May 2008 – Page 2

LOST Finale Open Thread

There is going to be some serious LOSTPedia reading to be done tomorrow. Best. Season Finale. Ever.

Thoughts from fellow LOSTies?

The Pill: Help Us Write Its History

Passing this along for a friend:

Dear Friends (and friends of friends…),

The Pill is often considered one of the most important innovations of the twentieth century. As I investigate this claim for a new book—set for release on the 50th anniversary of the Pill’s FDA approval (Basic Books, 2010)—I’m looking to include the voices and stories of real people. I hope yours will be one of them. I’m eager to hear from men as well as women, of all ages and backgrounds.

· Have you or any of your partners taken the Pill? Why or why not? How did it work for you—physically, emotionally, and ethically? How has it compared with other contraceptive methods you or your partners have used?
· What has been the impact of the Pill on your sex life, relationships, political or social attitudes, and beliefs about the medical or pharmaceutical establishments?
· Do you have opinions about public policies related to access, availability, approval or limitations on the development and distribution of the Pill and related contraceptive products (the patch, the “morning after pill,” long-term injections, etc.).
· Anything else you think I should know?

Send me your most richly detailed answers to any and all of these questions (and don’t forget to include your age, gender, where you live, occupation, ethnic/religious/racial background, sexual orientation, marital status, political party affiliation, or any other biographical info you think is important). If you would like to participate in my study but would prefer to respond to a questionnaire, please let me know and I will happily send you one.
I’m interested in hearing from men and women who have used the Pill and those who have not, those who used it briefly or a long time ago, or who use it now. I am also eager to hear from people who work in fields that relate to the use and availability of the Pill (such as medicine, public health, social work, education, etc.). You will remain anonymous. I will use your contact information only to respond to you directly and to let you know when the book will be available for purchase (at a discount to contributors!).

And just one more thing. I not only want to hear your voice, but the voices of those you love, teach, preach to, learn from, and work with. Please pass this request on! The more responses I receive, and the greater the diversity of respondents, the more the book will reflect the wide range of experiences and attitudes that have shaped the Pill’s history over the last half century.
I hope to hear from you. Please write to me at elainetylermay@gmail.com.
If you want to know more about me and my work, please click the link below.

Thanks very much!
Elaine Tyler May

Elaine Tyler May grew up in Los Angeles and now teaches at the University of Minnesota. She was twelve years old in 1960 when the Pill was approved by the FDA. Although not yet old enough for the event to have any personal significance for her, she was already interested in the subject because her father was one of the clinical researchers who helped develop the Pill, and her mother was a founder of free birth control clinics in Los Angeles. In spite of her later efforts at responsible use of contraception, she is the mother of three offspring.
http://www.hist.umn.edu/people/facExp.php?UID=mayxx002

Governor Paterson Orders State Agencies to Recognize Same-Sex Marriage

UPDATE: If you live in NY, please call the governor’s office TODAY and let them know that you support Paterson’s directive. Call 1-518-474-8390 and say “I support the Governor’s directive on marriage equality,” then give them your 5 digit zip code. I did it just this moment, and it really is that easy. The opposition is gearing up and we need to let them know that they’re on the losing side. Go! (Thanks to Angela for the email.)

New York Governor David Paterson has issued a directive that all state agencies must revise their policies to recognize same-sex marriages that were legally performed in other states and countries.

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Thank You!

To Ismone, who very generously sent me Running with Scissors and Killing the Black Body — the perfect balance of entertaining and serious reads to get me through the next two months of Bar study. Plus have I mentioned that I have a slight Dorothy Roberts obsession?

And to Hugo and his family, who kindly gifted me an Amazon card for graduation. I thought I was going to use it for books, but now I’m thinking DVDs to rot my brain post-Bar.

Thank you both so so much. This really brightened my day!

Siriano, your license to fierce is hereby revoked

Christian Siriano: If you think of heterosexuals, they have white-trash women and trailer parks, and we have drag queens and trannies. I don’t know if I’m the one who can explain it. It’s, like, drag queens are just there. These answers are hard!

I swear, if I see this twit walking around Williamsburg again, I will be tempted to clock him upside the head with a pink flamingo. Let’s see, Christian. You grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, went to school abroad in London, then got a big break on Bravo by flinging around 80s drag ball terms like “fierce” and deriding outfits as “a hot tranny mess” over and over.

In case anyone was confused about whether you meant “tranny” as a slur, now you’ve made it clear: trans people and drag queens are down there with “white-trash women” and trailer parks! You know, all those low-class bad things — gee, why didn’t you throw “welfare queens” in there too? Maybe I should get together with a couple of my white friends from lower-income backgrounds, get our car off the cinder blocks, and drive around Brooklyn looking for you. Pink Flamingo!

Time Out’s premise of asking a bunch of random homosexuals to weigh in on the rapidly self-devouring remnants of “gay culture” in New York is awfully thin to begin with. But Siriano somehow manages to suck the meaning out of the conversation every time he opens his mouth, like some kind of vacuous intelligence-leech. I mean, look at this:

Douglas Carter Beane: When a gay man does drag, it’s the most beautiful feminist statement. When straight men do it, you’ve got to train them not to be negative. I learned that from making To Wong Foo.

Christian Siriano: I love To Wong Foo! It’s so good, so fabulous.

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A flaming barrel of video game stereotypes, part I

Flaming barrel hits hapless plumber!

Let’s see what the flaming barrel of stereotypes has for us to day, shall we kids?

1. Video games can ruin your relationship!

Ah, such a classic and volatile subject. Gal feels like she and her guy aren’t spending enough time together; obvious culprit is guy’s “males only” hobby that he spends a lot of time on! This story, which could take place in almost any decade of the last century, used to be about golf or football (or in some more eccentric cases, reading
books) but now it’s told more about video games than anything else. And of course, video games are an even more juvenile waste of time, right? Combined with feminism, you have a heady mix of couch-potato disempowerment that’s sapping the manhood and responsibility from a whole generation of guys! Woe!

Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to go that way. Rachel Shukert’s story in Salon, which has been the most read piece on that site for the last couple days, ends with a suggestion that a lot of people have made to resolve this “dilemma.” Gaming really doesn’t have to be such an exclusively masculine pursuit, so why not play video games together? We’re currently enjoying a bumper crop of games that aren’t designed exclusively for the post-adolescent trigger-happy guy crowd, from almost every title on the Wii to Rock Band, which Shukert credits with “saving her marriage.”

The thing is, in order to reach this turnaround ending, Shukert first has to set her marriage up as a morass of communication problems and neglect that any thoughtful reader will quickly realize couldn’t actually be fixed by Rock Band. She establishes a more familiar domestic diorama where video games are A Big Problem. Shukert writes exaggerated, campy prose, and at one point mocks herself as a pile of “pathetic, whining neediness.” Her attempts at comic hyperbole give me a glimmer of hope that her actual relationship might not really resemble the hoary scene out of the Honeymooners that she paints. But it still grates like Wolverine playing Chopin on a chalkboard to watch the actors in her scene go through the tired old paces of misogynist relationship roles:

I click on another page, where a forum of concerned women instruct me to regain Ben’s attention by walking around the house dressed in skimpy outfits and waggling my hips provocatively. One enterprising poster, aptly named Cyberhottie69, even suggests draping one’s naked breasts somewhere impossible to miss — like the coffee table, or on his head, like a doughy, undulating hat.

The angle Ben is sitting at makes this impossible, but I sit beside him on the couch, unzip my hoodie to reveal the lacy top of my bra, and press my breasts firmly against his bicep.

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Widespread Sexual Abuse Against Children Commited by Peacekeeping Forces

Trigger Warning: this post contains descriptions and links to descriptions of sexual abuse against children.

I woke up this morning to two emails from readers, and they both contained this story (thanks Jean and Rich): a new study shows that peacekeepers and aidworkers in post-conflict areas are sexually abusing children much more than we’d like to believe.

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Memorial Day Reads

Yet again, my inbox is full of great stories that I just don’t have time to cover individually. Some to check out:

Meet Gus Puryear, Bush’s latest nominee for a lifetime judgeship. If this article doesn’t make you panic about the kinds of people Bush is using to stack the courts, I don’t know what will. It is simply and utterly terrifying.

Exonerations Continue Across the Country — But Are Innocent Prisoners Ever Truly Free? In a criminal justice system as sprawling as ours, it’s no shock that many prisoners are in fact innocent. But truly clearing someone of a crime they didn’t coming takes a lot more than overturning a guilty verdict.

Rebecca Walker, daughter of feminist icon Alice Walker, has a piece up in the Daily Mail eviscerating her mother and the feminist movement. It’s a bit painful to read, mostly because it feels more like airing the family’s dirty laundry than an actual substantive critique, and I found myself cringing through a lot of it. I think what it illustrates more than anything is that a one-size-fits-all solution isn’t going to work for anyone; having a child didn’t bring happiness to Alice, but it apparently worked for her daughter. Rebecca, though, seems convinced that child-rearing is the best thing for every woman — and odd conclusion, considering her own memories of her childhood.

Women in academia are less likely to have children than women in other professions. What’s going on there?

Almost 300 illegal immigrants are sent to prison in a federal effort to crack down. What makes the case unusual is that the immigrants were tried in criminal proceedings (as opposed to in immigration court) and were threatened with prison sentences instead of simply being deported back to their home countries. In the meantime, the owners of the plant where the feds conducted the raid sound like they were running an incredibly cruel and exploitative business — and so far they face no charges.

And not only were workers at the plant mistreated and over-worked, but there are also allegations of sexual abuse.

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Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

Two questions this week: (1) What have you written? (Leave links in the comments); and (2) if you’re in the US, what are you doing this lovely Memorial Day weekend?

I am sitting out at my fabulous room mates’ pool at her parents’ house, eating lots of BBQ, getting sunburned and drinking lots of vinho verde. That means that I’m not around to moderate comments — so please be patient if you’re stuck in moderation. I’ll clear the queue out Monday evening.

Now, self-promote away!

Lithuania considering turning single parents into second-class citizens

This sounds like horrendous legislation.

The Lithuanian Parliament is currently weighing an unprecedented bill that would legally redefine the concept of family and that would establish a government-sanctioned concept of family limited exclusively to the traditional notion of a married man and woman and their children. With the stroke of a pen, this new concept of the Lithuanian family would relegate other family forms-single mothers and fathers raising children, unmarried partners raising children, and grandparents caring for their grandchildren-to second-class status.

Demographic analysis demonstrates that the structure of the Lithuanian family is changing. In 2005, almost a third of all children were born to unmarried parents living as partners. The same year, the number of divorces per 100 marriages hit 56. This is evidence of the growing number of single parents, who in 98 percent of cases are women. Until recently, high unemployment in Lithuania also encouraged migration, and half of all workers who emigrated in 2005 were married men or women. As a result a new family structure-the long-distance family-emerged. A poll conducted in 2006 showed that all these different family forms are considered as families by a majority of Lithuanians. However, the new concept of family would have practical implications, as it could ostensibly be used to prevent nontraditional families from receiving the same level of government assistance and from benefiting from government programs meant to support and strengthen the family.

This bill, the first of its kind in Europe, has been applauded as a breakthrough by the Catholic Church and conservative politicians.

You mean conservatives and the Catholic Church support something under the guise of “family values” that is, in reality, really really bad for families and children? Well knock me over with a feather.

Contact information for members of the Lithuanian parliament is here. Email and tell them that the international community opposes turning women and members of non-traditional families into second-class citizens.

Thanks to Natalia for the link.