May 2007 – Page 4

Request for assistance

Any family lawyers in the house willing to answer a question or two?

Email at feministe (at) gmail (dot) com.

Thanks!

The Homosexual Agenda Hits the White House

Just look at the evil that homosexuality has wrought:

He may look innocent wrapped in a blanket and wearing a little cap,* but we must remember that this is the child of homosexuals. Therefore, he deserves fewer protections and rights than the children of heterosexual parents, and should grow up being taught that his family is deviant, sick and undeserving of legal recognition. Thank goodness Vice President Cheney’s proud party is willing to stand up to these destroyers of traditional marriage. I’m sure he is very proud.

*Secret: I am a sucker for babies in caps. And dogs in shoes.

Futile Care

Speaking of Blue, that rejection extends to things like survival, as well:

Oh, fuck you, Lou Sheldon.

I’m sorry, that wasn’t very funny.

Pam went to the trouble of writing a real post that I just saw.

(She quotes another blogger, Jeremy at Good as You:

How does one even respond? Do you say that yes, in fact, under ENDA, one could still freely tell the blonde above that she must tone down her wardrobe and makeup to fit the company dress code? Or do you question why “homosexual” and “pansexual” are grouped with the available gender options, as if one’s sexual orientation or proclivity is the same thing as their gender identity? Do you ask who, exactly, would use the “not sure” bathroom and question why even in the fearmongery, offensive world of TVC’s making would such an option be necessary? Or should you point out that in the transgender community, she-male is considered highly offensive (much along the lines of “faggot,” which we hope TVC would not feel it okay to use)?

Well, I have the strong sense that that last approach would just be a waste of time. I know that Jeremy’s doing a bit of exasperated tongue-in-cheek here, but I think that all of these rhetorical points are a dead loss. As far as Lou is concerned, sexual orientation is gender nonconformity is gender confusion–and trans anything is equally null a set. None of these preferences or needs are valid, and the people who insist on keeping them with dignity cannot be allowed either their freedom or the simple respect of acknowledgement.)

Awhile back–right around the Eli Clare piece on links between disability and trans autonomy–Blue asked whether I or other trans bloggers saw any parallels between trans stuff and disability stuff (the answer is yes, lots, and hopefully more later). I guess one of them would be this one: this total inability to understand that those other people have lives and bodies, too–that they have needs as non-negotiable as yours, and require provision for them just like anyone else would. They buy and proceed to wear clothing! They eat in restaurants! They get hay fever (or herpes) and require prescription medication! They read books from local libraries and bookstores! They go to the movies! They attend funerals in cemeteries! They scope out local singles bars!

And where they don’t, they probably would really like to.

Most people need bathrooms. Lou Sheldon goes to the bathroom. (I mean, I hope he does.) Not being able to go to the bathroom is a huge problem. It can ruin your job, your shopping trip, your anniversary party, your vacation, your excursion out of your own house. It can even cause other people to pre-emptively ruin those things for you. It’s stressful and painful and deeply humiliating. It can endanger your health–and I’m not even talking about people who might have special health issues with regard to their bladders or kidneys or bodies. It can even get you arrested. Trans and gender-variant people have huge problems finding safe bathrooms, and they suffer as a result.

I have trouble attributing this mysterious exemption from a pretty rudimentary human need–one that would probably make perfect sense to Lou Dobbs if it were a complaint from many other groups of people–to anything other than a reflexive rejection of the humanity of transpeople, just it must be with disabled people. That impression is only strengthened by this idea that Sheldon has that transpeople are ridiculous and unreasonable for wanting access to toilets, for wanting to enter a public restroom without fear of reprisal.

If Wanting To See Vaginas Is A Crime, Then I, Your Honor, Am Guilty

Amazing. I’m just waiting to see a straight-faced version of this same argument to appear on a men’s rights site — except it would end by telling “Ameriskanks” that if we won’t let men see our vaginas, they’ll just go find real women in Eastern Europe and Asia to peep at.

Thanks to Terry for the link.

Family Planning Riots in China

Reuters reports that China admits to detaining 28 people in recent riots protesting the country’s draconian one-child policy, enforced with high fines, infanticide and forced abortions.

The 28 were “suspected of instigating” the riots that flared in the Guangxi region last week, the Xinhua news agency reported. It did not specify their identities or the charges they faced.

Villagers attacked officials and burned cars in protest against attempts to enforce family-planning policies they called harsh and unjust, witnesses earlier told Reuters. Xinhua also said protesters damaged government offices and files.

The Xinhua report was the first public official statement about the protests, and it blamed traditional-minded locals in Bobai county, where it said seven towns saw riots late last week. The main riot involved about 300 residents in the town of Dungu on Thursday, it said.

But the report also made clear that sweeping family-planning penalties lay behind the discontent.

“Violations of the family planning policies are common in Bobai as local residents still hold to the traditional idea that having more children brings more happiness,” Xinhua said.

“The county’s family-planning workers have carried out large-scale law enforcement campaigns,” it added.

A local official told Xinhua that the rising population was squeezing land availability. But a county government chief suggested that not all the blame lay with residents.

“There may be problems with the family planning work of the government, which have prompted complaints from residents,” Huang Shaoming, the head of Bobai, said.

Some couples with more than one child must pay fines of up to tens of thousand yuan (thousands of dollars), villagers earlier told Reuters.

China launched its one-child policy in 1980 to curb a ballooning population, now at more than 1.3 billion.

The restrictions, which vary from city to countryside, have bolstered a traditional preference for boys and have drawn fire from Western countries and human rights watchdogs after reports of forced abortions and infanticide.

It’s a tough situation in China — the government understandably wants to keep the population in check (and lord knows we have enough people on this planet), but the enforcement of the one-child policycan be so harsh that it amounts to human rights abuse, and the traditional preference for boys has led to widespread abandonment, and in some cases killing, of girls.

Thoughts?

I think I’m glad I never saw this when it came out

I really wanted to see it, though. I was all set to see it for my 12th birthday, but then my best friend’s parents found out it was rated PG, and wouldn’t let her come, so we saw something else. I don’t remember what it was, but it wasn’t the death of Michael Beck’s film career, and it wasn’t the death of Gene Kelly.

Oh, but the cheese. And that unfortunate hairdo they gave that one Muse — it looks like she’s got a dildo on her haid. And the roller skates. And did I mention the cheese?

via.

Fat chicks should be glad someone would want to rape them in the first place

Yes, really.

A barrister provoked outrage yesterday by claiming that the victim of an alleged gang rape was so fat she would have been ‘glad of the attention’.

Sheilagh Davies, defending one of three boys accused of raping two girls, said the 16-year-old girl had ‘slimmed down a lot’ since the alleged attack.

She told Inner London Crown Court: ‘She was 12st 6lb – not quite the swan she may turn into. She may well have been glad of the attention.

…which is exactly why she accused them of rape. Right.

I don’t know quite what to say about this one. Sometimes there aren’t really words. Stories like this make me embarassed to be human.

Thanks to Little Cabbage for the link.

“Those” children

There’s an incredibly powerful piece in the LA Times about a couple adopting an autistic son, and the reactions that they’ve received — Why don’t they have their own children? Did they try IVF? Could they not get a healthy white baby? They really must be saints.

Go read the whole thing, because I really cannot do it justice.

Some of my heroes

These women.

Lederer, 30, can’t relate to the images that drew an older generation of physicians into abortion work. She can barely picture it when they talk about life before legal abortion: the blood-spattered apartments, the women racked with infection from stabbing sticks into their wombs.

But she and other young doctors-in-training have found their own motivation to enter a field that they know will put them at risk of isolation, harassment and hatred. For them, doing abortions is an act of defiance — a way of pushing back against mounting restrictions on a right they’ve taken for granted all their lives.