June 2006 – Page 22

Abortion in State Races

Abortion is presenting quite an issue to pro-choice and anti-choice politicians like. Now that South Dakota has banned abortion, pro-choicers are understandably panicking, and anti-choicers have a wrench thrown in their strategy of slowly chipping away at abortion rights.

In many state races, it remains uncertain who will benefit from the sudden focus on abortion bans — candidates who oppose abortion rights or those who favor them. Sometimes the political calculation gets complicated. While support for bans has grown, especially in some Southern states, even those who oppose abortion rights do not agree that direct challenges to Roe v. Wade are the best approach. Some argue that gradual efforts to limit abortion are more likely to win support.

“I think that, in the short term, this issue can be less helpful to pro-life candidates,” said Daniel McConchie, vice president of Americans United for Life, a group that opposes abortion rights. “The questions that are being asked are hypothetical, things governors mostly won’t control. My concern is that the average person on the ground will misinterpret the questions to be something more real than they really are right now.”

Anti-choicers know that the majority of Americans don’t want to see abortion illegalized. Their strategy up until now has been to shave off right after right, making abortions more and more difficult (and in some places impossible) to get. That way, most Americans operate under the impression that abortion is accessible, when the reality is that for a lot of people, it isn’t. But a ban makes people think twice — do we really want to take this right completely away?

As for most governors not having any control over abortion rights, that’s patently false. Considering that a handful of state legislatures have already passed or are considering abortion bans and governors have veto power, I’d say that their role is fairly crucial.

The article focuses on Iowa, with nearly every one of the candidates saying something to the effect of, “I’m gettnig asked about it a lot, but I don’t think it’s that important.” Which is… great.

Office Piranhas

Watch out, middle-aged men: They’re gonna getcha.

They are identifiable not by their short skirts or heavy make-up but by their unflinching devotion to their male bosses. They will work late for them, pick up their dry cleaning and even buy birthday presents for their relatives. They are single women who, stuck in their search for a personal partner, are ready to give their all to a professional one. What they want is a high-earning, high-flying, high-virility man – and one who they can drag to the altar. Welcome to the world of the “office piranha”.

Read More…Read More…

So there’s this meme going around…

And I’m not going to answer it, but I wanted to ask all of you:

What’s the least attractive “fantasy” component you can possibly think of? Are you profoundly lactose intolerant (or an ultra-militant vegan), so much so that the thought of licking whip cream off of anything makes you ill? Is your horrible ex a firefighter? Did you actually get caught making out with a coworker in the copy room?

Read More…Read More…

Going to the Mat

(Sigh)

So Jay put up a wonderful post about how it’s possible to value some of the wonderful contributions bloggers make and still take them to task for their failures. He was talking specifically about Heart, and how she’s boffo on the anti-racist stuff but still not getting it about the “trans issue.” He’s right: there are dozens of bloggers who disappoint me in some ways and impress me in others; I’m sure Jay and Heart feel the same way about certain of the white feminist bloggers they’ve been so harsh on lately.

He’s also right that she’s right about comments threads and hostile environments:

Exactly! Why are the posts of racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, white supremacist haters not being moderated? Are long-ass trainwreck comments threads, and endless displays of ignorance hits so important to you that you are willing to just blow off, ignore, the damage they cause as evidenced in posts and threads like bfp’s and nubian’s?

I’m doing some serious thinking and planning, both about how I moderate and how I respond as a commenter. There’ve been some pretty grotesque trainwrecks here, and they were as unproductive a use of my time–and everyone else’s–as I can imagine. There’s no excuse for that.

Heart responded, very nicely, but said something that just made my teeth itch. I’m just going to respond to it, in the spirit of activist compartmentalization:

Ah Jay. What a beautiful post, so powerful. Makes me cry. Thank you for writing it. I am going to blog soon about some of what you are talking about in your post, trans issues. I have a lot, lot, lot I want to say. For now, let me just say that I’m so very sincerely sorry to have caused you or anybody in your situation any pain–it doesn’t help anything, or solve anything, I know, but I never, ever intended to do that. That was never the plan.

*Sniff* Aw.

This goes out to Heart, to the defensive anti-racism newbies, to the men who can’t bear the thought that women might not like them*, and to everyone else who ever blundered into a progressive discussion like the proverbial bull into a china shop (myself included): No one cares how you feel. No one wants to waste so much as a nanosecond on your feelings, or your intentions, or your guilt, or your pain. Now and forever, keep them to yourself.

In this context, they’re not just immaterial: they’re a diversion, a red herring. This has never been about feelings. No one has ever believed that Heart sits up at night thinking about ways to hurt the transsexuals because she hates them so very, very much–just as no one ever believed that the IRS chortles to itself because transsexuals can’t deduct their medical expenses. It’s about the validity of her arguments (nil), and the effect they have (negative).

I don’t care whether she wants to give every transsexual on the face of the planet a big hug and a hot cup of camomile tea, any more than brownfemipower cared that I felt real bad about my inadequate linking habits.

Finally, an apology is a promise to change. I therefore don’t accept this as one.

But good work on the anti-racist thing, Heart! All my compliments!

*Not, mind, the comment itself, which was insightful.

But it’d be so tastefully decorated!

Okay, so Kevin wrote a post on the Washington Post’s series on “Being a Black Man.” And I want to comment at length, but first I have to highlight this bit, because bwah ha ha ha ha ha!

Here’s a story: A Black man who was in all other respects a good person, when finding out that I lived with a gay man, could only respond, “how can you live in an apartment that smells like ass all the time?”

Really? I thought fags were all anal-retentive neat freaks.

Anyway, Kevin goes on to write about the Washington Post’s description of black male culture, which I’ll just re-quote here:

On the streets, strangers frequently give each other an uptick of the head when their eyes meet, a nod of black male acknowledgment. Black men have invented so many special handshakes that a recent McDonald’s commercial turns on this fact. Their commonality is often defined by their style, their walk, their slang and even how they refer to each other (”Slim,” “Shorty,” “Dawg,” “Mo,” “Brother”). Wherever black men congregate, there is often a comfort level that crosses class and generational lines. There is even a universally acknowledged black men’s club, the barbershop, where no subject is off limits.

(Q: What do two trannyboys do in bed together?

A: They take off their shirts.)

It can be such a thin line between celebrating commonality and parroting stereotypes, particularly when outsiders are doing it. The head-tic thing–which I’ve actually gotten from men, period, which is odd–is also something that queers of various stripes do. Ragdoll over at Television Without Pity called it, “The Look of Mutual Homosexual Acknowledgement.” I’ve also heard, “The Nod of Lesbian Solidarity.” A quick non-verbal “hey” to the only other one in the room could well be a more general thing.

Which kind of makes me wonder how the Washington Post is going to deal with commonality as a function of racism and segregation, or as a historical firebrake against racism, and whether–as Kevin points out–it’ll make much of an effort to separate reality from pop-culture stereotype.

Disrespectful to Food

This article, about a prodigy at eating, offended a few people who wrote in to the Datebook section to complain:

Our rates of childhood obesity have tripled since 1980. Regular reminders from the California Department of Education inform us that about 75 percent of our kids flunk national fitness tests.

And yet, I don’t know any sixth-graders who enter eating contests–in fact, it’s pretty uncommon to gorge oneself in the way Chestnut does. Poor eating habits are different from “gluttony” in Chestnut terms. And Chestnut himself isn’t all that hefty.

The piece about eating contests filled me with disgust. You devoted many inches to something I and many others cannot comprehend. In today’s world, with millions starving and other millions suffering from obesity, holding competitions to eat lots of food drips with irony. And, as Julia Child would have said, it’s disrespectful to the food.

As opposed to the weekly segment in which food writers compare the eight different kinds of white truffle oil available in the Bay Area? Or the “Best Wedding Cake Ever” special on the Food Network last week? You know, the one that aired right after Rachel Ray toured a ceviche bar? Or maybe the mille fiumi cupcakes at Citizen Cake, or the fifteen-dollar polenta* appetizers at Hawthorne Alley? If having a consumptive attitude towards food is a bad thing, and if indulgence in the face of starvation is selfish, that holds true for gluttony and fetishization. And if hyperconsumption in the face of need is grotesque, that holds true for the guy who broke the world record for number of consecutive skydiving runs.

I have no interest in eating contests, and am not all that excited about Chestnut’s special skill. But why does he stand out? Bizarre, sure. But the symbol of all that’s wrong with our eating habits?

*You know, corn mush?

How Many Feminists Does it Take to Tell a Joke?

Ilyka, in comments about The Alphabet of Occasional Chuckles:

I’ve been thinking about this general subject of what’s funny vs. that’s not funny a lot recently anyway, and I don’t think there are any easy answers. For myself, it breaks down like this: I might laugh at a misogynist joke, but two conditions have to apply. First, it has to be really, really well done, and since the subject’s been mined so thoroughly, that’s increasingly difficult to do. Second, and even more importantly, my “I’m kidding, except I’m really not kidding” detector has to stay silent. If I sense that the dude making the joke really means it, on any level, that he really hates women–it’s not funny.

Yes! Exactly!

Read More…Read More…

Study Finds Female Genital Mutilation Can Increase Risk that Mothers or Their Babies Will Die In Childbirth By 50%

Scary.

The first large medical study of female genital cutting has found that the procedure has deadly consequences when the women give birth, raising by more than 50 percent the likelihood that the woman or her baby will die.

Rates of serious medical complications surrounding childbirth, such as bleeding, also rose substantially in women who had undergone genital cutting, according to new research being published today in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

“Reliable evidence about its harmful effects, especially on reproduction, should contribute to the abandonment of the practice,” wrote the study’s authors, all members of the World Health Organization Study Group on Female Genital Mutilation and Obstetrical Outcome.

And just so we’re clear on the what’s involved in the practice, the World Health Organization classifies the types of female genital mutilation thusly:

Read More…Read More…

Better Late than Never

(So during the long blog slowdown that attended the Cold that Wouldn’t Leave, finals week, and my trip to New York, I received several links from alert readers and saw some nifty stuff online that I wanted to comment on. I’m gonna start with what I think is the earliest first.)

First of all, brownfemipower could use some kind words. It’s disgraceful that she should be made to feel like a failure for taking care of herself and her family, or like a leech for taking advantage of a social support system that’s supposed to be available when needed. The hell with that. My community college costs me thirty bucks a credit; five years ago, it was half of that. Would it not be really stupid to think of myself as not taking hard-earned money from taxpayers? Do my watercolor classes serve a higher purpose? I don’t recall anyone ever telling me that I should be ashamed of painting on the public dole, or questioning my right to instruction. Feh.

Second, way way back, she posted about learning about the trans community SAII, in response to my post about masculinity among ftms and ft? people:

So I have spent the time since I met Piny (and Vegan and Jay) reading their sites, reading trans sites, and just googling various terms/issues/concepts that I keep coming across. And although I still am fairly aware I am speaking out of my unknowlegeable trans baby butt–and issue has come up in the last few days that I felt was important for me to address.

Read More…Read More…

‘Splain This To Me

So, here we have an op-ed by a member of Opus Dei, who is a professor of English at the University of Houston, taking the view that The DaVinci Code is actually good for Opus Dei because it gets people curious, and he can then answer questions and do a little recruiting.

And yes, he wears a cilice.

All fine and good, but then he starts in with the whole “I got a job as a conservative in liberal academia and I just knew they weren’t going to accept me” thing, concluding with, “but they did.” Yeah, nothing we’ve haven’t heard before from the “liberal professors scary!” crowd. But then he says this:

Curiously, I have found that liberals — perhaps more than conservatives — often get the idea of mortification. They understand that merely giving money to help the needy is inadequate and patronizing. One key element behind corporal mortification is to feel solidarity with the poor and the suffering, denying oneself some comfort, whether it be by fasting or wearing a cilice.

Um…what?

Is he seriously equating actually doing work to help the needy with mortification of the flesh?

I’m sorry, but if I were at a soup kitchen, I’d rather get a bowl of soup funded by someone who did no more than write a check than have someone tell me that he knows just how I feel because he wears a spiked strap around his thigh a few hours a day. And get no soup.

“I feel your pain” don’t feed the bulldog, you know?

WTF?