State of the Union: Your Rhetoric, My Policies

Last night's State of the Union was a real snoozer, wasn't it? I kept getting distracted all the way through Bush's speech and Sibelius' response because they were so boring. As the MSNBC-pundits all opined, he was basically offering a retrospective of his (failed) presidency, without making many plans for the future (his promise to veto excessive-earmark-containing budgets aside). Maybe he figures that since he'll no longer be in office, it doesn't much matter anymore. This is one of biggest things that's been wrong with the Bush presidency: it has been so inward-directed, so focused on its own power and success, that it has never been able to convince me that it gave much of a rat's ass about what actually happens to American people. Do they care about what happens to the American economy? Sure. Do they care about whether the United States is perceived as a superpower who will beat down its enemies? Yes. Do they care about the power of the executive branch, and whether they can consolidate and strengthen executive power to "protect America"? Most definitely.

But what in the speech had to do with actual people? Well, it turns out that when talking about people, the words coming out of his mouth sounded an awful lot like phrases out of the Democrats' phrasebook. But that can't be! So I've provided some helpful translation, in case you were confused by these strange phrases from another language.

We have seen how Pell Grants help low-income college students realize their full potential. Together, we've expanded the size and reach of these grants. Now let us apply that same spirit to help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools.

We will not liberate them by fixing those failing schools. No, we will leave them floundering for the children without the good sense to get out. Instead, we will send the really good ones to private schools, where rich people are already having a really good time.

The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change. And the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more energy-efficient technology.

That's why we refused to sign any agreement on global climate change that would require us to commit to do anything. Also, why the EPA refuses to limit emissions even though American vehicles contribute quite a bit to global greenhouse gases.

I've submitted judicial nominees who will rule by the letter of the law, not the whim of the gavel.

Except for that when there are legal authorities on both sides of a question, the judges I've nominated will choose the analysis most harmful to women, poor people and criminals. And the side most favorable to businesses, and to me personally!

In communities across our land, we must trust in the good heart of the American people and empower them to serve their neighbors in need.

Trusting the American people is very important. Unless you are brown, black, or worse, Arab, in which case you are very dangerous and we are extremely suspicious of you, and want the restrictions on what the police can do to you to be very limited indeed. And also, we'd like to listen to your phone calls, if that's alright.

[We] also need to acknowledge that we will never fully secure our border until we create a lawful way for foreign workers to come here and support our economy.

Which they should just wait in line for, the impatient brutes, like everyone else.

And this came first in chronology, but I saved the best for last:

The Congress must also expand health savings accounts, create Association Health Plans for small businesses, promote health information technology, and confront the epidemic of junk medical lawsuits. (Applause.) With all these steps, we will help ensure that decisions about your medical care are made in the privacy of your doctor's office -- not in the halls of Congress.

Decisions should be made in the privacy of your doctor's office, people. Except for if you're a woman overseas who wants to get an abortion. Scratch that, if you're a woman overseas who wants to get any advice about anything from an organization that has provided an abortion to someone else! And actually, if you're a woman in this country who needs an abortion in the third trimester, for health reasons. Or if you're a woman under 18 who wants an abortion. Or if you're a woman who wants to get an abortion anytime, actually, because we want to make sure that you do so with the benefit of a 24-hour waiting period and some literature that tells you what a cute little baby you're killing. Don't you want to reconsider, sweetie?

Now WTF?!?

Check out this completely bizarre statement from NOW-NY. And, um, this one.

I thought, this is surely a joke. But apparently it isn't.

For the record, this is a state branch--here's the NOW statement from the national organization. Just have to throw that in there b/c you know the wacko statement's gonna get misattributed.

Okay, now back to the wackiness. I mean, the title to the latest (top) link alone is very, uh, un-press-releasy:

Senator Ted Kennedy Betrays Women by Not Standing for Hillary Clinton for President;
Ultimate Betrayal Felt by Women Everywhere

Ultimate betrayal? Um, really? Wow.

Then we've got exclamation points! Two of them! in the second paragraph:

And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment!

Ted Kennedy has abandoned us? I can kinda see an argument that, say, endorsing anyone other than Hillary suggests that women's issues are taking a backseat, and that this has historically been the case, but "his abandonment" has overtones that I'd rather not put under the feminist microscope; it's too embarrassing.

And then press release #2:

Psychological Gang Bang of Hillary is Proof We Need a Woman President

Oooh, ouch. I love hyperbole, don't get me wrong, but there's hyperbole and then there's . . . really, really bad taste. Followed by really, really poor argument.

We've all witnessed scenarios where, on the playground little girls are being taunted by little boys while both girls and boys stand idle, afraid to speak up or even cheering. Or, in the workplace males tease young and older female co-workers; make obscene gestures, inappropriate comments, laughing and expecting (often correctly) that everyone will join in. Then there was that movie where Jodie Foster portrayed the true story of woman who was ganged raped in a bar while others looked on and encouraged the realization. Still others pretended the rape didn't happen. In short, gang raping of women is commonplace in our culture both physically and metaphorically.

Hmm. Two "we've all witnessed" made-up scenarios followed by one movie do not "in short, gang raping is commonplace" support. I'm sorry, they really don't. You can say there's a *culture* of rape--and hopefully you'll be able to, you know, provide a little better evidence than this--but, uh, no, gang rape really isn't *commonplace*.

And a couple paragraphs later we get some more exclamation points:

Every woman knows how it feels! There are those who will dismiss, defend or even shame those around them into believing that we progressives are making a mountain out of a mole hill. But that’s the game plan of the patriarchal system that has persisted for millennia. Because they can't frighten Hillary they've decided to control her with the time-old trick of patriarchal ridicule. Women, you know what I mean!

Ayiyi. I get that some people--including, apparently, the president of NOW-NY--are really adamant Clinton supporters. And hey, great.

But you know, she *is* a candidate. Not the feminist messiah. It's not inconceivable that some people--good feminists, even--might endorse or vote for someone else. And yes, she's gotten some sexist bullshit thrown at her, and it sucks, but dealing with sexist bullshit is not gang rape.

I've seen a lot of people bitching that things like Steinem's editorial or the Hirshman articles about "opting out" make arguments that imply that any woman who doesn't agree isn't a feminist--and I've always argued that those readings are unnecessarily defensive and insensitive. But in this case, yes, someone is actually making that kind of an argument.

Like, whoa.

Shows what I know

I was just writing the other day that I've thankfully never been subjected to harassment because I'm fat. Sexual harassment? Yup, several times a week at least since I was about twelve.

But apparently all you have to do in order to get people yelling at you about how, wow, you're moving your fat ass, is ride a bicycle. Today was the first day warm enough for me to ride my new bike, which is not the most glorious thing in the world but it's cheap and it fits just right. Between my mile-and-a-half ride to work, and then back, I had no less than five, yes five people yell at me.

Unfortunately, my sexual harassment tactic of telling people to fuck off doesn't work quite as well when I'm cruising by on a bike. Maybe I should get some kind of weapon to make my displeasure known from afar? A potato gun? Would be fitting for a fatass like me.

Wonder Woman

Leave it to Shark Fu to make me actually want to watch a Bush State of the Union Address. Mmm, fudge brownies. (Read the whole thing, it's funny.)

I wanna add a couple things to her scorecard, though. Anti-abortion dogwhistles--subtract 5 points. Outright anti-abortion "culture of life" references, etc.--subtract 7 points. Any mention of 9/11--subtract 25 points. Acknowledgment of the deficit--add 45 points.

Uncle Earl

Last Wednesday night, my boyfriend took me to see a band called Uncle Earl. We'd heard one of the band's members, a banjo player named Abigail Washburn, at the Old Town School of Folk Music 50th Anniversary show. Me, The Bear, and my friend The Dolphin all agreed that her set with Béla Fleck was the best part of the evening. She was amazing—a terribly skilled banjo player with a startlingly distinct voice that hit high and medium tones hard and emotional. She, a white girl born in Evanston, just north of Chicago, sang a song in Chinese that she'd learned in her travels to China (she speaks fluent Chinese). I was quite taken with her. So when The Bear told me that she'd be playing with her band Uncle Earl at Schuba's and tickets were still available and did I want to go with him, I said hell yes.

As we stood in the small room, behind the rows of chairs, looking around at the crowd (who was significantly older than us), I got that same characteristic excitement I always get before a show—waiting for the sound to begin, for the music to get something rollicking in my core. I'd never heard this band or any of their records, which made the anticipation even greater.

But when they walked through the crowd towards the stage, brandishing their instruments and stepping into the light, I got a surprise. There they were, Abigail, Reyna, KC, Kristin, and Brin. All women. I turned around to The Bear, standing behind me with his hands on my shoulders, and whispered "This is the first time I've ever seen an all-woman band, live. Ever." "Oh yeah," he says, "didn't I tell you that?" He most emphatically had not.

I listen to a fair number of all-girl bands: Le Tigre, Sleater-Kinney, the Hazard County Girls, The Be Good Tanyas. Several more bands fronted by women: Rainer Maria, Ambulette, Portishead, Blonde Redhead. Some of these latter group I have seen live, but none of the former group. And it was shocking to me that a) I'd never realized it, and b) that I was standing watching such a group just now.

They were spectacular. With a banjo, a fiddle, a guitar, a mandolin, and an upright bass, these women rocked out hard. Some of their pieces were so fast they looked like they hurt. Some of the pieces they performed standing in something like a circle, leaning in toward the center and pushing on their instruments, they moved faster and smiled bigger than any band I'd seen in a long time. They harmonized effortlessly and used their instruments percussively. They traded instruments and Kristin played the harmonica and then, a tiny, discordant, slightly-out-of-tine instrument called a banjo ukulele that sounded fucking awesome.

I should pause to tell you that live music often affects me profoundly. This also has to do with the fact that I have excellent taste and mostly see amazing shows, but it's not out of the ordinary for the music to make me cry. Usually a happy, inward-direct cry, not a sad or melancholy one. Music moves me, and it moves me hard. I'm usually crying because it's so goddamn good or beautiful or important. I've cried at everything from solo violin to heavily distorted, mathy post-rock.

But this show was different. During their first set it wasn't just a few tears here and there, like usual. It was song after song, tear after tear. Because I just kept marveling at these five women, beautiful, talented, funny, and completely bad-ass, pounding away at these pieces of wood and string and hide, bending them to their will, being powerful and impressive and making this room full of people scream and shout and laugh.

And it all hit me like a ton of bricks. I've been a feminist probably since I was twelve or thirteen, when I started to be pissed off that my Mormon church had separate rules for men and women. I wanted the priesthood, the power to bless and heal and ordain. I wanted to go on a mission and do the most holy thing a believer could do: spread the gospel. But what was 90% of my instruction based around? Preparing to go to the temple, to get married. And this did not please me.

In high school, I started listening to Ani DiFranco and Tori Amos and was moved by the way these women, in their different ways, spoke out about how they'd been mistreated and fucked over and diminished because they were women. I gleefully sang along and tried to replicate their songs on the piano and the guitar. I laid in my room in the evening transcribing lyrics and trying to dissect them as pieces of poetry. I started writing poetry of my own, that was angry, and full of profanity and extended metaphors taken to a very far extent and lots of sex and desire. I started a feminist group in college, I started blogging, I started reading about gender.

I'm still learning. My writing has become polemical, and I've been accused more than once of taking things too far or "reading too much into it." I'm still low on theory and high on rhetoric. I still look to older feminists sometimes, women I respect like Bitch and like LizardBreath, for cues on how to think and how to argue (by "older" I don't mean "old", ladies, just "older than me"). I argue hard and I don't give up, and most of my acquaintances have gotten a little tired of my looking at almost everything we view through a feminist lens. They manage to avoid rolling their eyes, though.

But in all this trying, all this thinking and learning and analyzing, I never understood something the way I had that night. I looked at these women of the band, these forceful, beautiful, human beings, and I cried. I cried, because seeing them shocked me. The scale of thousands of years of the oppression of women flashed before my eyes, like I was dying.

I thought of the billions of women who have lived and are living. I thought of women raped and forced into slavery, sold for money, held in subjugation. I thought of the sheer numbers of women, which is to say, nearly all of them, who were told explicitly or implicitly that they couldn't do something they wanted to do, because of their sex. Told that they were less smart, less capable, less strong, less worthy, less important than their brothers. Women who didn't go to school because resources were limited and funds were saved for their brothers' education. Women who dropped out of school to care for their siblings. Women who were beaten by their husbands or fathers, women fired for being too sexy or not sexy enough. Women ignored or silenced, women whose writings disappeared because they never existed or never mattered. Women who died trying to terminate a pregnancy. Women, all of them, who feel that they are not worth loving because they do not conform to impossible ideals of beauty, women who hate their bodies, women who starve themselves to death, women who refuse to live their lives the way they want for fear of being scorned because they are not acceptable. Women insulted, abused, downtrodden, scared. Women, all of them, limited by the forces outside them that keep them small and quiet.

If there is anything I can do with my life and my career, to lift women out of poverty and shame, to help them live as full human beings, to take away the shackles of oppression and free them, to exercise their power to live complete, unafraid, glorious lives, I will do it.

blogging miss america so you won't have to

Yeah, you read that right.
I'm blogging the Miss America pageant. Not the South Carolina Primary.

Because the pageant show numbers keep tanking, the show, contestants and the pageant itself are undergoing a 'radical' makeover. It's on cable (TLC) and now Miss America is supposed to embody 'America's It Girl.' So they created a Miss America reality show and took the 52 contestants to give them makeovers, including 'tips' on how to be more 'accessible' and less 'Barbie.'

What a great marketing ploy. Give us the competition in a language we can understand (reality makeover/competition) and market the actual pageant as the finale to the pageant's commercial, uh, reality show. Brilliant. They wanted to make Miss America more 'relevant' by showing them how to become a tabloid-worthy celebutante. And who was going to show them how to do it? A Hollywood stylist, an editor from US magazine and a fashion photographer I've never heard of (but he has a British accent so he must know what he's talking about.)

It's good to know the people who trade in image, superficiality and total vanity are now the arbiters of 'relevance.'

Let the blogging begin:

The parade of states
-Wow, they've gotten rid of the yucky state themed dresses and kept them in the reality show 'teams' and there isn't a big teased hairdo among them. And what perky little factoids. (Oklahoma has a nut you can't eat??)
- Miss Washington is an early favorite; she has two gay dads and asked how we like them apples. We like them fine!
- I also like Miss Utah; she's military, tough and doesn't care about makeup - and she's one of the older women. And she just took a potshot at the Osmonds! heh!
- They have a DJ. A DJ to entertain the women who are eliminated. How...relevant.
- Wow! Jackie Joyner Kersey isn't dead! (Why did I think she was dead?)

Semifinalists!
Michigan, Iowa (she can juggle fire), North Carolina, Tennessee, California, Indiana, South Carolina, Georgia, Washington (!!), Arkansas, Virginia, Texas (who adores Kelly Ripa), Wisconsin, Florida, Mississippi.
- Dammit! I wanted Miss Utah in the semi finals. Wait. America voted for one more semi finalist...Utah!!!
- Pageant factoid: the big innovation in the pageant is the way the new Miss America walks...less robotic and more 'free.' Apparently female empowerment begins with your strut. Who knew?

The swimsuit competition:
- Love it. Miss Utah breaks out the black one-piece, in a sea of bikinis. Love her.
- Losers: Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, Mississipi, Utah (Dammit! Oh, awesome - she's doing pushups! And now she has the whole line of beauty queens doing pushups! It's the best elimination ever), South Carolina

Evening wear:
- Almost everyone is wearing a dress with a sequined or beaded breastplate. So much for those stylist tips.

Talent:
After enduring bad opera and desperate ballet, they eliminate Iowa - we didn't even get to see her baton throwing. They always get rid of the fun ones!

Talent, part 2:
Washington sings a song that's actually been played on the radio and makes me hope we get a Miss America with two gay dads.
More bad jazz dance and opera until they reject the anonymous Miss Georgia without letting her perform. Good to know that the 'New' Miss America really doesn't give a crap what your talent is.

The questions, asked by ordinary folks in Las Vegas (heh):
- What would you do to improve America's image? Wisconsin says we need to show love for America by volunteering.
- Does someone with HIV have an obligation to tell their fiancee? (asked by a really grizzled guy) Michigan says yes, if they respect their partners.
- Should celebrities promote their religious beliefs? Virginia says they have that right to voice their opinions.
- What could be done about lLow youth voting patterns? Washington says there's a disconnect between youth and political process and more should be involved with Rock the Vote programs.
- Thoughts about Paris Hilton and culture of celebrity, where people are famous for nothing? California blames it on materialism and wrong priorities but Miss America is great!
- Binge drinking and 8th grade girls? Texas blames it on Lindsay Lohan and as Miss America she'd tell them Lindsay sucks!
- Country is headed in the wrong direction, what to do? North Carolina blames the media and Lindsay Lohan! As Miss America she'd have the chance to be the right role model, not Lindsay Lohan!
- Brittany Spears' sister is pregnant so should she be fired? Indiana says, no. Lots of girls are pregnant but they're not bad, they just made stupid mistakes; we all make mistakes and she needs to keep her job.

-Interesting that Lohan is a national threat.

Finalists:
4th - North Carolina!
3rd - Virginia!
2nd - Washington! (dammit)
1st runner up - Indiana! (totally called it)
(come on Wisconsin...)
Miss America is...
Michigan?!? The hell - ??

There goes relevance.

Final Grade: B+ (for the new streamlined show, the genius in marketing and the lack of pouf) Relevance: C

(Oh, and Obama kept Clinton at 27-29% all night. Yeah, baby.)

Random thoughts on the occasion of my 40th birthday

Thanks for the bike advice, yo; after talking to the boyfriend for a long time last night and reading all your comments this morning, I'm going to go try the Trek 7.2 and maybe see what else the couple of local bike shops have. The guys at all the various bike shops are actually pretty helpful, though the young guy at the Trek place was definitely the least pushy about getting me on *a* specific bike. But anyhoo. I'm excited!

This new bike thing is part of my oh-shit-I'm-turning-40 plan. It has recently started to become evident to me that the crappy part about reading middle age is that suddenly the basic level of fitness and general good health and attractiveness that most of us rely on in our 20s and 30s starts to be just a li'l less reliable. "Hm," I am realizing. "After sitting on my ass all day, I actually feel kind of crappy. The general puttering about on errands and shit no longer seems to be quite enough exercise to maintain a general feeling of decent health and the illusory appearance of attractive fitness. Crap." (Notice that I used the word "crap" three times there? That's because this aspect of things is a crappy one.)

This is of course somewhat related to the fact that I no longer live in Seattle, city of hills and decent public transit, and I am no longer toting a 10-20 lb nursing baby all over town. Ah, the good old days. But in any case, I'm determined NOT to buy a second car, and I know through wasteful experience that joining a gym is heinous. I want to start taking yoga classes again, but--catch-22!--the yoga places are all downtown, i.e., not within walking distance. Plus biking *is* fun, I have discovered, and I live in like the most perfect biking city in all of creation--sunny 70ish days are the norm, the streets are all insanely wide, most of them have insanely wide bike lanes, and there's enough of a slope up away from the sea to make things challenging, but it's not hilly enough to really be impossible.

So a bike it is. W00t! Expect moral superiority about Not Owning Two Cars Even Though I Live in California to become a major feature of this blog/my personality.

ALSO. I have, GODDAMMIT, quit smoking. Apparently. Which is one reason why I'm a li'l hyper right now, I think. I had bought a couple packs a couple weeks ago, thinking they'd last through my bday, and then they didn't, so I bought another pack like three? days ago, thinking *it* would, and it didn't, and I smoked the last one last night. I *had* been going to grab another pack while I was out looking at bikes, since there's a very nice smoke shop right across from the downtown bike store (how's that for convenient, hmm?) but I fucking forgot, and I was too lazy last night to go back out in the rain for a pack of smokes. "Fuck it," I thought. "I'm going to quit in two days anyway, this'll just be my last one. Gulp." Have I mentioned that I DO NOT WANT TO BE DOING THIS?

I considered announcing to PK that I had just had my last smoke when I came back inside, but didn't really want the attention, so I didn't. I sat around for *hours* last night DYING for another cigarette and thinking "fuck this shit sucks."

This morning PK came and crawled into bed with me.

"Mama," he asked, "is it true what Papa told me, that tomorrow is your birthday?"
"Yes."
"So you will quit smoking tomorrow?"
"Yeah."

A little later:

"Actually, PK, I am out of cigarettes now. I had my last one last night. So I guess I already quit."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Be nice to me, quitting is really hard and it makes me cranky."
"Okay." Snuggle.
"Why is it so important to you that I quit, anyway?" He's never really told me. And he tried to dodge it this time.
"It just is!"
"But WHY?"
"Because!"
"Why?"
"Because smoking can kill."
"Oh." Poor kiddo, and how sweet of him not to have ever wanted to actually articulate that.

A little later:

"Mama, I HATE you!" he says, gleefully.
"What?!?!" Exaggerated shock. "You horrible child! If you hate me, why am I taking care of the mice every single night* and quitting smoking?!?"
He smiles. "Because you love me."

Tomorrow's my 40th. Wish me a happy birthday, goddammit. Because you love me.




*The half-paralyzed mouse keeps on truckin', thanks to daily oral steroids. Administered in .2 ml increments, by the way. YOU try it sometime.

More bike blegging

Advise me, people. I'm too lazy to compare the specs (though I'll take test rides, obvs.). Mr. B. seems to have agreed to get me a new bike for my birthday, and I'm trying to decide between three models.

How I ride: mostly I use the bike as a substitute for the car--and right now I'm not doing so as often as I want to, because I'm not the greatest rider in the world and frankly I'm not super-comfortable on my current bike. Keep in mind that I'm often hauling PK behind me on a tag-along, and the little brat doesn't always pedal (and when he does, he's often in the wrong gear anyway), so I'm often hauling an extra 70 lbs or so behind me.

What I want, then, is a bike that lets me put a foot down easily, ride on paved roads but not be afraid to jump a curb, sit in a more upright position than I currently am (I tend to get really sore in the neck and shoulders if I've got too much weight forward), and not exhaust me on the goddamn hill up to our house. Cruisers aren't going to be any good on the hill, especially not with PK on the back, but a "real" road bike makes me a little nervous--I always feel like my center of gravity is way too high.

So anyway, here are the bikes I'm currently considering. If you know bikes, tell me what you think?

1. The Trek 7200. I've already had a test ride on this, and it feels pretty sweet. *Much* nicer ride, for me, than my 20?-year old Trek 800. Nice gears, nice upright (but not too upright) position, I feel like I could lean a bit on the hills if I needed to, the shifters are awfully nice. The 16-inch frame feels a li'l small, but I might have to go that route (or else give up the suspension seat post) in order to have enough room on the seat post to hook PK's tagalong on.

2. The Specialized Crossroads. I haven't ridden this one yet--it was dark by the time we got to that bike shop. It's obviously comparable to the Trek, though; but sitting on it feels, I dunno, a little *too* upright, maybe? Obviously I have to ride it to really decide about that.

3. The Specialized Globe. The guy at the bike shop asked me if I care more about speed or comfort; when I said "comfort," he steered me away from the Globe. But I'm wondering if I want to give it a test ride anyway--I'm sure it's lighter (even though Specialized doesn't put weights on their damn site, the jerks), which means less hauling up the hill. Of course one reason it's surely lighter is that it doesn't have shocks--how much do I care about this?? I've never ridden a bike with shocks in my life. Do I want something that's a little more of a road bike, thinking ahead in the hopes that I'll become a more aggressive rider with some practice (and once PK can ride his own damn bike)? Or should I just buy a comfort bike *now*, and if I get a jones for a road bike in a few years, go ahead and get a proper road bike then?

Also, is it just incredibly petty and ridiculous of me to say that I think that the Trek's a pretty handsome bike, in a girly way, while the girl's version of the Crossroads looks a little silly? (If I like the Crossroads a lot better once I ride it, this isn't going to be a big deal.) Is there a reason to get the women's Crossroads rather than the men's, given that as far as I can tell the measurements are *exactly the same* and the men's looks less foofy (but still has enough drop to be easy to stand over) and comes in better colors? Though being able to put a foot through the center instead of always over the top, especially if PK's sitting on the tag-along, is kind of nice.

Juno

Totally awesome.

Movies that present a calm, unstrained feminist viewpoint are few and far between. Even my beloved Almodovar relies a lot on melodrama and high stress to challenge sexist norms. Juno, bless it, doesn't. None of the characters are idealized, but they're all empathetic and fully human, and praise Diablo Cody, the women in it are at the center of the film. You can see why Juno rolls her eyes at her boring, provincial stepmother, and why she likes the adoptive father she's chosen for her baby much more than his tense, perfectionist wife--but you can also see, as the movie unfolds, that these "unlikeable" women are good, complete people--and why being "likeable" isn't the end-all and be-all and why focusing on likeability above things like empathy, reliability, and being willing to step up to the fucking plate and, as the stepmother says, "make sacrifices" to accommodate the other human beings in the world might actually be a better thing. Yeah, sometimes when you're accommodating others, the strain and sacrifices show, and god forbid, that might make you "unlikeable" for a while; it's not always nice to let people know that they can be pains in the ass, or that living with them takes work. But becoming an adult means accepting that other people aren't always perfect, that they don't always say or do the right thing, and that neither do you. But you love each other anyway.

I've heard people gripe that the dialogue is "too clever," i.e., inauthentic; that Juno's decision not to have an abortion is too simple; that she's not traumatized enough by the adoption. I think that's all bullshit. The film is asking us to do what we're watching the characters do: to accept that this is the story of one young woman whose actions, emotions, and desires don't map easily onto preconceived ideas about what she "should" feel or "should" do. She's sarcastic and glib because she's smart and guarded, and she's guarded because she's smart and young and still figuring things out. I found it completely believable that this young woman, in this situation, would make the decisions she made and that they would be the right ones for her (and I was completely charmed by her young boyfriend, who is of course the perfect kind of boyfriend for the kind of girl she is and who is like about a hundred real life young men I know).

Bonus detail: the young man who sold us our popcorn caught a glimpse of my ticket and said "Juno? Great movie. I've seen it twice. You'll love it." Hooray for the folks who believe that real movies about fully-realized women will attract audiences, and hooray for men who see no reason why they shouldn't go see those movies.

It's a great movie. If you haven't seen it yet, do so.

All I know is

$300?!?!??? W00t! Home ownership, here I come!

the economy: i don't get it (and not because i'm a girl)

Take these three articles and tell me what you think:

Tentative Deal on Economic Stimulus Plan - New York Times (today)
Make the Tax Cuts Work (yesterday)
How to Stop the Downturn (yesterday)
(The guys over at Lawyers, Guns & Money have a little post here, too, that I liked.)

From the first article we find out that a compromise has been reached to give ordinary folks like you and me a $300 check - a rebate, I guess. But to get that check, a couple of concessions had to be made (and this is where my confusion comes in):

A House aide close to the negotiations said that Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and the Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, reached an “agreement in principle” after Ms. Pelosi agreed not to include two proposals that had broad support among Congressional Democrats: an extension of unemployment benefits and a temporary increase in food stamps.

In the op-eds from yesterday it's pretty clear to the economists that aid to the lower end of the economic scale would help out the most. (The Times has a nifty summary of why this could be here.) One of them even mentions how expanding unemployment could help. But while a $300 check is ok, how much of a financial bulwark is it against a scaled back food stamp program and no extension of unemployment benefits? (And I'm thinking specifically of low-wage workers here.)

I mean, let's say you've spent the $300 - to pay rent, pay off a credit card bill, buy some groceries or buy some gas, whatever. Now what? Your wages are still flat, your expenses haven't gone away, you're still on insufficient food stamps or you're still unemployed and your benefits are about to run out (or you didn't qualify for it in the first place.)

Since I'm not a theory head when it comes to economics or business, what's the long view of this stimulus package? I mean, is a $300 rebate check really the best that can be done? (I'm assuming, too, that if one qualifies for a federal and state EITC, then one would receive those checks, too, so maybe we're talking about more than $300 for a family?)

And what did you do with the last rebate check in 2001?
Shit, I don't even remember getting one.

Belated Roe v. Wade blogging (plus bonus links)

Okay, so, yeah, I'm about 24 hours behind everyone else. So?

If you missed Salon's Roe v. Wade piece, go read it. They interview a bunch of cool chicks, including some of my favorite feminists--Lynn Paltrow, Amanda Marcotte, and the inimitable Shark-Fu. Definitely worth looking at an ad.

Great round-up of other folks' Roe v. Wade posts over at AlterNet. Note to self: the advantage of procrastinating is that other people do all the work for you! W00t!

Orange, bless her heart, quoted something I wrote a couple years back; if I say so myself, I still think it's pretty good, and it still seems to me to be the bottom line. So I'll just quote Orange quoting me, shall I?

When pro-choice feminists like Wolf, or liberal men, or a lot of women, even, say things like, "I'm pro-choice, but I am uncomfortable with... [third-trimester abortion / sex-selection / women who have multiple abortions / women who have abortions for "convenience" / etc.]" then what you are saying is that your discomfort matters more than an individual woman's ability to assess her own circumstances. That you don't think that women who have abortions think through the very questions that you, sitting there in your easy chair, can come up with. That a woman who is contemplating an invasive, expensive, and uncomfortable medical procedure doesn't think it through first. In short, that your judgment is better than hers.

Think about the hubris of that. Your judgment of some hypothetical scenario is more reliable than some woman's judgment about her own, very real, life situation?

Another oldie but a goodie: Scott Lemieux's three-part series. Which I love because I'm so sick of people claiming to be "objective" by saying shit like "sure, abortion rights are important, but everyone knows Roe was a bad decision." Send them to Scott, who'll set them right.

Our own Ding, aka Bitch M.A., wrote about the all-important access issue over at her other blog:

The right to control our fertility does not exist if we do not have access to those services that allow us to control our fertility. Access isn't just for the women, like me, who have good medical benefits and live in a city and can rattle off where the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic is; it's for women who make barely minimum wage and live in places like Bloomington, Alton or Aurora and there's no one around to help them.

A right isn't a right if you can't exercise it.

Remembering Roe v. Wade matters. Continuing to fight to make sure that the spirit, as well as the letter of the law, is realized, matters too.

And for god's sake, remember this when you go to the polls.


Bonus non-abortion link: via The Edge of the American West (you all read that blog now, too, right? So this link is surely redundant, but still), head on over to HuffPo, scroll down, and watch all three video clips from the Colbert Report's MLK day show. Damn good stuff.

And finally, that radio show I'm doing is tomorrow, not today (thank god--I have a meeting for my kid's school tonight). You'll be able to listen to it, tomorrow at 7:30 pm, here.

Belated MLK blogging

I didn't blog MLK day yesterday because I was waiting to see what the guys at Edge of the West would write. It being my new favorite blog, plus, you know, they're actual practicing historians and everything.

But then I went to bed at, like, 7 p.m. And today I napped from 9 until 2.

So here, belatedly, is a link to Ari's Remembering MLK post. Which is much better than anything I would have written on it. I highly recommend clicking over and reading the whole thing.

Teh Islamics are bad

I was instantly annoyed by this article in the NYT magazine over the weekend (actually, I was annoyed by it this morning, which is when I read it). The article, about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), had the following blurb on the front page: "Inside a female-circumcision ceremony for young Muslim girls."

Before even clicking on the link, I knew something was off. Why, after all, say that it's for young Muslim girls? Huh, that makes it sound like FGM is associated with Islam. Which, being educated in this shit, I know that it isn't.

Clicking through, I saw that the article focused on girls getting FGM in Indonesia. Which, fine, is a majority Muslim country. But maybe they mention in the article that FGM isn't part of Islam, and that there are plenty of non-Muslim populations where it is very prevalent, and Muslim populations where they don't do it at all?

Nope, that was nowhere in there. In fact, throughout the article it was made to appear as though it was the Islamic religious establishment which was responsible for the prevalence of the horrifying practice. It may be, in Indonesia. But it also helps to note that there are many rather conservative Muslim countries, like, say, Saudi Arabia, where FGM is basically unheard of. And non-Muslim populations where FGM is the norm, like many sub-Saharan African countries. Or places like my home country, Egypt, where everyone gets FGM, Muslim, Christian, or otherwise (although the practice is losing favor in urban areas).

As an article which is aimed at people who don't have much knowledge about FGM, apparent by the fact that it gives background and explanation of the practice, you might think they could have thought to mention this.

But no, anything to make Muslims look scary and Other and bad! Because they are! Like I've said before and I'll say again, religion is often just a thinly-veiled excuse to maintain cultural norms and enforce patriarchal tradition, rather than the genesis of the norms themselves.

Speaking of bitches

Part One:

Here's why I love Mr. B. He walks into the living room this morning and says,

"So twice in the last twenty-four hours I've had women apologize to me for being a bitch."

"Oh yeah?" My ears perk up.

"Yeah. And in both cases, I said to them, 'You don't have to apologize to *me* for that. I *like* strong, powerful women who know what they want and ask for it directly.'"

"Heh, good for you."

"Yeah, one was probably 25. . ."

"Oh good, I'm glad she had someone say that to her directly at that age."

". . . and the other was probably 55."

"Oh? What did she say?"

"Her eyes kind of popped, like she'd never heard anyone say that before."

"Really? God, I'd hope a woman that age would have heard that before."

"Yeah, she said she wasn't usually a commandeering bitch, and I said, 'hey, I *like* comandeering bitches. I married one, and she wears that label proudly.'"

Then he told me that in both cases, the conversation had occurred just as they were shifting from dealing with a single situation into deciding they kind of liked each other more broadly, so they seemed to feel like they needed to apologize for having been forceful in the isolated interaction.

"I read this book called Women Don't Ask," I said, "not too long ago* that said that one of the things women do in negotiation--this is based on research--that men aren't very good at is try to maintain the relationship, rather than just focusing on gaining the advantage in the isolated situation. So I guess it makes sense that as they're moving from the isolated situation towards a more ongoing relationship, they'd worry about that, I suppose."

"But that's so sad. It's sad that they feel like they have to apologize."

"Well, yeah."


*I swear I thought I reviewed this, but I guess I didn't. At least, I can't find the review on this site. Consider this an endorsement, then: it's an excellent book. The marketing makes it sound like self-help, but it isn't, at least not directly; it's actually a very sound (and readable!) presentation of original research on gender and negotiation. I believe the self-help version is the follow-up book, Ask for It! which I've had on my Amazon list since before it came out and am now ordering immediately.



Part Two:

I've been asked to be on talk radio on Wednesday about Hillary Clinton. I don't yet know exactly what we'll be focusing on, though I think the show will be pro-Clinton. So help a bitch out: give me a few links to some solid coverage of her campaign. And if there are particular issues that you'd like discussed, let me know.

Mitt Romney? You gotta be kidding me. Wait, actually, I mean, "Hurrah! Go Democrats."

Surfing over to the NYT, I initially thought, "oops, someone at the Times really fucked up with this headline." I assumed, you see, that what they meant was that, while everyone else's campaign staff had headed off to SC, Romney was hanging around Nevada, "coasting."

My bad! Somehow, Romney is, in fact, supposed to have already won in Nevada--in fact, if my calculation of the time difference between Nevada and the east coast and my understanding of the scheduling of the caucusing are correct, he apparently won fifteen minutes before the caucusing officially started.

Seemingly bizarre and impossible. And yet. Nevada *is* the center of American fakeness and chicanery.

So *of course* Romney was the winner going in.

It's not me, but ordinary people think Hillary Clinton is too desperate!

UPDATE: I totally did not realize, because I am an idiot and didn't click through, that my co-blogger linked to this very same article, hosted on the Chicago Tribune site instead of the LA Times, a mere two days ago. So now you have two piece of scintillating analysis! Sorry, ding.

Via Kate Harding at Shakesville, a moderately horrifying editorial by Meghan Daum in the L.A Times. Where, hey, guess what? It's not her that thinks so, but those ordinary Americans out there are just so turned off by the fact that... HILLARY ACTUALLY WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT!

No. It can't be. A major presidential candidate who was recently leading in national polls, who has served in the United States Senate for eight years, and who has been working on her political career ever since at least college, actually wants the position she's campaigning for? How disgusting. How very savage and vile.

You can tell how savage and disgusting Hillary is because of the way she "clawed her way out of an abyss" but is still "forging...in the deep woods." And goddamn, look at how she's "visibly salivating from hunger" because she's like a "bachelorette whose obsessive focus on finding a mate has reduced the other aspects of her life to blank," nevermind the "sharp contours of her passion."

I've got it! Hillary Clinton is Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.! Except less hot. Because don't you know, since the presidency is like a man that you're trying to land, she would have won the damn thing already if she were sexxay enough. Despite the fact that the election hasn't happened yet.

The reason that a lot of Democrats feel uneasy about voting for Hillary Clinton isn't because of her politics, silly goose, it's because eww, we can see she actually wants to be president, and wants it bad, the savage crybaby-beast. And that is Just Not Ladylike! It can't possibly be because she's the most centrist of the major candidates, and won't back down on her having supported the Iraq war, or being the only one of the candidates that takes money from lobbyists, or anything like that. No, the men and women of the Democratic party just want her to be a little more aloof.

If only Hillary wouldn't return my calls or show up uninvited as she is so prone to do. She's just so needy, always appearing on television and talking about her platform and asking us to vote for her! Gross. Have a little self-respect, lady.

Bike Bleg

Dear Bitch Readers,

I would like to tap the Bitchosphere for some advice. I would like to buy a bike. I haven't owned a bike in about 7 years, and I seem to have forgotten everything (that, or I never knew anything to begin with). I want something just to ride around town on, mostly rides of 1-2 miles to do errands, get to work (when the weather's warmer and/or I don't have to go to court), and bike on the lake path if it's really nice.

I'm about 5'1". I think that in the past I have ridden bikes that were too big for me, and thus a pain to get on and off the seat. What are these numbers that are advertised with the bike, like 19" or 26"? How big should my bike be?

I plan on spending less than $200 on something used, hopefully. I want to know the depths of your bike knowledge.

Love,

M. LeBlanc

now hillary's a bad date

Articles like this make me regret the moment in journalism when it suddenly became ok to make really weak (and problematic) pop cultural references when it came to serious politics. (Satire is something different.)

This isn't to say that no one should be talking about the dynamics of race and gender in this election. We are at an crucial moment in our history where a woman or a person of color stand a very good chance of becoming the most powerful person in the country. (Not only is this election important to us, it also matters to those who are watching this election process abroad. I can't help but remember the time I was in Amsterdam, helping a friend run focus groups on black political identity, and meeting Afro Dutch students who told us they looked at the political success of black Americans to show them how to reach the same level of parity in their own country. I was humbled by their hungry observation of us.)

But a column like this, comparing our reactions to Hillary Clinton to 'dating' or bad chick lit, only trivializes how important this election is. I know, it's an obvious point to make, but why is it so hard to sink in? I understand Daum is trying to dismantle and critique the sexist overtones of our election coverage but there has to be a better way of doing it; there has to be a way of opening a dialogue about our national resistance to a woman in power without replicating those same sexist patterns.

I wonder if I can lay the fault of this tripe at MoDo's door?

I want Mr. B. to work for my campaign

Listening to him making phone calls to Nevada voters for the Obama campaign:

Yessir, I understand the objections to the idea of socialized medicine. But I think we're ready to take the stink off those words. I know that the cost of health insurance for people like you and me is really hard to handle, but there's a problem this country has to take care of first, and that's people without insurance. There are 47 million Americans right now who have no insurance, and those people don't go to the doctor at all until it's so bad they go to the emergency room. That's why health insurance costs so much; hospitals pass those costs on to insurers, and you and I end up paying for it. If we can get health care for those people, it's going to reduce *all* our costs.

Yessir, I'm talking about a single payer system.

Well, sir, let me tell you. I was in the military for twelve years, and the government provided *my* health care. And it was first rate.*

Thank you sir. It's been a real pleasure talking to someone like you tonight. I really appreciate your time.

That's what the Dems need: more straight-talking military veterans who can appeal to the common sense of the meat and potatoes crowd to dismiss shibboleths like "socialized medicine", explain this stuff in clear language, and use the word "sir" without sounding like it's a foreign language.

It's hilarious, too, listening to his voice change when he gets a woman on the phone. Sweet as honey, and just a tiny li'l bit flirty.

Well, hello, ma'am. How are you this evening?

My name is Mr. B., and I'm a volunteer for the Obama campaign. Do you have a minute to talk about the upcoming primary vote with me? Well, ma'am, I want to urge you to vote in the caucus! This is the only chance you'll have to pick between these candidates, and regardless of who you support--I hope it'll be Obama, of course, but regardless--this is your chance to help decide who our candidate will be.

Well Ma'am, I don't watch that show, and I don't know what her reasons for supporting Obama are. But I'm pretty sure *my* reasons for supporting him are intellectually based and not just emotional identity politics.**

Well for one thing, I'm a military veteran. I used to be a Republican. And I was just *devastated* when our country went to war in 2003. . . .

Well Ma'am, actually, he graduated from one of the top law schools in this country. He could have gone to work for any law firm in the nation, but he decided to go into public service, and that's a decision I really respect. . . .

Actually, ma'am, he used to be a professor of constitutional law. And that's one of the things that really impresses me about him, we have got to get back to the rights guaranteed in the American Constitution. . . .

Ma'am, we've got one state for Obama and one for Clinton right now. Your state has so much to say about who's going to be the candidate for the Democratic party. . . .

I know your business is important to you ma'am, but this is our nation and the world. We've got to change this stuff. . . .

And one final, funny one. Yes, he's ignoring (or appealing to) people's prejudices. It's still funny. He gets a woman on the phone who's a registered Republican (this must be a list of "undecideds") and who says good luck to him because she'd much rather see Obama than that awful woman Hillary in office. . . .

I see. Well, did you know that you can register as a Democrat for the caucus? Yes ma'am, you can. It's Nevada, home of the free.

(The woman apparently says, "I love this state!")

Heh heh heh. All you have to do is just show up at your local Democratic precinct--let me tell you where it is--register as a Democrat, and you can vote for Obama, who as you know has the best chance to take the democratic candidacy away from Hillary.

Yes, you can re-register as a Republican the next day. No, ma'am (chuckles), I'm sure that if you're registered as a Democrat for just one day, it won't show.


*This is actually true, or it was until they switched to a goddamn HMO that played the "deny covered costs" game until I would get sick enough of spending time on the phone to just pay the bill myself.

**This is where I'd be like "you racist bitch, fuck you."

Liveblogging SLC

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you this post from the beautiful streets of downtown Salt Lake City. I've managed to find a coffeeshop with free wireless and people who are aggressively "alternative"-looking. Being in Mormon country again makes me want to chain-smoke cigarettes and get wasted. Having quit smoking and also having to drive around, I will do neither. But Sweet Christ on A Cracker, I should really take more time to appreciate my lovely town of Chicago. Where there are people! Walking! On the streets!

I haven't been to Utah since, um, 1994, when I stopped in to visit my twelve-year-old friend with my twelve-year-old self. I remember shopping at Target and eating at a place called "Hogi-Yogi." Before that, the last time I was here was in 1989, when I moved away. Y'all knew that I used to be a Mormon, right? Right. Me and my siblings (and dad) were the only vaguely non-white people in the small town we lived in. This place is white, y'all.

I guess I'm going to go gaze at the temple, and figure out if there's anything good to eat (answer: probably no). Tomorrow, it's back to my couple-years-of-childhood home to take a gander about, and then a funeral. Good times!

My derision aside, this is kinda fun.

Stuff I read today while putting off updating my CV

1. In light of all the pre-and post-New Hampshire misogyny masquerading as "why I don't support Hillary Clinton," a nice thoughtful piece over at Obsidian Wings that differentiates between actual politics and sexism. Don't read the comment thread, though, unless you're interested in how many people refuse to separate the two.

2. An oldie but a goodie about how tiresome it is to have men always playing the gender card.

3. Scott Lemieux's analysis of what the Supreme Court is doing to fuck over your voting rights. See also what Dahlia Lithwick has to say. And don't think it's "just" the "poor and marginalized" that will get fucked over. There are a lot of people in the US who believe in, you know, public transportation and/or biking, and therefore don't have drivers' licenses.

4. Over at LGM, Bean points to a new idea: high school maternity leave. High fucking time someone thought about this. While we're at it, let's stop sending pregnant teenagers and teen parents to remedial programs designed for "behavior problems," shall we? No damn reason in the world why getting pregnant ought to keep you from getting the same fucking education as everyone else, and going to college if you damn well want to.

Jon Swift saves me from the muck

By taking care of Maureen Dowd's response to Hillary's moment of--gasp!--emotion so that I don't have to.

Sometimes I thank god for dead white men.

This is what Democracy looks like, part 2

As a follow-up to explaining *how* the primary system works, check out Apo's brief post that boils it down to the numbers, and you'll see the effect.

In short, the chosen son (or, in this case, daughter) has a really huge advantage, no matter what happens in the primaries. I'm still expecting a Clinton/Obama ticket for the Dems.

Where are all the women voters?

Last night, in my hours of MSNBC-viewing, I endured a shitload of conversation about how women were or weren't voting for this or that candidate. The women came out for Hillary! Young women voted for Obama in Iowa, but now they're voting for Hillary! How will the women vote? The women are voting for Hillary, and that's why she won! But what about in the general election! Will the women vote then?!

This obsessive focus on how the women will vote makes me feel like I'm back in fucking 1920. You know, women have been voting for 87 years now. In fact, in the last few elections at least (I'm too lazy to do research at the moment), they have voted more than men. It's kind of a thing, that we do, as members of this society. But pundits and other commentators insist on acting as if we've just admitted people with vaginas to the electorate, and it's just so crazy because how will this affect the election?!

Given that Clinton had a 13% advantage with women, and Obama had a 13% advantage with men, it seems like hey, being a man can affect your vote, too. Imagine that! Especially given that more Republicans are men. And since 57% of the people who voted last night were women, it seems like we might give some attention to whether the men will come out, since they aren't coming out as strong.

But no, we never talk about how men will vote, because it's just not as interesting. Or scary. Men have been voting for years! They are the average voter! They don't vote based on little things like crying episodes or whether someone is black. They vote the issues.

From now on, I will be presenting analysis of the man vote. Will they vote with their penises? Are they indignant? Do they want to see a man in the White House?

That said, I still don't know who I'm voting for in the primaries.

Pseudonymous Kid gives me hope for the future

While reading the "Brain Quest" cards his grandmother sent for Christmas:

"Mama, do you know what I've noticed? In these questions, it's all "he's." No "she's.""

God, I love my kid.

That said, read this

Gloria Steinem on Hillary Clinton in today's NYT.

What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.

Half-assed half-dead blogging

Why have I not blogged about Hillary tearing up? And John Edwards's reaction to it? Or today's NH primaries? Or any of the questions or links y'all have emailed me??

BECAUSE I AM SICK, PEOPLE.

Seriously, my completely unmedical opinion is that I have "some kind of mild flu." I say this because it's worse than a cold, but not *really* as bad as influenza (which I've only had once, and which is Truly Awful). But I do feel like wiped-out crap. So there.

That said, a few sick opinions.

1. Hillary tearing up: I see no reason to believe that that wasn't completely authentic. The woman is surely exhausted and extremely disappointed, and she's been, let's be honest, the focus of unremitting personal criticism for years now. Finally someone asks how *she's* coping, and for some reason it really gets to her, and she tears up a bit. We've all been there.

2. The reaction to Hillary tearing up: interesting. From what I've seen, she's getting more of a pass on this than Ferraro or Muskie did. I suspect this is because (1) Hillary has a reputation as a stone-cold bitch (which is why some people think she was faking it, even); (2) maybe, just maybe, we've come far enough that a woman having a brief emotional moment on camera isn't definitive proof that she's too weak to lead. That said, I don't know if it would resonate the same way for a man--after all, it's one thing for a strong woman to have a "feminine" moment, but for a man to have a feminine moment, zomg. Then again, she didn't really break down, just had a moment of wet eyes. Maybe, in the right circumstances, a man could get away with that too. I'm not sure.

3. John Edwards's statement: OF COURSE the "we need a strong leader" thing (paraphrased from memory; I am too sick to go looking shit up, people, which is why there are no links in this post) is sexist. It would be sexist *even if he'd said the exact same thing about a man*, because, duh, the idea that tears = weakness is rooted in the centuries-old idea that women are emotional, men are rational, that crying is for women, etc. etc. Therefore, if you are a strong man and you cry, you are weak; if you are a strong woman and you cry, you are weak.

That said, he gets credit for backing off on it. But I'm still disappointed, even if that kind of statement was inevitable.

4. New Hampshire: Turnout is said to be huge, I heard someone say that in some places they're running short of Democratic ballots (!), and whoo, go elections!

5. Minor anecdote: yesterday, as I was bringing PK home from school, a young scruffy hippie guy pulled up next to me at the light, beeped his horn, gave me a big grin and a thumbs up, and shouted OBAMA! through the window. (We have an Obama bumper sticker, b/c Mr. B.'s working on the campaign.) Completely unscientific evidence that, at least for now, Obama's got momentum.

This is what democracy looks like?!?

Over at The Edge of The West, the gents sure know how to treat a lady. I left a comment over there, sort of a "wanted: alive, please" poster if you will,* asking Mr. Rauchway and Mr. Kelman if they could, pretty please, write up a li'l primer about How Our Crazy American Electoral System Works. I'd spent the morning, y'see, trying to explain it to a friend of mine and finding myself saying things like, "well, I think. . . " and "I'm pretty sure. . ."

Which is way teh lame, I'm sure you'll agree. So anyway, I asked a couple historians, and they outsourced it to a political scientist named Seth Masket, so it just goes to show you that clearly the answer is "Far Too Complicated."

That said! Professor Masket did a lovely job of summing it all up. For which I am most grateful to him, and to Professor Kelman for asking. And to Professor Rauchway just because, I guess. So if you're Canadian or otherwise deprived, or if you're just an American ignoramus like me, click on that link there, and be sure to thank the boys before you leave.


*I realize that my attempts at humor in this post--this paragraph especially--are strained and painful. SUE ME. I flew home today with a head cold and now my ear hurts like a motherfucker and my sinuses are stuffed with cotton, I think.

How to Look Good Naked

For science, I just watched the first episode of Lifetime's new show, How to Look Good Naked. The premise of the show is your standard "makeover" show; actually, it's more like Queer Eye for fat chicks, minus the whole redo-your-home thing. I don't watch much television and I think this is the first time I've ever watched something on Lifetime, so my tv-reviewing is based on my own idiosyncratic tastes.

First, Carson is kindof annoying. Doesn't the whole "you go, girlfriend" thing get old? Apparently, every woman in America wishes for a fabulous gay best-friend-cum-fairy-godmother to tell her she seems awesome. Second, it's the same basic makeover-show shit as always, with an expensive haircut-and-highlights job, new clothes, and a spa day.

But this show is totally revolutionary in that it features plus-sized women in their underwear. More plus-sized than the Dove "real" women (can I just say the whole notion that larger women are "real" women really turns me off? And skinny women are fake? Or what?), and still totally unairbrushed. You can see some of them, if briefly, in the show trailer here. And they look hot. I kept thinking throughout the show that there are several men I know who would like to watch it for non-educational purposes, because seriously, hot chicks with big racks, in lingerie.

Chicks with hips and big racks in lingerie aside, the show is also revolutionary in that it seems to espouse a "no diets" mentality. Carson even says at the end of the episode, "no more diets, ok?" In a television era filled with people getting liposuction and being bribed to lose weight, this is shockingly refreshing: instead of trying to change your body, accept your body and try to feel look and look good as you are. It still falls into some of the traps of using terms like "problem areas" and creating "illusions", but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Of course, there are people who think it's wrong to encourage fat people to feel better about themseves, like this guy who says

Being fat isn't a moral failing, but it is a failing. It's just like not fastening your seatbelt or not washing your hands. It's just like being disorganized or chronically late. It's okay to say it.

And since being fat is just like not fastening your seatbelt, which is bad, we can't let the bad people feel ok, because then they'll never change!

It's just like the people who argue that the wide array of clothes sizes in the United States is making people fat, because if you couldn't buy any cute clothes in your size, you'd just have to lose weight. Let's make the fatties feel bad! Then they'll change! 'Cause that's so worked thus far.

You know what I realized yesterday, after some really hot sex? I don't even want to be thin. If I could tap a magic wand and be 5'8" and 120 lbs., I wouldn't. I want to be fit, yes, and have lots of energy, yes, and look hot, yes, but only the cultural trope that being all those things requires being thin makes me think about thinness at all. I like my body. It's the one I've had for twenty-five years. I like walking around with this body, I like having sex with this body. It's part of my personality, and people's conception of me, and it's the body that's strong like my dad and olive-skinned like a cross between my mom and my dad and has a powerful singing voice like my mother. This body is my genealogy, and my history, and my vehicle for living, and I'm very, very attached to it.

Pseudonymous Kid is a spoiled American

My dad called yesterday to tell me that his power was out, and to ask if Mr. B. was driving (as planned) to pick up PK, and to warn him that going over the Sierras was Not a Good Idea.

"It's okay," I said, "He's taking the southern route to avoid snow."
"He said he was going through Yosemite," my dad worried.
"Yeah, I know, but he saw the news and realized that was stupid. He's going through Bakersfield. He'll run into some rain, but he should be there tonight."
"Oh wait," my dad said. "I guess I have his cell number right here. 310.xxx.xxxx?"
"Yep, that's it. Give him a call, but he left about four hours ago so he's probably somewhere in the valley by now."
"Oh yes," dad said. "Surely."
"So, it sounds like you're having an adventure. Can I talk to Pseudonymous Kid?"
"Sure, here he is."
"PK? Hi, it's Mama."
"Mama! We have no electricity! I'm sitting in front of three candles!"
"It sounds like an adventure!" I enthused.
"NO! I CAN'T PLAY MARIO AND IT'S MY LAST DAY HERE!"
"Well, true." I said. "But you've been playing Mario all week, and Papa will be there tonight, and tomorrow when you get home you can play computer games."
"NO I CAN'T! THERE'S NO ELECTRICITY!"
"There will be electricity at *home*, honey."
"BUT THERE'S NONE HERE! I HATE IT!"
"Why don't you play hide and seek with your cousins?" I asked.
"There would probably be a lot of extra hiding places where there are no lights," he considered.
"Exactly. It could be fun." There was a pause.
"NO! I WANT TO PLAY MARIO, AND IT'S A VIDEO GAME, SO IT USES ELECTRICITY, AND WE DON'T HAVE ANY ELECTRICITY, AND THIS SUCKS!"

Eventually I had to just hang up on my complaining son so that my dad could call Mr. B. Sigh. I remember the last time we had the power out, he thought the candles were so neat....

RIP Andy Olmsted

So much for post-caucus euphoria: ObWi's Andy Olmsted was killed yesterday in Iraq while we were all being happy about Iowa. Head on over and leave your condolences for his family and friends.

for those who knew me and feel this pain, I think it's a good thing to realize that this pain has been felt by thousands and thousands (probably millions, actually) of other people all over the world. That is part of the cost of war, any war, no matter how justified. If everyone who feels this pain keeps that in mind the next time we have to decide whether or not war is a good idea, perhaps it will help us to make a more informed decision. Because it is pretty clear that the average American would not have supported the Iraq War had they known the costs going in. I am far too cynical to believe that any future debate over war will be any less vitriolic or emotional, but perhaps a few more people will realize just what those costs can be the next time.

This may be a contradiction of my above call to keep politics out of my death, but I hope not. Sometimes going to war is the right idea. I think we've drawn that line too far in the direction of war rather than peace, but I'm a soldier and I know that sometimes you have to fight if you're to hold onto what you hold dear. But in making that decision, I believe we understate the costs of war; when we make the decision to fight, we make the decision to kill, and that means lives and families destroyed. Mine now falls into that category; the next time the question of war or peace comes up, if you knew me at least you can understand a bit more just what it is you're deciding to do, and whether or not those costs are worth it.

C'est la guerre.

In india, we treat women as goddesses!

Via commenter Nandita, this story about two women who were attacked by a mob of 80 men. You heard me right, I said eighty.

...the women came out of the JW Marriott Hotel with two male friends around 0145 hours IST, and walked towards Juhu beach. Soon a mob of about 40 men began teasing the women, which led to one of the women swearing at the hooligans. But the mob, by then 70-80 strong, pounced on them.

A Hindustan Times cameraperson spotted a police van and called for help, following which the police rushed in and chased away the mob. However, no case has been registered so far.

You guys don't need me to make the obvious comment that this is beyond horrifying, but honestly? It doesn't surprise me that much. In many developing countries where women in some cities are starting to behave like men do, you know, going out at night, walking alone in the street, and generally being visible in public, there is a violent backlash against them. When I last returned to Egypt, harassment was even more in-your-face than it had been before. Again, the topic of women in public space is relevant.

Think this can't or won't or wouldn't happen in the United States? It just happens differently, and we call it "expressing our views on the internet" and "mardi gras."

Half-assed Iowa Caucus liveblogging: engage!

Okay, folks. Here I am in my boyfriened's grandpa's purple robe, feet up on the couch, listening to NPR, drinking coffee and water and thinking maybe at some point I'll eat some solid food. So I will share with you, as the day wanes (it now being almost noon, after all), my random thoughts on the NPR commentary and *maybe*, if I get ambitious, some of yer more easily-found online articles. I have no tv, I'm not going to rush out and buy a stack of papers, I'm not going to work the phones here. This is yer average citizen with yer average semi-informed, inchoate thoughts on The Political Process.

9:30 p.m., bitchphd Nice show, Edwards. Mr. B. will be happy Obama won. But Huckabee? Fuck me.

7:20 p.m., bitchphd Okay, I'm off to a bar with a television. Whether or not I continue to blog will depend on if they also have wireless access.

5:30 p.m., bitchphd I hope that Edwards is one of the top two. I predict that Kucinich throwing his delegates at Obama isn't going to get him the v.p. nod, thank god.


5:20 p.m., m. leblanc The Bear and I are discussing our predictions for tonight and for the election as a whole. For the Dems, he says 1. Obama 2. Edwards 3. Clinton. I say 1. Obama 2. Clinton 3. Edwards.

For the eventual tickets, he says McCain-Huckabee and Obama-Richardson. I say Giuliani-McCain and Clinton-Obama.

4:30 p.m., bitchphd Mr. B. tells me that the polls the Obama people are paying to have Obama up 7% point above Clinton, 27% to 33%. When I ask how Edwards is doing, he says, "who?"

4:15 p.m., m. leblanc: CNN tells me that an analysis of the all-important question of "Experienced vs. Likeable" is coming up in their Iowa coverage. You know, inane as it sounds, this apparently all-important question seems to have dominated discussion about at least the Democratic candidates (while with the republican candidates it seems to be "who's the real conservative?").

I realized the other day that I really don't even care who of the top three Democratic candidates ends up being the nominee. At some point, I'm going to stop waffling and pick one to vote for, but whoever ends up being the nominee, I'll be happy. Isn't that weird? It signals that either a) I'm so desperate for a Democrat I don't care who it is, or b) the candidates are virtually indistinguishable from each other. I think it's probably both, actually.

But it strikes me that the question of "Experience vs. Likeable" is an awfully bizarre way to think about choosing a leader. Someone could be experienced, but their experience could show that they made policy decision that hurt us. After all, Dick Cheney, for example, is a very experienced politician, and he's so bad he's not even running, despite his, you know, being the vice president. And being likeable? Well, I don't see how that's a particularly important presidential quality, except in as much as people of great integrity tend to be likeable, even if only in a "grudging respect" kind of way. It seems like "likeable" is a lazy proxy for "thinks like me."

I wish we could try to make some meaningful policy distinctions between the candidates instead of relying on these lame proxy indicia of electability.

3:15 p.m., Bitch Ph.D. Old WWII vets support Hillary. I gotta say, most of the older people I know (many of whom are women) are adamant Hillary supporters. Everyone's focusing on the woman vote where Clinton's concerned, but I wonder if there might not be a legitimate retired folks bias for her. My dad likes her, for instance. Then there are the old people who are voting for Obama (this is apparently a piece interviewing retirement home residents). Hm, maybe if we can get old people to the polls, the "making history" vote will make a big difference.

We've got some youngass business owner voting Romney. Seriously, when are small business owners going to wake the fuck up and realize that today's Republican party is *not* on their side? Bah.

3:00 p.m., Bitch Ph.D. Ooh, here's an idea! Put the updates up top! Duh. I'll fix the earlier comments, too, since we're all about consistency here.

Okay, so NPR just interviewed some Huckabee worker, who watched Huckabee on Leno last night. There goes the union vote, if there's any justice in the world. That, along with the "hard work = money" thing makes Huckabee a complete asshole. I guess Jesus was a lazy slacker, what with that poverty thing and all.

Then we segued into beards, for god's sake. Come on. There's gotta be more people in Iowa to interview.

Also, I hereby declare that anyone who wants to caucus-blog today (ahem, M. LeBlanc) do it on THIS POST. All you gotta do is put up a time *and your name.*

Ooh, more news "coming up." Maybe I'll have something to say in a bit.


12:15 a.m. Unfogged links to this article, which points out (duh) that institutions created for white landowning males are less than purely democratic.

To many Iowans, the caucuses are a civic treasure, passed down from the farmers who introduced them nearly two centuries ago as a way of organizing themselves politically.
....
Caucuses are quirky electoral creations that depart from the usual civics-class ideas about fair elections. They are run not by the government, but rather by the state Democratic and Republican Parties. The 1,781 caucuses that take place around the state are small community meetings in which citizens gather not only to choose candidates but also to conduct local party business. Rather than secret ballots, there are public exchanges of opinions.

In short, you have to show up in person, in the evening.

Snippet from a chat transcript between myself and the boyfriend on the subject. Note: WE ARE BEING SARCASTIC.

Bitch PHD: ah, you're right: this *is* the primary. it's just that iowa runs it in a weird way.

The Connoissuer: It's Iowa.

Bitch PHD: apparently you have to physically show up in person and then stand around, at a specified time in the evening. very "ye olde days." thus disenfranchising anyone with small children or a service job.

The Connoissuer: Or people uncomfortable standing about, surrounded by the dominant culture group.

Bitch PHD: right. geeks and homeless and other losers.

The Connoissuer: And colored people.

Bitch PHD: they don't have those in iowa.

The Connoissuer: Why would they want to come to a party of us anyway?

Bitch PHD: totally. i mean, no one likes being someplace they haven't been invited to.

The Connoissuer: They're happier with their own people.

11:20 a.m. A while ago they were interviewing other average citizens about what they want in a Presidential candidate. I swear to god my first thought, as I was pouring my coffee, was "sanity. I want someone sane."

The frightening Iowan doofus on the radio, though, said "strength." I am afraid. Then there was some discussion of honesty or somesuch in which, if my yet-caffeinated brain did not deceive me, Giuliani's name was mentioned positively.

11:00 a.m. Waking up, I can hear the radio talking (again--this must be NPR's famous "liberal bias"--I feel proud of finding the needle in the haystack of market coverage and "how to manage your investments"!) about Huckabee being a Baptist minister. And I'm thinking, you know, yeah yeah, religious discrimination is bad and unamerican, I'm entirely on board with that, but: a minister? Running for president? Dudes. Separation of church and state--isn't that still in there somewhere? I do not want a clergyman as president, I'm sorry. This shit is freaky.

I work hard for the money: more caucusblogging

"The harder you work, the more the government wants out of you." So says Mike Huckabee in defense of his national-sales-tax proposal because oh, teh poor rich people have to pay more taxes! I heard just this little snippet because CNN is on in the background while I read blogs and stay home sick with a shit case of strep. Being sick is very good for my blogging mojo, apparently.

This notion, that hard work equals money, is basically what's fundamentally wrong with the Republican party. Because if the harder you work, the more money you make, then poor people obviously aren't working very hard. And why should we care about people who don't work hard? If you work hard, you will have lots of money, and you will be able to afford housing, and healthcare, and you won't need the government's help.

If they could just realize that plenty of poor people do work hard, and they're still poor, they'd be a lot better of a party.

Feminism 101: The internet is a jungle, but if you are a woman it's a jungle in which you deserve to be raped, you fat cunt

I've been pretty shocked by many of the responses to my post yesterday arguing that blogs who post images of women mined from Flickr or other photo-sharing sites as part of a body of work intended to titillate, suck.

That's right; I, apparently mistakenly, thought it was going to be pretty uncontroversial. I wasn't arguing that the proprietors of such blogs should be arrested and waterboarded, merely that there's something wrong, from an ethical perspective, with what they're doing. This is not a feminism 101 blog and I am not here to explain to you how sexism and misogyny affect what it means to be a woman and have an internet presence, but I'm going to anyway.

In the comments to my post, people seemed to be pretty quick to get behind the idea that "if you don't like strangers [misusing your pictures], then don't post them online." Multiple people offered me suggestions about making my pictures friends-and-family-only, or being careful about how and where pictures are posted. People were unmoved by the story of Alison Stokke, or at least took the position that what happened to her was only bad because she didn't post the pictures herself, but if she had, it would have been totally different and not reprehensible.

Feminism 101: this is what we call victim-blaming. That's why I made the analogy in comments to "don't go outside, you won't get raped." Victim-blaming isn't just "blaming the victim", though, that's a much too literalist explanation. At the heart of victim-blaming is the assertion that if you are a woman, it is your responsibility, and your responsibility alone, to make sure bad shit doesn't happen to you. If you decide to make choices which put you at risk of harm, whether it be having your picture posted on a porn site, being the recipient of online threats, being sexually harassed or stalked, or even raped, you have little to no right to complain about it. You knew or should have known the risk, you did it anyway, tough motherfucking titties.

When we engage in victim-blaming, we make a statement about what is "normal." It is normal for women to be harassed, stalked and have their image misappropriated if they dare to have an online presence. That is a fait-accompli, a fact of life.

Yet, curiously, the very same people who think that this is just the way it goes when you post pictures of yourself on the internet and happen to have a vagina, also get huffy and offended when I make sweeping statements about how men regard women's bodies as public property. Well, which is it? Is the world full of jerks who are always going to sexualize your image without your consent, or have we moved into a golden age of enlightenment where sexism is no longer a problem?

Saying that online harassment/misappropriation is just the way things go on the internet, and hey, it happens to everyone, men and women, quit whining and deal with it or take your pictures/blog/professional website available to friends and family only, displays a profound ignorance of the reality of what it is to be a woman in the public eye, on the internet or otherwise.

Being a woman on the internet, especially one with strongly-held views, is Kathy Sierra, who was subject to death threats and sexualized comments as a tech blogger, for Christ's sake. Being a woman on the internet is Melissa McEwan, who is lying about being raped, don'cha know, and happens also to be a fat cunt. Being a woman on the internet is Alison Stokke, who I guess shouldn't have taken up pole vaulting, because if you are young and attractive and have the temerity to appear in public in tight shorts, you obviously should have know that dudes will be talking about how they'd like to defile you on the internet. Duh! Being a woman on the internet is Jade Raymond, a game developer who also had the audacity to be young and hot have have her picture on the internet, and guess who will or will not hit that shit?

Online harassment happens to men. Men get online threats, and have their image misappropriated. But it doesn't happen with anything even close to the scale with which it happens to women. If you are a woman on the internet, and you post pictures of yourself, and even if you don't, if you get any kind of widespread attention people will come along and shit on you. They will talk about your body, about how you should or shouldn't be fucked, whether you are attractive, and whether you are a slut. If you are particularly attractive, then the probability that this will happen to you is even higher. If you don't meet conventional standards of beauty, though, people will still come along to tell you that you are fat or ugly or both, but they still might fuck you anyway, because you know what? You're a bitch and you deserve it.

And you know why having your non-porny picture posted on a porny website is online harassment? Because it makes you feel uncomfortable, it makes you feel that maybe you should be putting anything online, that you should hide and protect your image because what you were thinking wearing a low-cut shirt like that? It makes you feel scared, and weird, and like you have done something wrong just by being female. FUCK THAT.

Post Season

Via the comments section of Edge of the West, this cartoon answers the question, "why are you lying to your child about Santa?" better than anything I could ever say.

The camera captures your soul: What is this picture for?

Just now, I was looking at my personal Flickr account and noticed that I had a new "so-and-so has added you as a contact" message from a few weeks ago that I hadn't looked at. I didn't recognize the name, so I went to the person's profile page. Still no idea who it was, no contacts in common. Who the fuck was this guy? Then I noticed that the dude was a member of a lot of groups. Several hundred groups. Groups with names like "boobs boobs boobs", "little waist round ass", "hot fat chicks", and "JUST 4 ARAB GIRLS".

So I thought, do I have any "sexy" pictures on my Flickr? None that were intended to titillate, but a few that show some cleavage, sure, given that I have a lot of it and tend to sometimes wear low-cut shirts. Especially when in a Halloween costume. But really, the number of such pictures is maybe 5-6 at most. Most of my pictures are of other people, given that they're pictures I take.

The realization that someone was likely looking at my basically totally innocuous Flickr pictures because they were part of a larger attempt to find sexually arousing images on the internet was surprisingly disturbing. I know what a sexy picture looks like, and I've taken very mildly titillating ones before, mostly just for fun and sometimes to send to a boyfriend or something. But I've never put such pictures on the internet, nor would I, because the idea of random strangers getting off on images of my body really doesn't do it for me.

My sudden distress reminded me of a discussion I had several months ago with my boyfriend (who really needs a pseudonym--in keeping with his pseud from my other blog, I'll call him "The Bear") about the existence of very-softcore porny "blogs" that mine their content from Flickr. What the proprietors of these websites do is link to and/or embed pictures from Flickr users that are "sexy." The pictures usually aren't even really that pornographic--mostly clothed or scantily-clad women, and very little actual nudity (more like women in low-cut tops, bras, or bikinis). The blog's sole purpose, however, is to link to such pictures of women. Apparently, a lot of women whose pictures were featured would write the blog's owner to ask that the picture be taken down or de-linked. We were discussing whether or not linking to such pictures was problematic.

Let's assume that there was a picture posted on Flickr by the person featured in the picture. (If it were posted by someone not in the picture, then you'd have to ask a whole other set of questions about whether the featured person gave permission. And in a lot of these cases, the person posting (on Flickr, not on the porny blog) was the woman photographed.) One argument goes that hey, you put it on the internet, you're putting it out there for whoever to see, on that site, and wherever it's linked from. Some of those pictures were very obviously intended to be "sexy", like, for example, a woman holding her breasts up, nipples obscured, and looking alluringly into the camera. Linking to those pictures didn't seem to me to be so bad.

Some of them, however, were much less intentionally "sexy", like another of a woman standing in a low-cut shirt exposing cleavage, next to her less-becleavaged friend. With that kind of picture, it seems wrong that just because you posted a picture of yourself, being a person who happens to have breasts, that your photo should be featured on a website whose primary purpose is to help dudes get off.

At the time, my position was that pictures shouldn't be linked unless they were obviously intended to be "sexy" pictures. This was because of a convincing argument made by The Bear that some of the women were clearly using their Flickr accounts as a DIY sexy-modeling site, with photos just barely within the bounds of Flickr's content rules, but otherwise "porny."

Now, I realize the error of my thinking, after learning that someone could view my pictures as titillating or sexy, despite how totally non-sexy I view them to be.

The thing is, in a sex-obsessed, women-are-sex, body-as-public-property patriarchy such as the one we have, we can't rely on anyone to make a distinction between a picture that is intended to titillate and one that isn't. I'm sure that there have been a thousand public moments in my life where, if someone had snapped a picture of me, that picture could be easily interpreted as a "sexy" picture. What if I were bending over to pick something up in the street, or adjusting my shirt, or dancing in a club, or leaning on a bar to get a drink? And someone took a picture then?

In our society, any image of a woman is fair game for analysis of her sexual attractiveness. You see it all the time, where pictures of athletes, or newscasters, or actresses or anyone who dares be in the public eye are dissected on some blog or other with hundreds of comments about how much the male readers of the website would, in fact, Totally Hit That Shit. Or not, because ZOMG, her face is totally fugly!

The internet is totally pornified. There is no such thing as an objective distinction between images intending to be sexy and images intended to be neutral. As women, our purpose as physical beings, especially when captured on film, is to be either fodder for men's sexual gratification or the object of their scorn. Absent someone's express agreement that their picture be posted in a forum designed to provide masturbation fodder and/or explicit commentary on the desirability of Hitting That Shit, no such linking is appropriate.

Therefore, I hereby reverse my position on the softcore-porny Flickr-mining blogs to Against.

Happy election year, everyone

Happy new year, all. I'm on vacation, so I'll be a bit light on the ol' blogging, but I'll do what I can as soon as I finish being hung over, 'kay?

Maybe in the meantime my co-bloggers will, you know, post relevant things like sales on decent bras here instead of only at their own blogs. Hmph.