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

Open Thread with Cheese Platter

tigtog

A plate full of yummy stuff I cannot eat for the next month or so features for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.

Mmmmm cheese platter

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.

45 thoughts on Open Thread with Cheese Platter

  1. I can’t eat cheese right now because my gallstones are rebelling against any sort of fatty/spicy food. I’m having surgery this coming Friday, and will still be on a restricted diet for a few weeks afterwards, but then I can gradually start enjoying cheese again. Phew.

    1. @tigtog; Good luck on the surgery. A friend of mine had his gall bladder out and also had pancreatitus(bad speller). He missed alomost 3 months of work, but is ok now but, does have to watch is diet.

    1. I’m not familiar with the case, but I did read the linked article, plus some articles linked from geekfeminism.org.

      I agree with the main thrust of the post: that Ms. McCallum’s being trans is irrelevant to the case (it’s not like cis women don’t do the same sort of things — why would we act like it’s something completely different when a trans woman does it?) and that it doesn’t speak well for the non-haters that (as I gather) Ms. McCallum’s ex is mainly getting support from the haters (TERFs, etc.)

      Two things in her article did raise red (or maybe yellow?) flags for me, though:

      1. Her saying that Ms. McCallum “wasn’t the same person” when she was drunk. From everything I’ve heard about alcoholics, this isn’t really true. What comes out when people are drunk are sides to them that they may (or may not) be suppressing or hiding when sober. It doesn’t create aspects that weren’t there. In my experience, the “not the same person” line is a form of denial.

      2. “I want to forgive her. I want this story to be about forgiveness and redemption. I need it to be.” Do I need to explain why I get a sinking feeling when I read this?

      1. The same red flags come up for me. But if she wants and needs to look at the situation that way, I guess that’s her right, as the victim. Especially since I am sure at this point that there’s no chance of her endangering herself by getting back together with her former spouse. Not this time.

        And you’re absolutely correct: it’s very, very frustrating to see that most of the support she’s gotten (other than from her friends) has been from people who are really only interested in exploiting her, and pointing gleefully to what happened as supposed “proof” that trans women are really just violent male rapists. Because as everybody knows, all trans women are guilty of whatever bad things one trans woman does.

        I don’t think people’s fear of drawing attention to this, and inspiring that kind of reaction, should prevent them from supporting M., and acknowledging that yes, trans women are capable of doing bad things just like anybody else. Even though I understand and share the fear — it’s pretty much the same way I feel every time someone Jewish does something terrible.

        1. The important thing is that trans people are people, and that means that some of them are going to do dreadful things, because that’s how people are.

  3. I love cheese! 😉

    My partner and I are thinking we’re going to have a cheese wedding cake.*

    Good luck with the surgery tigtog; hopefully it won’t seem too long until you can start on the cheese again.

    P.S Does anyone have a favourite cheese? Mine is probably gorgonzola dolcelatte, but I know some people hate blue cheeses. But hey at least it isn’t marmite? 😉

    * something like – https://www.thecheeseworks.co.uk/cheese-wedding-cakes

      1. I’ve not had paneer that much, but a friend of mine once made an amazing saag paneer and it was wonderful. Need to make it myself sometime!

      1. Ok, now I want some Camembert. And to be honest, I’d totally be ok with that if my partner said here is some cheese, rather than I love you! 😉

    4. A good blue cheese (there’s a soft one that’s delicious) for just eating or with crackers; brie or camembert (not too ripe) for crusty bread, a very sharp cheddar with apples, muenster or similar for an egg sandwich, fresh mozzarella for scarfing down straight –
      Basically, cheese.

  4. I officially have bronchitis and a bladder infection. 20 bucks for dr visit and 57 bucks in meds. My corgi has an inflamed and infected prostate. 320 dollar vet visit. We HAD been looking forward to having a bit of cash saved so we weren’t broke til next payday. That’s out. But bills are paid, groceries bought so we’re still better off than many people.

    And as sick as the corgi feels, he still managed to perk up and flirt with the 3 legged female lab in the reception area at the vet. He’s a leg man, evidently. As long as the legs are long, the number doesn’t matter.

  5. I’ve moved up to Antioch with my friends. On the verge of vomiting due to being exhausted and having eaten nothing but corn chips, soda and sour candy for the past week. I would try to buy more nutritious food if it weren’t for me being poor and using up all my donation money (the only money I get these days) on HRT refills because my insurance is currently not usable. I hate having a body.

    1. Hi Aaliyah, Where are your donations coming from? Maybe we can boost your signal and get you a little more cash?

      Also, just FYI – your link to your blog from your avatar is broken. I think it’s got dot-com instead of dot-org in the url.

      1. Yep, wrong suffix. That’s embarrassing.

        Anyway, I appreciate the offer, but I got some money in, so I’ll be good for a while (and hopefully this month).

  6. [Moderator note for cross-thread clarity: this references a discussion arising from Broadblogs' link posted in Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday #362]

    Delegar, what did your original post on Broadblogs say?

    Good for you for trying, but as you can see, it seems that citing facts seems to do absolutely nothing to get the author of the blog to do any self-reflection — nor remove her from complete confidence that it is actually she who has much to teach us about Judaism and how it made Christians be sexist.

      1. Ah, OK; I hadn’t read last Sunday’s self-promotion thread or BroadBlog’s post on her blog. Now I understand.

        I have no interest in commenting on BroadBlog’s blog (especially since people who disagree with her are ipso facto deemed anti-feminist and banned accordingly), but it’s been a while since I’ve seen such self-righteousness from an apparent Christian lecturing Jews on Judaism, and its alleged responsibility — because the early Christians considered themselves Jews, don’t you know — for the spread of patriarchy to Northern Europe (which undoubtedly was a matriarchal paradise before the Semites started messing things up).

        I did leave this comment on last Sunday’s self-promotion thread:


        BroadBlogs, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re just repeating ahistorical, anti-Semitic nonsense. Judaism didn’t “spawn” Christianity; Christianity appropriated and distorted Judaism and its sacred texts.

        And I assure you that Jews aren’t responsible for bringing patriarchy to Northern Europe.

        I also defy you to find a historical example of Jews stoning women for having sex outside marriage at any time in the last 2000+ years, or actually doling out any of the other punishments prescribed in Leviticus hundreds of years earlier.

        Finally: disagreeing with you does not make someone anti-feminist.

        1. Love the comment, though like you say, it won’t help. How are you otherwise? Don’t forget to email me sometime if you are for example having some coffee and think “this is pretty good but would taste better with a side of pro trans rabbinic responsum.” ^_^

          My favourite self promotion sunday was the one where Pheeno posted how to help her with her horrible house/expense situation. I’ve found some good blogs through it but I really wish it was something a little more for/by the commentors here. I guess that’s more for us to step up to though.

        2. The person in question responded to my comment in the self-promotion thread, largely by falsely accusing me of various sins in the same way she did to you. I tried to request a giraffe about four different times, and it went into moderation each time. Dear Moderator: you only need to unmoderate one such request!

        3. A big “never mind”: I said what I had to say, over in the last Sunday self-promotion thread (on the theory that it’s now already the next Saturday night, so I’m not really interfering with the flow of self-promotion posts by doing so).

          And if giraffe requests automatically go into moderation now, I completely forgot.

        4. Yonah, I’m sorry, I know you sent me your email address, but now I can’t find it. Are you in New York too?

          Things aren’t really so great for me these days. It’s not easy to find a job as an attorney when you’re a middle-aged trans woman. In fact, it seems to be almost impossible. Even with organizations that are specifically in the business of helping LGBT people, ironically enough.

          Plus I have to move in five months when my sublease expires, and as far as I can tell it’s impossible to rent an apartment in this area if you don’t have a job, and don’t have an annual salary of at least 40x monthly rent. Being unemployed doesn’t cut it. So I have no idea what I’ll do if I don’t have a job by then. None at all.

        5. Oh no, I missed this development — I remember you writing once about how you wouldn’t know what to do if you had to find another job! How frightening.

          My email is this username, which is my first name, then a dot, then my surname (lavery) at gmail.

    2. Can I just say I was very confused by BB’s “evidence” in that post? The one thing she links to is a footnote citing Marilyn French re: “virgin,” and the annotation itself describes French’s redefinition of the word as “quite willful.” Which I believe is a polite academic way of saying “that word, it does not mean what you think it means.” She keeps mentioning “several” sources that back her up, but I can’t seem to find any.

      I remember that the name of Arthur’s mother in the Welsh stories, Igraine, is supposed to be derived from a Welsh word for virgin, eigyr. And seeing how the early versions of the story involve the Pendragon raping her by deceit in order to conceive Arthur, that probably isn’t a word that means “in control of one’s own destiny.”

      This feminist medievalist thinks she’s full of shit, and plenty anti-Semitic to boot.

      1. Since you’ve got the historical/linguistic angle covered, let me add to that my political confusion. Using “virgin” in the way BB wishes it to mean doesn’t seem feminist to me at all, but just perpetuates the idea of pure/impure women where pure means good and impure means bad. The only difference is that now to be “impure” means to be controlled rather than to be sexually experienced.

        Like what I mean is that whether or not a woman is controlled by men should not say something about how cool she is. If men are controlling her that says something about THEM, namely, they are unjust and unethical. It doesn’t say something good about the character of a woman if her partner never beats her, the same way that it would say nothing bad about her if a man did. This whole “reclamation” project seems like another way of boiling down women to their relationships with men.

        Partly off topic, have you considered blogging, or do you have one not linked in your username? Because I would LOVE more feminist Medievalist reading in my life.

    3. I pretty much said what Donna went on to say later — that Christianity did not, in fact, arise from Judaism; that “Virgin” didn’t enter the English language until 1200 — that it had, specifically, come into the language with the Normans, after William the Conqueror’s era (I teach History of the English Language, among other things, so I knew she was wrong on that one); and that I didn’t think Europeans/ Christians had been as supportive toward women as she was implying.

      I don’t remember my exact wording, and of course, since she edited my comment, I can’t check it; but I don’t think I was hateful. I do think I disagreed with her on several points; especially I disputed a number of her facts.

  7. Decorating for Halloween! So excited! Last years Halloween was a disaster, natch, what with the surgery and all, but I’m happy to be able to participate this year.

    1. Great petition. I’ll add that Lovecraft was more than just an author who “happened to be” racist — many, many of his works are virulently and obviously racist, and indeed some only work as “horror” stories at all because of racism (e.g. the supposedly horrific punchline to a story being a hoard of “yellow” people flooding the earth). I think there are great reasons to study Lovecraft, and he contributed a lot to a certain type of pseudoVictorian horror atmosphere still influential today, but there is really NO reason to celebrate the person… like none at all, it’s not as though he was racist but had a side hobby of saving orphans, racism was pretty much his only hobby aside from writing.

      1. Yeah. In the 1920s he wrote a letter wishing that somebody would gas all the Jews on the Lower East Side. And he supported Hitler in the ’30s. No kidding. And that’s leaving aside what he wrote/said about black people. So, you know, fuck him.

    1. The Sergeant-At-Arms for the Parliament in Ottawa is to be commended for co-ordinating such an effective response – it could all have been so much worse. One dead soldier is more than bad enough.

      Hells bells though.

      Today there were meant to be several events in Ottawa honouring Malala. They’ve now been cancelled.

    2. …and here comes the predictable racist bullshit on my facebook feed. Time to exercise my ‘hide’ and ‘unfriend’ finger.

    3. I’d love to hear more from you too! About so many things, really. I’d love to hear about being trans and leftist, and about negotiating your identity and trans-ness and atheism at the intersection of US’s transphobia and Islamophobia. But really, anything you’d want to post would be fascinating.

  12. I’ve hesitated a lot about making this comment, but my friends are in a dire financial situation. They have to raise about $700 in utilities by tomorrow or else they will no longer have any electricity or water. I’m only making this post because some other folks have donated to people here before, but of course if this comment is inappropriate then I’m ok with the mods deleting it. For anonymity reasons I can’t provide my friend’s PayPal info, but you can use my PayPal address, cryptowomyn@gmail.com and I will transfer the funds to them. I’ve been trying to help my friends out with the little money I have but I’m pretty poor as well, so any help is very much appreciated. Thank you so much in advance.

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