An evolution in my opinions.
Go… Obama… (retch)
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008So who’s the Veep for “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy?”
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008Gad, who’d say such a dumb-ass racist thing as that?!
Sign the petition, comment on the register…let’s deluge those fuckers!
Friday, August 22nd, 2008In my inbox today:
Dear Lisa,
You have joined us in standing up for women’s health in the past, so I wanted to give you an update on the latest news. Yesterday afternoon, the Department of Health and Human Services issued the latest version of their health care regulations. The latest draft proves once again the Bush administration is jeopardizing women’s health by putting their ideology first.
Senator Clinton and her colleague Senator Patty Murray are working hard on this issue. Together they are fighting on behalf of women everywhere to make sure this attempt does not go unnoticed. Make no mistake — the Bush Administration is threatening access to family planning options for women who need them most.
That is why it is so important that we continue our fight. We still need your help as we continue to oppose these attempts to undermine women’s health care. If you have not yet signed the petition, I hope you will today, or please send this to your friends and ask them to join us.
Click here to sign the petition
We have already seen the difference your support can make. These new regulations do not include some of the most objectionable language from the earlier draft. I believe that is because so many of you have joined Senator Clinton in speaking out, and I want to thank you for helping with this effort.
But we are not done yet.
The newest version continues to be a problem. Instead of increasing women’s access to health care, these regulations would further complicate the process, adding additional barriers to women’s ability to get quality care.
Now that these regulations have been published in the Federal Register, the public has 30 days to comment (email address is consciencecomment@hhs.gov). It is so important that we continue to speak up and make clear that we oppose any last-minute Bush administration attempts to undermine women’s health!
Please ask your friends to join us by signing here, so that we can send all your signatures and comments to HHS.
Thank you,
Ann F. Lewis
Ann Lewis, Director of Communications for HILLPAC and Friends of Hillary, served in the White House from 1997 2000 as Director of Communications and then Counselor to President Bill Clinton. She was Director of Communications and Deputy Campaign Manager for the Clinton-Gore Re-Election Campaign in 1995- 1996, and Senior Advisor to the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton for U.S. Senate in 2000. As the National Chair of the DNC Women’s Vote Center, she led the Democratic Party’s major initiative to reach, engage, and mobilize women voters from 2002- 2004.
Added to my list of people that I can’t believe get paid to write.
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Shorter Glenn Beck: Correlation IS causation dammit!! It IS it IS it IS and Benjamin Franklin was a STAUNCH opponent of raising the “minimum wage!” and maybe if I separate the quote I’m wildly misconstruing from him to back up this assertion by the entire length of the article from his actual name, nobody will realize that the “minimum wage” didn’t even exist til a hundred years after his death…and if I close my eyes and I can’t see YOU then you can’t see MEEEE neener neener!
Fallout from the Edwards Affair: Part One!
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
For anyone who thinks that “feminism” as a practiced theory is narrow in either scope or defintion and that “feminists” are pretty much six-of-one-half-a-dozen-of-the-other—not even clooooose. F’rinstance, recently on our very own PunkAssBlog, one of our feminist posters (violet) told off (in a kinder and gentler fashion, of course) one of our other feminist posters (yours truly):
…I don’t think in the context of feminist blogging and critique that shaming these individuals is either valuable or appropriate…I also tend to believe there isn’t a lot of room for shaming in feminist ethical critique in general, particularly when we’re talking about women who are already shamed by society. It’s just incredibly easy for that sort of criticism to support the patriarchal narrative, even unintentionally.
I blame punkass marc, who instead of emailing me Teh Feminist Blogger Rulebook upon my acceptance of his kind invitation to become a PunkAssBlogger, just tossed off some line about “write about anything you want–I mean anything!” and then abandoned me to my own sorry devices. I hope you’re reading this, Marc, and are hanging your head in shame and possibly even sobbing into your beer ’cause this is ALL! YOUR! FAULT!
Well, til Marc gets around to setting me straight, I am just going to have to keep forging ahead into the troubled waters of feminism, blogging and morality all on my own.
Morals
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008I am pretty sure that Tory Health Minister Tony Clement has never had to live in a neighbourhood ravaged by drug-related crime. I’m pretty sure that he’s never had friends bounced between rehab and jail, unable to get proper treatment for their disease because drug use is considered a criminal, rather than a medical issue. I’m pretty sure of this because only a person so very, very sheltered from the effects of the War on (Some People Who Use Some Kinds of) Drugs could make the sorts of hateful, ignorant comments that Clement made yesterday:
“The supervised injection site undercuts the ethic of medical practice and sets a debilitating example for all physicians and nurses, both present and future in Canada,” he scolded in an address to the Canadian Medical Association general council meeting in Montreal. [...] “This is a profound moral issue, and when Canadians are fully informed of it, I believe they will reject it on principle,” the minister said.
Actual medical professionals (Clement is not one) know that harm reduction initiatives like Insite—the Vancouver safe injection site that Clement attacking in his speech—was save lives. They reduce the transmission of infections spread by dirty needs, reduce ODs, get drug use off the streets and away from the general public. Both Clement and his government don’t care about either the lives of addicts or the welfare of people in communities where drug use is rampant. They are much more concerned about appearing “tough on crime.”
After all, there’s an election coming up:
The new Conservative ad campaign picks up where Mr. Clement’s message leaves off with its call to “keep junkies in rehab and off the streets.” It includes pictures of the party leaders and asks which of them is on track to fight crime.
The text reads: “Thugs, drug pushers and others involved in the drug trade are writing their own rules. For too long, lax Liberal governments left gangs and drug pushers to make their own rules and set their own criminal agenda. Those days are over.”
The Tories have lower support among women, and pollsters for both Conservatives and Liberals have found that women and seniors feel vulnerable to crime. A promise to keep junkies away from children is a direct pitch.
Of course, women and seniors are also vulnerable to Tory policies, and have more to fear from our government than from unfortunate drug addicts. I can only hope that Clement and his party get tossed to the curb in the next election before they can do any more damage.
Condoms: Like my long-lost best friend. Or my long-lost friend that was only my friend because she was friends with my best friend, you know, the one who told me my senior prom dress looked like a lampshade.
Monday, August 18th, 2008I’ve gotten to take a long sabbatical from these guys, but the endless round of business trips has now claimed yet another casualty in my life; my hormonal contraception. Impressively, in spite of being away from home on short notice on a regular basis for days at a time for more than a year now, I hadn’t yet managed to forget to pack my pills…til about two weeks ago. Sadly, a three-day hiatus is enough to render the reliability of said hormonal contraceptive dicey at best, so I dumped the rest of the month down the toilet upon my return home and informed the significant other that we were going to get to relive the earliest days of our romance til I could restart a new pack next month.
We’ve had a few adventures since then–like him discovering that by far the best place to buy condoms is the grocery store, where they are openly and innocuously stashed next to the disposable razors in the toiletries aisle; drugstores lock ‘em up next to the “Nicorette” at the prescription counter and glare suspiciously even at a man who is clearly well beyond the age of consent who expresses an interest in purchasing some. He also neglected to read the varietal descriptors on the box and, for anyone out there who is curious, “Climax Control!” condoms do indeed work, to the point where the poor sucker who innocently put the thing on may never achieve one. (I’m still trying to figure out who thought that the icy numbness which results after inserting your penis into a condom filled with lidocaine-spiked lubricant was some kind of brilliant sexual invention, and if anybody ever buys these twice.)
Oh, the joys of condoms! And apparently I’m not the only one who wishes they were anywhere near as conducive to fun or even efficient sex as they are to pregnancy- and disease-free sex. There’s a guy out there who has spent a lot of his adult life working on just that–Jan Vinzenz Krause, a German sex-ed instructor. Actually, he sounds like a very cool and useful guy–
As a teenager, Krause, now 30, had trouble finding the right size condom, which set him on a quest to aid other similarly befuddled young men. In 2001 he developed an online condom adviser, which provides printable measuring tapes and instructions to help men determine which condom, out of all the brands available in Germany, will fit the best. According to Krause, more than 300,000 people have used the free service.
This really is a problem–I have had in the past both a boyfriend who could barely keep the condom on, obviously not a reassuring situation, and another who lost his erection every time he put one on because they were so tight they literally cut off the blood flow to his penis. So among other things, this guy has invented spray-on condoms, which I think I actually did read about in the fairly recent past:
The prototype, which began testing last year, consists of a hard plastic tube with nozzles that spray liquid latex from all directions, much like the water jets in the tunnel of a car wash. According to Krause, there are numerous advantages to his spray-on condom. “The condom fits 100% perfectly, so the safety is much higher than a standard condom’s, and it feels more natural.”
Unfortunately, there are still a few bugs in the system. I’m not too worried about the first few bugs mentioned–
The men who tested the spray-on condom had a few hesitations, Krause says. Some were “a little bit afraid to use the tube” and would only try it on their fingers. Others worried that the mechanism, which hisses as it sprays, might ruin the mood.
Dingalings with this level of “techno-fear” probably have a multitude of other issues that dwarf this one and possibly don’t even use condoms at present due to the level of technical difficulty and intimidation presented by the packaging and unrolling phases of the operation so we can discount them, and unless you or your partner has some kind of snake phobia, I really doubt that a brief hissing sound is going to make anybody incapable of functioning. However, the next bug is a little more significant–
But the most serious problem with the design — which is what has kept the product off the market thus far — is that the latex takes too long to dry. Liquid latex currently takes two to three minutes to vulcanize, making it impractical. “For people to buy it,” Krause says, “it needs to be ready in five to 10 seconds.”
Well yeah. Three minutes is a long time, especially if you can’t touch anything to help it maintain its, er, turgid state and have to be super-careful not to move around and accidentally bump into or brush off the drying latex, and of course the are-we-there-yet?-are-we-there-yet?-how-bout-now?-well-how-bout-now? mindset is a mood-killer even when all you’re doing is driving to Grandma’s. So hopefully some genius chemists out there will figure out the secret of fast-drying latex soon. Of course by that time I’ll be back on the pill…
If you get drunk, you’re partially responsible for rape
Monday, August 18th, 2008There are oh so many myths about rape that I would like to kill, bury, and then dance on the grave of naked, but I think the number one myth is that rape is something that “Just Happens” to victims (more likely women), like it is a force of nature. In order for rape to happen there has to be a rapist around- a rapist who doesn’t happen to wear a sign, I might add. Weather is a force of nature: we can’t stop it, all we can do is take steps to deal with it. But, at least with weather, we have a fairly good chance of knowing when it’s coming. And, (barring the recent example of Katrina) we don’t generally blame people for being ill-prepared when weather systems happen.
But yet, women are supposed to simultaneously to distrust all guys, all the time, and to flirt and be friendly with them. We are supposed to be able to “cut loose” and “relax” and be ever vigilant and all-knowing. And the guys responsibility in all of this is….nothing, near as I can tell. Telling guys to be responsible, and ask a woman if she consents to sex, and not have sex with a clearly inebriated women is apparently an overly arduous task akin to being castrated.
This line of thought, (expressed fairly clearly by the testosterone-for-brains Peter Hitchens) is victim-blaming at it’s very worst. Melissa did a very good job at taking down this annoying article, but I’d like to take a different approach to it.
I was raped once. I am not going to go into too much detail about it, because it is simple not something I’m comfortably giving out to the void. But, one thing I am willing to say is that I was stone-cold sober: there wasn’t a drop of liquor in my body that time.
On the other hand, I have been drunk, many, many times. Stupidly drunk; falling-down-due-to-miniature-localized-earthquakes-drunk. And I have been slurringly drunk with a guy before as well- and sometimes when I have gotten stupidly drunk, I have become amorous and tried to kiss the guy, or make-out with him. And you know something? Every time this has happened, I have not been raped, nor have I raped anyone else. The guy, possibly someone I’ve already had sex with before, stops the activity, because he knows that I’m not in my right mind, or he says “no” to me, and I immediately stop (because I know my horny-ness is not his problem. Alcohol use is not an excuse to rape either). I have not been raped, nor raped, because a RAPIST was not present. It’s not just something that happens, like a sunburn when you don’t wear sunscreen, there has to be an active party.
And I have also seen guys use alcohol to get a girl drunk, so they could rape her. My freshman year, I was invited to a Frat party, and I went along to see what all the fuss was about. I did everything “right”: I went with a bunch of girlfriends, I did not drink, I did not even accept soda in an open cup. And, I still get made fun of my fraternity friend who invited me that not for being overly paranoid.* V was a girl from my floor that went that night as well. V was not used to being on her own, drinking, and she maybe weighed 90 pounds soaking wet. She said she wasn’t going to drink that night; and so asked for a glass of punch. The “gentleman” she was talking to got her a glass, which was spiked. Now, I don’t know for certain: perhaps the “gentleman” didn’t know that the punch was spiked, perhaps he thought she knew it was spiked, perhaps he was taking advantage of the situation at hand. But, in any occasion, he should have quickly seen that she was getting very, very drunk; and yet he kept giving her alchol. If anything, as her BAC rose, he seemed to increase the frequency of the drinks. By the end of the night, V could barely walk, her eyes were blurry, and the words that came out of her mouth were nonsensical. This is when the “gentleman” (who was not drinking, I’d like to point out) decided was a great time to make out with her, and started groping the hell out of her. She was not responding to his “overtures”- if anything, she seemed a little fuzzy. When I started to see him lead her up the staircase to the rooms, is when I decided to intervene.
“Come on V”, I said, “Let’s go home…it’s getting kind of late. Come on, up let’s go outside and get home, not up the stairs”. I managed to wedge my way between the two of them, as the gentleman said “she’s fine, we’re just going to go upstairs and talk where it’s quiet”. I gave him my best “bullshit” look and lead her to my car. If looks could kill, the look that “gentleman” gave me would have been the last thing I ever saw. When we got home, I held back her hair as she vomited for about an hour straight. The next morning, she remembered almost nothing of the night before.**
There is almost no doubt in my mind that “gentleman” would have raped her had I not interceded. I’m sure he saw the liquor as making it easier for him to do so, but that still doesn’t change the fact that if he wasn’t there, V would have been at no risk for rape (as demonstrated by when he was gone, she wasn’t raped). Had he raped her, it would not have been her fault under any circumstance: nothing of V’s actions made her culpable, or responsible. If one says otherwise implies that a rapist has no volition of his own.
*Side Note- I was underage at this time, as was V, my friend, and I’m going to say a 1/4th of the people that night. Everyone underage was required to wear an armband signifying this. We were never denied liquor. I don’t think the bracelet worked.
**I almost hate to tell this story, because it does fall into some tropes that I don’t like- namely how passive V was. She didn’t even consciously make the decision to drink- she just didn’t know what alchol tasted like, nor how to recognize that she was getting drunk. But even if she had gone to the party with the intention of getting rip-roaringly drunk and break lose as her mark of independence, it still wouldn’t have changed the fact that if she would have been raped, it was still the rapist’s fault.
Can’t Sleep
Saturday, August 16th, 2008Occasionally, I’ll get bouts of insomnia and then I’m stuck watching late night television until I fall asleep out of sheer boredom. After watching women’s gymnastics (Go USA), there wasn’t much left on to watch on television, so I started to channel surfing.
Clicking randomly around, not really paying attention, I suddenly heard a male voice going “Can we be one nation UNDER GOD, indivisible with liberty and justice for all?”
“Huh,” went my disengaged brain. “What kind of crazy is this?” This was my favorite kind of crazy, God’s News: the 700 Club.
It’s…interesting to say the least. There, of course, was a blurb on the UC- Calvary lawsuit, in which they quoted the attorney when he said that this court case would “have a chilling effect on Christian schools”. Being the evil, secular hedonist that I am, I thought “well, good. If this court case “chills” Christian schools into teaching actual facts instead of opinion, isn’t that good for everyone?”
Then, there was a story where they were talking about “The Call”- hundreds of Christians who pray in various areas, trying to change the world. This had Lou Engle- whom I recognized from Jesus Camp, talking about how “prayer would cause a revival” and that “division was a good thing- we needed to be divided if anyone supported spilling the blood of innocent unborn children”. This was a little creepier, because this guy is REALLY intense- he might actually be a true believer, instead of a scam artist. His major thing seems to be “Dream interpretation”; he shared a dream of a woman from Kansas City. She dreamed that she saw a scroll unroll with the words “America has asked for a king, and I will give her a king, because the cry for change is greater than the cry for mercy”. Lou then talked about how we needed “Jesus, not change”. Honestly, this guy did everything but flat out say that Obama would be a king. But, Lou’s strategy for changing the world was to get a bunch of people in public places and pray (guess that literal interpretation of the Bible forgot Matthew 6:2, and I’m fairly certain that praying will accomplish exactly nothing.
Even as creepy as this was gentleman was, by far, the creepiest thing about this show was the “international news” section. Lee Webb boiled the Georgia/ Russia conflict down to “We need to help Georgia because they are a fledgling democracy and because they are the OLDEST Christian nation, which has been steadfast against the encroaching Muslims”. It was like a wing-nut trifecta: spread democracy, Christian nation, against Muslims. I think this is going to be the new talking point: Georgia is a Christian nation; therefore we need to protect them. He also went on to say that if we didn’t send a military force, we were letting the Russian forces steamroll Eastern Europe. It seems like there are some people that are bound and determined to restart the Cold War, and then turn it hot.
All of this makes me think of the original question Mr. Webb posed: can we be one nation indivisible? Probably not- at least the way he wants it. In order for us to be the indivisible he wants us to be, we’d have to shut our brains off and believe everything authoritarian leaders say, no matter how illogical or reality-contradicting. The UC-Calvary lawsuit shows that they really want us to believe that black is white and white is black if a man talking in Jesus’s voice says so. I want to be able to look at the sky and say “the sky is blue. It is blue because of light and prisms, not because ‘god made it so’. If we had a different atmosphere, or a different sun, the sky would be a different color”. “Indivisible” would mean “lockstep”- I would either have to be brainwashed or dead. Isn’t that a pleasant thought to try and go to sleep to?
What the hell is wrong with people?
Friday, August 15th, 2008I recently found myself in need of a mattress. After a severely disappointing experience with 1-800-Mattress and several sleepless nights on my loveseat (or sex-couch, as a filthy-minded foreign friend prefers to think of it) I turned to the internets and asked, where oh where can I get a mattress today?
Google not only provides the answers, but also the user reviews to tell me what I’m getting. I was shocked to learn that Value City Furniture, the very people I purchased my sex-couch from, had put me in danger!
No self-defense allowed – Nickname unavailable – Jun 30, 2008
VCF is one of those places that doesn’t allow law-abiding citizens to have the means to protect themselves if they enter their store. They require … More »
VCF is one of those places that doesn’t allow law-abiding citizens to have the means to protect themselves if they enter their store. They require everyone to make themselves helpless, even if they have a state issued handgun carry license. Haven’t we seen enough mall, church, and school shootings to know that criminals and deranged individuals don’t respect signs that restrict only law-abiding individuals? « Hide
[Flag as inappropriate]
0 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful?
Clearly, I had no choice but to buy from the Original Mattress Factory. Thank you, Anonymous Paranoid Guy!
Let’s Talk About Abortion
Thursday, August 14th, 2008Maybe it’s because it’s an election year, but I’ve been feeling outright pounded by abortion news lately. To wit:
WSJ:
The American Psychological Association said Wednesday there is “no credible evidence” that a single, elective abortion causes mental-health problems for adult women.
The report, which came after a two-year review of published research, was anticipated by both supporters and opponents of legal abortion.
Women’s psychological reaction to the procedure has become a key issue in the abortion debate, with some judges and lawmakers citing mental-health concerns as reason to impose restrictions on abortion.
Two years after a strict abortion ban [in South Dakota] was overturned by voters, backers have brought a similar measure — but one laced with complexities that could bode well for its passage, and ultimately could bring about the challenge to Roe v. Wade desired by abortion foes nationwide.
The Democratic Party is planning a convention designed to soften the edges on the party’s support for abortion rights, with a revamped platform and a speaking lineup that reinforces efforts to broaden Democrats’ appeal on the hot-button issue.
In a statement fraught with symbolism for those on both sides of the abortion debate, Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa., an abortion-rights opponent, will be given a prime speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month.
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt has denied that a controversial draft regulation would redefine common birth control methods as abortion and protect the rights of doctors and other health-care workers who refuse to provide them.
According to the language in a draft of the regulation that leaked last month, the rule would apply to anyone who participates in “any activity with a logical connection to a procedure, health service or health service program, or research activity. . . . This includes referral, training and other arrangements of the procedure, health service, or research activity.”
One section of the draft regulation defines abortion as “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”
John McCain yesterday said he would not rule out picking a pro-choice running mate, a move seen as a boost for former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, who joined the presumptive GOP nominee for two days of campaign events in his home state.
In Colorado voters are being asked whether human “personhood” begins at conception. If passed, that measure would make Colorado the first state to outlaw abortion outright since the Roe court ruling.
The Colorado ban has secured endorsements from “over 70″ anti-abortion physicians, according to its backers. But in the state’s closely fought Senate race, both Democratic candidate Mark Udall and self-described “pro-life” Republican Bob Schaffer are opposing the ban.
“I think there are other strategies and tactics that get us far closer to advancing the cause of human life,” Schaffer told a local Colorado radio station this month.
Maybe we’ll stop silencing them next year.
Thursday, August 14th, 2008I wanted to honor Aisha and all the wives of Muhammad by giving voice to them, remarkable women whose crucial roles in the shaping of Islam have so often been ignored — silenced — by historians. I guess maybe someone will give them a voice next year or something. — Sherry Jones, You Still Can’t Write About Muhammad
This quote may not be entirely accurate.
Asra Q. Nomani has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal talking about Random House’s decision not to release The Jewel of Medina, Jones’ novel about Aisha, the youngest wife of Muhammad.
Their reasoning?
[Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry] said that after sending out advance copies of the novel, the company received “from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.” … After consulting security experts and Islam scholars, Mr. Perry said the company decided “to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel.”
So that’s… interesting. Random House has taken to avoiding the publication of books because brown people”sorry, a small, radical segment of brown people—might do something dangerous if they’re provoked. And, of course, the thing that’s meant to be doing the provoking is a fictionalized (perhaps highly fictionalized) account of a woman’s life.
For some reason, I wanted to write: “I’m torn,” but actually, I’m not torn, I’m with Asra. This is stupid, and it’s sad, and it’s more-than-slightly racist. It’s stupid on multiple levels, in fact. It’s stupid that writing about the women of early Islam as if they were actual people provokes such a chillingly negative response. It’s stupid that a western publisher reacts to fear of violence from vague, scary Muslims (who assuredly are just waiting for this book to come out as an excuse to blow up, I dunno, Los Angeles). And it’s an icy blend of stupid and colonialist that the author, the professor who took issue with the book, and—I’ll hazard—everyone handling this case at Random House is white, and not Muslim.
And that last point is why I felt maybe a bit ambivalent about this particular instance of corporate insanity. Unlike Nomani, I haven’t read the book. I don’t know if it’s shite or if it’s ridiculously offensive, and in any case I’m not particularly well-positioned to determine the latter. I do absolutely believe that misogyny—some of it particular to Islam, some of it not—is driving some of the outrage against the text and the publisher’s fear of promoting it. At the same time, this is one work of historical fiction by one white author, highlighted against a background of millions of living Muslim women—artists who are alive right now and whose voices are not silent but rather conspicuously muffled. I want Jones’ work to be published, I do, but I think there’s danger in letting it define the discourse, or become the extent of the Islamic feminist canon.
Recently