In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Weekly Open Thread with Norwegian Blue

tigtog

He’s just pining for the fjords! A massive sculpture tribute to the Monty Python comedy troupe features for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.

For those unfamiliar with the famous Dead Parrot Sketch celebrated by the sculpture, you can watch it on the intertube.

So, what have you been up to? What would you rather be up to? What’s been awesome/awful?
Reading? Watching? Making? Meeting?
What has [insert awesome inspiration/fave fansquee/guilty pleasure/dastardly ne’er-do-well/threat to all civilised life on the planet du jour] been up to?

* Netiquette footnotes:
* There is no off-topic on the Weekly Open Thread, but consider whether your comment would be on-topic on any recent thread and thus better belongs there.
* If your comment touches on topics known to generally result in thread-jacking, you will be expected to take the discussion to #spillover instead of overshadowing the social/circuit-breaking aspects of this thread.

112 thoughts on Weekly Open Thread with Norwegian Blue

  1. (That other comment is in moderation because of a language filter. )

    I went to an open mic event last night at an anarchist/radical community space. I was originally planning to just sit there and watch the show, but I came up with something to talk about eventually and decided to speak. I spoke about how dismantling patriarchy requires an understanding of how society coercively genders bodies as male or female. (I also threw in some anti-capitalist feminist talking points, but it was very brief and I didn’t want to take too much time.)

    I was nervous as hell, but at least some people ended up liking it. The host said he related to what I was saying and two other people from the audience thanked me for sharing my thoughts on the matter. It was actually a lot of fun, so I’m going back there next time. I’ll speak about gentrification and its role in white supremacist capitalism.

    Unfortunately, aside from a few good speakers and my not-so-bad performance, the open mic was ruined by this disruptive, creepy white dude. He kept staring at the women there, talked over everyone and interrupted everyone constantly, and worst of all, he was extremely racist. Just before the show he was saying something along the lines of “I hate it when black women do things like white people. I just want to follow a black woman all over the place till I can finally grab her, shake her back and forth, and scream ‘YOU’RE BLACK! STOP TRYING TO BE WHITE, B*****!’” He was so terrible that I ended up leaving early, not long after my performance.

  2. I’m extremely happy to be able to say that somebody we all know very well won a major award last weekend. (She posted something a few months ago about another award for which she was nominated, so I’m not outing her here by any means!)

    http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/07/2013-shirley-jackson-award-winners-announced

    2013 Shirley Jackson Award Winners Announced
    Tor.com

    The winners for the 2013 Shirley Jackson Awards [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Jackson_Awards%5D have been announced! Awarded every year in recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson, the awards honor exceptional work in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and dark fantasy.

    We are especially proud to report that Veronica Schanoes’ Tor.com story “Burning Girls” won for Best Novella.

    This year’s Shirley Jackson Awards were presented at Readercon 25. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners!
    . . . .

    NOVELLA

    Winner: Burning Girls, Veronica Schanoes (Tor.com)

    Children of No One, Nicole Cushing (DarkFuse)
    Helen’s Story, Rosanne Rabinowitz (PS Publishing)
    It Sustains, Mark Morris (Earthling Publications)
    “The Gateway,” Nina Allan (Stardust, PS Publishing)
    The Last Revelation of Gla’aki, Ramsey Campbell (PS Publishing)
    Whom the Gods Would Destroy, Brian Hodge (DarkFuse)

    The story itself can be read (for free!) at http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/06/burning-girls, and I think it’s wonderful; it deserves all the awards. Obviously, many others agree! (It’s also a nominee for Best Novella for this year’s World Fantasy Awards (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Fantasy_Award), to be awarded in Washington, D.C. in November.)

    1. It occurs to me that I should make the connection explicitly, since I’m not sure how many people actually know which person I’m talking about: the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novella for Burning Girls (and nominee for the World Fantasy Awards for the same story) is my good friend, our very own EG!

    2. Wow. That story is good. I don’t normally read horror but I found that better than most I’ve ever read.

    4. Congratulations, EG! I read Burning Girls when she was nominated and was completely blown away! This award is much deserved!

    6. Whoa, I somehow missed this entire thread! So many thank yous! I’m so grateful that you all took the time to send such kind thoughts!

      I’m pretty much over the moon!

    7. That story’s incredible. I can’t think of exactly how to say what I loved about it, but I couldn’t stop reading once I started.

  4. I am currently studying the Python programming language, named for Monty Python, and I have a 100% in my class to date.

    And sometimes I say “Ni”

  5. I gave birth last weekend to a baby girl. I’m struggling over feeling like a bad feminist because of how things turned out in my family, my husband is the primary bread winner and I don’t work outside the home. We moved twice for his job, and I wasn’t able to find work after the first move. Which meant I basically sacrificed my career for his. Which I’m not bitter about. I ended up telecommuting part time and being primary care giver for first kid. We moved again in January. We left the country this time, and I find myself hanging out with the other international women who moved for their husband. These are all smart women who married smart men in academia and who chose or had to give up their own careers or career ambitions to follow their husbands to wherever. I’m lucky in that I’m still able to telecommute, but I still feel like a bad feminist for not working outside the home, only working part time, and not bringing in a lot of money. My older kid once asked me where I worked, and I told him I worked at home, and he said oh, right, that’s a girl place to work. I just don’t know if I can still be a feminist role model for my kids or if I’m fooling myself. (I also don’t know if this rambling made any sense.)

    2. Congratulations on your new daughter!

      My mother was a SAHM for most of my life, and she spent an awful lot of that time teaching me about feminism and how to use a feminist analysis to understand the world (she didn’t put it like that, of course–she just sat next to me during TV and pointed out how sexist the commercials were, and other stuff like that). She took me to rallies and taught me about reproductive rights and we did clinic defense together when I was a teenager. And she drilled it into me that I had to be able to support myself when I grew up, too.

      I still think of my mother when I think of feminism, and all that she taught me–so much so that it can be hard for me to wrap my mind around the more asshole aspects of second-wave feminism because my mother would have none of those, and taught me anti-racism and labor history as well. We still have long feminist discussions. I hope it’s at least a bit reassuring to hear from the daughter of a SAHM that you have not failed your daughter (or your son) by deciding to make care-taking your priority (not in circumstances of your own making, of course, as Marx would put it). You can still be that feminist role model! I love my mother and respect her deeply for the making the best decisions she could in less-than-ideal circumstances, and I learned a lot from her about how to be a feminist mother and caretaker to my children. I’m sure your kids will have that same good fortune.

      1. Wait, not most of my life, I meant most of my childhood! She went back to working outside the home when I was 16 and my father left. And then she went back to school and became a social worker. I’m very proud of her, both of the time she spent at home with me and the work she’s done outside the home since I’ve been older.

    3. Congratulations!

      My $.02, being a mother is an important job for a feminist to fill, and you’re probably modeling to your kids how to “make it work” and about life balance, and I think those are important things for kids to learn.

      I think.

      But maybe take that with a grain of salt, ’cause you know, not a child development expert by any stretch of the imagination.

    4. Congratulations on the birth of your baby girl! That’s wonderful!

      My mother — after being one of only four women in the Class of Sept. 1948 at Columbia Law School, and, later on, an economic analyst for the Federal Reserve — was a SAHM for nearly 10 years, from the birth of my older sister until I was about 7 years old. Even after that, she was never able to get a job that allowed her to utilize her professional training; she became an elementary school teacher in the NYC public school system, where she remained until her death at the age of only 52.

      Nonetheless — and even though I was assigned male at birth and raised as a boy (not entirely successfully!) — she always taught me about the importance both of being a good, loving parent (she made no distinction between the importance of motherhood and fatherhood) and of women’s rights; she always made it clear to me that she was a feminist, and believed that sexist views about male superiority were nonsense. In fact, she was an early subscriber to Ms. magazine in the late 1960’s, and I read every issue that arrived!

      Even apart from my own transness (which goes back to my earliest memories and had nothing to do with my mother’s “pernicious” feminist influence, in case anyone happens to suspect that to be the case), my memories of her always gave me the strength to speak out (most of the time, anyway) against the horribly misogynist things that men used to say to me back when they thought I was “one of them.” Including more than one man who expounded to me at length on his elaborate theories that boiled down to a belief that women weren’t really “people” in the same way that men were.

      So you are not a “bad feminist,” in any way, for doing what you’re doing. And I have no doubt that your children will benefit from your feminism, as you’re living it.

  7. I now have a supporting letter to take to an endocrinologist so I’ll be able to start hormones. Haven’t yet got my referral or appointment there so not sure when things will actually happen, but at least that’s one more gate passed.

    1. Wow. Imagine having to share the same lobby and elevator with poor people! What will visitors think? Do they have different plumbing systems, too?

      And I thought it was — peculiar — that 35 years ago some law firms had separate partners’ elevators, partners’ bathrooms, and even partners’ legal pads!

    3. I scoured the net for signs it was from the onion. It’s THAT over the top. So I can only repeat holy fucking shit my Christ.

  10. “These populations.” Fuck you, douchebag. “These populations” are New York City.

    Next question: how are they going to enforce this? Presumably the rich people entrance will have a doorman–is he just not going to open the door for the affordable housing people? Will he not accept packages for them? How much do you think a duplicate key to the front door will be?

    1. It probably wouldn’t do any good for the residents living in affordable housing to come into the “rich people’s” entrance: I’d bet almost anything that the rich people’s elevators won’t take you to the poor people’s apartments, and vice versa; i.e., that the two kinds of housing are separated internally as much as externally.

      1. Wait, the elevators are separate too? This is kind of amazing in its horrible bullshit.

        I pine for the old NYC and the rallying cry of my old neighborhood, stenciled on the sidewalks and graffitied onto walls. Die Yuppie Scum.

        2. The key argument:

          The idea is that affordable housing shouldn’t just be affordable and livable; it should be substantially similar in location and character to new luxury housing. If rich people are getting brand new apartments overlooking the Hudson River, so should some lucky winners of affordable housing lotteries….

          [Instead], upzone land so more housing units can be built to meet supply. Let developers decide what to build and what to charge for it based on market forces. Charge developers substantial fees to access those newly-created development rights. Collect full-freight property taxes on new property that gets built. Use tax and fee proceeds to pay for projects of broad use to New Yorkers, including housing subsidies.

          The idea that the best way to deal with an affordable housing shortage is to give luxury developments huge tax breaks in order to let a small number of lottery winners get massively expensive apartments at equally massively subsidized rates is, to be blunt, stupid.

        3. Hey, I can’t be yuppie scum. As my father said 30 years ago right before punches were thrown, first of all, I ain’t young.

          While I agree that the policy as stands is stupid, I know far too much about the history of housing in NYC to have any faith in market forces whatsoever, and I don’t see that the policy being stupid is any justification for separate entrances.

        4. I’d argue market forces, properly harnessed by public policy, are the only way to find solutions to massive economic problems. The alternatives tend not only to work inefficiently, but also to take agency out of the hands of the people being ‘helped.’ To borrow an analogy, it’s the difference between giving people food stamps and letting them buy food at market rates, and giving everyone a quota of each food product they can get each week.

          Also, maybe real estate in a tiny island with lots of people is always going to be pricy, and it’s time to accept that. I’m not sure bailing out the tide is the way to go here.

        5. That last paragraph is a rumination, not an argument, by the way. I could probably be convinced either way right now- I don’t know enough about the issue. But I know in Paris there was a decades-long attempt to keep rents artificially low in Montparnasse (it’s a lot like Brooklyn Heights or the Village in some ways) and similar areas, that ended up costing billions and accomplishing very little. I’m just kinda questioning what the public policy rationale here is.

          Obviously none of this applies to making sure that, fundamentally, everyone person is housed/sheltered. That’s like the basic standard of a civilized society. But I’m not sure why it needs to be in Manhattan any more than it needs to be in Martha’s Vineyard or something.

        6. Real estate on Manhattan has not always been pricey. I was there for the gentrification of my old neighborhood.

          I see no reason to cede Manhattan to the rich. I simply don’t agree market forces should be privileged over stable communities when it comes to deciding who has a right to live in a city. The very people who make a neighborhood are the ones who get kicked out by kids with trust funds and stock brokers, and the latter can kiss my ass.

        7. I meant going to be, as in the future.

          I just don’t think there’s any reasonably efficacious and non-coercive way to accomplish your goal. I suppose you could nationalize the housing industry.

          The reality is that people move, people have always moved, and people will always move. Unless you’re North Korea and assign people houses from which they can never leave.

          Also, no offense, but aren’t you a tenured college professor? I don’t mean to get nasty or personal, seriously, but I’m missing something.

        8. I don’t understand what you’re asking me–trust me, tenured college professors at CUNY cannot afford luxury apartments in Manhattan. And I wasn’t always a tenured college professor, you know. I did actually grow up here. I remember what my neighborhood was like. And I know what it’s like now. And I see no reason why my mother should have to be pushed out of the apartment she’s lived in for 35 years because of your precious market forces.

          I don’t mind using economically “coercive” methods like rent stabilization to provide some assurances and continuity for the people who make the city run. It’s no different than providing tax breaks for corporations who place their headquarters somewhere. All cities have zoning laws regarding what kind of work gets done and buildings get placed where, and cities in the US and Europe have regulations regarding housing. Free market housing in NYC caused airless firetraps to be built.

          People move, sure, especially when they can’t afford to live in a neighborhood anymore. I see no reason to force that on them.

        9. Basically, I don’t think you know much about NYC housing. Affordable housing is specifically for people in my income bracket–moderate middle-class.

          You can read about it here.

          And yeah, I’m pretty sure that based on these standards, if I had kids, I would qualify (they’re specifically for families).

        10. I don’t understand what you’re asking me–trust me, tenured college professors at CUNY cannot afford luxury apartments in Manhattan.

          Because the primary victims of gentrification actually aren’t middle to upper class white people.

          People move, sure, especially when they can’t afford to live in a neighborhood anymore. I see no reason to force that on them.

          And I’m not opposed to subsidizing housing/rent stabilization, as I made clear above. But that’s not nearly a radical enough solution to prevent gentrification- it just means some percentage of the original population gets to stay through the process. If your goal is actually to prevent the entire neighborhood from ever changing their character, that’s when your solutions become coercive and unjust.

          Rent stabilization isn’t coercive, by the way- it’s an agreement landlords make in exchange for a variety of concessions from the city. At the risk of sounding like I’m repeating your points, I don’t think you actually know very much about the issue.

        11. Because the primary victims of gentrification actually aren’t middle to upper class white people.

          Uh-huh. Being a public university college professor doesn’t come even close to putting me into NYC’s upper class (being a social worker puts my mom and her 35-year tenure in one neighborhood even farther away). Middle-class professional, sure. But you’ll note when I talk about having seen gentrification I’m talking about my old neighborhood. The one I grew up in. You know, back in those days before I was a tenured college prof? You can read about the first (failed) attempt at gentrifying it in a book by Janet Abu-Lughod, if you’re interested. I remember exactly what was lost. I know exactly who isn’t there any longer.

          Are you actually trying to say that I can’t be opposed to gentrification because it isn’t currently hurting me? That’s just…bizarre, if not downright socipathic.

          You’re the one who brought up “coercive,” in this context, which is about a deal made between a landlord and the city blah blah blah. If you now think it signifies ignorance, then look to your own. Otherwise, you might to indicate what you mean more clearly.

        12. Further, gentrification in Manhattan isn’t just about poor neighborhoods, though certainly it is about them. It’s also about middle-class neighborhoods. It’s about whether you should have to make six figures to live on Manhattan and have access to all the supposedly public benefits it provides. It’s about the political knock-on effects–already Harlem’s voting patterns are changing, for example. It’s about neighborhoods that had been the mixes of races and ethnicities that made the city interesting being homogenized. It’s about keeping Manhattan an actual city instead of a chain-store theme park.

          You have no emotional investment in the city and see it as the equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard. That’s nice for you. But many people actually do develop emotional attachments to their home and would rather not see it turned into solely a playground for the wealthy.

          Finally, I fail to see how any governmental policy you might decry could be any more coercive than market forces are.

        14. You have no emotional investment in the city and see it as the equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard. That’s nice for you. But many people actually do develop emotional attachments to their home and would rather not see it turned into solely a playground for the wealthy.

          Sure, but I’m not sure how much moral weight I assign to the fact they were there first.

          but it illustrates the problem with trying to base a city on rich people only

          Well, I don’t think we should be trying to base cities on anything. I think we should be letting people move where they want.

          I freely admit I’m coming to this from a different cultural context. France’s economy has essentially collapsed as the result of the state’s attempt to regulate all aspects of life, whereas if I’d grown up in a more libertarian place like the US, I’d probably have a more instinctive affinity for government intervention into the actions of private individuals.

        15. It’s about whether you should have to make six figures to live on Manhattan and have access to all the supposedly public benefits it provides.

          I’m not in favor of requiring anyone to make any specific income to live anywhere, either as a floor or a ceiling. And I’m not opposed to rent stabilization, though again, that will never be enough to stop gentrification.

        16. I guess it’s a good thing no one needs to convince you , lisaw. The people who live there are the people who have relevant opinions. And they think it’s shit. So kindly stop acting like your confusion over what the big deal is takes priority. Go read the excuse for it. It boils down to it’s unfair for rich people to have to enter a building with poor people, like equal human beings. If you can’t see the problem with that, then at least let those of us who can discuss it without having to stop and lead you through class and race 101.

        17. It boils down to it’s unfair for rich people to have to enter a building with poor people, like equal human beings. If you can’t see the problem with that, then at least let those of us who can discuss it without having to stop and lead you through class and race 101.

          I take it you skipped the conversation up to this point, since it was pretty clear in context I wasn’t discussing the ‘poor door’ anymore.

          And don’t you fucking dare condescend to me about racism. I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but you’re not in any position to lecture me.

        18. Oh, I tell you who I think I am. I’m someone who’s sick of your targeting EG for whatever reason and pulling some blinky eyed well I don’t understand what the big deal is crap, having to be led by the goddamn nose to what the big deal is, and dismissing her concerns about the very city she lives in. 2nd time you’ve done that. If you don’t like that, don’t comment on shit I post about. This is an outright attempt to codify racism, and elevate classism. Your side conversation can go derail someone elses post.

        19. EG talks about interesting things and I enjoy the discussion. If she feels like I’m targeting her for some reason, I’ll happily back off.

          If you don’t like that, don’t comment on shit I post about. This is an outright attempt to codify racism, and elevate classism. Your side conversation can go derail someone elses post.

          Talking about gentrification isn’t a derail.

          pulling some blinky eyed well I don’t understand what the big deal is crap

          The fact you’re not able to understand the argument doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

        20. I understand it fine. You don’t, given your first post on it was a link to an article calling outrage over a poor door absurd. It’s not absurd to feel outraged over hearing you’ll bring the rich people down to your filthy, poor level by sharing a fucking door. Which is what I posted about. Not gentrification. Start your own conversation about gentrification. This one is about treating the poor like filth who will taint the rich, and outright stating it in an attempt to excuse the 2nd door. Gentrification is simply an extension of colonization, and yeah, I have a grasp on the subject.

        21. Renters don’t own their apartments any more than I own the taxi I use to get to the airport. So you’re saying colonization is about people who already own the land choosing to use it differently? Interesting. I think I learned a very different version of history.

          But I don’t really think you’re capable of the type of good-faith discussion that might lead to me learning something, so I’m done with you.

        22. Telling pheeno she isn’t able to understand your arguments? Wow. Who are you to impugn anyone’s intelligence here?

          By the way, it’s not just that EG has lived in New York City herself since she was a baby; she’s the 6th generation of her family to live here, since back in the early 1880’s when they first immigrated and lived on the Lower East Side, not far from where her mother lives today.

          And I’m the 5th generation of my family to live here since my paternal grandfather and his family arrived when he was a year old in 1888; in fact, of the four different tenement buildings on the Lower East Side that they lived in over the next 20 years — a block or two from where EG’s family lived — three are still standing. Here’s a photo of the first one, at 176 Suffolk Street (there was certainly no canopy when they lived there!): http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/components/photo/pic_view.html?imgname=1-00350-0006.Rg2R4Er4&size=medium&type=

          So I think we both know enough about New York City to comment on the situation!

          And even though I was making in the (very low) six figures as a lawyer until I quit my job at the end of May (minus the very substantial alimony payments I still owe 9 years after my divorce and for another 6 years, which I agreed to in order to avoid a trial in which my transness was going to be made the central issue), even without the alimony I couldn’t afford to live anywhere in Manhattan except up here in the far northern part. The “free market” rate for one-bedroom apartments in midtown, especially in buildings built anytime in the last 35 or 40 years, is something like $3-4,000 per month these days. Ridiculous. When I got my very first legal job in 1979, I was able to rent a one-bedroom apartment in a new building on 72nd and 3rd for rent totaling about 25% of my annual salary of just over $20,000. To do that now, somebody would have to make close to $200,000 a year.

          Speaking of which, there has absolutely been substantial gentrification on the Upper East Side, at least east of 3rd Avenue: when I was a child in the 1960’s, there were still old tenement buildings all over the place around there, and the neighborhood was mostly poor and middle-class people. (Some of it hadn’t changed much since about 1900; I even used to get regularly harassed, walking home from the public library, by gangs of blond boys who talked like Jimmy Cagney and looked and sounded like they came from old movies like “Angels with Dirty Faces” — “Books? Four-eyes!” [books knocked to ground] — “What are youse — a girl?”)

        24. Just wanted to say many thanks to pheeno and Donna for the defense. And to tigtog! I’m out of town and not getting to the computer as much as usual, so I just saw all this go down now, and I’m really grateful. I had been feeling a bit targeted, but I wasn’t sure whether or not I was imagining things. So I’m grateful for the validation as well.

          It got weird, right?

      2. I had already assumed, before reading lisaw’s link, that the affordable apartments in the building would be the ones facing away from the river, not towards it. Not surprised.

        I was never a fan of the “Die Yuppie Scum” epithet back in the 1980’s, because it was often applied to anyone under the age of 30 or so wearing a suit — including me, several times — rather than limiting it to the drunken yuppie frat boy types who used to travel in noisy groups through Manhattan (when they weren’t busy gentrifying the Lower East Side), reminding me of rakes in 18th century literature.

        1. In the SF Bay Area, we now have “die techie scum.” There similarly ought to be a distinction. Not everyone who works in tech is a codebro.

        2. My understanding is that it’s not about codebro-ness, but just a general hatred of the fact that when areas get wealthier, less-wealthy people have a harder time paying rent and end up moving. As a social cause, it’s a bit reminiscent of the dudes who roamed around 1800s England blowing up factories to hold back the industrial revolution, but I do understand why it upsets people.

        3. My understanding is that it’s not about codebro-ness, but just a general hatred of the fact that when areas get wealthier, less-wealthy people have a harder time paying rent and end up moving. As a social cause, it’s a bit reminiscent of the dudes who roamed around 1800s England blowing up factories to hold back the industrial revolution, but I do understand why it upsets people.

          The comparison to Luddism is just ridiculous, and I say this as an unapologetic neo-luddite sympathizer. You have inadvertently illustrated pheeno’s point about the colonialism connection.

        4. You have inadvertently illustrated pheeno’s point about the colonialism connection.

          Well, since she’s inadvertently suggesting that colonists have the right to the land they colonize, in the same way landlords have the right to the buildings they rent, I find that problematic.

          neo-luddite sympathizer

          OK, well. That basically says it all. Peace.

          1. lisaw, out of curiosity I did an admin search on your IP number, and lo and behold I find the only other commentor who has ever used it is someone who stopped commenting here in May in an episode of relatively high dudgeon, and some of that dudgeon was with the exact same people you are dismissing so condescendingly in this thread. It looks highly possible that you might be continuing an old grudge with people who have been treating you as a new commentor, which seems a rather lopsided dynamic.

            So, the IP number and the two new email addresses are now going into permamod. I’m pretty annoyed by this situation, and suggest it might be a good idea for you to take a break from submitting comments for the next few days.

        5. Well, since she’s inadvertently suggesting that colonists have the right to the land they colonize, in the same way landlords have the right to the buildings they rent, I find that problematic.

          This is upside-down twice, and unfortunately that doesn’t mean it loops back to right-side up, it just discovers new non-Euclidean ways to be upside-down.

          Firstly, it would make no sense for Pheeno to suggest that, ever. Ever ever.
          Ever-ever-ever-ever-p’tang-zoooooooom-boing.

          Secondly, it doesn’t mesh with

          I’m not sure how much moral weight I assign to the fact they were there first.

          If you want to find problematic an argument which you perceive as pro-colonialism, maybe casually dismissing one of the fundamental points of anti-colonialism arguments isn’t the most rational thing to do.

        6. So ldouglas is back?

          I remember pheeno declaring her a troll when she first started commenting under the original user name. Lisaw lives in Paris and claims to be a WOC, while ldouglas said she lives in NYC and I don’t recall ever identifying as a WOC.

          @Lisaw
          On the off chance that you are not a troll, I’ll say this: Change=Progess=Goodness is colonialism rhetoric.

        9. I knew it. I fucking knew it. Wanted to say something last night but decided it would come off a grudgey.

        10. The problem with the “Poor Door” is obvious to anyone who understands America: The people of America long ago consciously and deliberately discarded the concept of a Gentry. It’s written into our Constitution that no American may hold an hereditary title.

          So Americans who are on board with the American Way of Life hold an inherent distrust and disdain for dynasties, class warfare, castes, and snobbery in general. Money and power can buy a person respect, even deference, but it does not make the person who has more money inherently better than the person who has less money.

        1. Say what you will about TimmyTwinkles, he never pulled the old sock puppetaroo

          It’s pathetic. I must now question the veracity of anything and everything she said. Maybe pheeno had her from jump.

      1. That was ldouglas? Wow, that makes me wonder if she was ever here in good faith.

        I never thought so, I seriously questioned whether or not she identified as a woman anywhere other than this website, but I’m not going to call anyone out on that with no proof. I honestly thought of her as an MRA troll from day one, and prior to her identifying as female, my initial discussions with her were all under the assumption she was a man, as she used so many MRA talking points about male rape victims.

        1. That was my original assessment as well, Fat Steve. She/he set off my bullshit alarm with every post. Women can parrot MRA views as well, so her sex doesn’t matter on that front, but I was and still remain skeptical. Either way, troll sums it up.

        2. I like giving heaping servings of benefit of the doubt. I probably need to learn to do the internet more gooder, but not quite sure how.

  11. Trigger Warning:

    Got questions for the lawyers here:

    1. Does America treat child sex workers as victims or criminals under the law?

    2. Are there any American states which still require witnesses/other corroboration for a woman to make a charge of rape?

    Thanks.

    1. (I’m not a lawyer, but I work in juvenile justice.)

      I don’t know about the second question, but I do know that (at least in my state) child sex workers can be arrested on juvenile charges. Then a social worker is assigned to them and arranges for the child to get mental health treatment. Depending on prior charges, the child may or may not be committed to state’s custody and sent to a group home or hardware-secure facility.

  12. sarcasm(“And now I have shingles! 2014! Totally my year!”)

    (I acknowledge that there are worse things than shingles, but I just wanted to whine a little)

    1. PeggyLuWho, I had shingles when my children were small, and it was a PITA. My doc prescribed me Valium (diazepam) to get through the worst initial itch stages and it was wonderful.

      I hope you don’t inadvertently start a chickenpox outbreak via your shingles like I did (husband had never had them as a kid so he caught them from my shingles, and then the kids caught them from him and spread it round the neighbourhood).

      1. Tigtog, thank you for the kind words. I am lucky in that I live alone, and have no kids to infect. The HR department of my job has banished me from the office for at least a week, due to the fact that there are several pregnant folks in the office, as well as those with little kids.

        Last night was pretty bad, and I wrote this post about it. http://peggyluwho.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/not-going-according-to-plan/

        I may take an extra dose of my anti-anxiety meds if it starts to get really bad again, today.

        I’m so tired.

        And I truly am sorry to come on here and just whine about this over and over again.

        2. Agree with pheeno–a really close friend of mine got shingles a couple years ago and she says it’s really horrible and painful. This is not being your year, PeggyLuWho, and that sucks. Get well soon.

        3. One of my friends said the other day that the universe owes me some sort of windfall for everything I’ve had happen this year. I’m not sure she’s wrong.

          Thankfully I still had some painkillers from when I broke my leg, and I just took another one. It’s as painful.

          Thank you so much for your kind words of support. They do make me feel better.

  13. I think this is the best thing I’ve read so far about the Conor Obsert false rape accusation.

    It’s such a shitty, shitty thing. It’s shitty that a false accusation is getting so much more attention than all the true ones. It’s also shitty that people are arguing that someone who was falsely accused should just ‘take one for the team,’ and that defending yourself is anti-feminist.

    Lastly, as a side note, let’s keep the Central Park Five in mind. Very, very few rape accusations are fabricated (2%-8% seems to be the consensus), but that doesn’t mean the person who’s arrested is always the person who committed the crime. In one study ran by the Innocence Project, somewhere between 12% and 18% of men in jail for rape were wrongly convicted- a rate higher than any other crime.

    And in both your country and mine, it’s usually oppressed groups- black people in the US, Roma and immigrants in France- who are the victims of false arrest for rape, just like they are for other violent crimes.

    http://flavorwire.com/467845/the-sad-strange-aftermath-of-the-conor-oberst-rape-accusations

  14. So much horrible shit has gone down politically. I’m thinking in particular of Israel deliberately targeting the only injury rehab hospital in Gaza and destroying it, and the anti-semitic riots in France. I’m so upset about all of it, it’s horrifying. I don’t know that there’s a feminist angle, but I guess I just wanted to note it here.

    1. [CN: Islamophobia, rape, racism, colonialism, war]

      The mass murder happening in Gaza is really distressing. The worst part is that no one with any power to change the course of the Israeli occupation gives a shit about Palestinians. 500 people have been murdered because the government oppressing Palestinians is merciless and because allies of Israel who are capable of putting pressure on the Israeli government are either apathetic or eager to defend Israel at all costs for the sake of economic and political gains. At this point I no longer think the people of Gaza have any hope, at least not in the near future, and even in that case how much future is even left for Gaza? The power to change or prolong the situation rests solely in the hands of colonialist oppressors.

      I’m saying this because this particular massacre in Gaza seems a lot more relentless than the ones in recent memory. Netanyahu has made it clear that he doesn’t want to ever let Palestinians have sovereignty. There are also talks among Israeli politicians about cutting off food and energy supplies to Gaza in order to punish Palestinians for daring to not want to be ethnically cleansed and murdered. It all seems that they are trying to finish off Gaza for good.

      There’s even a picture spread around in Israeli social media of a woman in a burqa (with the word “Gaza” on it) sprawled on a bed with her bare legs showing, and there is text that reads “Bibi [Netanyahu], finish inside this time please!” The extent to which Palestinians are dehumanized is so horrific.

      1. It’s so horrific. It does seem like Israel just wants to make Palestinians not exist. I didn’t know about the possibility of cutting off food and energy. More murder of so many civilians, so many children. I can’t even articulate properly. I’m sorry.

        Even if Israel is willfully blind to anything that isn’t about Jewish welfare, doesn’t it see that its actions are making Jews around the world unsafe?

        But of course it’s not about Jewish welfare, either, I guess. It’s about a state and a government maintaining and consolidating power at any cost.

        1. Here’s the source: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/12798-israeli-officials-call-for-cutting-energy-and-food-supplies-to-gaza

          Israeli officials yesterday renewed their calls for cutting food and electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip as a punitive measure against Hamas and the area’s residents.

          Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister Danny Danon stressed that it is important to pressure Hamas and the people of Gaza through cutting off electricity and bombing Gaza’s power plant and destroying it completely.

          In a radio interview yesterday Danon called on Netanyahu to cut off the electricity supplies that Israel provides to the power plant, and to prevent the flow of fuel, food and basic goods into Gaza.

          Israeli columnists called for closing the Karm Abu Salem border crossing, the only commercial border crossing linking Gaza to the West Bank, so that no food, fuel or any other exports could reach the Gaza Strip.

          …

        2. Pressure the people of Gaza? Pressure them to do what, exactly? Pressure them through cutting off food?

          What the fuck is this? If the Israeli government wanted to hamstring Hamas, the best thing to do would be make sure Palestinians had food, medical care, a future to look toward.

        3. It’s a very effective strategy: take away everything Gazans need for survival and then excuse it under the pretense of defeating a Palestinian military organization. That’s why we see the IDF bombing hospitals, institutions for disabled people, and so on.

          This has been the modus operandi of the Israeli government for decades. It gets away with this shit every single time, and it’ll probably even get away with wiping out Gaza completely at some point. No one with any power to change the status quo cares about Palestinians. Like countless other colonialist states, it will probably achieve its goals one way or another.

      2. …allies of Israel who are capable of putting pressure on the Israeli government are either apathetic or eager to defend Israel at all costs for the sake of economic and political gains

        Unfortunately it’s not just Israel’s ‘allies’ who won’t put pressure on them for political gains. Egypt and Saudi Arabia both support the invasion of Gaza due to differences with Hamas.

        I feel like what is being done over there is very wrong and I am also distressed.

        2. Jordan has also played a role in exacerbating the oppression of Palestinians as well. I think their motivations for supporting the Israeli government – directly or otherwise – boil down to economic factors.

    2. I have nothing to contribute to the discussion, but I just wanted to say thank you for broaching the subject. A bottomless pit of sadness all around.

    4. I almost never talk about I/P online (for reasons I explained here several years ago, including the fact that if you take a position that isn’t 1000% committed to one side or the other, and are willing to point out the flagrant historical untruths told on both sides, it seems that everybody hates you!). But I will say that any willingness I had even to contemplate conceding that there was a justifiable basis for the Israeli government’s original actions (the airstrikes) in the current crisis, after the murder of those three teenagers, pretty much ended with the ground invasion — which I think is horrible both as a humanitarian tragedy and as something that can’t possibly end well for anybody. They’re not going to “destroy” all the tunnels; they’re not going to get rid of Hamas. Instead, everything is going to be worse, especially for people living in Gaza.

      That said, I believe even more than I did before that civilian casualties are exactly what Hamas wants to serve its own political purposes, and that it’s unconscionable for Hamas not to have made any effort whatsoever, with the billions of dollars in international aid they’ve received, to build a single bomb shelter to protect anyone other than their own leadership in a conflict they very much wanted, and, instead, to have used so much of the concrete they imported to build those tunnels into Israel. See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/23/world/middleeast/hamas-gambled-on-war-as-its-woes-grew-in-gaza.html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article.

      Unfortunately, the Israeli government seems all-too willing to provide Hamas with all the civilian casualties they could possibly want, ever since the ground incursion began. Not that I believe for a moment that “Israel” (or even Netanyahu and the present Israeli government, as completely as I despise them) actually wants to “make Palestinians not exist.” The ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli airstrikes would have been a lot higher than one death for every nine airstrikes (195 Palestinian deaths after about 1,650 airstrikes in the first 8 days before the ground invasion) if they were actually trying to kill civilians. (And people just need to stop the comparisons to the Warsaw Ghetto, and to Nazis in general, by the way.) Now, things are very different, and the Israelis no longer seem to be taking anything like the precautions they were earlier, and I’m praying even harder (figuratively speaking) for a ceasefire.

      1. I hadn’t run across any comparisons to the Warsaw Ghetto, and I’m glad of it. I really hate the invocation of the Nazis when talking about Israel as well. I’m far from a supporter of Israel as it is currently constituted–one might say I look at it with loathing and embarrassment–but I find the Nazi comparisons to just be noxious.

        I didn’t mean to imply that I supported Hamas in the slightest. They’re corrupt reactionary thugs, and indeed, mass civilian death just serves to empower them, so I too don’t doubt it’s what they want.

        1. No, Hamas (whatever you think of their politics), don’t want to to see loads of dead or maimed children in Palestine. They are human beings too. Would you write that IDF soldiers want lots of Israeli children dead because it empowers them?

          Hamas don’t need lots of civilian death to empower them, the grim reality of life under a blockade in Gaza does that for them.

    5. I just don’t even know. I keep hearing people say Israel has the right to exist as the excuse. So do my people, but we’re not bombing schools over it. And we certainly don’t gleefully use the deaths of our people to continue a war.

        1. This is the article I read-http://www.dailydot.com/politics/israel-gaza-kidnap-false-inaccurate/

      3. I just don’t even know. I keep hearing people say Israel has the right to exist as the excuse. So do my people, but we’re not bombing schools over it. And we certainly don’t gleefully use the deaths of our people to continue a war.

        I always thought the expression “right to exist” referred to the State of Israel, and not to The Jewish People in general. A people yes, a state, well that to me is debatable.

        1. That’s not how the Christian conservative assholes are saying it. But Israel could be 100% wrong in something and they’d support it.

          Just read a story on how Hamas didn’t kill those 3 teens. It’s now become Israels weapons of mass destruction.

        2. They haven’t taken credit for it, but it’s hardly conclusive. And somebody is giving refuge to the people who killed them. I hope you don’t believe the articles that claim that the three teenagers were murdered by Israeli Jews to give an excuse for retaliation.

        3. No, but I do believe it’s entirely possible someone jumped the gun in finger pointing. Going off half cocked is what governments -do-, when it means they get to kill people. Protecting piece of shit murderers is also what governments do when they murder people the government wants dead. Basically I think it’s both. I think some murdering even more extreme assholes killed those kids, Israel blamed it on Hamas and Hamas are protecting them. And neither have any high moral ground.

        4. The thing that bothers me the most about this (at the current second) is how people excuse killing children by saying that Hamas is using children as human shields. Is “They put the kids there, we just shot them,’ anything approximating a legit argument for killing children? How is that not morally reprehensible?

        5. I suppose if someone’s shooting directly at you while standing behind a child, it isn’t morally reprehensible to shoot back in self-defense. But that isn’t exactly the situation here.

        6. Stuck it in wrong place.This is the article I read-http://www.dailydot.com/politics/israel-gaza-kidnap-false-inaccurate/

  15. I do wish the world had the ability to pay attention to more than one apparently intractable conflict at a time:

    http://mic.com/articles/95006/this-was-the-syrian-civil-war-s-bloodiest-week-yet-and-you-probably-heard-nothing-about-it?utm_source=policymicFB&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social

    An estimated 170,000 people have been killed in Syria in the three years since the civil war began — 10 times as many as in all the Israel-Palestine conflicts in the last 65 years combined — and this was the bloodiest week so far, but it’s as if everyone has forgotten about it. I’m not suggesting that the attention to Gaza should be less, but that the attention to Syria should be at least equal to it.

    1. I have family in Syria. I have family who have fled Syria. I cannot forget about Syria, ever.

      However, since the situation in Gaza has erupted, I’ve seen people who give precisely 0 about the Syrian people, pulling the “What about Syria” card as a way of saying “Stop making such a fuss about Gaza”. I know that is not your intention here, btw.

      Also, remember or not, Syria is at an impasse and the West will not intervene anyway. I have no idea when this will ever end.

      I would also like to add that, AFAIK, Syria has only been mentioned ATL here exactly twice. Once was about “Damascus Gay Girl” and the other was to state that women weren’t getting enough roles covering the conflict. That has been it.

      1. I agree with you that many of the people who are speaking the most loudly about Syria now have not exactly been drawing attention to it themselves in the past. It is very depressing, however, to think that — for example — The New York Times didn’t even have a story about the most recent casualty figures there.

      2. However, since the situation in Gaza has erupted, I’ve seen people who give precisely 0 about the Syrian people, pulling the “What about Syria” card as a way of saying “Stop making such a fuss about Gaza”. I know that is not your intention here, btw.

        I believe this is because the main forces driving this debate (the debate, as presented in the media, not the war itself) are Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. If you think all Jews are evil or that all Muslims are evil, the Israel/Gaza war is a no-brainer for you. Subsequently any sort of nuanced voice which can variously be any combination of pro Israel, pro Palestine, anti Hamas-style extremism, yet still cry at the news of dead Palestinian civilians gets lost. The nuanced opinions aren’t news.

        Therefore, in Syria, where you don’t have a simple option for Anti-Semites or Islamophobes, all US opinion must be nuanced. Nuance is not going to make big news.

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