In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: April 2005

Weekend Reads

TBogg: Dennis Prager, Call 1-900-HOT-LESBO

Ginmar: Statistics, Damned Statistics

Deborah Hellman: It’s Not The Thought That Counts

When we pose the question of what Equal Protection requires in terms of justifying our answer to the people affected by the laws or policies at issue, we see that from their perspective it makes sense to be concerned with how they are treated rather than with passing judgment on state actors. To know how they are treated, we must focus on the objective features of the laws and policies that affect them, rather than on the internal mental states of the actors that adopt or enact these policies and laws. Returning to Holmes, we might say: when a reasonable person would know the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked, then there is truly a difference that matters for Constitutional law. Where she would not, however, there is not. And Holmes would, most likely, agree.

Kim Procrastinates: First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage… Sex AFTER the baby carriage

Majikthise: Santorum, Fetus Fondler

Pharyngula: I Heart Vaginas

Sapphos Breathing: A History of Politics and Depression

No. 2 Pencil: Private vs. Public Schools

And if you don’t have them blogrolled already, adopt Culture Kitchen:
Teenage Girls in Hell
Hypocrite *Concerned Women For America*
Jesus and “Real” Men
Mothers Who Like to Fuck : Yep. I’m one of them
Race and Multicultural Politics

Reason #849 My Son Amazes Me

I checked on Ethan last night as I was going to bed and noticed his bedroom door was covered with two dozen yellow sticky notes. I crouched down to look at them and look at what I found:

If you have a hard time reading this, it says “Tchaikovsky Music.” The ultimate bonus is the stick drawing of Pablo complete with label.

On Being a Breed Mare

This one speaks for itself, or will have to because I can’t come up with anything remotely un-profane to say about it:

Imagine two rape victims taken to the same hospital emergency room. Imagine them put in adjoining examination rooms.

Let’s say they have identical injuries.

Presume everything about them is the same except for where they are in their menstrual cycles.

Do they deserve access to the same medical treatment?

At most Catholic hospitals in Colorado, they can’t get it.

The protocol of six Catholic hospitals run by Centura calls for rape victims to undergo an ovulation test.

If they have not ovulated, said Centura corporate spokeswoman Dana Berry, doctors tell the victims about emergency contraception and write prescriptions for it if the patient asks.

If, however, the urine test suggests that a rape victim has ovulated, Berry continued, doctors at Centura’s Catholic hospitals are not to mention emergency contraception. That means the victim can end up pregnant by her rapist.

HT: First Draft

Daylight Savings Time

If you think it’s unusual that I would be blogging about daylight davings time long after the time change, it isn’t.

I’m from Indiana, one of the last states to hold out against DST despite an internal debate lasting over thirty years. This has become an incredibly partisan issue in my state politics — Indiana is split by Eastern and Central time zones — with Republicans claiming that the primary reason no outside corporations want to do business with Indiana is that they can’t figure out the time zones (kids, get out your crap detectors) and Democrats holding out because no one wants to be on the Western tail of an Eastern time zone.

Now, which one seems more accurate?

Let me tell you how nice it is never having to change your clock: the days are as long as they are long, short as they are short, daylight in the summertime lasts forever. Once spring rolls around it is far easier to get out of bed as early as we must because the sun is already shining and the house and outdoors are already warm. There is no confusion about what day to change the clocks, no additional traffic accidents or grogginess and time isn’t as arbitrary as it seems to be in other states, it just is. It’s plain pleasant.

But no more. After holding out straight down partisan lines, one rookie member in the split house “changed his vote because the issue had become too partisan, and he wanted to move on to bigger matters such as the two-year state budget. He said he was prepared to explain his actions to constituents, many of whom had opposed adopting daylight-saving time.” And thus we will be changing our clocks along with the rest of the country next April. Never mind that the reasons that DST exists are based on energy-saving strategies which no longer apply thanks to widespread AC use, that Indiana is based on agriculture and plants and animals don’t observe DST, or that the reasons for initially beginning observance of DST as opposed to observing standard time zones has everything to do with World War I and little afterward.

Above all, never mind that a majority in Indiana were opposed to the bill and the only “constituents” to back it were businesses. Our politicians are “prepared to explain” despite our oppostition. Indiana is now as ridiculous as of the rest of the country. Evidence:

House Speaker Brian Bosma called the 51-46 decision one of the most “heroic” votes in his 20 years in the General Assembly.

“I can tell you that the rest of the nation, the rest of the world, knows that Indiana doesn’t get it,” Bosma said. “Now is the day to tell the rest of the world that we are willing to step into the 21st century.”

Bosma, another evangelical politician to add to our lists, also believes that legal discrimination against homosexual partnerships is also a step into the 21st century. One of his pet projects is maintaining the Indiana state’s ban against seme-sex marriage, and pushing another more explicit amendment to add to the state constitution banning gay marriage again just for kicks.

No matter how much he loves the cape his mama made him, this man ain’t no hero.

And me? I’m far for likely to side with this guy:

“This is not the second coming that is going to take Indiana into a brighter future,” Democratic state Rep. William Crawford said.

But getting rid of Mr. Bosma and his right-wing idiot parade just might be the first step.

UPDATE: Chuck has more explanation.

Those of you that aren’t from the area don’t get this, and I’m sorry. There is just no way that I can impart to you how contentious this issue is / was / has been / will be. Unlike many other “political” issues, this is an issue on which no one really has any sort of ethical qualms about holding a strong position. Many times, people will have a taboo on abortion or gay rights or whatever, and they just won’t talk about issue X. But nobody has that about DST. Everyone has an opinion, and most people aren’t afraid of expressing that opinion loudly.

My family almost came to fisticuffs last time we all got together because of this. Seriously.

A Brief Moment of Intellectual Superiority

I’m glad I opted for college:

Love is likely to thank for Paris’ newly angelic demeanor. She was joined at the W Hotel after-party by her new beau, Greek shipping heir Paris Latsis.

“He’s definitely the one,” she said, explaining that Paris Un et Paris Deux met way back in 1997 in a Hilton-owned Monaco club called Jimmy’s.

“Paris and I met when he was 14 and I was 16,” she said. “I had this fake tattoo on my back, and he came up and was like, ‘Is that real?’ and I totally lied and said, ‘Yeah.’ He’s like, ‘That’s hot,’ and I’m like, ‘I know.’ Then he said, ‘My name’s Paris,’ and I said, ‘My name’s Paris.’ Then we danced all night.”

“He always gives me nice gifts,” she said.

Friday Random Ten – The Apparently Ass-Kickin’ Edition

You know the deal. If it’s Friday somewhere, it’s time for the Friday Random Ten. Load up all your mp3s, set to random play, and list the first ten to grace your precious ears.

It looks like Winamp is into some ass-kickin’ rock this evening.

1) Motorhead – Hellraiser
2) Modest Mouse – Bukowski (how did this get on my playlist?)
3) Slayer – Mandatory Suicide
4) Detroit Cobras – Cha Cha Twist
5) RJD2 – The Horror (and this?)
6) MC5 – Ramblin’ Rose
7) Vibrators – Yeah Yeah Yeah
8) Yo-Yos – Leaning On You
9) Wu-Tang Clan – Conditioner
10) GG Allin – Beat Beat Beat

Leave yours on your own blog or in the comments.

Posted in Uncategorized

Done!

I finished my projects last night and sat down in front of the tube, but I was too wired to sit there. And so I ended up doing an amazing array of things until 5:30 in the morning. Luckily my first class was cancelled, so I was able to get a nice three hour nap before my first class of the day.

This was the day that I was to give a brief, informal presentation for my poopin’ dogs project: a sad PP presentation in which a lone white dog takes a crap all over beautiful landscapes. As much as I appreciate attempts at letting us be creative in class, I often end of making fun of a) the project or b) myself during the project’s implementation. This one was a bit of both. See the picture detail sans literary caption.

The project was based on a book I’ve been reading all semester, “Teaching As A Subversive Activity,” a book written in the 1960s on implementing critical thinking skills above the factory-style teaching to the test. The premise is how to reform schools in order to make the best of critical thinking skills, above all to teach kids how to value their voices in a growing political and digital age and promote several levels of literacy that many schools do not acknowledge. It’s a great book if you ignore some of the gendered and racial language (a contemporary rewrite would be in order), and surprisingly, it remains wholly relevant almost thirty-five years after its publication.

My favorite question in this book is, “What is worth knowing?” Teachers are never at a loss of content, thanks to new federal laws that all Florida elementary schoolers know what a toboggan is. The relevance is up for questioning. Add compulsory standardized testing and we’re fucked. My presentation was titled after the first chapter of the book, “Crap Detecting,” in which the first sentence sarcastically begins “In 1492, Columbus discovered America…”

This is total crap. Hence the poopin’ dog.

All the pictures were a bit of a Where’s Waldo? thing, this one being the last in the picture series (at which point my classmates would detect the pictorial crap, and hopefully not notice that the whole project was an exercise in trying to cover up the crap that my project unfortunately is). But with only three hours of sleep, I walked up in front of the class and embarassed myself by giving a completely incoherent talk on school models and critical thinking. I got absolutely no response but crickets chirping and a quiet appreciation for my ability to photoshop a reflection of a poopin’ dog on a still lake.

From now on if class is optional and I am sleep-deprived, I’m so not going.

Knit for Choice

Dr. B. has radical reasons behind her knitting:

Doctors say Kenya’s strict abortion laws have forced thousands of women and girls to the backstreets where charlatans use all manner of sharp instruments — metal wires, knitting needles, forceps — to penetrate the womb and kill the foetus.

I know that this is absolutely insane. It’s where we have been in the U.S. and where we swiftly headed back to. As the daughter of the woman who ran a women and children’s clinic in the 70s and 80s and who had seen the horrors of botched abortions […] I knit with a purpose.

I do think about this now and then when I pick up my knitting needles. They have been used as weapons against others and against ourselves. Occasionally as I stroll through my house I see items once used with frequency in America to butcher women from the inside out. My stomach turns.

What is most horrifying is that these items are used to perform abortions by the untrained across the world on millions of women. And on occasion, still in the United States because, as Dr. B. says, we’re headed back to that time unless we are able to stop those who successfully battle against our rights to contraception and other methods of birth control.

HT: Dr. B.