Recently by figleaf
Photo by Flickr user 30003019. Used under a Creative Commons license.
[Yeah, it's not Thursday but I didn't feel like waiting or post-dating this. --fl]
Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Professors raises an issue that every decent, right-thinking independent sex blogger and HNT participant ought to take personally. It's about the circulating video footage of wingnut Vice-Presidential candidate in a bathing suit when she was around 20 years old.
Egalia at Tennessee Guerilla Women points how here that blogs linking to Sarah Palin’s 1984 beauty pageant swimsuit competition are attempting to trivialize her for doing something traditionally feminine when she was young, using this HuffPo piece as an example. Of course the odious Daily Kos is all over this as well. Actually one of the bloggers at Kos manages to ramp up the sexism an additional notch by comparing Palin to this then teenaged South Carolinian, who certainly gave an oddly rambling and incoherent answer to an interview question during a beauty pageant, but who, last I checked, was not running for political office. And, it should be noted, who turned out to be fairly poised and mature in the face of aggressive widespread mockery.
Seriously!
The first blogger I "outed" myself to was Blogher co-founder Susan Mernit. She was giving a presentation on anonymous sex-blogging at Gnomedex 2006, an über-tech conference. one of her points was, first, that while they were all gathered to talk about developments in, primarily, Web 2.0 infrastructure what she was finding most remarkable were the resulting *social* developments (often almost dismissively shorthanded in nerd speak as "content.") In particular she said people... men but especially women...
As I said in my old post, the audience responses from men were pretty uniformly alarmed, and knowledgeable enough about details of on-line sex-related security to have practiced some of it themselves. They were also nearly as uniformly certain that "if you're not careful" then writing about sex, or posting your photos, or even looking at them when you're young could come back to bite you later when employers or admissions offices Google your background.
On the other hand, in a way that surprised me at the time, the relative handful of tech women in the audience, ages ranging from twenties at the low end to maybe fifty at the high end, were perfectly sanguine about it. Which, in retrospect, strongly reinforced Mernit's thesis. Their reaction was "no big deal, more and more people are doing it and when 'in the future' happens it'll be no bigger a deal than having a tattoo is today.
Well, two things come to mind immediately after contemplating the Palin pagent video. #1: To paraphrase William Gibson, "in the future" has already arrived, it's just not evenly distributed yet #2: Whoever initially posted that video was probably a man who still imagined it's a "gotcha."
But here's the deal: chances are *very* good that if you're a blogger reading this post you've written about your own sex life. And chances are pretty good you've participated in popular and consequently non-scandalous Osbasso's Half-Nekkid Thursday meme. Which, incidentally, started... roughly around the time Mernit made her presentation! And therefore chances are the immature troll who posted that Palin video is the kind of asshole who whacks off to your photos in private but would discriminate against you in public. And whoever snickers along with them saying "yeah, she was a *beauty contestant,* what a bimbo" is also insulting *you!* Oh yeah, and they're also threatening you. So yeah, they're not just sexist, they're immature, knee-squeezing, not-caught-up-on-the-21st-Century assholes who'd do the same to you given half a chance.
So! Governor Palin is a corrupt, imprudent, professional-line-crossing wingnut. Fine. Governor Palin is scary-unprepared to uphold the Constitution and administer the executive functions of the United States of America (or even, it would seem, execute the far more limited functions of President of the Senate -- the VP's day job till the President's unanticipated departure.) Got that too. But unlike every one of her many, many "fail stamp" flaws, that she ever paraded in a bathing suit... or for that matter birthday suit... or had Teh kinky Sex... or had Teh Sex at all... either in her youth or last week is *not* a blot on her character. It's *not* a disqualification for office. It's *not even a big surprise* since people have been doing those things since long before Edward Land introduced the first Polaroid camera. Instead it's what ordinary people do, and have done. If certain asshats got a problem with *that* it's *their* problem, not hers. If they think it's a point against her, surprise! It's a point against them.
Action item: when you see the future isn't distributed properly like that leave a comment saying get over it. Even better? Get *used* to it. Sod off works too.
I mean, yeah, most of us still post under internet aliases, and most other people don't post anything at all, because the future still really isn't well-distributed at all. Yet. Challenging mouth breathers who think that video, or who's in it, or how they got there is significant is one way to help break up the lumps.
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Also see: "The Price of Profanity" (not.)
Image from the Babeland product page for the
"Monkey Spanker" toy for men.Megan of Jezebel brings up a great point!
A male colleague of mine remarked to be recently that writing about vibrators is a Jezebel scribe's rite of passage. And, it's true, we totally write about vibrators a lot; in fact, I popped my own vibrator-story cherry not that long ago! It is a rare day, however, that any of us writes about male masturbatory aides — and, when we have, we usually focus on Real Dolls and how vaguely disturbing we find the men who are into them. But then I saw this article in The Independent today about the surge in men purchasing all sorts of things to their dicks into or up their butts, and I realized that it wasn't just sex dolls I find vaguely disturbing... and that that's kind of sexist of me.
I mean, why is it that the mental image I have of a guy who utilizes sex toys is someone kind of creepy? Is this fleshlight any stranger-looking than a rabbit, really? Why is it that I am fine with a guy jerking off with his hands, but if he's jerking off in something I'm vaguely disturbed? Why is it not remotely strange to me that men would buy things to shove up their butts — or to have their partners shove up their butts — but, still, looking at this picture of something the would stick their dicks in, some reptilian part of my brain goes "Ewww."? Even the author of the article, Tanya Gold, admits to masturbating with mechanical aids, but seems to find male sex toys — from the pocket pussies to the pussy-in-a-jar devices to the blow-up and real dolls — disturbing in their appearance and what they say about the men who utilize them.
I'm not sure sexism is the right word for the impulse for judging men's masturbation, ahem, differently from women's but she's right about the double standard.
"Blossom Sleeve" toy for men.I'm the first to agree that the, um, highly stylized attempts at representing disembodied vulvas is disquieting and probably disturbing to people with the actual parts. That could be projection on my part though because I'm disquieted by the no-less "realistic" disembodied erections you see in a lot of sex toys for women. Fortunately many sex toys, for both men or women, aren't really anatomical at all -- consider the very novel, but allegedly quite effective "Monkey Spanker" toy for men in the photo, above.** But I digress...
I can think of two other reasons why we might feel more squeamish about male masturbation than for women. The first being that for many mainstream cultures, now and through much of history, have (believe it or not) placed a *huge* emphasis on male chastity. Several major religions and related medical traditions.*** (See Ayurvedic medicine, for instance.) In the West, from roughly 1825 to 1975, doctors were convinced that ejaculation in general and (male) masturbation in particular were the root causes of tuberculosis, insanity, curvature of the spine. The original Boy Scouts was founded to help divert young male minds from "self pollution." John Harvey Kellogg invented corn flakes, Charlie Post cooked up Postum and Grape Nuts, and Sylvester Graham invented Graham flour and Graham crackers because they believed bland, whole-fiber foods temper hot lust. And the tradition of non-religious male circumcision was introduced and successfully promoted by physicians because it was believed to inhibit masturbation in boys and men. It was as much an article of medical faith in the late 1800s that "excess" ejaculation was as life-shortening as the (much more well-founded) belief that smoking is life-shortening today. That's a *lot* of propaganda, and the late 20th Century, when the idea that masturbation-as-health-hazard was finally put to rest. And, well, *perversely* it *really was* the case that due to convention and social pressure those who *did* masturbate, or admit it, really could be seen as marginal or socially suspect. (Compare it to the reaction today to people who won't wear seat belts or won't car-seat their children -- at this point if you haven't gotten the safety message, and can manage to ignore all the dashboard lights, there really *is* something else going on.) And the late 20th Century just wasn't that long ago -- some of us still remember it quite distinctly. :-) Anyway, that's one good reason.
"Fleshlight" toy for men.The other is that (soapbox here) the classic feminist construction of women as the sex class has it backwards. In fact it's more accurate to say women are (prescriptively and proscriptively) supposed to be the restrained, chaste, non-sexual "no-sex" class, whereas men are held to be the reflexive, relentless (every seven minutes!), think-with-the-little-head, fuck-anything-that-moves, fuck-anything-that-*doesn't*-move (Megan mentions "Real Dolls," for instance, but drunk-date rape is a lot more problematic) sex class that perpetually threatens the chastity and propriety of "delicate flower," "hey, my *mom* was a woman!" femininity. And so male sexuality, while considered utterly predictable, is also a commodity produced in quantities that far exceed demand.
Oh, see also the universally degrading "why buy the cow when the milk is free" philosophy advanced by the patriarchy as a means to induce men to marry... once they're deemed "worthy" to receive the woman's *father's* consent. Given that Patriarchy functions not only by treating women as domestic livestock but also as a system for controlling men via *access* to sex, then that system is overridden by what author Neil Stevenson wryly termed "manual override."
"Aneros Prostate Stimulator"
Oh, and one last thing. Recently, in the last year or so, several women have confided to me that they're running into more and more men who now prefer masturbation to sex. With *them.* And whereas *tradition,* not to mention the "no-sex" class paradigm, says they ought to be relieved not to have to endure men's lustful advances, *reality* says women desire and enjoy sex no less than men and consequently a "I see you as just a friend" isn't so, well, hot. No, obviously the plural of anecdote isn't data, nor am I ready yet to accept the generally breathless claims that, say, Japanese men are losing interest represents a real trend. But if it really does *become* a trend, and if toys for men become as sophisticated for men as they've become for women then I wonder if at some point traditional disgust or distress at male masturbation would flip over into resentment.
[** Note: Clicking the images in this post will take you to the corresponding pages at Babeland. I'm not at all affiliated with Babeland but that's where I've nicked all accompanying images so it only seemed fair. They're a good company though and the original store's here in Seattle. Worth a visit if you're in town. --fl]
[*** Male chastity being distinctly, well, distinct from male virginity. --fl]
Laura Agustín of Border Thinking on Migration, Culture, Economy and Sex is a sociologist who's work focuses on legal and illegal immigrants in general, and migrant sex workers in particular, at the interface between NGOs and migrants themselves. She's using her blog, in part, to publish some of her earlier works. Here's an excerpt from "Challenging 'Place:' Leaving Home for Sex."
My example here is migrant women and transsexuals in Europe, but the discourses which construct them as ‘trafficked’ exist all over the world and are being addressed by international bodies.[6] At the time of this writing, the majority of migrant prostitutes in Europe come from the west of Africa, Latin America, eastern Europe and countries of the ex-Soviet Union. While domestic workers have begun to unite across ethnic borders to demand basic rights, sex workers have not, making them impossible to fit into classic migration frameworks, in which associations are formed as an essential step to ‘settling’ down. For a variety of legislative and social reasons, not least of which are the repressive policies of police and immigration all over Europe, prostitutes tend to keep moving, from city to city and from country to country.[7] This itinerant lifestyle creates a particular relationship to ‘place’ that impedes doing the things migrants are ‘supposed’ to do, related to establishing themselves and becoming good (subaltern) citizens (the Roma suffer from the same impediment). While nomadism is found romantic in people who live far away (such as the Bedouin) it tends to be seen as a social problem inside the West.
Agustín makes the further point that if tradition in both countries of origin (usually in the 2nd- and 3rd-world), and destination countries (usually in the 2nd- or 1st) make jobs available to women only in the domestic, "caring," and sex industries** then that's... pretty much where they're going to end up in the course of doing what men have done for centuries: emigrate in search of greater economic or social opportunities elsewhere.
This suggests two things where one's obvious and the other ought to be. First, that without shifts away from limiting women, especially at the margins, to tasks that tie them to "home" activities no amount of criminalization of sex work is going to reduce the likelihood of surplus workers winding up in it (whether more or less against their will.) Second, as the quoted passage illustrates, the specific criminalization of sex work complicates the development of networks available to other migrants for "landing" in a place and becoming established -- leaving them perpetually both more displaced and more vulnerable to continuing coercion and exploitation.
Link via Red Spine.
[** I'd add sweatshop piece work which, based on my own childhood experiences with small-scale farming in the middle of the last century, is itself an offshoot of the tendency for the partners of male farmers to process, finish, or package what the male farmer harvests and takes to market. --fl]
Emily Douglas of RHRealityCheck.org passes along word that
Republican Majority for Choice today announced that it will not issue an endorsement in this election. The organization of pro-choice Republicans cites an "outpouring of concern from members" opposed to the endorsement of candidates John McCain and Sarah Palin as the reason for its announcement.
Good for them! It must not have been easy for them -- the Log Cabin Republicans have stayed on board despite their party's intense and calculated homophobia -- but sometimes principle has to trump partisanship and I want to acknowledge them for that.
While clearing out the very back-est, furnace-room-iest part of the basement I found this pair of really old, rusty dumbells. I vaguely remember picking them up from a pile of junk left by a previous tenant at an apartment I lived in, and I vaguely remember taking them with me each time I moved. But I distinctly remember not ever using them. Actually I got a number of pieces to begin with but each time I moved I wound up with less and less. Evidently by the time I moved here these were all that remained of the original collection.
Amazingly, even though they're still rusty, dusty, and cobwebby they still work! :-)
Also, cool what kind of lighting you get in a basement from really overcast, rainy northwest skys in the Fall, eh?
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Heather Corinna of the sex-ed site Scarleteen, and others, remind us that
September 25th is the last day to submit public comment on the proposed HHS regulations which are not only superfluous, but more importantly, would further limit access to reproductive healthcare (and other healthcare) services in the U.S., particularly for those who already have the greatest limitations to care, like teens.
It's so important to have public comment on this, so if you have not done so yet, take a few minutes tonight and be sure to get something in.
* * *
I am writing to urge you to stop efforts to block women's access to basic reproductive health services.
I understand that the proposed regulations that the Department of Health and Human Services released on August 21, 2008 expand existing law to allow more health care providers and institutions to refuse to provide needed care.
As written, the regulations could allow institutions and individuals -- based on religious beliefs -- to deny women access to birth control and permit individuals to refuse to provide information and counseling about basic heath care services. Moreover, they expand existing laws by permitting a wider range of health care professionals to refuse to provide even referrals for abortion services.
For those of us working in healthcare, the onus is on us to choose a clinic or an area of practice where we know we want to provide the healthcare services offered to clients, and which we feel is in alignment with our personal values or religious beliefs. It should not be on those seeking needed health services. It is our responsibility -- and we have the greater agency as as workers -- to seek out the work we want, and leave the work we do not want, or do not feel we can live with, to those who are supportive and can honor any given job description. It is also our responsibility to take a job earnestly, not disingenuously. In healthcare, we have an extra responsibility, which is to put our clients needs and their physical health -- not our ideas about their spiritual health -- ahead of our own, and to care for them in the way which is best for them, objectively, rather than in the ways we feel would be best for us, or feel our religion would mandate.
It's a pretty big deal and your comments (pro or, I guess, con) can make a big difference. The reproductive-health website passes along a link to an online comments form at Physicans for Reproductive Choice and Health. You can write your own comments or just use the template letter they provide. I've added mine, please consider adding yours.
Thank you!
figleaf
Sokari of The F-Word Blog in the U.K. says of the "Brothel Report" by the Poppy Project
What the Brothel report does is conflate sexworkers like Lara with women who are forced into prostitution through trafficking, pimping and drug addiction. Lara represents many women in the sex industry who have the right to chose how they earn a living without having to live up to some latent Victorian sense of morality that is built on belief that women and sex are dirty. As Lara points out the kind of people who traffic women for prostitution are hardly likely to bother whether prostitution is legal or otherwise. They are already operating illegally by trafficking and abusing women. By criminalising prostitution as opposed to focusing on preventing and prosecuting trafficking AND by failing to support those women who are real victims of crime, more women like Lara are put at risk by having to go underground and of loosing their children. What the Brothel Report doesn't show is the hypocrisy of the British government towards trafficking victims who when found are in nearly all cases deported back to their home countries where they are once again vulnerable to be trafficked not just back to the UK but other countries across Europe and beyond.
It's an incredible summary of what irks me about moves inspired by the coalition of evangelicals, neoconservatives, and their various fellow travelers to to divert policy and law-enforcement resources away from *actual trafficking,* which doesn't seem to bother them much in favor of anti-prostitution enforcement, which -- voluntary or coerced -- bothers them quite a lot.
That last bit, about deporting (often summarily deporting) trafficked sex workers is a story told all across Europe. Although I oppose recently proposed amendments the otherwise generally laudable Wilberforce (a.k.a. "White Slavery") Act in the U.S. is at least better engineered to forestall deportation. But the general deportation-centric approach for trafficking victims, along with casual attitudes towards the actual traffickers and their customers**, strongly betrays what motivates these sorts of initiatives.
I think I've mentioned this before but I was reflecting again today (especially after this post by Debauchette) on the by-definition not perfect analogy between sex work and agricultural labor: just as there can't be a blanket policy that makes no distinctions between free farmers, skilled labor, substance/survival farming, migrant labor, and slave labor, a blanket policy that assumes *all* sex workers are trafficked, prostituted, or otherwise conscripted or coerced is going to leave the sort of substantial enforcement gaps Sokari points to. It's why we can't play either the blue-nose or the libertarian card but instead must to actually craft policy to fit *cases.* The first, obviously, between those who do what they do *on purpose* (however much we do or don't approve)and those who have *no say at all.* (And anyone who approves of that isn't just part of the problem, they're the blood adversary!)
[** Remember johns of trafficking victims are the *trafficker's* customers, not the victim's. --fl]
Have I mentioned I seem to have *very* strong willpower in the face of consensual but extraordinary temptation? The trick seems to be... thoroughly enjoy having it.
In comments last week Curvaceous Dee mentioned teasing a partner who was forced to keep his eyes on the road while she caressed herself in the passenger seat. All the way home. I've always had a roaringly good time in exactly those kinds of situations.
Of course teasing can go both ways with that. For instance sweet-talking about what you'd like to do to each other if you could only find a place to pull over... and then "accidentally" missing a promising deserted exit or side road? Oh yeah, extending the agony for another few miles... even if that really only means a few more minutes of driving time. Saying "ooh, I think there's a spot just up ahead where we can pull over and... oh no, too many lights?" Also pretty humidifying.
But of course you don't have to be in a car to find, or invent, all sorts of opportunities for teasing and denying yourselves. If you're younger there's always "not yet, I think your <sibling/parents/sitter> hasn't <left/gone to bed/gone downstairs>!" And of course if you've got children -- and the time and energy left anything but sleep :-) -- there's always "I think I hear footsteps." And if you're daft enough to have at-work relationships, well, the opportunities are endless -- during normal work hours *or* after.
And then, obviously, there's the "haven't gone that far" phase of new relationships, although the actual, legitimate uncertainties are usually too distracting... not to mention too important... to call it tease and denial.
A couple of caveats. While it's fun when it's mutual and cooperative, unilateral teasing isn't any more admirable than... I dunno... playground teasing. And when it gets wrapped up in the whole "no-sex" class thing it's a bit too cliché, not to mention stereotype-enforcing to be very cool at all.
Fortunately it doesn't *have* to be either unilateral or cliché. Instead it can be... delightfully appetizing. For hours, although preferably not for days.
And the nice thing about playing *together,* of course, is that when you're working it together the worst that can happen is... you both lose! Which, when you're talking about sexual tension, means you also both win. :-)
Samhita of Feministe asks an unsurprising question about Attorney General Mukasey putting pressure on the (Monica Goodling-bolloxed) Immigration Appeals Board to reverse their decision to send a refugee back to Mali on the basis that, having already been genitally mutilated once she's not likely to be mutilated again. (Heck of a job, Bushie!)
Seriously, why? He hasn't seemed to care about international human rights violations in the past.
While digging deeper into the background of the Immigration Appeals Board (heck of a job, Bushie, revisited) Megan of Jezebel supplies the ominous answer (emphasis mine.)
Mukasey's order sends the case back to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which, one hopes, will not act like complete assholes the second time around. Mukasey pointed out that female genital mutilation can, indeed, be inflicted more than once — making the ruling factually wrong — and that further persecution need not take the same form as the initial persecution to qualify the woman for asylum. So, the Bush Administration finally did something right... only, actually, it's all their fault in the first place.
I remember reading... somewhere... this summer that FGM victims are often able to masturbate by rubbing their scar tissue -- which makes sense given what we know now about the actual size and structure of the clitoris. The idea that adherents of the practice might keep doing it till their victims are rendered completely compliant with "no-sex" class ideology is pretty, um, discouraging.
I'm not at all a fan of circumcision period but anybody out there still want to debate whether male circumcision is identical to female "circumcision?"
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As Megan points out, Mukasey was only doing his *actual job* of cleaning up after the disgraceful behavior of the Bush DOJ, but give credit where credit's due. Good for him.
[Another draft-pile post from this summer when it felt like I couldn't finish *anything* I started. --fl]
Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Professors highlights a study on the hazards of "marrying up" that she got from Historiann
...she considers the findings, which she asserts support a conclusion that "Women, much more often than men, are in marriages that don’t privilege their career tracks." Men’s and women’s academic careers start off relatively equally, but 6 to 10 years out, men are more likely to have tenure or jobs outside of academe (generally with higher salaries than those for professors) and women are more likely to have jobs off the tenure track.
Towards the end of the theme song for the 1965 American TV comedy "Green Acres" the husband who wishes to move to the country sings "You are my wife..." and his partner warbles with resignation "Goodbye city life..."
The lines went largely unremarked because at the time it was a foregone conclusion that, even if the woman worked, a husband's career opportunities pretty much determined where the couple was going to go.
From conversations with academic couples there's also evidently an institutional two-for-one tradition where it's assumed that if you hire one candidate on a tenure track his or (less frequently, evidently, at least for now) her partner will be over a barrel anyway so why "waste" another tenure position on them? Unless it's a town with a lot of colleges if the spouse want to work in their field at all they'll settle for non-tenure contracts.
I'm not so confident the twofer tradition will disappear -- if the rise in divorce in the last 40 years hasn't changed that probably nothing will. But with colleges now graduating quite a few more women than men there's some better than zero chance that the unfairness treatment will at least become more gender neutral.
Another reason, by the way, why the equality of *opportunity* (look, now there've been *two* women vice-presidental candidates on losing party tickets!) isn't always the best metric of success. (Fortunately it's also not the only such metric.)
Photo by Flickr user otbayley. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Having just repeated myself with a serious post from my pile of drafts here's a non-serious one from the draft pile I'm... pretty sure I've never brought up before. It's based on observations while hanging with my children in a mid-western municipal swimming pool this summer.
So on a sweltering mid-west day the relatives we were visiting suggested we go visit the nearby swimming pool to cool off. We agreed instantly, especially since our children and theirs were going stir crazy in the too-small-for-two-families house, effectively trapped inside by the heat.
Once I'd finally cooled off in the water long enough to be able to think clearly again I started watching the local youth playing their half-flirt/half-showoff games by the diving boards. They were all pretty accomplished divers (to my relatively untrained eye anyway) but at one point one of the young men upped the ante by yelling at another to do a belly flop. The man on the board took the challenge and landed a whopper, let out a huge groan when he surfaced, and then challenged the rest to follow suit as he swam to the side.
Maybe eight or ten, mostly men but a few hardy young women as well, followed suit. Some people went more than once. My observation? Even through a summer-long tan a belly-flop leaves red marks on the down-side of the body. If you've ever landed a belly flop yourself you gotta know it just plain hurts, and some of these people were really trying to get some air before their landings. But between the adrenaline, cheering and being cheered on, and just the general camaraderie they... Ok, I can't say they didn't *mind* that it hurt, it just didn't *bother* them that it did.
Not the way, say, they would have seriously minded getting a similar all-body whopping as corporal punishment in a different setting -- say, instead of school detention.
That's sort of the difference I've noticed between BDSM and ordinary physical abuse as well -- attitude, and maybe arousal and adrenaline make a *huge* difference.
Not a huge insight, I'm sure, and probably an eyeball roller for people more in to spanking than I've ever gotten. But something to remember while processing one's reactions, and possible triggers, while contemplating consensual BDSM.
One question, though. While I'm sure I could Google up a porn site somewhere that's got nothing but naked people doing belly flops (so confident, actually, that I'm not even going to bother looking) I wondered then, and I'm finally asking now...
Ever heard of a lazy top telling their sub to do belly and/or back flops? Any subs out there who'd think that would be hot? (Because, seriously, anything inside anything dungeon-y in the midwest in the summer has got to be some kind of miserable-hot, not hot-hot.)
Thanks in advance.
No word yet from Leslee Unruh. Nor should we expect one.
KagroX of Daily Kos highlights the difference between the lie of being "pro-life" vs. merely anti-abortion.
EPA won't limit rocket fuel in U.S. drinking waterWASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there's no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country.
The ingredient, perchlorate, has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses, according to some scientists.
You'd think the "fetus" part would get them, but nah. The jet fuel lobby (i.e. the Pentagon) trumps "life" in Republican circles.
When progressives say they're pro-choice they're not lying: we mean we're actually *pro-reproductive choice!* If you don't want to reproduce, fine, let's help you with that. If you *do* want to reproduce, fine, let's help you with that too, and while we're at it let's make sure people who reproduce have the best chance possible of having a safe and healthy pregnancy resulting in a safe and healthy child who will then grow up to be a healthy and productive adult able to take up the reins of the world when we must pass them on.
On the other hand, when conservatives say they're "pro-life" they *are* lying. They don't give a rat's ass if you live or die during pregnancy, whether your baby lives or dies before or *after* delivery, or whether your water's so tainted you have bullfrogs for babies. They just don't want you to use contraception or terminate a pregnancy because for them pregnancy isn't a promise to the world, it's the wages of sin for the individual pregnant woman and all they care about is making sure you serve every day of your sentence.
Shit like this just confirms initiatives like this are in utterly bad faith.
Photo "Child Bride" by Flickr user TRiver. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Mike Barber of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has the scoop on a too-often ignored, and particularly disgraceful form of sex-trafficking
Her disappearance from a Skagit County migrant worker camp a week ago launched a nationwide manhunt for a teenager accused of kidnapping.
But it turns out that the Mexican woman being sought as a kidnap victim since Sept. 13 was instead escaping an arranged marriage, authorities said Monday.
An arrest warrant for kidnapping that carried $1 million bail for Elena Garcia's purported kidnapper -- who turns out to be the man she wants to be with -- was quashed, Skagit County Chief Criminal Deputy Will Reichardt said Monday.
Two witnesses, including her father, who claimed Garcia was robbed at gunpoint on Sept. 13 and forced into a van with her 2-year-old son recanted over the weekend, Reichardt said.
Naturally the only charges likely to be filed are for "false reporting" and not, at all, for attempted sex-trafficking. Because thanks to aggressive lobbying by evangelicals, neo-conservatives, and their various dupes "human trafficking" in general and "sex trafficking" in particular means only, and exclusively, conscription and transportation for *commercial* sex.
Garcia said her father had promised her hand in marriage to a 27-year-old Mount Vernon man whom she had no desire to be with. She wanted to be with Sanchez-Velasco.
Garcia said her father's attempt to enforce the arranged marriage led to her flight with Sanchez-Velasco, and that no firearms were used and no money was stolen.
There's no evidence (at least not yet) that the father had outright *sold* his daughter to the Mount Vernon man she didn't want to marry. So if it wasn't about money what *was* it about? Here's a hint.
Garcia told investigators that, in his culture, he had lost all credibility when his daughter left with another man.
Thus, evidently, the "credibility saving" claim she'd been kidnapped by thugs at gunpoint. And evidently there really were consequences for the father's failure to hold up his side of the patriarchal arrangement
The man her dad had arranged for her to marry, however, who comes from the same area of Mexico and shares similar beliefs concerning marriage arrangements, was reportedly upset over the rejection, he said.
I'm... *pretty* darn sure I'm as bitterly opposed as the next activist to slavery in general and sex slavery in particular. And while I disagree pretty forcefully with some people about how anti-trafficking resources should be prioritized I'm pretty darn passionately believe it should all be a pretty darn high priority. I *do* think, however, based in no small part on Shulamith Firestone's work in the early 1960s, that economic/transactional/arranged/chattel marriage and the acquisition of labor it implied -- in other words *real,* non-romance-facilitated traditional marriage documented by Stephanie Coontz and others -- was the basis... the real "original sin" if you will, for all other subsequent forms of exploitation.
Consequently I'd *really* appreciate it if, say, anti-sex-trafficking (a.k.a. anti-prostitution) activists would expand the scope of their fulminations to this *original* form of sex *and* labor trafficking.
I've usually felt a little uncomfortable about playing what's usually called the "what about the menz" card while talking about men, feminism, and sexism. It's a problem, in part, because... well, first of all it's a perfectly naive but also perfectly natural reaction. (10,000 times more people *are* sexist than *want* to be sexist.) But, more problematically, it's also the refrain that Men's Rights Activists air-horn into virtually any forum they stumble into. With the result that I wind up feeling apologetic when I try to say that sexism *really does* hurt men too! So what to do?
Enter Hugo Schwyzer with a critical point about the line drawn most often by MRAs:
"men are victims too, and it’s mostly feminism's fault"
That's it! Men *are* victims too but it's mostly *not* feminism's fault, it's *anti-feminism's* fault!
It's not that "men get raped too," it's that anti-feminism creates a context for intimidating or humiliating people by violently sticking penises in them, and, once you've established the principle it turns out you can violently stick penises into just about anybody.
But the thing is that sexism *really does* hurt men. Sure, sexism pretty incontestably hurts women *more* (for instance when was the last time a family set a man on fire because his wife died of natural causes?) But the net benefit to men *really is* still negative -- which makes it an even *bigger* tragedy. I mean... someone could conceivably make a case for it if men really were better off than they *would be otherwise.* But it's not.
Consider a bunch of people stuck in a stuffy, nearly airless room. People leaning up against door, where a little air slips in around the edges, can be said to be privileged *relative to everyone else* in the room. But *only* compared to others in the room!
The problem is that if you were just looking for *equality,* a perfectly good solution would be to let everybody have a turn sucking slightly fresher air from around the cracks of the door. And you could even see the door people feeling their privilege was threatened, or even just selfishly wondering why *they* should have to suffer just so everyone else could have a little more comfort. But that's not what feminism is about -- certainly not the much-maligned *radical* feminism! *Feminism* is about opening the flipping door. And not opening the door so everybody gets more fresh air. It's about opening the door so everybody can *leave!*
The point being that yeah, maybe the immediate concerns seem like shuffling around so everybody can get a far shot of air. But once out the door that would seem like the *least* of the benefits.
Anyway, in the little analogy of the stuffy room, as with the status quo in the world in general, there's no doubt that men are suffering -- even if they're not consistently suffering as much as women are. But it's not *feminism* that's keeping them from opening the door and letting everybody out. It's the *anti-feminist* urge to maintain the status quo.
I'm not sure why that message across is harder than it ought to be. Because, especially once you start thinking about what's outside the stuffiness, even here in the "privileged" spot by the exit, is pretty unbearable. And it's mostly anti-feminist's fault.
Megan of Jezebel says
United Kingdom Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, received a standing ovation from the Labour Party this weekend when she announced a new initiative to reduce the trafficking of women in the country. Under the potential new law, men who pay trafficked women (like the women pictured) for sex will be prosecuted for doing so. While some will undoubtedly whine about the importance of things like "knowledge" and "intent," it also makes me want to stand up and cheer for the kind of law that could make a difference by reducing the incentives for people to force women into sexual slavery.
First, though, a little background on precedent. In most places, a person can still be brought up on statutory rape charges even if they don't know that their partner is under 18 and might not have had sex with them if they knew. So while I assume that the sort of men who get off on having sex with prostitutes that might have been forced into sex work will whine and complain that they didn't know, it should not be required that the person coerced into having sex with men for money tell those men that she's a sex slave for them to be held liable.
*That's* what I'm talkin' about!
Say what you will but the people who hire actual professionals like Brooks, or Renegade Evolution, or sex workers who actually *want to do the work* might be operating under some mistaken assumptions about sexism, the worthiness trap, sexual scarcity and gender relations, but neither they or the professionals they hire are or should be treated as criminals.
On the *other* hand, those who pay for sex with unemancipated minors are child molesters and the people who pay for sex with trafficked persons of any age are... pretty much rapists, eh? And therefore *are* criminals and ought to be treated that way.
And unless you want to propose accepting "I didn't know my melamine-tainted milk protein would would wind up in baby formula" as an excuse for Chinese dairy producers I don't see how you can accept "I didn't know" as an excuse for customers either.
And I *really* don't see how one should argue that men (most customers, after all, being men) are such elemental creatures that we can't take as much time to confirm a sex worker is a willing adult as we do, oh, say, confirm the sex worker isn't a cop, or doesn't have V.D. Or that your wife or partner won't find out.
Because, seriously, if you *support* sex work either as a provider or a customer you've got to support this kind of initiative because the principle removes the biggest non-blue-nosed objection -- direct coercion -- off the table. And puts the burden of proof, incidentally, on the customer -- who holds most of the cards anyway -- instead of the provider.
It even fits in with standard law-enforcement mechanisms: an under-cover officer can simply bust you for failing to verify identity in the car or hotel room instead of simply producing money.
While, especially after reading Mariko Passion and Amanda Brook's posts about egregious-but-legal Nevada brothel experiences I'm a lot more sympathetic to their preference for decriminalization over legalization** I still think simple registration and/or licensing, if not by government then perhaps by an accountable professional association (think Bar Association, American Medial Association, or American Massage Therapist Association), would make verification a fairly low hurdle for actual professionals *or* their customers.***
And, as I've said fairly repeatedly, *if* actual professional sex-work was legal (and licensed by worker instead of by employer) then professionals would have professional and financial reasons, as well as ethical and moral ones, for reporting illegal competition by traffickers of the coerced or underaged.
And yeah, like a lot of regulation there are a lot of wrong ways to go about it, especially for those who are insincere about worker autonomy, safety, and legitimacy. So I'm not necessarily endorsing Jacqui Smith's or anyone else's proposal without question. But I'm all over the *principle* of obliging customer responsibility. *Especially* considering the status quo which, perversely, makes no distinction at all.
What do you think?
[** Decriminalization takes much of the pressure off sex workers. Legalization, especially as practiced in Nevada, Australia, the Netherlands, and other places, seems to benefit mainly brothel owners while still treating the actual workers like vermin. --fl]
[*** See also Genderburg's insincere but actually practical proposal to license *customers!* --fl]
Photo "Cleanup 002" by Flickr user figleaf (hey, that's me!)
While watching the "shower scenes" in that Sarah Haskins video I started thinking "maybe I should reconsider whether the masturbation euphemism 'rubbing one out' needs... well... reconsideration." I mean, usually I think it's mostly a really great phrase...
But after that video I started getting a cleaning-related connotation of rubbing out not orgasms but stains or spots, which makes it a chore, or, more ominously, non-glamorous and therefore undesirable in the Cosmopolitan/iVillage.com only-about-him universe.
On the other hand, Googling around suggests it's also a term men use (quite a few of the top hits refer to a song and/or rap lyric by a male artist with "rub one out" in the chorus.) Which harks back to Haskin's quip about soapy "hand-jobs" for bathtub spouts.
Still... while it's not as dismissive as "choking the chicken" or "flicking the bean" it's still an awfully perfunctory and utilitarian allusion to what's instead a pretty enjoyable form of personal hygiene.
Ordinarily at this point I'd lightheartedly ask what euphemisms *you* prefer but... y'know, it's a question that's been asked 10,000 times before and there *still* aren't any non-nervous and/or non-clinical and/or non-whimsical and/or non-deprecating. So try something else instead like, I don't know...
Oh wait, got it! *If* I was going to ask for comments on this then instead of asking what you called it I'd ask you to think about something like your most *opposite* of "rubbing one out" masturbation experience. Y'know, the one where you took the most time, put the most into it, really built yourself up and spent what felt like forever just riding in and out of arousal or plateau before finally avalanching into highly contented... well... *rubble!* (Hmmm... rubbling one out? :-))
Anyway, now that I think about it, and if this doesn't seem like too much information, I'd have to say *my* most extended avalanche would have to have been the incredible buildup after my vasectomy reversal, when I wasn't supposed to ejaculate for six weeks so all the nearly microscopic sutures were healed.
The first week or so was no problem. That was all about ice packs and swelling, gingerly walking, gingerly sitting, and gingerly marveling as the incidental bruising subsided. (No cringing necessary -- despite the cliché location it was no worse -- but also no better -- than recovering from any other surgery.) The next week or so wasn't so bad either, even after I'd tapered off the perfectly-adequate pain pills and began to resume normal activities.
Beginning around the fourth week, with two more to go, though, I won't say I was nothing but a walking erection, but... I was pretty preoccupied. And that's where, incidentally, I have to concur with Kink in Exile's enjoyment of Teasing and Denial. Because by the end of week five I was positively simmering and *still* had to play the total willpower game. (Made worse, incidentally, by the knowledge that most surgeon's didn't think it was necessary to wait so long... but who wants to go through that kind of surgery if you guess wrong?)
Anyway by the end of that time I remember how *intensely* relieving, although necessarily non-orgasmically so, it was just to lie back and just run my fingers up one side and down the other and then back again. It would just send shockwaves through me. I remember not daring let my partner do anything like that because by then I was just *so* hair-triggered that the tiniest misstep would have rumbled me all the way down the slope. But *wow* did it feel good!
And when the day *finally* arrived? I won't say it was exactly worth the wait but, and I definitely wouldn't hold out again for six weeks just to experience it again. But *wow* did that feel nice!
So. Not sure how I strayed so far from cleaning metaphors, but the point being we don't have to talk about it as though it was spot removal. :-)
Memorable: "Remember if you're giving your bathtub spout a handjob [whispers] it doesn't add to your number!"
Doh! #1: via Feministing.
Photo by Flickr user Jamuudsen. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise points out that the "no-sex" class paradigm intersects the financial meltdown.
Michael Daly of the New York Daily News reports that the financial meltdown is forcing former Wall Street big shots to dump their "high end girlfriends" as a cost cutting measure
"[Charles] Hayes says. 'If you're a short, ugly 40-year-old guy and you're throwing over a high-quality girlfriend, you're desperate.'
The absolute economic low comes with a realization that Hayes summarizes in a sentence.
'I can't afford her anymore!'"
Girlfriends as disposable accessories, charming.
You know what's really fucking *tragic?* All the people who claim "women are the gatekeepers." Because, s'yeah, those "can't afford her anymore" girlfriends sure are in charge of how those relationships go, mmm-hmmm, you bet.
What else is tragic? That so many people think this is the *only* way relationships work, can work, even *should* work.
Oh yeah, and not to put too fine a point on it, what does one do when one has "thrown over" one's "high end" girlfriend because one can't "afford" her anymore? Go to the "previously owned" section of the girlfriend lot? Put an ad on Craig's list saying "had to dump my old girlfriend because I couldn't afford her, need someone cheaper?"
Also not to put too fine a point on it but... um...
Y'know, if some fellow human being is your actual, y'know, *girlfriend* you could probably, I dunno, *talk* to her about what's going on, let her know you're in trouble, ask what *she* wants to do. But... nah, if you're "a short, ugly 40-year-old guy" no way she'll stay interested.
*And,* while I'm railing on about the "no-sex" class, I'm kind of curious how many of these "high end girlfriends," a.k.a. living human beings, actually *like* their partners, disagree that they're as ugly as the partners themselves claim, don't care for them only for their money as their partners themselves claim. In other words, how many of these guys are "tossing over" their partners not because the partners won't have them but because they feel that, after their fall from wealth, they no longer *deserve* or are otherwise worthy of "high end" partners?
Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty sure some of those men, and women, are every bit as shallow, predatory, ruthless, and as incapable of emotional attachment as advertised. But I'm betting *most* of them aren't. Although some obviously *think* they are. Or, worse, think they're *supposed* to be. Noticing this isn't the same thing as sympathy, necessarily, and real or not real there's really no excusing it. But still, woah, no matter how much we might hold them in contempt, remarks like "If you're a short, ugly 40-year-old guy..." suggest we can't catch up with the contempt they pretty clearly hold for themselves.
So. What do you think? Any Manhattan-area readers able to offer local perspectives?
So! A lot of folks have been picking up on the possibility that the city of Wasilla, Alaska might have charging rape victims for "rape kits."
I say that's not just wrong it's wrong in a way that inadvertently help former Wasilla mayors and police chiefs save a little face. The rest of this post explains what's actually *in* a "rape kit," where the actual expense comes in, why emergency contraception isn't part of the process, and why 'wingnuts would prefer that story to what's probably the *real* reason, and, finally, what the real reason probably is.
What *are* rape kits? Rape kits, a.k.a. SAE kits (sexual assault evidence kits), RA kits (for rape-assault kits), or Vitullo Kits," named after the Chicago forensic investigator Louis R. Vitullo who developed the standard kit for gathering, processing, and storing evidence of rape and sexual assault...in the 1970s.
Like many other evidence-gathering "kits," rape kits aren't commercial products. Instead they're a collection of (as Wikipedia's entry puts it) "commonly available examination tools" such as swabs, glass slides, wooden sticks for fingernail scrapings, bags for clothes, forms for documentation, and detailed instructions for correctly collecting the evidence.
They *don't* contain emergency contraception.
So! If it's just swabs, slides, vials, and bags, how can one cost $600-$1200? And why *wouldn't* they contain emergency contraception?
Well, guess what? "Rape kits" are nearly always processed in hospitals. (ka-ching!) By doctors or other medical personnel (ka-ching!) or (at least on CSI where I *haven't* gotten most of my information) by trained forensic specialists. The evidence is processed in labs (ka-ching), either in glamorously lit and gorgeously designed CSI labs in larger cities with television programs, or, for smaller municipalities, in the same sort of medical pathology labs that process throat cultures, blood draws, and other medical samples. (Ka-ching!)
Which part do you think takes up most of the $1200.00, the q-tips and evidence envelopes or the gathering and processing fees?
Right in one!
So why does it make sense that the kit itself wouldn't contain EC? Well, because none of the standardized lists of kits suggest they do (direct evidence) and because they're used *in hospitals.* (Note: this would be consistent with 'winger protests that really they only wanted the hospitals to bill the victim's *insurance* for the kits, not the victims themselves. But s'yeah, see below.)
Anyway, we could drill down through evidence and counter-evidence but the bottom line is *still* going to be that the nominally "principled" (by 'winger standards anyway) that "virtuous" (again by 'winger standards only) municipal authorities won't pay for rape kits because they contain emergency contraception is bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Bullshit! No, stop, don't start, bullshit. That's not why. It has nothing to do with why.
In fact, to perpetuate the story that that's why is doing *them* a favor! So don'!
How's it doing them a favo? Because, again, *if* it was on "pro-life" principles they'd have *some* kind of a moral, non-knuckle-dragging-women-hating leg to stand on. Which is why they may end up *begging* you to say it's about EC.
Because if it's not about EC then it's about the much more plausible, fundamental belief on their part that all rape accusations (where the victim survives, anyway, and is therefore a slut) are *false* accusations. So, principled wingnut stand? No, *unprincipled* wingnut stand.
They want to charge for rape kits because they think it'll discourage women from "changing their minds and crying rape."
If it really was about emergency contraception (which, remember, it isn't anyway) then you'd expect them not to stock the kits at all. But instead of refusing to *use* the kits -- as might be expected of a *really* principled "pro-life" person if the kits really *did* contain EC -- they merely required that the victim to pay for it herself. And when I say "pay for it" I don't mean the actual material kit (low cost, remember) but paying to have the evidence *processed.*
So once again, their refusal to pay for rape kits was never about red herrings like emergency contraception. Instead it was about an entrenched, traditional, philosophical sympathy and/or admiration for the accused in rape cases, and an equally abiding suspicion that if the victim wasn't just lying outright she was almost certainly asking for it.
Professor Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Professors has an excellent point about the recent hack into Governor Palin's private Yahoo! account: it might be enough to finally inspire some real, hard-core laws against that kind activity. The issue being that *non-famous* victims have a heck of a time convincing police to take attacks like these seriously.
Too many feminist bloggers have suffered various forms of internet abuse that most law enforcement officials simply refuse to address at all. If anything good can come out of this episode, I hope that will change.
Irony is not lost that Palin's situation might inspire affirmative legal protection might otherwise have been bitterly opposed by her fellow partisans. But there you go.
A from France, of A Changing Life left a comment on this post about partisan attacks on teaching kindergardeners about boundaries and how to avoid predators. It got me thinking.
I suppose they are the same people who don't want to contemplate their children becoming sexual beings and so don't teach them how to deal with that, emotionally or practically. The ostrich syndrome.
Pretty cool term, I think, because it captures my suspicion that what motivates a lot of people to shy away from sex ed isn't so much morality as anxiety. The other day I heard local sex education activist Amy Lang talking... and balking!... about dealing with her *own* children. As I've balked with mine. So I totally get that it's not easy for everybody. But!
Well, first of all, ostriches don't actually put their heads in the sand when they see lions coming (see "fittest, survival of;" see also "land speed, ostrich") but second of all, if they *did* it wouldn't, um, protect them *or* their offspring.
Point being that even if we don't *want* to go there we're not serving out *own* children with the Ostrich Syndrome. Not by balking about information appropriate for kindergardeners, nor by balking at what elementary and middle-schoolers need to know as their bodies begin to develop, nor by balking at what high-schoolers need either.
Image by Flickr user figleaf (hey, that's me!) Used under a Creative Commons license.
I've never particularly cared for the penis euphemism "junk." As in "junk in the trunk." I'm not even sure where it comes from.
But then...
This afternoon I think I got a clue while deleting the usual rivers of spam!
Ah-ha!
Photo by Flickr user .stocker.
Used under a Creative Commons license.Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon needed only one sentence to screw up someone else's carefully constructed sociobiological thesis. When asked how men, but not women, could be "naturally" attracted to partners more conventionally beautiful than they the "ev-psych" answer is... um... complex.
Or it could be that they’re accurately assessing the dating market, where women’s lower status and lower economic prospects means that men with both have a few more cards to play than just looks.
When I say the author's explanation is "complex" I mean complex as in "given enough 'ifs' one can fit Paris in a bottle." The problem being that, well, *if* any single "if" in a complex chain of contingencies falls then the *whole thing* falls.
Photo by Flickr user kamoda.
Used under a Creative Commons license.You've probably heard about Occam's razor, where given two possible explanations the simpler one is to be preferred? Mr. Occam was talking about situations just like this. The thing about Occam's razor isn't that the simpler of two explanations must always be right. Instead, *if* you're going to pick the more complicated explanation you're obliged to really *really* explain why the simpler explanation is insufficient. Evolutionary psychology (which tends to be to sociobiology as "intelligent design" tends to be to creationism) rarely addresses simpler solutions, let alone persuades.
So, choice #1 would be "unlike ugly dudes who's genes make them letch after healthier chested "vessels" to squirt their "genes" into, cute chicks just don't care if their partners are so ugly they'll have bullfrogs for babies! Or, choice #2, see Marcotte, above.
Speaking of lightening up, it occurs to me I've been... and a lot of other people like me have been... trying *in good faith* to respond to John McCain's selection for vice president. But responding in good faith, while eventually perhaps effective, is asymetric because her party *didn't select her* in good faith!
And that's not meant as a knock on Governor Palin herself, not at all, at all. As extreme-right wingnuts in her party go she was exemplary in the very best sense: a rising star, driven, charismatic, a crusader and reformer within the *narrow* limits of her party's fetishes, focused on details of immediate relevance in a way that was actually pretty developmentally appropriate for her career path. Last year, perhaps before anyone else cared, she was called out as a major obstacle for 50-state strategists hungry for a chance to run against the decrepit, corrupt Senator Ted Stevens. Wildly popular in her state she'd seemed poised to tackle Stevens in the primary, and at least at the time she was considered a shoe-in both to topple Stevens and then a lock for the general election. Sure, news about Troopergate put her Senate hopes on hold for *this* election cycle, but while sordid I'm not sure it would have derailed her career long-term. She'd caught the eye of right-wing election geeks as well as progressive 50-staters, and thus would have had quite a lot of support for her continued acceleration into national politics... probably after picking up a Senate seat or, perhaps, under-investigation Congressman Don Young's.
So! From a pure political party-building perspective she was an extraordinary prospect following a near-textbook career arc that promised -- when complete -- to really have her ready to help take up the reins of the national party, maybe even the Presidency. In five to ten years. Not this year.
So what happened? The only way you could possibly say it's "her fault" that she's in it now is that she was rash enough to accept the offer. But even *that* can be chalked up to the carnivorous self-confidence of a to-the-bone politician. And while sure, it was... m'kay, *stupid* for her to say yes now the *whole point* of career development is to refine *raw* ambition into complex, articulated, *capable* ambition. So no way I'm faulting her for still being green. (I fault her for being an anti-choice, anti-science, anti-conservation, conscience-free liar but, again, those are virtus rather than defects inside *her preferred party.*)
So, again I say so! So, John McCain and his party -- exercising the same judgment that brought us the S&L crisis in the 80s, the short-sightedness that brought us a war in *Iraq* when our very-real enemies were in Afghanistan, and the same lack of impulse control that architected the current economic meltdown -- robbed the future in order to score what amounts to a P.R. stunt this year.
They can complain about how Democrats, progressives, and feminists have been "unfair" to Gov. Palin, but sweet mother of pearl *look* how unfair *they* were to try to plant and harvest her before she was ready! To squeeze one more drop out of the farming metaphor, Palin was Republican seed for (metaphorically) next year's crop! And, since I don't think anyone who follows politics could say she was professionally prepared for the role she's been put into (not *yet*), and since, not being really ready, she hasn't had a chance to mature, to grow subtle, and to distance herself from the excesses of, well, her *current self* I think it's pretty good odds her future as an office-holding politician will wind up pretty compromised. (Although especially given her broadcasting background she may have a promising second career as an Ollie North-style darling of the 'winger circuit.)
So! (I say for the last time.) I want... I *really want...* And if it was anyone else... someone who hasn't been subjected to all this MILF/GILF/VPILF crap Palin's been getting... I wouldn't have such qualms because it would be received as a general indictment of McCain and his party leadership rather than construed as something about Palin herself but...
...Dang it all, yanking a rising-but-not-at-all-ready star out of their party's future was just so much political premature ejaculation! Exciting for them, obviously, and subject to much interest and exclamation from onlookers. But overall a sign not only of lack of judgment but of lack of interest, lack of concern for the future, lack of judgment, lack of integrity, lack of responsibility to self and others, and lack of just basic plain old *impulse control* that -- again just to be clear -- has no bearing at all on Sarah Palin the professional politican and *everything* to do with the same-assed, lame-assed manky old cans of corn that risked a part of their long-term future *and hers* for...
... *entirely bad faith* reasons.
Again, to the extent I'm a partisan in these things (and I suspect my preferences are pretty clear) I'm a bit relieved that Palin's likely to be dragged down like so many others of her party likely will. Because given maybe six years in the Senate, or four to six in the House, she'd have learned everything she hasn't *needed* to know yet and (barring scandal or indictment -- she is, after all, a member of her party) she'd have otherwise been a tough opponent all around. But to the extent I can detach myself from partisanship I just gotta marvel at how thoroughly unprofessional it was to pick her *yet,* *before* she was ready.
In other words *she's* not the problem we need to be worrying about. As these things go *she* was doing great. Her *selection* however? *That's* a problem! A problem, a symptom, an idictment, a flaw, and a disqualifiction not for her but for the *top* of the ticket... and for everyone else on that side who thought this was a good idea.
That is all.
Well, I'm going to be out and about this evening, and I haven't had time to take photos for days, and barely time to post! So I guess I'll have to cheat. And if you're going to cheat and hit the archives you might as well go way back to when almost nobody read this blog. So here you go, an almost exactly half-nekkid photo from July 2005.
Update: To be honest I was reluctant to post such a bluntly sexual photo, especially for HNT. But y'know what? I got into the habit of posting fairly mild images on Thursdays because several years ago I was trying to post series of erotic posts with an update every day. Lately, though, I haven't been so erotic -- sexual, yes, given that talking about reproductive freedom, or about the peculiar mismatches between what we seem to believe is true about sex and what actually *is* true. But just slipping my hand into my pants for the sheer joy of being able to? While thinking what a shame it is that each of us *can* do the same thing but, for numerous, often perfectly sensible reasons, most of us rarely *do?* Not so much.
So... What the heck. Yeah, I still think an awful lot about the politics of sex and gender, but... thing is that while Peter Pan and Wendy might imagine that real adults are a stodgy lot... they were both *little kids!* What did they know? And how on earth did *they* become the (metaphorical) templates for life after puberty, let alone life after adolescence?
So feh with all that solemnity! Do me a favor. Slip your hand in your pants for me. Give yourself a nice fond caress, and remember how for *at least* half the population the specific way *you* experience it is utterly unfamiliar. And remember that a smaller proportion but still an absolutely huge numbers of the population would give anything to know what you know nearly... as well as you know the palm of your hand. :-)
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Dodi of Jezebel has a nice reminder about reproductive self-determination and women's expected roles as child-bearers. (The "production" part of reproduction, a point Dodi makes in her post title as well.)
While women in the U.S. often struggle with infertility, it can be truly devastating for women in other countries around the world, reports Newsweek. "If you are infertile in some cultures, you are less than a dog," says Willem Ombelet of the Genk Institute for Fertility Technology in Belgium. In certain societies, infertile women may not be invited to weddings. Often, people see them as having a "bad eye" that can make other women infertile, too. In Chad, a proverb says, "A woman without children is like a tree without leaves." In the Hindu religion, a woman without a child, particularly a son, can't go to heaven. In Muslim cultures, women without children aren't always allowed to be buried in graveyards or sacred grounds. Since the consequences of infertility can include ostracism, physical abuse and even suicide, Yale professor Marcia Inhorn says: "It's a human-rights issue." But in addition to treating infertility, shouldn't we also address the intolerance? I grabbed her whole post from here.
Last year when I was reading a lot about the history of chastity and marriage I also noticed the issue of "productivity" came up a lot. And it wasn't just about the production of heirs (a significant issue among aristocracy and other moneyed classes since marriage was... and in parts of the world still is... how families transacted economic or political alliances, and live offspring cemented them.) In *much* of history and in much of the world today grown children are *the* retirement plan... *the* social "safety net." But even more important, production of children means production of *labor,* critical, particularly, in subsistence-farming and subsistence-extraction societies.
Anyway, one point that came up in, I'm pretty sure, Stephanie Coontz's Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage
Getting back to the main point, while we don't necessarily encounter it directly in the 1st world (or at least in the lower 48 states plus Hawaii) the issues Dodi highlights are also issues of *reproductive freedom.* Unlike the one-note "pro-life" movement, the pro-*choice* movement covers *all* that. Working to prevent forced pregnancy in the U.S., sure, because that's a big deal here. But "pro-choice" also means opposing force *abortion* in China or the Marianas Islands and ending discrimination against women who won't or *can't* have children at all.
(Oh, and speaking of Matt Yglesias, children, and social safety nets...)
Stacy at I Met a Possum asks the ironic but evidently not rhetorical question "Is there *anything* that can't be turned into a 'sexy' Halloween costume."
"Sexy Tin-Man" costume image found at I Met a Possum.
Evidently not. She's turned up images of a sexy Statue of Liberty costume, a sexy Plymouth Pilgrim costume, sexy defense *and* prosecuting attorneys *and* sexy judge costumes, a sexy Wizard-of-Oz Tin-man costume with kicky silver boots, sexy Freddy Kreuger and Jason costumes, and a (kid you not) sexy fried-chicken restaurant clerk costume! Oh, and a sexy plumber-with-butt-crack costume.
The model for the sexy defense-attorney costume is shown holding glasses, which makes it my favorite... but sadly they're not included in the $52.99 package so never mind.
Which reminds me of that post by the now long-gone Olympia Matisse about the difference between purchasable "sexy" costumes and actual sexy costumes. (And possibly predictably I just realized her analysis -- that commercial costumes, like Victoria Secrets lingerie, signifies sexualized but safely not really at all sexual intent -- ties in beautifully with the "no-sex" class paradigm.)
At any rate, there being enough time to plan ahead, what's *your* idea of the most absurd "sexy job" Halloween costume anyway? And if you instead wanted to be actually sexy, instead of safely "sexy," what costume (do it yourself or purchased) would *you* choose?
(For the record the sexiest costume *I* ever got was a vintage diplomat's morning suit, a tuxedo-like outfit with doeskin-soft pants with a modest but consipicuous button fly, a Jacard-woven vest, a long but unvented "tails" jacket, a tall top hat and... five-and-a-half inch black platform boots that, combined, made me more than seven feet tall. A pair of fangs I wheedled from a friend who's dad owned a dental-supply lab and a little gothic makeup and I looked...
Well, to be honest I looked like I evidently usually *didn't.* Because that evening at the Halloween bash an amazing number of strangers asked me, humidly, to bite them compared to the number that usually asked me to bite them before or since. Which would be pretty much zero, before or since. (Hmm....)
(Via Neatorama)
...I'd be able to put a more direct link than this one in my blogroll.
I'm guessing you've seen links to various video clips of Sarah Haskins. She seems to be a cast member of Infomania on the Current TV (cable?) channel.
Anyway, Ms.I emailed me a link to Haskin's recent riff on assumptions regarding the politics of PUMAs and I started digging further back, some of which I'd stumbled across before and most I hadn't.
The political content of her pieces are intelligent and well-informed, she and/or her producers make sharp use of TV production -- better use than a lot of other variety/personality (e.g. Letterman, SNL, SCTV) programming does -- and she's got great comic timing.
For instance here's a smartly prescient video she made after Senator Obama clinched the Blue nomination but before either party convention.
Anyway, if you've got a more specific link to her work I'll update my links.
Via Scout Finch of Daily Kos, talking about certain Alaskan cities charging victims of sexual assault for their rape kits...
Michelle Andrews of U.S. News & World Report mulls the question:
In all too many instances, women are still being stuck with the bill for rape kits. This despite the fact that in order to qualify for federal grants under the Violence Against Women Act, states are supposed to pick up the entire tab.If on her watch Sarah Palin allowed women to be charged for rape kits, she has some serious explaining to do.
Finch adds that Governor Palin's opponent, Senator Biden, wrote the Violence Against Women Act that her employees may have violated. Biden and Palin's Vice-Presidential debate is scheduled for Oct. 2.
So I haven't been useful at all today. Instead I bought an iPhone.
Except for the rather glaring absence of, um, *cut, copy, and paste!!!* which even the original 32K, floppy-only Mac had, they're pretty cool.
Anyway, I did manage to take and actually download, then upload, two obligatory, cliché, predictable photos. The first, an accidentally salacious-looking one I took in the car just moments after taking the phone out of the box. The second, with forearms in flagrante delicto, I tried to take on purpose.
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Photo by Flickr user Broken Piggy Bank. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Echidne of the Snakes asks of John Tierney's latest sociobiological/"ev psych" thesis
At the same time, I do not have the resources that someone who actually works in the field would have and, once again, I plead for the professionals to step in.So here we go: Tierney's thesis is that the more gender-equal a society is the more men look like they are from Mars and the more women look like they are from Venus. Men are competitive, aggressive, emotionally flat, and women are cooperative, timid and emotionally curved I guess. Yet the reason for these differences is not our different planetary roots but our different roots in prehistory!
And that prehistory must have had a division of labor between men and women though we don't have any direct fossil evidence from it. And that division of labor must have meant that women gathered and men hunted though we don't know if that's actually the whole truth. And somehow gathering required cooperation and hunting did not though it's fairly easy to imagine how finding a really good spot for juicy roots