October 2011 – Page 6

Great British Bake-Off viewers shocked by ‘explicit’ image of male squirrel

All eyes should have been on the delicious array of cakes and pastries prepared by the finalists of the Great British Bake Off.

But winner Joanne Wheatley’s moment of glory had to play second fiddle to a squirrel.

The rodent, seen loitering in the grounds of the mansion where the BBC2 show was filmed, was the subject of a lingering camera shot.

And viewers could not help noticing its unmistakably masculine appearance.

Clips were posted on YouTube, while hundreds took to social networks and TV forums to discuss it.

One joked: ‘This evening’s Great British Bake Off contains full-frontal squirrel nudity which some viewers may find startling.’

Another said: ‘A squirrel is flashing everyone on the Great British Bake Off.’

Others were more disturbed by the image, complaining it was an unnecessary and unwelcome distraction on a show about baking. Since the programme was recorded some time ago, it could easily have been edited out.

“Its unmistakably masculine appearance.” This squirrel has really huge nuts, is what the Daily Mail is trying to tell you. XXX squirrel pic below the fold.

“I consider myself a decent man, but for the past year I have been cheating on my wife about twice a month with prostitutes.”

Hahahaha ok sure.

(For the record, I am very sympathetic to people whose partners don’t want to have sex with them, or don’t want to have sex as often as one partner thinks is ideal. Serious libido imbalances are deal-breakers for me, personally, in my relationships, and I would be pretty frustrated/devastated if I were married to someone who only wanted to bone me once a month. But the solution to that situation is not to cheat on your partner, with sex workers or anyone else (the “prostitute” part is kind of not the issue here!). There are lots of different ways to be in a relationship, but if you’ve agreed to be monogamous, cheating violates the deal and puts your partner at risk for STIs. The solution is, you decide just how much of a deal-breaker this is for you and then you talk about it and you lay it all out on the table so that both you and your partner can decide how to proceed. Otherwise you are a piece of shit. Oh also you’re kind of a piece of shit if you only cook and help with chores and child-rearing as a way to “increase the likelihood that [your] wife would be in the mood.” Chores need to be done, food needs to be cooked and kids need to be raised; if you’re a parent, you don’t get to drift in and out of those obligations according to how hard your dick is, and then get all salty when the person who’s doing them because they need to be done maybe resents you a little bit. Oh and then cheat on her, but because you’re paying for it say you consider your extramarital sex more “honorable” than having an affair. But totally, go on with the “I’m a decent man” thing. Definitely bring this story up on dates, after your inevitable divorce, to show how decent you are.)

Goodbye, Rev. Shuttlesworth

October 5th was a rough day for civil rights leaders: Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who not only helped establish and lead non-violent anti-segregation actions and the civil rights movement as we know it but also took the right to protest right up to the Supreme Court, passed away yesterday. He stared the devil in the face over and over and over, and was repeatedly injured, threatened and nearly killed. From the WaPo obit:

Rev. Shuttlesworth faced down violence from police and racist mobs soon after he began preaching in Birmingham in 1953. In December 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation of buses in Montgomery, Ala., was illegal, he announced that he would challenge other discriminatory laws in court.

On Christmas Day that year, 15 sticks of dynamite exploded beneath his bedroom window. The floor was blown out from under him, but he received only a bump on the head.

“I believe I was almost at death’s door at least 20 times,” he told the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education in 2001. “But when the first bomb went off, it took all fear from my mind. I knew God was with me like he was with Daniel in the lions’ den. The black people of Birmingham knew that God had saved me to lead the fight.”

In 1957, when Rev. Shuttlesworth tried to enroll his children in a white school, he was beaten unconscious with chains, baseball bats and brass knuckles by a Ku Klux Klan mob. His wife was stabbed in the hip.

“He was a tested warrior,” civil rights activist Jesse L. Jackson said Wednesday in an interview. “He was bombed. He was beaten. He was the soul of the Birmingham movement.”

Rev. Shuttlesworth’s biographer, Andrew Manis, told the Birmingham News in 1999: “There was not a person in the civil rights movement who put himself in the position of being killed more often than Fred Shuttlesworth.”

Rev. Shuttlesworth was arrested more than 30 times and, Manis said, was involved in “more cases in which he was either a defendant or a plaintiff that reached the Supreme Court than any other person in American history.”

Harassment of Rev. Shuttlesworth knew no limits. The Alabama Supreme Court refused to consider one of his legal appeals because it was submitted on paper of the wrong size. In 1960, nine police officers boarded a bus and arrested his three teenage children for refusing to sit in the back.

“We’re tired of waiting,” Rev. Shuttlesworth said at a 1963 rally. “We’re telling Ol’ Bull Connor right here tonight that we’re on the march and we’re not going to stop marching until we get our rights.”

In May 1963, Rev. Shuttlesworth was hospitalized after being struck by a blast from a high-pressure fire hose in Birmingham.

“I waited a week to see Shuttlesworth get hit with a hose,” Connor said. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

Told that Rev. Shuttlesworth had been taken away in an ambulance, Connor replied, “I wish they’d carried him away in a hearse.”

The whole thing is worth a read. People throw around words like “brave” and “hero” a lot, but they definitely apply here.

Goodbye to two great men

The whole of the internet is abuzz with the news that Steve Jobs passed away today, and I also feel strangely sad about his death. Hitting a little closer to home, I found out via Twitter that Derrick Bell also passed today. Bell was a leader in the development and teaching of Critical Race Theory, and one of the most interesting legal thinkers I’ve ever come across. He shaped not only my legal studies and my work, but American law and ideas about race in this country. You should be reading his writing generally, but this section of the Wikipedia entry about his career is worth pointing to:

In 1980 Bell became the dean of the University of Oregon School of Law, becoming the first African American to ever head a non-black law school. He resigned several years later over a dispute about faculty diversity. Bell then taught at Stanford University for a year.

Returning to Harvard in 1986, Bell staged a five-day sit-in in his office to protest the school’s failure to grant tenure to two legal scholars on staff, both of whom adhered to a movement in legal philosophy that claims legal institutions play a role in the maintenance of the ruling class’ position. The administration, not giving an inch, claimed substandard scholarship and teaching on the part of the professors as the reason for the denial of tenure, but Bell called it an unambiguous attack on ideology. Bell’s sit-in galvanized student support but sharply divided the faculty.

Bell reentered the debate over hiring practices at Harvard in 1990, when he vowed to take an unpaid leave of absence until the school appointed a female of color to its tenured faculty. At the time, of the law school’s 60 tenured professors, only three were black and five were women. The school had never had a black woman on the tenured staff.

They were both influential men who struck me, most basically, as good people. They were were visionaries trying to do the right thing. They were builders and creators. Jobs is a bigger name, of course — this piece at Wirecutter is really worth a read, and I’m typing this post on a Mac. But Bell’s influence was deep and wide, even if not as widely recognized. I’m sorry they’re both gone. I’m glad they created what they did.

Suck my left one

Such a great post by Jessica on breastfeeding supremacists. Breastfeeding is great — and the corporate push for formula-feeding, without any regard for women’s health, is totally and entirely fucked up and unconscionable. But not all women are able to breastfeed, and new moms have a lot to balance. Yes, breastfeeding should be promoted and taught, and there should be resources in hospitals and communities to assist women. But also, pregnant women and new moms are criticized for basically everything they do, from drinking coffee to eating a bite of fish to using the wrong kind of stroller (and women who aren’t white and aren’t wealthy are criticized a whole lot more). Breastfeeding is time-consuming and can be physically painful and difficult for a lot of women; it can be nearly impossible to balance with all of life’s other demands. So maybe lay off the comparisons to smoking or feeding your kid a bottle full of Big Macs?

Straight to the heart

Mindy Kaling, are you eavesdropping on my life?

Until I was 30, I dated only boys. I’ll tell you why: Men scared the sh*t out of me. Men know what they want. Men own alarm clocks. Men sleep on a mattress that isn’t on the floor. Men buy new shampoo instead of adding water to a nearly empty bottle of shampoo. Men make reservations. Men go in for a kiss without giving you some long preamble about how they’re thinking of kissing you. Men wear clothes that have never been worn by anyone else before.

OK, maybe men aren’t exactly like this. But this is what I’ve cobbled together from the handful of men I know or know of, ranging from Heathcliff Huxtable to Theodore Roosevelt to my dad. The point: Men know what they want, and that is scary.

What I was used to was boys.

Boys are adorable. Boys trail off their sentences in an appealing way. Boys get haircuts from their roommate, who “totally knows how to cut hair.” Boys can pack up their whole life and move to Brooklyn for a gig if they need to. Boys have “gigs.” Boys are broke. And when they do have money, they spend it on a trip to Colorado to see a music festival.

Boys can talk for hours with you in a diner at three in the morning because they don’t have regular work hours. But they suck to date when you turn 30.

At least I have a couple more years of diners and music festivals. I can’t deal with alarm clocks.

(via)

HIV/AIDS and UNITAID

Writing in the Guardian:

Daniel is six months old, and one of the more than a million children in Africa born of HIV-positive mothers every year. Without prenatal treatment, up to 30% of these children will contract the virus. Daniel is one of the luckier ones, so far. His mother, Elise, found out she was HIV-positive eight months ago, while she was pregnant with him. She took the necessary antiretrovirals to decrease the risk of transmission. But Elise lives in rural Cameroon, and since she was diagnosed has travelled two hours by car every month to the closest clinic to get the drugs necessary to prevent transmission to her child. The travel is expensive, but she wants her son to be negative, and she wants to be healthy. The type of drugs she takes require consistent usage; if they’re taken intermittently, she can develop resistance, which requires moving on to different (and more limited) treatment options.

When she showed up at the clinic last month, there weren’t any drugs in stock. When she took Daniel in to be tested, she was told she would have to wait a month to find out whether her baby had HIV.

We’ve heard the statistics. A baby born in a developing country is 13 times more likely to die before she reaches the age of five than a baby born in an industrialised country. A woman dies every minute from pregnancy-related causes. Three-quarters of all women with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa shoulders 25% of the world’s disease burden, but represents only about 10% of its population and has 1% of its health workers. Ninety per cent of babies born with HIV are born in sub-Saharan Africa.

You can read the whole thing here.

The Worst Lines From Allison Pataki and David Levy’s “Vows” Article

5. They could talk about anything, from Milton to the best lacrosse players in the Ivy League. Growing up with so many boys, Mr. Levy said, “I didn’t know you could develop the kind of connection with a girl where she really understands you.”

4. “My parents,” she added, “didn’t raise us to have a sense of entitlement.”

3. The reception followed at the bride’s large and gracious childhood home in Garrison.

2. Ms. Pataki felt much the same way: “I was between two brothers, so Dave’s masculinity didn’t bother me. I was comfortable with silence.”

1. Charlotte d’Orchimont, who has known Ms. Pataki since they were both in the second grade in Garrison, N.Y., said, “Alli is someone others have always been drawn to.” She added that Ms. Pataki “was definitely the most popular girl in our class.”

“In fact,” she continued, “she had to keep a schedule of whose turn it was to sit next to her at lunch.”

Links for 10-5-2011

And it’s that time of the week again. Here goes :

October is domestic violence month

You’re probably all inundated with Slutwalk-related articles after the NYC march this weekend, but still, you should read Sady Doyle’s piece about it.
Also on SlutWalk is Latoya Peterson’s piece on racism and solidarity over at Racialicious!

Another event that you’ve seen loads of coverage around this week is Occupy Wall Street.I haven’t been to the protests personally, but here are a few pieces I think you should check out:
Manissa Maharawal at Racialicious on the struggle to make OccupyWallSt a fairer, more inclusive space.
Jessica Yee on the colonialist implications of the movement. More on the topic through this Racialicious link round up.

The NYPD’s response to the protests has been messed up in a number of ways, detailed by Jill in an earlier post, but if you need further proof – this is appalling. A trans man protesting was arrested and mistreated in an incredibly transphobic manner.

Enough about Occupying Wall Street: the rest of your weekly dose of depressing is provided by the Hyde Amendment. The amendment prohibits all federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or danger to the life of the woman. In celebration of its 35th anniversary, NPR tells us that ” even abortions that technically qualify for public funding often don’t reimbursed”. Yay.

Continuing on an anti-choice note, Saskatchewan Tory MP Brad Trost demands that the abortion debate be reopened. The Conservative position is apparently too far left for MP Trost, who thinks that a more aggressive pro-life campaign would result in a better, more moderate legislation in Canada. This occurs in the aftermath of a yearlong saga over Canada’s funding of Planned Parenthood International, recapped here.

Also. Still depressing but kind of awesome as well : the Berkeley College Republicans, in a classic College Republicans move, held a bakesale in which items were differently priced depending on your race. Affirmative action is evil message, protesting bill SB 185. But here’s where the awesome part comes in : the protests ! They ranged from serious vigils and demonstrations to counter bakesales, to this :

“UC Berkeley Professor of political science Wendy Brown tried to buy all the baked goods at the Republicans’ sale, but they did not allow her to do so.

“I thought the Republicans were free enterprise, but they won’t let me buy all the cupcakes,” she said.”

In other exciting news of the week, French feminist group Osez le feminisme has launched a new campaign : Madame ou Madame. The goal is to eradicate the official use of Mademoiselle (Miss) in paperwork, and generalize the use of Madame (Mrs) to all women regardless of marital status. Predictably, the argument that “it’s just semantics and doesn’t really matter” has been brought up a bunch…But still – check it out if you speak French, and if you do not and want more info, do let me know in the comments.

As usual, if there are links/stories/posts/etc you’d like to see included in these, please email feministe@gmail.com !

Scary health news of the day

Throat cancers caused by a virus transmitted during oral sex have increased significantly in the United States in recent years, researchers reported on Monday.

The virus is the same one that causes many cases of cervical cancer: human papillomavirus (HPV) Type 16.

Researchers tested tumor samples from 271 patients with certain types of throat cancer diagnosed from 1984 to 2004. The virus was found in only 16 percent of the samples from the 1980s — but in 72 percent of those collected after 2000.

The researchers estimated that over all, throat cancers caused by the virus have increased to 2.6 per 100,000 people in 2004 from 0.8 cases per 100,000 people in 1988. If the trend continues, by 2020 the virus will be causing more throat cancer than cervical cancer, the study concluded.

Really cool, also, that there’s a vaccine that might prevenet this, and Republican presidential candidates are trying to scare people out of getting it.

And one of the most popular contraceptives in Africa may be increasing the risk of HIV transmission.

The most popular contraceptive for women in eastern and southern Africa, a hormone shot given every three months, appears to double the risk the women will become infected with H.I.V., according to a large study published Monday. And when it is used by H.I.V.-positive women, their male partners are twice as likely to become infected than if the women had used no contraception.

The findings potentially present an alarming quandary for women in Africa. Hundreds of thousands of them suffer injuries, bleeding, infections and even death in childbirth from unintended pregnancies. Finding affordable and convenient contraceptives is a pressing goal for international health authorities.

But many countries where pregnancy rates are highest are also ravaged by H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. So the evidence suggesting that the injectable contraceptive has biological properties that may make women and men more vulnerable to H.I.V. infection is particularly troubling.

Injectable hormones are very popular. About 12 million women between the ages of 15 and 49 in sub-Saharan Africa, roughly 6 percent of all women in that age group, use them. In the United States, it is 1.2 million, or 3 percent of women using contraception. While the study involved only African women, scientists said biological effects would probably be the same for all women. But they emphasized that concern was greatest in Africa because the risk of H.I.V. transmission from heterosexual sex was so much higher there than elsewhere.