America, after all, is a vast, wild frontier, where any man—only the right kind of any man, of course—can make his fortune! It’s a place filled with adventure and danger (to other people) and, most of all, freedom. A place where brave settlers defend themselves against savages, on the every edge of civilization! Where we fight tremendous wars, and they’re good, and they’re right. It’s a rough, beautiful land where men are men and women are women.

Look around. You don’t live there. Nobody lives there. We all live here, on bloody land stolen from people who don’t have the decency to either attack like wild animals or lie down and die. In a place where black and brown people freely walk the streets as though they belong, as though their lives are anything but an uncomfortable reminder that the triumphant throne of whiteness is stacked on a pile of bodies that could overflow a thousand mass graves. Where people with cardboard signs saying veteran. disabled. please help line the streets because they didn’t get the memo that you’re supposed to come back perfect and whole and blonde or in a box or a bag or not at all. It’s hard to live here—hard because the government takes everything to give to those lucky brown immigrants, hard because your Social Security check isn’t near big enough, hard because they keep showing bleeding, broken children on the news like it’s our fault they were in the way of our bombs, hard because you can’t just shoot a man on the street or slap some sense into your woman.

It was better, back then. Better in the past. The past, after all, is the only place where America lives. Maybe it was your parents’ time, or their parents’ time, or maybe if you’re lucky and old enough it was your own childhood, but whenever it was, that—that place, seen through the perfectly smudged glasses of memory—that was America.

Of course Liberty Land is a hoax—Extruded Liberty Product With Real Freedom Filling. Everyone knows that. But maybe it’s enough for now. It’s just a taste to keep us going. To remind us of what it will be like when we bring it back. When we kick out the fakes, the immigrants, the interlopers. When we bring back real America, where men are men and women are women and our wars are just and our lives are simple, clean, and good.

RT @slacktivist

The fatal flaw in [AFTAH‘s] arguments was the necessary requirement of the belief in a Judeo-Christian conception of God and an acceptance of the Bible as wholly true. … Until we can come to a consensus on what “truth” and “evidence” should be defined as, this argument is never going to be resolved. I don’t hold out much hope that it will be.

Look: that is not their fatal flaw. Their fatal flaw is that they’re hateful. The arguments they’re spewing to further their agenda are hateful, fearmongering manipulation used to maintain oppressive systems. Their fatal flaw isn’t incorrect, it’s that they’re wrong.

Christianity doesn’t compel you to believe that homosexuality is wrong, let alone dangerous. If Christianity weren’t around, these folks would find another way to prop up the patriarchy. They would swap out the cornerstone with another, similarly-shaped brick without a moment’s hesitation, and nothing but the words would change. On the flip side, there are plenty of Christians—though, I’ll agree, fewer—who fully support the radical queer agenda.

I think this cuts to the root of why I, at least, find atheists irritating—they see that Christianity is incorrect, and assume that’s the problem. As when we turn on the worldwide DeReligionizer Ray tomorrow, there will be no more social injustice!

Which is, I think, not quite what would happen. People will realize that there’s no more money or power in the religious oppression game, and they will move on to codify new structures to oppress people with, in remarkably similar ways.

The Catholic Church has lots and lots and lots and lots of problems. Some of those problems are epistemological, and they are not, should not, must not, be the top priority.

AFTAH has some serious problems, but the fact that they’re incorrect about this or that inconsequential thing isn’t the big one. Their biggest problem is that they’re wrong.

Via http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/08/discussion-thread-i-love-way-you-lie.html, I saw a discussion of Eminem’s new video “Love the Way You Lie” featuring Rhiannon. A good chunk of the discussion was talking about how this song/ video glamorizes domestic violence under the context by making first making the characters super sexy, and conflating “passion” with “violence”. And I can see that support for it- the video does come off as ambiguous, and there are lines in the song like “Maybe this is what happens when a volcano meets a tornado” suggesting that their relationship is just the result of two fiery personalities coming together.

But then, there was also discussion about the fact that this doesn’t look like a “classic” image of domestic violence, meaning that it doesn’t show an abuser as a monster and the women as a cringing victim a’ la Lifetime Original Movies, and this makes domestic violence look ambiguous in the video. Later, people challenge it saying that there was “no such thing as a perfect victim” and it made me think of two seperate things.

One was this post from No Longer Qivering where one the author talks about justifying leaving her abusive husband. The part that particularly resonated with me was:

I would attempt to explain the abuse. Often I would leave out the worst things as I had not processed them enough to verbalize them. In later years I would leave the worst things out because they were intensely humiliating. But still there were plenty of things I could say that sounded pretty awful; living under his constant rage, the threats to hurt me and kill me, the irrational behavior towards the children, the constant lying. If I managed to get that far the answer was always the same.

“If it was that bad why did you stay with him so many years? Why did you have all these children with him?”

In the blink of an eye I had gone from being condemned for leaving to being condemned for staying…..

It’s been a lesson for me though and I try and listen to people’s stories without ever asking those condemning questions. “Why did you go back to him?” “Why did you marry him?” “Why didn’t you see he was [somethingawful]”? I have to ask myself, does anyone ever ask the man “Why didn’t you love her and care for her so she wanted to stay with you?” But of course that is a fruitless question as abusers usually assert that they did love their partner and “gave her everything”.

Read the whole thing, it was an interesting can’t-win for leaving exercise.

It also reminded me of when I was a horrible little child, and I would get so MAD at my mother for, in my eyes “provoking” dad. My father was abusive, but why did she have to bother him with stuff like the bills when he was already so tired from work, and why couldn’t she just go along with him when he just wanted quiet, and why couldn’t she just LEAVE THINGS ALONE?! As an adult, I’m deeply ashamed of this mindset that I had, and realize that I was probably just one more voice keeping my mom staying with my dad. The day I saw my dad throw my mom into the coffee table, the first time that I knew he actually hit her (as opposed to “only” constantly belittling her, threatening her, and yelling at her) was the day that I did a 180-switch about who exactly was at fault here.

These three, seemingly unrelated things about domestic violence boils down to this: there is no such thing as a “perfect victim”. There is no one who looks perfect cringing, and decides to up and leave the first time she gets hit because he’s so clearly a monster and she’s just independent and not willing to take that crap (my biggest problem with “Enough”, really). Victims of domestic abuse sometimes “start” the fight by yelling, or asserting themselves in some way, and still can have their self-esteem so under-minded that they can’t leave (or any of the millions of reasons that women “don’t leave”, from money to children to no support). MRA’s frequently talk about “mutual combat” but that’s somewhat of a misnomer. Even in the video, when Megan Fox starts the fight by yelling and slapping ineffectively at the Dominic character, it is clear that she’s the victim. She can’t do a damn thing against him. He’s so much stronger than her in, and demonstrates this again and again. But, we have this idea that if women aren’t perfect, they don’t do all the right things, they don’t deserve “protection” and it’s not really domestic abuse. Victims of domestic violence can have terrible tempers, be lazy, be depressed, be any number of things that are, shall we say “human” and still be victims of domestic abuse and still need help and assistance. And abusers aren’t monsters- a lot of times it’s hard to leave an abuser because it is mixed up with love as much as fear.

We get a lot of conflicting messages from society about our interpersonal relationships that it makes it difficult to figure out normal, non-toxic relationships. And not just romantic ones- relationships in general. My father is abused my mom and is more than a little sexist. He also taught me how to throw a baseball and showed up to every single one of my baseball games. For every instance of him yelling, screaming, and basically acting like a time-bomb that we had to tip-toe around because the most random thing would set him off, there is probably another equally powerful memory of him being a loving, caring father. For every voice that says in society that we should shun batterers, there’s the conflicting message of loving your family no matter what.

I read somewhere (I thought No Longer Quivering, but I can’t find it now) a description of someone staying with an abusive husband. Paraphrased, it was something like “Yes, there were two incidents of him hitting me that month, but there were 43 times of hugging, 3 random flower deliveries, 6 nights of great sex, and hundreds of smiles and soft kisses”. I think this video, in it’s somewhat ambiguous way, tries to show that. Like, if you look at about the 1 minute mark, it shows Dominic throwing Megan Fox into a wall, and then punching it to the point that it leaves a whole. A flash later, they’re running up to that wall to have passionate sex, and it’s sort of implied that happens one right after another in it. But if you look again, you see that a) it’s a different wall, that doesn’t have a fist imprint and b) that they’re wearing different clothes. This I think says more like “we have this terrible, self-destructive fights, but we also have moments were things are wonderful together too, do they cancel each other out?”

Domestic violence isn’t about big monster against a cringing passive victim. It’s about a human victimizing another human. An abuser isn’t a monster, just a human doing something that is wrong and seriously fucked-up. An abused person isn’t some perfect snowflake in need of rescuing, but another human being in need of support because s/he is being controlled. And I think that showing that narratives surrounding domestic violence are more complicated than people assume, or opposing the idea that the victims of the simplistic narratives are the only ones worthy of help can only be a good thing.

That’s kindof a big deal. Cooking is one of the few things I can do reliably and well. I’ll fuck up crazy experimental food (what happens… if I stuff peanut butter into this bell pepper?!?! Nothing good, it turns out.), but this was pancakes.

Pancakes are not experimental.

What’s more, I failed at pancakes by adding too much baking soda. That’s like failing at partying because you took too much ecstasy (and, incidentally, tastes similar).

Two days ago, I burned Daal. I’m not becoming a fantasy writer (“the Da’al wound their way up the to’wer, donning their ky’aap’es and activating their læn’tyrr”iens”). Daal is lentils. Lentils in a pot. With spices. I burned lentils in a pot with spices. I still don’t know how I did this.

I just tried another pancake, made with new batter. It’s vaguely tolerable. I think I still added too much baking soda, or maybe my baking soda has been absorbing the taste of ass. Maybe it absorbed the smoke from the burnt Daal.

I think I need a time-out. No, wait, what’s the thing in that Canadian game, with the sticks? I need to go into the penalty box. The ingredients will have a power play in my kitchen during which I will not cook them, because apparently I pissed off M’oskyo’wyts, the goddess of cooking stuff.

I’m going to get stoned now, and eat the rest of my vaguely ass-absorbed pancakes.

What’s more interesting is how Hogan constructs his legal opposition to Olson’s position.

Olson claims that California “has no rational basis for continuing this discrimination.” Really? No rational basis? Who made you King, Mr. Olson? Because it seems to me that we human beings may well have more than a “rational basis” to recognize marriage as it has been recognized around the world for literally thousands of years – the union of a man and a woman. For reasons of pro-creation and parenthood, to start with, but also for reasons of faith and morality, for some of us, any marriage other than such a union can never be, whatever society says, a “marriage” at all.

Mr. Olson hides behind – as any good activist does – the issue of race to use the Constitution for a larger social purpose and to achieve own policy objective. Olson invokes Loving v. Virginia, which was the case ending racial discrimination in marriage laws, to say that gays should be allowed to marry. If you believe that, then you believe that the 14th Amendment means anything. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were specifically designed to deal with racism and the prohibition thereof.

There are two separate claims here: one, that there is actually a rational basis for preventing gays and lesbians from marrying, and two, that the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the 14th amendment were intended to address racism, and shouldn’t apply to gays and lesbians anyway. It’s an argument whose structure you might recall from primary school—“I didn’t do it, you can’t prove it was me, and it’s a stupid rule anyhow.”

On the first point, Hogan wants to assert that tradition, faith, and morality, or at least some combination thereof, constitute rational bases for discrimination against gays. It’s an argument you hear a lot from fans of sectarian government—these reasons seem rational to them, so obviously if the courts fail to recognize it, it’s because the courts are a wing of a liberal anarcho-queer supremacist movement which has as its aim the annihilation of heterosexuality, families, and liberty in general.

Actually, this is his strongest point.

Courts are generally somewhat conservative, and consider tradition and morality—if not someone’s particular, sectarian religious beliefs—to be acceptable bases for legal intervention in our lives. Acceptable, that is, but certainly not sufficient, and that’s where this line of reasoning sadly falls apart. When you’re abridging someone’s rights, the courts have found, you need to be able to conjure up some slightly more compelling reason than, “it has always been thus, so there.” This was an important finding in Loving v. Virginia (and, later, in Williams v. Illinois) —prohibitions on interracial marriage may have had the support of tradition and church, but they weren’t rational. In fact, they were pointless. And even as the courts seem willing to smile on even poorly supported encroachments on liberty, they’ve found unsupported violations will have to go. And so they went, some of them.

But! That’s Loving, a case about interracial marriage. The 14th Amendment, Red State reminds us, is specifically crafted to apply only to people of color. That was the obvious intention of its framers, and absolutely the only reason we think its application might be broader than that today is because the power-mad judiciary has over the years stretched the tiniest of loopholes into an enormous tear in the very fabric of the Constitution. Why, just look at the wording of the thing:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. —14th Amendment, Section 1

The text certainly seems to… resist the interpretation that it only offers protection against racial discrimination. In fact, it looks rather more like a broad-reaching law designed to force States to respect the rights of their citizens.

All their citizens.

If the framers—John Bingham, specifically—had intended for the 14th Amendment to apply specifically to institutional racism, it’s not as though they lacked the tools to call it out. The 15th Amendment, passed just two years later, does exactly this:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. —15th Amendment, Section 1

No man may be denied a vote because of the color of his skin, nor because he was once a slave. (No man and his skin, specifically, because of course it would remain illegal for women to vote for fifty years hence, until the 19th Amendment was ratified. It had to be another amendment, because the 15th is silent on the issue of gender in exactly the way that the 14th is not.)

All their citizens. Everyone.

That’s what Bingham meant; that’s what the Congress meant. Hewing to a strictly originalist view of Constitutional law, you might be surprised to read Bingham’s congressional testimony, in which he makes quite clear his intention that the 14th Amendment be a broad thing, a powerful instrument of justice, protecting citizens (All citizens. Everyone.) from the capricious decisions of governmental bodies large and small. In fact, he seems to argue for an even broader reading of the amendment than courts recognize today.

So where does the Red State writer’s interpretation come from? In a blossoming of what I’m tempted to term delicious irony, it comes from an activist judge—five activist judges, specifically. Not five years after its passage, the Supreme Court decided in Slaughter-house cases that the 14th was a response to racism—specifically, to lasting discrimination against former slaves—and so it oughtn’t be applied more broadly than that. So it wasn’t, and for years, the amendment may as well not have existed.

Today, essentially nobody believes that Slaughterhouse was decided properly. In the intervening years, the courts have slowly restored the power of the 14th, building a multi-tiered (and, arguably, overcomplicated) framework under which different laws are considered with different degrees of scrutiny, based on the significance of the rights abridged and the oppression experienced by the class of people it targets. This isn’t a power grab—it’s entirely the opposite, a moderation of the judiciary’s power, rooted in the notion that courts ought to be a last resort for those peoples too maligned, stigmatized, or powerless to seek legislative remedy.

It’s this last point that gives lie to the slippery slope argument we’ve heard so very often—this notion that if you believe the arguments for gay marriage, “you believe that the 14th Amendment means anything.” Yes, the courts have found that gays and lesbians constitute a suspect class, and that abridgment of their fundamental rights must thus be narrowly tailored to satisfy a compelling government interest which cannot be satisfied in any other way. But it only found this—could only find this—after being buried under an avalanche of evidence in which the plaintiffs exhaustively and somewhat oddly argued that gays and lesbians are politically powerless and biologically locked into their sexualities (leaving the sectarian proponents to argue that no, gays have enormous political power and their sexualities are fluid and constructed, making me wonder if they intersperse Butler in their sword drills). It seems enormously unlikely that we’ll see similarly compelling arguments for marrying cats or children, neither of which can offer legal consent.

The evidence is so overwhelming that should Perry make it to the Supreme Court, it will be exceedingly interesting to watch Antonin Scalia tie himself into a pretzel trying to justify ignoring it. Perhaps he will decide that the 14th Amendment really is all about the rights of ex-slaves, pesky things like the framers’ intentions and thousands of pages of jurisprudence notwithstanding. Or perhaps, seeing his very own words quoted in Judge Walker’s decision, he will become radioactive with indignation, and he will explode.

If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is ‘no legitimate state interest’ for purposes of proscribing that conduct… what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising ‘the liberty protected by the Constitution’? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry. —Lawrence v Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), Antonin Scalia Dissenting

Generally, two things only women can be.

I’ve seldom been a slut–I was never able to say that before, or anything else on the topic of how much of a slut I was or wasn’t, because I never had a definition before that I felt satisfied any kind of consistency (internal or external). However, I have finally lucked out and stumbled across the bestest definition of s-l-u-t evar:

as the awesome Kelly Huegel pointed out, is a female person who has had sex with more people than any one person calling them a slut considers acceptable

Actually, by that definition I may never have been a slut, since as far as I know nobody has ever called me one. However, since the strong possibility always exists for any woman that at some point in time somebody somewhere has called her a slut outside of her hearing, I may have periodically been a slut. The closest I ever came to this face-to-face was the one-and-only-boyfriend-who-ever-asked-me-what-my-number-was, and appeared to be either deeply shocked or deeply impressed by said digit once it was delivered to him. (I returned the favor and asked him for his, and thence learned that his was, oh dear, lower than mine, which likely had some influence on the rather odd number-asking behavior and response to my response.)

I am mostly indifferent to the social construct that is a slut, but given my lack of personal dealings with the meme, I suspect a lot of my indifference stems from my privileged status as generally not being considered one. I have instead spent most of my sexual life married, which has resulted in more frequent accusations of codependency (not true–yes, I have checked with a psychologist on the possibility of that or any other quirks in my cortex–there are quirks, but not that one). I will say I have managed to spend the past five years only married for less than one of them, though I somewhat spoil that by having to admit that I have cohabitated for three.

Which is why I did really enjoy this piece from Jezebel, which has generated (unsuprisingly) all kind of bloggy feedback, both positive and negative. Not because I ever experienced the joys of “sluthood” myself, though I considered the idea on several occasions throughout the years, but because I know what it is to find well into my adult life that I was not only a serial monogamist but that I was a completely unintentional one, with unpleasant psychological results at the ending of the last foray into committed relationshiphood. I also found myself completely burnt out on the emotional roller-coaster ride, though my personal centering solution to this wasn’t to embrace casual sexual encounters. I figured out long ago that I am by nature monogamous, and in spite of the bewildering (to me, anyway–why does anyone care what someone else’s personal consensual sexual preferences are, really..? but oh, silly question–if that were the case, this wouldn’t be the behemoth it is) attempts by some to portray monogamy as unnatural and damaging for everyone. I have to admit, though, that my lack of interest in casual sexual encounters when monogamy is not an issue as everyone involved is totally single has eroded a little over the years. (Why this is, and why I feel I am naturally monogamous in general, is totally worth exploring further and I am gonna do it. Soon. Really!) But it still isn’t much of an interest.

But it’s really old news that only women can be sluts. I have periodically heard in passing, some man or other playfully labeled a “slut,” but it’s pretty meaningless in that context. For women, it can clearly become life-dominating. For Jaclyn Friedman, author of the Jezebel piece that prompted this train of musing, it clearly was as well. Frankly, I find the thought of it exhausting, the burden I and every other woman is supposed to shoulder at puberty (or even before, sometimes) based upon the fact that heterosexual men (the dominant variety) want to have sexual intercourse with us. Besides my history of not having to deal with it much personally, I suspect this exhaustion is the other main reason I am mostly indifferent to the slut meme–I don’t want to think about it. It’s not my problem, dammit! But you know, it is, by virtue of the fact that I am a woman. This is deeply irritating.

So I was already irritated when I continued my perusal of Feministe’s front page and got to this gem:

Diets all around!

Well, here’s some research that can’t possibly be misconstrued: a new study published in The Lancet has documented an association between the amount of weight a mother gains during her pregnancy and the birth weight of her infant. Since birth weight can be used to predict adult BMI, cue the ZOMG! Obesity! commentary. “For babies, studies are just now beginning to show that the effects of tipping the scales at birth may linger throughout life. Many experts suggest that excessive nutrition in pregnancy creates an abnormal uterine environment that permanently changes the baby’s brain, pancreas, fat tissue and other biological systems, said a co-author of the study, Dr. David Ludwig.”

Right.

I ate like a pig during both my pregnancies, once I was able to keep food down at all (in other words, not the first trimester or the first half of the second trimester). Though I may actually be insulting pigs by comparing my gestating eating habits to their usual ones. I gained about fifty pounds both times–I kid you not; when I stood on the scale in the delivery room while in the middle of labor with Offspring No. 2, I weighed in at 197 pounds. Not only did I consume vast quantities of food, it was whatever type of food I madly craved at the moment, which was quite the bewildering variety. (Yes, I drank pickle juice straight out of the jar, among other things. Pregnancy is weird. Avoid it until you are 100% sure it and its lifelong semi-autonomous consequences are what you really, really want.) Some of this food was great stuff for anyone, like the cucumber-and-tangerines kick I went on in the eighth month of pregnancy with one kid. Some of this food was not so great, like the french toast obsession I developed in month six or seven with the other kid.

So I starved myself (involuntarily, I assure you, not to mention dehydrated myself badly) for half of both my pregnancies and gorged like food was going to be gone tomorrow for the other half. I gained probably about as much weight as was recommended for the Octomom to put on (nope, neither of my pregnancies were even with twins). And yet–and yet–

Baby no. 1: male, full-term, 7 lbs 15 oz and 21 in. long
Baby no. 2: male, full-term, 7 lbs 15 1/2 oz and 21 in. long

According to kidshealth.org:

Most full-term babies weigh somewhere between 6 pounds, 2 ounces and 9 pounds, 2 ounces. Their average length ranges from 19 to 21 inches.

Hmm. Does the fact that at 5 feet 8 inches, I’m the shortest person in my family, and the only person shorter than me in the kids’ dad’s family is my sister-in-law at 5 feet 7 inches, and that in neither family is there an adult male below 6 feet in height, have anything to do with anything..? But even taking that into account, the kids weren’t outside the average range in length and were comfortably within the average weight.

Well, how about now though…? Maybe my goatlike approach to ingestion during pregnancy had a delayed response–

Baby no. 1: still male, 18 years old. 6 feet 4 inches tall. 160 pounds. (Actually a bit of a problem, as he is only 4 pounds over the underweight limit for an Air Force enlistee of his height. He has been advised by his recruiter to start scarfing down protein and hitting the gym for some weight training.)

Baby no. 2: still male, 13 years old. 5 feet 4 inches tall. 97 pounds. (According to standard charts for the US, this puts him at about the 80th percentile in height and 45th percentile in weight for a boy his age.)

…maybe I’ve starved them since birth, to hide my grotesque fetal abuse?

I know, I know, one piece of anecdata does not a refutation make…but it does make it hard for me personally to really take this seriously. It makes it very easy for me to see it as yet more womanshaming, safely targeting a role that only, indeed, women can and do take–there’s no way at all to slither out of gender-specific blame here, baby!

Let’s give the ladies a rest for a day, folks. Okay?