Chocolate city

I spent all day listening to, watching, and surfing around about the flooding in New Orleans. Alas, I've only been to the city once in my life--although I remember it vividly enough to have always wanted to go back. I'm very glad to be able to say that one of the things I did there was see the Preservation Hall Jazz Band; I also developed a love of crayfish, grits, and gumbo. More importantly, I have a good friend who lives down there. Luckily, although I haven't been able to get ahold of her, I see that she's updated her livejournal, so I know that she and her daughter are probably fine.

A couple of the more interesting pieces I read about the flooding are here (Salon) and here. The first points out that the disaster--which, along with a terrorist attack on New York, was predicted by FEMA in 2001--might well have been prevented if the Bush administration hadn't consistently cut funding for flood control efforts in New Orleans:

by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze.

Note that as bad as the hurricane itself was, it was really the broken levee afterwards that destroyed the city.

The second link up there asks why the major television coverage isn't mentioning the subject of race. New Orleans is a majority-black city: 67%. As people are beginning to point out, many if not most of those stranded and now in need of recognizing are black and poor: people who didn't own cars, so couldn't evacuate; or people who may have lacked insurance or the money to replace lost or looted possessions, so risked staying; or people who couldn't afford to leave town and get a hotel room.

While I was on vacation, I read Sheryll Cashin's The Failures of Integration. I highly recommend the book, which came out last year; Cashin does a strong job of presenting a great deal of empirical evidence explaining the whys and hows of continued segregation in America, particularly in terms of where we live. She starts out by acknowledging that people prefer to live in neighborhoods where they feel "comfortable"--which means that both blacks and whites often choose neighborhoods where they are in the majority--but then goes on to dig deeper into the history of segregation, not just because of Jim Crow laws, but as a consequence of HUD mortgage practices, the creation of the interstate highway system, thirty to forty years of emphasis on "local governance," zoning laws, and pernicious tax systems that build suburban infrastructure using city taxes, but then don't return suburban tax money to the cities, ensuring that wealth is concentrated in white suburban developments. It's a sobering and eye-opening book. While much of what she says about school funding and increasing segregation in public schools I already knew, her research and discussion of housing practices--which underlie school segregation--is new to me. As I read, I thought about the last two presidential elections, and the oft-noted distinction between the urban and suburban vote, and I wondered why so little discussion about election strategy and party "framing" has failed to pay attention to the obvious question of race. We all know that "urban" is a code word for "black." But I have seen very few people point out the juxtaposition of the overt right-wing attacks on "city liberals" with the outreach efforts directed at the black church on "family values" and gay marriage. Cashin's book, which talks towards the end about the Bush administration's resort to social values rhetoric that masks its real economic agenda, made me wonder if the real target there might not be white integrationists and the resulting urban renewal that is starting to challenge many of the divide-and-conquer strategies of suburban development, the gutting of public education, and the aggressive tax cutting measures that undermine social services and public goods that are more visible to city dwellers than they are to those in the suburbs.

And then the hurricane and flooding. Which happened in part because the administration underfunded the infrastructures that could have protected the city, and which are straining the resources of the National Guard because everyone's over in Iraq, and which is displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Those who are wealthy enough to be well-insured have lost a great deal, but they will be able to rebuild, or buy somewhere else. They have and will suffer, but they will regroup; with savings or investments they will be able to tighten their belts and ride out a few weeks of unemployment; with cultural capital and social connections they will be able to get help from friends and family. Those who lack those things, black and white, will have to depend on government help to pull their lives back together. Will they get it? Do we remember the way that the funds for the vicitms of 9/11 privileged the wealthy over the poor?

We often say that natural disasters affect everyone, that people pull together in the face of tragedy. And surely this is so, especially at first. But like the "natural" desire to live someplace where one's neighbors share one's social background, subtle and not-so-subtle inequalities underlie the common experience of the hurricane. The aftereffects, I think, will test how well our national imagination has overcome our long history of black / white divisions. Will we care as much about the lower-lying areas of New Orleans as we did about rebuilding lower Manhattan?

Didja miss me?

A HUGE thank you to Twisty and Elise for super-fantastic guest blogging in my absence. I should go on vacation more often, n'est-ce pas? Thanks and profound admiration to Flea and her husband Steve for being the most gracious hosts in the world--they gave us their bed! And bathroom!--and to their kids Alex and Christopher, with whom Pseudonymous Kid had the time of his life. He's now officially in Alex's "best friends club," which surely means we'll have to go to Chicago even more often. I had a terrific time lunching and shopping with Flea, Sarah in Chicago, Roni, Orange, and Ding, who promises we'll go to Sole Lounge next time I'm in town. Highly enjoyable brunch and conversation with Risa and Sean, who were very kind about entertaining Pseudonymous Kid's (and Mr. B.'s) many questions about planets and universes and aliens and space travel. Lovely walk along the river and great conversation with Demetri, who also invited me to go along to the state fair, but alas, I didn't have time. Next time, however, we really must share a meal with Mrs. Demetri and the boyfriend. A great, gossipy ("which male bloggers do we suspect are hot?") lunch with Elise and Clancy, followed by a little shoe shopping that Elise, sadly, had to miss in order to go back to work. Thanks, too, to Sarah for letting us crash at her place Monday night, as well as for her company over dinner.

There was also much delicious food (my boyfriend cooks better than most of the restaurants in Minneapolis, I swear), a really fine exhibit of Chuck Close's work (which I highly recommend if you live in or near the Twin Cities), an outstanding (but too short!) afternoon talking and shopping with the boyfriend's sister, an entire season of Buffy, an evening with an eight-year old, a two-year old, and a baby, linen sheets and silk pillowcases, and--claro que si--champagne, as well as much excellent beer and a really fine chardonnay that I'm going to have to try to find around here. Not to mention a fair bit of luxurious lounging around smoking and reading.

In other words, a most excellent vacation. In my next life, I plan to be rich so I don't have to work and can live like that all the time.

Sad News

Y'all will remember Dr. B's post on Badger, whose husband was in treatment for cancer, and some of you may have contributed to the hospice fund. I just got news that Mr. Badger died yesterday. Please send warm thoughts to the grieving family; Academic Coach is also collecting cards to forward to Badger and her family - more information here.

Mmm ... I loves me some gay coffee.

I swear, the Christian right-wing has way too much time on their hands. I mean, with all the shit going on in the world right now, you'd think they'd be too busy spreading the gospel or something to bother with fussing about slogans on coffee cups. But of course, you'd be wrong, because there's nothing evangelical fanatics love more than sticking it to the effete, latte-drinking liberal "man":

A national Christian women's organization is accusing the Seattle-based coffee maker of promoting a homosexual agenda because of a quote by author Armistead Maupin, whose "Tales of the City" chronicled San Francisco's homosexual community in the 1970s and 1980s.

Maupin's quote — one of several dozen in "The Way I See It" promotion — says his only regret about being gay is that he repressed it for so long."I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short."

Concerned Women for America, which promotes itself as the antithesis of the National Organization for Women and boasts 8,700 supporters in Washington, says most of those quoted on the coffee cups are liberal.

The group believes corporations have a responsibility to reflect the diversity of their customers by taking a balanced approach — or staying out of divisive social issues altogether.

Look, first of all: Starbucks coffee cups are not media outlets. There's no standard of "fair and balanced reporting" on receptacles for hot, caffeinated beverages. Honest. I looked it up. And second of all: the quotes Starbucks has selected actually do come from a wide variety of sources, including Jonah Goldberg, editor of the National Review online - which ain't exactly a bastion of liberalism - and Michael Medved, nationally syndicated conservative columnist. So they're already presenting a pretty balanced picture. So can y'all just back the hell off now? I'm sure there are snakes to be handled, tongues to be spoken, and progeny to be readied for years of therapy - how 'bout we lay off the nonsensical protests for a few days?

Oh, my god ...

If you haven't already seen this, you must go over to Blue Girl, Red State and read her account of a friend's relief work in Darfur. An excerpt:

She finished her mission in Chad, then went to Zimbabwe for three more weeks before she came home. She brought home a pretty good case of PTSD. What she dealt with daily goes beyond the pale ... beyond the nightmares of most people; Children with all four limbs hacked off right above the knee or below the elbow. Twelve year olds who died in childbirth after being gang-raped by the Janjaweed. Women who gave birth to rape-babies who were then cast out by their families for shaming the family name, leaving only one avenue of survival for themselves and their children after the camps: Prostitution.

... And women are the preponderance of victims. Men do not leave the villages to go to the countryside to gather firewood and other necessary items of sustenance. Women venture out, even though every time they leave their villages, they are at horrific risk of being beaten and raped and disfigured. The reason they go instead of the men? The women are only attacked, the men are killed.

It is criminal that we are not intervening more strongly in Darfur. This stuff happens there every day. I cannot even imagine existing in that kind of hell. This is the kind of thing that makes me pessimistic about the future of our species.

Helping those in need

Here are some links to places where you can donate to help victims of Hurricane Katrina:

The American Red Cross

Noah's Wish (help for animal disaster victims, via Echidne)

You can also get ongoing updates on USA Today's Hurricane Katrina Blog.

If anyone knows of other resources, feel free to add them in comments.

UPDATE: MSNBC has a good list of other resources.

(x-posted at After School Snack.)

Separated At Birth?

Natural History

Saturday morning. I spring from my bed with a glad cry, effect the disappearance without a trace of several cups of espresso, pack the dogs into my old kit bag, and do hie for El Rancho Deluxe, our rural seat in the heart of the picturesque Texas Hill Country.

I bring along an extra triple espresso in a go-cup. Austin is dandy in many respects, but containment of urban sprawl is not one of them. The first 20 miles of Highway 290 west of town, once some of the prettiest country in the cosmos, now comprise some fairly treacherous and depressing terrain. It's a joyless exurban purgatory full of subdivided 5-acre "ranches" and giant SUVs doing the full-tilt rush-hour boogie on a two-lane originally built for the occasional Winnebago. Motorized commuters regularly multitask themselves to a fiery death on this narrow stretch of roiling asphalt, so I always ensure I'm good'n coffeed up before attempting any trans-Hays County crossing.

Donuts never hurt, either. I stop at the Chevron at Fitzhugh Road for a Krispy Kreme. I'm headed for Blanco County. There are no Krispy Kremes there, that I know of.

At a stoplight in Dripping Springs, TX, under a banner announcing the annual town gun raffle, I have the pleasure of observing a 40-something hottie in an iridescent black Ford F-150 apply blush to her face and pick her nose at the same time.

I whiz by the new Tractor Supply Co, which is the Home Depot for exurban "ranchers." This is where you buy your cattle ear tags and llama feed. The parking lot is full of giant SUVs.

I whiz by Tank Town, a field of rainwater collection tanks painted in goofy crayon colors by some enterprising hippies who bottle "Cloud Juice."

Ten minutes later I'm in Blanco County, the ur-Texas, and not a moment too soon. It's pretty sparsely populated, is Blanco County. If you, say, went off your nut and tried to fill up the Houston Astrodome with Blanco Countians, you'd have to clone each one seven times. Which is why the second you cross the county line, it's like the acid just kicked in. The traffic vanishes, it stops raining (if it had been raining) and the sky opens up, and there's this magnificent endless panorama of Texas, Texas, some vultures, and more Texas. Non-Texans, whom I pity, are pretty opinionated about Texas, and often not in a good way, I've noticed, and the reason for this is that they've never seen the view looking north on Ranch Road 3232.

Another reason is probably the president, who is a carpetbagging jagoff, and not a real Texan, no matter how much "brush" he "clears."

Nine miles later, just to break up the monotony of magnificent vista after magnificent vista, I meet a truck coming from the opposite direction. As we pass, we raise two fingers off our steering wheels. This is the redneck salute, which is our way of saying, "thanks for not slapping my side mirror off, asshole!"

My day becomes suddenly and quintessentially both Texan and Three Stoogian when I disembark the vehicle to fumble open El Rancho Deluxe's ancient rusty gate. For lo there is a rattlesnake in the culvert, to whose somewhat unexpected presence I react by jumping about a half a mile sideways, alighting in an opuntia. Which would be no big whoop if opuntia were a species of daffodil, or pillow, but it is not. An opuntia is a cactus. Addressing the topic of leaping into cactuses, the state's national song, "Deep In The Heart of Texas," contains this nugget of pure poetry: "The Texas plants/ are hard on pants." Truer words were never spoke by a singing cowboy.

Back in the truck. It's about a mile over a seriously crappy gravel road to the creek, our destination. The plan is to take Bert, my 3-month-old Golden retriever, swimming for the first time. I smile the smug smile of a successful wildlife conservateur, for within five minutes, without even trying, I have spotted not only the rattlesnake, but three white-tailed deer, a red-tailed hawk, an armadillo of indeterminate tail color, a painted bunting, and a herd of feral burros.

El Rancho Deluxe is the summer residence of these feral burros. They aren't really supposed to be here, but I can't keep'em out; they wander in through the creekbed, and anyway, they present a scenic tableau. Sometimes when the burros and I cross paths, and they start loping down the road ahead of the truck, I pretend they are zebras and I am careening in a dust-colored Jeep through the Kalahari in a PBS documentary. For some reason I speak with an Australian accent when I do this.

For instance, when my dog Zippy takes advantage of my inattention (I am plucking several pounds of cactus spines out of my knee), and jumps out of the truck, and peels out after the burros, I holler "Oi, mite!" My admonition falls on deaf ears, possibly because my accent sucks. The entire party disappears into a thicket of live oaks. My heart bleeds for old Zippy. A dog can outrun a burro over the short haul, but will only get a swift kick in the chops for her trouble.

Oh, crap, look at the time! I was going to describe the heart-rending scene at the creek, in which Zippy rejoins the group with a pronounced limp to tell me of trouble at the old mill, and in which it becomes apparent that I have the only Golden retriever ever born who is scared to death of water, but this little travelogue has swelled well beyond its intended boundaries, word-count-wise, and it is time for the gentleman farmer to shut up.

[Cross-posted at I Blame The Patriarchy]

Grrrrrrrrrr ...

I'm sitting in my favorite coffee shop (eccentric locals, good coffee, free wi-fi), staring at the last chapter of my dissertation on my computer screen. If I can write 8 pages today and 8 pages tomorrow I can be done with the initial draft, leaving the much less intimidating (to me) task of revisions. It will therefore surprise no one that all I want to do is blog, blogsurf, or take a nap. (Oh - and beat the wanker who's ineptly plonking on the coffeeshop piano over the head with a large bag of unroasted coffee beans.)

Elise's Law of Dissertating: One's motivation to write anything academically worthy is inversely proportionate to the urgency with which said writing must be done.

Gah.

A Tale Of Two Rapes

On August 24:

A man was raped in Johannesburg. A woman was raped in Doncaster.

The man was raped by three women. They invited him into their car, went for a drink, then drove to an abandoned field where they produced a gun.

The woman was raped the old-fashioned way, overpowered in a dark alley by a douchebag she'd met in a pub.

Google lists fourteen news accounts from nine different sources about the man's case. Several of these are updates on the progress of the investigation. One or two suggest that there must be "more to this story," implying that no rape actually occurred. The word rapist is put in quotation marks.

There are but two reports that allude to the woman's case, both from Sheffield Today. One of those mentions the rape only in passing, ostensibly to add more shock to the real story: the "shocking dossier" of crime associated with the pub (it is beyond my powers of self-restraint to resist revealing that the name of the place is The Blue Ball Pub) where the woman met her attacker. Rapist is not put in quotation marks. Sheffield Today has no doubts about the potentially fucktarded inclinations of guys walking home from pubs.

The male victim is described as "so traumatised that he won't speak a word to anyone." His family is interviewed. They express concern and confusion. The police spokesperson repeats that the victim was "very traumatised" and explains that he was taken to a hospital and given counseling and an HIV test.

Neither the female victim's state of mind nor her medical treatment is discussed.

"Well duh, Twisty," you are saying to yourself, "Whaddya expect? Of course the man-raped-by-women story is getting 14 times the ink, it's so weird. But women get raped by men every day; it's scarcely news."

Yup.

Fun Friday Site

Here's a fun little tidbit for your Friday afternoon: the Eggcorn Database, a collection of a particular kind of misspelling or linguistic reconfiguration. What's interesting about these is how widespread they are, even in professionally edited sources like advertisements and industry newsletters. As a some-time writing teacher, a lot of these put my teeth right on edge (my instinctive reaction is that if people would just read more, there would be fewer instances of eggcorns), but they're interesting to review, nonetheless. Here are two of my favorites:

hoarfrost » whorefrost
Classification: English – questionable
Spotted in the wild:

* “Me recently at Antelope Island - Great Salt Lake surrounded by whorefrost. …” (link)
* “… yet it was not to be …for the wicked cold hardness of the waters of the world froze solid …and the air (error) of it ….turned into whorefrost ….” (link)


holds » holes
Chiefly in: no holes barred
Classification: English – final d/t-deletion
Spotted in the wild:

* Shakespeare’s classic romantic tragedy is transformed into a no-holes barred, punk-inflected Elizabethan stage send-up of the story of a doomed love. (hollywood.com, movie blurb)
* This film is a must for Sean Bean fans, it shows him as a violent no holes barred villain. (lovefilm.com, DVD review)
* “Dumb Girls,” is a self-deprecating, no holes barred look at about getting hoodwinked in the romantic wars. (Todays Women in Music)
* Only in India would Clinton get this kind of no holes barred response. (ZNet Daily Commentary, April 17, 2000)
* Their advice is conveyed through powerful prose sparked with humor, and stunning, no-holes-barred poetry. (U Pittsburgh Press, book review, March 23, 2003)

Cultural Revolution II: Misogyny Is The Opiate Of The People

Is there an orthographer in the house? Could you please explain to me why, when reading Chinese words expressed with the Roman alphabet, one invariably encounters what appears to be deliberate obfuscation? In other words, what's with all the exoticism, all the Xs and Us? Is it not just gratuitous? I mean, you can spell these words any way you want, theoretically. Why not spell'em the way they sound?

I ask because of Madame Gu Xiulian, who is the president of the All-China Women's Federation. Say that word "Xiulian" three times fast. If you dare.

Madame Gu is on my mind because this morning I read an article in the World Peace Herald (a sister publication of the Washington Times, just so you know) about her recent press junket. She is going around extolling the virtues of China's new "vigorous measures to promote gender equality." Apparently the Chinese government now thinks women are the bee's knees, so you know what they're gonna do? They're gonna "[build] sound organizational structures and [reinforce] operational mechanisms."

Well, hallelujah.

Madame Gu is rah-rah about women's lib. When asked about certain social obstacles to granting Chinese women the right to exist, she agrees a few problems may linger, and speaks of "correcting the thinking" of the masses.

The soon-to-be-corrected thinking of the masses to whom Madame Gu alludes runs along the lines of "chicks are shit." This attitude results in female fetuses being aborted left and right. Lucky fetuses. Because, like everywhere else in the world, Chinese women are getting the shit kicked out of them on a regular basis by their douchebag husbands. Unlike everywhere else in the world, however, Chinese women have Confucius.

Confucius, known in China by his superhero name "Kong the Master," is adamant on the subject of domestic violence: "Suck it up, girls!" is his motto. But many of the girls cannot suck it up. In fact, every year over a million Chinese women find their worthless lives so intolerable that they attempt suicide. Thirty out of 100,000 succeed. They do it by drinking pesticide. It's quite the fad.

China is the only place on earth where women are snuffing it at a higher rate than men. I blame the patriarchy.

Amendment XIX

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Happy Birthday, 19th Amendment. Thanks for giving me the power to vote.

Why Women Don't Win Nobel Prizes

At last. Scientific evidence. Men are smarter than women.

Why Is Huda Ammash Behind Bars?

Here's a case I haven't seen getting much attention in the blogosphere:

When Huda Ammash turned herself in to the U.S. military in 2003, she had unusual distinctions for a woman in Iraq. She was a prominent scientist and had held senior positions in Saddam Hussein’s government.

Pentagon officials said that she had played a role in Iraq’s biowarfare research programs and dubbed her “Mrs. Anthrax.” Before she turned herself in, she even rated a spot on the Pentagon’s famous deck of cards of Iraqi officials the U.S. was trying to track down.

Two years later, Ammash remains in prison in Iraq and has not been charged with any crime. As a former dean of the Women’s College at Baghdad University and the only female member of the Iraq Academy of Sciences, Ammash was known to American academic groups. And several of them are now pushing for her release, saying that she and other scientists were detained for doing research on weapons programs that have now been found not to exist.

Ammash has also reportedly had a relapse of breast cancer.

I did a little googling on Ammash, and it turns out that prior to her arrest, she published several papers on the toxic effect of the first Gulf War on Iraq:

In her paper, "Toxic Pollution, the Gulf War, and Sanctions," Dr Ammash examines the effects of United States' use of depleted uranium during the first Persian Gulf War, the spread of electro-magnetic fields in the environment, chemical pollution, and massive destruction of Iraq's infrastructure on public health. Her assessment of the overall effect is that US actions are largely responsible for the deterioration of public health in Iraq. She writes: "Iraqi death rates have increased significantly, with cancer representing a significant cause of morality, especially in the south and among children." This view is shared by other scientists and experts.

Gee, do you suppose there's any connection between us holding her, illegally, without charging her, and her ability to expose the damage we've caused countless Iraqi civilians? Or am I just being cynical again? (For more information on Ammash's case, see the American Association for the Advancement of Science page)

Help for Badger

As an update to this post that Dr. B. put up right before she left for vacation, you'll be happy to know that donations were made to the tune of $2100 in 48 hours, and the Badger family can now afford hospice care. See here for more info. (Thanks, Mary!)

HA!

In light of some of the discussion threads on recent posts, I couldn't resist posting this excerpt from Kirkus Review's interview with T. C. Boyle:

KR: What’s the worst technological invention?

TCB: The penis and the vagina. It that technological? Because look how many of us there are? I’d like to go back to simpler times when you die at 19 of typhoid and live in the woods and eat nuts.

Deadbeat Dykes

Not so fast, Butch! In California, if you donate your eggs to your live-in girlfriend, and she has twins, and 3 years later you realize that you’d rather die screaming than hear one more chorus of “The Wheels On The Bus,” and you, you know, go out for cigarettes, the girlfriend is entitled to child support from you.

So sayeth a new ruling by the California Supreme Court, which declares that same-sex couples with kids have the same legal responsibilities to not be douchebags as straight people. While I personally cannot understand why people become so hysterically happy whenever they manage to convince the government to butt into their lives, the ruling is nevertheless regarded more or less as a big gay victory.

Naturally the local homophobes give tongue:

“Today’s ruling defies logic and common sense by saying that children can have two moms. That policy establishes that moms and dads as a unit are irrelevant when it comes to raising children.”

This from some honky godbag lawyer who lurks around the nation's courts making life unpleasant for people who don't love Jesus, or hate fags, enough. Oh, please. Since when are "moms and dads as a unit" the default? Someone should tell this douche about the 10 million single mothers in this country.

And why is he talking about "units"?

Science: 1, Anti-Choice Wingnuts: 0

The Times:

Taking on one of the most highly charged questions in the abortion debate, a team of doctors has concluded that fetuses probably cannot feel pain in the first six months of gestation and therefore do not need anesthesia during abortions.

Their report, being published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is based on a review of several hundred scientific papers, and it says that nerve connections in the brain are unlikely to have developed enough for the fetus to feel pain before 29 weeks.

The finding poses a direct challenge to proposed federal and state laws that would compel doctors to tell women having abortions at 20 weeks or later that their fetuses can feel pain and to offer them anesthesia specifically for the fetus.

Now, I didn't even know there were such laws, but had I known, I would have been highly suspicious as to their intent. And what do you know ... I'd have been right (emphases mine):

The federal legislation, introduced by Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, in 2004 and again this year as the "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act," says there is "substantial evidence" of "substantial pain to an unborn child" during abortions performed after 20 weeks. The bill includes a script doctors must read to women, offering to deliver anesthesia directly to the fetus and stating, "The Congress of the United States has determined that at this stage of development, an unborn child has the physical structures necessary to experience pain."

Mr. Brownback said he hoped Congress would act on the bill sometime next year. "It is one of the top priorities of the pro-life movement to address this issue," he said.

Last time I checked, Congress wasn't qualified to make determinations of this kind. And it really, really steams me that once again, misogyny is masquerading as care for children. I'm sorry, but I don't think Senator Brownback gives a flying fuck about whether or not fetuses feel pain. This is about controlling women, period.

Fat Chance

If you are ever in a swimming pool and feel compelled to toss your toddler niece repeatedly up in the air in order to effect the highly gratifying splashdown, and your shoulder breaks free of its moorings, and you end up in physical therapy for 5 months, and your orthopedic surgeon says “Hey, how’s about a Medrol DosePak?” take it from me. The correct response is, “I’d rather you plunge that giant needle deep into my rotator cuff like you did last time.”

For I am three days into my six-day course of the aforementioned oral steroids, and I am not myself. I am, in fact, Dave Attel combined with something that slimed out of the Hellmouth in Sunnydale to feast on blind orphans. I am stoned, I do not sleep, and I am pretty grouchy, even for me.

Which is how I came to watch half an hour of cognitive dissonance called “Mo’Nique’s Fat Chance” last night on the Oxygen channel. “Mo’Nique’s Fat Chance” is The World’s First Plus-Size Reality Beauty Pageant, or something like that.

Mo’Nique, a flamboyant, full-figured C-list celebrity, seems like a nice girl. She’s sick and tired of skinny chicks getting all the perks. Her young life’s dream has been to host a beauty contest for fat girls. She emotes warmly on the subject. “We are the majority! We’re gonna change the WORLD!”

Cut to a commercial for, I kid you not, Weight Watchers.

In the run-up to the pageant Mo’Nique auditions her contestants American Idol-style. Once they get to Hollywood, they all bond, laugh, giggle about their love for steak, hug, cry, and get makeovers. A lot. Mo’Nique loves them all and they all love her and they all love each other. “Fat girls are great!” is the refrain. Well, that’s swell. But they can’t just leave it at that, because who cares about a bunch of fat girls who aren’t desperately trying to capitulate to the patriarchal mandate?

Nope, a beauty pageant is a beauty pageant. The thing just won’t die.

The point of the show is the “drama” that unfolds as these completely overwhelmed women are by turns infantilized by Mo’Nique and her team of makeover artists, manipulated into bonding with each other, and finally made to rend these bonds asunder as they compete for the privilege of being crowned Miss FAT (“FAT” stands, somewhat unpoetically, for “fabulous and thick.”).

Mo’Nique, alas, has not changed the world. She’s just arranged for a few more women to be objectified as sexbots on national television. I threw a book at the TV as she announced the “lingerie competition.”

Vaginas are scary!

Giving birth: it's a traumatic process, long and drawn out, often resulting in scars and emotional trauma that can make it difficult to be interested in sexual intimacy for some time after the child is born.

Not for the woman, mind you. For the man.

Or at least that's the situation according to Dr. Keith Ablow, in an article he wrote for the NY Times titled "A Perilous Journey from Delivery Room to Bedroom." Where many of us might be tempted to focus on the difficulty of, say, the expectant mother squeezing something the size of a watermelon out of a hole the size of a dime, Dr. Ablow wants to remind us that there's another person suffering in that delivery room: the male partner forced to view his woman's cooter in a way he never wanted to see it (emphasis mine):

In the age of the "new man," very little consideration is given to the potentially negative side effects of togetherness in the delivery room. [...] And not every man gets over it. Several men have confessed to me that they never regained the same romantic view of their wives that they had before seeing them deliver children.

"They ended up having to cut her open to get the baby," one patient told me. "I saw it. I mean, how am I supposed to get that out of my head? Every time I look at the scar, it's like I'm seeing it again." [...]

The fact that the subject is taboo also means that a man who is traumatized by the experience may be retraumatized again and again, with each child born to him.

"Honestly," one man, married for 12 years, told me, "I think one of the main reasons I don't feel attracted to my wife is that I saw her give birth three times. It's like I know too much about that part of her." [...]

Women may want to consider the risks as they invite their partners to watch them bring new life into the world. For some of the passion that binds them together may leave their lives at the very same time.

Wow, so much to think about. Ablow really raises some interesting points that I hadn't considered before. I mean, sure, typically the woman giving birth is kind of preoccupied what with the small human being ripped from her abdomen and all, but truly: shouldn't she be sparing some thought for the possible emotional damage she's causing her man? I mean, labor is just so ... icky, isn't it? If we could only find a way to make it more aesthetic somehow. Maybe we could camouflage the birth canal with flowers or something - you know, preserve the "mystery" a little. Or maybe we could have porn playing in the background, so guys can associate birth with sex, or ...

Ahem. Sorry, my sarcasmatron just went into overdrive. Look - I'm sure it can be a little unsettling for a man to see his romantic partner in the throes of labor, but honestly: give me a break over here. Does Ablow honestly expect us to believe that a) men are this fragile and b) it's the woman's responsibility to consider this fragility and take care of it? I'm sorry, what century are we living in again?

Fuck it, I'm with Twisty: we need to find a way to remove the human body from the reproductive process. That, or Dr. Ablow and his patients could possibly learn to, you know, cope. (Hat tip to Belle for the link.)

(cross-posted at After School Snack.)

Giving the Finger to Iraqi Women

Compare and contrast:

1. "These are extraordinary times, historic times. We've seen the fall of brutal tyrants. We're seeing the rise of democracy in the Middle East. We're seeing women take their rightful place in societies that were once incredibly oppressive and closed. We're seeing the power and appeal of liberty in every single culture. And we're proud once again -- this nation is proud -- to advance the cause of human rights and human freedom." (Dear Leader, March 12, 2004)

2. "Across the country, a steady clampdown on women's rights has been going unreported and unchecked by the government. Islamic terrorism is killing and injuring Iraqi women daily, employing among other weapons, acid attacks ... This is all the outcome of the occupation of Iraq. This has been pursued under the name of liberation, but what we actually see is women increasingly losing their freedom, while political Islamists feel free to terrorise them. The Islamicists pour into this invaded, so-called Muslim land in order, they say, to liberate it; but in reality, neither the US nor the Islamists are our liberators. They both really fight for power and influence in Iraq and in the region." (The Independent, August 15, 2005)

3. "Islam will be "the main source" of Iraq's law and parliament will observe religious principles, negotiators said on Saturday after what some called a major turn in talks on the constitution and a shift in the U.S. position. If agreed by Monday's parliamentary deadline, it would appear to be a major concession to Islamist leaders from the Shi'ite Muslim majority and sit uneasily with U.S. insistence on the primacy of democracy and human rights in the new Iraq." (Reuters, August 20th, 2005)

Words fail me. Fortunately, they don't fail Pepper, Digby, Ms. Julien, Amanda, or Shakespeare's Sister.

That Parody Which Is Not One

The concept of parody is enjoying, if that’s the word I want, an upsurge in deployment as a weapon in the Dudes Take Back The Blog movement. Unfortunately for us connoisseurs, the trend appears to have shifted away from actual parody--which, after all, requires the commitment of time and dedication, if not actual talent--to become a parody of parody, manifesting in the practice of parody accusation. Here’s how it works:

Chick blames patriarchy. Dude perceives chick speaking mind, believes life to be in danger. Dude would ordinarily attempt control of mind-speaking chick via symbolic rape à la classic “you just need a good fuck” response, but remembers new kind of snappy put-down he’s been seeing on dude-centric blogs with erection-shaped logos written by date-rapist college sophomores. Dude attempts to neutralize dangerous chick threat by sardonically impugning chick’s post as parody.

It’s the hot new bit that tells a chick she’s full of shit! To wit:

Reader Glinda The Good Bitch, Ph.D recently alerted me to Phyllis Barone’s amusing essay, "The Quotidian Miasma of Discrimination," which chronicles the author’s exasperating experiences with sexism in the halls of academia. A gripping tale, yes, but it’s the associated comments to which I wish particularly to draw your attention. In addition to the generic “Quit nagging and go get laid” / “You’re obviously an ugly lesbian” squalling expected of internet wankers who are desperate to tame the shrew, there are multiple responses containing the jokey but sneering imputation that Barone’s article “must be a parody” because of its surfeit of "feminist clichés.” The commenters pretend to have cleverly spotted the spoof, and congratulate the author on her brilliance at having so perfectly nailed the tone of the hysterical victimized feminist.

Check out this Einstein, who drives the point home with an allusion to a tired academic in-joke so lame I’ve even invoked it myself:

“Like Sokal’s famous article, ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward A Progressive Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity’ published in 1996, I think this must be a parody of the angry feminist genre. I called it first.”

Zing! By dismissing as parody an essay which is not parody, the writer assumes the superior role of literary critic and impeaches Barone’s legitimate content as having been purposely exaggerated for comic effect. By way of demonstrating to the rest of the field that he can totally whack an emasculating cunt, he then lifts his leg and claims the kill for himself (sadly for him, by abusing the Sokal reference he reveals himself as an amateur, and by including the Sokal essay’s publish date he reveals himself as an amateur with a tiny dong. Better luck next time, chump!).

Parody-accusation is all well and good, but the gambit is becoming so commonplace I fear for the very future of vitriolic anti-feminist commentary. Note the anaemic invective in the following comment, left on my patriarchy-blaming blog yesterday afternoon:

“I can't figure out if you're a real feminist or a guy doing a parody of a nutty misandrist feminist. Maybe if I had more time to dig into your posts, I could divine the answer. However, I have better things to do.” (As is the case with 90% of commenters who have better things to do than read some stupid blog, this one reappeared later to further embarrass himself).

As parody-accusation takes only a few seconds and requires only the most primitive of brains, it necessarily loses points against actual parody on the hilar-o-meter, for which reason I postulate that it is endangering the art and science of the misogynist blogular insult.

Chick Lit: Bane or Glory?

I admit it: I'm a fan of "chick lit." I adored Bridget Jones' Diary (and the sequel, dammit!), I have well-worn copies of every Rosamunde Pilcher and Maeve Binchy novel ever written on my shelves, and there's nothing I'd rather take with me on vacation than a couple of juicy, smutty Nora Roberts reads. Sophie Kinsella, Jennifer Weiner, Rebecca Wells: they are all my sisters. Having said that, I also have to admit that the category makes me uncomfortable. I mean: chick lit - could anything sound more dismissive? And what would be its masculine counterpart? Cock Lit? (Actually, that's an idea ... no - focus, Elise, focus.) Part of the problem is the implication that only women are interested in reading about stories that focus on relationships, parenthood, romance, etc. But I think a bigger problem is the extraordinary range of material that gets lumped into this category. Even among the authors listed above there's a wide variety of literary merit, writing styles, and topics. Much as I enjoy Nora Roberts, I'm well aware that her novels are what my mother would classify as "trash." Whereas Weiner, Pilcher and Binchy, at their best, are writing genuine literature, with fully realized characters and intricate, engrossing plots.

And then there's the question of the tradition of chick lit - i.e., is there one? Some authors in this category will not hesitate to claim Jane Austen as one of their own. And if you're including Austen, then you might as well add the Brontes, Virginia Woolf, and George Sand, right? and I can certainly see how some mid-20th century writers like Angela Thirkell and Barbara Pym might retroactively be considered "chick lit"-esque. But again - why can't these all just be lit? Why the need for the feminine modifier? Or perhaps the question is, why can only some of these be lit? Is there anything redeeming about the "chick lit" label? Is it just a marketing thing? Is Oprah to blame? Should I even care what other people call it? These are the questions that keep me up at night!

So what do you all think: is this a category that should be embraced/co-opted/rehabilitated? Or do you subscribe to Eight Reasons Why Chick Lit Authors Should be Kicked Until They're Dead?

Mr. T Versus Walgreens

Such occurrences are distressingly intermittent, but once in a while a specimen of glad tidings swims against the current and flops ashore on my desk. I allude to the recent email bulletin from Danielle Tierney of Planned Parenthood, which put me in possession of spirit-cleansing news. To wit: last Thursday the Austin City Council was the first in the nation to pass a “no refusals” amendment to its pharmaceutical services contract with Walgreens. This means that enrollees at Travis County health programs will get their dang ol’ birth control then and there, regardless of the individual pharmacist’s personal misogynist godbaggery, though it may require the intervention of a store manager.

That’s good.

It doesn’t mean that Walgreens city-wide, or anywhere-else-wide, have to comply. In fact, only nine stores are affected.

That’s bad.

My pal René (who writes award-winningly about music for the Illinois Times and really likes old buildings) despises Walgreens with an icy fervor because of the unmitigated and deranged glee with which the corporation buys up beloved architectural landmarks, obliterates them despite public outcry, and erects in their places cheap ugly crap. It is no surprise that what lies within is also cheap and ugly and crappy.

I know because I was forced to darken the cheap ugly crappy stoop of a Walgreens yesterday, on accounta the hippy-dippy People’s Pharmacy was out of my prescription. I will do so again only if the building is on fire and there are blind orphans inside, and then only if the blind orphans owe me money. The experience was, on every level, crushing.

For the interior of Walgreens smelleth as a festering scrap-heap of deep-fried vinyl. So dense is its concentration of cheap crap from China that the store is orbited by clouds of particulate matter--candy wrappers, cigarette butts, small children-- that cannot achieve escape velocity. And the pharmacy clerks--it took no fewer than five of them to bring my drug deal to a conclusion; who knows how many it takes change a light bulb-- are quite the little rays of sunshine, too. Their skin is grey. Their shoulders are hunched. Their expressions are hollow and dull, lacking even the smug spark of pure evil one so often sees flashing in the eyes of petty bureaucrats at the DMV. Their collective worldview appears to be that of the dying slave for whom the last puff of hope has long ago wafted into a pitiless aether.

Can I just say that if you’re gonna wear a white lab coat in an effort to exude an air of clinical authority, how about washing it once in a while? Jesus.

LaToyia Figueroa

I believe Dr. B has posted about this case before, so I thought I'd pass along the update, via Christy at Why are you reading this. Figueroa's body was found today and they've arrested her ex-boyfriend.

My Mother The Aborted Embryo

Regular readers of my patriarchy-blaming blog, I Blame The Patriarchy, are aware that breaking news is by no means the forte of the professional spinster aunt. My views on John Roberts probably won’t congeal until sometime after Arbor Day in 2007 (although here are some preliminary findings: JVNNIVS ROBERTVS FVCTARDVS EST), and I couldn’t give a splat for the stunningly uncontroversial BTK killer. I try, but I cannot change my twisty-come-lately ways. Which is why this morning I read with some interest a four-month-old essay referencing a two-year-old newspaper article on, what else, “unborn mothers.”

That’s right. Unborn mothers. A concept with which the Doctor’s sophisticated readership is undoubtedly already familiar, but which, I confess, kind of startled me, yokel that I am.

The story so far: some dudes in Israel are--or at least they were in 2003; for all I know they could be running a sports bar by now-- working on a method to harvest ovarian tissue from aborted human fetuses for the purpose of sprouting eggs for in vitro fertilization. The goal is to eliminate the middleman, i.e. the sentient egg donor--or as some sentimentalists may euphemize, the “woman”-- who can cause problems down the line, in favor of an aborted fetus egg “donor” with no pesky legal standing. Pro-life hijinks ensue.

A 2003 Guardian article quotes the stern objections of several professional fetus-fetishists. The remonstrances fall into two categories. One, the procedure is “sickening” because the “dead baby” cannot give consent. Two, the offspring of an aborted fetal “mother” would “have enormous psychological problems.”

Lisa Guenther brushes aside these godbag gripes. Writing in the March/April issue of Radical Philosophy, she says (I pararphrase), “Forget about the children! What about the feminists?” She is understandably troubled by aborted fetal “motherhood”--for non-fetus-fetish reasons that I’ll get to in a minute--and is bummed by the insufficiency of feminist thought to address her concerns.

“Can we coherently defend,” she asks, “a woman’s right to terminate pregnancy without relinquishing a feminist position from which to critique the use of aborted fetuses in certain experimental procedures?”

Here’s her sticky wicket: suppose you are a pro-choice feminist in whom the idea of aborted-fetal-motherhood induces vomiting. How to argue against it? If you confer upon fetal tissues sufficient personhood to render them immune from egg harvesting--i.e., turn them into legally recognized entities from which consent for the procedure must be, but of course cannot be, extracted--do you not also weaken the case for abortion as an option for fully-realized adult human women?

Guenther, in pondering the biological and cultural status of “mother,” also attacks the whole woman = uterus = biological destiny thing, with satisfying results, one of which is this: using aborted fetal ovarian tissue for IVF ultimately undermines the choice of the woman who has made the decision to terminate said fetus. Her decision--or more broadly, her status as a human being-- is made irrelevant if an instance of reproduction occurs as a result of this procedure.

Dr. B has argued that the reproductive state is the default for women. This notion is so distasteful to the spinster aunt ethos that I have resolutely dug in my heels on the opposite side, but lately I am finding this position untenable. Whether or not Dr B’s statement is biologically true is a discussion for people who did not snooze contentedly through Bio 105, but there’s no denying that it is culturally true; patriarchy places the burden of what Guenther calls “the much-vaunted ‘future of the species’” entirely on women as a class. She writes:

“The absence of viable eggs is only a shortage – and the shortage is only a problem – if women are thought to have natural rights and/or obligations to produce offspring. When considered in this light, the proposed procedure of growing eggs from the ovarian tissue of aborted fetuses collapses the meaningful distinction between woman and mother, which is otherwise maintained by access to a decent range of reproductive choices. In so doing, it reinforces the reduction of women to mothers – and of mothers to their reproductive organs – which feminists have fought so hard to contest.”

Man, if only there were a cure for reproduction. The sooner “mother” and “woman” go splitsville, the better.

Benevolent Vandalism

Frustrated with the world at large? Sick of the increasing intersection of reality with the most dystopian kind of fiction? Feel like doing something naughty but not really dangerous? Then perhaps you should consider joining the Ministry of Reshelving. From the rules:

1. Select a local bookstore to carry out your reshelving activities.

2. Download and print "This book has been relocated by the Ministry of Reshelving" bookmarks and "All copies of 1984 have been relocated" notecards to take with you to the bookstore. Or make your own. We recommend bringing a notecard and 5-10 bookmarks to each store.

3. Go to the bookstore and locate its copies of George Orwell's 1984. Unless the Ministry of Reshelving has already visited this bookstore, it is probably currently incorrectly classified as "Fiction" or "Literature."

4. Discreetly move all copies of 1984 to a more suitable section, such as "Current Events", "Politics", "History", "True Crime", or "New Non-Fiction."

5. Insert a Ministry of Reshelving bookmark into each copy of any book you have moved. Leave a notecard in the empty space the books once occupied.

6. If you spot other incorrectly classified books, feel free to relocate them.

Barnes and Noble, here I come! (Cross-posted at After School Snack.)

Guest Blogger Debuts Amid Flourish Of Trumpets

Top o’ the marnin to ya, bitches! Dr. B has absconded to points unknown. Mistaking me for someone with a sense of responsibility, she has conferred upon my humble person the opportunity to help babysit her blog.

At first I thought it was a typo, that she must’ve meant me to babysit her hog, which of course is a request I most emphatically would have turned down, and without delay. I am up to my eyeballs in hogs.

But it was no typo. She meant blog, all right.

I did not ask her why she feels that a blog--which I was at first going to call “an inanimate object” until I realized that it’s not quite that, but more of an amorphous intellectual conceit--needs babysitting. She is an educated woman, and full of it, whereas I am but a novice blogger lacking many clues. We must trust her judgement. And there it is. So here I am.

As Texas novelty gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman says, “where else would I be?”

Of course, now that I’m here, I’m suddenly wracked with uncertainty.

There is every possibility that the Doctor will be kidnapped by aliens from the planet Obstreperon, whisked off to live a life of leisure among benign super-entities with giant brains, never to return.

What then?

I can’t fill her mighty Wacaol!

Introduction

Greetings, readers of this superlative blog. I'm extremely flattered to be guest blogging with the inimitable Twisty while Dr. B. takes a well-deserved vacation. My blogging home is After School Snack, where I and my co-bloggers cover everything from politics to feminism to academe to pop culture. So you can expect a fair amount of eclecticism from me over the next 10 days. My background is in academic theatre, and I'm currently finishing my dissertation while my soul slowly dies in a corporate pay-the-rent job. So you can also expect a fair amount of snark. Looking forward to getting to know you all better!

Special guest bloggers!

I will be taking off tomorrow for one last escape from tinytown before the semester starts--but don't worry, o my readers, I shall be leaving you in the more-than-capable hands of the inimitable Twisty and the subtly snarky but always sensible Elise.

Like last time, I'll pop in occasionally my own damn self as well. They'll be doing all the heavy lifting while I lie around on a chaise in marabou slippers sipping champagne, occasionally tossing out tipsy asides while trying not to slosh my drink.

I lift my glass to you all. I'll be back on full-time duty in about ten days, once I sleep off the inevitable hangover.

Worthy causes abound

I promise this isn't going to turn into the cause of the week blog or anything, but b/c of how successful we all were at getting Sarah to New Zealand, several people have emailed me asking me to point out this site, which has been set up to raise funds for a grad student whose medical bills are astronomical b/c of her husband's terminal liver cancer. You can read a little more about it here.

That's the last blegging I'll do for a long time, I promise.

"The exciting game of career girls"

From my email inbox: two people sent me a link to this this morning. It's a board game from 1966 about what careers girls can have when they grow up! (Here's a link to a boy's version of the game.) For girls, the options are: teacher, ballerina, stewardess, model, actress, nurse. For boys: statesman, scientist, doctor, athlete, engineer, astronaut. (So all you male academics out there obviously screwed up somewhere, except for the scientists and engineers.)

What really interests me about the game are the little categories of "skills" and "detriments" for each career, and the ways they are assigned. Teachers should be good at biology, "proper" English, and speaking clearly--but apparently not at stage techniques, which are advantageous to actresses and ballet dancers. What's noticable in the game is that every one of the girl's careers is heavily oriented towards self-presentation and performance: even the nurse should be "calm in an emergency" and "friendly." And of course, those of us who teach know that in fact things like clothing, "stage techniques," being "pretty" and having "a nice smile" (those last three are categories from the game) do, very much, impact your perception in the classroom--and that perception is an important part of teaching, for better and for worse.

In other words, all the girls' careers are essentially about performing for an audience--nursing, which you'd think would be the least obviously audience-oriented and the most focused on technical skill, still has that "friendly" card. It's very, very interesting, and despite the temptation to laugh at the thing's antiquated idea of women's career options, it also makes me self-conscious and a bit uncomfortable about how much performance and audience-orientation still seem to obtain for women, and how much I participate in that, even in creating the persona for this blog. I am trying to think of whether men's blogs rely on the creation of a charismatic author (and whether any men's blogs are eponymous in the way that this one is), and whether or not women's blogs, in general, rely on (or are popular in relation to) their author's personality, and how much we can and do separate the content from the persona, and whether we do that more or less for men than we do for women....

Sadly, the link for the boys' game isn't as detailed, so I can't see what the skill categories there are. I wonder, though.

Sign me up!

Check it: the Phantom Professor is doing a free online writing workshop via her blog.

As I envision it, you can take it at your own pace, with only a few hard deadlines to meet between the start of the workshop August 16 and the end of the semester in mid-December.

To take part, all you have to do is come back to the blog regularly. I'll post assignments, quizzes and other lessons. You read them and do the work on your own.

Pretty damn neat. First assignment is due next week.

How much do you love your apple laptop?

Hm. Maybe enough to pee on myself, but not, I think, enough to beat people with a folded chair. Not enough to crush a stroller or lose a shoe, but then I don't wear flip-flops so shoe loss is not a real problem. Although I would wander around barefoot on hot blacktop; have done it many, many times before. Drive my car through a crowd? Depends. Not at speed, but if a bunch of people were clogging up the parking lot, would you have any choice?

I do have to say, though, that if Pseudonymous Kid were 14 years old, I'd let him stand in line while I went to the bathroom.

Sarah says...

"I cannot begin to describe what a whirlwind the previous day has been for me. I honestly have spent the last 6 months resigning myself to the fact that I wouldn't be going to my sister's wedding, and had pretty much gotten used to it, as much as I hated it. But the amazing insanity of the last 36 hours or so has turned that world completely on its head. 'Unnamed Coworker' (yes, she does work with me) was right, it completely overwhelmed me to the point where I broke down and cried yesterday afternoon at my desk after coming out of a meeting and finding out the total and reading the comments (said coworker also gave well needed hugs).

I am going home. For the first time in over 4 years I am going home, and will see my baby sister marry an awesome guy (though, of course, no guy will ever truly be good enough for my little sister) and this is entirely, and emphatically, only due to you all. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I'm not often moved to soppyness but this warrants it. And, of course, a special thank you to our wonderful Dr. B, the incredible bitch we all aspire to be *grin*.

Thank you everyone.
Sarah

PS Oh, don't worry all though, there will definitely be pics, as I am expecting the memory stick in my camera to be smoking :)"

...

And from me: we booked the LA-NZ ticket last night, and when I see Sarah this weekend I'll write her a check for the balance and she'll be able to book a Chicago-LA ticket. I think there's about $190 left, which should be enough judging by the ticket prices I was seeing yesterday. So, once again, thank you to everyone who pitched in. It was great being able to help Sarah out, with all of your assistance--makes me feel decidedly non-bitchy.

For those who asked where I found good deals on tickets--and really, for everyone, because who doesn't want to save money on airline tickets?--the first place I look is always Air Fare Watchdog. I got a round trip ticket from Chicago to Minneapolis for under $100 not too long ago through that site. Highly recommended.

Later today we'll return to your regular cranky blogging.


Update: Some people are still continuing to donate, and Sarah says that she really truly has more than she needs for the plane ticket now. It's really generous of all of you to have helped. Thanks :)

Sarah's sister asked me to pass this on...

"I have just read through all of your comments online and am absolutely blown away by your amazing generosity. I had all but given up on the possibility of Sarah being here for my wedding. This is the best present that anyone could get me - seeing Sarah in all her gorgeous splendor (as long as she doesn't out-shine me on the day! hehe - wedding humour). Thank you all so much. I thought I was a lucky person just having her for a sister, but she's the lucky one.... having people like all of you! I will be sure that Sarah brings lots of photos back and keeps you all posted.

Thanks again,
Megan."

Yay! Congratulations everyone, and thank you

As of 5:43 5:57 pm, my paypal account shows an incredible $970.85 $1091.32 raised. A li'l web searching shows that Sarah can fly from LA-NZ for $798 and from Chicago-LA on Southwest for $168. So it looks like all Sarah will have to do is cover the taxes on the tickets, and she's good!

Thanks so much for everyone's generosity. Sarah and I will talk tonight about flight times, and I'll book her tickets.

Y'all are great. Thanks so much to everyone who contributed.

Help Sarah go to her sister's wedding

In comments to the crumpet post, frequent commenter Sarah in Chicago let on that (1) she's homesick for New Zealand; (2) she hasn't been home in 4 years; (3) her sister's getting married next month; (4) she can't afford a plane ticket.

So I thought. Hm. What if we did a blog fundraiser to see if we can buy Sarah a ticket back to New Zealand for her sister's wedding? This blog gets about 5,000 readers/day. I did some googling and found a round-trip ticket from LA to New Zealand for under $800 (if purchased by Friday), and another round-trip from Chicago to New Zealand for a little over $1300.

I bet we can do it. If you can help Sarah get home for her sister's wedding, even if only with a couple of bucks, please click on that paypal "donation" button over in the near right sidebar. Everything I get I'll forward to Sarah (who I'm actually going to meet this weekend). Sarah says that if, in the end, we can't raise enough to buy her a ticket, she'll donate it to Planned Parenthood. But I'm sure we can do it. What do you guys say?

Mice like "crumpets"

Thanks to Doctor Dave's suggestion, I swung by the grocery store on the way home from the office (office!!) today and picked up some poppy seed mini-muffins. Pseudonymous Kid says yes, these are mouse crumpets, and that mice particularly like the poppy seed kind because mice are junkies who are always looking for an excuse to fail their pee tests mice like seeds.

In other "thank you, wise commenters!" news, I mentioned Shrinkykitten's suggestion to one of my cool colleagues who pointed out that I don't even need to make my own .pdfs: I can just have the library do my course pack stuff as electronic reserve. Why I hadn't done that before I don't know, but whoo! Course pack crap = someone else's responsibility to xerox and upload. I feel so . . . freed.

Tomorrow's task: fiddle around with syllabi, submit some more receipts to use up the last vestiges of my research money.

newsflash: current president shockingly insensitve

Why won't he meet with Cindy Sheehan? Because it's important for him to go on with his life.

Wow. Nice job, George. You might want to think about the fact that Casey Sheehan is dead, and therefore not "going on with his life," and also about what it would feel like if one of your children died. Because most parents I know can't imagine just "going on with life" after losing a kid.

But hey, don't let the deaths of Casey Sheehan, or any of the other American soldiers or civilians who've died, or the deaths of all the Iraqis who've been killed since the start of the war keep you from getting on with yours, Mr. President. After all, it's not like you started the war that led to those deaths, or anything.


News link via The Rude Pundit.

Pseudonymous Kid likes crumpets muffins

Pseudonymous Kid is now obsessed with crumpets because the goddamn mice in The Great Mouse Detective eat crumpets at some point. Now, one of the nice things about Pseudonymous Kid is that he's an adventerous eater; if he hears about some new kind of food stuff, he wants to eat it. Eating out at grownup restaurants and ordering, for him, from the appetizer menu, he has had grilled calimari, fried calimari, escargot (yes, we told him it was snails, which is why he wanted to eat it), sushi, octopus, goat cheese, and so on.

So he's watching this darn mouse movie, and they eat crumpets, and he decides he wants a crumpet for breakfast tomorrow. Now, this is very easy, as in fact, we *do* have crumpets in the house (and he has eaten them before) . So, no problem. Only when he's served the damn thing, he says:

Pseudonymous Kid: That's not a crumpet!
Mr. B.: Um, yes it is.
Pseudonymous Kid: No! In the movie, a crumpet is flat, and it has walls like this (holding hands vertically) and a round top.
Me: Like a muffin?
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes! Like a muffin!
Me and Mr. B.: That's not a crumpet, that's a muffin.
Pseudonymous Kid: NO! It's a crumpet. The movie said so.
Me: (trying) Ok, well, maybe it just looked like that because mice are very small, and to them a crumpet looks tall, like a muffin.
Pseudonymous Kid: (impatiently) No. Listen. The crumpet was very small, just like the mice. Only it had a flat bottom and tall sides (hand gesture again) and a round top (hand gesture).
Mr. B.: (googling) Ok, come here. (Reads): A crumpet is a cake made from flour or potato and yeast eaten mainly in the United Kingdom, but also in the nations of the Commonwealth. The crumpet is circular in shape (usually; long and square varieties also exist) and has a distinctive flat top covered in small holes. It has a spongy texture and a fairly bland flavour. Crumpets are served hot, usually with butter. Other popular accompaniments include jam, Marmite, honey, or cheese. . . . And see? There are pictures.
Pseudonymous Kid: No. That is a spongey thing. A crumpet is not a sponge. It has a flat bottom, and tall sides, and a round top (hand gestures).
Mr. B.: Pseudonymous Kid, where do they make Disney movies?
Pseudonymous Kid: I don't know.
Mr. B.: In California. And where are crumpets from?
Pseudonymous Kid: I don't know.
Mr. B.: Britain. So maybe the people who made the movie didn't know what a crumpet looked like, and so they made it look like a muffin instead.
Pseudonymous Kid: No. A crumpet has a flat bottom, and tall sides, and a round top....

It is too a river in egypt

I am so, so not acknowledging that classes start soon. Even though I have to actually--my god--go into the . . . the . . . the . . . off . . . off . . . off-ice tomorrow to get my so, so very late course pack put together or I won't have anything for the students to read once (gulp) classes start. Which is soon. And I will be here. And I will be teaching them.

Crap.

feminism saves lives

Really interesting article in the London Times: Murder Rate is Cut by Women who Walk Away.

WOMEN are less likely to fall victim to murder today than 20 years ago because they are more willing to walk out of violent relationships, a new study has revealed.

“People have both became aware of how dangerous domestic violence is and how fruitless it is to stay in a violent relationship. In addition, women have become economically better off and so, in increasing numbers, they can afford to walk out.”

Sadly, the murder rate for young men has doubled, particularly for poor young men.

Good heavens!

I go to Big City to hang out with my cool colleagues and their kids for a couple of days, and a bunch of damn trolls wander in. Sorry about that. Thanks for giving 'em a few good smacks while I was gone, everyone.

Ok, so I'm back, I'll come up with something entertaining to say as soon as I finish getting caught up on my email....

Update: NARAL ad

NARAL has decided to pull the ad after all, on the grounds that the fuss over it is a distraction from the real issue. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the fuss over it is a distraction from the real issue--I am almost reluctant to blog this, having said that I did not intend to talk about the ad any more, but I figured that having blogged both the ad and their response to "fact"check's response, I should. On the other hand, whatever the merits or flaws of the ad may have been--and I believe that, while factual in a strict sense, it was somewhat misleading, although I also believe that misleading ads are the name of the game in politics, so I find it frankly hypocritical for the right to be bitching about it, and rather disappointing that political sites on the left are so uninterested in defending it--I seriously wonder if any ad that NARAL runs isn't going to be a flashpoint for controversy.

They have another one in the works, so I suppose we'll find out.

More on Cindy Sheehan

Apparently she has a diary at Daily Kos. As eRobin points out at the American Street, Sheehan "alone is keeping the Dowing Street Memo scandal afloat despite the corporate media’s best attempts to pretend they can’t see the dots she’s connecting. . . . Cindy Sheehan is the anti-war movement."

The American Street post also announces that 24 September there will be protests nation-wide in support of Sheehan and against the war, and against the president who lied to get us into it. Code pink is doing some organizing too.

Update: After Downing Street is also staying on top of the story, as is Hungry Blues, which by the way is one of the best blogs out there.

I'd forgotten this one: factcheck.org = dumbassery

In the comments to the Scott Lemieux post I linked at the bottom of the previous entry, someone reminded me of this piece of hilarity from a previous factcheck.org "fact" check.

These are the people whose "analysis" is getting trotted out to argue that Roberts's work has never helped excuse and thereby perpetuate violence against abortion clinics? Lord.

Bray v. Alexandria, Roberts, clinic violence, and discrimination against women

So here is a little bit of the history behind the Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic case. The thing to remember is that, in 1993, anti-abortion groups had an established record of violence in "protesting" at women's health clinics: women seeking medical care and workers at the clinics had been assaulted, physically prevented from entering buildings, intimidated, and threatened. Clinics had been bombed. Here is a brief overview of the history of abortion clinic violence dating back to the early 1970s.

So the Bray case took place in an atmosphere where it was already established that protesters were not only protesting, but were threatening and harming both clinic workers and women seeking health care. Michael Bray, one of the litigants in the Bray case (although it is Jayne Bray, his wife, not he, who is the "Bray" in the case's title) had been convicted in the 80's in relation to a series of clinic bombings.

The case hinged upon a claim that this violent, threatening history did not constitute discrimination against women. The amicus brief was voluntarily filed in support of this position. (Interestingly, I have seen no one point out that there was also an amicus brief filed by Feminists for Life in the same case, one that made essentially the same argument as the Solicitor General's brief.)

Now, this is very similar to what Roberts wrote in the brief for Rust v. Sullivan, which I blogged a while back, in which he argued that Operation Rescue did not discriminate against women, but instead "pregnant people." I see similarities between that argument, the argument in Bray, the FFL brief, and his finding in Hedgepath v. Washington Metro (which I've also blogged about). And it is very similar to the argument he made in a case in Kansas a few years before Bray, as this editorial in the Wichita Eagle points out. (Do read that last link, it's very interesting and good.)

In all these cases, what I see are arguments that explicitly refuse to recognize women (or, in Hedgepath, children) as in any way different from men. And this is a real problem, given that women (and children) are often discriminated against *precisely* because of the ways they differ from men, e.g., when it comes to reproductive issues.

Now, in these cases (except for Hedgepath), yes: Roberts was writing a brief, not issuing a judgment. And the FFL brief wasn't written by him, or in association with him, and I will firmly say that I think that the activities of someone's spouse are neither here nor there, or at least shouldn't formally be considered, which is why I have said nothing about FFL on this blog up 'til now.

But.

The thing is, a Supreme Court seat is not an entitlement. Or, to mix my legal metaphors, Roberts is not on trial for murder. We are not obligated to give him the benefit of the doubt. We are not obligated to give him a job on the Supreme Court. While there is no smoking gun in the sense that Roberts has not (and obviously will not) said on the record that he, *personally* thinks that Roe v. Wade needs to go (although he did write that, again in a brief for Rust v. Sullivan), there is certainly a great deal of evidence that he may very well--probably does--hold that belief. He has consistently and clearly been involved at a very high level in cases that do not recognize women's right to reproductive health care, that do not recognize clear and obvious discrimination against women, to the point of violence. This is enough. Whether or not it would be enough to find him guilty is not the point; the point is whether or not it is enough to lead a reasonable person to believe that he does not, in his interpretation of the law, recognize women's rights in this area.

Here are a few more links.

1. On the history behind Bray, from the Feminist Majority Foundation.

2. More on the history of Bray, from Planned Parenthood.

3. Scott Lemieux again, ripping into the argument that threatening women at abortion clinics is a nonviolent form of protest.

4. Completely unrelated to abortion, a Salon piece on Roberts and corporate interests.

More adventures with mental illness

You realize, of course, that I am documenting all this primarily in the name of "demistifying depression," rather than because I am a big fat narcissist, right? Ok, good. As long as we're clear on that.

So today I did manage not only to make it to see my shrink (finally) but also to actually bathe! and dress! neither of which had happened since Sunday night, so that was a big thing. And then I had to trundle around town buying cigarettes and filling prescriptions at two different grocery stores, so that, too, was very exciting. I continue to think that my psychiatrist is a complete dork, however. Snippets of conversation (paraphrased) follow:

Me: So I'm like, really, incredibly depressed. I haven't gotten dressed or showered in three days, and I'm not eating. At best, I feel kinda restless, but mostly I just feel like crap.
Dr. Dork: Mm, okay. Well, have you thought any more about whether or not you want to try Depakote?
Me: Here's what I'm thinking on this. I did some research, and my understanding is that a diagnosis of bipolar isn't indicated if the only incidence of hypomania can be traced to either drugs or a significant change in circumstance. If you remember, the first time I saw you I had gotten back from Very Sunny City only 24 hours before. And you know, the "hypomania" I had there was mostly not sleeping and feeling really energetic, sure, but I was also on Wellbutrin at the time, and there was a lot of sun, and I wasn't really freaking out or anything, I just had a lot of energy. And that's the only incidence I've ever had in my life of what could even remotely be described as "hypomania." So really, I think your impression of my mental state might be kind of distorted by the fact that you saw me right after that had happened. If I were seeing you for the first time today, I would only mention it by way of pointing out that whenever I get the hell out of this town, I feel better.
Dr. Dork: Ok, well, if you want I can just treat the depression, but as long as you understand the risks. Because if you are bipolar, which I still think you are, anti-depressants can throw you into a manic state and that could be a problem. It could be a suicide risk.
Me: Oh, I'm already suicidal, so whatever. Look, I'm not going to kill myself. I'm not that crazy.
Dr. Dork: Ok, well, remind me of what you've taken before.
Me: I took Paxil CR, and I was only on 12.5 mg/day, and I didn't like the way it made me feel kind of shut down. So then I came off it, and they didn't taper me, and that sucked. Then I went on Wellbutrin and I started at 100mg and then I think I went up to 150 mg. But they thought that my side effects from Paxil withdrawal might be attributable to the Wellbutrin, so they pulled me back down to 100mg. I can't remember if I went back up just before Sunny City or not, but in any case I stopped taking it after I came back and saw you.
Dr. Dork: Ok, well, let's try you on Effexor.
Me: How does it work, and what are the side effects?
Dr. Dork: Ok, well the primary side effect is stomach problems, so you should take it with food. And it's not an SSRI, it's an SNRI, so it works on more than one neurotransmitter. Here is the list of side effects if you want to read over it.
Me: (reading) Hm. Okay, it seems to have many of the same effects as Wellbutrin. Oh, except for the sexual side effects, which are listed at SIXTY TIMES as likely as with Wellbutrin. That's not cool.
Dr. Dork: Well, you may not have them, and most people find that the trade off is worth it.
Me: Well, the sexual side effects were one of the things I hated about Paxil.
Dr. Dork: Ok, well, you could try it, and maybe you wouldn't have those effects.
Me: If I do, then what happens?
Dr. Dork: Well, we'll have to wait and see.

And so on. Basically, I hate the way he says "ok, well" before everything, as if he is trying to soothe me, and I hate the way he tends to just slide past my questions with reassuring non-content answers. I mean, if you think someone is bipolar, why not *explain why* rather than just react to their questions about the basis for that diagnosis by throwing up your hands and backing down? And could you please take my questions about sexual side effects seriously? Later he went through a list of side effects and described how long each of them might last, and again he simply left sexual side effects off the list entirely. I had to ask again. I think the question embarrasses him or something. Grr.

And then I come home and do a little research, only to find out that, in fact, Effexor is one of the worst anti-depressants to take if bipolar is suspected. Plus apparently it's harder to discontinue than Paxil. Lovely. The up side, I guess, is that it's very good with unipolar depression, so I suppose we'll find out if I or Dr. Dork is a better diagnostician.

But even better news is that there is no talk therapy for me! At least, I am *still* fighting with the insurance company to extend my benefits, and they're being a pain in the ass about it. I tried to enlist Dr. Dork to please join my talk therapist in harassing the insurance company (talk therapist, who is awesome, has been really pushing hard), but as per usual his passive "ok, well" habit kicked in:

Dr. Dork: Ok, well, I haven't had much luck with that in the past, they're very reluctant to extend benefits. And if you take the meds you might not need the talk therapy so much.
Me: What?!? Isn't it recommended that one not prescribe psychoactive drugs without talk therapy?
Dr. Dork: Well, yes.
Me: Plus, if I could get talk therapy I might not need the drugs so much.
Dr. Dork: Ok, well, maybe.
Me: Look, would you please try? I've already had my therapist, and my department chair say that I need this. Can you help me out?
Dr. Dork: Ok, well, let's try you on this for a few weeks and see how you're doing, and wait and see what the insurance company says, and then if you want me to try when I see you again, we'll go from there.

So yes. I am stuck with the world's most passive-aggressive psychiatrist. Just what I need.


(P.S. Really, don't bother telling me I need a better doc. I know. It's not so easy, between the HMO and the fact that tinytown really doesn't have that many psychiatrists in it, and yet there are a lot of crazy people here (I can't imagine why), so switching docs isn't as easy as it is in a big city where there are lots of options. Although I am seriously considering seeing if I can get a referral to someone in Big City, so I can commute. To see a shrink. God, the desperation.)

Still more on NARAL ad

Excuse the length of this post, which is the entire text of an email I received from NARAL's communications office. I think it's important to reprint it, because in the discussion about their ad I alluded to the argument from factcheck.org that this email is refuting.

On Monday, NARAL Pro-Choice America released our ad "Speaking Out" concerning John Roberts' record of siding with radical anti-choice groups in a critical Supreme Court case. By now you've likely seen an analysis of that ad from FactCheck.org. We wanted to share with you the attached document showing conclusively that their analysis was completely wrong. The basic fact about this case is incontrovertible: In his role as a top legal strategist for the first Bush Administration, Roberts put the U.S. Government on the side of individuals and organizations that had used violent tactics against women's health clinics -- in a case that was critical to efforts to curtail that violence.

FACTCHECK.ORG COULD USE A GOOD FACTCHECKER

Factcheck.org’s analysis of the television advertisement released by NARAL Pro-Choice America on August 8, 2005 is deeply flawed, and its conclusion that the “ad is false” is unsubstantiated and should be retracted. The analysis, written by Matthew Barge, identified as a recent college graduate(1), is riddled with legal and factual errors and in many instances virtually mirrors the White House’s talking points. One might disagree with the opinions stated in the ad or even have a different view of how John Roberts’ role in a particular case should be characterized; however, every factual statement made in NARAL Pro-Choice America’s ad is completely accurate and supported by objective documents. The ad is not “false.” John Roberts did indeed file briefs supporting violent fringe groups, with the effect of excusing their actions by helping to remove a crucial legal remedy that had been the most effective tool against them.

Some of the more glaring errors in Factcheck.org’s analysis are detailed below.

Factcheck.org Makes Factual Misstatement About “Clinic Bomber” Statement in Ad: Factcheck.org asserts that ad is false in part because Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic “didn’t deal with bombing at all.” However, NARAL Pro-Choice America’s ad never claimed that it did. What the ad did claim – and what is in fact true – is that John Roberts “sided with violent fringe groups, including a convicted clinic bomber.” Long before Roberts involved himself in the case, Michael Bray, one of the named defendants in the Bray case, was convicted for his role in the bombings of several reproductive health facilities(2). John Roberts did, therefore, side with a convicted clinic bomber. He also sided with a violent fringe group - the violent history of Operation Rescue is well known.

Factcheck.org Falsely Suggests that Roberts Did Not Support Bray Defendants: In a puzzling statement, factcheck.org states that “the ad misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber. It is true that Roberts sided with the bomber...” Mr. Barge further states that Roberts merely “made the same arguments as” the defendants. However, there is no question that Roberts sided with convicted bomber Michael Bray and the other defendants, and, in doing so, Roberts supported those defendants. The brief itself is titled "brief for the United States as amicus curiae supporting petitioners(3)," with the petitioners in this case of course being the defendants, including Michael Bray. The filing of an amicus brief is a discretionary act, and the office of the Solicitor General enjoys wide latitude in deciding whether to intervene as an amicus in any particular case. If the Solicitor General’s office did not intend to support the Bray defendants, the office could have chosen to intervene on the side of the reproductive health clinics or not to intervene in the case at all.

Factcheck.org Makes Factual Misstatement About Timeline Used in Ad: Factcheck.org states that the “ad fails to mention that the ‘court briefs’ it mentions are actually from nearly seven years before the abortion clinic bombing talked about in the ad.” As the sidebar to the factcheck.org article demonstrates, the date of the filing of the brief – April 11, 1991 – appears on screen as part of the overall image of the brief’s cover. The year of the brief’s filing is visible on-screen, as is evidenced by the date’s inclusion in factcheck.org’s summary of the ad in its sidebar. Furthermore, the ad opens with the announcer stating that Ms. Lyons was injured in a bombing “seven years ago” and includes an image of the New Woman All Women Health Clinic and the date – January 29, 1998. There was no attempt by NARAL Pro-Choice America to misstate the timeline of events or to infer that Ms. Lyons’ injuries occurred as the result of the actions at issue in the Bray case.

Factcheck.org Makes Factual Misstatement About Roberts’ Legal Argument: It is worth noting that even factcheck.org’s legal description of the brief Roberts filed in the Bray case is not accurate. Mr. Barge states that Roberts argued that the act at issue in the case “applied only to conspiracies to deprive people of civil rights due to racial discrimination, not gender discrimination.” In fact, that was not Roberts’ position. Roberts actually argued that, regardless of whether gender discrimination was covered by the act at issue in the case, the clinic blockades were not gender discrimination at all. The brief states that the question of whether gender discrimination was actionable under the law was one that there was “no need to answer” in this case(4). The brief further adds that, even if the act at issue was “broad enough to reach gender-based animus, the actions taken by the petitioners are not a form of gender-based discrimination(5).”

Factcheck.org Minimizes John Roberts’ Role in Filing of the Bray Brief: The ad states that “John Roberts filed court briefs supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber.” Mr. Barge states, without explanation but apparently in an attempt to minimize Roberts’ role, that Roberts was “one of six Justice Department officials who submitted the brief.” In fact, the ad is accurate when it says Roberts filed the brief – his name appears on the brief itself. Furthermore, Roberts was the second in command at the Solicitor General’s office, a senior political appointee largely responsible for shaping legal strategy. Roberts appeared to have been the office’s point person on its strategy around the clinic violence issue – appearing twice before the Supreme Court to argue the Bray case and making media appearances to defend his office’s position(6).

Factcheck.org Minimizes Operation Rescue’s Lawlessness: Factcheck.org paints a grossly misleading picture of the nature of Operation Rescue “protestors.” At the time of Bray, reproductive health clinics were under siege by anti-choice extremists. In many cases, state law enforcement was outnumbered, overpowered, and overwhelmed, despite their best efforts. For example, in their amicus brief in Bray, the State Attorneys General of Virginia and New York pleaded to the Supreme Court to make federal civil rights laws and remedies available to reproductive health clinics and other victims of Operation Rescue’s lawlessness. They insisted that “[n]o state, or group of states, is equipped alone to deal with and redress the deprivations of federal rights caused by the nationwide activity of Operation Rescue(7).”

The City of Falls Church, home to one of the plaintiff clinics in Bray that experienced clinic blockades on almost a weekly basis for five years(8), declared in its amicus brief that it could not effectively contend with Operation Rescue’s “military-style tactics.” During blockades that local law enforcement were unable to effectively handle, Falls Church reported that “[s]ome [patients] suffered physical injury, locked captive in cars that could not move through the parking lot, or bunkered inside the clinic from which medical personnel seeking to treat them had been denied access… It was only when the federal court in this case entered its injunction under §1985(3) against the blockades and those that would act in furtherance of them that these disturbances ceased(9).”

Factcheck.org Is Profoundly Misguided To State That Operation Rescue’s Behavior Is Akin to the Civil Rights Movement: Mr. Barge states that Operation Rescue’s actions “in some ways mirrored the non-violent tactics used earlier by civil-rights activists.” This restatement of anti-choice extremists’ talking points is clearly untrue. As Justice Stevens wrote in Bray, “the demonstrations in the 1960's were motivated by a desire to extend the equal protection of the laws to all classes – not to impose burdens on any disadvantaged class... The suggestion that there is an analogy between their struggle to achieve equality and these petitioners' concerted efforts to deny women equal access to a constitutionally protected privilege may have rhetorical appeal, but it is insupportable on the record before us...(10)” Justice Stevens also noted that Bray “presents a striking contemporary example of the kind of zealous, politically motivated, lawless conduct that led to the enactment of the Ku Klux Act in 1871 and gave it its name(11).” Similarly, Justice O’Connor likened Operation Rescue’s behavior to the Ku Klux Klan, noting that “[l]ike the Klan conspiracies Congress tried to reach in enacting §1985(3), ‘[p]etitioners intended to hinder a particular group in the exercise of their legal rights because of their membership in a specific class(12).’”

Footnotes:
(1) Annenberg Political Fact Check, About Us Factcheck.org, (last visited Aug. 10, 2005); Chris Wooley, McCain Talks to WBTB, THE HOYA (last visited Aug. 10, 2005).

(2) Bray was convicted of two counts of conspiracy and one count of possessing unregistered explosive devices. The court sentenced him to 10 years in prison and ordered him to pay restitution in the amount of $43,782. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned his conviction on a technicality relating to jury selection. Before he was retried, Bray entered a plea that resulted in him serving 46 months in prison. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Extremist Biography: Michael Bray (Feb. 2, 2005) (last visited Aug. 10, 2005); National Abortion Federation, Anti-Abortion Extremists/The Army of God and Justifiable Homicide (last visited Aug. 10, 2005); National Abortion Federation, History of Violence/Arsons and Bombings (last visited Aug. 10, 2005); Sandy Banisky, Bowie Family Condones Anti-Abortion Violence, BALTIMORE SUN, Oct. 9, 1994, at 1A.

(3) Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae Supporting Petitioners, Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, No. 90-985 (Apr. 11, 1991) (emphasis added).

(4) Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae Supporting Petitioners, Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, No. 90-985 (Apr. 11, 1991).

(5) Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae Supporting Petitioners, Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, No. 90-985 (Apr. 11, 1991).

(6) See e.g., Gwen Ifill, 1871 Law at Issue in Abortion Debate, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 11, 1991, at 16; MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour Transcript #4133, Aug. 7, 1991.

(7) Brief of the Attorneys General of the State of New York and the Commonwealth of Virginia as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents, Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, No. 90-985 (May 13, 1991).

(8) National Organization for Women v. Operation Rescue, 726 F. Supp. 1483, 1489 (1989).

(9) Brief for Falls Church, Virginia as Amicus Curiae Supporting Respondents, Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, No. 90-985 (May 13, 1991).

(10) Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, 506 U.S. 263, 344-45 (1993) (Stevens, J., dissenting).

(11) Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, 506 U.S. 263, 313 (1993) (Stevens, J., dissenting).

(12) Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, 506 U.S. 263, 349 (1993) (O’Connor, J., dissenting).

What's really bothersome about all of this is that now we're wasting so much effort talking about the *ad* and none talking about Roberts's candidacy. I, for one, vow to get back to the actual issue at hand from here on out.

"NARAL's ad is tough but fair"

Do check out what Scott Lemieux has to say about NARAL's ad and Roberts's position vis a vis Bray v. Alexander. Scott's totally my go-to guy for any kind of actual legal analysis; not only does he know what he's talking about but he actually looks up what was said in decisions. And he's one of maybe three or four men liberal bloggers who is as sound--or sounder, in the sense that he backs up his opinions with knowledge of the law--than many feminist bloggers on the question of abortion rights.

Roberts filed an amicus brief on behalf of Operation Rescue, arguing that they had the right to obstruct access to abortion clinics despite language in the Civil Rights Act of 1871 that makes conspiracies to deprive people of their rights illegal. The Court, regrettably, accepted Roberts' argument that the statute should be interpreted much more narrowly than its language would suggest; for reasons very ably stated by Sandra Day O'Connor, I believe this decision was wrong. . . . to summarize, Roberts filed an amicus brief arguing for an extremely narrow construction of a broadly worded statute in order to protect a group that used various illegal actions up to and including violence to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights. NARAL's ad is tough but fair.

NARAL's new ad

Check it out.

What do you think?

Return of the flying cats

This time, they take baths.

Via Lauren. (P.S. if you go to the guy's flikr page, there are other photo sets, some of which don't even include cats.)

Pseudonymous Kid's parents kind of suck

Scene: Pseudonymous Kid has spent virtually all day watching kids TV. His dad is working on the house, I am working on sitting on my butt being the Bad Depressed Mama. A show comes on that's designed to get kids exercising, showing lots of people outside having! fun!

Pseudonymous Kid: 'Scuse me.
Mr. B.: Yeah?
Pseudonymous Kid: (whining a little) We should have gone outside today, because today was a really nice day to go outside.
Mr. B.: Do you want to go play in the backyard?
Pseudonymous Kid: No, I don't want to just go in the backyard. I want to go someplace special. Like the grocery store.

Heroine of the week

Cindy Sheehan. You've probably seen lots of other bloggers talking about her: she's standing outside of Bush's Crawford ranch and wants to talk to him about her dead son. Of course, she is just the figurehead for all the other parents who've lost children in Iraq, some of whom are joining her in Texas.

Of course, the fact that these mothers want to talk to the man who is ultimately responsible for their sons' deaths means that some misogynistic assholes are starting to try to impugn not only their patriotism, but their character as mothers. Because nothing dishonors the memory of a dead child like a parent who demands answers and accountability. And nothing dishonors motherhood like actively trying to protect children and refusing to let yourself be used as a symbol to promote the very thing that killed your child.

Here is a picture of her son when he was probably about Pseudonymous Kid's age. Pseudonymous Kid is kind of interested in things like soldiers and police officers right now. We tell him that soldiers and cops are supposed to help protect people, but that they also sometimes kill people. He wants to know why, and we explain that if someone is trying to kill you, or invade your country, some people think it's okay to kill them in self-defense (and that some people think even that's not okay), but that unfortunately sometimes soldiers are told to start the fighting, not just defend themselves, and that that's how wars start, and that that is when soldiers are needed to fight back. If my idealistic little boy ever joined up, only to be sent to his death under false pretenses in a war of aggression, you're damn right I'd want to hold the person that sent him and lied about why accountable.

And heaven help anyone who tried to impugn my love for my child because of it.

I admit it: not everything done in the name of feminism or sex-positive sisterhood is a good idea

Witness, for instance, these letters, from well-intentioned morons sending vibrators to the women of Iraq because what you really need in a war zone is a battery-operated vibe. And some nice lube to help out in "the arid desert conditions." You know, the aridity that would be the inevitable result of receiving a letter like this:

Greetings to my Iraqi sister,

I love getting gifts and surprises, and I hope you feel the same way. The items in this box were selected personally by me for you. The Sphincterine wipes will help you keep your anus and vagina minty fresh (I imagine things get a bit musky there in Iraq) and tasting great. The lube is one of the finest in the world and can really help enhance your pleasure.

The vibrator I am enclosing is the same as the model I personally use....

Via Travis (♀), who says "oy fucking vey." My boyfriend's comment was "it doesn't speak very well of the employees of the shop." Mr. B. said, "stop, please stop reading that now, I don't want to hear any more."

As for me, I laughed until I had to wipe tears from my eyes.

Yeah, I still think the Minutemen are racist

A picture's worth a thousand words right? But just in case you want words too, here is an eye-witness account of a Minutemen "protest" against day laborers in Laguna Beach, CA last weekend--with lots more pictures. And here is a nice, reasoned explanation that, whatever individual members of the organization may claim, "the Minutemen provide an ideal opportunity for white racists to "mainstream" their agenda, using the relatively benign "average citizens" that Lou Dobbs exclusively observes in their ranks as just so much cover."

You're known by the company you keep. I know for damn sure if I were at a rally and a bunch of Nazis showed up to "support" my side, I'd shut them down or go home--not hang out with them and then offer half-assed statements after the fact about how they made us look bad.

Voting Rights

Saturday was the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. I highly recommend reading the last several posts over at Hungry Blues, where Benjamin Greenberg has been writing up a storm about the Act, its history, and its resonances in the present day. I've also noticed a few other great posts on the subject lately, and of course there was that article in Harper's. And for god's sake, do spend some time reading both the Democratic Party's recent report, Democracy at Risk and Preserving Democracy (pdf), the John Conyers-headed report by the House Judiciary Committee--both these last are very long, but they clearly demonstrate an intentional and successful pattern of voter suppression in Ohio, particularly aimed at Democratic voters and black voters.

Why does all this matter? Primarily because voting rights are fundamental to a functioning democracy (or, if you prefer, a functioning republic). But also, from the point of view of us on the left, because the Conyers report and the Democratic party report strongly suggest that all our brow-beating and hand-wringing over why we are losing elections has a very simple answer: we aren't.

Now, both reports make a point of concluding that, in fact, the voter suppression in Ohio didn't change the outcome of the election. And no Democratic senator, even when challenging the legitimacy of the Ohio election results, has made that claim. But because I am not an official Democratic party spokeswoman, nor an elected member of the House of Representatives, I can say that I'm not at all sure this is the case. Read the reports, which detail obvious disenfranchisement of thousands--maybe tens of thousands--of Democratic voters. Even if Bush's lead of over 100,000 votes was too big to be accounted for by election irregularities, surely if Democratic votes had not been suppressed in Ohio that lead would have been much smaller. And if you couple what is, for all intents and purposes, basically an even split with the fact that one side demonstrated a serious and effective intent to suppress votes for the other side, then what we see isn't a case where one party's message is more effective than the others.

It's polemical, but I think it is true: for all our worrying about framing, and core issues, and broadening the base, and all the other strategies of getting voters to punch the Democratic candidate in the ballot box, what it boils down to is the vote, stupid. We can talk all we like, we can strategize all we like, and sure, those things are important (a big cushion is better than none at all). But we really need to be making a stink about free and fair elections. We really need to be mobilizing to get the vote out, and make sure those votes are counted. We really need to be talking about voting machines, and equality of access to polling places, and provisional and absentee ballots, and fair registration systems, and all of that.

Messages don't win elections. Ballots do.


P.S. While I'm at it, I'll even shill for an advertiser--that top ad over there is for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and they want feedback on their new site design, and information about what kind of content people want to see. Also, of course, they want you to sign up for their email list. But on the grounds that getting Dems into office is important--and that there's a midterm election next year--I figured I'd point it out to those who, like me, usually overlook ads.

P.P.S. The Voting Rights Act comes up for renewal in 2007. That's *after* the next midterm election, and *before* the next presidential election. Should be very interesting, seeing what the relationship between who's in power and what happens to the act in a couple of years.

Open letter to the woman working at the K-Mart snack bar

Thank you so much for your kindness. I was having a shitty day. First I had to pour my entire change jar into the CoinStar so I would have enough money to buy gas to get home. Then I was feeling incredibly stressed and anxious, no good reason, just the depression coming on again after a couple of days of exerting myself to be social and good company. So the fact that I was having to do an eight hour drive with a little kid and no money was feeling really scary to me, and when Pseudonymous Kid fell asleep I spent two hours sobbing while I drove. Then he woke up and I stopped, and then the car overheated, which is why I pulled off the road and ended up at your K-Mart.

So thanks for seeing me pulling out the $3 I had left in my pocket in order to buy Pseudonymous Kid, who was hungry after his nap, and hot, because our car doesn't have a/c, something to eat. And thanks for making up the difference out of your pocket so that I could afford to buy him a hot dog AND an icee. And thanks for telling us "not to rush" when I realized that you were ready to close up and we were still sitting in the snack area. And thanks for sitting at the next table and engaging PK in conversation and offering to get him some more ketchup so he could finish his hot dog. And thanks for telling me where a phone and a gas station were, and for asking kindly how much further we had to drive, and for wishing us luck and expressing sympathy when I said that the car had overheated. Thanks for pretending to believe me when I pretended for PK's sake that this was no big deal and it would be fine and I wasn't worried about it at all.

I know you couldn't have had any idea what was going on behind all of that--just a woman without much cash and a little kid in the K-Mart looking a little road-weary. Or maybe, since you looked about 50 and are working at the snack bar at K-Mart and told Pseudonymous Kid, when he asked why you needed to go home, that you had to go home to see your baby, and then mentioning to me with a smile that your baby is really actually seventeen, maybe because you are the mother of a teenage girl and you work at the K-Mart to put food on the table, maybe you do understand what that's all like. Maybe that kind of anxiety and fear and needing to put on a good front for the kid is part of your everyday experience. I don't know, just like you couldn't possibly know what all led up to me landing at the K-Mart snack bar with a deliberately calm voice and a smile that was probably a little weak around the edges and windblown hair and a hungry little kid.

You don't know me, and I don't know you. And I'll never see you again. But you really helped me out today. Thanks.

Misogyny in real life

(Yes, I am supposed to be on the road. I slept in.)

Yesterday TD asked me to provide examples of misogyny in every day life. How convenient, then, that this morning Christy sent me a link to this.

Ha! Ha! Those women, so unpredictable! Here's a joke for you: My wife is so moody that I installed a joke computer program rather than encouraging her to see a therapist. My wife is so moody that, well, she's really not so moody that I think she needs to see a doctor, she's actually just kind of tired at the end of the day, but I installed a joke computer program anyway. My wife is so moody that I just stand around and pretend that there's no rhyme or reason to it because I had my tongue cut out in a freak accident and I can't ask her what's wrong, so I installed a joke computer program. My wife is so moody that I prefer the computer, which has no moods, to her, so I installed a joke computer program. My wife is so moody that my complete lack of empathy, communication skills, or concern for her as a human being seems to really piss her off, so I installed a joke computer program. My wife is so moody that she seems annoyed for some reason when I dismiss her feelings or make them into a joke, so I installed this joke computer program....

Awww

What now? How about a li'l pat on the back? Oddly charming.

My bestest girlfriend from high school called me today and told me that all her brothers and sisters were in town visiting her--'I'm sorry it's such short notice, but would you like to come out for a visit?" "Sure!" I said, I haven't seen the siblings in ages." So tomorrow PK and I drive to the next state for an impromptu family reunion, of sorts.

So I may or may not be getting online for the next couple days. I'll be back home Sunday, though. Have a good weekend, y'all.

Vote early, vote often

Do head on over to feministing and put in your two cents on "most disturbing product actually for sale."

Possibilities include a child's pimp costume, a titty mouse pad, car antenna stripper, and the most disturbing concept toilet since the Virgin "piss in the woman's mouth" urinal (which Virgin changed their mind about after everyone wrote to them and asked what the fuck they were thinking).

And, once you recover from your revulsion, head on over to Lawyers, Guns and Money to put in your dib for best song about... oh, you know.

Pseudonymous Kid is evil, but he is still cute

So little Dr. Depressionpants has been having some acute insomnia problems, which means of course that I am then sleeping in very late (although the benefit for all of you, of course, is late night posts waiting for you fresh & pipin' from the oven when you get to work at normal human hours the next day). Anyway, so I was up 'til about 4 am last night, and then at about 6:30 or 7 Pseudonymous Kid, who is on a "I don't want to sleep in, I don't want to waste the morning" kick, wakes up and climbs into bed. Mr. B. and I continue to snooze, fitfully, while he crawls around under the covers, says things like "is it time to get up yet?" and hassles the cat, who, since PK is up, thinks that obviously it's breakfast time and is wandering around mrowwwing about wanting food and wanting PK to leave her alone. So finally, after losing my temper and starting to snap at PK, I say to Mr. B., "Honey, will you PLEASE get up and deal with this?" Of course, in the event, I was too annoyed to go back to sleep (plus it's too hot), so I was up with about 4 hours of sleep. Lovely.

Needless to say, within half an hour of Mr. B. and PK going downstairs, PK was asleep on the couch, and napped until noon. The cat, as per usual, ate something and went back to nap on the now unoccupied bed.

But after his nap, Pseudonymous Kid woke up and declared, in a stage whisper, that "today is Special Cookie Day." This, apparently, is a new holiday, proclaimed by Pseudonymous Kid. What it means is that he and his father are making cookies, and it is all to be a Secret from Mama, so I get to sit on my butt and later be surprised by cookies.

Pretty sweet, huh?

I hereby announce that August 4 is Special Cookie Day, on which everyone is authorized to treat themselves, or others, to cookies. Go forth and enjoy.

For Wolfa

Thanks for the books! They arrived today, and I plan to spend the afternoon reading :)

Awesome

Flying cats. Via Uffish.

I also desperately want that apartment.

Christ, this is pathetic

I don't remember where I found this charming story about the former Archbishop of Portland--who is now, mind you, the prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith--making the argument that the diocese of Portland shouldn't have to pay child support for the child fathered by one of its priests when he was in seminary because, and I quote, the mother had "unprotected intercourse … when [she] should have known that could result in pregnancy."

That's right. The Catholic church, arguing that the woman oughta have used birth control.

Lots of Catholics, of course, are pissed off about it (and, in the end, the woman was awarded the increase in child support she was asking for). But the real problem with this argument isn't that the church is being hypocritical. That's old news, and hardly worth commenting on. The problem is the argument, of course, that the pregnancy was all the woman's fault, like the priest who fathered her child (haha, fathered, geddit?) just had nothing to do with it.

Hence the lawyer, trying to explain why he made an argument that, in theory, is contrary to the actual position of his client (i.e., birth control is evil), says that he

brought up the lack of birth control for an entirely different reason — to allege that Collopy was trying to trap Uribe into a long-term relationship." . . . Kuhn said the defense he raised was probably based on his suspicion that Collopy got pregnant to keep Uribe out of the priesthood.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Yeah, that's how pregnancy works. You just wake up one morning and say, "I'm gonna get pregnant today in order to screw up some random guy's life" and you go and pick up the pregnancy at the local convenience store and then you file a child support suit against someone whose name you pick out of the phone book.

She didn't get pregnant to keep him out of the priesthood. She got pregnant because he was fucking her.

Unless, of course, the argument is that because he was a seminarian he didn't know how that all worked. Poor innocent lamb.

Women, race, and employment

Interesting article about new work by Paula England about a fairly major historic shift in women's employment patterns: white women are now more likely to be employed than black women or Latinas.

In 1890, 40% of black women were in the labor force compared to 16% of white women. By 1950, black women's labor market participation had declined slightly to 38%, but was still well ahead of white women's participation - 29%, England's research shows.

Skip ahead to 1980 and you will see that black and white women's employment rates had converged at 47%. By comparison, 51% of Cuban, 44% of Mexican and 35% of Puerto Rican women were employed in the labor market.

By the early 1990s, England's research shows, African-American women and Latinas were employed at lower rates than non-Hispanic white women. Despite welfare reform and the earned income tax credit, which pushed many poor women of color into employment, by 2001, white women still had the highest employment rates.

This is partly because African-American women have lost during the recent jobless recovery, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The February 2005 unemployment rate for black women was at 9.2%, more than double that experienced by white women, at 4%.

That's a major historical shift for women, and I wonder what it means. Obviously part of what it means is the success of feminism, from the point of view of white women, especially educated white women: we are now far more economically independent than our mothers and grandmothers were. It also suggests, of course, that feminism has been less successful, economically speaking, for black women and Latinas--a sad but generally well-known fact.

Surely this suggests that we need to pay more attention to the intersections of race and class with gender. Part of the problem, for feminism, is a question of critical mass: the more educated and the more power white women have, the more we are going to dominate the feminist discourse. Much is made of third wave feminism's attitude towards sex and sexuality; but at least as important is the fact that third wave feminism has made a conscious effort to be more racially and ethnically self-conscious, I think, than prior feminisms often were. Which, paradoxically, suggests progress, in contrast to the employment differentials.

I wonder how much the shifts in employment rates for women mirror employment rates for men, similarly divided along ethnic/racial lines, over the same period. Maybe we are doing better than we think; maybe not.

In any case, here are some good books on third-wave feminism and women of color. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

Hernandez and Rehmen, Colonize This!
Nelson, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement
Moraga and Anzaldua, This Bridge Called My Back
Anzaldua and Keating, This Bridge We Call Home
Wing, Critical Race Feminism: A Reader
Hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
Hooks, Feminism is for Everybody
Zinn and Dill, Women of Color in U.S. Society

A little more detail on Roberts and Roe v. Wade

Bush v. Choice links to this WaPo article summarizing the content of the documents released from the National Archives relating to Roberts's legal career up to this point:

new documents released by the National Archives from Roberts's tenure as a senior adviser to the attorney general during the Reagan administration make clear that he was deeply skeptical of the court's recognition of a citizen's fundamental "right to privacy"
....
The new documents disclosed by the archive that reflect Roberts' skeptical views regarding a "fundamental" right to privacy include a lengthy article on judicial restraint that he apparently drafted for publication in a journal of the American Bar Association under the name of then-Attorney General William French Smith, his boss.

The article approvingly quoted from a dissenting opinion by Justice Hugo Black in a 1965 court decision, in which the majority held that a Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives was unconstitutional. Black's opinion, as cited in the draft, complained that the court had used "a loose, flexible, uncontrolled standard for holding laws unconstitutional." The draft article said that "the broad range of rights which are now alleged to be 'fundamental' by litigants, with only the most tenuous connection the to Constitution, bears ample witness to the dangers of this doctrine."
....
A second memo, sent by Roberts to the attorney general on Dec. 11, 1981, summarized a lecture six years earlier by then- Solicitor General Erwin N. Griswold at Washington and Lee University, which touched on the same theme. Griswold's lecture, Roberts said, "devotes a section to the so-called 'right to privacy,' arguing as we have that such an amorphous right is not to be found in the Constitution. He specifically criticizes Roe v. Wade."

Note that it is not only abortion that these memos question; it is also the right to use contraception.

On civil rights:

In a May 6, 1982, memo to Smith, Roberts outlined points for Smith to make during a scheduled interview with a Los Angeles Times reporter. Roberts advised Smith to stress that although the Justice Department continued to bring actions to "guard against impermissible discrimination," the average citizen is "no longer burdened by intrusive remedies which have not been proven to be effective."

As an example, Roberts wrote: "We no longer demand busing, so disruptive to the education of our children, or quotas, which have been so divisive in the workforce."

Look, people can quibble and say "most of this stuff is things he wrote for someone else, none of it is testimony to his real beliefs, there is no smoking gun." But at some point, you have to hold people accountable for the work they have done in their careers. How much evidence do we need? How many warning signs are enough? If a dog flashes its teeth at you, but the owner says, "oh, don't worry, he's never bitten any one before," do you believe the owner, or the teeth?

What do women think?

I hope that as you read that headline, your brain automatically heard a whining, foolish voice. Has anyone besides me noticed that The Onion has quietly become a very solid feminist humor site? Kameron points to this gem:

"Today he asked, 'If a woman were running from a burning building, what would she be thinking about?' And I don't know how to answer that. I'd be thinking about getting away from the building, I think."

Don't apologize

In a previous comment thread, people started talking about evolution. And then they started apologizing for going off-topic. Mes amis! The subject of evolution is not in any way off topic; in fact, it is extremely on topic and timely. And PZ Myers wants us all to talk about it, a lot, and who am I to disappoint the great Dr. Myers?

Personally, I think the reason Bush wants "intelligent" design taught in the schools is because he wants people to stop pointing out that he looks like a chimp.

Heroine of the week

Linda Loaiza.

This is what she used to look like.


This is what she looks like now.


Here is her story. Warning: Graphic picture, upsetting content. I would post a clip, but I can't bear to.

Here is something you can do. It's little. But it's something.

Hand over the pills. Now.

On the question of pharmacist's "rights" to refuse birth control or emergency contraception, which came up in the previous thread--or, more broadly, the "rights" of medical professionals to withhold treatment--the drunken lagomorph, who I really must simply add to the blogroll, lays it down:*

When I signed up to be an RN, I did so fully knowing that I would have to put my PATIENT’S welfare above my own judgments and opinions.

To me, becoming a medical professional then saying that you won’t give patients certain medical information is the same as joining up for the military, then expecting special treatment because you don’t “believe in” war.

It's a good rant. go read it. Plus, the bunny at the top of the page is cute, and not dead.

*Isn't that a masterfully complex sentence? Thanks, I wrote it myself.

"Birth control leads to promiscuity"

This, according to Wisconsin State Representative Dan LeMahieu, who successfully sponsored a bill to Ban campuses in the University of Wisconsin system from dispensing birth control or counselling rape victims. This despite the fact that funds for student health services are paid for by student fees, not tax dollars. Several other feminist bloggers have already talked about this, and pointed out that birth control does not, in fact, increase the incidence of sexual activity (and surely rape counselling doesn't, good lord, unless Representative LeMahieu thinks that rape counts as sexual activity and that counselling women afterwards will somehow encourage them to go get raped again) but here's my question:

Even if it were true that birth control leads to promiscuity, what business is that of the stat of Wisconsin? College students are adults.

In other old-men-with-control-fetishes-about-young-women news, Pataki plans to veto over the counter EC because it would also be available to minors. Never mind that pregnancy is more dangerous than emergency contraception--hell, cold medicine is more dangerous than emergency contraception. Apparently the belief is that the veto is part of Pataki's preparation for a presidential run.

Think about that. The Republican party is promoting laws to make birth control and rape counselling unavilable; to allow pharmcists to deny birth control even with a prescription; to deny emergency contraception to women, including rape victims, who need it to prevent pregnancy; and to restrict abortion. Bush has nominated a Supreme Court Justice who we have reason to believe wants to overturn Roe v. Wade.

No birth control. No emergency contraception, not even if you are raped. No counselling if you are raped. No abortion.

Sound like hyperbole? Don't blame the messenger.

Darn blogger, darn current events

Blogger's image upload thingy isn't working today, so you don't get to see my crappy non-photoshop creation of Bolton as the walrus and Bush as the carpenter. Just as well, maybe, since I totally ripped off the idea from After School Snack. Ding points out that it's ironic King Fahd should have died on the same day Bush appointed himself King of the United States.

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
...
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

Logorrhea R us

Ah, sweet relief: I have successfully completed last week's two writing projects. First, some piece of bureaucratic crap I had to do for work (which I finished yesterday--I kind of like going into the office on Sunday, because no one is ever there), and second my very first ever intended-for-newspaper-publication op-ed type piece. We shall see if it gets accepted. And by "we," obviously, I mean "me," since I'm certainly not going to publish a newspaper op-ed under the pseudonym "Bitch Ph.D." Although if it gets published, I just might link you to it if you buy me flowers or write me a big check or something. Kidding!

Writing is such a weird thing. I had a long chat the other day with ABD Mom about the problem of audience and genre, and why in the world is it so difficult, when you've been writing for years, to suddenly try to write something that's new? And not so much because the writing part itself is hard--actually, I found it quite enjoyable--as because of the fear of the new, I guess. The sense that one doesn't know how to do whatever it is "right"--what kind of tone to take, how much evidence to present, how to structure things. And maybe a certain difficulty in picturing one's audience. And god knows, having to write short, punchy sentences.

When I was in high school, my honors English teacher once said to me that my writing was "concise to a fault." And, while struggling with the dissertation, it eventually dawned on me that a big part of my problem was that I was really boiling down my argument so thickly that the evidence I was using wasn't being clearly presented and described: over and over, my dissertation advisor told me "just describe, just summarize, just report." As I started writing academic articles, I started noticing that yes, a lot of academic publications are 90% simple summary: here is something new, here is something old and forgotten, here is what it looks like. Often the only "argument" is "someone should do something more with this."

And in fact, I really enjoy reading things that merely present new information, as opposed to constructing new arguments or new paradigms. Information is cool, and I'm pretty good at thinking of what the information "means" all on my own. But as a writer, it is true; I tend, very strongly, to want to interpret and explain, as well as simply tell. Even though sometimes just telling is actually very fun. I like reading what other people tell; but when I do it, I always think, "who is going to care about this, unless I tell them why they should"?

It's interesting. And it's fun, this exploring different kinds of writing, different reasons for writing. I dig it.

Now if I could only internalize the rules that (1) writing is fun; (2) finishing writing feels great--and stop blocking myself by fretting unnecessarily. There's got to be some kind of feedback loop between not-writing and depression; I was never a fan of that Charlotte Perkins Gilman story, because it always seemed so overdetermined. But like some other feminist classics, I begin to appreciate it more as I get older. Yes, it's didactic and pretty obvious; you have to bring a fair bit of yourself to the reading in order to invest it with emotional resonance. But it is hard, hard to write something new, and even harder to write something new gracefully.

But graceful or not, it feels good.