Bark/Bite

Blogging Belatedly for Choice

2007-01-24T23:43:00.000-06:00

Allright. So I missed Blog For Choice Day. Fine. It's not like missing deadlines is any news at all around here.

And I haven't been reading the news much lately, I'm not up to speed on whatever egregious assault on reproductive choice has been mounted lately--the type of thing I've blogged about before, here. And here. And here, too. And even here.

So today, in honor of the recently-passed-without-me-writing-a-goddamn-thing Blog For Choice Day, I thought I'd go into some of my basic thoughts about abortion.

Given that I first really gave abortion any thought about the time that I had my first (and unprotected) sexual encounter, my first thoughts were of abortion as an emergency exit, so to speak, should the need arise. Not a very noble, to be sure, but hell, I was eighteen--I also thought homosexuality was gross and weird and that 1969 Camaros were the finest cars on the face of the planet.

Ok, so '69 Camaros are the finest cars on the face of the planet. So sue me.

At any rate, my thoughts on the matter at hand matured. And today, it boils down to one main issue:

it's her body.

At first, I wanted at first to go off on all the reasons anti-choice laws are fucked up:

Like if it weren't for religion, 90% of the anti-choice activism wouldn't exist, which clues me that we're looking at somebody trying to get legal privilege for their particular religious viewpoint.

Like a lot of the activism is fueled by a real mean-spirited morality: women who have sex should be forced to suffer the "consequences of their actions." Serious--as if they were five-year-olds who'd tracked mud into the house and had to deal with the "consequences of their actions" and mop the fucking floor. I mean, my grandfather used to smoke cigars all day and eat the fat that other people had trimmed off their steaks (Ewww). But when he went in for a quadruple fucking coronary bypass , did anyone say that he should "suffer the consequences of his actions" and be denied the surgical procedure? No.

[These, after all, are the anti-HPV people. The "I'd rather risk you dying a slow and excrutiating death via cervical cancer than give you the idea that sex before marriage is even a physical possibility, my sweet virginal daughter" people. Mean-spirited fucks].

Like there's no end of patriarchal bullshit tied up in this. The denial of a woman's control over her own body, the shaming of women because of their sexuality and reproductive biology (Leviticus 15:30, anyone?), men's claims of ownership of children--these are all venerable institutions that are essential to the propagation of any patriarchy, and they are all part of the anti-choice movement.

But in the end, none of those reasons really speak to the heart of the matter to me. Which is, again,

it's her body.

I have to admit that once I came across an Ann Coulter piece where she quipped that Rove involved the Supremes having somehow found "a constitutional right to stick a fork in a baby's head" and I had to admit that sounded pretty bad. So-called "Partial Birth Abortion" is the Willie Horton of anti-choice activism, and as such, it's pretty effective.

But it's also largely bogus. Not just that the term is a gross (and deliberate) misnomer, but that it is an extremely rare procedure performed virtually exclusively in cases where it is the most medically appropriate option to ensure the mother's health.* This is not something that women and doctors agree to do because there's nothing good on TiVo. As I understand it, elective D&X (the procedure that folks usually are trying to describe when they say "partial-birth") is not even permitted by most, if not all, state medical associations.

That being said, even the medically accurate descriptions of a D&X are unsettling to me. The nasty photos that anti-choice activists show are unsettling to me. Never mind that the majority of abortions are carried out when the fetus is the size of a peanut shell or smaller, I have to admit that deep inside, there is some lingering doubt, some hesitation, some apprehension. But guess what?

That's my problem.

Why? Because of one simple fact:

it's her goddamn body

That's one of the absolute bedrocks in our house. We tell the kids over and over, "it's your body." They make a lot of decisions that I don't like, but I suck it up, because it's not my body--it's theirs. Go outside in freezing drizzle and sleet--barefoot? Bad idea, HowlerMonkeyBoy, but it's your body. Skip lunch and turn into a grouchy, irritable wretch by dinnertime because you're pissed that I won't make your ramen noodles for you? I don't like it, and I don't like putting up with a grouchy, irritable EvilGeniusGirl, but hey, it's your body.

Case in point--the aforesaid EvilGeniusGirl is around the age at which the CDC recommends she get the HPV vaccine. I'm the one appointed to sit down with her and discuss this. While I am 100% in favor of her getting the vaccine, at the end of the day, I'm going to leave it up to her. It's her decision, because...well, you know why.

Now, without getting all "I went to grad school in an esoteric discipline" goofy on you, let me just say that The Body is inherent to identity. There are reams and reams of literature on this--most of it feminist, a lot of it from Routledge--but one of the recurring themes is that our relationships to our bodies are profound, fragile, and essential. That's why the "my body has turned on me" aspect of cancer is so horrifying to so many patients. That's why torture is so horrific--it's a deliberate, malicious, and excruciating invasion of the body--the seat of identity, the physical manifestation of the self.

And this is actually what moved The Lovely Wife from mildly anti-choice to solidly pro-choice. The experience of carrying EvilGeniusGirl for nine months, the realization that it was a total usurpation of the body, a profound loss of control of her physical being, caused her to decide that this was simply not something that should ever be forced on someone against their will.

So: Would I like to see abortion safe, legal, and rare?** Sure. How about safe, legal and virtually non-existent because people are thoroughly--and accurately--educated, birth control is safe, legal, and omnipresent, women are unashamed about their bodies, men take equal responsibility for contraception, etc., etc.. But until and unless it is, and yes, I’m squeamish, it’s her body. Yes, I may even have moral qualms, but it’s her body. As much as I have to admit I’m not 100% impervious to anti-choice arguments, that’s just too fucking bad. That’s just something I have to walk away from. It's not my choice.

it’s her body.

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*At this point I really, really wanted to insert a link to a story of a woman who needed a D&X--or she would die--and went through a two or three-day ordeal trying to get to a doctor--in another state--to perform the best procedure that could save her life. If you know the link I'm talking about, I'd love to see it.

**There are those who take issue with the "rare" part of safe, legal, and rare. I think this is because "rare" implies that there is and/or should be some kind of stigma attached to abortion. And I can see this. If abortion is the non-stigmatized, non-morally offensive, non-crime that we make it out to be, then why should it be rare? Well, there's the answer that anything that involves doctors sticking pointy things up your plumbing should be avoided unless absolutely necessary, but even that's limited.

Look at it this way. EvilGeniusGirl can expect to be visited by Aunt Flo one of these months. When she does start having her period, I sure as hell want her to feel absolutely no shame, squeamishness, or--Yahweh forbid--"pollution." So, menstruation is nothing that--even were it possible--we would wish were "rare," right?

Well, some 60 to 80% of fertilized eggs fail to implant. That means they are expelled during the menstrual cycle. We have no grief over these, and as seen above, most of us would like our daughters to feel no shame, and many pride in the monthly reminder that they are part of the eternal cycle of the Goddess yadda yadda.

So, I'm not sure there's a huge difference between celebrating the life-affirming Goddess-power of a run-of-the-mill menstrual flow (which may well contain a fertilized egg) and celebrating the same in a flow brought on by a cup of pennyroyal tea.*** Hmmm.

***Ok, how geeky is this--I'm appending footnotes to my footnotes. Anyway, I just wanna say "don't try this at home" with regard to using pennyroyal as an abortificant. Bad idea. I just wanted to convey the neo-pagan/herbalist type mindset.

Are they really that Stupid?

2006-12-21T23:27:00.000-06:00

OK--how stupid can Liberals get:

“I put this question to some highly influential evangelical leaders -- James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family), for one. I said, "People are suspicious of your motives. They wonder what you're trying to do, what happens if evangelicals get their way." He said, "Do we aim to turn this country into a theocracy? Absolutely not."

Ok, for starters, asking James Dobson if he would like to turn America into a theocracy is kinda like asking a coyote if she plans to wipe out your entire flock of sheep. “Absolutely not,” she would say, and it’d be true--there’s no way she’d even consider trying to devour the whole flock. But does she plan to pick off a lamb or two every few nights? Hell, yeah.

It’s a matter of asking the wrong question. I think there are very, very few people in this country today who would like to see an Iranian-style theocracy. Even the most ambitious “Let's-win-America-for-Christ” types are generally more about our traditonal form of democracy, individual rights, etc--with the exception that their brand of Christianity is the dominant force in all aspects of culture. Kinda like a constitutional democracy where everyone who’s not a Good Christian finds their rights severely curtailed.*

So it’s pretty stupid (hence the title of this post) to ask people “Do you want a Theocracy where all matters--cultural and legal--were decided by elements of a centralized church and in which you could loose your RTKBA if the head pastor so decided?” I think the number of people who could answer "yes" to that question could fit in the LGBT student services center at Bob Jones University.

On the other (fairly scary) hand, on the very same day that the above-cited “Well, if James Dobson says he doesn’t want theocracy, then I guess there’s nothing to worry about” article came out, so did this one, which reports conservative radio host Dennis Prager opinion that getting sworn in to Congress on the Koran would be “the first break of the tradition of having a Bible present at a ceremony of installation of a public official” (demonstrably untrue, including Founding Father rockstar John Quincy Adams***), and argued that “If you are incapable of taking an oath on [the Bible], don't serve in Congress” (unconstitutional. Really, really unconstitutional).****

This, boys and girls, is some scary shit.

Why so scary, Uncle Bobby? I hear you saying. Isn’t it just another conservative blowhard mouthing off?

No, it is not. If this bona fide scary-ass freak had come out and said “The wrong religion disqualifies you from Congress!” and had then been buried under a deluge of attacks from not only the progressive Left but also the Rational Right,** and had been forced off the air, or at least forced to issue a clenched-teeth "I don’t want to say this but they’ll fire me if I don’t” apology, I could have dismissed it as, well, just another conservative blowhard mouthing off.

But, nooooo.***** No, this guy is getting support. And I’m not talking about Stormfront and Aryan Nations either. I mean that wacky “Fuck court decisions, I’ll put my 2.6 ton Granite monument to the Ten Commandments wherever I fucking well want to” former Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore, who thinks Muslims should be categorically banned from Congress and has said too many wacky things to count, which include:

“The Islamic faith rejects our God and believes that the state must mandate the worship of its own god, Allah"

Unlike, I suppose, Yahweh, who must have been only kidding when he said “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Did you happen to forget that your religion categorically rejects all other Gods? It’s only the first motherfucking commandment, you “I’m gonna tote my 2.6 ton granite monument across the country until the GOP bows down and worships Yahweh” hypocritical son of a bitch.

Yeah, Roy’s kinda a fringe figure, but he (ahem) carries a lot of weight in some circles. Like the circle of 3.4 motherfucking million people who got the American Family Association's “Action Alert” warning them about Keith Ellison’s Plot to Destroy America by bothering to take his freedom of religion seriously, and giving them a copy of Prager’s screed (said screed failing to mention that the Bible-based swearing-in ceremonies are not the official ceremonies. The Bible ones are done in private. The official one is done in congress and, guess what? Is done with no fucking book at all).

But have I even gotten to the reaaal scary shit? If you said, “Betcha haven’t, Uncle Bobby,” go git yerself a cookie. Because now, now, boys and girls, we have a motherfucking member of the House of Goddamn Representatives opining that Ellison was the thin edge of an American-values-destroying wedge.

We are talking about a man with the power to make Federal Fucking Law here, boys and girls. Including genuinely, 100% Uncle Bobby Approved, scarier-n-shit laws like H.R. 1070, which basically tells the Supreme Court to go fuck itself and let government officials promote their religious agenda any fucking way they want to..

So, yeah, boys and girls, I think it’s scary. When 59% of Americans believe the whole rapture/blood in the streets/whore of Babylon is on its way, and 55% think evolution is a crock, high-profile figures running around saying who is and is not fit to participate in democracy based on their religion, yeah--I think the coyote’s got her eyes on at least a few of the lambs.

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*I want to stress I don’t think this is true of Christians in general, or even Evangelicals in general. For fuck’s sake, 25% of Americans consider themselves Born Again and/or Evangelical. If even a significant minority of them were like that, we’d be fucked.

**Hey, I just coined that. I think it’s pretty cool. It also communicates very important fact that there’s a whole big branch of conservative thought (which used to be dominant, but is now a distant second to the Religious Right) that is absolutely grounded (almost obsessively so) in rational, intelligent discourse. Like the time I saw William F. Buckley speak. I didn’t agree with more than 10% of what he had to say, but (ital)goddamn (/ital) could that man think. Maybe the smartest motherfucker I have ever heard live. I think that’s just a whole hell of a lot better than anyone who can even pretend to believe that the Bible never, ever, ever contradicts itself. (http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/contradictions.html)

***Mr. JQA, in fact, got sworn in on a law book. That’s right, you Founding-Father Fetishists: one of your very favorites believed that law was more important to a freedom-loving democracy than religion. Imagine that. I’ll bet he sipped latte.

**** I dunno. I would have thought that “...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” would have been really damn clear.

*****If you’re old enough to remember, that last phrase there should be delivered the way John Belushi did it.

"War on Christmas" Redux

2006-12-20T22:37:00.000-06:00

Hi, folks. Just a little Xmas blogging to let you know I'm out there and still alive.

Well, sort of alive, because I'm recycling old material here. But it's damn good old material (IMNSHO).

And, it's relevant because we're hearing the "War on Christmas" whining again. Jesus Christ in a Government Building, people--give it a rest. The below gives my opinion of the dire straights of religious freedom in which you find yourselves.

Merry Yuletide!

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[NOTE: I originally started writing this before Bill O'Reilly invented the "War on Christmas" which has to be one of the great ratings-boosting stunts of the past 10 years. But the same thought applies. I work in a state-run facility, a branch of the state government. We have a 12-foot Christmas tree on prominent display. War on Christmas? Gimme a break.]

Seriously. If this is War On Christianity, then we have a serious John Paul Jones problem on our hands: we have not yet begun to fight. Last time I checked, the vast majority of people in this country were still Christian, they still prayed freely in their homes and in their churches, their major holidays were recognized by the mainstream culture (and in many cases by employers and governments), and they were generally free to run around thinking, talking, and acting as if everybody in this country was Christian.

Which a lot of them do. They act as if their prayers ought to be led by principles and teachers, but would probably shit their pants if someone wanted to start the day with a chant to the Goddess or the Muslim call to prayer.* They are able to marshal the legislative clout to get their religion's definition of marriage written into the constitution of state after state. Hell, the Mormons had to (officially) drop their definition of marriage a hundred years ago just to get statehood. Why doesn't anyone complain about their freedom of religion? Christians can install monuments to their religious law in public buildings, and count on widespread sympathy if anyone gives them flack about it. How much flack would I get if I installed a 5,300-pound granite phallus in the Texas Department of Agriculture building? How much sympathy would I get if I were forced to remove it?

Most Christians have the same privilege-blindness that afflicts straights, white, and males (among others). They have the proverbial invisible backpack full of unearned privilege, but they aren't able to see it, much less admit that it exists. Take a look at some of these statements and see how many of them apply to you. I'll bet you a "Happy Holidays" card that I can tell from your answers whether you're a mainstream Christian or not:

I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my religion most of the time.

The vast majority of jobs would not require me to work on my religion's sabbath or holidays. Government agencies are closed on my sabbath and holidays.
Public displays and decorations routinely celebrate my religion's holidays.

I never find items that violate my religious practices on restaurant menus.

I am never asked to speak for all the people of my religion.

I can remain oblivious of the customs, holidays, and practices of other people's religions without negative results.
I can walk into any Hallmark store and expect to find a wide variety of greeting cards appropriate to my religion's holidays.
My religion will help me feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life.

Now, if there are any War on Christianity believers reading this (as if), stop a minute before you start telling me how you get ridiculed, marginalized, or discriminated against all the time for Witnessing to your co-workers or using interjections like "Praise Jesus" in everyday speech. This is not discrimination based on your religion. This is discrimination based on the fervor and intensity of your religion. I'm sure that even Saudis say things like:

Y'know, Achmed's a really great guy, but he's all, "Thanks be to Allah" and "There is no god but Allah and Mohammed (pbuh) is his Prophet ." I just wish he'd give it a rest sometime. Let's not invite him over to watch the soccer game.

We're not talking about ridicule, marginalization, or discrimination based on your religion. You want to alienate all your neighbors by telling them they're going to hell, that's your cross to bear. We're talking about ridicule, marginalization or discrimination based on which religion you have. And I think it's really, really hard to find that kind of discrimination against Christians.

[Note that we're also not talking about ridicule, marginalization, or discrimination based on having any religion at all. Atheists can be pretty biting, but it's not like they say "Hey, you big dumb praying Christian! You're having a pretend conversation with an invisible superhero!" and then turn around and say "of course, holding cows sacred, abstaining from pork, and chanting to the moon while naked are cultural practices that we respect and honor, even if we don't fully endorse the religious beliefs that underpin them." No, they tend to be equal-opportunity snarks. Wacky atheists.]

So, if you're a mainstream Christian, and you were honest, I'm going to bet that you couldn't say "No," to more than one or two of those statements, if any. Most Christians don't notice what a Christian-friendly culture we have because they live in it every day. I doubt there's a person in the country who doesn't know what Christmas is, or some of the basics of how it's celebrated. But how many can tell the difference between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? How many even know what the fuck Eid is?

And just to put the icing on the "your ignorance and self-centeredness is really beginning to piss me off" cake, I love, just love the fact that a lot of the controversy is swirling around city officials re-naming Christmas trees "Holiday Trees." First of all, as I'm fond of telling Evil Genius Girl when she's upset because Howler Monkey Boy said the family car belonged to him or some stupid shit like that, "just because you call it a leg doesn't make it one." **

In other words, it doesn't matter what the fuck they call the big-ass blue spruce slowly dying of dehydration in town square--it's still a fucking Christmas Tree, and all the official proclamations in the world can't change that.

Second of all, and this is the part that I really love, it's not a fucking "Christmas" tree in the first place. Christmas trees are about as Christian as Santa Claus and gingerbread. There ain't no goddamn connection. No, that big-assed blue spruce that's slowly dying of dehydration in Town Square is a goddamn Solstice Tree, and you know it. Decorating the house with evergreen and/or decorating evergreen trees at the Solstice goes back, waaay back before Baby Jebus. I can just hear the conversation circa 380 AD (pardon me, 380 CE).

MacCluddagh: Did you hear that the Chieftain is calling the Yule Tree a "Christmas Tree" this year?
MacDugglah: Thor's bones! Enough with this "War on Yule." Let's disembowel him.

So, what's really happening here is not "War on Christmas." It's not even "War on Christianity." You wanna know what war on religion looks like? Open a fucking history book--one not written by the staff at Bob Jones University. Think Bosnia, Saint Bartholomew's Day, Third Reich. That's what war on a particular religion looks like.

No, what we're seeing is the furious yowling that you always hear when those blessed with unearned privilege find some of that lovely privilege slipping away. We hear it every time racial justice gets a little closer, we hear it every time the gender equity gap closes a little more. Mainstream Christians are used to bopping along in a very Christian-flavored culture, apparently oblivious to the fact that a) huge numbers of Americans are not Christian, and b) that Christianity doesn't necessarily deserve any more special treatment than Asatru and Vodoun.

What's got the Theocrats so up in arms is just the latest part of the process by which the forces of secular fucking democracy (which we so vigorously support in the Middle East and other, um, well...non-Christian regions) have been slowly peeling the fingers of Christianity off of the throat of this country. Today Christianity reigns as the unofficial state religion. In the 1970s, Jews were still officially banned from a lot of Country Clubs. The Klan was actively persecuting Catholics in the 1920s. Hell, Quakers were hung for religious non-conformity in the 1600s.*** This has been a long, slow process of creating the world's first country in which worshiping a certain deity doesn't get you a single bit of extra privilege.

Bit by bit, we are waking up as a society to the fact that Mainstream Christianity has been coasting along on a cushion of unearned privilege for centuries. Well, the cushion is getting yanked, and yes, it's going to be a little bumpy. But no one's going to close or burn your churches. No one's going to stop you from wearing a cross or putting a nativity scene on your own lawn. Just don't expect such a free ride when you want the entire fucking nation to act as if your holiday is the only one that counts.

Merry Christmas!

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*When I was in high school in the 80s, our coach finished each pre-game speech with a prayer that started, "Heavenly Father..." I wish I had had the guts to ask him if I could add a little invocation beseeching Tyr for victory on the field of struggle. Wonder how well that would've gone over. Wonder if it would have helped us win a game or two...

**Q: How many legs does a sheep have if you call the tail a leg?
A: Four. Just because you call it a leg doesn't make it one.

***Yes, I realize that both Catholics and Quakers are Christian. But back then, just being Christian wasn't enough. You had to be the right kind of Christian. See how far we've come?

You Might Be a Feminist If...

2006-11-29T23:02:00.000-06:00

It happened again. For some reason, the comments are coming out of nowhere, on ancient posts, and I'm feeling compelled to respond. So, comment received, answer went long, might as well post it--you know the drill.

The Post.

The comment:

I can't believe people accuse you of being feminist because of this!! I personally can't stand feminists because they ask for rights above men they don't deserve, but this isn't feminist, it's reality.*

Nat--thanks for the kind words. One thing though--I am a feminist. Or at least, I consider myself one--others might beg to differ. But I try really hard.

The word seems to have gotten a very bad name in some circles. As far as I can tell, the rights that feminists ask for (or maybe the rights, asking for which, make one a feminist) are things like equal pay for equal work, control over their own bodies, and the right to carry on with their lives without the oppression (being considered biologically inferior, for example. Rape, for another) of a society and culture that often treats them as second-class (or to get jargony, sex-class) citizens.

I taught a class once, where many of the women kept saying "I'm not a feminist, but..." and following up with a good, solid, feminist thought. I'm put in the mind of the famous quote (Rebecca West, apparently):

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."

That about sums it up. If you think women suffer unfairly in our society,** are equal to men in every way except for some teensy biological differences (the teensyness illustrated, I hope, in the above post), and you think that they should be free to live their lives as such, then you are, pretty much by definition, a feminist.

That doesn't mean that you have to subscribe to all views ever voiced by anyone who ever called themselves a feminist. Even if you believe that the majority of people who call themselves feminists ask for rights above men, that still doesn't make the term one to hurl as an epithet. Feminism is responsible for tremendous gains in areas like fair pay, domestic violence, legal rights,*** and rape (not to mention the bedrock democratic right to vote). If you have a mother, sister, daughter, aunt, or female friends who you care about--or just happen to care about the welfare of women as part of a basic concern for the just and decent treatment of all human beings, then you may be a feminist.

*I will be personally pissed if anyone says a single nasty word to Nate about this. Yes, it's ripe for some cheap shots, but I try very hard to limit my invective to the posts, and speak civilly and decently, without insults or deliberately insulting tone, in the comments. Please comment, if you wish to, in a similar manner.

**Being represented, for example, by 20% of the doctors, 14% of the Senate, 9% of the clergy, and less than 1% of the Fortune 500 top earners.

***When my mom came to Texas in 1963 and tried to sell the car she'd bought and owned outright in Massachusetts, she found that she could not legally do so without my dad's permission. Needless to say, he was under no such obligation.

Of guns and seatbelts

2006-11-26T23:30:00.000-06:00

OK--just in case anybody ever reads this anymore.

I compulsively respond to comments, no matter how old the post, so when I got one from August of last year, I just had to dash off 700 words in response. And I figured since I have all but orphaned this poor blog since the Spring, I might as well publish anything that even vaguely resembles a post.

The context is a post of mine that compared fear of stranger rape (high) to fear of acquaintance rape (low), even though the latter is far more likely to happen. It veered off into my favorite coinage, which is "intolerable threat." People spend a lot more time and energy thinking about--and preparing for--threats that are intolerable. Thus, stranger rape is considered intolerable, and is the subject of most self-defense advice for women. Acquaintance rape is rarely mentioned in the context of self defense.

So, I compared this to self-defense firearms enthusiasts (who you probably call "gun nuts," you condescending Liberals) who don't take simple safety measures like seatbelts. The recent comment disagreed, and I responded:

=========================================

" I disagree with your point about gun nuts not wearing seat belts. I think most true gun nuts are kinda anal about safety and stuff like wearing seat belts."

That would be a great study for someone to run. There are a few studies out there that measure safety-consciousness vs. firearms ownership, but they aren't limited to firearms enthusiasts, so they're not so relevant. A lot of people own guns pretty casually (i.e., not enthusiastically), and they're not the type of folk I was talking about.

OTOH, although firearms enthusiasts may be more safety conscious that the average person, I still don't think their treatment of likely threats is anywhere near their treatment of intolerable threats. Gun shows are common (at least here in the South), but I've never seen a fire extinguisher show, and I'll bet you the percent of houses that have a professional-grade self-defense setup which *also* have a professional-grade fire suppression setup is right about zero.

"Be glad you live in a state where conceal carry is allowed. It does deter crime, especially violent crime. Look up the FBI stats for before and after crime rate and state that do not have conceal carry."

As for the "More Guns Less Crime" theory, it's hotly debated in the Criminology, Sociology, and Public Health literature. Simple correlations like the above are invalidated by all sorts of fundamental statistical truths (i.e., "correlation does not equal causation"). The more complex correlations, which control for all sorts of other variables, are what the academics argue about, and there's nothing close to consensus in the scientific community.

My favorite story about firearms and safety is about a street near my house. It's named after a police officer who died in the course of duty. It's ironic because he died in a car wreck on his very last day of car patrol--he was being transferred to foot patrol the very next day (I'm assuming here that a man who spends his work hours exposed to violent, armed criminals has at least as much legitimate interest in using firearms to protect his life as the average firearms enthusiast).

Dig a little more, however, and you find that he died in that wreck because he wasn't wearing his seat belt. Dig even more and guess why he was being transferred to foot patrol? Go get a cookie if you said "he'd been repeatedly cited for refusing to wear his seatbelt."

Which makes it a classic illustration. A significant portion of cops refuse to wear a seatbelt because they're afraid their gun will get snagged while leaving the car. Could a cop--or a civilian--die because a seatbelt snagged a gun? Sure. How much do you want to bet that the number of times that has happened is about .001 of the number of times cops have died because they weren't wearing their seatbelts?

Or take "smart guns." Simple idea--cop wears a ring or bracelet on his/her hand, and their service weapon won't fire unless close enough to that ring or bracelet. Bad guys/gals can't fire the service weapon. Pretty slick.

Why are so many cops opposed? Because what if their partner loses their gun, and the cop retrieves it, and can't fire it? Potential life lost.

Again, could that happen? Sure. There's a non-zero chance. But do you know what percent of cops who are killed by a bad guy/gal are killed because a bag guy/gal (although I think they may prefer "persons of badness") was able to fire the cop's weapon? Go get another cookie if you said eight percent--nearly one out of ten.

And finally, my search for that number (which is not authoritive, so take it with a grain of salt), turned up the following gem, which is a perfect example of the deliberate (or at least conscious) obfuscation that makes the-more-guns-less-crime issue so hard to muddle through.

John Lott, author of the very book, "More Guns Less Crime," has a piece called "let our pilots be armed" that says the following:

"Statistics from 1996 to 2000 show that only eight thousandths of one percent of assaults on police resulted in them being killed with their own weapon."

Wow. Pretty convincing. Except he said *assaults.* Do you know how fucking unlikely it is that an officer will get killed--by anything, let alone their own weapon--in an assault? Well, considering that "assault" includes kicking, biting, and head-butting, and that cops are highly trained in the art of not getting killed, and that they wear body armor etc., etc., the ratio of assaulted to killed is really, really--I mean really--low. If Lott had said what percentage of officer *deaths* were caused by the officer's weapon, he would have undermined his own argument. And Lott is a big-time statistics nut, so don't tell me for an instant that he didn't know exactly what he was doing.

Gang-Rape of the Caribbean

2006-08-23T12:06:00.000-05:00

I wrote this for an email list I' m on. Since I've been almost completely derilict in my duties this Summer, I thought I 'd at least slightly redeem myself by posting it here. The topic was the effects on children of seeing violence. Yes, I know, hotly debated topic, but these thought are from more of a philosophical and experiential standpoint than an empirical one.

So, without further ado:

I actually wrote my dissertation partially on film violence, and one of the things that absolutely drove me banannas was the "it's just a movie" argument. I actually read an otherwise-intelligent film critic make the "Well, I saw it and it didn't make me into an axe murderer" argument.

Which is what comes to mind when I think of kids watching John Wayne mow down Apaches in the barbershop or seeing trailers that seem to involve mostly men pointing guns and explosions when we go to see Toy Story XVII at the cineplex. No, a single movie isn't going to make anyone into an axe murderer. But the combined effect of hundreds, or in many cases, thousands of acts of violence per year? I think that's a different story. I think of it like coral--teeny tiny little animals that you can barely see, but if you allow enough of them to accrete over the years, they can have quite an impressive effect.

Two examples of this particularly stick with me. When I was 10 or so--back when cable TV was new and exciting--we stayed at a ski condo that had cable. My brother and I watched the uncut version of Dirty Harry's Magnum Force. Almost three decades later, I can remember a few particular images that were absolutely branded into my consciousness. Prior to that movie, I'd never even thought of, much less seen, images of a topless woman shot to death, floating in a bloody swimming pool. I'm pretty certain that left to my own devices, that particular juxtaposition of sexuality and violence would not have occured to me at age 10. But because of Dirty Harry, that image became something I carried around in my head throughout my adolescence, and obviously still do.

The other was talking with a friend when Pirates of the Caribbean came out. I saw it, I loved it, I fell in love with Johnny Depp. But would I recommend it for my friend's eight year-old son?

For a lot of people, this is a no-brainer. The violence is all against ghosts who are already dead, it's cartoony, it's comic, what could be wrong with it?

My biggest problem with the movie really comes down to just two scenes. They're both ordinary action-movie interaction between the heroine and the villian, but they both also revolve around a powerful man threatening a beautiful (and helpless) woman with gang-rape is she doesn't do what he wants.

Yikes. And one of them is quite graphic--Barbossa's crew of skanky pirates are swarming all over Elizabeth, clutching her in ways that are just on the PG-13 side of groping, and he chuckles and tells her that he'll turn her over to them unless she agrees to his demands.*

So, this is what I told my friend. I think we all have mental Rollodexes where we keep all the most powerful images we've ever seen. Any child who sees Pirates of the Caribbean is guaranteed to walk out of there with an image that they may never have had before, and it's going to be filed under "one of the ways that men and women can relate to one another." Yes, Captain Barbossa is a skanky villian who is damned for his preternatural evil, but that doesn't change that fact that the film introduces millions of eight year-old boys and girls to the idea that men can get what they want out of women by threatening them with gang rape.

And again, that's not to say that one image from one movie is going to lead anyone down a life of crime (or sexual victimization, or even just basic disrespect for women). But then, one cigarette won't cause cancer. In fact, a lifetime of cigarettes doesn't cause cancer--it only increases your odds. But I don't want my kids to consume a lifetime of violent images any more than I want them puffing Pall Malls for 50 years. Those images get in your system, and they stay there. The scene I remember from "Magnum Force" has been with me for three decades, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of others like it that are filed away in my mental Rollodex. Frankly, I wish the vast majority of them weren't there.

------------------------------------

*Which brings up the topic of all the ways in which sexual violence against women is perfectly acceptable--even in "family" films--as long as it's not explicit. Imagine if Captain Barbossa had said, "Well, Elizabeth--either you accede to my demands, or I'm going to let my crew gang rape you, over and over, all night long, and quite possibly kill you, unless they decide to keep you alive and continue raping you." Exactly the same threat, just worded differently. Why is one acceptable and the other not?

Talk, Talk, Talk...

2006-07-11T23:21:00.000-05:00

So, I was talking with a young and impressionable co-worker the other night, and he asked me what I thought about North Korea, and Bush's saber-rattling theretowards.

That set me off (surprise) on a long rant, but to my credit, I think I touched on at least a few relevant points. So, I thought I'd try to encapsulate them here.

My first instinct is as a parent, to say "No, you may not start any more wars until you've finished the two perfectly good ones you've already started and cleaned up after yourself." Jeez. I'd think that would be basic.

But on a more serious note, we can't ignore two salient points about North Korea: 1) the are in hot pursuit of nuclear capability, and 2) they are led by a raving Stalinist nutjob.

Well, okay, maybe that's a little harsh. But Kim Jong-Il is definitely something of a wild card at best, a loose cannon at worst. And his high regard for human life is probably evidenced by the fact that a whole bunch of his people are eating grass and boiling shoe leather to survive.

On top of all that, one of the things that's probably giving King George pause is the 13,000 pieces of artillery that are massed near the border with South Korea. It's estimated they could hit Seoul--a metro area of some 23 million people--with an initial firing rate of 300,000 to 500,000 shells per hour. That's mind boggling. Somehow, I doubt they'd get much beyond that first hour before the city was a smoking ruin.

So, what's to be done? I don't know what harebrained scheme Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz are cooking up in the lab, but if it's as poorly thought-out and wildly unrealistic as their most recent fiasco, the people of Seoul are in a world of shit.

It's kinda like David Koresh* with 23 million people holed up in his compound. If W goes in with guns blazing, he's going to make the BATF look like tactical fucking geniuses.

Which leads me to my analysis. What went wrong at Waco is that the FBI (who were in charge after the BATF proved their total incompetence) proved their total incompetence by deciding to treat the situation as an armed standoff rather than what it effectively was--a hostage situation.

Yes, I know that all of those folks with Koresh were there of their own (more or less) free will, but it's not like you had eighty-odd hardened criminals all out for FBI blood. You had a lot of kids, and a lot of adults who probably would have preferred to be any of a number of places, but stayed for reasons that ranged from being brainwashed to genuine loyalty to fearing a bullet in the back if they tried to sneak out.

So, what do cops normally do with a hostage situation? They wait. They wait, and they talk, and they use the fact that they have virtually unlimited resources and huge amounts of training and experience, while the hostage-takers have very limited resources and usually no experience at all in this kind of thing.

But there's a fundamental problem there--waiting isn't macho. Waiting, and talking, and being patient, and establishing relationships with people so that you can work out mutually satisfactory solution--hell, that's chick stuff. Guys use guns. Guys wear "tactical vests" and shout "Go, Go, Go!" as they storm buildings.**

If you think I'm oversimplifying, dig this: one of the first things I read about when I started studying violence and conflict was the Waco siege. And my absolutely favorite little-known tidbit is that at least once, after a long day talking, negotiating, and being really patient, the FBI negotiators got to their cars to find them festooned with bras and panties. This was a little message from their buddies in the tactical unit. Real men shout "Go, Go, Go!" Negotiation and patience are for pussies.***

So, what we have here is the equivalent of a 23-million hostage crisis. Kim Jong-Il has the power to kill millions of people any time he wants to. We would be powerless to stop him. Yes, we would then proceed to roll right over his 50 year-old tanks and his fuel-challenged MiGs, but that wouldn't be much consolation to the millions of dead in Seoul.

So Kim Jong-Il isn't likely to do that anytime soon, unless he decides that getting blown into hamburger by a 500-lb bomb is his next career move. It's a stand-off. And as much as you may dislike it, as vile and batshit-crazy as you may think the hostage-taker is, in a hostage situation, you have to talk. You have to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. You make concessions. You bargain. You stonewall. You drop hints and veiled threats. You, like it or not, build a relationship.

This in no way means that I think Kim Jong-Il or anyone else in the upper government of The People's Republic of Well-Oiled Artillery and Starving Children is a decent guy who just needs some love and understanding. It's just that we're not in a position to act like an angry parent and declare the conversation over until our demands are met.

It's been said that "Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst looking for a rock." That's crap. That's a gung-ho SWAT commander's version of diplomacy: "Keep him talking long enough for me to get my men in position..." That's called negotiating in bad faith, and in the long run, it doesn't work very well.

I much prefer the idea that diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst simultaneously finding out who owns the damn dog, how it got out of the fence, why it thinks you're on it's territory, how likely it is to actually bite, what's the best way to defuse the situation, and how to make sure that the damn dog doesn't get out again.

So, now that Bush is looking at 300,000 artillery shells per hour, all of a sudden he's Mister "the diplomatic processes can be slow and cumbersome." Is it just me, or back about February of 2003, wasn't he Mister "Fuck Diplomacy, We know we're right!"

Anyway, there is a point to all this, and this is what I told my impressionable young co-worker. We've all been raised--especially us guys--in a culture that valorizes violence, toughness, and taking no crap. A culture that declares that talk, negotiations and patience are for "pussies." A culture that puts the reins of state-sanctioned violence in the hands of men who act like it's the fucking Superbowl. When someone like Kim Jong-Il--or Osama bin Laden, or Saddam Hussein--does something stupid and dangerous and scary, it's not surprising that our first national reaction is "Kick their ass!!"

But in the same way that my generation grew up in the shadow of a failed ass-kicking expedition in Viet Nam, the coming generation will hopefully grow up in the shadow of Iraq, understanding that as odious as it may seem, the best course of action with heavily-armed assholes is to deal with them. In the same way that the local sheriff could have talked Randy Weaver down from his mountain, in the same way that the BATF could have inspected the Branch Davidian's arsenal (at Koresh's invitation), in the real world sometimes you just have to deal with odious people. No, they're not nice. Yes, they're breaking the law. Yes, they're bullies. No, they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. That doesn't change the fact that going in with guns blazing, making scary threats, or refusing to talk unless it's 100% on our terms is a recipe for disaster.

But of course, others have said this better than I, so I'll leave you with a perfect encapsulation of the Gung-ho attitude:

[Bush] still refuses to engage North Korea in direct, one-on-one negotiations, though everyone involved has urged him to do so because, they all realize, that's the only way progress can be made. He refuses because he doesn't want progress to be made, or at least not that way. He still believes that it's better to defeat evil than to negotiate with it—and so it is, but he hasn't yet accepted that he has no alternative to negotiating with this particular evil [emphasis in orginal].

Got that George? "No alternative."

So get talking.
==================================

*given the secrecy of the North Korean government, we don't have enough information to determine if that comparison is more insulting to Koresh or Kim Jong-Il.

**Lest you think that this is a blanket criticism (and a snarky one, at that) of all SWAT-types, let me assure you that it is not. For example, just down the road from Waco, the Austin SWAT team has a fairly different attitude. They brag about not having used deadly force in quite a while. They brag about the fact that they haven't actually killed anyone in even longer. They regard their job as trying really fucking hard to make sure that no one gets hurt when some nutjob holes up with a small arsenal. And they are very, very patient.

***I just found out that it appears that the man in charge at Waco was Richard Rogers--the same guy who was in charge of the Ruby Ridge fiasco (the one where the feds settled with the survivors for 3 million in damages). And one of his snipers in Waco was Lon Horiuchi--the Fed's Ruby Ridge sniper who shot and killed an unarmed woman while she was holding her baby. Do these people not learn?

Bark/Bites Gayest Hits

2006-06-26T22:55:00.000-05:00

So, my son's godmother Aimee (the lesbian Episcopal priest who can perform marriages but not get one herself) was in town this weekend, and we were talking about GLBT issues, and I found out that she didn't know about my blog.

So, as a service to her, as well as all of you random strangers who stumble in her while searching for "Slogans Honoring Veterans" or pictures of Roberto Duran or "Father sex with daughter" (You sick fucks), and have no idea what the hell this is all about, (And because I'm a lazy git, and it's easier than writing a whole new post), I offer:

Bark/Bite's Gayest Hits

You Selfish Fucks. My wife says this is possibly my best post. Maybe it is. It's my reaction to my lovely Red state chosing to officially classify people like Aimee as second-class citzens (instead of just treating them that way all the time while pretending they're not homophobic assholes).

Gay Manophobia. Here I try to get to the heart of what drives homophobia. A.k.a., why is Personal Best "Hot" but Brokeback Mountain "disgusting"?

Hetero Privilege I like this one a lot, and it’s largely about HowlerMonkeyBoy, Aimee’s godson.

Jesus Christ I'm Moving to Canada On why gay marriage will most likely not cause the world (or even Western Civilization) to come to a screeching halt.

News Flash: Christ says Homosexuality "No Big Deal." Guess how many times Jesus mentioned homosexuality...?

Homophobe du Jour despite the title, this one is a long rant about how the concept of “gender” functions within homophobia.

Demagoguery Not strictly about GLBT issues, but about the way that they are being exploited by the GOP. Wake the fuck up, Christian America—you are Karl Rove’s tool!

On Legislating Morality Not my gayest post ever, but it did give me the chance to use the word “rimjob” several times

Threatening My Marriage? A recent piece on why the idea of Aimee and her wonderful partner getting married doesn’t keep me awake at night, nervously fingering my wedding ring.

Nah, it's Still Homophobic More on gay marriage. Not the best post ever, but it does take on one of the more mainstream anti-gay-marriage arguments.

Well, there they are. Hope you like 'em. And if you didn't, let me know--I find hate mail rather amusing. Or better yet, Fisk me on your own blog--that way you'll drive traffic here, and then everybody's happy :)

But that's exactly what they want you to think...

2006-06-25T23:54:00.000-05:00

So, Amanda posted a call for people to name their favorite conspiracy theories, and I being me, couldn't contain myself. By an order of magnitude. So here we have it, Bark/Bite's top ten conspiracy theories of recent history.

10. JFK I'm not a big fan of JFK conspiracies, but it's gotta be on the list. It would be like discussing rock and roll without mentioning Elvis.

9. The IRS is illegal This barely makes it, because a) it stands in for a whole host of financially-based anti-government conspiracies that were especially popular in the 1980s and 90s. Things like you can become a sovereign citizen and legally refuse to pay federal tax, paper money and the Federal Reserve are unconstitutional, you can legally get out of any amount of debt because the Federal government is illegitimate, etc., and b) because it doesn't necessarily posit a true conspiracy--just that basic facts of civic life are false. But they're important because they motivated a whole host of people to do some outrageous shit, including Timothy McVeigh.

8. Protocols of the Elders of Zion And this one stands in for the whole "Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy" ball of wax. The best thing about the Protocols, though, is that it's the only reputed handbook of a conspiracy that I know of--the actual "take over the world in 24 easy steps" handbook. It's also sometimes considered the birth of conspiracy literature.

7. Suppressed Science/Technology This is less a conspiracy than a trope used in many conspiracy theories. "He proved that ____ [or invented a ____] but the government/oil companies/AMA/PTA/whatever suppressed it." C'mon folks. One thing that the free-market economy does fairly well (while simultaneously doing a lot of ill) is promote innovation. If GM was sitting on a water-fueled engine or a 300-MPG carburetor, do you really think they'd keep it a secret? Or would they quietly build a production infrastructure, divest themselves of the now-doomed petroleum industry, and then unleash it on the market, thereby disemboweling their competition and leaving Ford, Chevy, Honda, Toyota, and everyone else just smoking ruins on the dustbins of history while simultaneously making enough profit to pull a hostile takeover on heaven and downsize God?

6. 9/11 an inside job Almost beneath comment, but the importance is that a lot of lefties are joining the righties on this one. I doubt they agree on who to blame, but I'll tell you this: there is nothing short of a swastika that can discredit your demonstration faster than a "9/11 was an inside job" banner. Please, please, please keep that shit out of the anti-war rallies. We'd like to be taken seriously.

5. Black helicopters Back when this was popular, I really wanted a "My other car is a black helicopter" bumpersticker. But the best thing about it is the notion that the BHs were sent by the UN and full of crack Belgian storm troopers. Belgian stormtroopers? I'm supposed to be scared of Belgian stormtroopers?

4. Weather Control How? How in the fuck would anybody go about controlling the immensely huge and insanely complex elements that make up the weather? If anyone had invented technology that could do this, it would have leaked onto the market long, long ago--there's just too much money to be made (see above), and you can't keep something secret like that for the decades and decades it would take to fully develop it. I mean, Sharper Image would be selling little invisible "Uber-Umbrellas" that clipped onto your belt and magically shielded you from rain.

3. Fluoridated water as mind control. I'm not talking about the potential health effects of fluoride (not that I take them much more seriously). I'm talking about the sweeping explanatory power of fluoride-induced mind control. Kubrick had it spot-on about the obsession with drinking water. The radio station here that used to carry Alex Jones' show (which is broadcast not too far from my house) ran ads for all sorts of silly shit, but I swear--fully 1 out of 3 were for water-purification devices.

2. Chemtrails I don't know--they're just so goofy. Google "chemtrails" and "orgone generator" and see what you get. Grown men and women driving around the US, busting up chemtrails with their homemade orgone generators for the public weal just makes me giggle.

1. Apollo moon landings faked Why? That's what I want to know. Why? And especially almost forty years later, who the fuck cares? I'm sure there's someone out there who can explain why understanding this particular dastardly plot is the key that unlocks an entire parallel universe of evil and deception, but please. It's just so damn pointless.

There you have it. My top ten conspiracy theories. Do you have any faves that I left out?

News Flash: Jesus Still Wants you to Die of Cancer!

2006-06-14T23:19:00.000-05:00

Y'know, there is just so much outrageous shit out there to blog about, and such a fucking limited amount of time in which about it to blog, that I literally don't know where to start. So, in the spirit of self-promotion, I'll go with the theme that will allow me to make reference to an earlier post.

Said post, of course, being "News Flash! Jesus Wants you to Die of Cancer." In which I went on and on about the HPV vaccine, and how some Aussie fundies wanted to make sure that adolescent and pre-adolescent girls (the very population to whom it makes most sense to give the vaccine) wouldn't have access to it. Allow me to quote myself:

Here's the scoop: cervical cancer kills something like 5000 women a year in the US, with (natch) a disproportionately higher rate in the post-colonial world. I imagine the incidence and mortality figures in Australia are something like ours.

So now, those clever scientists in their white lab coats have come up with a vaccine that appears to be 100% effective in preventing infection by the viruses that appear to cause cervical cancer. You would think this would be a good thing, yes?

Well, no, apparently not if you're talking about women. Women who might have sex. Women who [horrors] might even have pre-marital sex. These epidemiological geniuses down under have decided that rotting to death of cancer ~~is a fit punishment for~~ better than suffering the indignities of pre-marital sex.

Notice how I used the clever, "fundamentally indicative of irony," ~~tired blogging cliché~~ strikeout font there to indicate that that's what they were thinking even if they couldn't bring themselves to say it? Because the closest I could find to anyone coming out and saying "You don't want cancer? Keep your legs together, slut!" was "Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex."

Well, it seems now that the FDA has caved and allowed overwhelming scientific evidence and the virtually unanimous opinion of the public-health community to trump religious fanaticism (what is this country coming to, I ask you?), it seems that now it's time for the gloves to come off.

See, now, the closest I can find to someone actually saying "You don't want cancer? Keep your legs together, slut!"is

"If you don't want to suffer these diseases, you need to abstain."

Yes, he really said that.

And no, that's no wacked out country preacher on a day pass from Leviticus-land, either. That's one Dr. Hal Wallis (That's "Doctor," as in "take care of people and try to prevent shit like them dying of an entirely preventable cancer, you sanctimonious fuck!") of the Physicians Consortium.

But Wait! boys and girls. For once, Uncle Bobby has good news. See, I have this annoying habit of actually running down the original sources for a lot of the damning quotes uttered by our wisdom-impaired cousins on the Far Right, and sometimes, every once in a while, (ok, I admit it. Twice.) I find out that the criticism is unjustified.

Or at least it was, but now it isn't. See, I actually bothered to Google the Physicians Consortium, and it seems that for some reasons, they've taken their ass-hats off and decided to re-join the reality-based community. I don't know if they've genuinely seen the light, if they got badgered nearly to death by the feminist blogosphere (yeah, right) or if they just realized they had some fundamentalist crackpots running the show who were making them look like idiots , but they have, as one says, changed their tune:

We welcome the development of this vaccine against cervical cancer as a great breakthrough that has the potential of saving the lives of millions of women worldwide...
As youth are unpredictable in their risk-taking behaviors, immunization with the HPV vaccine may be wise...
We recognize that this vaccine may obtain a universal recommendation and has the potential of becoming a required vaccine for entry to public school.*

...and they mention that they've also clued in that there are more ways than slutty fornication for a woman to get infected with HPV in the first place ("Dude! Didja know that some women get raped and contract STDs that way? And it's like, not their fault? " "No fuckin' way, Dudemeister! Next you'll be telling me that monogamous women can contract HPV from their husbands, who didn't know they carried it!")

Sigh. We can all relax now, I guess. At this rate, Plan B will be OTC this time next Tuesday.

Right?

*don't get me started on the issue of required vaccines. I tend to piss off everyone I know when I do that.

Nah, it's Still Homophobic

2006-06-12T23:37:00.000-05:00

So, I got an interesting comment on the last post. Chris puts forth an argument that s/he read elsewhere, and asks for my opinion on it (which I find flattering. Chris is now my favorite reader).

My post had been to the effect that if you try the "I'm not homophobic, but same-sex marriage threatens the very institution of marriage by diluting it," argument, then I'm prepared to call you a homophobe for assuming that gays and lesbians are somehow incapable of having a "real" marriage (i.e., one which would not dilute the institution of marriage).

But Christ posted an argument (that s/he does not necessarily endorse) that basically boils down to this:

Marriage is primarily about having and raising children. SSM "dilutes" marriage because it shifts the focus of marriage towards the love/devotion aspect and away from children.

By refocusing what marriage is about, we lose some of the emphasis on marriage as a commitment to the well-being of children in favor of emphasis on the commitment to each other.

50 years ago we had marriage in order to help people raise children. 50 years from now, will the purpose of marriage be redefined to simply help two people express their love?

So, is this argument anti-SSM without being homophobic?

No.

First off, I think the argument makes a couple of big assumptions.* One of the assumptions is summarized in the "50 Years" part. Marriage has changed in a lot of ways in the past 50 years. To the "help raise children" part of marriage in 1956, you could add "so that a woman can be financially supported by a man, which is necessary for her to avoid either starving or being considered less than respectable." By that reasoning you could say that all the work that has been done to fight gender discrimination in the workplace has been diluting marriage, not to mention the laws that gave women ownership of their own property, the right to take a job without their husband's permission, redress to the law when beaten or raped by her husband, etc., etc.. I don't think many of us would accept a return to that definition of marriage, yet few would argue that letting a woman charge her husband with rape dilutes or "threatens" their marriage. Marriage has been evolving forever, but no one complained much about it until the GOP decided to turn LGBT folk into the electoral boogeymen (excuse me--I think they prefer "people of boogey").

The other assumption is that gays and lesbians won't raise children. In fact, child-rearing is one of the main reasons that people are fighting for same-sex marriage. I go to bed each night secure in the knowledge that if my wife dies, her creepy father won't be able to challenge me for custody because I'm a "legal stranger" to my children. My friend Mary does not have that luxury.

A quick peek at the census tells me that one-third of lesbian households and one-fifth of gay households include children. Married couples come in at just under half.

So, we see that child-raising rates, while lower among gays and lesbians, are quite substantial. Then there's the question, of course, of how many more would have kids if they knew they were legally protected. With fully revised marriage, custody, adoption, and foster-care laws, we could easily see lesbians at a rate equal to heterosexual married couples, with gay men not far behind.

But what really shows that this argument is yet another rationalization for homophobia is the blind eye that's being turned to heterosexual marriages that don't intend to produce children. Do they dilute marriage? Even if one honestly answer "yes," I doubt that they would advocate stripping those people of the rights and obligations conferred on them by the legal agreement to marry. I would buy the argument reproduced above a lot more if the same people who are pushing to ban same-sex marriage were also pushing for a requirement that all heterosexual couples sign a pledge of intention to have children before they could be married.

Here's the crux: hetero couples not having children are a non-issue. Lesbian/Gay couples not having children are held out to be a threat to human society itself.

What does that tell us...?

[NB--I've responded to the gut-level, "this is why I personally oppose SSM" argument, not the legal "this is why it's legal to exclude certain people from a basic human right" argument. The argument Chris mentions has no credibility at all from a legal standpoint. What I'm trying to do here is show that the argument is inherently homophobic--not that it has no legal, societal, or moral justification (which, of course, it doesn't)]

* Actually, a bunch, which you can see if you read the original comment. But I'm just going to take on two main ones here.

Threatening My Marriage?

2006-06-01T23:43:00.000-05:00

So yesterday I posted one of my marathon comments on a piece that Pam wrote. Someone asked a fairly simple question (how is it that allowing same gender marriage, thereby encouraging more people to get married, means that you're attacking marriage?), and it got me thinking, and it came down to this: opposition to same gender marriage = homophobia.

Yes, I know you're all saying "Thank you, Captain Obvious" right about now, but there's more here than meets the eye. A lot of people, some who I know and love, oppose same-gender marriage on grounds that are ostensively not related to "Fags are icky" or "Fags are evil." There are a variety of arguments, but one of the most popular is the "Dilution" argument. Here, for your reading pleasure, is my take on the Dilution argument, the vast majority of which is lifted verbatim from my comment on the Mighty Pandagon.

-----------------------------------------------------

I’m still a little lacking in understanding here - exactly how is any institution under attack by making it more popular?

OK–assuming this is a serious question, I’m going to try to use my insight (developed through years of indulging my perverse fascination with extremists) to explain the reasoning.

As far as I can tell, there are basically three lines of reasoning–the first is just that some people hate/fear queers, and have a strong gut reaction that anything they touch is defiled beyond recuperation. So, if queers get marriage, they will destroy it.

Second, is a variation on the “They hate our freedom” horseshit from 9/11. Queers are banished from decent society, therefore they hate decent society, therefore they will do anything to destroy it. Ergo, their attempts at “marriage” are just a thinly-disguised campaign to destroy a fundamental social institution. Kinda like pouring cyanide in the water supply because everyone else is nice and you’re evil. We see this in cartoon villains a lot.

But the third line is the one that probably resonates with more people than the other two. I think of it as the “dilution” argument. Marriage is a privileged state to which people are admitted when they meet certain conditions, and it confers certain privileges and responsibilities. There’s an understandable objection if you feel like it’s being watered down or given away cheaply.

It’s like the letters PhD or USMC after your name–you bust your ass to get them, they confer both rights and responsibilities. As long as it’s known that those letters mean specific things, then you can count on people extending the privileges and holding you accountable to the responsibilities. But if it’s generally accepted that anyone who wants to can legitimately call themselves "Doctor Smith" or "Marine Sergeant Smith" just because they feel like it, then you know that you will no longer be given credit for what it took to earn those letters.

The problem with the above reasoning is that the underlying assumption is that queer marriage is not “real” marriage.* You have to assume that queer folk somehow do not deserve the status of marriage before the “dilution” argument makes any sense. If queer folk are just as capable of love, affection, responsibility and commitment as straight folk, if their relationships need and deserve as much societal support, if they have just as much to contribute, if their children are just as important, then the “dilution” effect disappears.

Which means (sigh), that it all boils down to homophobia again. If my friends Mary and Linda are my social equals, and their relationship is equal to mine, then there’s no “dilution” going on, and it’s just another way to rationalize gut-level bigotry.

And rationalizing gut-level bigotry is what the modern Religious Right is all about. That's why it's almost pointless to attack things like creationism or abortion laws.** They aren't the problem--they're the symptom. People who reject evolution do so because they have a basic aversion to its implications--all the pseudo-science is just window dressing. the majority of people who want to banish abortion aren't interested in the babies--that's just a outgrowth of the basic desire to (as I have said before) control women's sexuality.

We are not dealing with a movement that can be turned back by appealing to logic and rationality. Hell, some of these people are opposed to logic and rationality (no, really).

So I'll leave you with a quote from an old-school diatriber that pretty well encapsulates the problems inherent in turning back a Theocratic movement in a Democratic society:

It is useless to attempt to reason a [woman or] man out of a thing [she or] he was never reasoned into.

--Jonathan Swift

----------------------------------------

*I’m sure there are plenty of guys who felt that their PhD or USMC was cheapened when women were allowed to use those titles, because women couldn’t be “real” scholars or Marines.

**That is, to attack them as rational constructs. By all means, attack them in their social and legal instantiations.

Take Action

2006-05-30T23:33:00.000-05:00

Via the Indomitable Bitch, we have a stomach-churning reminder of what patriarchy looks like in its natural state.

I'd heard of the case of Nazanin Mahabad Fateihi before, and I'd prayed that the Iranians would find a way to diffuse it, like the Afghans did with the Christian convert a while ago.

But no. At least as of the 19th, the 18 year-old Nazanin was still facing execution for defending herself and her niece from a pair of rapists (never mind the fact that had they been raped, they could have received 100 lashes for adultery).

For some reason, this one really makes me feel sick. I mean, not that it isn't plenty horrifying, but there are lots of horrifying stories out there. For me, there's always been something especially disturbing about state-sanctioned executions. Even with shit like Bosnia, you get the powers-that-be either denying that it's happening or blaming on "rogue elements." But with this kind of thing, you've got a bunch of judges, prosecutors, bailiffs, police, and the whole state "justice" apparatus not just admitting that it's happening, not just standing by and letting it happen, but calmly and deliberately making sure it happens. As awful as a lynching is, I find something like this far more disturbing.

And I guess maybe it is. As long as people are hiding, denying or blaming their crimes on someone else, then they're at least admitting that they're aware that the rest of the world community considers it barbaric, and they don't want to accept the consequences of openly admitting their behavior. As long as the execution is extra-legal, we can take comfort in the knowledge that it's not supposed to be that way--that the powers-that-be, at least in theory, find it unacceptable and could even prosecute it if they wished. When lynching was carried out by hooded rednecks in the middle of the night, there was at least the possibility that the FBI would swoop down and bust their party up. But when the lynching was carried out in broad daylight, with picnicking crowds arriving via excursion trains, no such comforting illusion is possible.

And that's about what we're looking at here. But this is not just another let's-depress-all-my-readers post. The Indomitable Bitch has assembled quite a list of things you can do. What I'd really like is for everyone to take on at least one of these, then report what you did in the comments. For the motivation-impaired, numbers 1, 7, 8 and 9 are particularly easy. I took on #4, and it would gratify me to know that it had at least some effect.

Thanks.

Help spread the story about Nazanin! Tell everyone you know, family, friends and others who might be interested. Direct them to this web page and ask them to take action for Nazanin.
Contact newspapers, TV-channels, blogs and other media and ask them to report this story.
US residents can contact local or national media via NOW.
Write about Nazanin in your own blog, homepage, or in internet forums or chat rooms you frequent.
Put a link to this page in your email signature or at your homepage.
Put one of these banners on your website.
Write the Iranian government or the Iranian embassy of your country, and demand that Nazanin's death sentence is commuted immediately. (About writing to the Iranian embassy).
Contact politicians/representatives and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in your country and ask them to pressure Iran to commute the death sentence and free Nazanin. US representatives can be contacted via NOW.
Contact the United Nations Office of Human Rights and ask them to protest.
Sign and spread this petition, started by the Canadian model Nazanin Afshin-Jam.
Buy a T-shirt in support of Nazanin, designed by Lily Mazahery.

News Flash: Tony Blair Smokes Crack!

2006-05-26T23:11:00.000-05:00

Serious. All I can figure is ol' Tony was high as a motherfucking kite yesterday, because the insane crap that came out of his mouth defies any other explanation.

Now, leaving aside the fact that this was the tail end of a statement that basically said, "The more we get our asses kicked, the more important it is that we go and get our asses kicked some more," I am was just really amazed to hear the following:

[T]he problem we have is very, very simple...the reason they [the terrorists/insurgents] have been fighting is not, as we can see, because Iraqi people don't believe in democracy, [or the] Iraqi people don't want liberty. It is precisely because they fear the Iraqi people do want democracy; the Iraqi people do want liberty.

Granted, that's just vintage 9/11 horseshit ["They hate our freedom. They hate freedom in general. They particularly hate Freedom Fries."] which we know--and have known for quite some time--is simply not true. Any doubts? Just ask the fucking Pentagon.

No, what I think was fairly incontrovertible evidence that the Prime Goddamn Minister of a G8 nation was under some serious fucking influence was this bit:

And if the idea became implanted in the minds of people in the Arab and Muslim world that democracy was as much their right as our right, where to these terrorists go?

What do they do? How do they recruit? How do they say, America is the evil Satan? How do they say, the purpose of the West is to spoil your lands, wreck your religion, take your wealth? How can they say that? They can't say that.

No, you're right Tony. Of course that couldn't say that. It would become physically fucking impossible for these people to open their mouths and make the accusations that people in democratic, relatively terrorist-free societies all over the fucking world make every single day of the year:

The purpose of the West is to spoil your lands.
The purpose of the West is to wreck your religion.
The purpose of the West is to take your wealth.

Oh, and there's one Tony forgot to mention:

The purpose of the West is to turn your country into a forward base for imperialism.

Now, I'm not saying that any of these are true (Oh, Heavens, no. God forbid I suggest that any of those are true. What--do I look French?), but those claims are being made, those claims have (ahem) a certain amount of credibility, and they have absolutely fuck-all to do with terrorism or democracy. Those claims are being made because there are factions in the United States of America that are doing a hell of a lot to convince the world, Islamic and otherwise, that they are, in fact, true.

And they let this man rule a nation state?

Here's some free advice, Tony. Lay off the crack. Or, on the odd chance that that's not your problem, pull your head out of your ass and take a look around the world. If Iraq turns into a flourishing free-market secular democracy (which I expect it to do right after monkeys fly out of my ass), you know what they're going to have? They're going to have a free fucking press. And do you know what that press is going to say? It's going to say that Americans are out to conquer the Arab nations, plunder their wealth, crush their religion, and turn their country into a forward base for imperialism. Because that's what a hell of a lot of these people believe, largely thanks to you and W's asinine policies.

At which point, you're going to find yourself wishing that some obliging terrorists would come by and car bomb the newspapers.

Demagoguery

2006-05-25T23:46:00.000-05:00

Demagoguery. The word for the day is, as it has been in the past, "demagoguery. " In case anyone forgot, here's the dictionary definition:

"impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace"

That's "prejudices" as in racism. Although there are plenty of homophobic African-American leaders who denounce claims that the Gay Rights Movement is an analogue to or extension of the Civil Rights Movement, let's not forget that the last time we saw this level of demagoguery was during that very Civil Rights Movement. No matter what homophobes or historians may think about comparing the two movements, there's no denying that the people who have ridden homophobia to power are doing a hell of a job of making the similarities painfully clear.

Doubt it? Then set the Wayback Machine to 1964. Those of you who are students of Southern History (and many who aren't) will probably recognize the famous quote from George Wallace, the demagog-est of demagogues, at his inauguration:*

Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!

But the odds are that fewer would recognize the related quote that explains why the one above came into existence.

Wallace, who won the Governor's election in Alabama in '64, '70, '74 and '80, didn't win it in 1958. He ran as a moderate--endorsed by the NAACP, for Freya's sake--against a racist demagogue who carried an endorsement from the Klan.

He lost.

The story goes that after his concession, Wallace was sitting in a car in a rainy parking lot talking about the loss with his advisors. The man who'd earned the NAACP's endorsement came to a cynical conclusion:

``I was out-niggered. I will never be out-niggered again.''

Ugly language, but demagoguery is ugly. It was ugly in 1964, and it's ugly in 2006. Right now, demagogues in the Senate are pushing for a vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment--a vote they know they will lose. The prediction is 52-48, 17 votes shy of the 2/3 majority. Nothing short of an Act of God is going to change 17 senators' minds in the next week or two. The vote is a non-starter. The only reason the FMA is coming up for a vote is that the demagogues want their "appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace” to be a matter of public record, because they know they can turn those prejudices into votes by appealing to the worst qualities of the American public.

To be fair, though, you can't put all of the blame on the politicians. After all, they wouldn't do it if it didn't work. Hell, most of them are probably cynical enough that they'd back compulsory pedophilia if it polled well. No, we have to think about the voters. The anti-science, reactionary, "let's put American back on track" voters who are just dying for a scapegoat--whether it be "Activist Judges," undocumented workers, the Islamic world, or gays and lesbians. Fortunately for students of demagoguery, Wallace, who'd held a moderate line on race, was quite willing to be explicit about his choice to appeal to the prejudices and emotions of the populace:

When Wallace started using demagoguery on the race issue, one of his distraught supporters asked him why, historian Dan Carter** said on an "American Experience'' documentary broadcast on PBS.

Wallace replied, "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.''

That foot-stomping is the same sound we heard when Ronald Regan made his "young buck" speech (which later morphed into the slightly-less-obviously racist "Welfare Queen"), and it's the very same foot stomping we hear when people like Mike DeWine take a look at their sagging poll numbers and decide to shore them up with some gay-bashing. Or, as Congressman Barney Frank put it:

“We screwed up Katrina, wages aren’t going up, but how about those fags getting married?”

No shit. Considering that we've gone from a balanced budget to a staggering deficit, considering that we're engaged in a losing war that was immoral and illegal to start with and there's no good way out, considering that we're doing everything we can to piss off the Islamic world short of changing our national motto to "Allah Sucks," then what the flying fuck sense does it make to run around talking like the idea of my friends Mary and Linda actually enjoying some of the rights they've earned by committing their lives to each other and their kids is the single most dangerous threat looming over the US today?

Unless your goal is to appeal to the prejudices and emotions of the populace.

Hat tip to Anne Woolner for making the 1958/2006 connection, also source of the Dan Carter quote.
________________________________
*Said quote, interestingly enough, was written by one Asa Carter--White supremacist and author of, perhaps not surprisingly, The Outlaw Josey Wales (under the pen name Forrest Carter, chosen in honor of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first major Klan leader (after whom Forrest Gump was also named)), but also, probably quite surprisingly, the much-adored The Education of Little Tree.

**Okay, I just have to say that Dan Carter was one of my instructors in my PhD program. He's a fantastic historian, literally wrote the book on George Wallace (as well as a multiple award winning account of the Scottsboro Boys) and one of the few faculty to share my fascination with white supremacists. And a hell of a nice guy, too. If you live anywhere near the University of South Carolina, I strongly suggest that you sign up for one of his classes.

I'm not Dead...

2006-05-14T18:37:00.000-05:00

Not dead, just obsessed with another writing project at the moment. Check back in a day or two, and I should have something up. In the meantime, read the "Best Barkings" over there on the right, browse the archives, or visit some of the fine bloggers on my "Currently Reading" list.

...and await my return with bated breath, of course.

Best Referral Yet

2006-05-09T23:53:00.000-05:00

Gotta love this.

Browsing my referrals tonight, I see that I got one from a link I hadn't seen before:

feministmormonhousewives.org

No shit. So I bopped over, and I had to hunt around a bit, but then I saw the link--it's under the "sideblog" heading, and it says simply "Mandatory Adoption (some profanity)."

Some profanity? Jesus H. Christ bleeding to death at Mountain Meadow, if that's what the Feminist Mormon Housewives consider "some profanity," I am personally scared of what they might actually consider obscene.

But seriously--I'm surfing the blog and finding these women pretty damn fascinating. If only because they're calling me out on my big old stereotypes without even knowing they're doing it. I mean, even if I didn't get most of my knowledge of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from Jon Krakauer, I think I'd still be in the majority if I said that I don't usually associate "Feminist" with either "Mormon" or "Housewife," but certainly not with "Mormon Housewives."

What I really like about surfing their blog, however, is the combination of deep faith in their spirituality and deep scorn for sexism--which kinda makes my head want to explode because compared to the Southern Baptist Convention, even the mainstream LDS is pretty much a big goddamn patriarchy-party.

As I understand it, anyway--like I said, my familiarity with LDS is limited.

At any rate, what I found kind of humbling about my visit to their blog (which is why this post is about neither voyeurism ["Hey! Look at the freaky FeministMormanHousewives!"] nor condescension ["Oh, look at the cute Mormon housewives trying to be Feminists!"] but admiration) is something that always makes me think of my dear friend, the pro-choice/ anti-abortion Roman Catholic who taught me a lot about what Christian Charity really means in one short comment.

I was in the middle of my dissertation, and I'd been spending the week learning everything I could about the US firearms industry, and I shared with her one of my favorite tidbits--that the skyrocketing murder rates of the 1990s were largely due to the skyrocketing firearms homicide rates among African-American males ages 18-25, and that these, in turn, were largely due to the nasty combination of 1) dramatic changes in the illegal drug economy, and 2) the conscious and deeply cynical decision by firearms manufacturers that since they had largely maxed out their traditional market of middle-aged white men, they could sell a lot more product if they specifically targeted the poor, urban, African-American male youth market--which they did, developing marketing strategies and even new products specifically to appeal to the kind of people who then went around blowing the living fuck out of each other (and plenty of innocent standers-by) in drive-by shootings, armed robberies, and macho pissing contests gone awry.

Yes, you read that right--the firearms manufacturers armed thousands of young, poor, urban African-American males as the crack boom swept over American cities and turned playgrounds into war zones. That's kinda like, oh, I dunno, Hewlett Packard, Dupont, Eastman Kodak, and Bechtel selling WMD materials to Saddam Fucking Hussein.

But I digress.

No, what I always think of is how my friend, who has both an inspiringly gentle soul and an almost frighteningly fierce moral clarity, widened her eyes in shock and said, in genuine horror, not "Oh, how could they?!?" or "Lord, what people will do for greed," or even "What a bunch of goddamn fucktards!" (which is about what I would have said), but:

"I fear for those poor men's souls."

Which, to this day, always humbles me. Her first reaction was horror at what these men had done to their own souls out of greed, racism, classism, and Isis only knows what all else. As awful as the deed was, and as tragic and brutal as the results were, her first thought was of compassion and pity for the poor bastards who had sunk so low as to have done such a thing to their fellow human beings. I'm sure there's a great Bible verse that could go right here about profiting the world for a mess of potash or somesuch, but I'm not the guy who can come up with that shit without breaking stride.

I'll leave that to the feminist Mormon housewives.

Planned Parenthood, the Pro-Lifer's Friend

2006-05-08T08:59:00.000-05:00

[Some of this material appeared previously as a comment. Don't tell me you never do that.]

Whether or not you think that Planned Parenthood has, at great risk to their credibility, completely manufactured an outrageous story designed to motivate congressional action against a perceived threat (obviously thinking that the Great American Free Press would let them get away with it), there's good, solid evidence that the threat posed by Crisis Pregnancy Centers is for real:

Low-income Texas women and families need access to basic health care and pregnancy prevention services, not access to biased counseling at crisis pregnancy centers. It is irresponsible to take scarce taxpayer dollars away from pregnancy prevention and health care and divert it to unlicensed, biased, non-medical counseling. We hope these materials help Texans better understand this hidden threat to the health needs of Texas women and families.

Yes, that's right. Funding CPC's means taking money away from people who actually provide basic medical care to people who will probably not otherwise get it. Contrary to popular belief, Planned Parenthood does occasionally manage to make time in their busy schedule of condemning their everlasting souls to a literal and eternal hell to do a few good works--like averting 617,000 unintended pregnancies (which amounts to about 300,000 prevented abortions) each year.

What the hell is up with these anti-Planned Parenthood Jihadists? Huh?

I mean, I will give you the fact that Doctors at Planned Parenthood terminate a lot of pregnancies. And I understand that there are a lot of people who are passionately anti-abortion. I get that. But here's what I don't get--why is the following statement so incredibly hard for folks to understand:

"If you people would get the fuck out of Planned Parenthood's way and let them do their work, they would prevent millions of abortions a year, instead of just hundreds of thousands."

Serious. Yes, Doctors at Planned Parenthood terminate pregnancies. They perform abortions. If you want to call it that (which doesn't even begin to make it true), they "kill babies."

But have the jihadists ever stopped for a second to think about what else they do? Considering that Planned Parenthood serves some five million people a year (three-quarters of whom are above the age of 19), and only Nine Percent receive abortion services, has it never crossed their minds to wonder exactly what the fuck are they doing for they other four million, five hundred and fifty thousand people?

Oh, just a few basic things that the jihadists apparently wouldn't mind seeing banished from the face of the earth--or at least made unavailable to anyone who isn't lucky enough to be able to pay for them out of their own pocket:*

family planning, counseling and birth control
pregnancy testing and counseling
gynecological care, Pap tests, breast exams
emergency contraception
HIV testing and counseling
medically accurate sexuality education
screening and treatment for sexually transmitted infections
infertility screening and counseling
voluntary sterilization for women and men
reproductive medical exams for men
safer sex counseling
midlife services
prenatal care
adoption referrals
primary care
referrals for specialized care

Nah, we don't need any of that stuff, do we?

Look. Even if you hate abortion with every fiber of your being, please consider this--for every blow you strike against the abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood, you are striking Nine against all of the above services--services that people desperately need to, among other things, keep from getting pregnant in the first place. This is the political equivalent of a cluster bomb in a crowded city--sure, you're hitting you're target. But 91% of the destruction is falling on the innocent.

If all the anti-Planned Parenthood jihadists believed for one minute the old saw about "love the sinner but hate the sin," then they would be loving the living fuck out of Planned Parenthood right about now. If you're against abortion, the folks at Planned Parenthood are your goddamn front-line motherfucking troops.

I know that sounds paradoxical, but think about it. If your agenda is to reduce the number of abortions in this country, then there's probably little you could do that would be better than putting Planned Parenthood in charge of a huge fucking budget and telling them, "Unplanned Pregnancy: Seek and Destroy."

Because Planned Parenthood is about just that: actually planning when to become a parent. And that is something that we, as a nation, are not real good at. About half of the pregnancies in this country each year are unplanned. People--that's a fucking 50% failure rate! About the only thing we do less successfully than that is creating peace by invading other countries.

And this is not rocket science. This is about a) knowing where babies come from and how, b) knowing how to use contraception, c) having access to contraception, and d) not believing that using contraception will condemn you to a literal and eternal hell.

Well guess the fuck what: in at half the pregnancies in this country annually, at least one person has failed in at least one of those areas. But here's the good news: Planned Parenthood works hard in all four of those areas.

So, I've asked this question before, and I'll ask it again (now that I know I've got at least one anti-choice reader): if an abortion is such a terrible thing that you would recommend almost anything to prevent it, up to and including harassing women who are seeking abortion and imprisoning doctors who perform them, why can't you get behind the much simpler (and more widely accepted) practices of teaching accurate sex-ed, making contraceptives widely available, and de-stigmatizing contraceptive use?

=========================================
*and no, I don't just mean "pay the co-pays and deductibles out of their own pockets." I mean "pay the whole fucking bill out of their own pockets." The anti-choice Jihadists want to let insurance companies quit paying for all sorts of reproductive health care--but we wouldn't know about that if Planned Parenthood didn't tell us, now would we?

Oh, boy. Comment Wars.

2006-05-07T23:47:00.000-05:00

Oh, goodie. My first real comment-war. Well, OK, more like a comment-skirmish-between-two-lightly-armed-and-insignificant-scouting-parties, but still--it's exciting.

For those of you joining us late: I posted on Planned Parenthood's story about a "Crisis Pregnancy Center" that tricked at least one girl into thinking she was dealing with Planned Parenthood, and then called the cops on her and harassed her afterwards. The Raving Atheist posted a comment that I believe to be deliberately deceptive--it sounds like he agrees with me, but it actually links to anti-choice blogs that speculate (rather forcefully) that the story is not true, and which offer lots of condemnations of Planned Parenthood in general.

So, I wrote a new post explaining my reasons for believing this [in which I made the mistaken assertion that Raving Atheist was a pseudonym for Dawn Eden, on whose blog he writes]. Raving responded to that one in the comments section, and the battle was joined (Grrr.)

My latest sally ran long (imagine that), so I thought I'd put it up here for all to enjoy. If you want all the gory details, check the comments.

Thus:

Raving: Sorry about calling you "Dawn" again. It's stuck in my head. No malice intended. Feel free to remind me if I do it again.

I was talking about YOU and your unquestioning willingness to spread of Planned Parenthood's highly suspect propaganda...Anybody reading my post at The Dawn Patrol and comparing my analysis to yours would have recognized this.

Yes--once they got to your site, it would be obvious that you were talking about me (that's the whole point of the "Fake Clinics, Fake Comments" post). My suspicion is that you worded your comment in a deliberately ambiguous way so that people who wanted to hear more about the story from a pro-choice viewpoint would go over there, thinking that the evangelical people you were referring to were the CPC workers, not me, and that the "terrible deception" was on the part of the CPC workers, not Planned Parenthood.

[For my part, when I accuse people of spreading rumors and propaganda, I call them by name and let them know what I think they're doing wrong.]

Seriously--If you wanted people to have a clear idea of the content of your posts, you could have said something to the effect of "The Planned Parenthood story appears to be a hoax. Click here for more details."

The word "evangelical" doesn't have strictly religious connotations...your original post on this topic was certainly evangelical.

Strictly speaking, true. But in this context, it's hard to imagine people wouldn't assume a religious meaning to the word.

If, in the middle of discussion about reproductive rights--and the obstruction thereof by religiously-motivated activists--one makes disparaging use of the word "evangelical" without any qualifiers, 98% of the readers are going to assume you mean evangelism of the religious type. I think that's pretty obvious, and it makes the post misleading, deliberately or not.

My post was a balanced review of the existing evidence, which suggests that PP has likely engaged in deception.

We will have to agree to disagree on both of those points. We clearly have different standards of what we consider "balanced" and how much evidence you need to accuse someone of lying. [BTW, I make no pretense that this blog is balanced]

the links I've provided do support a substantial case for lying. They lead to photographs of the CPC, which raise serious question as to whether any reasonable person could have thought they were in an abortion clinic. They also point to the absence of a police report, which would have been routine had the CPC tricked the cops into making a false arrest.

I don't think that either of those counts as substantial. The failure to turn up a police report on the false arrest would be worth following up on (but again, not enough to accuse someone of lying) were it not for the fact that neither the Email PP sent out nor Amanda's article on Alternet make any mention of an arrest.

I think you might have better served your readers if you had reprinted my posts at the Dawn Patrol and done a line-by-line analysis of why Planned Parenthood's version of events is more likely to be accurate than those who are disputing it.

I don't really think they need refuting. I think any of my readers who chose to visit your site will come to their own conclusions. I feel fairly confident I know what those conclusions would be. Anyone want to take me up on that?

I wasn't defending the organization at any cost, in the way you seem to be defending PP.

Neither of my posts defends PP.

The first one simply tells the story and gives my take on it. The second is not a defense of PP, but rather a criticism of what I consider to be deceptive commenting--and an appreciation of the fact that the deceptive comment practices the same deceptive tactic that the CPC's are accused of.

I would defend PP if I thought it necessary and justified, but at this point I don't see anything substantial to defend them against.

And since you didn't directly answer the question (possibly because I asked Dawn instead of you): Raving, do you--for the record--deny that your original post was an attempt to trick people into visiting your blog by making them think that they would be getting more information on the Planned Parenthood story from a pro-choice viewpoint?

Fake Clinics, Fake Comments

2006-05-05T20:41:00.000-05:00

Now, before I go off and start accusing somebody of fostering a "terrible deception" without cause, let me just say that I'm not saying that Dawn "Amanda's favorite Anti-Feminist" Eden is a duplicitous hypocrite. Just that it would be awwwfully ironic if she were.

For those of you who don't read the comments, Dawn (the raving evangelist) left a comment under the name "raving atheist" on my last post (see, the irony starts early).

Now, I don't know much about Dawn, but a quick look at her blog convinces me that while she does in fact rave (not that raving is bad--if you didn't like raving, you wouldn't be reading my blog, now would you?), she is far from an atheist.

So, why would she leave comments under that name?

More curiously, why would she leave comments under that name that were ambiguous enough to be completely misinterpreted:

I hate it when people get so evangelical about a topic that they start spreading lies. I've posted about the terrible deception here and here. Spread the word so that the truth gets out!

Let's look at this for a moment: the post to which that comment responds is about a "terrible deception." Without a mention of a second "terrible deception," one would expect a reasonable reader to assume that Dawn was, in fact, referring to the "terrible deception" of which Crisis Pregnancy Centers are accused. Why would you assume that it referred to anything else?

Then we get the buzz word, "evangelical." Now, I grant you that "evangelical" can have any number of connotations, but in the context of religious-based anti-feminism, I think we all (and that includes you, Dawn) know what the reasonable reader is going to assume. She is going to assume that Dawn is referring to Evangelical Christian anti-choice activists, thereby solidifying the impression that she (the reasonable reader) had in the first place, that Dawn is referring to the actions of the Crisis Pregnancy Centers as a "terrible deception."

Finally, in an action directly reminiscent of the appeal that occasioned the post in question (an appeal from Planned Parenthood to, as it were, "get the word out" about a "terrible deception"), Dawn urges us to spread the truth, and shows us helpful sources where we can get information with which to fight the good fight.

And so when we click on her links, do we find what any reasonable reader might expect? No. We find volunteer counselors posing as medical practitioners who feed us emotional half-truths and misleading pamphlets with gory pictures of ..

--Oh, wait a minute. Silly me. I'm confusing Dawn's real, verifiable actions with the "terrible deception" that Planned Parenthood has accused Crisis Pregnancy Centers of carrying out. Not to be confused with the "terrible deception" that Dawn is accusing Planned Parenthood of when they accuse Crisis Pregnancy Centers of doing exactly the type of thing that Dawn just came all the way to my teeny little blog to do.

Confused? Yeah, me too.

But, fortunately, I'm a Former English Major, so I'm experienced in explicating tangles of multi-layered irony. Let's break it down:

Planned Parenthood accuses Crisis Pregnancy Centers of committing an unethical deception: making people think they are going to provide medical counseling when in fact they are providing arguments that attack the very credibility, ethicality, and legality of the medical counseling (and related procedures).
I write a post about said accusation from Planned Parenthood against Crisis Pregnancy Centers.
Dawn Eden, under a deceptive (although apparently regularly used) screen name, posts a comment which bears a (deliberately?) deceptive resemblance to a comment supporting Planned Parenthood in its accusation Crisis Pregnancy Centers.
Said comment would appear--to a reasonable reader--to direct people to sources of information they can use to deal with the terrible thing that is happening.
Upon arriving at the source, however, people will instead find arguments that attack the very credibility, ethicality, and legality of the accusation made by Planned Parenthood against Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

Thus:

Dawn accuses Planned Parenthood of " terrible deception."
That supposed "deception" consists of falsely accusing Crisis Pregnancy Centers of deception.
Yet Dawn commits (intentionally or not--but I'm guessing she knows what she's doing) the exact deception that she insists Crisis Pregnancy Centers are not committing.

That any clearer? No? Well, you can't say I didn't try. But the irony is just too rich not to take a shot at it.

Kill Them All and Let John Wayne Sort Them Out

2006-05-04T09:34:00.000-05:00

Dear Goddess/God/Allah/Giant Wombat in Heaven, this shit is truly too obscene to be believed--as in I honestly thought it was satire when I first read it--I literally did not believe that it was for real.

But it is.

By way of the irreplaceable Amanda, we find Glen Greenwald's analysis of recent completely un-fucking-hinged rantings by various unrestrained-warfare advocates. That this kind of chest-beating nationalistic howling gets published in the likes of the Wall Street Journal makes me weep for American Conservatism. If I saw something this repugnant to human decency as the cover story on Mother Jones, I'd want to turn in my Official Jr. Liberal Decoder Ring.

The worst is from Jeff Goldstein:

Which is why there are times when we really should turn off the “smart” bombs and show our seriousness by putting the world on notice that, when we believe the situation calls for it, we are willing to ignore the inevitable bad press and the howls of protest from human rights groups, and exhibit a show of strength and military professionalism that is politically disinterested and tactically thorough and lethal....

...the only way to disabuse the enemy of the notion that we are constrained by a moral calculus that makes little sense in urban combat situations is to refuse to show the kind of restraint they have come to anticipate and count on.

Let's parse that real quickly:

the Geneva convention, et al., are only to be followed as a tactic for avoiding "bad press" and the "howling" of groups like Amnesty International who have done more than the USA ever has to promote human rights.*
Indiscriminately blowing the living fuck out of people regardless of their standing as civilians is the essence of "military professionalism."
Callous disregard for human rights, Geneva convention, et al., are signs of "seriousness" (I guess all those times in the 70s and 80s when we berated the USSR for their atrocious human rights record, we were what, "foolin' around?")
"Moral calculus" is situational. That is, morals are great as long as they don't get in the way of achieving your aims. When they're inconvenient (as in urban combat), fuck 'em.

Jeez. And they wonder why half the planet hates us. We run around calling ourselves the Bringers of Democracy and Freedom to the Rest of the Benighted World, but we're fine with telling Amnesty International to go fuck themselves if we suddenly feel like we’re above basic human decency.

And don’t, not even for one second, give me that “But the terrorists think they’re above basic human decency…” crap. Well, no fucking shit. Newsflash: those guys are slime. They are murderous, torturing, head-cuttin'-off car-bombin--the-fuck-out-of-little-kids slime. The fact that they think they're above basic human decency is what makes them the murderous fucks that they are. And guess what--we don't want to be like them. For the last time, we are supposed to be The Good Guys.

Now, John McCain may be a pandering weasel, but you have to admit the guy has his moments. Like when he proposed--on the Senate floor--the radical notion that the self-proclaimed Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of Human Rights might want to go on the books as opposing torture by their own armed forces:

We stand for something more in the world – a moral mission, one of freedom and democracy and human rights at home and abroad. We are better than these terrorists, and we will we win. The enemy we fight has no respect for human life or human rights. They don’t deserve our sympathy…

…but this isn’t about who they are. This is about who we are. These are the values that distinguish us from our enemies.

Emphasis mine. Think about that–”These are the values that distinguish us from our enemies.” If we can’t at least pretend to distinguish ourselves from our enemies, why would we expect the rest of the world to do so?

_______________________________
*Believe it or not, I am aware that we played an important role in defeating the Nazis (though not nearly as important as we'd like to believe). But if you look at in the balance, I think we don't have nearly as much to be proud of as we ought to. In our favor: Germany, South Korea, etc. Counted against us: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, Iran under the Shah, etc.. Considering the absolutely callous disregard for human rights that we have traditionally shown (except when it serves our political and/or economic interests) I don't think we come out ahead of AI.

Fake Clinics

2006-05-03T09:20:00.000-05:00

What magnificent timing.

The good folks at Planned Parenthood (you know, the ones who provide basic health care to millions of women because neither our medical system or our government gives enough of a fuck to do it?) sent me an email the other day, asking me if I'd be kind enough to blog about the latest insult to women's reproductive freedom. Aw, fuck that--it's an insult to decency, ethics, and respect for women's intelligence and self-determination.

And then yesterday I find that the irreplaceable Amanda has a piece on this very scam up at Alternet [Go take a look at it--looks like someone's moving up in the world...]. Which moves me to honor my promise to PP to blog about issues they point out. So here goes.

This is the deal--folks (often with government funding--the very funding that's being slashed so that Planned Parenthood can't provide the things like contraception, prenatal care, pap smears, and sex-ed, which make up the bulk of their business) are setting up "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" which pass themselves off as clinics where women can reasonably expect to get medical care and advice.

But of course, they're not. If you want the whole gory story, go read Amanda's piece, or the Planned Parenthood material. But the crux is that it's no longer enough to offer women an alternative to abortion--now they want to catch women at an extremely vulnerable point in their lives, trick them into exposing themselves to evagelism, and under the pretense of offering medical care and counseling, browbeat, shame, misinform and frighten them into changing their mind about terminating the pregnancy:

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend to one of Indiana's Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a so-called "crisis pregnancy center" ...designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl's confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment...When she arrived for her appointment...the police were there. The "crisis pregnancy center" had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The "crisis pregnancy center" staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl's home and calling her father's workplace....They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion. [Emphasis mine]

Now, if that doesn't violate every medical ethic known to the profession, I don't know what does. Oh, but I forgot--these folks aren't medical professionals--they just play them on TV. No, the closest thing they've got to a professional care provider is a "sonographer" (whose job it is to show the woman in question a misleading "snapshot" of the tissues in question). Even their "counselors" are volunteers:

[A]s a general rule, these pseudo-clinics have few or no paid employees, no medical personnel on staff and no real facilities to provide any medical care. Generally speaking, the medical treatment provided by the largely volunteer staff is nothing more than handing clients a pregnancy test that could be purchased over the counter for $10.

So this is my analogy: You walk out of the cool, antisceptic glow of your doctor's office into the bright sunlight of a Texas afternoon, still trying to wrap your head around the fact that the word "cancer" is now a defining term in your life. You get home, still numb from shock, and find a "Cancer Care Clinic" in the phone book that's conveniently close to your house. You call, and they promise to help you explore all your medical options.

But when you get there, what you find is a roomful of Christian Scientists who try to browbeat, shame, misinform and frighten you into changing your mind about medically treating the cancer. At a point when you may be re-negotiating your relationship with the Divine, they tell you that you're a depraved sinner who's going to burn in hell for eternity if you get chemotherapy.*

Now, would anyone have any sympathy for that kind of medical abuse?

I didn't think so. So here's what to do: go to Planned Parenthood and support the bill that has just been introduced in congress to stop this predatory bullshit.

The Religious Right has declared open season on medical ethics in general, as long as it suits their anti-women-having-control-of-their-own-uteri-and-vaginas platforms. Let's not let them get away with this one, OK?

-------------------------------------
*disclaimer--I don't know dick about Christian Scientists. It's just a convenient analogy. I don't know if they even evangelize. If you're CS and would like to respond, please do. No offense intended.

Amanda Hates Me...

2006-04-30T23:45:00.000-05:00

No, seriously. It's just her comments. Sigh.

I posted a longish comment over at Pandagon today, and it disappeared into the ether. Fortunately, it was still sitting around in draft form, so I'll pass it on to you so that it shall not perish from the earth.

The thread was on the Spanish-language version of the National Anthem (which I think looks to be, like Gay Marriage, bad strategy for the short-term backlash reasons, but absolutely the right thing to do for the long-term "We're here, we're Hispanic, get used to us!" effect), and I wanted to address three important themes that had developed during the comments: 1) the unsuitability of the Star Spangled Banner as a National Anthem because of it's relative unsingability, 2) the racist assholery inherent in W's response to Nuestro Himno, and 3) the myriad suggestions of alternative National Anthems.

So, close your eyes, and imagine that you are at Amanda's. Hear the well-reasoned, yet snarky commentary dished up by those who are not only smarter than I am, but more politically astute as well. Feel the hip vibe of bloggers who have only ever seen The Brady Bunch in re-runs. Now open your eyes, and read my comments:

1) The SSB is really not that hard to sing. Serious. It does require a decent range, but as I understand it, it's just that it's customarily played in a key that's great for marching bands, but hell on amateur voices. As spine-tingling militaristic anthems go, it really is a lot of fun.

2) When I heard the sound bite of W's response, I was, for a moment, gripped by what I can only explain as a hallucinatory level of hope. Y'see, when he said,

"I think the National Anthem should be sung..."

what immediately popped into my mind, and what for some insane reason I actually thought he was going to say, was:

...in every language. It's a beautiful song, and this here is a beautiful country. What makes us so wonderful is the multitude of voices, and I want to hear those voices.

I want to hear all those voices. I want to hear those voices making a joyous noise unto the Lord in every language of God's creation, praising this magnificent country in every tongue the Lord gave us.

I think the National Anthem ought to be sung in Spanish. And I think it ought to be sung in English. It should be sung in German, Irish, French and Italian. It should be sung in in Cantonese, Mandarin, Lakota, Hopi, Hindi, Hebrew, and Arabic. It should be sung in every language of every immigrant who ever came to these shores looking for an honest job and a better future for their children.

If you want to work hard, take care of your family, and love this magnificent country, then I want to hear you sing the Anthem in the language that your parents and grandparents spoke when they dreamed--when they dreamed--that one day you would be able to stand on these soils and sing proudly and unafraid, "My country, 'tis of thee."

But he didn't. He said "...in English." The big putz.

3) Finlandia. Fer fuck's sake, people, can I really be the only person who has thought of Findlandia? I mean, I know it because I hang out with old Leftist-Folkie-Quaker types, but didn't Dar Williams start singing it in concert right after 9/11?

OK, it's even harder to sing than the SSB, but damn--the lyrics:

This is my song, O God of all the nations
A song of peace, for lands afar & mine
This is my home, the country where my heart is
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean
And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations
A song of peace for their land and for mine

Yeah, I know--a song that says "We're no better than anyone else and world peace would be a pretty cool thing" is going exactly nowhere with people who can't even tolerate hearing their favorite English Drinking Song sung in the native language of 40 million of their fellow citizens.

But I can dream, can't I?

Purity Defined

2006-04-26T23:54:00.000-05:00

So. All this discussion of the "Daddy's Li'l Virgin" movement has me thinking about what virginity means. And why it means it.

What's virginity? Or "Purity," to use the new buzzword? Actually, "Purity" is a better place to start, because "virginity" has a fairly clinical meaning that could easily be confused with the social meaning. It's easy enough to coerce an 11 year-old into swearing Purity till marriage, but how, exactly, do we define Purity for little Melanie and her cohort?

Because, guess what--little Melanie is going to be impure.

And, no, I don't mean in a the-more-you-lock-em-up, the-more-they-run-around sort of way. I mean in a by-definition sort of way. If Melanie is going to go through adolescence as anything other than a nun, she's going to be impure.

How can I be so sure? Well, look at it this way. There is a virtual certainty that she will, at some point, kiss someone to whom she is not yet married. Unless she refrains from even kissing before marriage, she's impure.

How's that?

Well, OK. I think we'll all agree that penile/vaginal sex would qualify as "impure." That is, I believe, generally considered to the basic sex act, and the one which most people have in mind when tossing around words like "virginity" and "chastity." So any amount of penile/vaginal sex is clearly verboten.

As a result, a lot of kids being raised on abstinence-only sex ed have taken up the notion that anything else goes. Oral, anal, what have you. Sounds like Rick Santorum's nightmare. Personally, I think it's a hoot. All these squeaky-clean VBS inmates running around, promising their lives to Jesus, listening to Amy Grant, and taking it up the ass (the girls, of course. We all know how much Jesus hates homosexuality).

My friend had a girlfriend like that in college. Wouldn't dream of losing her virginity to anyone except the man she married, but (by report) she could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. Go figure.

Somehow, I don't think that's James Dobson's version of "Purity."

Then where do we draw the line?

I mean, if a blowjob is unchaste (and I have a hard time imagining that the average Christian father wouldn't agree), then what about a hand job?

Probably "un-chaste." So would manual stimulation of non-genital erogenous zones (aka, "groping") be unchaste if done under the undergarments? What if it's over the undergarments, but under the clothing? Or is it only "chaste" if the hands stay outside of the clothes at all times?

Hmmm. I know that if I had told my high school friends that I was no longer a virgin because I had groped someone through her clothes, they would have questioned my definition of the word. And my sanity. After they stopped laughing.

See where this is going? We could take this all the way up to the aforementioned kissing: is chaste kissing limited to closed lips? Do you lose your virginity if tongues are involved? What if you nibble an earlobe? Does that make Baby Jesus Cry?

Serious: where do we draw the line? There's no really clear division between "chaste" and "unchaste," between "Pure" and "Filthy Whore." Between "True Love Waits" and "Girls Gone Wild"

Unless...

Unless it really is all about penile/vaginal sex. Hmmm. Now why would that be?

If you said "Because it's about the goddamn patrilineage!" go get yerself a cookie.

To protect the patrilineage, there's really only one thing that's required. A total ban (for women) on penile/vaginal sex with anyone other than your husband. You can mess around in all the other ways that you want to, but as long as you keep the sperm away from the ova, we can all agree to look the other way.

Hell, why do you think they used eunuchs (who do not necessarily lose either sexual desire or sexual functioning--just the ability to ejaculate) to guard harems? As long as you're not messing with the patrilineage, you are as "pure" as you need to be.

Now, I'm not saying that the Daddy's L'il Virgin^® crowd are actually giving conscious thought to little Melanie's role in preserving the genetic purity of their bloodline. That's just where the concept of "Purity" comes from. What I think the Daddies in question are thinking consciously is that a) they don't want their girls to be "filthy whores" and b) it's their job to make sure they don't end up that way.

In other words, it's their job to control female sexuality.

"But," I hear you cry, "isn't the job of a parent to control their children (you America-hating liberal who will be justly punished by a wrathful Jehovah by having your daughters turn into disease-ridden sluts)?"

To which I answer: First of all, if it were the "parents" who were involved here, I'd be a little less uneasy. But what with the whole "High Priest" shtick going on, I get pretty queasy about the fact that it's just dad weighing in on little Melanie's proto-sexuality.

But second of all, and more to the point, no. No, it is not the job of parents to control their children. It is the job of parents to teach children how to control themselves.

When EvilGeniusGirl was old enough to understand what a knife was, I didn't make her pledge to never, ever touch a knife unitil she was an adult. I told her that they were dangerous, and that they were for grownups, and that I could cut anything that she needed cut. As she matured, I started showing her how to use a knife safely. I let her help me cut things. I let her use kitchen knives under my supervision. I let her use kitchen knives without my supervision. Finally, at this last birthday, I gave her her own pocket knife. It was my way of saying, "You've shown responsibility. I trust your judgment. It's your decision from now on."

And I figure the Wife and I will do pretty much the same with sexuality. She's still in the "Boys--Ick!" stage, but I don't think it will last a whole lot longer.

So we're going to tell the kids (and already have done so in age-appropriate bits and pieces) the facts, with emphasis on the facts, of life. That p/v sex is fundamentally different than oral sex because only one can get you pregnant, but either can get you an STD. But that you can't get an STD from groping (no, I will not be that crude or graphic with my kids. Jeez.)

This will include the psychological facts as well--that there are very different emotional and psychological meanings/effects that go with different sex acts. Just as some behaviors can get you pregnant and some can't, some behaviors can have a much more serious impact on a relationship, on your self-definition, on your ego, than others.

And that sex is an incredibly powerful force that you don't want to take lightly. In the same way I want to be real damn sure she takes the risks seriously when she's driving, I'm going to want to be real damn sure that she's seriously considering the impact that sex can have on her life (and the lives of others)--physically, emotionally, psychologically, spirtually.

There's a lot going on there, I don't see a clear dividing line. If you're going to insist that there is, that there's a hard boundary between "chaste" and "slutty," I say you either have to endorse the idea that it really is all bout p/v sex and the sanctity of the patrilineage, or admit that you're being more than a little disingenuous with little Melanie.

A Charming Little Ceremony...

2006-04-23T23:14:00.000-05:00

[Once again, the irreplaceable Amanda points us to bizarre virginity-fetish behavior, and the comments were simply not enough to hold my response. So, I shall expostulate here.]

As if the Purity Ball weren't enough, now we have the "Heart to Heart" locket,* a piece of jewelry designed to teach little girls that their sexuality belongs to Daddy--at least until such time as it he transfers custody of it to her husband:

You then explain to the child that you will hold the key to her precious heart until the day of her wedding. On that day, you will give her away like at all weddings, BUT in doing so you will also “give away” the key to her heart to her now husband. The key and lock are actually functional and your son-in-law will place the key in the heart to open it.
Inside will be a small note that had been placed in the heart on the day you made the covenant. That note can say something like, “I do not know your name or what you even look like, but this is my promise to save myself for you this day. Love, Melanie.”

Eeeeww!

Ick!

I truly hope this is not just me (it isn't). What is the deal with Dad's obsession over little Melanie's virginity? And where the fuck does he get off (no pun intended) keeping the key?

I mean, OK--I know how the thinking goes--children are foolish and continually tempted by Satan. God requires that Christians only have sex within hetero-normative marriage. Parents must safeguard their children and make sure they don't fall into sin.

I can get that. HowlerMonkeyBoy is big into fire these days, and you can bet your non-incinerated ass that I'm doing my best to stand between him and a foolish (and potentially fatal) mistake. I'm his parent. That's my job.

...except that I'm not giving him a little matchbox-shaped locket and telling him that he must swear to me and Ishtar that he will never, ever use matches ever until he's eighteen. With the subtext that he's a filthy whore if he gives in to temptation and lights a match or two. I have this wacky notion that a) he's going to experiment with fire no matter what I say, and b) I'd much rather be his mentor and guide than simply pretend it's not happening.

And one of the things that stands out here is that once again, it's all about Dad. Someone termed it the "Daddy's Li'l Virgin" movement. Ugh. At least if it were the Mom going through this grotesque little ritual with Melanie, I’d be less creeped out.

But the crux of the matter here is that this whole thing is about demonstrating--ritualizing--the idea that Melanie's sexuality is not hers to determine.

I mean, why don’t they just make it a little-bitty pair of handcuffs and be done with it?

“The key and handcuffs are actually functional and your son-in-law will place the key in the handcuffs to open them when she’s been a good little girl, or when he wants sex.”

The only way I could see this not making my skin crawl is if the husband came with a little locket, too (perhaps locked by his mother?).** But nooooo, all the “purity” bullshit is heaped on the girls.

How, how, how does this not scream “A woman’s sexuality is the exclusive property of her husband who purchased it from her father” to every intelligent being on the planet? I mean, we are talking about a literal lock and key, here, for Athena's sake.

Ugh.

Now, I'm fully aware that there are things that you tell kids it's just not OK for them to do--EvilGeniusGirl may not stay at home alone when we're gone for the night. HowlerMonkeyBoy may not use the circular saw.

But there comes a time when EvilGeniusGirl will be old enough to stay at home alone, and there will come a time (I hope to Hecate) when HowlerMonkeyBoy is old enough to use the circular saw. And while the Heart to Heart idea does suppose that Melanie will one day be old enough to choose to behave sexually, it includes the idea that God and her Father have already made the choice for her.

So, before anyone comes down on me for mocking people's beliefs and their right to instill them in their child, let me be clear--I'm not saying that abstinence until marriage is icky, or that it's inherently a bad idea. I'm saying that it ought to be a choice, and the whole purpose of this exercise to tell Melanie that she has no choice.

And, yes, I realize that the Heart to Heart locket is supposed to symbolize a covenant between Dad, God and Melanie, but guess the fuck what--God and Dad have already made up their minds, and unless Melanie is a total masochist or has Oppositional Defiant Disorder, you can bet your last latex that she's going to say, "Yes, Daddy" no matter what she's really thinking.

So, what I keep coming back to is not the lock or the key. No, I think they are actually kinda cool symbols for protecting something that's precious to you--and I think that a child's developing sexuality is a precious thing to be protected.

The problem I have with it is that the key goes with Dad, and that at some point, he will pass it along to another man, completely bypassing Melanie in the process!

Is that clear enough? There is a key to Melanie’s "heart" (used here as a particularly confusing euphemism for "virginity"), and at no point is it ever in her possession. It goes directly from one man to another.

If that doesn't raise a red flag for anyone who thinks that women deserve ownership of their own sexualities, then I don't know what the fuck will.

So here's my modest proposal. What if Melanie got a little locket with a little key, but this time the patter went something like this:

“Here is you little heart locket, Honey. And now I’m going to lock it with this key, and then I’m going to give the key to you, because it’s your body and it’s your sexuality, and you are the only person who is allowed to hold the key or unlock the lock ever, and your mother and I are sending you to Rape Aggression Defense so that if any over-privileged fuck ever tries to open that locket without your explicit and freely given consent you will know how to kick him in the balls and then break his fucking nose."

Now that I think about it, that might make a charming little ceremony…

-------------------------------------------------------
*It's about halfway down the page--just text search for "sexuality"

** javaphil, commenter at Amanda's proposes just such an item:

In the mommy box, young little Timmy may place his tool until such time as he decides that he will give it away forever to young Jane or Julie or Jeff (oops! how’d that get in there?)
The best part, of course, is that we have to have a symbolic tool (something with some girth, no doubt) for Timmy to place in the box, which young Jane, Julie or Jeff (him again!) will undoubtedly find useful after about 30 seconds on wedding night with young Timmy.

Purity Ball

2006-04-20T23:27:00.000-05:00

Via Amanda, the creepiest thing I've come across in quite a while. The South Dakota alternative to the traditional "Father-Daughter Dance." The "Purity Ball:"

It is impossible to convey what I have seen in their sweet spirits, their delicate, forming souls, as their daddy takes them out for their first, big dance. Their whole being absorbs my loving attention, resulting in a radiant sense of self-worth and identity. Think of it from their perspective: My daddy thinks I'm beautiful in my own unique way. My daddy is treating me with respect and honor...My daddy really loves me!"

OK--I'm the father of a pre-teen girl. I can relate to that. Nothing wrong there (well, okay, not much), and I think we'd all agree that our society could use more men spending time with their kids.

But then there's the pledge. See, the whole point of the Purity Ball is that the little girls make a pledge. About sex. With their fathers. (The pledge--not the sex).

I pledge to remain sexually pure...until the day I give myself as a wedding gift to my husband. ... I know that God requires this of me... that he loves me, and that he will reward me for my faithfulness.

And Dad has his pledge, too:

[I] choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity....I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home.

Emphasis mine.

"High Priest" and "Wedding Gift” aside (because the patriarchy and women-as-property connotations are just too obvious to deserve comment), what this reminds me of a great deal is the traditional wedding ceremony, in which the father "gives" the woman to her new ~~master~~ husband.* Dad is the only person qualified to not only consent to her marriage, but also to vouch for her virginity. It's Dad's job to make sure that his merchandise isn't spoiled, or else he won't ever be able to unload it. Her virginity is not hers to safeguard, but his.

Ugh. Ick.

But if you're like me, your first reaction (Ugh. Ick.) may not be completely on target. Because my first idea was that it's just creepy for a man to be that, well, intimate with his daughter's budding sex life.

But if you think about it, it's really just the Religious Right version of Dad sitting down with his little gender-warrior and reading It's Perfectly Normal or Where Did I Come From, something I have done with both my kids. If we think that parents should talk with kids about sex early, then we can't really fault these South Dakota Dads for teaching their seven year-olds terms like "sexually pure." There's every reason that parents should be mentors in all areas of their children's lives. It may be abstinence-only, but at least seven year-olds are getting sex ed. That's more than I would expect from South Dakota.

But it's still real creepy.

So I thought about why. And here's what came to me:

Where are the Moms?

Why is it about the Dads? Why are these little (and not-so little) girls having this big sexual (or non-sexual) initiation rite with their Dads instead of their moms? Why is it that the equation that springs to my mind is [Dad + Daughter’s Sex Life] x Control = Patriarchy?

Well, for starters, think about the other possibilities that the good people of South Dakota could have chosen: Mother/Son purity balls, Father/Son Purity Hunting Trips, Mother/Daughter Purity Day-Spas.

That last one would make a good bit of sense. Kind of a Phyllis Schlafly-approved Red Tent. After all, it’s women who have traditionally mentored girls in their developing sexuality, and there are a lot of good reasons for that. But guess what—this kind of thing is not really about mentoring anybody about anything. Not at its traditional, social root. It’s about protecting the purity of the bloodline. We’ll come back to that word, “purity,” in a minute.

What about Mother/Son purity balls? Well, there are good reasons that Mother/Son balls--pure or impure--don't generally exist. To put it crudely, the boy would be "sissified." Can you imagine a budding patriarch pledging his virginity to his mother? I think not. Women are not allowed to have control over men’s sex lives.

So, what about the Father/Son Purity Hunting Trip? This one would also seem to make a fair amount of sense. If you’re into any kind of traditional gender roles, it makes sense for men to mentor their boys. At the very least, it would be nice to see men telling their son's that fucking is serious business, and not just a big homosocial competition.

But they don't exist. Why not?

A much older phenomenon may be illustrative. In the early Twentieth Century, most Southern white men could imagine no worse fate than if their white daughter had sex with a black man. This fear was used to break the back of the Populist movement—which mobilized Southern blacks and poor whites against the wealthy whites who were oppressing them both. The wealthy landowners, under the banner of White Supremacy, convinced the poor whites that unless the “Negroes” were politically disenfranchised, the poor whites would lose the one thing that every (white) man, no matter how poor, was entitled to—the purity of his patrilineage:

“You cannot seek the Negro vote without asking him to your home sooner or later. If you ask him to your house, he will break bread with you at last. And if you seat him at your table, he has the right to ask your daughter's hand in marriage.”

That's Thomas Dixon, the Harriet Beecher Stowe of White Supremacy. Shorter White Supremacist: "Let a Nigra vote, and he’ll fuck your daughter."

So, back to the word “purity,” for a moment, because it’s central to both phenomena. My first guess is that the Religious Right has chosen “purity” over “virginity” or “chastity” because the former is now a synonym for “nerd,” and the latter makes us think of Lancelot and Guinevere.

But what is “purity?” It doesn’t mean “virginity.” The second definition given (after the wholly useless "The quality or condition of being pure") is “A quantitative assessment of homogeneity or uniformity.” In other words, a girl who is “pure” is a girl who is untampered with. She has not had anything “mixed” in with her essential nature. Hence both the words “Adultery” (the condition of being adulterated) and “Miscegenation” (from the Latin miscre, to mix).

So, you’re starting to see the connection here— for a woman, unauthorized sex (whether it’s outside of an approved heteropatriarchal marriage or outside of her “race),” automatically renders her “impure”—that is, mixed or adulterated.** The only possible way to know that all your wife’s sons are yours is if you know that you are the only person fucking your wife. The only way to make sure that all of your daughter’s sons are your grandchildren (not to mention the only way to keep her marketable to other men) is to make sure that your daughter is "pure."

But not your son. No, sons don’t need to be pure. Now, I’m not saying that the Religious Right isn’t reaching out to young men to try to get them to keep their pants on till their wedding night. It’s just that I’m noticing a dearth of “Mother Son Purity Balls” and “Father Son Purity Hunting Trips,” and eight year-old boys taking "Purity Pledges."

No, sons don’t need to be pure, because sons can’t be made impure, in the original patriarchal sense of the word. You can't be made impure if you can’t get pregnant.

Look at it this way--if I have an ounce of gold and an ounce of lead, I can render the gold literally “impure” by mixing in a small amount of lead. The remaining .97 of an ounce of lead, however, will still be pure. Sex has, for Hecate knows how long, been associated with contamination on the part of the woman, but not on the man. He "gives" something of himself to her, she "receives," and is therefore--if his gift is unauthorized--tainted or contaminated. This, I assume, is because in the patrilineage-protecting view of sex, unauthorized sex leaves no trace upon the man, but it can quite clearly mark the woman as "impure." Until they can get pregnant, boys can’t get impure.

So, at least the Religious Right is being honest with it’s new buzzword. In the same way that abortion isn’t about the babies, “purity” isn’t about virginity, chastity, or sexual health. It’s about men exercising, dramatizing, ritualizing, and celebrating their control over women’s sexuality.

And the quote above about disenfranchising African-Americans wasn’t about the prevention of race-mixing. You notice there was no mention of “Your son breaking bread in a Negro’s house.” There was no threat made that racial equality would result in your son “asking a Negress’ hand in marriage.”

Because the very same men who were shooting, hanging, and burning African-American men on a regular basis over imagined (fantasized?) rapes of white women were visiting black prostitutes and raping black women on a regular basis. Having your patrilineage violated is a horror, outrage, and embarrassment. Fucking up someone else's patrilineage is a sport.
Which brings us, once again, back to the word purity, and definition number five:

“The degree to which a color is free from being mixed with other colors”

====================================
*I'm not saying that any of this is going through anybody's mind at the time--just that it's the traditional meaning of the symbolism.

** For all you (female) adulterers out there (i.e., anyone having sex outside of a monogamous heterosexual marriage), it might be worth noting that some of the other synonyms given for “impure” include: black, contaminated, corrupt, debased, defiled, desecrated, dirty, filthy, foul, infected, nasty, polluted, profaned, tainted, unclean, and vile.

Damn, That Was Close (Again...)

2006-04-17T23:58:00.000-05:00

Holy Shit! I'm sure all the rest of you are as thankful as I am that the Department of ~~Fatherland~~ Homeland Security is just so motherfucking on the goddamn ball. I mean, shit--I'm as fake-ass-war-on-terror bashing as the rest of y'all, but when I find out that they're putting Homicidal Islamic Fundamentalist Nutjobs like this one away, I have to give them their props:

During conversations with (Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent) Burroughs, who portrayed himself as an Islamic fundamentalist and told Omari he could get stolen nerve gas and C-4 (plastic explosive), Omari told of his dreams of exploding a briefcase bomb with stolen plutonium while Congress was in session. He also talked about making batches of poisoned marijuana to kill Jewish residents of Jackson, or spraying them with mustard gas from an ultralight plane.

Damn. That's some scary-ass shit. I don't know about you, but the idea of some religiously-motivated wacko flying over my neighborhood spraying poison from an ultralight sound uncomfortably plausible (don't forget--these freaks have been caught with ricin right here in the U S of A). This guy wasn't just talk, either. He was busted shortly after he purchased what he fully believed were the ingredients for making sarin--that's fucking nerve gas, people.

But what I don't understand is why this didn't make a huge splash in the media. I mean, would-be terrorists trying to buy nerve gas right here at home? Hello!? Anyone at Fox listening?

Oh, wait--could it be because he's white?*

Yeah, I know I pulled the same shit back in March, but Fer Fuck's Sake, this shit pisses me off. I won't go into the rant here (you're welcome to read the original), but all fake-ass-war-on-terror bashing aside, a whole bunch of people are going to have a really, really, really bad day when another one of these fuckers gets all Timothy McVeigh. Hijack four jetliners simultaneously and fly 75% of them into national landmarks killing thousands of people? That shit's hard: it requires a lot of funding, a sophisticated network, and a shitload of planning. Stuff a bunch of fertilizer and diesel fuel into the back of a Ryder truck and light the fuse? Any malcontent with a credit card and an internet connection could pull that shit off.

Folks, I have an almost infinite capacity for schadenfreude, but the fact that another Oklahoma City would probably expose the fake-ass-war-on-terror-fighting Republicans for cynical, lying demagogues that they are would not make me feel even the tiniest better if another 168 people ended up dead from ricin, cyanide gas, plague, or nerve gas--all of which white supremacists have either obtained or attempted to obtain.

And, yeah, I know that the vast, vast majority of these idiots are half-assed losers who couldn't organize a one-car parade, but it only takes one to really fucking ruin a lot of people's day.

So here's an idea--Alberto Gonzales is, after all, our nation's highest law enforcement officer (when he isn't busy justifying torture) . So one might be pardoned for thinking that he might actually want to do something about Terrorists who are fucking well buying Real Live Weapons of Mass Motherfucking Destruction! So why don't you drop him an email, and tell him something like this:

Mister Attorney General: I am in possession of information regarding terrorist cells currently operating in the United States. I have verified knowledge that they have acquired or attempted to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and have made plans to attack government buildings and personnel. I am offering to share this knowledge with you on the conditions that you a) pull your head out of your ass and quit fucking lying about the ELF, and b) actually fucking do something about these nutjobs before they spray ricin on my kid's little league game.
PS-if you still need help, the ADL and SPLC have been doing your fucking job for you for the past 20 years.

But that's my version. I'd really like it if you'd try to write something a little more diplomatic. Because I can't.

_____________________________
*As in March, the only details that have been changed are "White Supremacist" to "Islamic Terrorist," "Crocker" to "Omari," and "Black" to "Jewish."

A Logic Lesson, South Dakota-Style

2006-04-13T23:26:00.000-05:00

Ok, just because I don't post enough good news, I thought I'd give a run down of some bright spots in the current political landscape which, when added together, might just be the faint glimmer of the light at the end of the tunnel.

...buuut, of course, I exceeded my word limit on the very first one. So maybe we'll take them one at a time, starting tonight with South Dakota.

OK. While I think the most likely outcome is that some state's abortion ban will eventually lead to an overturning of Roe (We only need one state out of fifty to pass something so odious that it gets fought up to the SCOTUS--if South Dakota can't do it, Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama are lining up to give it a shot), there is heart to be taken in the fact that many South Dakotans are starting to realize a) how incredibly backwards the law makes them look, b) that--golly geepers--they might actually have use for an abortion one day ("What? You mean it would apply to my abortions, too? Hmmm--lemee give that a second thought. I thought it was just for sluts and Liberals.") and that c) the idea of forcing a 12 year-old girl to bear the child of the Uncle who raped her is simply repugnant to even the average Theocrat.

Thus, supporters of a petition to put the ban up to a public vote are finding it suprisingly easy to gather the necessary signatures.

Which raises an important question: Why is it that even the "~~sluts~~ women who have sex must be punished by pregnancy" hardliners are mostly willing to endorse exceptions for rape and incest?

Ok, I know, I know,--it's because it really is all about punishment, and women who are raped can't be held responsible for the pregnancy, and thus don't deserve to be punished. But that's a logical contradiction that they pretty much can't acknowledge because it's what actually lies at the very heart of the anti-abortion, anti-contraceptive, anti-sex-ed, anti-HPV vaccine (basically, anti-non-Christian-monogamous-sex) movement.

What I find to be a much clearer logical contradiction, which I'm surprised more people don't bring up (and I didn't think of until Amp pointed it out), is this:

If you think abortion is murder, then how can you possibly support an exception for rape and incest?

Serious: if you believe that preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg is exactly the same as offing a 5 year-old, then if you also believe in exceptions for rape and/or incest, then exercising that exception would be exactly the same as killing a 5 year-old because her father also happens to be your father.

Let's break that down Aristotle-style:

Abortion is murdering a child
Abortion is OK if you were raped
Therefore, murdering a child is OK if you were raped.

You got a problem with this? Huh? You got even the slightest moral scruple about killing children because of their parentage? Then you have three choices:

Give up and admit that abortion is not murder, Or
Write a letter to the editor explaining how it's just fine and dandy for first cousins to pull an Andrea Yates on their 8 year-old offspring, OR
Admit proudly to the world that you think 12 year-old rape victims should be forced to bear their attackers' children.

If you don't like any of those, then explain how any other choice is logically consistent and morally honest. Take as much time as you need, use a No. 2 pencil, and yes, logical consistency does count (but I'll let you slide on spelling).

ACLU--The Christian's Best Friend

2006-04-12T22:56:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's right, boys and girls--the Satan-Worshiping, American-Hating, Sodomy-Promoting ACLU is actually on Jehovah's payroll.

Have I lost my mind? Not at all. No, I just happened to be skimming their website the other day, and in and among all of their efforts to Destroy American and Force Homosexuality on Small, Defenseless Children, I came across a few of their less-publicized cases:

September 20, 2005: ACLU of New Jersey joins lawsuit supporting second-grader's right to sing "Awesome God" at a talent show.

November 20, 2004: ACLU of Nevada supports free speech rights of evangelists to preach on the sidewalks of the strip in Las Vegas

November 9, 2004: ACLU of Nevada defends a Mormon student who was suspended after wearing a T-shirt with a religious message to school

July 10, 2004: Indiana Civil Liberties Union defends the rights of a Baptist minister to preach his message on public streets.

March 25, 2004: ACLU of Washington defends an Evangelical minister's right to preach on sidewalks.

February 21, 2003: ACLU of Massachusetts defends students punished for distributing candy canes with religious messages.

July 11, 2002: ACLU supports right of Iowa students to distribute Christian literature at school.
April 17, 2002: In a victory for the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the ACLU of Virginia, a federal judge strikes down a provision of the Virginia Constitution that bans religious organizations from incorporating.
January 18, 2002: ACLU defends Christian church's right to run "anti-Santa" ads in Boston subways.

Jesus-Jumpin'-Jehovah in a Jellybean, who the fuck knew that the ALCU was defending so many Christians' right to religious freedom? I mean, fuck--I'm a big fan of the ACLU, and so I assumed I had a reasonably good idea of the kind of work they did. But no. No, boys and girls, I think the above list tells us that there are quite a few Fairly Important Things of which your humble narrator was completely unaware.

To wit:

There are apparently not enough crazy people on the sidewalks in Vegas, so the ACLU made sure that Evangelicals got their licks in.
Ditto for Indiana Baptists and Washington (again) Evangelicals.
The Religious Right are not necessarily being hysterical and paranoid when they claimed that children are being punished for singing religious songs and wearing religious shirts to school. Looks like the Theocrats haven't cornered the market on Flaming Stupidity.
Honestly. Who the fuck suspends a kid for wearing a "Jesus Loves the Little Children (but not the way Catholic Priests do)" T-shirt to school? Okay. I'm kidding about the Catholic Priest part--I don't really know what the T-shirt says, but whothefuckever decided to suspend that kid must have an even slipperier grasp on the 1st amendment than David Barton. Jesus, people--don't give the Theocrats any free ammunition, Okay?
The ACLU is in bed with Jerry Falwell. Yeek. My question? At the end of the day, who goes home and has to take the longer shower before they feel clean?
(That probably sounds like a mis-guided slam at the ACLU--it's not. I just a) really pity people who have to find themselves on the same side of Evil, and b) I really enjoy the idea of Falwell coming home every night and crying tears of rage and frustration that he has the ACLU to thank for the continued preservation of his religious freedom).
Anti-Santa advertisements? Oh, fucking please! Don't you people have anything better to spend your time on? Y'know, like poverty, war and disease? My guess? Jesus H. Christ Himself does not spend time pacing the golden hallways of God's Corporate Headquarters wondering why his followers don't commit every ounce of blood and sinew to rid the world of the Satanic Scourge of St. Nick. No, I'm kinda thinkin' he's beating his fists on the floor and screaming "Will You Fucking People Listen To Me!! I said Heal the Goddamn Sick and Feed the Motherfucking Hungry!! Now will you lay the flying fuck off of Sponge Bob and Tinky-winky and go tell Jimmy Fucking Carter than you'll build a house for a homeless family with your motherfucking teeth if you have to because That's What I Fucking Well Told You To Do Three Thousand Times!!!
And finally, the most important thing that I learned from reading the above list is that I had fallen for the Theocrats' anti-ACLU hype just like everyone else.

That's right. If you asked me the ACLU's relationship to organized, established religion (not the marginalized stuff), I'd have told you that the ACLU smites them hip and thigh on a regular basis. That the ACLU keeps the Theocrats in check, and makes the world safe for Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Wiccans and Ishtarians.

But no. No, the ACLU is out there spending the money that Lefties like me have sent them to make sure that Fundamentalists can criticize Santa on the Subways, and second-graders can sing "Awesome God" in high-pitched shrieky voices to the accompaniment of badly-tuned elementary school pianos played by bitter ex-musicians who drink a pint of mescal every night trying to figure out how the hell they ended up as elementary-school music teachers instead of the next Iggy Pop or Joan Baez.

So, why is the Right so damn good at simply repeating lies until they are accepted? Hell, look at the whole issue of WMDs in Iraq and Saddam's involvement in 9/11. The ~~Ministry of Truth~~ Bush Administration just kept saying these things, over and over again, long after they were proven false, and eventually huge numbers of Americans came to believe them. Shit--if the Iraq war were a bar of soap, we could sue them for deceptive fucking advertising. Every time someone says we're over there "fighting terror" or that Iraq is the "front line in the war on terror" or in any way links 9/11 to Iraq then they are advertising their product in a way that would get any corporation yanked off the air, and probably slapped with penalties, too.

Oh, geez: then there's this petition which I found via these charming folks.

All I can say is that if those idiots ever do succeed in shutting down the ACLU, I really hope they appreciate the bitter irony as they're watching masked FBI agents rough up reporters who tried to publish the story of warrantless searches on the ACLU-haters houses of worship.

Whoo! Woo! Woo! Ten Thousand and Two!

2006-04-12T19:48:00.000-05:00

Dig it. Some time in the past hour, visitor number 10,000 stopped by bark/bite. Considering that I started this well under a year ago as a place to park my practice writing--never expecting any visitors--I'm pretty gratified by all the attention.

And I've been averaging just under 100 visits a day for the past week or two, so tell a few friends about me--getting over the 100-per-day mark would be, well, y'know. Keen.

And hot motherfucking damn--I guess good things do come in threes. I took a quick look at my referrals (showing where visitors come from) and saw that someone had arrived here via US News and World Report. Gotta be a mis-print, right? Nope:

Well, Gaaawwdamn (as we say here in the Big Red State). Amidst all the irony, I feel the need to express my sincere appreciation for everyone who has ever told anyone about this blog, linked to it, forwarded it to their theo-fascist cousin, or even just dropped by to call me a feminazi. Y'all rock.

"Hey, Baby!"

2006-04-11T23:58:00.000-05:00

OK. So once again, I show my impeccable sense of split-second timing by posting on a topic a month late.

Last month, the Blank Noise Project called for a blogathon on street harassment. I had the best of intentions, but, well...

But I decided to dust off my notes and take a crack at it anyway. Thus:

The first thing that I thought of when I considered writing about street harassment was the times I have tried to answer my wife's question, "Why do guys do that!?"

Although I have never--not once--in my life called out "Hey Baaaabee!" "Nice Ass!" or "Goddamn, you're hot!" to a woman on the street, I think I understand some of the motivations of guys that do, and I think there are three basic things going on.

I. The Linebacker Syndrome

The first one, I'll call the "linebacker syndrome." Although, as I said above, I have never called out to a woman on the street (or anywhere else, for that matter), it is a different story when I watch football. I (like many sports enthusiasts) am given to spontaneous vocal indications of my appreciation for a particularly deft piece of athleticism, such as "Nice Fucking Hit!" when a linebacker swoops out of nowhere and decks a receiver.* Similarly, one thing that I have said out loud in the street is "Nice fucking car!" especially if I see a 1967 Camaro.** Both are spontaneous expressions of appreciation, and both are usually out of my mouth before I notice I'm saying them. I tend to think of them, especially the football vocalization, as "innocent exuberance. "

But although that's what the defenders of "Linebacker Syndrome" -type harassment will claim in their defense, there's nothing innocent about a total stranger remarking on a woman's sexual attractiveness in public.

For starters, it should be obvious that a 1967 Camaro is an object. A woman is not (see below). Second, a middle linebacker playing in the NFL has is deliberately positioned himself as the object of the public gaze, evaluation, and vocal response. A woman walking down the street on her way to work has not. Were she, say, pole dancing, it would be a different story. But no one likes to suddenly find themselves the object of public discourse when it was not their intention to be so--especially not on a topic as personal and volatile as the sexual response of strangers to their appearance.***

On top of that, women are generally harassed for what they look like--linebackers are praised for what they do. Were the harasser's praise based on something that the woman was doing ("Way to Schlepp those Groceries!" "Goddamn! That's some fiiiine parallel parking!") then it would at least implicitly acknowledge the woman as an active subject in the relationship. But as long as the praise is about the woman's appearance (her suitability for the harasser's visual consumption and pleasure), or her attractiveness (her suitability for his projection of his sexual desires onto her), then only he is the active participant in the exchange (desiring, consuming, projecting) and she a passive object (being looked at, being desired, being projected upon). It's a one-way street in which only one person is accorded full human status.

II Homosociality

I've gone off on homosociality at length but suffice to say that it's the system through which (heterosexual) male-male relationships are both defined in opposition to and strengthened at the expense of male-female relationships.

Although guys certainly perpetrate this type of harassment when alone, when it's done in groups it's important to know that the other guys are the actual audience--the harasser is not saying "Hey, Baby, Nice Ass" to the woman involved because he genuinely wishes to initiate a conversation with her. He is performing in front of his friends, who may or may not join him in this. Their interactions with her become a form a bonding between them. This is essentially the same dynamic as gang rape.

I think this might allow for the division of harassment into group and individual examples. My suspicion would be that harassers acting as part of a male group are harassing as a form of homosocial bonding, while guys who do individually are probably actually trying to have an interaction with the woman--either enjoying the intimidation or misguidedly thinking they are somehow being complimentary.

III. Letting women know their place

Unfortunately, whether group or individual, "innocent" or deliberately abusive, all forms of street harassment have the same function--letting women know their place, instructing women as to their role, and keeping them afraid.

I think it's fair to say that most guys don't realize this is going on. Not that they're little innocents, but most people in general don't think this hard about everyday interactions. No matter. These guys have no fucking idea what it means to be afraid just because you are female and walking down the street.

Referring back to #I, in which the guy is free to publicly display his sexuality, it's important to distinguish between the sexually-charged interaction in which the guy is actually trying to flirt with the woman as an equal and when he is deliberately displaying is sexuality to her in a socially unacceptable manner--much like displaying his genitalia would be. That's the difference between a legitimately interested look ("I find you attractive. Perhaps we could initiate flirtatious behavior?") and a leer ("You're one hot bitch. Damn, I'd like to do you.")

In fact, to extend the parallel, there's not a whole hell of a lot of semiotic difference between shouting "Hey, Bitch! You give me a Hard-on!" at a woman and actually whipping it out and shaking it at her. Except the first is likely to get passed off as "innocent fun" while the second will get you 5 years and a "sexual offender" status.

Both of those activities are threatening precisely because the public display of sexuality is something that women know to be fraught with danger, both social and physical, while it is an activity that many men find empowering and exciting. The act of displaying his sexuality publicly, and simultaneously calling out her sexuality despite her desire to keep it private is both a demonstration of his ability to bring her out of the safety of "non-sexual woman" and into the danger of "woman publicly seen to be sexual" and a demonstration to everyone involved that a) he is more in charge of the situation than she is, and b) his sexuality empowers him, while hers makes her a target.

So, hopefully, this little diatribe may accomplish two things--answer the question "Why do guys do that?" and arm you, my gentle readers, for the possible calling out of anyone--friend, family, or stranger--who pulls that shit and then has the gall to protest "Hey, I was only having fun," "Hey, it was just a compliment," or the ever-popular "What's the big deal?"

Because every time this happens, another man is telling another woman,

"No matter who you are, where you are, or how you behave, you are a target. No matter how you may wish to hide or disguise your sexuality in order to keep yourself safe, you cannot do so because your sexuality is actually mine to invoke at any time I see fit, and my invocation of your sexuality simultaneously makes you vulnerable and empowers me. The public sphere is mine to act in, and yours to be afraid in. I am predator, you are prey. Never forget that."

And that's a Big Deal.

=================================
*and for anyone contemplating a homo-erotic parallel between street harassment and my athletic cheering, I assure you, I am just as likely to yell out something obscene and enthusiastic when Desiree Williams rips one into left field or Cat Osterman strikes out yet another hapless batter. My God, can that woman pitch.

**Yes I have regressive taste in cars. Sue me.

***This is not to rule out remarks on someone's sexual attractiveness when they are part of a socially acceptable and mutually desirable process of flirtation. That many men claim not to understand the difference between dropping "you have such a charming smile" into the middle of an already-flirtatious conversation and hollering "Nice Ass!" at a woman schlepping home her groceries is evidence of either abysmal ignorance of the social codes governing flirting or a cynical disingenuousness.

Tasteless Satire Needed

2006-04-11T23:38:00.000-05:00

[UPDATE: For those of you who got here by clicking the "Welcome" icon in the sidebar, I must admit that it was a shameless attempt to get you to come here and read this post.

Or, more honestly, to get you to come here and look at the full version of the graphic and slogan, about which I'm rather excited.

See, I have no formal training in graphic design or anything like that, so when I occasionally put something together that I really like, I get all excited and want to show it off. And since I knew that this post was going to get buried very quickly, I decided to put up that icon just so people could come and see it.

'Cause I think it's pretty keen.]

Via the indomitable Bitch, we find our way to this competition for a new South Dakota State Motto.

Obviously, this is a great idea, but just as obviously, they need some higher-quality submissions. Here is your humble narrator's opening salvo:

This is too good of an idea to be left to .gif clip art and multicolored fonts. I know some of you have graphic design skills as well as snarky senses of humor, so saddle up your irony and head on over.

Oh, and if you want to volunteer to clean up their html, that might be nice, too.

Scapegoats and Culpability

2006-04-10T23:39:00.000-05:00

So, yeah, I've slacked for a week. So what I was about to post is no longer quite so current, but that's okay, because it's more of a theoretical rambling on guilt and redemption than a hard-hitting news scoop, so a few days of staleness won't affect it noticeably.

One thing that the discussion about gang rape over at Pandagon touched on before I completely slacked off both the reading and the writing was the question of group and individual culpability. I posted some thoughts on the matter, and then being the lazy sod that I am, I reworked them here for your edification. The entire comment thread, however, is worth a look.

What happened was that the very first comment made this point, referring to a (fairly disturbing) article about men who participate in attacks of this kind:

But yeah, that’s an excellent–and horrifying–article. Especially about how many of the boys who do this are otherwise normal and even good people, but somehow when you get them all together, they lose what little sense of boundaries they have. It’s just bizarre. I can’t wrap my head around it.

That set off some spirited discussion of whether anyone who participates--or even fails to intervene in--a gang rape can actually be a "otherwise normal and even good" person. The negative was stated strongly thus:

You might as well ask how many SS death camp guards were “otherwise normal and even good people.” Group think, however powerful, is not a replacement for individual culpability, moral or legal. If they’d deny her essential humanity in a group they’d deny it as an individual whether the group gave them courage to perform the sin or not.

But that definitely rang a bell for me, and I had to argue against it. When my wife was studying the Holocaust, she read a lot about exactly who the SS guards were. And yes, in fact, a fair number of them were “otherwise decent people.” Rates of alcoholism and suicide were way high among the guards precisely because they were otherwise decent people who were forcing themselves to participate in horrific acts in order to conform to extreme pressure. Same thing with the mass rapes in Bosnia–some Chetniks reported having to get drunk before they could force themselves to participate in the rapes–they knew it was wrong, the felt the revulsion, but they forced themselves to do it in order to conform.

Now, before anyone tears me a new one on this, let me be clear that I’m in no way condoning the actions or excusing the people in question. Nor am I saying “poor SS guards" and "let’s all feel sorry for the Chetniks.” No. They are all 100% responsible for their actions and guilty of their crimes.

What I am saying is that any sociologist will tell you that people who are decent, by any measure you want to pick, will participate in cruel and dehumanizing actions under the right pressure–the Milgram Experiment, designed in the wake of the Holocaust, tested just this idea. Guess what--65% of average folk failed. We can assume that most of them were "otherwise decent."

In fact, there are plenty of cases where entire towns turned out to watch or participate in a lynching. Unless the definition of “decent” is so restricted that you can have a town–even multiple towns– without a single decent person in them, then decent people can perpetrate–or watch while others perpetrate–horrific things.

The reason this is important is that blaming gang rape on aberrant individuals lets the system off. We live in a society were decent men are constantly pressured, even coerced, to go along with the systematic degradation of women. And while gang rapists need to take 100% responsibility for their actions, labeling them as monsters obscures the deeper problem.

It’s almost like a weird reverse scapegoating. If you brand someone as a “monster,” then you’re labeling them as “other,” as in “something other than normal people.” But the problem is that “normal people” are, in fact, complicit in the system that allows, even encourages, this to happen.

Even if we labeled all 47 of the Duke lacrosse players–and their coaches, and their roommates, and their parents–”monsters” or “evil” or “abnormal,” we’d still be letting the vast majority of people who participate in the system off the hook. The very horror of the situation is that most of those guys probably are normal. We live in a culture where normal people can stand by while their friends commit gang-rape because women, especially if sex is involved, just don’t receive full human status. How much do you want to bet that if the 3 active perpetrators had grabbed the pizza guy and were treating him in exactly the same way, their teammates would have said, “What the Fuck are you doing?!” and intervened?

I mean, can you imagine any other situation where a room full of college students would watch someone get physically abused and violated without stepping in?

Perpetrators and enablers do not deserve easy absolution. Nor do they get to blame their personal failures on any abstract concept like "patriarchy." But branding them as unnatural beasts denies the fact that they are a natural product of a patriarchal society.

It’s complicated. You don’t want to choose a one (or three, or 47) individuals and say “this only happened because they are morally reprehensible aberrations.” Nor do you want to grant the “easy absolution” of blaming their acts on the system in which they were formed. The goal should be to hold the guilty responsible while still calling out the system which allows and even encourages such crimes.

____________________________

So, then someone posted a comment more-or-less agreeing with my point about the dangers of blaming atrocities (like gang rape) on "monstrous" individuals:

But “other” ing someone can be part of a strategy of projecting one’s own shortfalls onto someone else on a personal level as well.

...and I just couldn't help pulling out the French Theologian that I just happen to keep around for just such an occasion:

OK, I'm going to get all geeky here, but the above is exactly what Rene Girard is on about with his whole theory of scapegoating. What he says happens is that when a community finds itself in discord, it has two choices--it can either deal with the actual cause of the discord, which will implicate the community as a whole and force it to change its ways, or it can single out an individual and place all the blame on that one person. Then, the community which was fractured can come back together in wholeness--with the exception of the scapegoated individual. Girard calls that "unanimity minus one."

Being part of the unanimity allows you to project any culpability you may have in the community discord onto the "one." As long as you're not the scapegoat, you are absolved of both your personal culpability (for participating in the system) and the community-wide culpability of keeping the system in place. All the blame is placed on the scapegoat. And because the scapegoat is driven out of the community [apparently, the used to actually use a goat. They would symbolically load it with the community's sin, and then drive it out into the desert to die] the community can go back to thinking of itself as a just and harmonious community--until the next discord, when they will have to select another scapegoat.

Now, this is complicated by the fact that unlike the traditional scapegoat who is innocent and is selected for reasons other than guilt (often vulnerability--like the single women who were killed as witches and the African-American men who were lynched for rapes that white men committed), gang rapists are in fact, guilty.

But what tends to happen is that in addition to the wrongdoing that is justly heaped upon them, they also become the carriers of the larger community's culpability. When they are driven out into the desert (or into the penitentiary), they take with them the culpability that the larger community ought to be dealing with.

That allows the community to tell itself, "Whew. Thank God we got rid of those people who were the source of all that discord. That problem no longer exists within our community. Now we can go back to our just and harmonious ways."

Only the community doesn't have just and harmonious ways. The fact that the scapegoats are publicly (and rightly) saddled with their personal culpability doesn't change the fact that the discord was caused not solely by the acts for which the scapegoats are culpable, but also by the community-wide culpability which the scapegoating process serves--intentionally--to deny.

All of which is further complicated when defense attorneys take it one step further and attempt to scapegoat the victim. "She led these poor boys on. She's the one at fault. Cast her into the desert and then we can go back to our just and harmonious ways."

Who's to Blame?

2006-03-31T23:43:00.000-06:00

So, over at the Bitch's place, she's got A White Bear filling in for her. So AWB asks, "Who's Your Favorite Feminist?" Meaning, who's the one who opened your eyes--who's the one that got you started down this road to ruin that led inevitably to reading over-educated potty mouths like Bitch PhD. (and your humble narrator)?

Well, since you asked...

My mom was born in 1940 and remembers vividly being turned away from the Law session at her high school career day because she was "a girl."

When I was 8, it was 1973 and we lived overseas where they made beautiful carvings out of teak. One day she brought home a carved pig and put it on the shelf. A few days later, one of us--my Dad, my brother, or I--said something that rubbed her the wrong way, and she pulled the little carved pig off the shelf and handed it to whichever one of us had said it. "Here you are. The Male Chauvinist Pig award."We all thought it was funny, but one of us got the award about once a month from then on. I don't know if she ever used the "F" word, but she didn't let us forget that we were saying and thinking sexist crap all the time.

Flash forward 16 years and my English degree at Huge State University is shattered when my politically active Chicano friend convinces me to take an African-American Lit class. He says the teacher is awesome. Up to that point, through well over 30 hours of English credit, no one had ever assigned any readings except for the works in question--Shakespeare, Yeats, Shelley, Milton, etc. It was all "truth is beauty and beauty is truth..." up to that point.

Suddenly, I'm sitting in the presence of one Dr. Wahneema Lubiano, and she's throwing words like "hegemony" and "deconstructionism" around, and we're reading Franz Fanon and Henry Louis Gates and bell hooks and then we get to the novels: Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara...

Shit. This little white boy just about blew a fuse. She challenged us, called us out, and asked really fucking hard questions. Her final was the hardest thing I ever did in college, and her class is one of the main reasons that I went on to spend six years in graduate school studying gender and violence.

Thank you Mom, and thank you Dr. Wahneema Lubiano. Y'all literally and permanently rocked my world. Every post I write is because of you

Go Read the Letter

2006-03-29T23:57:00.000-06:00

Okay. The last post was on a topic that literally makes me sick to think about it. But this is definitely one of those you-can-do-something-about-it issues.

Last Tuesday--before the Duke attacks--Flea of "One Good Thing" wrote a fantastic piece on the very same subject. It describes a similar assault, but it's also an amazingly hopeful piece.

What Flea wrote was a letter to her sons, twelve years in the future--when they would be old enough that they might be the "other" guys at the party who had the chance to do something--or to stand by and let the attack happen. Or even participate.

And it's about someone who was the "other guy," and who at very great risk to himself, did "do something."

Please, go and read it now. Read it to your boys, if you have them. If they're not old enough, print it out and save it for when they are. Forward it to your friends who have boys (that's what I'm doing). In the wake of the Duke attacks, I don' t think we could ask for a more compelling and honorable call to arms then Flea provides. Please read it, and share it.

________________________________

NB: Reading Flea's letter, I realized that I'd actually once been in this "other guy's" presence. At my commencement, they announced that our keynote speaker (some guy I'd never heard of) was going to be awarded an honorary PhD in "Military Ethics." "Great," I thought, "More glorification of the military."

Then he stepped up to the mike and told his story, and I realized who he was. He was the US helicopter pilot who stopped the My Lai massacre.

Hugh Thompson saw what was happening in the village, landed his helicopter, and ordered the US troops--some of whom outranked him-- to cease fire. He also ordered his gunners to fire on the US troops if they continued attacking the civilians.

I always carry that image in my mind of a helicopter settling down between the perpetrators and the helpless--literally placing his body between the attackers and their victims. One brave young man willing to engage in a fight to the death with his comrades to save people he had never met.

I was suddenly very proud of my university.

Go read Flea's letter.

Gang Rape

2006-03-29T23:54:00.000-06:00

Amanda has a short and sharp piece on the Duke gang rape. Actually, on gang rape in general. * I left much of the following as comments on her thread, but I thought I'd re-publish them here, as well.

Amanda made three points that got me thinking:

Accusations of effeminence are used to keep unwilling participants in the game.

One thing that gang rape does is to enact a main premise of homosociality: relationships between men trump relationships between men and women.

Consider this–-not only would most of those guys at Duke not have raped those women one-on-one, but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that the vast majority of those guys would have come to the woman’s defense had they stumbled on to the scene of a rape by a single attacker.

Think about it–you’re a young, athletic guy who excels at a contact sport. You turn the corner coming home from the library and you see some guy in the process of sexually assaulting a woman. I’m going to bet that 99% of those guys would have the very least called 911. I think most of them would have kicked the living shit out of the attacker. But when it’s their buddies or teammates–and as a survivor of 7 years of organized football in Texas, I can attest to the lengths that teammate bonding can go to–suddenly it’s “Can I be next?” or at the very best, “Hey guys, I’m not sure you should be doing that. Um, guys?”

That’s because the homosocial codes that are strongly in place in most men’s sports teams (among a bazillion other places) dictate that if you have to choose between your relationship with a woman and your relationship with men to whom you are bonded, you have to choose the latter–or else you’re feminized (a “pussy”) and as such, no longer fit for the homosocial bond.

Criminologists say that a lot of young men who participate in gang rapes would never rape a woman on their own....The victims are objects of male bonding.

Another main premise of homosociality that gang rape enacts is that men bond homosocially over/through the bodies of women.

That is, the woman becomes the conduit for male connection–the male bond is “triangulated,” deflected through the body of the woman.** Not that this is homosexual (that would be insulting to gay men), but the very opposite–the presence of a woman serves to nullify the threat of homosexuality implicit within the homosocial bond.

Look at it this way–is there any place besides a woman’s body that straight guys are willing to put their dicks immediately after another guy put his there?

“Hey Mitch–can I borrow your jockstrap?”
“Sure, Bart, lemme peel it off real quick.”
“Thanks, man. Hey! It’s still warm. Sweet.”

Similarly, can you imagine if two of those teammates had been caught masturbating in front of each other? But if they’re masturbating into a woman, suddenly there’s nothing queer about it.

It’s good evidence for the feminist assertion that rape is a tool of male dominance–the psychology is a lot like that of war–you must be brutal to the target to show your loyalty to the group.

And this is how gang rape enacts the patriarchal control of a women's bodies by men. "Objectify" is about as literal as it gets here--they guys are demonstrating to each other that (and celebrating the fact that) together they have the power to transform a human being into an object.

As Amanda noted, a lot of gang rapists wouldn't assault a woman by themselves. I'm sure that some proportion wouldn't because it's a horrific act, and they only end up doing so because they get caught up in mob hysteria. But at least some of them wouldn't do it alone only because they couldn't do it alone. Depending on which study you read, somewhere between 25% and 50% of undergraduate men say they might rape a woman if they believed they would get away with it. I imagine ganging up with your teammates increases your expectation of being able to get away with it.

Just like patriarchy in general, it's not something that a single man can practice by himself. He needs the active consent and participation of other men. In return for his support of their objectification of women, they can be counted on to in turn support his objectification of women.

__________________________________
*The Duke attacks also have clear race and class elements, which have been commented on by others more intelligently than I could do here.

**An extremely common, though counterintuitive example of this is the Hero and Anti-Hero fighting over a woman in an action film. There's generally a perverse--but very strong--bond between the Hero and Anti-Hero these films, and I have no idea I have seen the scene where the Anti-Hero is holding the woman with a gun to her head as he and the Hero literally negotiate over her body like it was a fucking used car. She, of course, is a non-participant in the conversation that will determine her fate.

Woolly-headed Conservatives

2006-03-29T23:14:00.000-06:00

Those woolly-headed conservatives. They're always paving the road to hell with good intentions one way or the other, so wrapped up in feel-good sentiment they can't see their own stunning lack of logic.

I mean, face it folks--it's a cold, hard, unfeeling world out there. The statistics don't care how pure your intentions are, the hard issues facing our country aren't just going to melt away because your heart's in the right place. That's what conservatives are too idealistic to understand: it's logic and rationality that gets results, not wishful thinking based on how you think the world ought to work.

No, seriously. I'm not just writing satire here. Although the above is basic script #17A for denouncing liberals and making fun of their positions, it really applies at least as well to those on the right side of the aisle. Conservatives love to cast themselves as "clear-eyed," "sober," and "realistic," all the while deriding liberals for being all touchy-feely and full of wishful thinking. But let's look at a few of the right's favorite projects, and see who's being "woolly-headed," shall we?

The War on Drugs Let's see, Ronald Reagan declared the War on Drugs in 1980. Since then, by virtually any measure, the war is a failure. Drugs are easier to get, more widely used, and crossing our borders in higher purities than ever before. The federal government spent over $19 billion in 2003 on the war, and state and local agencies spent a similar amount. Prison doesn't cure people of drug addictions, and fear of it doesn't stop them from using drugs. Yet conservatives have made the drug war a "third rail" of political discourse, and openly criticizing it is suicide for mainstream politicians.

The visceral satisfaction of this feel-good policy trumps all logic: witness the case of needle-exchange programs. Every time a case is made for needle-exchange programs that would save lives by preventing HIV infections, conservatives trot out their drug-war favorite: "It would send the wrong message." Yet there is absolutely no evidence that needle-exchange programs increase intravenous drug use. There is, however, solid, scientific, public health data to show that needle-exchange programs do save lives. Will those woolly-headed conservatives listen? Not on your life.

Sex Ed "Abstinence Only" has become the watchword of the Bush administration's sex ed policy. In fact, in Texas, under then-Governor Bush, abstinance-only was made the law. Yet, there's no evidence to show that abstinence-only sex ed works, and some that suggests it actually makes the problem worse. Keeping kids in the dark about sex doesn't help them keep their pants on. It just makes sure that when they pull their pants off, they don't know the first damn thing about how to prevent disease or pregnancy.

Yet, as with drugs, the Right Wing attacks anyone who points out theses blindingly obvious facts by saying they're sending the wrong message, and that anything from telling a kid what a condom is, to giving her a vaccine that could save her life, will only "encourage teen promiscuity."

A claim for which there is simply no evidence. Just the Conservatives' wishful thinking about how the world ought to work.

The War on Terror When it comes down to it, there's nothing quite as feel-good as a war. The world is a scary place, and we can all agree that it got a hell of a lot scarier after 9/11. It's tempting to simply try to be bigger and scarier than those who would harm us. This seems to be exactly what the Israelis have been doing for the past 10 years or so, and look how well it's worked for them.

In addition, war offers a bleak comfort. Once we've decided that someone is "the enemy," then every injury inflicted on us simply increases our righteous anger, stiffens our spine, and strengthens our resolve to accomplish the mission.

The logic is simple, and appealing: there are bad guys in the world. They want to hurt us. If we kill them all, they won't hurt us. Logic which works great if you're playing Rainbow Six or some shit like that, but not so well when applied to real people.

As we see in Iraq. The more we continue that misbegotten adventure, the more we convince the entire Islamic world that we are out to get them. We are recruiting terrorists like Osama never could. The fucking Pentagon has acknowleged that it's our policies that are pissing people off, but that's a cold, hard reality that the conservatives are scared to face--they prefer the warm fuzzies of "they hate our freedom" and "we're bringing democracy to the Middle East" and "Die, Motherfucker, Die."

Sigh. It's really just another example of how the Rove/Atwater Right have fucking owned the Left's image at least since I was in junior high. No wonder Bush has declared war on science--if the average American were willing to look soberly at the facts, half the GOP's platform collapse.

Smack Down a Theocrat in 27 Words or Less...

2006-03-28T23:26:00.000-06:00

And today's winner is Jamie Raskin, professor of Constitutional Law at American University (and who happens to be running in the Democratic primary for Maryland State Senate).

"People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution. They don't put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible." (via Political Cortex)

Goddamn, that's good.

Why is that so good? Because it evokes the "America is a Christian Nation" argument, only to show why it is not only absurd, but flatly anti-American. What he does is first makes reference to the practices of public figures, court witnesses, etc., using the Bible in an official, governmental capacity. This is evokes the Theocrat argument* because swearing on a Bible is probably the clearest and most pure example of the first, and largely correct, part of the basic Theocrat argument, roughly paraphrased thus:

Christianity is now, and has always been, the predominant religion of both our nation and our culture. America was founded by people who descended, culturally, from over 1400 years of Christianity. The pledge is "Under God," the Presidential oath is "so help me God," God and the Bible--the Christian God and the Christian Bible--are woven all through the fabric of this nation...

I could see a Theocrat even thinking they were going to like what was coming next after they heard Raskin's opening, "People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution..."

But Raskin neatly flips it on his head, showing that even the President of the United States, swearing to a (presumably) Christian god on a Christian Bible, immediately defers to the authority of the Constitution:

They don't put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.

Haayyyll, Yeah! Politicians aren't swearing on the Bible to demonstrate that Baby Jeebus ought to be our Commander in Chief. The act of swearing on the Bible (in this instance) is using the Bible to prove that you are really fucking seriously telling the truth, cross your heart and swear to burn in a literal lake of fire in exquisite agony for all eternity if you're fibbing.

Swearing on the Bible--perhaps the highest and clearest instance of Christianity functioning in our government--is done to prove your commitment to upholding the Constitution, not the shellfish-and-sacrifice laws of a Bronze Age sky god.

Which is where Raskin thoroughly refutes the second half of the Theocrats' argument, roughly paraphrased thus:

..., so it's time for you atheists and Pagans and Jews and non-fundamentalist Christians to just get the fuck over yourselves and let us return this country to the Christian government that Jehovah intended for her. And lets start by stoning 13 year-old ~~rape victims~~ adulteresses to death, just like they do in Iran.

[Okay, so they might not say "fuck," and they rarely call (openly) for the stoning of adulteresses, but that's the general gist of it.]

But no. No, even swearing on the Bible, the poster child of the see-we-really-are-a-Christian-Nation crowd, shows how wrong these folk are. Swearing on the Bible is not a promise to govern the United States in a Christian manner. Swearing on the Bible is an old Christian way of saying "I promise my God that I will faithfully defend the Constitution of the United States. And if I'm lying, I'll be Satan's toothpick for all eternity."

Does that mean that George Bush will burn in Hell for warrantless spying?

So--now for the do-it-yerfuckingself part of our program. The guy who posted this on Political Cortex, Theocracy ass-kicker Frederick Clarkson, had this to say:

Jamie Raskin is becoming nationally known as an advocate for marriage equality -- and for coining a phrase so important and so memorable that it deserves not only be to be widely quoted -- but considered part of an essential lesson that should be deeply learned by everyone concerned about the rise of the religious right.

So, do your part, already. Use the Raskin quote. Blog about it. Work it into a conversation. Email the article to your Theocrat cousin. Hell, just tell somebody to come read this post. This is a perfect example of the type of "framing" that the Religious Right has been so damn good at for the past 20 years and the Left has been so shitty at. So find some little way to share this with someone, anyone, today:

"People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution. They don't put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

_____________________________________
*Said argument having been implicitly advanced by his interlocutor (former Concerned Women for America leader and current Maryland State Senator Nancy Jacobs ) immediately prior:

"As I read Biblical principles, marriage was intended, ordained and started by God - that is my belief....For me, this is an issue solely based on religious principals."

On "Legislating Morality"

2006-03-27T20:37:00.000-06:00

Thank you, thank you, Gov. Perry.

Yes, I am actually thanking the governor of Texas for his most recent pro-theocrat/anti-logic statement, because it helped me put at rest something that's been niggling at the back of my neck for quite some time.

It's about the phrase "legislating morality." We on the Evil Left are generally against criminalizing various behaviors just because your religion and/or weltanshaung opposes it. We often refer to this type of behavior as "legislating morality." As in, just because you think pot, contraception and three-way sex are moral abominations, doesn't mean that you get to criminalize them--even if you have a majority in the State Legislature.

Hell, I think SUVs and polyester are moral abominations, but you don't see me purchasing my own collection of Texas legislators to do my bidding.

That's because I think we ought to keep matters of law and morality more or less separate. It used to be illegal for men and women to cohabit (shack up) in most, if not all states. The sale of alcohol was criminalized (temporarily) in our constitution. Heck, blowjobs (but, interestingly, not rimjobs) were criminal in Georgia up until 2003, when the Texas law (which criminalized gay blowjobs but not straight blowjobs, straight rimjobs, or gay rimjobs) was struck down.

So, there's just a whole lot of people (namely, those who like blowjobs and carpetmunching more than rimjobs) who have no problem saying, "Yeah! Those Liberals are right. You can't legislate morality."

But how quickly their faith is shaken when some legal Ozymandias like Rick Perry unleashes the terrible swift sword of his Scalia-like reasoning:

Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who is seeking re-election, spoke to hundreds of pastors at a meeting of the Texas Restoration Project, which hopes to elect candidates who reflect conservative Christian views. He promoted the idea of spiritual values in the public square and told the pastors that it was ridiculous for people to say morality can't be legislated.
"I say you can't not legislate morality,"

Forgiving the awkward (if not technically improper) double negative, I think I have an idea of what Gov. Goodhair was driving at. And I'll be honest, it's a doubt that's been niggling at the back of my mind for quite some time.

Not that I ever doubted that you could, in fact "not legislate morality," it's just that I was never really sure how to answer the basic contention:

Legislation is laws. Laws tell us what we can and cannot do. Some of the things we cannot do are murder, theft, and burglary. Murder, theft, and burglary are morally offensive acts, which is why they are against the law. Ergo, it is not only possible, but good, proper and necessary that we legislate morality.

Now, I'm sure that anyone who ever took Logic 301 could probably cut that to shreds any number of ways, but I took Ethics 301 instead, so I've never been a fan of saying someone's otherwise-valid argument is worthless just because they committed a Gambler's Fallacy or a Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc.

No, I'm much more interested in giving people the logical benefit of the doubt, and trying to see if their basic argument holds water at all. [The logic Nazis are the same type of people who will read through your 1,100-word refutation of Pat Robertson's latest outrage and tell you that you're just another clueless Liberal because you misused a semicolon.]

So, thinking about Perry's bit of legal reasoning finally made the last piece fall into place for me. That is, I now not only know that the "Sure, you can legislate morality--we do it all the time," argument is horseshit, but I can articulate why as well.

It's because we're not legislating morality. We're legislating Human, Civil, and Property Rights.

Now, all my Libertarian readers out there (those that can tear themselves away from their well-worn copies of Time Enough for Love) are probably all nodding and saying "Geez. Finally he gets it." But it really is an important distinction.

Look at it this way--if you and your gay partner decided--prior to 2003--that you'd had about all the (legal) rimjobs you wanted and decided to move on up to (criminal) blowjobs, you would be in violation of the moral codes of the people who happened to control the Texas legislature at the time.

But you wouldn't be violating anybody's rights.

If, on the other hand, I decide that I've had enough of HowlerMonkeyBoy's sass and decide to stone him to death, I am perfectly in keeping with the moral codes of the people who currently control the Texas legislature at the time.

But there would be the small matter of my violating his rights.

Think about it. Is murder immoral? Yes. Is that why it's illegal? No. It's illegal because you are generally thought to be violating someone's rights when you kill them.

You don't get thrown in jail for boosting the distributor out of my '92 Mazda because it's some kind of moral failing. You get thrown in jail for boosting the distributor out of my '92 Mazda because you are violating my property rights.

You don't get the law called on your ass when you burn a church, bail on your child support, or grab your co-worker's tits because those aren't nice things to do. You get the law called on your ass because those are ways of violating other people's rights.

The laws are not there to protect anybody's idea of morals. Sure, they go hand in hand a lot, and I'm not saying they don't, because I don't want some WallBuilders-trained wingnut assailing me with 1,200 (possibly bogus) quotes from Our Founding Patriarchs which happen to have the word "moral" in them. I think morality is a good thing, and I think most, if not all laws aim to have a moral component in them.

But our nation wasn't founded because Our Founding Patriarchs held certain morals to be self-evident or inalienable. No, those guys were all about rights. And so we live in a country founded upon the idea of keeping our rights safe from the government, from our fellow citizens, and--most relevantly today--from organized motherfucking religion.

And these guys knew about organized motherfucking religion. They knew that people could get tortured, hanged, burned alive, and worse for things that religious folks considered immoral. So, although they did mention "God" occasionally, and "The Creator" and whatnot, they quite deliberately avoided writing Baby Jeebus or Leviticus or The Ten Commandments into our original documents, and they based the government which we enjoy to this day on the Pale-Male Enlightenment concept of Rights.

So, Governor Perry, here's an idea. How about you keep yer Goddamn Morals offa my Rights?.

Why Cyrus of Persia Does not Upset Pat Robertson

2006-03-26T23:27:00.000-06:00

What does the Religious Right want?

[Actually, because what the movers and shakers of the Religious Right really want is power, let's ask, "What do the people who follow the demagogues of the Religious Right want?"]

If you asked the average campaigning, activist, fundamentalist, "So, what's on your mind?" what do you think the top three answers would be?

A holy and righteous rage against the plight of the poor and the homeless?

A Christ-like rejection of war, violence, and retribution?

A passionate witness to the godless prison-industrial complex that Jesus commands us to forgive those who trespass against us "seven times seventy" times?*

Probably not.

No, I'm going to go waaaay out on a limb and say that the top three things that popped up in everybody's imagination were Evolution, Abortion, and Homosexuality.

Now, those of us who were still were still in Sunday school when Roe was handed down probably regard most of these as the natural state of affairs--fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Baptists gotta rewrite biology textbooks. But there's really no good reason why it should be that way.

Well, no good biblical reason, anyway.

Think about it: the Bible is a big damn book. It's all full of commands and doctrine and orthodoxy. But guess what--your average fundamentalist activist is a miserable fucking failure when it comes to following about 90% of them.

[As are the rest of us. It's just that we don't go around a) claiming to live by the book, and b) getting fucking laws written and amendments passed based on our firm and unshakable adherence to God's little Bronze-Age instruction book.]

You know the laws and doctrine I mean: stoning your sons and daughters to death, sacrificing doves, passing up crawfish gumbo and Philly cheesesteaks--that sort of thing. The ones we all like to make fun of. They're easy targets, but mostly pretty irrelevant.

Then there are the ones that we can take more seriously--the "go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor" bit, the "I was hungry and you gave me food" bit, the "Whatever city you enter....heal the sick there" bit. Those are a hell of a lot more important, and--credit where credit is due--there is a hell of a lot of good done on these fronts by organized Christians.

But then there's the unholy trinity: Abortion, Homosexuality, and Evolution. Why those three? Why, of all the hundreds and hundreds of ways in which our society differs from the social order (supposedly) commanded by Jehovah and Christ, are these particular three such a big goddamn deal?

Let's start with abortion. Abortion, at least, has some fairly simple and clear logic behind it. If you believe, for what ever reason, that life--fully human, constitutionally protected life--begins at conception,** then you'd at least have a case that abortion could be homicide [Note that I said "homicide," not "murder." Big difference]. Like I said in a previous post, I'm kind of a dogmatist, so I have a soft spot for absolutist positions. And if it stopped there, the fundamentalists would be on much firmer ground. But it doesn't stop there--it's not just abortion that's forbidden, it's (depending on who you talk to) all forms of contraception.

What the fuck is up with that? Given that it's a (purely) theoretical possibility that Plan B could keep a fertilized egg from implanting, I can at least see the objection. But condoms? Sponges? Spermicial jelly? What the fuck is wrong with any of those?

OK. Number 2: Boinking people whose genitalia resemble your own. There are hundreds of laws and prohibitions in the bible--why does this one stand out? I have ranted more than once on this particular topic, so I won't belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that every time Jerry Falwell quotes scripture to justify homophobia, it just raises his "Scriptural teachings followed to Scriptural teachings absofuckingloutely ignored" ratio a little bit higher.

Finally: monkeys. It has been my keen observation that a public school child can make it through 12 years of school in the intellectual capital of the Bible Belt (Lubbock, I think), without the school board mandating that a Biblically-consistent account of The Great Flood be taught in Geology class. He or she won't be taught that it was not, in fact, Cyrus of Persia who captured Babylon in the sixth century BCE (as the established historical scholarship maintains) but actually one Darius the Mede (of whom no historical record exists. At all.)

No, odds are that out of all the 57 bazillion ways in which a literal interpretation of the Bible is contradicted by History, Science, Geography, and Just Plain Common Sense, there is only one issue on which there is likely to be any significant debate: evolution.

So, why is it that these three are the Grand Trifecta of Theocrat Demagoguery?

The Answer? Gender, gender, and race.

All three are biblical excuses to perpetuate oppressions that have been around longer than the bible. Scratch the anti-abortion/contraception furor and you get a whole lot of people who don't want women having sex outside of a Biblically-approved marriage. Scratch the Leviticus-quoting homophobe and you're not going to find an ultra-orthodox observer of every last Levitican proscription. You're going to find someone who thinks they get to decide who's allowed to have sexual relations with who.

And Evolution? It's the most fun. My personal hypothesis is that it has something to do with the fact that for a couple of centuries prior to Origin of Species (1859), the so-called "White Race" (which they really did call themselves back then) had maintained two ideas as articles of faith: that Africans and Europeans were, if not entirely different species, at least extremely distantly related to each other, and that Africans were somehow--biologically or just symbolically--related to apes and monkeys. Over the years, these ideas had grown in importance. In order to continue things like slavery in the midst of a country who claims "freedom" as its middle name, Africans had to be cleaved off from the rest of humanity. And because one of the best ways to do this was to identify Africans with apes and monkeys, the White Race had expended considerable time and energy stressing just how bad, how degrading, how terribly disgusting it was to be related--biologically or just symbolically--to apes and monkeys.

So, along comes Mr. Darwin, and his little theory of evolution which eventually says, "Guess what, Mr. White Supremacist (and yes, they did actually call themselves that, too), not only are you and your swarthy neighbor exactly the same species, but you are both only a hop, skip and a mandible away from Curious George over there."

So, all of a sudden, continuing to accept one of the basic tenets of White Supremacy--one that has been internalized at a gut level--requires a convincing rebuttal to Biological Science. Or a rebuttal, anyway.

Not that this is the only religious objection to evolution, nor that it is the original one. But for my money, it's got a hell of a lot to do with why the United States is the laughingstock of the world when it comes to evolution in the classrooms.

Think about all the things in the bible that don't arouse controversy. All the things that we teach kids in school that don't jibe with the Bible, and yet don't turn the Theocrats out on election day. Then look at the ones that do, and you'll see a religious pretext to continue defending structures of oppression that are no longer morally defensible in and of themselves.

Anti-abortion is not about Baby Jesus. Homophobia is not about Leviticus. Creationism is not about Science. This shit is about using the Good Book to camouflage the immoral defense of some good, old-fashioned unearned privilege.

______________________________________
*If you're doing the math, that's "490 strikes and you're out."

** Which in, case anyone's wondering, it doesn't.

In Which the Oompa Loompas Teach us Poststructuralist Feminism

2006-03-23T23:28:00.001-06:00

So, I'm driving in the car with EvilGeniusGirl, and we're talking about our recent favoritest movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We were talking about the way they used digital effects to make one actor look like all 165 little Oompa Loompas.* And of course, it is one actor, as opposed to actress, that is used to create all the dozens and dozens of little Oompa Loompas. Thus, all the Oompa Loompas are male.

Hmm...

EvilGeniusGirl argued that there were actually a few females. I asked where, and she thought a moment and pointed out the secretary (because, after all, men can't do secretarial labor) and possibly the Oompa-Loompa who was watching Oprah. So one, possibly two out of 165. Both engaged in activities traditionally coded as female.

So, I point out how sexist it is that all the Oompa Loompas are male, just from a "“women-ought-to-be-included"” standpoint. EvilGeniusGirl agrees. It's not fair that only guys get to be Oompa Loompas.

But it's also sexist on a deeper level, and that's where the word of the day comes in.

Today's word is "cisgender" (aka "cissexual"). It's created from the Latin prefix meaning "on this side of" or "not across," as in "cisalpine" (a word I'm sure you use almost every day).

"Cisgender" was coined as a complement to "transgender," in response to the observation that there was no way to [as Wikipedia puts it] "describe non-transgender people without the use of negative prefixes" (as in non-transgender) "while still avoiding terms like 'normal', 'born' or 'genetic' " (as in normal man, genetic woman, etc)

The mighty Wikipedia goes on to say:

it originated as a way to shift the focus off of a marginalized group, by defining not only the minority group but also the majority. This is based upon the hypothesis that categorizing everyone will illustrate a difference between equal alternatives, whereas singling out the minority group implies some deviance, immorality, or defect on the part of the labeled group. [emphasis added]

That's the same line of thought that brought us "people of color" as a replacement for "non-whites." If you call people "non-whites," you set up "White" as the norm--as that against which all others are measured. Falling into one of these "non" categories (non-Christian, non-standard, etc.) implies failure to measure up to the standard.

This is basic post-structualism. Read Foucault and Derrida (if you dare).

So, it's not just that women don't get to play in the Oompa Loompa reindeer games. And it's not even that women's very existence is erased by having all 165 Oompa Loompas played by a somewhat grizzled, Charles Bronsonesqe male actor.

It's the way in which, by constructing women as the "exception" (despite their making up over half of the world's fucking population), women become "non-men," and thus abnormal.

So, while there's no doubt that using a single actor for all the Oompa Loompas was a neat digital trick,** my question for EvilGeniusGirl was, "what if they had chosen a female actor?"

What if they had? What if all 165 Oompa Loompas had been portrayed by, say, Rosie O'Donnell? How many kids would ask "“Why were all the Oompa Loompas female?"” You know damn well that all the adults would.

So, being male in this case, as in most cases, is unremarkable. The Oompa Loompas portrayed aren't "male Oompa Loompas," they're just "Oompa Loompas." In the same way that we have "athletes" and "female athletes," and "health concerns" and "women's health concerns." Being male is unremarkable, and being female is remarkable--in the sense that being female marks you as being different, marks you as "non-male."

Even the secretary Oompa Loompa--the sole explicitly female character***--reinforces this. She is clearly a "“female Oompa Loompa."” She stands out like a sore thumb. Being a ~~male~~ Oompa Loompa is normal. Being a ~~male~~ Oompa Loompa is so "“normal"” it isn'’t noticed. To be a female Oompa Loompa is to be abnormal.

An illustration: no one, I promise (except for theory geeks like me) would watch the movie and ask, "“How come all the Oompa Loompas were traditionally able?"” But we would ask "“How come all the Oompa Loompas were in wheelchairs?" if all 165 Oompa Loompas had been played by an actor who used a wheelchair. That'’s because being in a wheelchair is considered abnormal, so it gets named.

Which brings us to the ever-trenchant Twisty's insistance that women are not, in our patriarchal society, granted full human being status.

It may sound like an exaggeration, but as I've found with the phrase "controlling women'’s bodies," once you start digging into this shit, you find that it's not actually a rhetorical or hysterical exaggeration of run-of-the-mill oppression. You find that controlling women's bodies and relegating them to subhuman status are actually foundational fucking concepts that structure the very fabric of our social relationships.

It's not that I'm looking at the absence of female actors in a movie and saying "there aren't any female Oompa Loompas, therefore women enjoy subhuman status in our society." No. That's the caricature that Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh love so much: the angry, unreasonable Feminazi who takes minor setbacks and imagined slights and tries to paint them as a vast and brutal sexist conspiracy to enslave women.

No, what I'm doing here is looking at the absence of female actors in a movie and saying "there aren't any female Oompa Loompas, because women enjoy subhuman status in our society."

Due to a vast and brutal sexist conspiracy to enslave women called "patriarchy."

Now go read Foucault.

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*For the Roald Dahl impaired among you, Oompa Loompas are the tiny, swarthy indigenous people that Willy Wonka has exported from their native land like so much lac resin to provide the labor at his factory. No, we didn't go into the racial/post-colonialist/Marxist implications of that. I figure one major axis of oppression per conversation. At least till she's 12.

**And using a single actor for all 165 Oompa Loompa plays right into racist/imperialist constructions of "non-white," "un-civilized" people as being functionally identical. They are the "undifferentiated mass" which is the polar opposite of the singular, male individual with an individual subjectivity and rigid boundaries. But let's stick with sexisim for the moment.

***Unless it's actually an Oompa Loompa in drag, which opens a whole other can of semiotic worms.

Whew! That Was Close...

2006-03-21T23:21:00.000-06:00

Holy shit! How could I have missed this one? We came this fucking close to having radical Islamic terrorists blow up a government building and assassinate a law enforcement official. I mean, holy fuck, people, this is real live terrorism right here on US soil! Fuck "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here," these fuckers are already over here, and they were caught in the act of trying to raise the money to carry out their deadly terrorist strike.

Why the fuck have we not heard about this!?!

How is it possible that these bastards were arrested in July of 2002, indicted in December of 2005, and I am only just today hearing about this, and not through a major paper or network (you'd of thought that Fox would have been all over this one like stink on shit), but through a crappy little not-even-200-word AP article that pillars of journalism like the Myrtle Beach Sun News saw fit to run.

Why is this not major headline fucking news!?!

Because they're white.

Because they're white, they're actually Klansmen, not Muslims, and because they're right-wing wackos. Simply replace the word "Islamic" in the above rant with "White Supremacist," and you don't have to change a thing--every word is true. They were plotting to assassinate the county Sheriff, they were planning to blow up the courthouse, and they were stealing guns in order to sell them for the cash they would need.

And you never heard a fucking word about it until today, did you?

And although I'm a close follower of the Klan, I didn't even know until this article came across my browser today, and that's only because I have Google News programmed to send me every single article that so much as contains the word "Klan."

No, the white guys were just not covered. Their arrests went virtually unnoticed, their indictments went virtually unnoticed, and were it not for me flapping my hands in the air and hyperventilating right now, you would never hear about their sentencing, either.

Despite the fact that one of the few (and I mean I searched Lexis-fucking-Nexis and found slightly more than diddly squat) mentions of the arrest I could dig up included phrases like "at least two bombs" and "an arsenal of numerous weapons" and "bomb-making materials at two homes," this somehow still wasn't newsworthy.

And no, this wasn't one of those "Oh, they're just a bunch of loud-mouth rednecks talking trash and they wouldn't have had the guts to actually do anything" kind of cases, either. No, this is one of those "some of them are also charged with a gory-assed, chief-evidence-is-the-blood-soaked-vehicle goddamn murder in the killing of one of their former associates, who authorities believe they'd tagged as an informant" kind of cases.

Those among you who are loyal readers (both of you) may remember a similar rant last August about a guy named Krar who was storing "machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs, and all the ingredients to make a cyanide bomb capable of killing anywhere from hundreds to over a thousand people" in his East Texas storage unit. When the feds busted that looney--with the ingredients for a genuine WMD on hand--John Ashcroft didn't even call a fucking press conference.

My thrust back then was similar, only it included the fact that the eco-terrorists (Now considered our nation's "#1 domestic threat," despite the fact that they have yet to be caught in possession of machine guns or the ingredients for cyanide gas) way, way, waaaay outrank the ultra-right extremists in any gauge of media attention you want to try (go back to the old post if you want to see the numbers).

Yet if you're willing to do something as complex and time-consuming as a fucking Google search fer Christsfuckingsake, you find plenty of information.

...Like the handy page from the ADL that--unlike our free and independent media that serves only the public good--actually supplies some goddamn details about the story. No, they're willing to go all the way up to 447 words (about 1/3 the length of this post) to tell us about the history of the Klan group in question, the specific bomb-making ingredients seized, etc.

Can you imagine the length of the stories that would have been published if these guys had been brown?

And it's not like this is some kind of fucking "isolated event." The SPLC can show dozens of cases like this --throwing firebombs, soliciting the murder of federal judges, and keeping personal arsenals that include barrels of jet fuel and fucking anti-aircraft guns*--since 1995, including 19 since we all went into terrorism hysterics five years ago.

"Liberal Media" my non-anti-aircraft-gun-possessing ass.

But this is not just another case of the "Liberal Media" parroting the priorities and biases of the Bush administration. This is the "Liberal Media" caving in to our great and abiding national racism. Just like all the furious calls for "retribution" died very quickly when we discovered that the killers behind the Oklahoma City Bombing were not brown but white, today we find that the media gives a free pass to white terrorists--unless they do heinous things like burn SUV's--while feeding us every possible breathless story even tangentially related to terrorism.

Terrorism that might be committed by brown people, that is.

So--here's what you're going to do. You're going to send a letter (or email) to your local paper. If you're feeling epistolary, you can write up a By-God op-ed piece: 500-750 words, good grammar, polite language, etc. Check your local paper's website for details.

If brevity is more your style (fuck knows it ain't mine), then just shoot off a letter to the editor questioning their editorial judgment. Ask them why they can't go a day without writing about terrorism, but somehow Norman Somerville (anti-aircraft gun) and William Krar (cyanide gas) and John Noster (jet fuel) just never seem to make the grade? Ask them what their standards are for the newsworthiness of terrorism stories. Ask them why minor announcements on the part of Homeland Security are worth covering, but not terrorist plots to blow up courthouses.

Serious. In case you think it's pointless, I had the distinct pleasure of participating in a (successful) Internet campaign to get the New York Times to quit undermining reports of civilian casualties. The public editor of the NYT went on record as saying that they were not practicing the level of journalism they should have been, and that he expected the editors to do better in the future.

So, what are you waiting for? Write that letter!

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*Sweet Jesus denying air superiority, can you imagine what the "Liberal Media" would have done if the guy found with an anti-aircraft gun (and pictures of Bush and Rumsfeld with crosshairs drawn over them) had been named "Abdul" instead of "Norman"? Can you imagine how fucking hard it would be to drive within five fucking miles of LAX after "Terrorists Can Shoot Down Passenger Jets!" was screamed from every fucking headline in the country?

Oh, and I have to give the freepers their due on this one. From what I can see, it sounds like his "anti-aircraft gun" is really nothing more than the famous WWII-vintage Browning M2 .50 Caliber Machine Gun, aka BMG. It's legal if you have the permit (he didn't), the only reason you can call it an "anti-aircraft gun" is that it can be mounted (and used) that way and the anti-aircraft mount is supposedly preferred by collectors because you don't have to lie in the dirt to fire it like you do with the regular mount. So we get "anti-aircraft gun" (which makes me think of this) where it could just as easily have been "gun perfectly legal for collectors to own, mounted to make firing more comfortable."

Not that he couldn't have shot down a passenger jet with it, and not that the media would have failed to exaggerate in the same way had he been brown. I guess we should be happy that the media's willing to use some of the exaggeration and hype on a white conservative terrorist that they usually reserve for brown Islamic terrorists.

The Lies-and-Dissembling-Based Community (Part II)

2006-03-20T23:50:00.000-06:00

When I started my previous post, I didn't really mean to use up 1100 words on what a lying charlatan David Barton is. I really did have a deeper point.

The point is not that what Barton says is bogus, and that he knows it's bogus. The deeper point is that it doesn't seem to matter. It doesn't matter because the Religious Right doesn't seem to care about what's true anymore (if they ever did).

Now, that's a pretty heavy attack, and I'm sure that all my Theocrat regular readers (hah.) are feeling stung and are about to politely remind me of their commitment to truth and honesty. So let me make it clear that I'm not saying that the Theocrats have repealed the 8th commandment.

No, I'm just worried that the Theocrats (and the well-intentioned middle-Americans they're brainwashing) just don't give a scripture-quoting rat's ass about the veracity of just a whole lot of what they say in the political arena.

And I don't mean things that are abstractly "true" or "untrue"--like "America is a Christian Nation" or "Biblical Law is the Best for America." No, I'm talking about things which are empirically, demonstrably false. Things that are Black and Motherfucking White. The Theocrats are putting out things that--even charitably--can only be described as Lies and the scary part is that no one seems to care.

And these are not trivialities like whether the president got a his pole smoked by a hot intern. No, we're talking about the UnfuckingHoly trinity of Theocrat issues right now: Gay rights, Evolution, and Separation of Church and State.

I covered the last in the earlier post, so let's look at evolution for a second. The worst thing about Intelligent Design is not that it's false--I mean, what the fuck--maybe a Bronze Age Sky God did create life 4000 years ago. That's not the point.

The point is that you are telling a Lie--a falsehood, a fib, a whopper, whatever--when you claim that ID has any scientific merit whatsoever. To even refer to the "scientific debate" violates that precious 8th commandment because there is no scientific debate. None.

Not that there isn't a debate--just that there isn't a scientific debate. To have a scientific debate, you have to involve science. ID is not science. By any--I mean any--generally accepted definition of "Science," ID ain't it.

Yet you can find apparently intelligent people, some with PhDs, going on about how we need to "teach the controversy"

Well, that's quick--there is none. Next lesson...

There is no genuine scientific controversy over whether or not evolution is or is not the absofuckinglute bedrock of virtually all branches of Biology. None. Zip. Nada. You may have a master of cognitive dissonance or two who are able to somehow reconcile their biochemistry professorship with their ardent belief that they are right about evolution and the other 99.9999% of the world of Academic Biology is wrong, but that does not constitute a scientific debate. If that's a scientific debate, then I can claim that Jerry Falwell is the Antichrist and Fox news will have to run stories examining "both sides of the debate." Wouldn't that be refreshing.

There may be a legitimate debate on whether right atrial pressure is a determinant or result of changes in venous return, but there is simply no legitimate debate about ID. Like there is no legitimate debate about the kind of trash Barton hawks either--the man doesn't even exist on the scholarly radar.

A slightly more subtle, though more revealing, example is Paul Cameron. The next time some Theocrat (or garden-variety) homophobe quotes some "scientific fact" about how soon gay men die or what awful parents same-sex partners turn out to be, ask for the source. If you can get it, it's about 90% likely that it's from Paul Cameron.

That's what's hiding behind the Church and State issue, ID, and Gay Rights--all the "scholarship" is coming from a very, very small group of people, virtually all of whom have been disowned (on in the case of Barton, simply ignored) by their respective fields--hell, even their colleagues feel compelled to publicly distance themselves from these guys.

Cameron has a leg up on Barton and Behe, however. He gets to claim that his work is "published in peer-reviewed journals."

Well, sort of. Turns out that the drivel Cameron passes off as science is crap, and the supposedly peer-reviewed journal that publishes almost all of it for him is a "Montana-based vanity magazine that advertises itself as "The Scientific Manifestation of Free Speech" and will publish practically anything for $27.50 per page. " One of the legitimate scholars who has been asked to review Cameron's studies for publication recommended rejection of every single one. Unfortunately, the "vanity journal" doesn't give the peer reviewers final say. In other words, it's peer-reviewed for purposes of claiming scientific legitimacy, but not for purposes of actually guaranteeing any level of scientific legitimacy at all.

So, in the end, it's time to recognize that the Theocrats haven't just declared war on Liberals, Gays and Lesbians, Feminists, Evolution, and Religious Freedom. They've declared war on truth itself. They have done so, ironically enough, so that they can claim that truth is on their side in their talk shows, stump speeches, and blogs.

That's the danger. In all three of these arenas, although 99% or more of the scholarly work opposes what the Theocrats are pushing, they are somehow treated as if they are one side of a legitimate debate. Cameron seems particularly good at this. When the American Psychological Association (annual budget: $98 million) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (membership: 60,000) come out and say "Gee, folks, the science is pretty clear. Gay marriage ain't hurtin' no one," Cameron's deceptively named "American College of Pediatricians" (total staff: one) somehow gets quoted in order to provide balance.

Jumpin' Jesus-in-remedial-math! That's like quoting the US census as saying that around 2 million people live in Houston, and then for balance quoting some crack head who insists that the actual number is closer to 12.

So, other than educating you, O my readers, on the perfidy of these gentlemen, is there any point to this diatribe?

Yes. Get out there and fight for science. Real science. The next time you hear someone say schools should "teach the controversy," insist that there is no controversy to be taught, and then demand that they show credible evidence of a legitimate scientific controversy. The next time someone tells you that Lesbians are 300 times more likely to die in car crashes than breeder women, (and yes, that is one of Cameron's findings) or virtually any other supposed scientific fact that supports homophobia, ask for the source, and when they tell you it's Cameron, tell them that he's been defrocked by both the American Psychological Association and the Nebraska Psychological Association. When your local paper acts as if these are legitimate controversies write them and tell them that a high-school journalism student can tell that the controversies are bullshit.

Just because they've declared war on the truth, that doesn't mean that we have to roll over, accept their premises, and play dead.

After all--we're not the Democratic Party.

The Lies-and-Dissembling-Based Community (Part I)

2006-03-20T23:15:00.000-06:00

OK. So I've been doing some volunteer researching, and I've been digging in to this creepy character named David Barton. He is, I've decided, one of the most important political figures that you've never heard of.

Or at least, who you've never heard of unless you hang out at fundamentalist/ dominionist/ reconstructionist lovefests and teach-ins.

In a nutshell--and I really must restrain myself because I just wrote 27 single-spaced pages about the guy and will never fucking stop if I start talking much about who he is--he is the theoretician of the Religious Right. He invented "Judicial Activism." He runs around the country teaching that the separation of church and state is a myth. He is one of the main reasons that the Freaky-Assed Religious Types now motherfucking own the Texas GOP, and much of the national outfit as well.

Look at it this way--in 1996, Bob Dole was terrified of Barton (who had made it onto the national platform committee) and people like him because they were pushing a strong anti-abortion plank in the GOP platform. Dole knew that a strong anti-abortion plank in the GOP platform would be an albatross around his neck that would brand him as being in the service of a "handful of zealots."

That's what they called them ten years ago: "a handful of zealots." Those zealots now run the GOP, and have made anti-abortion one of their strongest issues and South Fucking Dakota just decided that if you're a pregnant 15 year-old who's been raped by her father, that there is just no way in hell that you should ever, ever be allowed to terminate the pregnancy.

(unless maybe you were a brutally raped-and-sodomized virgin. Then maybe the state of South Dakota would consider allowing you some autonomy over your uterus. But we know that even that wouldn't help, because the South Dakota bill has no exceptions for rape or incest. None.]

Aaaanyway, what I was really on about is that this Barton character is not only fueling the ideological rise of the religious right, he's doing it by lying. What he says is bogus, and he knows it.

And I know this not because I've caught him in a slip of the historical tongue, but because some of his basic claims--entirely outside of his bougus historical theories--are demonstrably false.

The easiest one is that he is a "historian." While I know that anyone who studies history can theoretically call themselves a "historian," that's like saying that because I once read the back of my speeding ticket, I'm a "legal scholar" (something else Barton claims to be without evidence).

The guy is running around the country, publishing books, giving talks, and clearly passing himself off as not just a historian, but a legitimate historian. Now, I'm not saying that his statements about US history are wrong--hell, it's not even necessary to engage the guy in historical debate to show just how FOS he is. No, you can just look at the fact that this "historian" has published absolutely no articles in any respected historical journals. Even a half-assed professor of British History in some jerkwater Liberal Arts college in Maine can get published in a decent historical journal if she really puts her mind to it and works hard. But Barton the supposed genius historical scholar who can easily prove the entire rest of the historical establishment wrong has never done it once.

The other thing that academics do with their research is publish it in books. Now, we can't all be Shelby Foote and we can't all get published by Harvard University Press, but fer fuck's sake, Barton had to create his own fucking publishing house just to get his garbage in print. I do not invent. His "WallBuilders" organization of which he is HMFIC started out as not just a vanity press, but a self-created vanity press. How not-even-close-to-a-legitimate-scholar is that?

So that right there shows that Barton is grossly misrepresenting everything he says. But that's not all. Those of you who have heard his name before probably know him as the wacko Theocrat pseudo-historian who ran around with all these impressive quotes from the Founding Patriarchs about how much they loved Baby Jeebus and how terribly important the ten commandments* are to good government.

...until is was shown that 11 of his favorite quotes could not be substantiated. At all. In any way. And he admitted it. Looks like Barton ran afoul of a real historian who bothered to check his sources.

So, I'm not even going to say that this is proof that Barton is a fraud and a huckster. No, I'm going to use Barton's own words against him:

We have collected thousands of first-edition works of our Founding Fathers--including their own handwritten documents--and it is primarily in these original sources that we conduct our research.

Original sources are a fetish for Barton. And that's not so bad, because original sources help keep historians on the straight and narrow. The problem is that if Barton was running around with 11 unsubstantiated quotations** then we know that he did not, in fact, "carefully research" thousands of original documents--because if he had to admit that 11 of the quotes were undocumented, that means he didn't document them before he published them.

That's why historians use original documents to keep themselves on the straight and narrow. What must have happened--unless he just pulled them out of his ass one day--is that Barton read them somewhere, said, "Ooh--what a great quote!" and then wrote them into his books as if they were historical fact. Without checking them. Any of them.

"Historian," my ass.

=================================

*oh, and as for the tecommandmentsts? You know how the Theocrats love to say that the ten commandments aren't just a Judeo-Christian gig, because they are the "Foundation of Western Law" etc.?

Well, have you ever thought about how many of these supposedly "foundational" commandments (leaving aside the fact that there are actually three) are actually present in modern US law? How about, hmm--three.

Personally, I think 30% is a piss-poor showing for the Foundation of Western Law. Or did I miss the Mississippi statue that requires me to honor my mother and father? Did I overlook the Alabama law against gathering sticks on the Sabbath? Or maybe just no one told me when Florida criminalized coveting my neighbor's wife?

**Yes, I know that Barton claims to have substantiated one of them. That doesn't change the fact that he didn't substantiate it before he published it. That's historical methodologygy 101, fer fuck's sake.

On Vacation--Read the Archives, Dammit.

2006-03-08T23:29:00.000-06:00

Sorry to disappoint, folks, but your humble narrator is on vacation until the 19th of March.

Yes, I know.

But trust me--you will find a way to pick up the shattered pieces of your life and move on.

In the meantime, I suggest you turn your gaze to the sidebar on your right. Item number one, if you haven't already indulged yourself, is the "Best Barkings" list. There you'll find what I consider my most entertaining posts.

Item number two is the list of esteemed bloggers, many--if not most--of whom write better (and more often) than I do.

There is the remote possibility that I will get access to a computer long enough to post something in the next several days. Don't hold your breath.

Holla Back and Fire Extinguishers

2006-03-02T20:25:00.000-06:00

So--Biting Beaver (y'know, the blogger that makes me sound all delicate and polite?) dropped me a line that made reference to her presence on Holla Back,* so I went over and checked it out, and I was looking around when I realized I was having a thought that I'd had when I'd first seen it--a thought that didn't quite break the surface last time, but did this time and made me do a nasty double-take.

The thought was:

"Hmm. This idea kicks ass, but what are the odds that someone's going to get pissed off about getting their picture taken some time and something bad's going to happen...?"

And suddenly I went "Goddamn, that shit is Fucked Up!" It's classic blame-the-victim: if some abusive cretin attacks a woman because he doesn't like being (non-violently) called out on his abusive cretinous shit, it's somehow her fault? How fucked up is that?

I mean, is it statistically likely that some asswipe, somewhere, will get pissed off and assault a woman he wouldn't have otherwise assaulted because she had the guts to confront him and take his picture? Sure.

But in the meantime, it is also statistically inevitable that hundreds--if not thousands--of other asswipes will be shamed, intimidated, or otherwise affected in ways that will make them less likely to harass women in the future, and hundreds--if not thousands--of women will have the experience of confronting a sexual bully and letting him know that

a) what he's doing is not innocent fun
b) she is not going to stand there and let him do it
c) she is not afraid of him, and
d) he might actually have a reason to be afraid of her.

But without thinking about it, I found myself falling into the same patriarchal bullshit they used to teach (back in the 70s and 80s) that it was better for women *not* to fight back if they were sexually assaulted because, well, golly--if you make the mean man angry, he might actually do something bad to you. Y'know, other than rape and possibly kill you.

Seriously--does anyone else remember this advice? "Don't fight back--he'll get angry." What a load of crap. It belongs right up there with "Don't leave your abusive partner, he'll get angry," and "Don't tell anyone your Uncle's molesting you--he'll get angry." And yet it still bubbled to the surface when I was thinking about Holla Back.

The analogy that keeps sticking in my mind is telling women that they shouldn't keep fire extinguishers in the home because of the chance that they might drop one and break their foot. I mean, it could happen--feet are fragile, good fire extinguishers are heavy fucking cylinders of steel, and accidents happen. Shit, I wouldn't be surprised if the CDC had statistics on that.

Theoretically, a woman could even grab a big-ass extinguisher, try to put out a kitchen fire, drop the big-ass thing on her bare foot, crush it, and die because she was unable to get out of the house in time. It could happen. And then you could stand around and say, "See? If only she hadn't had that fire extinguisher, she'd be alive now. Face it, ladies: fire extinguishers are dangerous."

But, no. If you suggested that to any sane sentient being, their response would be something along the lines of "Are you out of your fucking mind?! Fire extinguishers save lives every day! Of course there's a non-zero chance that some woman somewhere will drop one on her foot, but that's fucking trivial compared to the benefit of women being empowered to defend themselves against injury and death with a good fire extinguisher! What the fuck are you using for brains?"

Or, if they're sane, sentient, and discerning, they might look you coolly in the eye and ask:

"Why do you hate women so much?"

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*If you haven't visited, you must. Just to get the idea in your mind. Just a quick look.

How the Fuck do you People Do It?

2006-03-01T23:02:00.000-06:00

How the fuck do the people I see all the hell over various comment threads actually have the time do it? I mean the people who actually get involved in back-and-forth discussions?

Yesterday, I spent a huge chunk of time (when, yes, I should have been posting here) running around on comment threads. And yes, it was good fun. But when you look at it, on top of the normal blog-reading I do, you have to read other people's comments, think about them, write your own comment, come back periodically to see if anyone has responded, read the responses (and any other new comments), think about them, write a new comment, etc., etc..

Like, I was participating in four comment threads, and it took up huge amounts of my free time. And I know for a fact that some of these active commenters are also keeping up their own blogs--most of them more prolifically than I.

So--if you are an ubercommenter (or even an obencommenter), how the fuck do you do it?

Good news, of course, is that commenting drives site traffic. Not that I'm narcissistically obsessed with site traffic or anything (which would be embarrassing, so I will never, ever admit it) but this blog averages somewhere around 30-40 visits a day. Guess how many I've had so far today? 152!

Now, it would appear that most of that is due to a bizarre and massive influx of visits from livejournal, and I can't for the life of me figure out how people are getting to my page from livejournal, or why they are suddenly coming in droves, but I'm guessing that running around leaving comments yesterday somehow put me on the livejournal radar.

Or not. It could be a coincidence. But at any rate, how the fuck do you people do it?

[and I hereby promise that I will post more frequently than once a week. Sheesh. I recently told someone that I wrote an average of 3000-6000 words a week and pointed them towards this blog. If that special person is reading this (and you know who you are), I promise that I usually write a lot more than this. Really. ]

UPDATE: Holy shit! Will you look at these stats? And almost all of it coming from livejournal. Any of you livejournalistas want to try explaining what the flying fuck is going on over there? Or do y'all just suddenly love me that much?

Want me to Walk you Home?

2006-02-22T23:35:00.000-06:00

Via Ampersand at Alas, a Blog, we are directed a thought-provoking post on men walking women home in the dark from the Happy Feminist. Both HF and the post that originally provoked her to write made me think about some of the politics of men walking women home.

Whenever that particular patriarchal social practice* gets brought up in polite conversation, I think of two things.

The first is one of my personal experiences when I was attending Distinguished Private University. I was in an absolutely ass-kicking class taught an ass-kicking professor, which ran from 7 to 10 PM once a week. That means that by the time we got out of class, it was dark.

Now, DPU has one of those charming old campuses with lots of trees and quaint pathways. That means that crossing it at night can be a dark, creepy, lonely experience. Especially if you're walking across that dark campus to a dark, creepy parking garage. Being the decent sort of fellow that I am, I offered to walk one of my female classmates to the parking garage. She accepted, so after class each week, I'd extend my male privilege of feeling safe from sexual predation to include her.

Now, this class happened to be on Feminist International Relations theory, so things like patriarchy and male privilege frequently came up. And although I didn't question the basic practice of walking her to her car at the time, I was keenly aware of the asymmetry of the situation. Particularly because the first time I'd walked her all the way to her car, she offered to drop me off at my apartment--she knew that my apartment was far enough that I'd have to take the bus, but close enough that it wouldn't be inconvenient for her. Justifiably, she felt socially obligated to give me a ride home.

Which, under different circumstances, would be a perfectly appropriate social obligation. But this was not a social relationship into which she freely entered. She was, to some extent or another, coerced by the ever-present threat of rape into accepting my offer of protection, and thus into offering me the reciprocal ride home. When it comes down to it, I got to ride home in her warm car instead of freezing my ass off waiting for the bus because of the ever-present threat of rape. That was--whether I wanted it or not--a benefit I received from being male in a patriarchy.

But, since this was a Feminist International Relations Theory, I brought up this gender-based asymmetry, and I told her that I wanted her to feel no obligation to give me a ride. That is, that I wasn't doing her a favor my extending my male privilege to feel free from sexual predation to cover her--I was just trying to fight the patriarchy.

Which leads me to the second thing that always comes to my mind when I hear "Do you want me to walk you to your car?" By offering me the ride, she--statistically speaking-- put her in even more danger. So I have begun to wonder lately about value of even having a guy walk you somewhere at night.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (I love the BJS sooo much. I am also a geek.) says: "About seven in ten female rape or sexual assault victims stated the offender was an intimate, other relative, a friend or an acquaintance."

So think about it--the case above puts a male acquaintance--the very category most likely to assault her--walking alone with her across campus at night, going with her into a dark, virtually deserted parking garage with her, and then riding in her car. All three potential venues for sexual assault.

Now, in light of my long discussion yesterday of victim-blaming, I don't want to get into a stupid "should she have/shouldn't she have" discussion. My point is that simply by claiming "decent guy" status, and backed up by a relatively slight acquaintance, I was able to accompany her into three situations where she would probably have been very nervous to be with a stranger--although her odds of getting assaulted by a stranger would have been lower.

This shows the more insidious layer of male privilege--the privilege of having women behave as if you were above suspicion, and the privilege of getting all offended if they don't: "How dare she suggest that I might be a rapist! What a fucking prude/feminazi/castrating bitch!

I remember clearly a friend of mine getting all bent out of shape because my girlfriend told him that she never felt completely safe being the only woman in a group of men. His indignant bluster had the sound of a loss of privilege in it. In this case, it was the privilege of being above suspicion.

For a man to claim that privilege (or a woman to grant it) is to deny virtually everything we know about sexual assault. From a woman's point of view, every man is a potential rapist. Individual guys may know in their hearts that there's no possible way they could every be guilty of that crime, but they really think they should be absolved of suspicion by saying, "Oh, you don't have to worry about me--I'm not like that," as if potential rapists were incapable of making that statement? Please. Hell, a huge chunk of the guys who commit rape don't think of themselves as rapists afterwards. What the hell makes you think that they would beforehand?

This shit is so strongly ingrained that it's even one of the reasons that rape goes under-reported:

[M]any women do not characterize their sexual victimizations as a crime for a number of reasons such as embarrassment, not clearly understanding the legal definition of rape, or not wanting to define someone they know who victimized them as a rapist. [Source, BJS, emphasis mine]

Dig it: guys have no ground to insist that women give them the benefit of the doubt. Knowing what we know about sexual assault, no one should be above suspicion. Rarely do you hear "Oh, I always figured he was the date-rape type." Often it's the opposite: "I never thought he would do something like that." More than two out of three sexual assaults on women are committed by someone she knows. What percentage of those guys do you think would have thought "How dare she suspect me as a rapist"?

A hell of a lot of rape is committed by regular guys, guys who probably don't think of themselves as rapists. More importantly, guys who feel they deserve not to be thought of as rapists. But face it guys--any woman with a realistic perspective on rape sees you, at least in some small way, as a potential rapist. Now, I think it's fair to give special dispensation for long-term relationships of trust and familiarity: fathers, brothers, husbands, old family friends etc--but don't think for a moment that men don't rape their daughters, sisters, wives, and old family friends.

Not to discount a woman's ability to be a judge of character--I'm not saying that all women should be afraid of all men equally all the time. I'm saying that women have the right to suspect any man at any time. All the best intentions in the world don't get you (or me) off the hook, fella. As long as we live in a patriarchy, you're a suspect, a calculated risk, a potential threat to be weighed and evaluated.

Ain't patriarchy a bitch?

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*And it is a patriarchal practice--whether you're the guy offering your male privilege as a shield against rape, or the potential rapist, or the voice that cries "Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!" or the woman compelled to choose between sacrificing her autonomy and sacrificing her safety--if you're participating in that practice, you're caught up in the patriarchy. Doesn't mean I don't think you should do it--just means that patriarchy is omnipresent, and will pretty much always get you one way or the other.

The ever-trenchant Twisty explains it much better than I ever could. Excerpt:

"The truth is, everybody, even those of us whose hobby it is to lounge around all day questioning the patriarchal origins of human behavior, contributes on some level to the sustenance of patriarchy. I, for instance, am at this very moment listening to Digital Underground’s "Packet Man"–damn those catchy sexist orgy-centric beats!– while wearing sweatpants that were made by Chinese slave labor in the Northern Mariana Islands. Earlier today I mocked people–I mean, what choice did I have?– who use the word "womyn."

On Blaming the Victim

2006-02-21T23:06:00.000-06:00

In the wake of the whole Nick/Paratrooper/Rape controversy, I wrote a piece that touched on victim-blaming. One of the comments I got on that bit was from my dad, (hi, Dad), who had followed the link to the Nick/paratrooper controversy, and told me that it was unreasonable that any time someone suggests that a woman might have exercised a little more caution, they are attacked for "blaming the victim." He gave the analogy that if a man were mugged while walking through a rough part of town, late at night, flashing his money around, people would say he "got what he was asking for," yet no one would call that "blaming the victim."

The more I thought about it, the more I have to disagree. First of all, I don't think it's true. I think if a guy got mugged in that situation, very few people would say that he "got what he was asking for." Rape is the one crime where there is a knee-jerk question of whether the victim was "asking for it." When a man was shot in my apartment complex, no one I knew asked if he had done anything to bring it on. When Ward Churchill suggested that the people in the WTC may have been, in some small way, "asking for it," he was promoted to America-hating Liberal #1. When I left my junked up old car on the street down the block from my house for a week, unlocked, and someone popped the hood and stole my distributor, nobody that I told--not one--suggested that I was "asking for it." They mostly agreed with me that some thieving little prick had deprived my family of our second car.

Now, that's not to say that there are things I could have done differently to prevent that theft from happening. The important point is that even if people could have said I was partially to blame with some justification, they didn't. And that is true of the vast, vast majority of crimes: our first reaction is something along the lines of "what a thieving little prick" or "Good God, what a horrifying murder!" but not, "Hmm. Was he in some way asking for it?"

That's because in crimes that don't revolve around a woman's body and/or a man's sexuality, we generally think that criminals are bad people, that what what they did was wrong. Whether the women in question are taking foolish risks is really beside the point: the point is that victims of just about any other crime that I can think of just don't have to answer that question. I mean, can you imagine a defense attorney making this argument:

Your honor, I'd like to call attention to the "victim's" dress. He was wearing well over $1000 worth of designer clothing, including a pair of $300 Italian leather shoes. He wore this tempting outfit into East Austin at 1AM on a Saturday night--his Rolex in plain view--knowing full well what might happen to him. Your honor, my clients are healthy, red-blooded American boys. The sight of that much wealth was, well, just too much for them. I ask your honor to consider what they did perhaps a "lapse in judgment," but certainly not a crime..."

I think not. But until recently, we heard arguments exactly like that one made routinely against rape victims, and occasionally we still do:

[The defense attorney] asked, "Why isn't she being charged with this crime?" [He] described Doe in his opening statement as, among many other things, "a pathological liar," "a cheater, "the aggressor," a wanna-be "porn star," "a troubled young lady," "a tease" a "master manipulator," a "little opportunist," "a compulsive liar" and a "callous" drug addict and alcoholic who trimmed her pubic hair, bragged about liking group sex and once drank a beer in a car.*

No, I can't imagine that an argument like that for robbery, assault, arson, grand theft auto, or virtually any other crime would do anything other than enrage both the judge and jury. For rape, however, it's still a winning tactic.

So, back to the Nick/paratrooper scenario. For those of you joining us late, Nick met two paratroopers at a bar and went back to their place. All three began having sex, but Nick insisted that it stop when it became obvious that one of the men wasn't wearing a condom as promised. He didn't want to stop, and Nick came very close to getting raped before leaving.

So, the question is, "is it foolish to engage in three-way sex with a couple of drunk paratroopers?"

Congratulations! You were correct if you said: Who the fuck cares? It's irrelevant!

Because that's exactly the way other crimes are discussed--the victim's culpability just doesn't seem to matter. If I met some paratroopers at a bar, and we all got drunk and went back to their place to play a little poker until one of them accused me of cheating and beat the living shit out of me, would anybody, I mean anybody, ask "Well, what did you expect, playing poker with two drunk paratroopers? I mean, really--isn't it pretty much your fault?"

No, no one would ask that, because it would be deemed irrelevant to the crime of some drunken asshole assaulting an innocent victim. Which is not to say that I may or may not have increased my risk by accepting the invitation to play cards. It's to say that we just don't ask that question for virtually any other crime. So the insistence on asking that question about rape tells us that rape victims are being singled out for special treatment. If "what did you do to incite it?" were a standard question for crime victims, I wouldn't mind so much. If people asked, "well, couldn't JFK have been more careful?--not that it's his fault or anything, but he does have to accept some responsibility for his actions," then I'd be a little more OK with people asking the same questions about a rape victim.

Meanwhile, I'm not holding my breath. Questioning the culpability of a rape victim is one more way our culture works to take the crime out of the arena of "problems" and into the arena of "women's problems." In the same way that lynching kept all Southern African-Americans (to one extent or another) afraid and thus (to one extent or another) compliant, rape affects all women in the same way.** And for about 5 decades or so, the standard response to complaints about lynching was some variation of "he deserved it," "he was asking for it," or "what the hell did he expect, acting like that?" It wasn't until lynching was recast from a "Black problem" to a "problem" that it stopped. When the focus went off the victim and onto the perpetrator, that's when it suddenly became unacceptable.

So, with all due respect, Dad, the question to ask is not "why can't I question the security precautions of a rape victim without getting accused of blaming-the-victim?" The question to ask is "why is the discussion of the security precautions of rape victims so incredibly disproportionate to the discussion of the security precautions of armed robbery, assault, arson, and burglary victims?"

_________________________________________

*Here's the link, but it's disturbing, because a) it includes graphic descriptions of a gang-rape, and b) despite the entire 21-minute assault being recorded on videotape (by the assailants) the trial in question ended in a fucking mistrial, because the jury could not agree on any of the 24 (!) charges (they were, however, convicted at a later trial and are currently awaiting sentencing).
**and, not surprisingly, it benefits all men--whether they want it to or not--in the same way that lynching benefited all white people--whether they wanted it to or not. I could argue this one at length, and probably will in another post, but here's a quick example: every male student at a University is at an academic advantage because they generally feel free to study alone in the library at night. But female students get the creeps walking through empty bookstacks late at night, or going into an empty restroom knowing there's not another person on the 7th floor who would hear them if they screamed. So they generally constrain their study habits in response.

Good news, again.

2006-02-16T23:09:00.000-06:00

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

Seriously. Sometimes I feel absolutely overwhelmed about the fact that Roe's days are numbered, we've got a stacked supreme court for the next couple of decades (at least), millions of Americans are buying the notion that a (failed) Imperialist war of conquest is justification for allowing the President to declare himself entirely above the constitution,* and the Democrats' are sitting around how best to win an election by sitting on their hands and acting nice.

However.

The good news does come in at times, and the other day we had a twofer. First, Intelligent Design got a kick in the shins when the Ohio state board of education decided to re-consider its anti-science, pro-theocracy science curriculum.

Of course, they really only did it because they were afraid of a long, costly and public lawsuit if they went forward with it, but after the Dover decision, this does give me a little hope. The wheels of justice in this country, when they actually do get rolling, can crush ass-wipery in their path in such a way that the shit will stay crushed.

I especially like this quote from a school board member:

I believe there are two separate issues here. One is the teaching of good science. The other is the teaching of creationism, and...I think that should be taught in any other class or at church or at home...not in science class

Well, yeah, you say, what's to great about that quote? It's the standard anti-Creationist line.

Well, no. Because it's coming from "Martha Wise, a 28-year veteran of the board, who led the fight to delete the anti-evolution language from the science standards and an accompanying lesson plan" and who "identifies herself as a creationist."

That's right, folks. The woman is a creationist. She believes that In The Beginning, God blah blah blah etc. Great. That's her motherfucking right as a citizen of the United States. But guess what? She's also an intelligent, rational citizen of the United States who happens to believe that "freedom of religion" actually applies to people who believe differently from her. Now there's a radical fucking concept.

And in other sports news, the score is Women's Health and Self Determination 1, Narrow-minded, self-righteous Fundamentalist Pharmacists [and the corporations who support them] setting themselves up as judge, jury, and executioner of a sentence of Mandatory Pregnancy for the crime of ~~being a slut~~ having had a condom break, Zero.

This actually turns out to be a happy follow-up to an earlier "Good News" post of mine. In that one, I was saying how two women (supported by three women's rights groups) were suing wal-mart to force them to comply with the Massachusetts law that requires them to stock all "commonly prescribed medications," which includes the non-abortion drug Plan B. The Mass. State Pharmacy Board was U-fuckin'-nanimous in its decision that wal-mart needed to start showing some respect for women's rights. Or at least start stocking Plan B, because we know we're sure as hell not going to get them to actually show respect for women's rights.

So, what's Bush's catchphrase? "Success is on the March," or some shit like that? I don't know. I think I'm going to keep my options open. And ask my Canadian friends if they'll have room on their couch, should the shit really hit the fan.

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* Serious. I'd just like someone in the White House press corps to ask the man: "Mr. President! Mr. President! Considering that you've decided that you can break any law you choose if you think it's in the best interests of national security, is there anything you cannot legally do? Could you beat Howard Dean to death with a flashlight on Hannity and Colmes? Could you declare that all Americans must hang your portrait in their houses, with violation punishable by waterboarding? At long last, Mr. President, is there any limit at all to your terrestrial power?"

"Oh. I see. Well in that case, Mr. President, I have a follow-up: "How the fuck are you in any way different from a king?"

Well, that was quick...

2006-02-15T23:18:00.000-06:00

So, just last month I was waxing eloquent about just how much I loved Paul Hackett. And just the other day, I was telling anyone who would listen about this ass-kicking Democrat who responded to Republican bullies with "What’s your fuckin’ problem?...You got something to say to me? Bring it on!”

Literally.

Well, apparently, that's not the correct response. Apparently, the correct response is somewhere between "Mommieee! That mean man called me a name!" and "Thank you Sir! May I have another!"

Because the DNC, in their immensely successful election-winning wisdom, have twisted Hackett's arm enough to make him drop out of his current bid for the Ohio senate:

Today I am announcing that I am withdrawing from the race for United States Senate. I made this decision reluctantly, only after repeated requests by party leaders, as well as behind the scenes machinations, that were intended to hurt my campaign.

Not only that, but according to Hackett (who doesn't seem to keep his mouth shut out of fear of anybody), they tried to get him to fuck over the three Dem candidates running in the race for the House :

Mr. Hackett said he was unwilling to run for the Congressional seat because he had given his word to three Democratic candidates that he would not enter that race. "The party keeps saying for me not to worry about those promises because in politics they are broken all the time....I don't work that way. My word is my bond."

Jeez. I can't believe these fucks expect me to vote for them.

What the fuck kind of message are the professional Democrats trying to send to us, their Liberal base? Is it "Sit down, shut up, and let us drive?" is it "We rolled over for an anti-Roe judge, we picked a homophobe to give the response to the SOTU, but you still have to vote for us because we're all you've got?"

Or maybe it's "We're scared as shit of the Republican bullies, and we don't know how to handle them, but the idea of a candidate who stands up to them and makes a few waves scares us even more."

I'm just disgusted with this party. I know the reasons for drifting towards the middle, and how that's supposed to get you more swing voters, but guess the fuck what? That isn't working. And I don't just mean not working in the sense of the Republicans controlling the White house for the past six years and controlling Congress (something they hadn't done since 1954) for the past 12. No, I mean not working as in we're fighting two motherfucking simultaneous wars and losing at least one of them, Congress is openly bought and sold by lobbyists working for the big corporations, our civil liberties are disappearing, and global warming may be passing the "point of no return," while Bush still refuses to admit it exists.

As you know, I could go on (and on, and...)

But the point here is that the current strategy isn't working. And the counterpoint is that if we start acting like real liberals, the Republicans will call us that very word, the swing voters will abandon us, and the bad guys will win again.

Well guess the fuck what, boys and girls--the bad guys are going to win anyway if you keep this shit up. Personally, I'd rather go down swinging than cringing. And going down swinging has the added advantage that people can see you swinging. People--including those fetishized swing voters--would actually see the Democratic Party acting as if it fucking stood for something.

And standing for something is exactly how the Republicans have been kicking our ass. They stand for things that people like--decency, morality, tradition, strength, honor, etc. These are good things (they also have fuck-all to do with the GOP. Go figure), but there are other good things out there, too. Like Equality, Civil Rights, Freedom, Compassion, Progress, and Honesty. And these are the things that Liberals stand for, and they are fucking good reasons for people--including swing voters--to vote for a candidate. "Please like me--I'm not as bad as him" is not a good reason to vote for a candidate.

If the Democratic party actually stood for those things, they might have a chance. And that's why I think they need to quit focusing on winning elections (which they're not doing, anyway), and start focusing on having a message--a real message. A plan for action. If they go down swinging in 2006 and 2008, things are going to suck. But by fighting--yes, fighting, not cowering--they might turn the Democratic party back into something worth voting for.

Which is good. Because if they don't go down swinging in 2006 and 2008 (excluding the remote possibility of victory), things are going to suck even worse, because the Republicans will have handed even more power over to the corporations and the theocrats, will have revoked even more of our civil liberties, will have launched an other imperialistic crusade or two, and the Dems still won't be worth voting for.

Crime and Justice

2006-02-14T23:28:00.000-06:00

Our justice/penal system (emphasis on the "penal," not so much on the justice) is maybe the most glaring example of how the right wing lets rhetoric trump the rationality and common sense they're always going on about.* If any business had a failure rate like our penal system, it would go bankrupt. A medicine that failed two-thirds of the time--while causing great harm to the patient and the people around them--would be yanked from the shelves.

There are alternatives to prison, some of which have better success rates, some of which show great promise--if only they'd get decent funding. Or funding at all.

Unfortunately, if you point this out, you're criticized as a liberal whiner by the right wing. You're soft on crime, you're immature, feminized (whether already female or not), a hippie idealist, or just scared of criminals and unwilling to stand up to them.

Bullshit. I was a TA for a Violence Studies 101 class, and one week the students read all sorts of research about prison, and all of it said about the same thing--it doesn't work. We were all just baffled--the scientific consensus is clear: we're doing just about everything wrong. But the political will is 100% behind the "Just Keep Doing What We're Doing" mentality. It's crazy. It actually makes the War on Drugs look relatively sane and effective (did you know that drugs are actually easier to get today than they were before the War on ~~Poor Minorities~~ Drugs?).

The answer isn't easy, but it's clear: we need to do things like address the at-risk kids before they commit crimes. Actually fund education (is there any fucking reason in the world that we have a better military than our 3 closest rivals combined, yet we have an education system that's an embarassment?). Work to stop, or at least greatly reduce child abuse--a major predictor of criminal activity-- etc., etc., etc..

In other words, take fucking care of people in this country.

But no, we'd rather wait until they fuck up and shoot someone, or take up crack, or steal a car before we get involved in their lives. Guess what, Charlie: too damn late. Problems like crime have root causes, and while it's important to deal with the ultimate effects, we're not going to get anywhere until we deal with the root causes.

I was told a parable one time that I thought applied to the whole mess--a brother and a sister are swimming in a natural pool under a waterfall. Suddenly another kid comes right down the waterfall into the pool. He's stunned, and about to drown before the kids pull him out. Immediately another one, and another come crashing down the waterfall, and the brother and sister are frantically pulling them out before they drown. Then the sister climbs out of the pool and starts running up the hill. "Where the hell are you going?!" shouts her brother. "I need you to help me save these kids!"

The sister calls over her shoulder, "Fuck that, I'm going upstream to tell all those kids to get out of the goddamn river!"

The point being that the conservatives have very effectively exploited our natural tendencies to focus on immediate effects to prevent the discussion from ever getting around to root causes. Which is wacked, because if it were really about reducing crime, the conservatives would be screaming for a "business-based" model built on hard facts and demonstrable fucking outcomes. And if it were even about money, they'd be howling about how much it costs to keep someone in maximum security, and how much cheaper it would be to provide the education, job training, drug counseling, etc. that would have kept that person off death row--not to mention kept the victim alive.

But no, it's about something else, so logic and money and crime reduction can all go fuck themselves. If you ask me, it's about the desire to punish people who make you scared. That, and the refusal to admit that there might be some structural inequalities in this country that make it really hard for poor kids, especially minorities, to make it through life without at least some serious brush with the law.

Because if you admit that there are structural inequalities, then you have to deal with the fact that your comfortable existence is due more to structural inequality and unearned privilege than to Hard Work, Perseverance, and the American Dream. You might have to admit that America is far, far from the meritocracy we tell ourselves it is: when your parents education isn't the best predictor of whether you'll go to college or not, when their income isn't the best predictor of how much you're making, then I'll believe that it's possible for people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps with having the deck overwhelmingly stacked against them.

And if you admit that our system is much, much more about punishing scary people than it is about keeping us safe, than you have to give up the illusion that more prisons will make us safer. You'll have to deal with the fact that we can't make the US a safer place to live just by building more and stronger prisons, by mandating minimum sentences, by sweeping more people into the maw of the penal system.

No, making this country a safer place to live means re-aligning some of our basic gut-level ideas about how things really happen in this country, and facing up to some ugly truths.

I'm not holding my breath.

________________________
*This is one place where I find myself in agreement with the Libertarians. One thing they do well is to look at problems logically and analytically, and then propose realistic solutions. On the other hand, they think things like Head Start and government-funded methodone clinics are the tools of Satan.

Hot Motherfucking Damn!

2006-02-08T23:16:00.000-06:00

OK, this time the good news is unadulterated good goddamn news.

Earlier in the evening, I came across a great idea at Pam's. The basic idea was that the Theocrats are trying to fuck with the Day of Silence, an annual protest against anti-GLBTQ violence and harassment in schools. They are sponsoring a "Day of Truth" the very next day, so they can pass out homophobic propaganda about how trying to stop violence and bullying against queer youth is somehow a bad thing (it's kind of like handing out fliers in favor of rape after a Take Back the Night march).

So, since part of their plan is to distribute a homophobic-propaganda DVD free of charge, it was suggested that if at least a few anti-homophobia bloggers logged in and ordered a DVD, that it might cost the bastards some of their hard-begged cash.

So, of course, I dashed over, signed in (under the name Brandon Teena), and tried to order my DVD. But I couldn't. So I limped back to Pam's comment thread and whined that it wouldn't work. I was told what to do, I tried again, it still wouldn't work, I came back, pleaded abysmal ignorance, and asked for help. At this point, all I can figure is that either a) I have somehow lost all ability to navigate web sites and order shit online, b) it's all a cruel joke designed to humiliate me on Pam's comment thread, or c) that there is the very remote possibility that all the lefty bloggers brought Homophobic Propaganda Distribution Center #37 crashing down.

OK-- 4 realz. Who picked "c"?

Yes, my friends and relations, it appears, at least at this point in the juncture, that the good guys/gals won a round. Here's the comment from Blender Kitten, the instigator of this little nonviolent action:

hey Pam -

I think we might have a victory on our bands - of a small battle, at least.You might have just shut down the distribution of an anti-gay DVD & taken some tools out of a bigot's toolbox with your post.

Why do I say this?

The ADF has now disabled their Day of Truth online store!

You can't order a free bigot DVD, tshirt or flyers anymore, which means bigots can't, either. That's something. It just makes it slightly harder for them to organize on the internet, which is great, imho.

Congratulations! Pam's House Blend 1, Bigots 0.

p.s. We just won a victory for queer teens!!

Yes, indeed. Perhaps a small victory, but I don't think there's any doubt that some poor kid in Iowa or Maine or California who's been lied to by his pastor and his parents about his GLBTQ peers tried to go online tonight and download his T-shirt, DVD, and talking points pamphlet. And he couldn't, because of Pam and people like her. Which means that there's some poor kid in Iowa, or Maine, or California who won't come to school the day after the National Day of Silence and see a T-shirt that basically says, "To hell with protecting teens from violence, bullying and harassment. I say we shame 'em all back into the closet!"

Wherever you are, kid(s), good luck. We're all pulling for you.

PS--the homophobes may have taken their store down because of the server traffic, or they may have realized that they were giving their materials away to heathens. Either way, it would probably help if you would at least visit the store and click the "click here to order stuff" link. Let 'em know we're still out there. And let me know if you did. This shit gives me goosebumps.

Heinous Acts

2006-02-08T23:01:00.000-06:00

So, I've been thinking some about Roy Moore, the uber-homophobe who's currently running for Governor of Alabama. Who also, apparently, thinks the death penalty for homosexuality would be just peachy:

The State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle." via PFAW

You've probably heard that snippet before--hell, I've written about it before --but that's not the part of his abominable--and legally unnecessary--concurring decision that's on my mind tonight. Nor am I mulling over the part where he calls homosexuality an "inherent evil, and if a person openly engages in such a practice, that fact alone would render him or her an unfit parent."

No, what I'm thinking of is the part where he says that falling in love with someone whose genitalia resemble yours is "a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies oneÂs ability to describe it."

Oh please. Oh Motherfucking Please.

No, even if I were willing to give Roy a pass (which I'm not) on "inherent evil," "criminal lifestyle," and/or "crime against nature," I'd still have to call him out on "an act so heinous that it defies oneÂs ability to describe it."

Gimmie a fuckin' break, Roy. Is your imagination really that stunted? Homosexual sex (which is not the same as homosexuality--although Roy, like a lot of other people, seems to forget that) simply does not "defy one's ability to describe it." Gassing 10,000 people a day, burning their bodies in open pits, and then starting over in the morning? That defies one's ability to describe it.

My friend Lori sticking her tongue in her partner's twat? There's no way that's an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it. I mean, first of all, if Roy really has no ability to describe that act, then I feel real sorry for Mrs. Moore. But even if you find any type of lingual-clitoral contact "heinous," it can't possibly defy your ability to describe it. I mean the anatomy in question is really fairly simple. In fact, considering that they're a couple of middle-aged soccer moms, it's actually fairly boring and pedestrian to imagine (in real life, however, I'll bet Lori and Maggie find it fairly entertaining).

Stripping an entire family naked and then shooting them one by one as the others watch? ThatÂs heinous.

How my friend James could enjoy on sticking his dick up his lover's ass is, when you think about it, fairly easy to conceptualize. What's not so easy is 300 starving people kneeling for hours on the frozen ground while their guards kill them at random. And make jokes about it.

That's "inherent evil," you sanctimonious fuck.

And no, I'm not violating Godwin's law here. I'm not comparing Moore to the Nazis (although it certainly is tempting...) No, the problem here is that Moore is basically comparing gays and lesbians to the Nazis. I'm sure that he wouldn't think of it that way, but when you start throwing around words like "inherent evil" and say that things are so awful that they defy description, and how this type of thing will lead to the Downfall of Western Civilization, well, you're playing in the big leagues. And you know what? The downfall of Western Civ probably felt never closer than 1939-1944. That's the big leagues, my friend. So, before you start talking about "inherent evil," think, just think for a moment about what the fuck you're saying

One could tell families even in death. They were still holding hands, stiffened in death so that it was difficult to tear them apart to clear the chamber for the next load.
---Kurt Gerstein, SS officer.

and then shut the fuck up.

Do You Tell a Football What Time the Superbowl Starts?

2006-02-07T23:56:00.000-06:00

OK. Bear with me.

I've been sitting on this post for a while, ever since Hugo used one of my favorite words from graduate school. It's one that doesn't come up very often in the feminist blogosphere (or anywhere else, for that matter), so I'm going to do my best to give it an airing.

The reason I decided to trot it out now because of my last post on the Superbowl^TM commercials. I started to write about the offensive beer ad that reminded me so much of my last post on married men acting like children in beer commercials, but I got sidetracked by the abysmal sexism of GoDaddy.com's ad this year.

But it turns out that all three ads have a hell of a lot in common, and that commonality is best summed up by the word "homosociality."

Now, homosociality is one of them 10-cent words that can take an awful long time to explain (I took something like 5 pages in my dissertation), and it's roughly the idea that men's relationships with women are secondary to men's relationships with other men, and that women are used as currency of exchange in male relationships, that women are used by men in various ways in order to negotiate their relationships with other men, etc.

But the other day, Amanda had a pithy take on it that beautifully described one of the more important aspects:

But so long as men are more worried about calling out other men than treating women right, things will stay the same.

That's about the size of it. Given a choice between looking bad in front of other men by treating a woman like a human being vs. looking bad in front of a woman by going along with what sexist guys are doing, guys operating under homosociality will always choose the latter. Hugo used it that way in the post to which I refer above, discussing a boys-only session with the church youth group he leads, in which one of the boys made sexist, objectifying remarks about a girl in the group:

The other boys all laughed and concurred,and then turned towards me with sheepish grins. Yes, their youth minister was with them -- but he was also a man, and they were operating under the homosocial assumption that even in church, it's okay to objectify women and girls as long as only other men are around.

And that captures the aspect of it that I'm thinking about in relationship to the beer commercials. The idea that men can always count on other men to stand with them against women. It defines the male-male relationship as the primary allegiance that men should have, and thereby relegates the male-female relationship to a secondary status. The effect of this is that, as I was bitching about in my previous post on the topic, that men can always be counted on (or so the ideology goes) to conspire with you, and against women. Women become the enemy--even if they're an enemy into whose pants you are trying to get--and they are to be avoided, deceived, manipulated or appeased as necessary.

Now, this is bad enough when it results in married men acting like children. I'm not saying that all men do this, but I am saying that all men are exposed to strong pressure to do this. And in all seriousness, the more beer commercials they watch during sporting events, the more of this pressure they will feel.

Like this year's abomination. It's not as visually repulsive as the GoDaddy.com ad, so I'll include a link to it.*

A guy climbs up to his roof, supposedly cleaning the gutters, but once he gets up there, he pulls out a stashed chair and TV, pulls a brewski out of his toolbox, and announces "Cleaning the gutters" to his neighbor who is likewise sitting on a lawn chair holding a brew. The neighbor replies, "Yup, I'm realigning the satellite dish." Then a third guy comes up and announces, "Fixin' a leak in the roof." He's congratulated on his inventiveness, and replies, "No I'm really fixin'--" but then the roof caves in, and the poor slob ends up in living room with wife, exactly where the other guys don't want to be. After the cut to tell us that it's Bud Light (why would anyone drink that crap anyway? Don't they know what real beer tastes like?) he gets clocked on the head when his own toolbox falls in on him. He's clearly a doofus, and the message is clear--break the pact with men, you get exactly what you deserve: no beer, no TV, just humiliation in front of other men and--worse--the company of women.

This is a milder version of the "Pussy-Whipped" tactic. Calling a man "Pussy-Whipped" tells a man that he must always choose between the esteem of men and the esteem of women. Hugo has a nice piece about how homosociality functions to suppress men's feminist tendencies in exactly that way--you can have women in your life who you treat like human beings, or you can have your cat-calling, ass-grabbing buddies. But you can't have both. In the youth group post, Hugo describes exactly this process:

Roger speaks up: "when you first see a pretty girl, you can't help but look. But you can choose whether or not you keep staring...You don't have to make the girl feel uncomfortable." Several other boys quickly agreed, and Aaron found himself on the defensive: "I don't know dude, I don't know how you can say you really like girls and not be totally distracted by something so fine." I smiled inwardly; Aaron, bless his heart, was trying to bully the other boys by threatening their masculinity if they didn't take his side.

A classic of the genre, emphasis mine. But it just so happens that my favorite example of this kind of boys-against-girls thought is from a piece-of-fluff sitcom.** It really is the best one-sentence description of homosociality. Imagine Del, the manly-but-jilted lover confronting Richard, the very un-manly artist, in the presence of Remo, the manly bar owner:

DEL: How could you set Caroline up with some other guy? Guys aren't supposed to do that to other guys. It's a simple basic understanding among men.

RICHARD: You're not going to report me, are you? I'd hate to have my treehouse privileges revoked.
REMO: When a man breaks up, he is entitled to two or three attempts at reconciliation before things are officially dead.

RICHARD: Uh, does anybody tell the women about these rules?
JOHNNY: Do you tell a football what time the game is? Come on!

That's it. The men are "playing the game," and the women in reality aren't even cheerleaders. They're the ball. The token, the trophies, the gambling chips. The objects over which men struggle in order to prove themselves in the eyes of other men. You don't tell women the rules, because what they know, or think, or say, or do is irrelevant to the game.

Which leads us to our more sinister aspects of homosociality. One of the most famous terms associated with homosociality is "The Traffic in Women," and it's pretty much what it sounds like. In patriarchal societies, women have no value as human beings--they exist only as commodities to be traded (and enjoyed) among men.***

And this is where shit gets really nasty. Because when women are not valued as human beings, human beings (i.e., men) don't really care what happens to them--except as it relates to their value as a commodity. So you end up with shit like this, in which five young women are fighting the tribal laws under which they are literally--I mean fucking literally--being traded as currency to resolve a debt:

A village council in Pakistan has decreed that five young women should be abducted, raped or killed for refusing to honor childhood "marriages". The marriages were part of a compensation agreement ordered by the village council and reached at gunpoint after the father of one of the girls shot dead a family rival. The rival families have now called in their "debt", demanding the marriages to the village men are fulfilled.The women have said they will commit suicide if their fathers obey the council.

And mind you, this isn't Iran or Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. This is Pakistan, a country we consider an "ally." Can you imagine if this was about race, instead of gender?

The Richmond observer reports that one Col. Harland Sanders has brought a legal action against his neighbor, a certain Gerald O'Hara, for his refusal to honor the debt of five Negroes which he pledged to settle a dispute over...

Oh, wait. We did that one.

Jesus. If this were about race, would we even touch that country with a ten-foot pole? Fuck it--if it were about men, would we touch that country with a ten-foot pole? Well, maybe we would, since Pakistan is such a staunch ally in the "War on Terror."

Oh. Fucking. Please. You want to talk about terror? You want to talk about unspeakable fucking acts of violence? Yes, 9/11 sucked. No argument here. But can we really say it isn't terror when a gang of young men show up at your house and say something along the lines of:

"Hi. The village elders sent us. We know that you haven't done anything wrong, and it's not like we've got anything against you personally--really we don't--but your brother fucked up and his punishment is that we're going to gang rape you now. Hold still and we won't hurt you too much."

This shit literally makes me sick to my stomach. And it isn't being perpetrated by some fanatical weirdo living in a cave, either. This type of terror (against which we are most explicitly not fighting a war) is completely authorized at the local level, tacitly authorized at the national level, and, were it not for the heroic efforts of the woman in question, completely ignored at the international level.

However, if you were paying attention, you caught the crucial bit in that story that makes it relevant to our lovely Superbowl^TM commercials. She was raped not for anything she did--after all, the football can't get penalized for facemasking, now can it? No, her rape was nothing more than a medium of exchange between men. The village elders decided that this woman could be---should be--sexually tortured as a way of sanctioning the behavior of her male relative. Now, you might say that in the same way that they might demand the payment of 12 goats, they demanded the payment of this woman's dignity, humanity, sexuality, etc. Except I'll bet you dollars to donuts they don't really think of her having dignity, humanity or sexuality. The punishment was that the brother in question be dishonored by having his sister gang raped. The effect on her wasn't even part of the calculation. It was all about him.

Do you tell a football what time the game starts?

Which is what brings us to GoDaddy.com, and their lovely "Window Washer" ad from the NFC playoffs. In this scenario, the ~~woman's~~ sexbot's sexuality is literally a gift from one man to another. I'll spare you the details, but in short two smarmy creative ad company guys are trying to convince a network apparatchnik to let them show their sleezy commercial on TV. He's not budging, and then one of the guys pulls out a radio-control device. He presses a button and the "GoDaddy Girl" descends outside the window on a window-washer's scaffold. She starts doing a bump-and-grind dance for the guy's viewing pleasure, but he sticks to his guns. Finally the smarmy ad guy pushes the button again, and the sexbot ascends out of view. The network apparatchnik gazes after her in blue-balled despair. Then the smarmy ad guy slides the radio-control device across the table to him. He grabs it, jams the button, and grins as the sexbot slides back into view. We assume the gift of her sexuality has changed his mind.

Yeah, it can all be dismissed as silly fantasy. But you know what? You can tell a fuck of a lot about people by their fantasies. Underneath fantasy is desire, and it's desire that drives culture.

"Homosociality." is a powerful word, a concept with a great deal of explanatory power. I wish I saw it more in the feminist blogosphere. It explains why--or rather, the mechanism through which--women are treated like radio-controlled sexbots. It explains why well-intentioned men end up hurting their wives and girlfriends again and again with their childish behavior. And it explains why somewhere in India, or Pakistan, or Bangladesh, a group of men may be deciding how to tell another woman that they've come to rape her--to punish another man.

____________________________________
*Third from the top, left hand column.
**That's a heavily edited version. You can read the whole scene if you want--it's worth it. Run a search for the words "Hey! What's the matter with you?" on this page. That'll take you to the beginning of the scene in question.
***Obviously, this would only be 100% true in a 100% patriarchy. It is, however, true to the extent that patriarchy has a grip on a society (or segment thereof).

Michaela Hutchison!

2006-02-07T16:48:00.000-06:00

Okay, remember that post back in November (the one that won me the "Feminazi" sobriquet)? Wherein my basic point was that the biological differences between the sexes were insignificant compared to the cultural difference between the genders? And how all the "women are the weaker sex so they have to be careful and restrict their behavior to avoid sexual predation" crap was indeed crap because self-defense is a lot more about skill, training, and determination than it is about upper-body strength? And how the discussions about women in "men's" sports really showed all that crap to be the crap that it is?

Well, it looks like Michaela Hutchison is doing her best to prove me right. She became the first girl in the US to win a state wrestling title against boys. Not only that, but she came within four matches of an unbeaten season and within one pin of a state record.

And not only that, she's not the only girl kicking ass in wrestling--her sister came in third six years ago, and a girl in Maine placed second in her state championship.

To irreverently paraphrase Dr. King:

I have a dream that my daughter (or more likely, her daughter) will one day live in a nation where her athletic ability will not be judged by the morphology of her genitals, but by her ability to kick ass on the playing field.

________________________________
footnote: and yeah, for any anti-feminist nitpickers out there, I know what you're thinking: it doesn't count because she was only wrestling against boys in her weight class, so the disparity in men's and women's size didn't show up, so it's not evidence for my argument.

Bullshit. My point wasn't that biological differences aren't there--it's that they're insignificant compared to the cultural ones. Tell you what: you round up four average boys her same age, who will (on average) be something like 40 pounds heavier (the biological difference). Now consider that the average boy doesn't have any competitive wrestling experience, whereas she's the state goddamn champion (the cultural difference). How much money would you be willing to put on any of those boys being able to pin her?

second footnote for the even nitpickier: yes, it's true that she only weighs 103 pounds, and that a lot of boys her age are a hell of a lot bigger than that. But small boys are at exactly the same disadvantage as small girls, and yet they are rarely counseled to restrict their behavior the same way girls are. Consider: if the average high school girl weighs 133lbs, that puts Michaela at about 77% of the average girl. To be fair, the above scenario should match her against boys who are about 77% of the average boy's weight, or about 142lbs. The test wouldn't be to see if she could beat the average-sized boy: the test would be to see whether sexual dimorphism was a more important predictor of success than experience and training, so her personal deviation from the average girl's weight would have to be controlled for. whew.

Ah, the Superbowl

2006-02-06T17:38:00.000-06:00

Ok. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that a large portion, if not the majority, of my readers did not watch the Superbowl^TM. Which means you did not see the ad that had me grinding my teeth and trying really hard not to swear at the TV in front of my children.

Now, if you want anti-feminist advertising, the Superbowl^TM has always got you covered. This year, the winner in the conventional "depict women as sexualized objects which exist for the visual pleasure of men" category is godaddy.com, who I will not dignify with a link. However, were you to go visit their site, you could not only watch the ad itself (in which the straps of a large-breasted woman's halter top slowly, teasingly stretch and unravel, finally snapping in a slo-mo money shot, much to the delight not only of the rich, old, white male who has been utterly transfixed by the slow tease of her inflated mammaries bursting out of her clothing, but also, apparently to the delight (and apparent sexual arousal) of the large-breasted woman herself), but you could enjoy the versions that were "too edgy for the network" (translation: click here to see some titty, boys. Heh heh. Heh.)

Ugh. I mean, how do I explain to my 10 year-old daughter what is going on in that commercial? More to the point, why should I have to? Yeah, I know, it's my own fault for watching football, but dammit, they pitch the damn the Superbowl^TM as a "family-friendly" event. What the fuck is "family friendly" about a grand total of two boys and three girls under the age of 11 watching a wet dream fantasy about a ~~woman~~ fetishized sexbot being humiliated in public by having her tits come bouncing out of her hooters-style halter top and enjoying it?

Aggggh! Shall I just tell EvilGeniusGirl, "Honey, just go over to Aunt Twisty's and click on the link that says "men hate you." She pretty much covers it all."

Do I tell HowlerMonkeyBoy, "See, son? That's the patriarchal privilege to which you are heir. Unfortunately, sexually desirable women do not actually enjoy having their silicon-enhanced breasts suddenly exposed to scrawny, old, white males, and while patriarchal privilege may well cause you to feel entitled to this particular pleasure when you are older, you must remember that it's incompatible with treating women as if they were full human beings. Now wipe up that drool."*

But while that ad featured the most in-your-face sexism, I was actually most annoyed by the one that was more subtly sexist. I mean, the "beautiful women enjoy having their breasts involuntarily exposed in front of a roomful of men" message is sickening and offensive, but the sexism is so fucking out there that at least a substantial minority of the population will recognize it as a degrading representation of a woman as a sexbot who exists purely for the pleasure of men. The minority of the population who agree with my pick for "Most Annoying Sexist Superbowl^TM Commercial" is probably somewhat more limited.

...and the winner is:

Okay. Some of you old-timers may remember the post I wrote back in July about stereotypes of men as children who went to great lengths to escape the scrutiny of their mommy-wives so that they could shirk their emotional responsibilities within relationships and act like, well, children. You may recall that my prime illustration of these stereotypes was a beer commercial. Well, guess what. Turns out that telling men that they can/should hide from their wives in order to enjoy life without their life partners, but with the company of other boy-men, still sells beer.

And I would write about it in detail, except Blogger.com has decided, once again, that Monday evening is the perfect time to pull their motherfucking servers off-line and tinker with them a bit. I'm sorry, but don't the propeller-heads get paid extra to come in at, like, 3 AM when nobody wants the fucking servers anyway?

Gah. So by the time the servers come back up, I won't have time to do justice to this truly destructive (both to men and women) commercial. But, to make up for it, I promise I take it on in my next post, and combine it with the long, pedantic post on homosociality that I've been planning for awhile.

Stay tuned....
_____________________________________________

*Fortunately, HowlerMonkeyBoy is only 7, so he wasn't actually drooling. For rhetorical purposes, let's pretend he's 12. OTOH, it may be worse that he's 7, and thus highly impressionable.

Good News.

2006-02-03T23:02:00.000-06:00

Who says I never post good news?

Via Pam at Pandagon, we learn that Target has fired a pharmacist for refusing to dispense Plan B.

Well, not really. What she was actually fired for was refusing to abide by Target's lame-ass policy that allows religiously bigoted pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency medication if they feel it makes Baby Jesus Cry. All they have to do is tell the ~~little slut~~ woman in need of emergency contraception where she actually can get her prescription filled. But no, apparently even that was too much for Heather Williams:

I believe life begins with two cells and I don't want to be part of the end of that life.*

That's great. I mean, seriously--no snark. I have respect for someone who's willing to get fired over her religious beliefs. That doesn't mean I don't think she's way the hell off the mark here. On Pam's piece about the religiously bigoted teachers who felt that they should be allowed to decide which students they would protect from bullying and harassment, she quotes Shakespeare's Sister thus:

But, much like pharmacists who choose a profession in which they may be required to dispense medications they may personally not like, professional public school educators must respect that many of their students’ personal beliefs and traits will be different from their own. That’s why Pentecostal public school educators can’t require their female students to not cut their hair and wear only ankle-length skirts, and Jewish public school educators can’t demand that their male students all wear yarmulkes, and atheist public school educators can’t forbid crucifixes and yarmulkes and hajibs. It simply isn’t the job of public school educators to dictate their own religious beliefs (or lack thereof) to their students.

And it isn't the job of pharmacists to dictate their religious beliefs to their customers. Granted, pharmacists aren't public school employees. But there is a strong tradition of requiring those in the health professions to provide public service whether they want to or not. We could recite all the standard "what-if's" that this topic brings up (what if I'm a Quaker--can I refuse to sell guns? What if I'm a Christian Scientist--can I refuse to sell any medicine at all? What if I belong to the Church of the Subgenius--can I perform absurdist performance art instead of working? etc.), but I like Shakespeare's Sister's take: this is America. We don't get to impose our religious beliefs on each other. We are an incredibly diverse bowl of mixed nuts.

Which would be all well and good if it stopped there. If Ms. Williams had the integrity to say, "I refuse to participate in the business of killing babies, and my job is a small price to pay for my religious values," then fine. I can even respect that. But (as John Belushi used to say), Nooooo. No, she's filing an EEOC complaint with Target. She has the gall to suggest that not only can she refuse to provide emergency medication for a customer, but that Target has no right to discipline her for refusing to do her job. This is cobblers. Can you imagine how quickly Civil Society would break down if the following were taken seriously?

I'm sorry, but I'm Islamic, and I can't allow any female passengers with bare heads on my bus. And yyou can't fire me for refusing.

I'm sorry, but I'm Jewish--I can't deliver napkins to a restaurant that sells pork. And you can't fire me for refusing.

I'm sorry, but I'm Jehovah's Witness--I can't respond to a fire on Saturday. And you can't fire me for refusing.

Etc., etc., etc..

Fuck. I hereby promise that if she wins her suit, I will join the Church of the Sub-Genius and tell my boss that "Bob" doesn't want me working more than 2 hours a day, and sue her if she complains.

* * * *

What pisses me off about this, though, is that it's just the latest in a long line of the "Poor Oppressed Christians" crap that we've been hearing lately. I have to admit, it's a great tactic. If you find that your hegemonic domination of organized religion in the Most Powerful Nation on Earth is being threatened, then just accuse all the people you've been oppressing of, well, oppressing you.

I mean, has it never occurred to Heather Williams and her supporters that those ~~little sluts~~ women who need emergency medication have religious rights, too? Or do they honestly believe that oppression is something that can only happen to Bible-believing Christians? If Heather Williams (pharmacist) and Jane Doe (~~little slut~~ woman who needs emergency medication) both have religious freedom, then Heather's should be honored by letting her refuse to hand over the pills. And Jane's? Jane's should be honored by giving her the fucking pills! I mean, where the hell is it written that a Christian's religious rights automatically trump anyone else's religious rights?

And the reason, the reason my little friends, why Heather needs to fucking well knuckle under and do her goddamn job is that she is in a position of great power vis-à-vis Jane there at the pharmacy. If Heather's religious rights are infringed upon, then her religious feelings may get hurt, but there's no permanent harm done. She's free to go home and consider whether or not this is really the line of work she wants to be in, and she's free to go home and consider how best to struggle against this gross injustice.

However, if Jane's religious rights are trampled in this way, then she may be forced to either continue an unwanted pregnancy or go through an abortion, either of which can be hugely traumatic decisions and experiences. More importantly, Heather has plenty of time to make her decision. For Jane, it's (we hope) a once-in-a-lifetime chance--she has one chance to make this decision, a 12-hour window for optimal effectiveness, and Heather's getting in the way can effectively rob Jane of that choice.

Heather is in the driver's seat. That is what makes her religious convictions of less import than Jane's. Heather chose to show up to work that day, knowing full well what Target's lame-ass policy was. When Jane walks up to the counter, Heather has the choice of whether to hand over the pills or not. Jane, on the other hand, has no choice. She is at the mercy of Heather's whim. And that's what makes it so fucking wrong. In this country, one citizen who needs emergency medication should never be at the religious whim of another.

For example: how would our sense of American fair play react to the following scenario:

Can I help you?
Yes, I need this prescription filled. My doctor has prescribed it, it's legal, it's a medically valid treatment, and if I don't take it in the next 12 hours it could have serious long-term effects, both medical and psychological, for me and possibly for another person.
No.
What?
I said "No."
Why the hell not?
Because you're black. And my religion forbids me to give aid to members of the Mud Races. But there's a CVS down the street that will be glad to help you out...

Oh, yeah. That'd get just a whole lot of support, wouldn't it. And then when the pharmacist was fired and filed an EEOC complaint, just how far would that get?

I don't know, but I can tell you what wouldn't happen. 18 separate states would not be looking at 36 separate laws to protect pharmacists like that from disciplinary action.

But when the religious bigotry involves either ~~little sluts~~ women who need either contraception or abortion on the one hand, or Gays and Lesbians on the other, then suddenly it's your right to refuse treatment to a person in need, to shirk your responsibility as a health care provider, and to abuse your power over another citizen based on your religious whim. But it's the Christians who are being oppressed here, right?

See? Told you it was good news :)

No, seriously. There are several things you can do here. First, email Target, and tell them how much you appreciate their firing of Heather Williams. If you can do so politely, you might also nudge them in the direction of actually requiring their pharmacists to provide medical services for all people in need, without religious bigotry, public humiliation, or medically contraindicated delays.

Then, go email Walgreens and let them know that you support them as they defend themselves against a suit by four religiously bigoted pharmacists who wanted their civil disobedience and their salaries, too.

Then truck over to Wal-Mart, and tell them that they ought to be ashamed of themselves for not stocking emergency contraception, in apparent violation of Massachusetts state law. Hence the lawsuit (Yay!) filed against the smiley-face corporatocracy. Then go over to Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, and Jane Doe Inc. and thank them for supporting the lawsuit (and yes, while good wishes are nice, the kind of thanks these folks need comes with presidential portraits on it. The Dems won't fight for choice, so we're going to have to support groups like these).

____________________________
*Okay, I promise I won't yell this time: Plan. B. Is. Not. Abortion. There, wasn't that nice?

Newsflash: Jesus Wants You to Die of Cancer

2006-02-01T23:51:00.000-06:00

Yes, my little children. Every time teen-age girls have sex, that makes baby Jesus cry. So, some wise souls in Australia have decided that they'd rather watch their daughters die an excruciating death from cervical cancer than allow them access to a simple vaccine.

We learn of this prima facie evidence of misogynist patriarchy via the ever-trenchant Twisty, who, not surprisingly, has her own gentle take on it:

Godbags naturally default to slut-punishing mode when encountering scary science that might help to confer human status on women. The myth of female virtue is the cornerstone of patriarchy. A pussy unpoliced will lead to hard drugs, communism, homosexuality, rampant stuffing of newborns into trash cans, and what have you.

Damn, I hate it when Twisty's to polite to come out and say what she really means.

Yes, this is really happening, and not in some scary place like Iran or Pakistan. No, this is Australia, where apparently they have their own Aussie-variety Theocrats. Said Theocrats, of course, being the ones who would rather lose their daughters in a cancer ward than have them lose their souls to the satanic cesspool that is pre-marital sex.

Gah. You still have no idea what I'm talking about, do you. Sorry. My bad. Here's the scoop: cervical cancer kills something like 5000 women a year in the US, with (natch) a disproportionately higher rate in the post-colonial world. I imagine the incidence and mortality figures in Australia are something like ours.

So now, those clever scientists in their white lab coats have come up with a vaccine that appears to be 100% effective in preventing infection by the viruses that appear to cause cervical cancer. You would think this would be a good thing, yes?

Well, no, apparently not if you're talking about women. Women who might have sex. Women who [horrors] might even have pre-marital sex. These epidemiological geniuses down under have decided that rotting to death of cancer ~~is a fit punishment for~~ better than suffering the indignities of pre-marital sex:

Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council said, ÂGiving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.Â

Oh, wait, sorry. That was here in the US. Can't let the Aussies have all the fun.

See, here's the deal. HPV, the virus that appears to cause cervical cancer, is insanely wide-spread. Something like 20,000,000 in the US are estimated to have it, but most are asymptomatic, and never even know they're infected. So they can pass it on to lots of other folk. So, what you want is for girls (men get it too, but it's overwhelmingly women who die from the resulting cancer) to be vaccinated before they become sexually active.

Which means, seeing as most girls aren't going to blithely let you know "Oh, by the way, Mom, Doug and I are planning on going all the way pretty soon" over milk and cookies, you need to get them vaccinated well before they're likely to become sexually active. Like around nine.

Now, I'm not immune to getting a little creeped out by that--being as the Evil Genius Girl is currently ten--but you know what? I was pretty fucking creeped out bmeconiumum and shitty diapers, but I dealt with it because it was my job as a parent to take care of my fucking kids.

But no. Not only do some people think that HPV vaccine shouldn't be made mandatory,* they would like to see it not be available in the first place:

Senator Joyce said the decision whether to approve the vaccine should not be left to the TGA [Aussiequivalentnt of the FDA]...There might be an overwhelming (public) backlash from people saying, 'don't you dare put something out there that gives my 12-year-old daughter licensece to be promiscuous'," he said.

Oh, that's the part I like: "don't you dare put something out there." I mean, the Aussies aren't even talking about making this shit mandatory. No, they just want to make it available, and this Crocodile Dundee Theocrat says that's too damn bad, pre-martial sex makes baby Jesus cry, no life-saving vaccine for you.

And, please: "a license to be promiscuous?" I can just see it:

So, Babs--did you and Mickey, you know, "do it" last night?
No way, Marge. I'm much too worried about HPV and the risk of cervical cancer.
Silly girl--there's a vaccine for that now!
Hot Dawg! First stop, the free clinic, next stop, boy's locker room...

Yeah, because HPV is the only thing holding Babs back from teen age sex--not pregnancy, not her personal morals, not HIV, not STDs, not fear of being taken advantage of, not an understanding that she's not ready for sex yet, not parental disapproval, not being gay, not the bazillion other constraints on young women's sexuality, no--the only thing stopping Babs from becoming the promiscuous little tart that Senator Joyce secretly fears all four of his daughters will become is HPV. Like a thin red line between sweet, innocent little school girls and Race Music.

All of which ties into the idiocy of anti-contraception forces, the anti-sex-ed forces, the FDA 's unconscionablwithholdingng of over-the-counter approval of Plan B (which means that people are driving to the Catholic nation of motherfucking Mexico to get their contraceptives), abstinence-only education--what else? How much anti-sex, anti-woman idiocy have I failed to mention?

The upshot, of course, is that it's really about controlling women's bodies. I mean, I used to believe that in a grad-school-postmoderist-abstract sort of way, but no. No, my friends, it really is about controlling women's bodies. It's not about preventing abortion, it's not about preventing teen pregnancy. It's about trying to scare or coerce women into not having unsanctioned sex (that is, sex that falls outside the control of a husband, and thus thpatrilineagege), or if that fails, to punish them for having had unsanctioned sex. With unwanted pregnancies or--it appears--with potentially fatal cancers.

No, what the above does tell us that these people do not have women's best interests at heart. Or, in the unlikely case that they even think that they do (that is, they honestly believe it's better to die of cancer than to have premarital sex), they don't have the courage to admit it out loud. Probably because they know how batshit fucking crazy it would sound.

So, it's not about the babies--I covered that last week. But here's the kicker--it's not about the bible or baby Jesus, either. The bible is pretty much mum on abortion. Yes, I know that there are a lot of things that could be interpreted as being against abortion, but there are a) a lot of things that could be interpreted to mean a whole shitload of things, and b) there are a whole, whole lot of things that don't need to be interpreted--upon which the Bible is quite clear--that are completely ignored by the Christian Right.**

Like, ferinstance, there's the standard anti-Leviticus rant (shellfish, doves, when to have your daughter killed on your doorstep, etc.). But more currently, how about this: it seems that at least a few evangelicals are starting to wake up to the notion that their movement to "spread the good news" has been hijacked by bigots andemagogueses, and they're noticing that while the bigots andemagogueses are doing alright on the sex-hatred thing, they're kinda letting the "whatsover you do to the least of my brothers" thing slide a bit.

Now, the bigots andemagogueses aren't about to take this lying down. In the above-linked article, the VP of Focus on the Family tells us that he's not devoting any time to feeding the multitudes and healing the sick because "Most evangelicals today are concerned with the much more basic issues of marriage and family."

Come again? The bible is silent on abortion, and virtually silent on homosexuality.*** Christ himself is absolutely silent on both counts, but he is both explicit and enthusiastic about feeding the poor. I could go off on this, but we all know the truth: Jesus was a socialist. If Jesus saw you drive up to the anti-Gay marriage rally in your SUV and your $300 Gucci shoes, he'd probably smack the shit out of you and tell you to sell the SUV, give your shoes to a homeless guy, and then get your ass into a soup kitchen and fucking well stay there. Iin a divinely gentle and compassionate way, of course.

So, it's not about the babies--I covered that last week. And it's sure as fuck not about the bible, because if these folks were seriously concerned with carrying out Jesus' instructions, they'd be all about feeding the poor, healing the sick, selling their possessions, tearing their cloaks in two, what have you. Yeah, they might eventually get around to abortion and homosexuality, but in a "after a grueling but deeply satisfying day of feeding the poor and other activities that Christ clearly commanded us to do, let's idly discuss the other things that Christ may have wanted us to do before we fall asleep exhausted from carrying out the Lord's will only to wake up and spend another day distributing bread and medicine to the least of our brothers" sort of way.

So I have to go with Twisty on this one. It's about the fucking patriarchy.

**************************

*Leaving aside the whole issue of mandatory vaccines. Let's just say that assuming mandatory vaccines are a good idea, HPV should probably be one of them.

**Ever notice how when the Bible says what they want to hear, they say "It's in the Bible, the literal word of God, and no interpretation is necessary or allowable!" But when their petty hatreds and prejudices aren't backed up by scripture, they say "It's clear from a careful reading and interpretation of the scripture that God's intent was blah blablah blah..."

***Yes, I know the passages that are trotted out against homosexuality. But they are squat compared to what the bible has to say about things like how to pray, our obligations to the poor, how to love one another, how to forgive, etc., etc., Read the anti-Leviticus rant if you don't believe me. Then come back and make your comments.

And No, I Do Not Still Want to be Friends.

2006-02-01T15:46:00.000-06:00

So, here's the text of my message today to the Democratic National Committee:

I am appalled by the way that the Democratic party rolled over on Alito. I will never again lift a finger to help the Democrats. I'd rather throw my vote away on the Greens, a party that fights for what I believe in, than on the Democrats, who no longer even pretend to.

If you feel so moved, you are welcome to drop them a line yourself.

UPDATE: via Pam, I found this. I could not have remotely put it better myself.

72-25?

2006-01-30T23:41:00.000-06:00

Oh, please.

Oh motherfucking Jesus-cowering-in-a-corner please.

I am disgusted by the performance of the Democratic senators today. For the first time ever, I'm glad that I've got a couple of GOP senators in my state, so I don't have to be ashamed of the people who supposedly represent me in Washington.

Let me make it clear here that I'm not pissed that the filibuster failed. No, I'm pissed that the Dems--collectively, not individually--didn't even put up a fight. Are you really trying to tell me that no more than 25% of Americans thought Alito was enough of a threat to the Supreme Court to be challenged?

No, it's not losing I mind. We all figured it was going to happen. But it's one thing when your opponent defeats you, and quite another when your own team lets you down. Back when I played football, I never really minded losing all that much. I mean, I didn't like it, but as long as long as there was a good fight to be fought, I was willing to bust my gut trying to get my team out on top, and if we didn't, well, fuck it. We played hard and could respect ourselves.

No, what I hated, absolutely hated, was when our team would just cave in after the other team got ahead by a couple of touchdowns. Then it was less like a good fight, and more like being on the wrong end of a flogging. It was demoralizing, depressing, and ultimately, I think, bad for the human spirit.

So that's what's got me pissed. George "I'm a uniter" appoints a man repugnant to what the Democratic party supposedly stands for--fuck that, what the goddamn constitution supposedly stands for-- and the Dems botch their chance to make their case against him in the hearings [I mean, Jesus Fuck, people. Can you imagine if Hillary were president, and she appointed a man who thought it was OK to strip search a 10 year-old girl who was not named in the warrant? Do you think the GOP would have gi]. And then they shuffle their feet and mumble pointlessly about how a filibuster would be seen as "obstructionist" and choose--once again--to "hold their fire."

Well guess what, you spineless hacks? A filibuster is supposed to be fucking obstructionist! That's the whole motherfucking point of a filibuster! Something heinous, something beyond the pale is happening in the upper house of the United States Congress, and you know you don't have the votes to defeat it, so you fucking chain yourself to the podium and declare that you'd rather shut the whole fucking system down than let it proceed on this indefensible course.

Voting for a doomed filibuster is the polite, senatorial equivalent of standing in front of the jail house and telling the mob, "You can have this innocent man over my dead body!" knowing that they're going to kill you and then hang him anyway

Except that the Senate won't actually kill you. Which makes it even more pathetic.

So then, John Kerry pops out of left field and says, "Well, fuck this. If no one else is going to filibuster, then I damn well will," which earned him a lot of credit (even if he did do it from a ski resort in Switzerland. At least it wasn't France).

So now, the Dems have the opportunity to play Heroic Underdog. It's like the Spartans at Thermopylae. You know they're going to get creamed, but that's what makes it more noble. Anyone can jump on a bandwagon. It takes guts to join up with a doomed cause. Here's their chance to redeem themselves in front of their constituency.

I mean, all these people had to do was register a protest vote. No one really thought the filibuster was going to succeed. You stand up, you say "Fuck You!" to George W and his Theocrat handlers, and then you lose, and since George W's going to get his court-packing way, it's not like anyone's really going to hold it against you.

Well, fuck you, you bunch of ass-kissing cowards. I was all set to talk about how the Dems had finally proven that they'd gotten in touch with their inner backbones.

But now? Now I think I'm going to go back to my sentiments of June. We are facing a serious shift in American politics. Roe is history. Gay rights are being pilloried. More than a dozen states are looking at laws to protect pharmacists who refuse to dispense contraceptives. Something like 70% of Americans think that teaching "intelligent design" in government schools is just peachy.

And all this would be bad enough if the Democrats were standing up and doing their damnedest to stop it. But they're not. With notable exceptions, they're just not doing it. And as much as I like the Greens, there's no way in hell they're going to come up with the political muscle to do anything about it in the next 40 years.

So, we're stuck with the Dems. But on the other hand, they're stuck with us. So give them a call, and try to find some polite way of saying, "Wake up and smell the motherfucking coffee, you craven worms! Your miserable milquetoast of a party is all that stands between our Republic and Pat Fucking Robertson in the White House! So get off your cowardly asses and do the fucking job we elected you to do!!"

Because I sure as shit can't.