heavily on how you regard the history behind it.

(via Bitch Ph.D.)

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Finally, is Godot a member of the Resistance?

Posted in Feminism, People, Politics, Theatre | Leave a Comment »

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June 19, 2008

Today Is My Birthday!

I am 27. Having a June birthday, I’ve very rarely celebrated it, because when I was a kid and cared about birthdays, either I was at camp all June long, or everyone else was. Summer birthdays are sort of non-events.

But not this year! This year I’m throwing a party, along with my two roommates and my friend Sara (whose actual birthday is Saturday). It’s this Saturday at my apartment, and if you live in the NYC area and know me, but this is the first you’re hearing about the party, you should contact me for directions. We haven’t really done any prep work yet, so I don’t know exactly what you’ll be in for if you come; however, I did wake up this morning to discover that a large piece of sound equipment was rolled into the living room sometime after I went to bed last night, so, you know.

Today being my actual birthday, I went to Rice to Riches on my way home last night (which, if you are not aware, is a place on Spring Street that sells nothing but flavors of rice pudding), and purchased a small tureen of pecan pie rice pudding, which I’ve just consumed as my birthday breakfast. So, the day is off to a rip-roaring start! (Actually, to be honest, it was way too much pudding, and I feel more than a little nauseous, but I’m sure that will subside.)

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On to feminism!!

You’ve probably already heard about this, but according to Fox News, all black women are angry black women:

Cal Thomas: I want to pick up on something that Jane said about the angry black woman. Look at the image of angry black women on television. Politically you have Maxine Waters of California, liberal Democrat. She’s always angry every time she gets on television. Cynthia McKinney, another angry black woman. And who are the black women you see on the local news at night in cities all over the country. They’re usually angry about something. They’ve had a son who has been shot in a drive-by shooting. They are angry at Bush. So you don’t really have a profile of non-angry black women.

(via Feministing)

Speaking of Fox News pissing everyone off, Salon explains why this was so bad (for those who actually need an explanation of why this is offensive):

“Stop Picking on Obama’s Baby Mama!” Those were the words running on the bottom of Fox News’ screen Wednesday, during a discussion about right-wing attacks against Michelle Obama’s patriotism between anchor Megyn Kelly and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin. . . . Though of course it does rhyme, and there’s the innocuous Tina Fey allusion, Fox News’ attempted subliminal ghettoization of Michelle Obama is still quite clear.

Undoubtedly, you’ve also heard a lot about all these angry, alienated white women who will now be voting for McCain out of sheer spite. I don’t personally know any women who fit this profile, but the media assures me that they’re everywhere. I like Bitch Ph.D.’s post on the topic:

. . . yes, I think that the women saying “I’m staying home” are overreacting. But I also think that the men saying “you selfish feminists, how dare you” are *also* overreacting–to the expression of female anger, disappointment, autonomy. . .And yes, the reality of party politics means that in this election, women who care about women’s rights . . . should *of course* vote for Obama, because McCain is opposed to to all these things. And maybe some of the feminist outrage is indeed an expression of white entitlement and/or class entitlement–since, after all, representation at the top is more of an immediate issue for professional women than it is for working-class women. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a legitimate expression of anger against sexism as well.

Speaking of McCain:

. . . John McCain canceled a Texas fundraiser to be given by Clayton Williams after it was revealed that Williams, during his 1990 campaign for governor of Texas, compared rape to the weather: “As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” After canceling the fundraiser, McCain’s campaign said that they would be keeping the money raised by Williams – more than $300,000.

Related, FP’s list of the worst places in the world to be a woman. (via Economic Woman)

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Here’s a fascinating article on moral psychology, and how it does and does not differ across different cultures. Included in the article are the “Trolley Problems,” which I heard a year ago (on an episode of Radio Lab as replayed on an episode of This American Life), and used as a conversation starter all summer long:

. . . Hauser and his lab have collected judgments about Trolley Problems from thousands of people in more than a hundred countries, representing a broad range of ages and religious and educational backgrounds. The results reveal an impressive consensus. . . . even in this enormous sample and even for complicated borderline cases, participants’ responses could not be predicted by their age, sex, religion, or educational background. Women’s choices in the scenarios overall were indistinguishable from men’s, Jews’ from Muslims’ or Catholics’, teenagers’ from their parents’ or grandparents’. . . . Also interestingly, Hauser, Mikhail, and their colleagues found that while the “moral instinct” was apparently universal, people’s subsequent justifications were not; instead, they were highly variable and often confused.

(via A&LD)

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Finally, following up on the Obama campaign’s rumor-dispelling site I linked to yesterday, see also this:

Barack Obama buys AMERICAN STUFF. He owns a FORD, a BASEBALL TEAM, and a COMPUTER HE BUILT HIMSELF FROM AMERICAN PARTS. He travels mostly by FORKLIFT.

Posted in Feminism, Food, People, Politics, Science | 5 Comments »

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June 4, 2008

We Have a Nominee!!!

Great article about Jackson Katz, who educates men about “gender issues” that, he argues, should not be considered as such:

“As a culture, Americans first must take the step in acknowledging that violence against women is not a women’s issue, but a men’s issue,” Katz said.

. . . Katz points out a pattern that has evolved regarding how the media uses passive voice and sentences when reporting gender violence. Using a board in the front of the room, Katz helped make his point by providing the audience with a concrete exercise to illustrate the power of passive voice (see below).

John beat Mary. (active)

Mary was beaten by John. (passive)

Mary was beaten. (passive)

Mary was battered. (passive)

Mary is a battered woman. (active)

“John has left the conversation long ago, while Mary evolves into the active victim,” Katz said. “This evolution of victim-blaming is very pervasive in our society, because this is how our whole power structure is set up. We start asking why Mary put herself into a position to be beaten by John.” “If we really want to work on prevention, we need to start asking questions about John, not Mary,” Katz said. “We won’t get anything done until we start treating these issues as men’s issues and shift the paradigm at the cultural level.”

(via Feministing)

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On the other hand, sometimes blaming the victim is hilarious and satisfying (a NYC man was acquitted for physically confronting a grunter in his Equinox spinning class):

“I don’t know if there’s going to be an uprising, but the short-term message is sometimes you can get away with assaulting somebody who’s annoying,” he said.

Indeed, some of the annoyed sat on the jury.

(via tmn)

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How to win the New Yorker’s caption contest:

You are not trying to submit the funniest caption; you are trying to win The New Yorker’s caption contest.

Funny side note – not long ago, I actually met a New Yorker cartoonist (friend of a friend, who came to one of our improv shows), and what were the first words out of my mouth upon discovering his occupation?

“No kidding! I enter that caption contest every week!”

As soon as I said it, I realized: boy howdy, I bet actual cartoonists freaking hate that contest. And sure enough: “Well, that’s great,” he said. “I mean, I freaking hate that contest, but good luck to you.” (He didn’t say it in a jerky way.)

I really should have known better, because one of my pet peeves is that, when what you primarily do in life (or what you aspire to do) is creative, people who find it out will rush to explain to you how they actually do that thing, too. If you’re an actor, everybody who ever asks you what you do will be anxious to explain to you how they’re really an actor, too. If you’re a writer, you’ll be forever hearing about how your partner in conversation is really a writer, too. And I imagine that interior designers and chefs are constantly hearing about how everybody they meet is just brilliant at rearranging the furniture and cooking.

Now granted, most CPAs who declare, upon meeting an aspiring actor, that they used to act themselves in college are really every bit as much actors as whatever perpetually-not-cast “actor” they’re talking to, but my fascination with this conversational faux pas has more to do with why the CPA thinks the “actor” they’re talking to will somehow be gratified to hear that the CPA can do everything the “actor” they’ve just met can do and more, but has moved beyond it now and makes money instead. THIS IS NOT POLITE, PEOPLE!

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Also, everyone’s fat and stupid.

Posted in Art, Feminism, Health, Humor, New York City, People, Theatre | 2 Comments »

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June 2, 2008

Give Me Transit, Or Give Me Death

Seems everybody wants to keep the racism and lose the term for it. Here, M. LeBlanc at Bitch Ph.D. responds to Geraldine Ferraro’s recent op-ed:

Bringing up sexism or racism has become, in the minds of those outraged by accusations that they might be sexist or racist, “playing the gender card” or “playing the race card.” . . .

I’ve been astonished at the degree to which “playing the race/gender” card has flourished as a phrase and concept in the conversation about this primary race. I’ve heard it from so many bloggers, pundits, straight-up newscasters, and even some of my personal friends. I want to be as absolutely clear as I can: it’s a bogus concept, and using it makes you part of the problem.

Race and gender are not “cards” that you play, like laying out trump in bridge and winning the hand. Because when you have to bring up racism or sexism to explain what is happening around you, that means you’re already losing.

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News that’s not news: shopping and eating cookies can help you forget about death:

The authors believe people with low self-esteem use consuming as a way of subconsciously escaping self-awareness, which is heightened by thoughts of dying. “When you indulge in shopping or eating, it helps you forget yourself,” says Smeesters.

(via Serious Eats)

Related, people in Japan should eat more cookies. So should the U.S. Army. And the Russian army.

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Jeffrey Goldberg interviews John McCain on Israel, Iran and Obama, among other things:

JG: Let’s go back to Iran. Some critics say that America conflates its problem with Iran with Israel’s problem with Iran. Iran is not threatening the extinction of America, it’s threatening the extinction of Israel. Why should America have a military option for dealing with Iran when the threat is mainly directed against Israel?

JM: The United States of America has committed itself to never allowing another Holocaust. That’s a commitment that the United States has made ever since we discovered the horrendous aspects of the Holocaust.

In addition to that, I would respond by saying that I think these terrorist organizations that they sponsor, Hamas and the others, are also bent, at least long-term, on the destruction of the United States of America. That’s why I agree with General Petraeus that Iraq is a central battleground. Because these Shiite militias are sending in these special groups, as they call them, sending weapons in, to remove United States influence and to drive us out of Iraq and thereby achieve their ultimate goals. We’ve heard the rhetoric — the Great Satan, etc. It’s a nuance, their being committed to the destruction of the State of Israel, and their long-term intentions toward us.

(via FP Passport)

In the same interview, McCain takes issue with Obama’s willingness to talk to Iran. Here’s what Thomas Friedman thinks about all that:

Mr. Bush was also right: talking with Iran today would be tantamount to appeasement – but that’s because the Bush team has so squandered U.S. power and credibility in the Middle East, and has failed to put in place any effective energy policy, that negotiating with Iran could only end up with us on the short end. We don’t have the leverage – the allies, the alternative energy, the unity at home, the credible threat of force – to advance our interests diplomatically today.

Here’s Matthew Yglesias responding:

We’re a giant rich country and they’re a medium sized middle income country. We have military forces in two of Iran’s neighbors, we maintain sanctions on Iran that hurt their economy. Our closest ally in the country is a rich nation with a power military establishment and nuclear weapons, their closest allies in the region are non-state militia groups. We have plenty to offer Iran that would be valuable to them insofar as they’re willing to change their behavior in ways that are valuable to us. That’s all the leverage you need to start a process of negotiation.

And Yglesias on McCain:

I was walking earlier today thinking to myself, “you know, say what you will about John McCain, but he’ll almost certainly be a better President than George W. Bush so we have something to look forward to no matter what happens in America.” Then I thought to myself that to write that up, you’d need to include the all-important to-be-sure sentence. Specifically, something like “if, that is, he manages to avoid any catastrophic new wars that lead to massive bloodshed.”

Also worth a mention (although to me this doesn’t sound like as big a deal as the whole Phil Gramm thing):

Before Rick Davis began serving as John McCain’s campaign manager, his lobbying firm had a pretty cosmopolitan set of clients. For example, Ukranian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, who has several business links to Iran.

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A history of the L…

…and a gallery of the coolest subways. Included is the best subway I’ve ever experienced:

The Hong Kong MTR has the distinction of being one of the few subway systems in the world that actually turns a profit. It’s privately owned and uses real estate development along its tracks to increase revenue … and ridership. It also introduced “Octopus cards” that allow people to not only pay their fares electronically, but buy stuff at convenience stores, supermarkets, restaurants and even parking meters. It’s estimated that 95 percent of all adults in Hong Kong own an Octopus card and they generate more than 10 million transactions each day.

Not to mention, it’s clean as a whistle and a piece of cake to navigate.

Timely to study what works, since lately, Americans are cuckoo for public transit!!!

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The Balkans are totally safe now (well, unless you’re a woman).

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May 30, 2008

Things Change

The mystery of Stonehenge is mysterious no more:

The secret of Stonehenge has apparently been solved: The mysterious circle of large stones in southern England was primarily a burial ground for almost five centuries, and the site probably holds the remains of a family that long ruled the area, new research concludes.

I don’t know about you, but…SNORE!!

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For the billionth time, boys are not inherently better at math:

Boys outperform girls on a math test given to children worldwide, but the gender gap is less pronounced in countries where women and men have similar rights and opportunities, according to a study published Thursday. . . . In about a dozen countries, both sexes scored about the same. In many of those places, like in Iceland, men and women have similar opportunities and rights, according to the study, which was published in the journal Science.

(via tmn)

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On the immigration raids, generally, and why the treatment of detainees is so inhumane:

Since 2006, ICE has been dispatching teams of agents into neighborhoods throughout the country as part of a ramped-up enforcement effort called “Operation Return to Sender.” Each team must apprehend an annual quota, currently set at 1,000, of fugitive aliens. These are immigrants who remain in the United States despite outstanding orders to leave. . . . Without an accurate list of which homes actually harbor undocumented immigrants, agents often rely on race to figure out who’s here legally and who isn’t. . . .Race, in fact, is not a very good indicator of whether someone is in the United States illegally. Up to two-thirds of the people ICE arrests have never received deportation orders, frequently because their presence here is lawful. By ICE’s own admission, the bureau has mistakenly detained, arrested, and even deported not only legal immigrants but also U.S. citizens.

It goes on from there.

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There is literally no place left on Earth where you can escape the human racket:

Krause has a word for the pristine acoustics of nature: biophony. It’s what the world sounds like in the absence of humans. But in 40 percent of the locations where Krause has recorded over the past 40 years, human-generated noise has infiltrated the wilderness. “It’s getting harder and harder to find places that aren’t contaminated,” he says.

Don’t I know it, buddy.

Also, this:

Researchers have produced aerial photos of jungle dwellers who they say are among the few remaining peoples on Earth who have had no contact with the outside world.

(via FP Passport)

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Who says nothing ever changes?  Nepal is a monarchy no more:

The main palace in Nepal’s capital lowered the flag of the country’s royal family Thursday, a day after lawmakers, led by former communist insurgents, abolished the monarchy that had reigned over the Himalayan land for 239 years.

(via FP Passport)

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I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge Michelle Obama fan.  In Phoenix, she apparently drew a bigger crowd than McCain (and the President):

This just amazes me. The wife of the Democratic front-runner outdraws, handily, both the Republican front-runner himself and the guy he wants to replace in the White House — and does so on the Republican front-runner’s home turf.

Hell yeah, she did.

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Well, this really says it all:  a British man who originally started a charity to bring medical aid to Guyana now does most of his flying into rural Tennessee:

On a wet, spring weekend he lands his vintage World War II aircraft – once used to drop American troops on D-Day – in Lafayette, Tennessee. He bought the plane to parachute medics into the jungle. Today he is unloading dentists’ chairs from the plane into a pickup truck. By eight o’clock on Friday evening the first patients have arrived after travelling hundreds of miles. They start queuing.

(via Unfogged)

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May 29, 2008

Birth, Death, Oppression

Newly discovered fossil shows live birth and egg-laying evolved together:

Dubbed “mother fish” by the scientists who discovered her in northwestern Australia, Materpiscis attenboroughi is not only an entirely new genus and species, but pushes back the first known case of live birth in the animal kingdom by some 200 million years.

(via tmn)

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Photos of well-known prisons and other high-security buildings:

To question the pervasiveness of intimidating, “disgusting” architecture, the images in Ross’ book are both striking and inviting. Ross intentionally makes the photos of oppressive structures look seductive. “You can convince people a lot easier by whispering in their ear rather than hitting them over the head,” says Ross.

On a lighter note, a photo of a light fixture made of cereal. And fake libraries, for those who have no time to assemble picturesque collections of books.

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On women:

In Iraq:

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British soldier in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

(via 3 Quarks Daily)

Among the Roma:

[A girl's] value, as a virgin, is ascertained not by the young groom on the wedding night but, according to archaic folk custom, by the probing finger of a tribal crone: Eberstadt’s partially renegade Gypsy friend Linda explains, “For Gypsies, it’s a nasty old woman who is paid to penetrate the girl, like a gynecologist but with dirty hands, in front of all the husband’s family. It’s terrifying, it’s inhuman.” Landric sums up: “People talk about preserving Gypsy culture. But what am I as an educator supposed to do when the comportment of my students is frankly pathological?”

And again, back to the U.S. political situation, Feministing responds to the study saying we don’t have more women political leaders because women aren’t that ambitious (and does such a great job of it that I’m going to quote nearly all of it):

Most of these things, in my mind, just go back to the fact that we have a fundamentally unfeminist society. Women are saddled with more family obligations, and we have a government that has been unwilling to step in and lighten the load. Girls are bombarded with the message, from a young age, that they should aspire to be pretty, not powerful. (Or that pretty is powerful.) So is it any wonder that grown women doubt their qualifications? Also, saying that women are less likely than men to “be willing to endure the rigors of a political campaign” fails to note that, compared to white men, the campaign trail is a helluva lot more rigorous for women. No wonder they’re less likely than men to “perceive a fair political environment.”

But to me, none of that speaks to ambition. Within the social constraints that are placed on women by a sexist society, how can you expect them to sign up for elections in droves? The two parties are basically boys’ clubs, the media is completely misogynist, there is virtually no government support for working mothers, and women get the message from a very young age that they have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to expect half as much. It’s hard to separate out all this junk and figure out how many women really do harbor higher career ambitions. And how many said they don’t because of these very unfeminist realities about our society. “Women may now think about running for office, but they probably think about it while they are making the bed,” as Beloit College political scientist Georgia Duerst-Lahti put it. For example, would it really be fair to call a single mom with three kids and two jobs “not ambitious” because she doesn’t realistically think she can run for political office?  Please.

These are big-picture problems — ones that feminists are working to solve, of course — but huge and pervasive problems nevertheless. Do these things keep women out of politics? Undoubtedly. But are they a problem of ambition? No. I’d wager a guess that if you reform the media, create better support systems for working mothers, and if the two parties actually made an effort to recruit women candidates, we’d see a huge spike in “ambition.”

Until that grand day, of course, we need a backup plan. So I refer you to the She Should Run campaign, which encourages people to push women to run for office, even in this imperfect world. The good news is when you actually ask women to run, they say yes at rates similar to men. I guess they suddenly discover they had ambitions, after all.

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This man is living my exact same life (except he’s doing it successfully):

Of working in the theatre, he said: “It gets you out of the house, and then you start to hate the people. And then you can go back and sit in a room and write.” . . .Kureishi also said that when he goes to his desk each morning to commence writing, he thinks to himself: “Why am I doing this? Shall I commit suicide?”

I wonder if he’s single…

Also, Umberto Eco is awesome.

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May 27, 2008

Bridges

A dozen cool bridges:

A bridge inspires us. A bridge overcomes an obstacle and connects someplace to someplace else, with strength and often with grace and beauty. A bridge lets us go to the other side.

I don’t know about all that, but these are neat looking bridges, regardless. The only one that I’ve walked over is the Ponte Vecchio.

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Shocker! CDM is a big, old mess:

Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN’s main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.

(via Majikthise)

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Interesting summary of Sen. Durbin’s recent hearing on Global Internet Freedom:

Durbin said he called the hearing to examine “the role that American companies play in internet censorship, and displayed a lot of passion on the issue. He asked whether Congress should find that it’s wrong for an American company to in any way cooperate with censorship and repression.

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You know, if the worst “the Man” has to fear is vegans and Critical Mass bicyclists, I’d say he can safely fire his food taster and stretch out in his throne.

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A prediction: I predict that when Obama gets the nomination, we’re going to have whole crapload of articles about how all of Clinton’s female supporters are now supporting McCain (even though there won’t be any actual evidence of this) because (and this will certainly not be overtly stated, only heavily implied) women are so freaking stupid that they don’t understand or care about real political issues – they just wanted a girl, and now they’re pissed.

Of course, I could be totally wrong, and we won’t see any articles like this. Shall we take bets now?

Posted in Feminism, People, Politics, Science, Technology | 2 Comments »

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May 26, 2008

People Are Interesting/Annoying

Apparently, men who believe in evolutionary psychology may be predisposed to do so by their possession of the recessive luz-R gene:

[S]ome men may be genetically predisposed to believe in evolutionary psychology, a finding that may well suggest future methods of treatment of the psychological malady. Believers in evolutionary psychology maintain that feminism sets itself in opposition to millions of years of anthropoid evolution, and is thus futile and inhumane to men. Allegations made by believers include references to putative differences in math skills between men and women, a supposedly irresistible but entirely non-visually stimulated female attraction toward powerful and/or arrogant males, and the existence of a genetically preordained male right to multiple female sexual partners.

(via Economic Woman)

Related (but much longer and not funny), a history of how race (as a concept) was invented:

If one is an evolutionist, and accepts that there have been hundreds of thousands of years for different ethnic groups to emerge and to spread about the globe, the monogenetic hypothesis is not hard to maintain. The same is true if, conversely, one believes that the world is only a few thousand years old, but is operating with a geographical scope that does not extend much beyond one’s own region. But for creationists in the 17th century, monogenesis effectively required that the new anthropological data from around the globe be somehow rendered compatible with the view that all human beings be descended from two ancestors, presumed to have lived somewhere in the Near East roughly six thousand years before the era of the scientific revolution.

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More on the immigration raids:

Most of all, it’s clear that the plant’s owners were in the business of seriously exploiting the illegal status of their workers — abusing them, underpaying them, exposing them to hazardous working conditions — and the raids actually had the effect of covering that up….

On the same blog is this discussion about the universality of inalienable rights:

My human rights law professor was Lung-chu Chen, a co-author along with Mac and Professor Laswell, of “Human Rights and World Public Order” which propounded the notion that Jeffersonian natural law and innate and inalienable rights belonged not just to US citizens, but to all people. They argued that providing human rights should be the policy of all nations and all organizations of nations (such as NATO, UN, etc.). . . . You see, there are some rights so fundamental that they come to us simply from being human; they are NOT “given” to us by the State.

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We should all be this resourceful:

Unable to afford a proper camera crew and equipment, The Get Out Clause, an unsigned band from the city, decided to make use of the cameras seen all over British streets. . . . Afterwards they wrote to the companies or organisations involved and asked for the footage under the Freedom of Information Act.

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On gawking at the Amish:

I usually enjoy playing the trespassing voyeur, but even at the heritage museum I could tell that in Amish Country, trespassing and vouyering were not going to bring me as much joy as they usually did.

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Photos of “punk houses” (otherwise known as “apartments of people with whom I will never make eye contact, because they are too intimidatingly cool for me”).

Speaking of, here’s an article on how much the Millennial generation sucks:

One need look no further than the local newsstand to see the favoritism the Millennials have received. Whereas Generation X was routinely denigrated by the press, the Millennials have been compared to World War II’s Greatest Generation. In Robert Strauss and Neil Howe’s Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, the authors state authoritatively that “over the next decade, the Millennial Generation will entirely recast the image of youth from downbeat and alienated to upbeat and engaged.”

(via Unfogged)

I’m on the cusp – while I’m just one year shy of being an actual Millennial, I am a solipsist and I do blog. However, I take comfort in the fact that no one could ever, ever accuse me of being upbeat or engaged. The ’81 crop of babies must have been the last to be born “downbeat and alienated.”

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Happy Memorial Day, y’all!  Hope everyone enjoys the holiday:  here, it’s a lovely day out, and we’re having friends over to christen our newly cleaned back yard.

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May 22, 2008

Culture, Culture, Culture

So, Iceland (my knowledge about which begins and ends with Bjork) is tops on the UNDP’s Human Development Index ranking. Which is pretty cool, except you would have to live in Iceland (this is also the problem with Sweden…suicide, anyone?). But hey, check out this awesomeness: nine months of paid maternity leave to be split between the mom and dad as they choose. YES! Standing O, Iceland!! (Although, granted, it might not be the most workable thing to give Americans nine paid months off every time they successfully knock each other up.)

Another great deal along these lines: Zappos offers its new employees $1,000 to quit on their first day!

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According to James Frey, he never reads what he writes. Explains a lot. Hey, speaking of fad books, can someone tell me why everybody in NYC is currently reading Middlesex? Is this just an amazing example of the collective groupmind at work, or did some cultural icon recently recommend it on a talk show? (Not that anyone listens to me, but if you’re currently working on it, I would suggest you spare yourself and put it down now – especially if it’s the only book you’ll be reading this year.)

Speaking of doing just as others do, let’s all talk about SITC: here, an impressionable young girl first becomes a ho like Samantha, and then a Mormon like her (the girl’s) husband. Hey, whatever’s in front of you…

Related, are civilization and culture in opposition to each other?

The problem is that civilisation needs culture even if it feels superior to it. Its own political authority will not operate unless it can bed itself down in a specific way of life. Men and women do not easily submit to a power that does not weave itself into the texture of their daily existence – one reason why culture remains so politically vital. Civilisation cannot get on with culture, and it cannot get on without it.

(via 3 Quarks Daily)

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Eric Alterman responds to Brink Lindsey’s commentary (which I quoted yesterday):

I feel that libertarianism, as I understand it, is overly concerned with theoretical liberty at the expense of its actual practice. The freedom to starve, to see one’s labor unfairly exploited, to drink polluted water or breath polluted air, are not freedoms I strongly value. And to battle these and others like them, society requires collective institutional action and in many cases, government (or labor union) protection. I’m no fan of “big government” per se–and neither was Dewey. It’s merely that powerful forces like global corporations require powerful forces to balance them.

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Lately, everyone seems to be saying that, while Clinton’s candidacy may have revealed a huge undercurrent of misogyny in our society, it did not actually suffer from this misogyny. That’s as it may be; however, speaking for myself at least, that revealed misogyny is exactly what has surprised and upset me throughout the primaries. I’m very disappointed by all of the openly hostile and condescendingly dismissive talk about Clinton’s campaign, both by men in the media and by guys I know in my own, personal life. I can say the same thing for racism laid bare by Obama’s campaign. Before this primary season, I naively thought that people (in my set, at any rate) had overcome at least the more overt racist and sexist thinking. Turns out, everyone has continued holding all the same racist and sexist opinions all this time – they’ve just learned to mostly keep their mouths shut about it.

Also, according to one of McCain’s advisers, calling Clinton a bitch isn’t misogynist, because, you see, Clinton really is a bitch.

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Negotiating this week:  Israel and Syria, Lebanon and Hezbollah…and Pakistan and the Taliban:

Pakistan will pull its troops out of the Swat valley in its Northwest Frontier Province according to an agreement signed today by government negotiators and local Taliban leaders. Local authorities also agreed to enforce Sharia law so long as girls are allowed to attend school and militants do not carry weapons in public.

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Finally, last night I saw Eric Bogosian do a benefit reading for Labyrinth Theater Company of some of his less frequently performed monologues. Eric Bogosian is one of my theatre heroes (I love all monologists, since my dream career involves me talking endlessly to myself, while crowds of people I never have to interact with face-to-face applaud thunderously somewhere out beyond the blaring lights), but I’ve never seen him perform – I’ve just watched whatever DVDs of his solo shows are available, and I’ve read all his stuff. In fact, just recently, I was randomly reading The Essential Bogosian, which includes several of the pieces he performed last night. This is one reason why living in NYC is actually cool – you can actually go see the people you like do the things you like (if you can rip yourself away from your laptop long enough).

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May 20, 2008

Just Because People Say It…A Lot

In two separate studies, neither of which should come as a surprise to anybody with a brain, the Washington Post today dispels some things we’ve heard a lot of squawking about for the past couple of years:

First of all, no, there is no education crisis in which girls’ increasing achievement is coming at the expense of boys’ success:

“A lot of people think it is the boys that need the help,” co-author Christianne Corbett said. “The point of the report is to highlight the fact that that is not exclusively true. There is no crisis with boys. If there is a crisis, it is with African American and Hispanic students and low-income students, girls and boys.”

This ought not to come as a surprise, because whenever you hear about a boys’ crisis in education, you never hear about boys doing worse than boys did in the past (clearly, because they’re not) – you only hear about girls doing better than girls did in the past. But there’s no discrepancy here for people who feel any advancement made by women is by its very nature at the expense of men. (Incidentally, remember back when Laura Bush decided to make saving American boys her mission?)

And secondly, no, teenage girls aren’t using a technicality to blow the football team and still call themselves virgins:

Contrary to widespread belief, teenagers do not appear to commonly engage in oral sex as a way to preserve their virginity, according to the first study to examine the question nationally.

This ought to come as no surprise, because there’s always ongoing speculation by adults who can’t get their minds out of teenagers’ pants about what porn-o-riffic exploits the young might be indulging in these days. I’m no fan of Caitlin Flanagan (in part, because she frequently mourns for poor, neglected, American boys), but this Atlantic article is a good explanation of where this sort of speculation comes from, and why it’s degrading and insulting to teenagers:

The moms in my set are convinced-they’re certain; they know for a fact-that all over the city, in the very best schools, in the nicest families, in the leafiest neighborhoods, twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls are performing oral sex on as many boys as they can.

Related, the creepiness of purity balls! There’s a line at which traditional safeguarding of the “virtue” of young girls becomes more perverse than its opposite, and I think it’s around the time people forget that a vagina is something a girl has, not something that she is.

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More on appeasement:

Bolton in the WSJ…:

‘When the U.S. negotiates with “terrorists and radicals,” it gives them legitimacy, a precious and tangible political asset. Thus, even Mr. Obama criticized former President Jimmy Carter for his recent meetings with Hamas leaders. Meeting with leaders of state sponsors of terrorism such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il is also a mistake.

…versus Scoblic in the LAT:

Containment, negotiation, nuclear stability — each of these things helped protect the United States and end the Cold War. And yet, at the time, conservatives thought each was synonymous with appeasement.

(via NYT)

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I’m sick to death of talking about the primaries, but I’m even sicker lately of hearing people say things like this:

[W]ere it not for Hillary’s vote for the war, [Obama] would not have run because there was no opening. She gave him the opening by voting for the war. So spare me the stories about her being defeated by sexism or whatever. Democrats are dying to vote for a qualified liberal woman for President (just as some of us are dying to vote for a qualified liberal African American. And this year we will).

What this writer really means is: “MY FRIENDS AND I are dying to vote for a qualified liberal woman for President….” Just because you are a liberal who dislikes Clinton based on her (lack of) merit does not mean that sexism hasn’t played a huge part in her reception as a candidate. If you truly, genuinely believe that race and sex play little part in how the majority of Americans (yes, even liberal Americans) see these candidates, well, then you have a far, far more hopeful view of people than I do, and I hope you’re right.

But you’re not.

Also, while I’m talking about this, I’d like an end to the oft-repeated exclamation that no one mentions black women when the topic at hand is the general reception of these two specific candidates. Does everyone really have to spell out “women, including black women” and “black people, including black women,” in order for people to stop tossing in the observation that “no one’s talking about black women” to bolster their claims that either (a) white women are trying to say they’re worse off than black men; or (b) people are generally more reactive to racism than sexism?

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On a lighter note (before I explode), I have an odd obsession with competitive eaters – my favorite is Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, who manages a McDonald’s and weighs less than 100 pounds – but even if I didn’t, this interview with Crazy Legs Conti is particularly hilarious:

I ate three sticks of butter as fast as I could. I wouldn’t recommend that for a pro-eater or a casual diner. . . .I also ate my way out of an eight foot box of popcorn, the Popcorn Sarcophagus, which earned me the moniker, “The Houdini of Cuisini”. I found it wasn’t the pop or the corn that did me in, but the butter. Butter is seems, is my kryptonite.

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May 18, 2008

Some Stuff Going On

Immigration crackdown in Iowa:

“They don’t go after employers. They don’t put CEOs in jail,” complained the Postville Community Schools superintendent, David Strudthoff, 51, who said the sudden incarceration of more than 10 percent of the town’s population of 2,300 “is like a natural disaster — only this one is manmade.”

The article opens with a quote from one fellow who’s been working in a meatpacking plant in Postville for 11 years. Good lord, is that not punishment enough for any conceivable transgression?

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I’m a big fan of Slate’s daily digests of various papers and blogs, and I think Friday’s round-up of bloggers’ reactions to the California Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision provides links to a particularly nice range of opinions on the issue. I’ll give Oscar Wilde the last word on this one:

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.

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Bush has been implying Obama is one of those appeasers we all hear so much about:

The president is just being a demagogue. There’s no general prohibition against talking to regimes we don’t like. There never has been. It’s just a made-up rule that right wingers invented to browbeat their critics and to make war seem inevitable. It’s not like the Bush administration has ever been bound by that constraint.

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Because I can never get enough of this, here’s Mark Liberman on Leonard Sax again:

In his books, Leonard Sax is a political activist using science to make a case, not a scientist evaluating a hypothesis.

Science is sometimes on his side, sometimes neutral or equivocal, and sometimes against him. He picks the results that fit his agenda, ignoring those that don’t; and all too often, he misunderstands, exaggerates or misrepresents the results that he presents.

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I’m sure this jives with the personal experience of anybody in the arts (I find it hard to relate to people who have some expectation that they’ll actually be paid for the work they do):

Unlike 20th century innovation, the most important developments in innovation have been driven not by research funded by governments or developed by corporations but by the collaborative interactions of individuals. In most cases, this modality of innovation has not been motivated by economic concerns or the prospect of profit. This raises the possibility of a world in which some of the sectors of the economy particularly the ones dealing with innovation and creativity are driven by social interactions of various kinds, rather than by profit-oriented investment.

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Another article about how little today’s sex objects have to do with actual sex:

But the women in FHM are an equally false representation of male desire. FHM is not a men’s magazine like GQ or Esquire. It’s a magazine for lads – for 15-year-olds. It serves adolescent boys with the fantasy that there is something or someone out there who is the “sexiest,” a comforting norm of male desire which does not exist and has never existed.

(via 3 Quarks Daily)

When I was in junior high and wondering why all the guys wanted to go out with the exact same girl, someone wise explained this to me: boys like to be told what they ought to want, because they worry that if left to follow their own desires, they’ll want something weird. (An observation that applies to more than just teenagers about more than just sex.)

See also, Scientific American‘s very comprehensive article on orgasm and the brain:

The men, by contrast, were physically titillated mainly by their preferred category of sexual partner-that is, females for straight men and males for gay men-and were not excited by bonobo copulation.

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