March 2008 – Page 4

Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Chucktatorship.

Or, why the conservative line about listening to the Founding Fathers’ views on every last issue is a little silly. From Chuck himself:

I was appalled when I read the American Family Association report that Friday, April 25, “several thousand schools across the nation will be observing ‘Day of Silence (DOS).’ DOS is a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools. … DOS is sponsored by an activist homosexual group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.”

Is encouraging or teaching about homosexuality what our Founders expected for the public education system they started? Even the most liberal among them opposed it. For example, Thomas Jefferson drafted a bill concerning the criminal laws of Virginia, in which he proposed that the penalty for sexual deviance should be unique corporal punishment. Jefferson’s views were indeed representative of early America:

“Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro’ the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least.” Can you imagine a statesman proposing such a law today?

Well, no, because that’s insane.

Chuck goes on to clarify that he, of course, is not “espousing such treatment” — but he does “believe that we equally and adamantly should oppose such aberrant sexual behavior from being condoned or commemorated in our public schools through textbooks or a so-called “Day of Silence.””

So we shouldn’t castrate people or cut holes in their noses, but we should do something “equally and adamantly” oppositional. How very evolved.

But it’s not just Teh Gays that are the problem — God and Guns also factor in. And Chuck suggests that we should, literally, turn back the clock:

To each of the social dilemmas in these three news stories (regarding guns, God and gays), a remedy can be found by turning back the clocks of time and consulting our Founding Fathers. They started this great experiment we call America. It seems to me their wisdom is still fit to guide us. It is, after all, upon their greatest work that public servants are called to fulfill their oath of office: “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States …”

It’s kinda funny to see wingnuts twist themselves in circles with arguments like this. They’re all about invading countries populated by brown people, and they justify the invasions by arguing that people in those countries do crazy stuff like stone homosexuals, riot over cartoons of God, dwell in villages run by gun-toting warlords, and limit women’s rights. Because, you know, that shit is backwards and in need of liberation at gunpoint.*

Then they want to go all 1787 on our asses, and bring us back to the good old days when castration was punishment for a blowjob, women couldn’t vote, and slavery was a cornerstone of the economy. Truly special.

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*Even though, of course, the reality on the ground is a whole lot more nuanced and complicated, and our invasions manage to set equality back a few decades.

Tuesday Travel Blogging – Puerto Rico

Spring break is over, which means that I’m back in school and back to Feministe. I spent most of last week in Puerto Rico, which was lovely and relaxing — and now it’s back to the grind. A million thanks to Anne for her awesome guest-blogging. Full-time blogging on my part should resume tonight.

The full set of PR pictures is here, and choice shots are below the fold. Enjoy!

Beach, originally uploaded by JillNic83.

Moralizing about single parents

Do yourself a favor and go read Lauren’s post about a Dear Prudence column that Emily Yoffe vomited up:

Judging from her latest piece, Emily Yoffe, Slate’s advice columnist, is going after Dear Abby’s job. Incensed that Dear Abby stole her advice thunder by insisting that the rape of one man’s sleeping wife is obviously a big ol’ lie, Yoffe tried to up the ante by writing a concern troll piece on single parenting, concluding that the real problem with single parents, namely single mothers, is that they don’t feel enough proper shame for their failed attempts at parenting, i.e. shame for their stupid, destructive children. Yoffe cushions her assertions with a bit of social science that leaves out wide swaths of information about the realities of why single parents opt to remain single, and tries to couch her concern in economic blither and psychobabble blather. There’s so much wrong with her essay that I sprained an eyeball by rolling them so hard, starting with the ever-present definition of “single parent” as “unmarried woman.”

I prefer “dumb whore” — it keeps things simple[.]

Lest you think this is some kind of aberration on Yoffe’s part, I invite you to take a trip through the archives here at Feministe. She’s got several opinions about children, namely, that if you’re married, it’s your duty to have them regardless of whether you want to have them or not (and Yoffe knows that you *really* do, no matter what you say), and if you aren’t married, you should be, you irresponsible slut. And while you’re at it, keep your husband happy by doing all the work without complaining and let him fuck you even if you don’t want to.

Just a wife.

Posted without comment:

Start paying attention around 4:50.

Um….

I’m not so sure that casting the female candidate for president as a beaver is a really good strategy, Erica.

Casting the black candidate as a stallion probably not a good idea, either.

Just sayin’.

A scoop of irony to go with your schadenfreude pie?

Quite possibly the most perfect bit of irony ever.

Define/perpetuate

Lisa–as usual–has already devoted many paragraphs to responding to this post, but I’m adding my contribution here, because I read this comment and sorta went, “Hm.”

Here is my position in a nutshell:
1. Transwomen are people (yep! “people”) that have made some sort of *change* to be considered (trans) “women”
2. To have transitioned is to have supported the message that links what our bodies are to how we express them. That, to me, is gender. (That those expressions, however, oftentimes have binary influence-influence not carbon copy- is no accident.)
3. I don’t want body parts “expressible” (maybe you do? or don’t care either way)
To “express” womanhood/being a “woman” is to further define/perpetuate how those with the status of “woman” under Status Quo Norms should act or behave and, thusly, what people expect from them (for obvious reasons, you didn’t become trans to be considered translisa). Any positive re-enforcement of this, afaic, is problematic and oppressive.4. I recognize that my latter points are not appreciated by transpersons so I’m not going to go out of my way (across seas, lots of expense) to say those things to transpersons who already have a hard enough time with conservative values. Contrary to typical conflation radfems are not conservatives–our positions are wholly different and you are smart enough to discern.
5. All I would like, wrt to trans exclusive spaces, are enough places I may go, in one lifetime, on one hand, that allow me to speak comfortably about the points presented above.
6. I will always question the motives of trans who can in one breath call me transphobic (or bigot, or fundamentalist) and then ask “So can I come?”

sex (with a married woman) = greencard

No wonder immigrants fear immigration officials. Apparently a US immigration agent, after interviewing the 22 year old Colombian wife of an American citizen, began to contact the woman requesting sexual favors in return for her green card. The clearly intelligent woman recorded the request on her cell phone and then went to the New York Times.

The agent insisted that she had to trust him. “I wouldn’t ask you to do something for me if I can’t do something for you, right?” he said, and reasoned, “Nobody going to help you for nothing,” noting that she had no money.

Apparently the US government does not pay him to properly and legally HELP immigrants to gain citizenship for nothing?

Oh, wait, they do pay him $50,000 a year “to be part of a larger pattern”.

“Mr. Maxwell, the immigration agency’s former chief investigator, told Congress in 2006 that internal corruption was “rampant,” and that employees faced constant temptations to commit crime.”

[The agency] stopped posting an e-mail address and phone number for such complaints last year, said Jan Lane, chief of security and integrity, because it lacks the staff to cull the thousands of mostly irrelevant messages that resulted. Immigrants, she advised, should report wrongdoing to any law enforcement agency they trust.

Yes, because after an official US immigration officer threatens your citizenship, suggests you will be sent back to your country, you should report it to another US agency that you trust… trust??

A commentary on our attitude towards immigrants… read the full article for all of the sad details.

A little bit more…

Sorry for one more Spitzer/Paterson article, but this gets at the heart of the comment I just left regarding Jill’s previous post on Spitzer. Where do we draw the line on what is considered private versus public information? And if it goes beyond the illegal (prostitution, soliciting sex, etc) who gets to judge?

Does Alfred?

Alfred Harris, a deacon at the Samuel’s Temple of God in Christ Baptist Church at Park Avenue and 125th Street, who said that the new governor, like the old governor, should step down. “There are enough righteous men for these positions, but we just haven’t found them yet.”

(note the use of the word MEN here.)

Does Shelley?

“You wonder, if you dug into a lot of governors’ or senators’ lives, what you’d really find,” said Shelley Sue Reig, “I don’t think it’s really fair to dig, but they have always been held to a higher standard, just like C.E.O.s of companies. They’re held to a higher standard, too.”

(Just curious, but exactly what kind of ‘higher standard’ do we hold CEO’s to? I have never heard of a CEO being asked to step down because s/he had an affair…)

I personally think if it isn’t illegal, and it does not impact your job, then the moral judgments should be left to those who are actually impacted.

What if you threw a party on Stained Blue Dress Day and nobody came?

Stay classy, Brian Ross and the ABC News Investigative Team.

Screencap image swiped with permission from Liss.

I really don’t know what to say at this point. Unbeknownst to me, yesterday was not actually the fifth anniversary of our invasion of Iraq, but Wank Day, as our mainstream media pored through the 11,000 pages of records from Hillary Clinton’s eight years as First Lady and grabbed the Lubriderm.

Oh, yes, boys and girls, it must have felt so good to be able to trot out the Blue Dress and add new, fresh wankstains to it. Thing’s more stain than dress at this point, what with being used as a receptacle for the splooge of a media desperate for ways to revive the Lewinsky scandal and remind everyone that Hillary Clinton’s husband cheated on her! Right under her nose!

(The WSJ, OTOH, would like to remind you that she’s a murderer, even if she wasn’t in the area when Vince Foster was killed.)

Message to the media: if you really want to relive the Clinton era, you might want to reach a little further back and this little mantra in mind: “It’s the economy, stupid.”