I know it is wrong, wrong and bad, to lift someone else's blog post in its entirety. But this is too fucking letter-perfect to excerpt, from Flea's summary of the latest Republican sex scandal blah blah blah to her plea to think of the children.
Do it. Link to her original post (link = title below), and pass it along. This could be awesome.
Steve’s taking the boys to Florida this weekend to visit grandparents, and he’s getting worried. How can he take the boys to use the potty in the airport bathroom? Can he adequately watch them both by himself? How can he be sure the man in the adjoining stall isn’t running for office on a Family Values platform?
“Something has to be done,” he said. “Obviously, fear and shame isn’t going to stop them. We’ve got to try something else. See if you can get an internet movement going. We’ll change the signs on public restrooms from ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ to ‘Republican’ and ‘Democrat.’”
Won’t you think of the children? Help us make the world a safer place!
So which of the current presidential candidates is probably going to be best for women?
Now, some folks will argue that blah blah it's possible to have the utmost respect for women, of course, without actually, you know, giving them jobs. And as we all know, there really just aren't that many women out there who really care about politics or who've reached the very top of their professions, and this fact has nothing to do with discrimination, necessarily--maybe women just choose to do other things with their time. Like shopping and cooing over infants, for example. And it certainly isn't the candidates' fault if, for reasons of their own, women are happy earning less than $9000/year or doing things other than being interested in who governs the nation.
Still, though, with all those necessary caveats in place, it seems reasonable to assume, as a starting point, that
the relative influence of women within presidential campaigns can be partially gauged by gender ratios among salaried operatives playing strategic leadership and advisory roles, the top twenty best-paid individuals, and staff who were paid more than $9000 in the last quarter.
Right? I mean, even though there's no reason why men can't represent women's issues just as well as women, and it's nothing more than rampant reverse sexism to assume otherwise, it doesn't seem entirely crazy to guess that probably, on average, women are probably slightly more likely to care about women's concerns.
Of course, we all know that ideally, there'd be no such thing as "women's issues". And I'm sure we all know enlightened individuals who are completely indifferent to gender and think that paying attention to this stuff just undermines equality.
Okay fine.
Now let's talk about the real world.
For those of us who haven't entirely evolved past noticing that people have bodies and that these bodies actually make a difference in the world, the Huffington Post released some interesting information a few days ago:
The campaign of Republican Mike Huckabee achieves the closest gender balance at a near 50% division between men and women on all measures (it is also the smallest of all the major campaigns). The campaigns of Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson, and Republican Mitt Romney are also fairly balanced, with Clinton's somewhat favoring women and Richardson's and Romney's somewhat favoring men. The most gender-skewed campaign, in contrast, is that of Rudy Giuliani.
In the campaign of the former New York mayor Giuliani, there is only one senior female staffer, who holds the title of Communications Director. Fewer than one-third of Giuliani's staff who earned $9000 or more in the last quarter are women, and just a quarter of his top twenty paid staff are women.
The Democrats' campaigns are more gender-balanced than Republicans'. Just over thirty percent of Republican senior staffers are women, compared to just under 33% of Democratic senior staffers. And there are ten more top salaried women in Democratic campaigns: 32 of 80 (40%) compared to 21 of 74 (28%) in Republican campaigns.
Richardson passes. So, needless to say, does Clinton.
If you're one of those hyper-enlightened souls who thinks that caring about gender in politics is just as sexist as the fact that, oh, every president throughout American history has been a white man, then fine; vote "purely on the issues." (Actually, in all seriousness, OnTheIssues is a good site for that kind of research.) If you're a straw woman who "only" votes based on gender equity, then hey, cast your ballot for Huckabee.
If, however, you live in the real world, realize that a given candidate's issues will flex (or not) in the context of party politics and actual day-to-day governance, and give a shit about women's equality, then consider Richardson if you like. If you're only paying attention to the frontrunners Obama, Edwards, and Clinton, then keep in mind that, as Matt Yglesias points out,
one of the most important legacies of a Hillary Clinton administration would [likely] be bequeathing to the Democratic Party a network of powerful plugged-in insiders that winds up containing substantially more women in senior roles than we have right now, along with perhaps a higher number of men comfortable working with power female colleagues and superiors.
That shit matters, people.
I know I'm on the record as leaning towards Edwards, actually, but I keep thinking I might change my mind. In any case, I'm consoling myself by--or maybe reassuring myself about--knowing I'll be voting for Clinton in the general election.
When I was sixteen, I went to visit my sister, who was 23 and living in San Francisco. I stayed there for three weeks, and it was one of the more important experiences of my adolescence; it was the first time I got a chance to explore a city other than the one I grew up in, and do it by myself. I remember a lot of things from that trip. I remember drinking coffee for the first time, I remember reading the newspaper, I remember getting my upper ear pierced on Market Street, I remember trying new food and taking the bus alone and sneaking cigarettes from my sister's roommates.
But mostly what I remember was thinking about sex. To me, San Francisco was teeming with sexuality. People dressed so much more provocatively than anywhere I'd ever been, making out in public, being fucking frank. I went to my first gay pride parade, I saw naked women on motorcycles, I walked around the Castro and gawked. And I was captivated.
I remember that I would pick up the SF weekly, the local alternative paper, but I wouldn't read anything except the personal ads; I found them compelling. The section was full of bizarre requests, bdsm, kinks, threesomes, homosexuality. I couldn't get enough of it. Thinking about all these people, with their depraved lives, their sexual freedom, their escapades and misadventures, made me feel that the world was a much more exciting place to live in than I had previously imagined. Now, when I look back on my secret inner sexual life as a teenager, it seems almost shocking.
The cultural portrayal of women, especially young and old women, as being sexless, or only responsive/aroused by/sustained by the sexual desires of men, always made me feel incredibly isolated, both then and now. This narrative, that boys were the ones interested in sex, seemed totally wrong. They didn't seem to want to have sex with me nearly enough, did they? They seemed more interested in asserting their masculinity by getting girls to be sexual with them, than the actual sex. It was sad.
I'm not a difference feminist. I really believe that men and women are much more similar than we are different. The closer I get to adult women of my acquaintance, the more I realize they're more like me and less like the caricature of feminine lack of desire we are presented with through countless cultural narratives.
They are human. They have powerful sexual desire that often clouds reason. More often than not, they wish they were having far more sex. They get angry, they are sexually selfish sometimes. They want to yell at their boyfriends, their bosses, their friends, their pets. They want to take and take and not always give.
I believe that part of seeing women as human beings means NO EXCEPTIONALISM for women. This is why Chesler's tsk-tsking about politeness and other "feminist" rhetoric about how women shouldn't stoop to the level of those evil men pisses me off so fucking much. Women are not somehow perfect and peace-loving, sweet and giving. We are no better or more noble or more pure than men; we are only more oppressed, more beaten down, poorer and with less political power. But we are not better, we do not live on a pedestal of long-suffering serenity.
Being human means being allowed to live the full range of human emotion. It means being able to express animal sexual desire, to express anger, to want to hurt the people we feel inhibit or insult us. We want power and when we get power, we fight like hell to keep it. Like men, we are capable of violence, of meanness, of selfishness.
Which is why I am sick and tired of the people who want to chastise me for yelling at a 12-year-old who felt it appropriate to comment on my tits. "Don't use profanity. You could be in danger! That won't work to teach the kid a lesson. Once he apologized, you shouldn't have rebuked him more." Fuck you. I happen to sometimes get angry, and when I'm angry, like every other goddamn person with any good sense, I show it.
I like to think I am a beast of a person. I have an immense capacity for anger, both righteous and totally petty. My anger at injustice has carried me really far, and in fact is what keeps me going and excited through the day at work. I am a beast of sexual desire. I think about sex, like, constantly, and I get pissed when the people I want to fuck don't want to fuck me back.
When I get emotional, whether it's sadness, anger, or exhilaration, its not because of PMS, or because I'm a woman. It's because I'm a human being, a complex and intelligent animal responding subtly to a thousand different stimuli.
I get to fuck up. I get to be rude, I get to be both selfless and selfish. I get to be sexually demanding. I get to want fame, and power, and money and love and to be really, really hot. I get to also want to take care of others, to fight for social change, to help the weak and create art. I get to feel it all, and do it all, because that's what it is to be human.
what i like about gail collins' piece is this part:
Huckabee’s problems say more about the leaders of the religious right than about him. They’re united mainly by their hatred of abortion and gay marriage, and a desire to win. (my emphasis)
winning isn't particularly christian. i mean, when you're supposed to be turning the other cheek and shaking the dust off your sandals, what's winning got to do with it? but collins puts her finger on a real ugly aspect of the christian right's involvement in politics: their growing pragmatism and willingness to compromise. to an evangelical fundamentalist, compromise is tantamount to cavorting (naked) with the devil. and if i was still a fundamentalist, i'd be worried about the growing corruption of my religious cohort.
collins' point about other aspects of his personality, aspects that may better conform to a more 'christian' image of charity, and how they are proving 'unwinnable' to leaders in the christian right is interesting. no, it's more than interesting; it's a great big spotlight on hyprocrisy.
take the romney thing. every good religious fundamentalist knows that there is NOTHING to bridge mormonism and evangelical christianity. there are more than enough doctrinal differences between the two faiths (if even a fundie will consider mormonism a 'faith' rather than a sect or cult) to make a mormon virtually unrecognizable to a baptist. the southern baptist convention is very clear they think mormonism is extant to the word of God on their apologetics site; walter martin's The Kingdom of the Cults, a classic in evangelical apologetics, is unequivocal in labeling mormonism outside of christian orthodoxy. (how do i know this? i had to read this for bible study when i was a teenager.)
yet fundamentalists who will battle for every scrap of scriptural ground like they're in a cage fight are suddenly finding it 'maybe okay' to entertain thoughts of romney. the doctrinal and exegetical purity that forms the foundation of their thinking on homosexuality, feminism, sex education, abortion, war and terrorism has suddenly become a wispy, trivial thing. you have to wonder at the sudden change in those Values Voters.
(fantastic articles here and here about romney's evangelical problem from my favorite religion/politics writer, amy goodman.)
the religious right, if they decide to throw their considerable weight behind romney, will have to find a way to reconcile their private doctrinal beliefs and their public thirst for victory. it won't be an easy reconciliation because getting in bed with a cultist is to commit apostasy. to get in bed with a cultist is to embrace a pragmatism that would sicken most church folk. politically, it would be the right thing to do but is the religious right willing to endanger their salvation to win an election?
hard to say. if they are, romney's their guy; if they decide that ideological purity is more important than winning, don't count out huckabee. what should the Dems do? since they, too, want to win, they shouldn't be afraid to make the mormon the Other, but they shouldn't ignore ignore the Other in their midst - hillary clinton - because the evangelicals certainly won't.
what should the GOP do? maybe they should pray. because they're screwed.
i'm enjoying the sight of the GOP suddenly realizing their religious friends are a whole 'nother animal. they're beginning to see that such an association comes with a price. hasn't that always been the way with matters of faith - a sacrifice is required of the truly faithful. if they had spent more time in bible study, perhaps they would know that.
it's also fascinating to see the the religious right, after years of winning with the help of power-thirsty republican politicians, discover that winning can be a hard drug to kick. the heady thrill of victory can induce lust in any puritanical breast and if a fundamentalist knows anything he knows the destruction of unbridled lust. [see this for how some grassroots religious folk are looking at the huckabee run and what the internal religious gossip is. i wonder if Democratic strategists ever hang out on these things to see what the religious right is doing.]
[and i'll post about the Dems and reproductive issues tomorrow. it takes a while to collate all that info!]
[oh, and this was cross-posted at my other blog, if that matters...]
Bitch readers! M. LeBlanc, Bitch, JD here. I feel like I should introduce myself, but I don't want it to take a whole post, damnit! There is time to be self-centered and petty later! So, hi. I'm a brand-new lawyer and young'un, been bringing feminist analysis to bear since I was a teen shunning the Mormon church I was raised in, but I don't use my legal skills to advance feminist causes (yet!). Instead, my work focuses on prisoners, who are mostly dudes. Not that it's not important (indeed, I find it such compelling work that I've devoted all my time to it), but I've gotta do something for the ladies. That mostly involves talking about gender issues like, constantly with anyone I can get my hands on, and blogging. I have a zillion interests, which include maps, mathematics, taking photographs, playing the guitar poorly, cooking Thai food, and looking at contemporary art. My pseudonym refers to this person.
So, for reasons that pass understanding, I was reading this Pajamas Media piece this morning. I don't know anything about this Phyllis Chesler person, but from reading the post, I suspect she's someone with whom I might have some disagreement. Chesler tells a story about Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian like me, who founded the group Arabs for Israel. Now, Darwish is a cool woman. I don't always agree with her conclusions, but I think her objective of promoting "peace, reconciliation, and understanding" between Israelis and Arabs is vital.
Apparently, Darwish was to speak at Wellesley about "Muslim women who live under Muslim religious law" but the topic was changed to one generally about "peace." Read the whole article; Chesler talks about how Darwish felt disrespected by "gangster" Muslim girls who showed up in droves and made "mean faces" at her. It's fascinating.
I think her claims are probably exaggerated, and what she's talking about is the behavior of bratty young adults, rather than some weird Muslim thing but what I think is most interesting is the idea of her coming to campus and talking about how Islam oppresses women, its "gender and religious apartheid."
What I've struggled with as an Arab feminist and now-atheist is how to act toward young Muslim women. Obviously, Islam is a religion that is sexist: women but not men must cover their heads, women can't fast during menstruation, there is gender segregation for prayer, a man is the unquestionably the head of the Muslim family. The fact that Islam authorizes polygamy makes this even worse.
But the way in which the West has dealt with these facts is to otherize the women who practice this religion, to make the headscarf a symbol of women's oppression, and revile the sight of it. News clips about Islam and terrorism often show a sea of women in headscarves, the garment itself looming ominously.
But what I found in Egypt on my last visit is that the donning of the headscarf has become a get-out-of-jail-free card for young Egyptian women. If they wear it, they have the appearance of being "good" girls, and then they can go do whatever the hell they want. They can hang out with their boyfriends in the park, stay out late smoking out of water-pipes (an activity that 10 years ago, you would never see women doing), wear tight clothes. Because if they're wearing the headscarf, they are automatically chaste. Young women say that it is incredibly liberating for them to take up the headscarf, and get their parents off their backs.
Don't get me wrong, I think the headscarf is ultimately problematic. It does, and must, take a deep psychological toll to have to cover up your body, day after day, to believe that the sight of parts of you are improper. There's a concept in Islam of "private" parts, a word in Arabic I can't remember. Just as in the US we believe that genitals and breasts are private, some strains of Islam believe that the woman's whole body, indeed, her whole being, is "private".
But I tire of seeing Western women pinpoint the headscarf as not only a symbol, but the apex, of oppression. When Karen Hughes, Bush's Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, went to Istanbul, she was surprised that Islamic feminists wanted to talk about the war in Iraq, about poverty, not about the headscarf. And they were pissed at her, for trying to tell them what their oppression looked like.
Third-Wave feminists in Istanbul told me that all the focus on the headscarf was obscuring the problems that women all over the world, not just in Islamic countries, have: they suffer domestic violence. They don't have money and their families don't value their education. I think that talking about Islam as if it is religion alone that causes the oppression of women is a mistake; it's the worldwide view, held by religious and areligious people alike, that women are lesser, are for use as sex objects or child-rearers or pedestals.
And Muslim women aren't all meek and beaten down and invisible. This incident, I think, shows that. In my mind, bratty and disrespectful though these women at Wellesley were, they were doing something that many American or Westernized women haven't yet freed themselves to do: not be polite. Even if they're wrong about Darwish, wrong that she's telling lies about their religion, they were giving her attitude, letting it be known that they wouldn't stand by smiling while someone else tells them how they feel.
when Bitch PhD approached me for this gig, i forewarned her that sometimes i just wanna write about my fantasies of taking revenge on a patriarchal world so twisted, i feel like taking a hammer to someone's scrotum. dear angel of light that she is, she said 'Write that!'
let me say that i do not hate fashion. short, brown and pudgy as i am, and though i am not fashion's best friend, i am a product of a consumerist society. i like drooling over shoes (just bought 3 pair at nordstrom last week), i love spreading glossy tint over my lips and my monthly Lucky magazines are full of little tabs flagging my fashionable, and unattainable, desires.
i'm behind in my fashion reading, so today i come across this article - Killer Designs or Killer Shoes? - New York Times. in it, female immobility is 'really modern.' it makes me want to take up my hammer, a la john henry, and knock on some fashionable doors.
would i love to see the shoe designer at Chloe forced to wear this shoe and run for a bus down a sidewalk lined with subway grates? yes, i would.
would i want the designer at yves saint laurent forced to stand in these shoes on a concrete floor for a whole 8 hours, the way i wore black patent leather Prada pumps at a work event last year and hobbled home, with bleeding feet? indeed, i would.
and would i force this designer from givenchy to wear this shoe, traverse o'hare and go through airport security repeatedly? i would love to.
ok, enough fashion/torture porn for the day. i've got to go home and finish reading Packaging Girlhood.
yesterday, i reluctantly started to research the presidential candidates and what they think about a woman controlling her own fertility. i discovered they suck. republicans, predictably, suck more, but the dems could be stronger. (i'll cover the dems later because i've already spent the whole day at the office on this.)
giuliani - meh. he could be totally uninterested in overturning Roe v. Wade, but his recent suck up to the religious right makes my left ass cheek twitch. he also says he 'hates' abortions and would rather states made their own decisions. i think we already know that 'state's rights' is code for 'horrific, regressive social policy.' woe betide the woman who lives in a backassward state filled with baptist zealots.
huckabee - speaking of baptist zealots, candidate huckabee is one dedicated anti-choicer. not only does he want to overturn Roe v. Wade, his ideal world is one in which anti-choice idealogues hold positions of power in his administration, all pro-choice legislation would be vetoed, contraception is neither available nor taught, 'life begins at conception' and abstinence becomes public health policy and 'unborn children' carry more rights than living, breathing women. lovely.
hunter - who?? if you take a huckabee and add a dukakis hairdo, you get duncan hunter, a man who wants to 'provide blanket protection to all unborn children from the moment of conception.' it just gets worse from there. his views on 'life' are here. what does he think about birth control? if he thinks a person is a person at conception, i don't really see him being a big fan of anything that prevents...person-making.
mccain - eh. i want to like the man but if he can't figure out if contraceptives prevent the spread of HIV, how can i trust him to be thoughtful about a woman's right to control her own fertility? (nevermind his whole stance on reproductive freedom is rather restrictive.)
paul - who can tell me what a 'pro-life libertarian' is? like huckabee and hunter, he believes a fertilized egg is a person, doesn't want to fund int'l family planning, supports a federal abortion ban but says EC is ok. he doesn't think abortion is a private matter and that abortions are an uneccessary answer to social ills. (whatever that means.) will he respect the right of a woman to control her fertility as she sees fit? i doubt it.
romney - i used to think that the fundies would shun a guy whose doctrine is so clearly extant from the literal bible, but the fundies surprised me; they're not so ideologically pure, after all. again, we have a candidate who seems to have failed simply biology. he, too, wants a fertilized egg to be called a person and thinks that birth control pills are 'abortive drugs.' the man's an idiot and i don't want his political hands on my private parts.
tancredo - by now my head is spinning from reading about all the idiotic men who want to run this country and make decisions about my health and body for me. tancredo thinks so-called 'crisis pregnancy centers' (that offer no medical care other than showing you an ultra-sound and telling you not to kill your 'baby') are preferable to Planned Parenthood centers (that actually offer healthcare services), which he wants to de-fund. the many low-income women who are served by Planned Parenthood thank you, candidate tancredo.
thompson - somehow, the schiavo case warranted a respect of privacy but his support of anti-choice legislation and ideologies says that a woman's fertility does not. thanks, fred.
these candidates' opposition to abortion comes as no real surprise; the more the GOP panders to the socially conservative values of the anti-woman religious right, the more we'll see republican candidates morphing into political dimmesdales, all the more willing to emblazon women with a great big scarlet A. what is surprising is the speed with which their moralizing gazes are turning to birth control.
years ago, i predicted the right wouldn't quit with abortion rights and birth control would be next; from experience i know the mind of a fundamentalist is narrow and can find still more ways to restrict pleasure and inflict punishment. but i still held out hope that modern politicians were reasonable people who knew that certain things are a good idea: birth control benefits everyone. clearly, my hope was misplaced.
i'll just come out with it: reproductive justice issues are my litmus test for this election. more than iraq, more than foreign policy, more than the environment, more than poverty, more than education, more than healthcare - protecting the borders of my physical body and my autonomy is my 'single issue.' the big boys of political strategy may not like 'single issue' advocacy, but it's not their bodies they have to protect. it seems the boys of political punditry and strategy care about bodies only when it's war.
Apparently Sarah the triathlete has put her blog on hiatus as a direct result of commentary about her on some blog that posted a picture.
I suspect from a couple things people have said in the comments to that thread that it was my post that created the problems. Even if it weren't, it doesn't matter; it easily could have been. I'm sorry, Sarah. I intended that post to be entirely positive, and I fucked up.
And to everyone who made assholish comments in that thread, I hope you're fucking ashamed of yourselves. Far, far more ashamed than every fat chick who's ever had to listen to complete strangers passing judgment on her body.
I've hidden the comments to that thread now, and I'm not going to allow comments on this one, either. If you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.
what deserves further exploration is the connection between a particular body weight and the ideas of goodness or worthiness, the Puritan equation between sloth and weight or weakness of character and weight, and the mirror image of this equation in how we view very thin women as somehow having won over their greedy and weak sides, even when the level of thinness they have achieved is a medical emergency.
The tendency to draw moral parallels between ill health and human worth is an old one. Mentally ill people were once seen as carrying demons and the treatment was to exorcize the demons in ways which often caused intense pain to the mentally ill themselves. Susan Sontag's work on illness as metaphors bears repeating here:
"Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor was the first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient's will to resist disease. It is largely as a result of her work that the how-to health books avoid the blame-ridden term 'cancer personality' and speak more soothingly of 'disease-producing lifestyles.' . . . Sontag's new book AIDS and Its Metaphors extends her critique of cancer metaphors to the metaphors of dread surrounding the AIDS virus. Taken together, the two essays are an exemplary demonstration of the power of the intellect in the face of the lethal metaphors of fear." --Michael Ignatieff, The New Republic
Something similar is visible on many discussions about health issues. An illness is seen as "deserved" if the patient ever engaged in any activity which is now known to be correlated with that illness, and the illness itself is now viewed as punishment for evil deeds. Illness becomes a moral condition and the search for its epidemiology becomes a court case where the jury looks for that one decision where the patient went wrong, the one sin for which the current pain and suffering might be a just punishment.
To wit: I need help! There's just too much to be pissed off about, feminist-wise, here in these United States these days, and this "stay home mom" gig is more fucking time consuming than teaching a 3/2 load of college students ever was.
I'd tell you to be nice to them, but they don't need your stinkin' benevolence any more than I do. I'll let them fill you in on their bonafides as they like--or not.
So from now on, it's really Bitches PhD, MA, and JD--notwithstanding the url.
If I get my shit together, there may be an appropriate site redesign as well.
Mechanical mouse is a leftover favor from Pseudonymous Kid's 7th birthday party yesterday. MM is unaffected by the smoke and ash outside, which are making the air a totally bizarre shade of yellow--sort of like after a midwestern thunderstorm in the late afternoon, or the golden light in an old masters landscape, but a lot less clear to see with.
Said party was an exhausting hit: we had water balloon fights and a silly string battle, a couple of kids needed to borrow changes of clothes from PK's bedroom, one girl got bored while the other kids were watching Monster House after two hours of running about, so I played Mouse Trap with her in the living room, everyone got to play with PK's new archery set, only one kid tromped through the forbidden (i.e., uncleaned) adult bedroom, and everyone's parents are now grateful to us for letting them drop their kids off for four hours, whereas I have learned that perhaps four hours is a little too long for your average elementary school party, especially if you invite the whole class (though thankfully only half of them showed up). Pseudonymous Kid, however, said he had an excellent birthday and that, in his opinion, the best birthday parties are at home because everyone gets to see where you live and you don't have to worry about losing toys and you can show everyone your room. I told him that maybe we'll do this again when he's ten.
And now, this being "fall break," PK is off up north with my dad, to spend a few days at Grandpa's playing video games while Mr. B. and I have an actual day alone (however, with the fires, I don't think we'll be spending it at the beach) before Mr. B. goes off tomorrow to Denver for another business trip and I spend *an entire day* on Tuesday *all by myself* before going up north to pick up PK and take him to San Francisco to visit the Exploratorium.
Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the Democratic whip, parodied what the president has said about the campaign against terrorism. “You’re either for American children or you’re not,” Mr. Clyburn said. “It’s just that simple.”
No, it is not, said Representative Greg Walden, Republican of Oregon. He said he wonders if the government could pay for the S-chip program as embodied in the bill. “I spent 21 years in small business,” he said. “I never signed a contract I couldn’t keep my word on.”
Voted YES on replacing illegal export tax breaks with $140B in new breaks, Voted YES on more prosecution and sentencing for juvenile crime, Voted YES on military border patrols to battle drugs & terrorism, Voted NO on removing oil & gas exploration subsidies, Voted YES on establishing nationwide AMBER alert system for missing kids, Voted YES on reducing Marriage Tax by $399B over 10 years (i.e., reducing government revenue), Voted YES on reforming the UN by restricting US funding, Voted YES on withholding $244M in UN Back Payments until US seat restored (so much for contracts), Voted YES on $15.2 billion for foreign operations, Voted YES on $266 billion Defense Appropriations bill, Voted YES on building a fence along the Mexican border ,Voted YES on $167B over 10 years for farm price supports, Voted YES on retaining reduced taxes on capital gains & dividends, Voted YES on making permanent an increase in the child tax credit, Voted YES on permanently eliminating the marriage penalty, Voted YES on making the Bush tax cuts permanent, Voted YES on $99 B economic stimulus: capital gains & income tax cuts, Voted YES on Tax cut package of $958 B over 10 years, Voted YES on eliminating the Estate Tax, Voted YES on eliminating the "marriage penalty," Voted YES on $46 billion in tax cuts for small business, (voted to) phaseout the death tax, and Voted YES on treating religious organizations equally for tax breaks.
So you know, no contracts we can't afford to pay for.
Fabulous photo set courtesy Kate Harding. I think what gets me, personally, most isn't the visual evidence that our sense of what is and isn't "normal" or "healthy looking" is fucked. (Though it's really not possible, I think, to get too much of that.) It's the effect of the repeated labelling: "Sarah is "morbidly obese"." "Mindy is "underweight"." "Shauna is "overweight"." After a while, I really started to become aware of how sad and uncomfortable that kind of repeated labelling--the kind we hear every day--makes me feel. And how not only am I (are we all) messed up in terms of what I think "looks" "good" (or not), but also simply in terms of how that kind of language surely impacts me (all of us) without my (our) even realizing it.
File under "barf": Home Depot is opening the first in a planned second line of stores called Her Depot.
You won't find any lumber yards, contractor-grade tools or commercial building supplies.
That's 'cause the ladies don't know how to, y'know, actually build stuff. Or run a business. Our job, as everyone knows, is to let the men do the actual fixing while we go out and buy overpriced consumer crap like
flower bouquets, well-lit bathroom and kitchen displays, stylish home furnishings and stacks of floral-print storage bins.
Floral-print storage bins! My dreams have been answered. I need those *so* much more than I need a decent drill or the right size washer to fix that damn dripping faucet.
Home Depot is known for warehouse-style stores that stock almost every nut, bolt and piece of lumber a contractor could dream of, but they lack customer service and comfort.
"It's a male-friendly home-improvement store," said Britt Beemer, a retail expert and president of America's Research Group. "It's a warehouse environment, and it's not clean and neat the way women like it.
It's SO true. I can't stand the way that work areas get dirty sawdust on the floor! And I really need someone to help me pick out the right size bolts for fixing the light fixture, because that kind of thing is too difficult for my wee, girly head.
On the up side, the place has gotta be doomed to failure:
The new Concord store will carry about 25 percent fewer items than a typical Home Depot. . . . Instead, the store includes a home decor and furnishings department, home organization department and an expanded window and door gallery.
Because nothing brings customers in like a store that sells less shit. And we've all just been *dying* to buy our furniture at Home--I mean Her--Depot.
Somehow I'm thinking this isn't actually going to go over too well with Home Depot's lesbian customer base.
The two main posts linked below in all caps are not only worth reading, they're worth bookmarking, printing up on transfer paper, and ironing on t-shirts. Seriously.
A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.
Duh.
Moreover, the researchers found that abortion was safe in countries where it was legal, but dangerous in countries where it was outlawed and performed clandestinely.
Honest to god, that right there should be the end of the fucking argument, people. Women abort pregnancies whether or not the Man "allows" them to, because women are in charge of pregnancies and we know if we can deal with another kid or not. Period. Either you believe that women who abort deserve to die, in which case you're "anti-abortion" (or "pro-life"), or you don't, in which case you're "pro-choice".
Let's rename those groups to reflect the facts. The antis can be the "pro dead women" camp and the pros can be the "pro adequate medical care" camp.
Extra bonus kicker:
The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available.
Again, duh. How does the "pro dead women" camp stack up on the question of contraception? Catholic Church--anti-contraception (hence, pro dead women). George Bush--anti-contraception = pro dead women. The National Right to Life--officially has no position on contraception but is anti-Planned Parenthood, anti-health-care reform and pro-criminalizing abortion = pro dead women. Feminists for Life--pro-criminalization, "no opinion" on birth control = pro dead women. Concerned Women for America--anti-birth control = pro dead women.
Try it. Google any so-called pro-life organization you want + "birth control" and find out if they support birth control or not. Is their anti-abortion position "prevent abortions" or is it "make abortions dangerous"?
And for extra bonus points, see what they have to say about Planned Parenthood, which does more to prevent abortion in this country than any other organization.
fully ignorant of Planned Parenthood beforehand, I thought I’d be doing abortion evaluations. Planned Parenthood equals abortions. That was the extent of my knowledge.
I was so far, far off base it’s not even funny. In fact, it may sound ironic, but I’m pretty confident when I say this: No matter what your feelings are about the subject, there would be more abortions performed in this country if Planned Parenthood didn’t exist.The patients I’ve seen have been, in general, young, healthy women, ages 12 to 26. . . .
They come in primarily for three things:
1. annual exams (pap smears, breast exams, etc.), 2. sexually-transmitted infection (STIs) diagnosis and treatment, 3. and birth control.
Read the whole thing--he puts to rest a lot of the cliches about who uses Planned Parenthood ("They are sexually active, almost always with one, monogamous partner, and they do not want to get pregnant."), whether or not women who use Planned Parenthood are "responsible" ("my patients are more informed about their health and medicines than me"), and whether they're the exception or the norm ("Over 90% of women of childbearing age use some sort of contraception method").
And yes, Planned Parenthood also provides safe abortions. Because doing so is a necessary part of women's reproductive health care, one that saves lives.
Like I said, this shit deserves to be printed on t-shirts. Hell, shouted from the rooftops.
My right neck and shoulder hurt so bad it makes me want to cry, I've got some kind of nonsense diarrhea, and this morning apparently some goddamn spider was hiding in my pants and BIT ME ON THE ASS, which hurts like you wouldn't believe.
That is all. Congratulations to Al Gore and Doris Lessing. If I didn't feel so incredibly crappy, I'd say something interesting about how maybe the awards mean that the current U.S. political climate is merely a bit of hysterical backlash against an inevitable move to Better Things in world culture as a whole. But typing makes my shoulder hurt.
Oh, and if Katha Pollitt doesn't stop being 100% right about everything, I might have to start stalking her online. This shit cracked me up despite my goddamn shoulder:
The other night I got an irate e-mail from an old acquaintance on the left. He was furious because I'd quipped in an interview that if people didn't stop making sexist comments about Hillary Clinton, I might just have to vote for her. Maybe he missed the ironic conditional: he thought I supported her. He went on to excoriate Clinton: she is militaristic and ultranationalistic; she would carry on Bush's policy of a long-term occupation of Iraq, define foreign policy around the "war on terror," support the hard-liners in Israel and promote the centrist-Democratic left-smashing ideology of the DLC. We need to rebuild the left, he concluded, and that's why he was supporting... Barack Obama.
Here's more you can do to help try to overturn Bush's veto of SCHIP:
there are five Democratic Bush Dogs who have also said they will continue to vote no on this bill and help Bush sustain his veto, whom the Democratic leadership cannot persuade to behave like Democrats. So this morning Blue America and BlogPac are going to take a crack at it and send these so-called Democrats a message. . . .
. . . if you can make some calls yourself, that would be helpful as well. The five Bush Dogs will be hearing from their constituents at their local offices --- and if you are one, please contact your congressman today! But I'm sure their Washington offices could use some pressure from the rest of us.
Jim Marshall (D-GA)–Washington, D.C. Office (202)225-6531; Macon, GA Office 1-877-464-0255; Tifton, GA Office (229)556-7418.
Baron Hill (D-IN)–Washington, D.C. Office (202)225-5315; Jeffersonville, IN Office (812)288-3999; Bloomington, IN Office (812)336-3000.
Gene Taylor (D-MS)–Washington, D.C. Office (202)225-5772; Bay St. Louis, MS Office (228)469-9235; Gulfport, MS Office (228)864-7670; Ocean Springs, MS Office (228)872-7950; Hattiesburg, MS Office (601)582-3246; Laurel, MS Office (601)425-3905.
Bob Etheridge (D-NC)–Washington, D.C. Office (202)225-4531; Raleigh, NC Office (919)829-9122 or 1-888-262-6202; Lillington, NC Office (910)814-0335 or 1-866-384-3743.
Bush, in only the fourth veto of his presidency, said he rejected the bipartisan bill because it would "move healthcare in this country in the wrong direction" and would mean that "government coverage would displace private health insurance for many children." .... Rep. Elton Gallegly, a Simi Valley Republican who voted against the bill, said the Democrats' decision to delay the override attempt shows their goal is to score political points, not to provide health insurance to children.
"This is a classic case of the ugliest part of our government process, which is taking something as critical as the healthcare of children and turning it into political spin," Gallegly said.
Gallegly is my Representative. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Denying health insurance to children because providing it is "the wrong direction" is the "political spin" here. SCHIP wouldn't "displace private insurance" for fucking anyone; it would *provide* insurance for kids who don't have it.
Here's what will happen in California, Gallegly's state:
Unless Congress overrides the veto, California will not only be prohibited from expanding the program, but the state will also have to drop as many as 250,000 children who are currently insured under the program, Wright said.
Between 1998, the year the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was implemented, and 2004, the number of uninsured children fell every year. But since 2004, as the availability of funding for SCHIP expansion has tightened and as a restrictive Medicaid policy enacted in early 2006 has taken effect, progress in enrolling uninsured children in SCHIP and Medicaid has stalled.
These are children with asthma, with disabilities, with chronic ear infections, with toothaches, with eczema, with allergies; kids in foster care, kids with depression or ADHD. The idea that most people are basically healthy and that if you get sick without health insurance you can always go to the ER applies to "most people" because "most people" have had decent health care as children and haven't developed long-term or chronic problems because they lacked it. Untreated colds, head lice when you can't afford the medicine that kills them, eczema that drives you crazy--that kind of minor ongoing problem undermines kids' ability to attend school, undermines their ability to focus when they are in school, undermines their long-term health and the health of their entire families. ER visits for head lice or asthma are a fuck of a lot more expensive to the almighty taxpayer than providing kids with inhalers and topical medications.
And it's fucking pathetic that we have to resort to that kind of "it costs more not to treat them" argument for convincing the wealthiest country in the world to make sure kids can see a doctor once or twice a year.
The good news is that the Senate has enough votes for SCHIP to override Bush's asshole veto.
The bad news is that the House doesn't. We need 25 more Representatives to act like decent human beings and switch their votes.
So. Do the decent thing. Go here and find out who your representative is.
Then scroll down the list below to see if his or her name is on it. These are the folks who voted against SCHIP.
Write them (you can do so via the first link, or you can google their name and find a real honest-to-god mailing address) and tell them to change their vote. That's all you have to do.
If you want to do more, google the name of your state + "uninsured children numbers" and find out what percentage of kids in your state are uninsured. Mention that in your letter. If your representative was one of the good guys, write to the people on the list below who are from your state, admit that you're not in their district, but tell them you write as a resident of your state, and point out that their vote affects everyone.
If you want to do even more, talk to your friends and make sure they know about this. Tell them who their representative is. Urge them to write or call. Give them your representative's contact information. (A list of people who are *most* likely to change their votes is here, but even the dyed-in-the-wool assholes should hear how unpopular their stubbornness on this issue is with their constituents.)
If you want to do even more than that, print out a few flyers that say "Your Representative in Congress voted AGAINST providing health insurance to uninsured children," put your Representative's name, face, and contact information on it, and post them around town.
If you want to do even more than all of that, think of what else you can do and post it in the comments below.
1. Getting SCHIP passed; 2. Getting your asshole Republican representatives out of office,
I hereby provide a template, in handy Pages, Word, or .pdf format, for your use in making flyers to put under people's windshields, post around town, hand out at community events, forward to your friends, whatever. Obviously you'll have to replace the text with statistics relevant to your own state (which should be pretty easy to google) and a picture of your own asshole representative. This will probably be easiest in Pages, since that's how I created the document, but if you're halfway handy with this stuff presumably you can do it in Word or a .pdf editor as well.
Good luck. I printed up 500 copies on caution yellow paper at Kinko's today and stuck them under windshields at my kids' school harvest festival fundraiser. (Mr. B.: "You know that people get paid for doing stuff like this, right?" Me: "What, as opposed to shelling out $50 at Kinko's? You have a good point.")
Download the Word document here. Download the Pages document here. Download a .pdf here.
"If putting poor children first takes a little more than the 20% increase I have proposed in my budget for SCHIP, I am willing to work with leaders in Congress to find the additional money," he said.
But
Bush also said that six states project that they will spend more SCHIP money on adults than they do on children in this fiscal year. However, those states got federal permission, in many instances during the time Bush has been in office, to cover adults. The president urged both parties to come together to support a bill "that moves adults off this children's program."
SCHIP covers children *and pregnant women*. Moving adults off it means not providing health care to pregnant women. Make sure that anyone you talk to about this knows that.
Former intelligence officials, for the first time, disclosed that a variety of tough interrogation tactics were used about 100 times over two weeks on Mr. Mohammed.* Agency officials then ordered a halt, fearing the combined assault might have amounted to illegal torture. A C.I.A. spokesman, George Little, declined to discuss the handling of Mr. Mohammed. Mr. Little said the program “has been conducted lawfully, with great care and close review” and “has helped our country disrupt terrorist plots and save innocent lives.”
100 "tough interrogation tactics." In two weeks.
Interrogators were worried that even approved techniques had such a painful, multiplying effect when combined that they might cross the legal line, Mr. Kelbaugh said. He recalled agency officers asking: “These approved techniques, say, withholding food, and 50-degree temperature — can they be combined?” Or “Do I have to do the less extreme before the more extreme?”
But Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples, remember?
John D. Hutson, who served as the Navy’s top lawyer from 1997 to 2000, said he believed that the existence of legal opinions justifying abusive treatment is pernicious, potentially blurring the rules for Americans handling prisoners.
“I know from the military that if you tell someone they can do a little of this for the country’s good, some people will do a lot of it for the country’s better,” Mr. Hutson said. Like other military lawyers, he also fears that official American acceptance of such treatment could endanger Americans in the future.
“The problem is, once you’ve got a legal opinion that says such a technique is O.K., what happens when one of our people is captured and they do it to him? How do we protest then?” he asked.
Yeah. That's the problem. Nothing else.
When even people trying to talk the executive and judicial branches of the greatest superpower in the world and so-called "leader of the free world" out of torture, do so on the grounds that "they might do it to us, too," you know the terrorists really have won.
Al Qaeda are amateurs.
*This is the guy who confessed to beheading Daniel Pearl. 1. I'd confess to beheading Daniel Pearl if I were tortured 100 times in two weeks. 2. Why are we so upset about Daniel Pearl's beheading? Oh right. Because it was a heinous and revolting act of torture.
One outraged recipient took the time to set up an anonymous gmail account with user identity “youmorons7” and write a blistering note: “I can see the CNN story on this tomorrow. The DHS’s mail server was crashed yesterday by a group of security ‘professionals’ that are part of our nation’s defense against attack. Because a large number of these ‘professionals’ did not understand how mail reflectors work and what function their reply button served, many of them contributed to the massive wave of e-mail nearly brought the server down.
“The wave of messages was followed by an equally large tide of ‘unsubscribe’ requests that were also relayed to thousands of subscribers. Combined, these messages were found to be the trigger of the crash event. One insider that was interviewed said ‘We should all be able to sleep soundly knowing that this group may be the one of the lines of defense in the protection of our nation.’”
I'd feel more schadenfreude about this if I hadn't noticed the exact same thing happening on listservs populated by PhDs.
The other day in the grocery line, PK pointed to a women's magazine and said to me, "Mama, that magazine says it has a diet that can help you lose weight and look better and eat all you want."
"Hmm," I said. "Do you think that's true?"
He thought about it for a bit. "No." Then, "Mama, why do magazines say things that aren't true like that?"
"Well, let's look at these magazines," I said. "See, that one says that that woman lost 20 pounds in a week, and this one says it has tips for looking thinner, and this one here says it has quick weight-loss recipes."
"Why do they all do that?"
"Well, all these magazines have pictures of pretty women on them, right? There are a lot of people who think that the most important thing for women is to look pretty. In some places, that means they force feed girls until they throw up, even, to try to make them really fat, because they think fat is beautiful. In other places, like here, it means that some girls develop a disease that makes them afraid to eat, and they get really thin, because we think thin is beautiful."
By now we're wheeling the groceries out to the car. As he's climbing into the back, PK asks, "but mama, why do we think that?"
"Hm, good question," I reply. "Do you want a long or a short answer?"
"Short, please. No, wait, long."
So I thought about it a bit, and here's the discussion that ensued. No, it isn't perfect. We feel our way through this stuff as best we can.
"Okay," I began. "Well ... we didn't used to; a hundred years ago, we thought women were beautiful when they were much fatter than we think is pretty today. I think it changed about sixty years ago, when two things happened. First, a lot of people moved out of cities to suburbs, and started driving cars more often. When you don't exercise as much, you gain weight, and people probably got a little fatter, and maybe they didn't like that, or else maybe it just started to be that if everyone was fatter, then looking thin made you different. But I think a bigger part was that, around the same time, people started having TVs. And you know, if you're going to hire someone to be in a movie, or on tv, you're going to hire someone pretty, right?"
"I guess, yes, because most actors are pretty good looking."
"Well yes, but also it's their job to be looked at, so how they look matters more than it does for most people. So anyway, people started seeing actors on tv more, and those actors were better-looking than most people, and I think people started getting more concerned about how they looked. AND, at the same time, people had more money to buy clothes. Now, it used to be that one job for some women was to model clothes, but they would only do that for designers or rich people at department stores, who wanted to see what the clothes looked like on a person before they decided to buy them. But when people started having TV, then you could see models on TV, too. And for some clothes, how they hang or drape is really important, and it can be easier to see that on someone thin. There was a very famous model who was very skinny, and people thought she was beautiful, and I think that made people start thinking that thin was prettier than fat."
"Well," PK sums up, as we pull into the driveway, "That's really messed up. I mean, how you look isn't that important: it's not so important that people should make girls throw up, or cause them to get diseases so they don't even eat."
"No," I agree, "it isn't. And that's why maybe you've noticed that I don't like it when people talk about 'fat' like it's insulting, or when you say that you don't think fat people look as good as thin people."
PK thinks prety hard about that one. "Well, but Mama, I don't."
"Okay," I say, "here--would you help me carry this bag in? Thanks. Anyway, think about it this way: part of what we think is pretty depends on what we see in movies and stuff, right? And what you see is that thin people are presented as pretty, and fat people are presented as ugly or funny. Maybe part of why you think that is because of those things."
"True," PK admits.
"Plus," I say, "you do like fat sometimes. You like my belly, right?"
"Yes!" PK exclaims. "It's so nice and soft!"
"Right. And you like the fat little mice, because they're cute. And fat babies are cute. And," I go on, as I'm putting the groceries away, "the point is it doesn't matter what you, personally, like. The point is that you shouldn't say things that might make other people feel bad about how they look; it's not nice."
"But mama," PK says, distracted by thinking about my belly, "really, you're a tiny mama."
"Well, I'm lucky that the shape of my body is more or less the shape that we think is pretty right now," I agree. "But again, that's not the point: the point is that even if it weren't, it shouldn't be that important. Different people have different bodies and look different ways. Speaking of which, you need to go hop in the shower."
"Okay, but come talk to me!"
"All right, I'm done with the groceries." I go turn the shower on for him. "Think about it this way: you don't like it when people say boys aren't 'supposed' to have long hair, do you?"
"No, it's stupid and sexist. Oh! So saying that girls aren't supposed to be fat, or that fat people aren't supposed to be pretty, right, I can see how that would be really annoying."
"And," I offer, really happy to finally have an opportunity to address an issue of PK's, "that's why, even though it's sexist for people to say that boys can't do things like wear pink or dress up or be frou-frou or have pretty long hair, in a way, that's even worse for girls that it is for boys."
"Right!" PK agrees, realizing he's just gotten something. "Like, girls get told that they *have* to be pink and frou-frou and all that, every day. Which would really suck."
"Exactly."
"It's like, girls get told that they *have* to be pretty all the time," he goes on, as it sinks in. "Which is way worse than being told that you're not supposed to care about being pretty. At least boys don't get diseases that make them not eat and stuff!"
"Exactly."
He steps into the shower. "But, Mama," a little anxiously. "It's still sexist to tell boys that they shouldn't care about being cute, like, ever."
"Yes, it is," I reassure him. "Everyone likes to dress up and be fancy sometimes, and everyone likes to hear that they're cute or beautiful. As long as you don't think that's the most important thing about you."
"No." He agrees. "Because that would just totally suck."
This conversation brought to you by the following video, which I first saw here.
After all, I held myself back from buying the new Queen Latifah--even though she covers "Sugar in my Bowl"--or this Tito Gomez album, even though it's super cheap! Or The Puccini Sisters (but, but, "Java Jive"!), or this Smithsonian collection of Chicano movement songs. Luckily their blues selection's still pretty thin (though you know I'm gonna be buying this come December).
And! They've got a number of titles put out by Music for Little People. If you have a kid (or a niece or nephew or young friend) of elementary age, go to that link and stock up on kid's music adults won't get tired of. MFLP is a guaranteed sure-fire great label for kid's music: they get real kick-ass musicians (Taj Mahal, Maria Muldaur, Buckwheat Zydeco, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Los Lobos) to record a broad selection of multicultural kids' songs, often with really enjoyable (I swear!) narration between times. Seriously--go listen to a few preview snippets.
We already had Buckwheat Zydeco's Choo Choo Boogaloo and Shakin' a Tailfeather ("Draw me a Bucket," aka "Frog in the Bucket" is a particular favorite), and tonight I indulged myself Pseudonymous Kid with Los Lobos' Papa's Dream. I'm hoping they'll make all of Hey, Mr. Spaceman available soon, too.
Or, if your money is burning a hole in your pocket, here's Bitch PhD's Amazon Wish List
(If you'd rather send swag to LeBlanc or Sybil or Ding or Taddy, email them and bug them about setting up their own begging baskets.)
When I was sixteen, I went to visit my sister, who was 23 and living in San Francisco. I stayed there for three weeks, and it was one of the more important experiences of my adolescence; it was the first time I got a chance to explore a city other than the one I grew up in, and do it by myself. I remember a lot of things from that trip. I remember drinking coffee for the first time, I remember reading the newspaper, I remember getting my upper ear pierced on Market Street, I remember trying new food and taking the bus alone and sneaking cigarettes from my sister's roommates. 
So, for reasons that pass understanding, I was reading 
is going to be an evil, evil temptation--and I'm not even someone who buys music very often.
