hello, Kitty: threat to global masculinity

horror of horrors!
who will save us from the egregious crimes of bad policemen?
Hello, Kitty!!

one one hand we have the 'isn't it funny?' factor of modern thai crimebusting; on the other hand we are presented the same old tired thinking that anything 'girly' is kryptonite for 'real' manly men. what is more shaming than an official reprimand? this from a police officer:

“This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor,” he said. “Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It’s not something macho police officers want covering their biceps.”

cute. pink. girlish. childish. feminine. danger to masculinity everywhere. elicits shame and guilt.
who knew Hello, Kitty had so much power?

hey, let's make a bunch of these armbands and drop them on iraq.

To Punish Thai Police, a Hello Kitty Armband - New York Times

i rock.

no, no. it's true! they told me.

today, at a regional conference, i totally rocked my panel presentation (How Advocacy can be a Tactic in Your Overall Internal/External Strategic Communications Strategy.) barely looked at my hastily cobbled notes, delivered my message, kept the energy level up, elicited some laughs and made my office look really really good.

i. rock.
...
of course, i'm also horribly cash poor right now (thanks to bad budgeting math) so my head won't get too big anytime soon.

thank goodness my Roomie lent me cab fare, or i'd be in northbrook, selling my blood to get back to the city.

justice for iraqi girl

G.I. Gets 110 Years for Rape and Killing in Iraq - New York Times

the prosecution of the rape and murder of the 14 year old iraqi girl, abeer qassim al-janabi, and 4 members of her family seems to be drawing to a close, with 3 soldiers convicted and sentenced; the ringleader, steven d. green, is scheduled to be prosecuted in federal court. his cohort is going to testify against him and i can only hope he gets the death penalty.

vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
but sometimes justice gets served here on earth.

wow. prayer really DOES work

OMG.

my doctor's office just called and told me my surgery (which i was totally freaking out about below) has been cancelled!

why?

because, apparently, i'm so freaking anemic (6.8 out of 11 scale) it scared them and now i have to spend the next 4 months raising my blood levels.

mysterious ways, folks.

the meta-narrative of my fibroid: or, fibroids as God's feminist punishment

it is 4 days until Agatha-extraction. (i named my fibroid Agatha; it brings to mind a pink, lumpy old lady huddled in a warm snug place who's about to get evicted. a miss marple of uterine invaders.)

against my will and despite my best 'think positive-ness' my imagination is full of those awful NBC Dateline-esque news stories: Stone Philips fills the tv screen with his big impassive face and says, 'It was an ordinary procedure. One performed millions of times before on millions of ordinary women just like her. But, sadly, the family and friends of Ding would soon realize that sometimes tragedy strikes despite the ordinary."

or something lame like that.

i can't help but think that if the next 4 days was a plot point in a novel bought in the checkout lane at the supermarket, i'd be worried about Me about now. reading about the protagonist who has made some questionable decisions over the past year and blatantly flaunted a 'whatever' face to the world at large, i would be worried that the Author would take this opportunity in the narrative to 'teach Me a lesson'. (sort of like the annoying holly hunter show Saving Grace.)

in such a mass market novel, this would be the moment in the story where the hard drinking/smoking/sexing wench (Me) would be given the opportunity to Learn Something Valuable about strength in perseverance as she recovers from the stroke she's had because the anathesia was wrong and she struggles to form basic words;
or i learn the love of a good man as the doctor, who accidentally removed all my reproductive organs because he's a drunk, falls in love with me when i sue him in a malpractice case that will change the shape of litigation forEVER;
or maybe i learn the identity of the 5 people i'd talk to in heaven after i bleed out on the operating table because i forgot to tell my doctors i've been taking an aspirin a day to stop a toothache.

these are the mental stories that fill my days when i'm not paying attention. needless to say, i'm a little stressed out.
...
the other day, when i was with Roomie and some friends celebrating Roomie's birthday, i was asked how i was holding up.

i said, 'uh, ok. i'm just slightly anxious about, you know, dying.'
Roomie said, 'you have to go into it thinking you're going to die. it's liberating.'
'you know, that's SO not soothing,' i said. (although there was a little voice asking me, If you're so cool with your faith, how come you're anxious? then i told the little voice to shut the frak up - i'm a weak human, that's why!)

she shrugged. 'it's soothing to me. i don't know why you're worried. you have no issue with dying. you talk to jesus and stuff.'

i said, 'it's not dying. it's the southern baptist superstition that i could still be wrong. i mean, yeah, i've done and believed almost all of the right things - almost - but what if i could still go to hell? presbyterians have that 'sealed' thing. baptists? not so much. God has a crazy sense of humor and right when you think you're all right, BAM! He could let hell could getcha.'

Roomie said, 'you are crazy.'

another friend, who also grew up fundamentalist, laughed and said, 'no. punishment or the devil's always there. ready to get you.'

i said, 'see? you can take the girl out of the baptist, but blah blah blah. still there. and i was with B- last week? yeah. could totally be punished for being a tart and God will kill me and i'll go to hell.'

my laughing friend said, 'but that's not the worst case scenario. worst case scenario is you end up a vegetable.'
i said, 'SEE?? she gets it! that's it! i could end up a vegetable because i had sex last week and i'm really supposed to be a repressed baptist virgin my whole life until i get married!'

'totally. nutbag. the two of you,' my Roomie said. but she doesn't get it.

she made artsy-craftsy dioramas in sunday school while i memorized scripture, learned about the rapture and was told how everyone was going to hell to burn in eternal hell fire if they knew gay people or had sex.

(and, yeah. any comment resembling this will get deleted: 'well, if you were a REAL christian woman you wouldn't be so worried. i hope God sends you a blood clot and you end up like terry shiaivo. then you'll learn.')

i don't read Hugo Schwyzer enough and i should. he's thoughtful, smart and takes care of something called a chinchilla. (yeeks.) but he's also one of the rare churchy guys around who writes about women, feminism and modern masculinity in a way that doesn't make me want to get in a black van, roofie a few guys and take a hammer to someone's penis.

(hey. sometimes i get angry. i'm bad. i know that.)

check out his post about male posturing and also his link to this blog that talks about grace and faith and choice. it's not about reproductive choice but whether faith is a choice. it's all very somber and honest and real writing about faith.

ok. now i'm going to leave my office and meet Roomie for a birthday drink.

Soldier Testifies in Rape - Slaying Case - New York Times

although this story has dropped into the memory hole the trials against the american soldiers who raped and killed an iraqi girl (also killing other members of her family) continues.

i'd think that this trial alone should give us pause about our 'mission' over there and call us home.
but i guess not.

what's a little rape and murder when we're defending freedom?

kick to the SCOTUS: house votes to reverse Ledbetter decision!

Feminist Wire Daily Newsbriefs: U.S. and Global News Coverage

holy crap.
how fantastic is this??

there are 2 new pieces of legislation that need as much support as possible in order to fight wage discrimination:

The Court ruled that discrimination charges must be filed within 180 days of the original discriminatory action. If signed into law, the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (HB 2831) would make it so that each paycheck could be considered a discriminatory action. The Act essentially restores Title VII, which covers wage discrimination on the basis of sex, race, national origin, and religion, to its original status as previously interpreted by the courts.

Companion legislation in the Senate was introduced last week. Called the Fair Pay Restoration Act (S 1843), the bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Education, Labor, and Pensions.

awesome, awesome, awesome.
"each paycheck could be considered a discriminatory action."

have i said awesome enough?

bad mommy monday: celebs have moms, too

more on the way our culture judges and scrutinizes mothers - even celebs' mommies:

But the amount of derision directed at mothers seems out of proportion.
“We still have a virgin-whore binary in American pop culture, and this governs motherhood as well,” Professor Douglas said. The same way in which girls are labeled either good or bad, so are mothers. The same level of censure does not seem to apply to sons, whose risky behavior is often seen as merely a rite of passage.
Professor Douglas thinks the reproach directed at some celebrities’ mothers speaks to the particular kinds of lessons that mothers are supposed to teach their daughters — lessons Lindsay, Britney and Paris seem not to have learned. “It’s supposed to be a mother’s job to train her daughter into how to domesticate her various desires,” she said. “If we see a young woman who hasn’t done that, the mother has failed her tutorial.”

i love that phrase: 'domesticate her various desires.' good mothers are supposed to teach us how to tame desire, make them homey, safe, appropriate. make them 'feminine.' i also like the connection the piece makes to bourgeois values and idealizations of womanhood. so victorian.

and if you go to these different gossip sites (where female judgment runs rampant), you'll read that these lessons about appropriate motherly/daughterly behavior are well-ingrained. (though, apparently, easily discarded, as well.)

but, as the article notes, scrutiny of the father and of sons is not often done - and this perhaps is an oversight. where is the surveillance of fatherly behavior? where is the constant preying on the behavior of sons gone bad?

(where is the chastising of joe francis' mother, for instance? why has his home training gone unnoticed, while the parenting skills of the girls he preys on becomes fodder for vicious speculation?)

how would our popular discourse change if we, for instance, began a hyper-close look at sports figures and their daddy issues? (or their absent daddy issues?) would we say that doping and cheating and violence and dog-fighting and assault could be laid at the feet of these athletes' fathers? (even if the fathers aren't present, their absence IS a presence, one could argue.)

but no. that's not as much fun as looking at a woman self-destruct and then blaming her mother. so much better to kick a woman than scrutinize a man.

Sometimes Mothers Can Do No Right - New York Times

family leave and litigation

Jobs - Labor - Discrimination - Family and Child Care - Courts and Decisions - Lawsuits - New York Times

this is a pretty good article outlining several legal fronts on the war against working families.
(notice i didn't just frame this as a mommy issue - it's a family issue.)

what i notice is how enduring our culture's stereotypes and assumptions are about who should be caregiver, who must be breadwinner and how faithful our workplaces are in upholding really simplistic gender roles. (again, patriarchy.)

an example from the article:

Knussman is a churchgoing Christian and a conservative Republican. In 1999, he
also became the first person to prevail in a sex-discrimination lawsuit filed
under the Family and Medical Leave Act. A jury awarded him $375,000 in damages,
although a judge subsequently reduced the amount to $40,000. The suit was filed
shortly after his wife, Kimberly, became pregnant and began to suffer from an
array of medical complications, including pre-eclampsia, a potentially
life-threatening condition. Wishing to be there to support her, Knussman wrote
to his boss at the Maryland State Police to request four to eight weeks of
leave, to which he was entitled under the F.M.L.A. He was told there was “no
way” he could take more than two weeks. Later, after his wife gave birth to a
baby girl, he asked for 30 days off, as is available to primary caregivers under
Maryland law. A personnel manager for the state police, where he had worked for
17 years, denied the request, telling him, “Unless your wife is in a coma or
dead, you can’t be primary care provider.” The same person also told him that
God made women to have babies. [emphasis mine]

incredible, isn't it? although the leave was available to him by law, his gender was the factor that made his employer deny his claim. 'there's no way fathers can by primary caregivers.' that's called a gender stereotype.

the lawsuits filed by working mothers and fathers, however, are showing how more families are resisting the untenable position of having to choose between their families and their paychecks. they also show how our workplaces and our society at large has failed in adjusting to the needs of the american worker. the office and the home no longer exist as separate islands, linked only by our travel to and from work; the office and the home are now connected to one another and are affected by one another.

what's even more disturbing is how workplaces are becoming even more hostile toward the working mother. i'll say what i will about having babies (ick) but in the workplace, this kind of discrimination is illegal:

Correll and other researchers asked volunteers to evaluate a pool of equally qualified male and female job applicants. On some résumés, a clue signaled that the applicant was a parent. Correll also sent 1,276 résumés for entry-level and midlevel marketing jobs to 638 real employers.
The results, as reported in the May 2007 issue of The American Journal of Sociology, are
striking. Among the volunteers, mothers were consistently viewed as less competent and less committed and were held to higher performance and punctuality standards. They were 79 percent less likely to be hired and, if hired, would be offered a starting salary $11,000 lower than nonmothers. Fathers, by contrast, were offered the highest salaries of all. Meanwhile, in the test run with real-world employers, the hypothetical female applicants without children were more than twice as likely as equally qualified mothers to be called back for interviews. Correll’s findings echo a discovery made by the psychologist Amy Cuddy. Cuddy asked volunteers to evaluate four imaginary professionals: a childless female, a childless male, a mother and a father. All these professionals had identical experience and educational backgrounds. Yet the mothers were given the lowest competency ratings, by both male and female evaluators, and were least likely to be recommended for hiring and promotions.

the message is clear: mothers are bad and fathers are good - except when fathers want to do the mothering. single women? we're given the possibility of economic reward but only until we become mothers. sucks, doesn't it? the game seems to be fixed.

in fact, the game seems to be sexist.

(the Center for WorkLife Law can be found here.)
...
this is my last week at the office, incidentally. next month is my surgery/recovery period and i'm anxious about how this long a leave will affect my work life. thankfully, since i work for a feminist organization, there is some comfort in knowing my leave has been approved; but others aren't so lucky.

i hear that parenting is a 'choice.' really? or is parenting something that's coerced from us (then punished, if you're a mother)? our tax structure certainly rewards childbearing; it makes it attractive and rewards it. seems rather coercive to me (and i've yet to see any tax breaks come my way for not having kids.) but at the same time our economy seems to privilege those with kids, there's this other aspect of punishing those with families; it's like our society is totally schizophrenic. we love families and we can't wait to punish them for existing.

the 'choices' some of us take for granted are determined by class and fortune. they're also determined by stereotype and deeply held 'traditions' that serve to, once again, keep a particular power structure in place. (fathers are inherently worth more than mothers? what's that math??)

give me a break: gen y in the office

When Whippersnappers and Geezers Collide - New York Times

as much of an anti-authoritarian i am, i have a rocking work ethic and this article made me laugh but also roll my eyes. i mean, are things so bad that we need to have 'translating' services to communicate with Gen Y now? i mean, really? are they so functionally backward and entitled that they actually need to have things like 'business appropriate attire' explained to them? where were these kids raised? aren't their parents wildly successful and corporate parents?

i've had a couple of Gen Y interns working for me over the past year and they were great. of course, they have no office skills whatsoever, but that's what classes are for.

but what i especially like about this article is the glaring silence from Generation X, the folks standing between Boomer and Y. i imagine my generation looking at the others with this look of bored contempt, while thinking, 'you're both asses.'

on hillary

Harpy, Hero, Heretic: Hillary

this was actually a really good piece. it takes a look at the different archetypes we've forced hillary clinton to inhabit in our cultural imaginations (and then taken her to task for them) and the article is a good, old-fashioned piece of textual analysis i haven't seen since grad school.

take a gander; it made me rethink my own discomfort with hillary clinton.
imagine! i rethought something!

vote for romney, vote for moroni

the conversation went something like this:

harry potter weekender #1: so who do you think will get the GOP nomination?
harry potter weekender #2: not giuliani.
harry potter weekender #3: ugh. please not giuliani.
hpw #2: it'll be romney.
harry potter weekendr#4: really?
ding: no way. not if they want and need the evangelical vote. say what you will about the fundamentalist, but they know their bible. there is no way in hell they'd vote for a mormon.

hpw #2: i don't know. at one point they seemed to like giuliani.
ding: yeah, because he's catholic. everyone knows catholic. but mormon? no way. let me put it this way. they'd rather vote for someone jewish than a mormon. jews are familiar. jews are the Chosen!
hpw#3: exactly. judaism is an incomplete part of christianity. and, eventually, they get saved, too.
ding: exactly. after the rapture and the tribulation, of course, but they get saved. it's the whole point.

(silence)

hpw #4: i am constantly surprised at the two of you and your fundamentalist, whacko childhoods.

(laughter)

hpw #1: but mormons and christians worship the same God.
ding: nope. fundamentalists and evangelicals know there is a huuuge difference between mormonism and christianity. they wouldn't vote for a jehovah's witness, either.
hpw #4: for me, the issue is romney used to be pro-choice! and now he's not?
ding: exactly, where are the flip flops for him?

hpw #2: then what'll they do? vote for hillary? i think not.
ding: they'll sit it out. they won't vote.
hpw #3: they won't vote.
hpw #2: i think that unlikely.
ding: not as unlikely as it is to expect a true evangelical, fundamentalist, southern baptist christian to compromise on their doctrine. again, say what you will about the fundies, but they know doctrine and they know that being a mormon isn't the same as being a christian or even a muslim. they think it's a cult. whacky.

hpw #2: what if romney had a running mate who was normal?
ding: well, that's different. but romney's still a whacko mormon. to, uh, the average evangelical, that is.

hear that, democrats??
all you have to do is present folks with this choice: an adulterous, pro-choice catholic or an untested, flip-flopping mormon.
we win!

God - Religion - Presidential Election of 2008 - Elections - Polls - Voter Preferences - Mitt Romney - New York Times

is ward connerly on really good drugs, or what?

Ship of fools: Johann Hari sets sail with America's swashbuckling neocons - Independent Online Edition > Americas

i tried reading the whole thing, at the behest of Bitch PhD, but failed somewhere around the second section. the vignettes were making me inordinately angry. so i took a break and started reading again. oho, i found my favorite part.

it's a conversation with ward connerly, anti-affirmative action apologist and favorite black man of the neo-cons, and in it he waxes sympathetically for the Klan (i'm going to highlight the most awesome parts for you):

He tells me plainly about his childhood – his mother died when he was four, and he was raised by his grandparents – but he never really becomes animated until I ask him if it is true he once said, "If the KKK supports equal rights,then God bless them." He leans forward, his palms open. There are, he says, "those who condemn the Klan based on their past without seeing the human side of it, because they don't want to be in the wrong, politically correct camp, you know... Members of the Ku Klux Klan are human beings, American citizens – they go to a place to eat, nobody asks them 'Are you a Klansmember?', before we serve you here. They go to buy groceries, nobody asks, 'Are you a Klansmember?' They go to vote for Governor, nobody asks 'Do you know that that person is a Klansmember?' Only in the context of race do they ask that. And I'm supposed to instantly say, 'Oh my God, they are Klansmen? Geez, I don't want their support.'"

This empathy for Klansmen first bubbled into the public domain this year when Connerly was leading an anti-affirmative action campaign in Michigan. The KKK came out in support of him – and he didn't decline it. I ask if he really thinks it is possible the KKK made this move because they have become converted to the cause of racial equality. "I think that the reasoning that a Klan member goes through is – blacks are getting benefits that I'm not getting. It's reverse discrimination. To me it's all discrimination. But the Klansmen is going through the reasoning that this is benefiting blacks, they are getting things that I don't get... A white man doesn't have a chance in this country."

He becomes incredibly impassioned imagining how they feel, ventriloquising them with a shaking fist – "The Mexicans are getting these benefits, the coloureds or niggers, whatever they are saying, are getting these benefits, and I as a white man am losing my country."

connerly's crazy ass minstrelsy has completely broken my brain.

pr0n preachers and dirty old men on buses

just think of the special homily he could give on pr0n sunday in october!

Man of the Flesh to Man of the Cloth - New York Times
...
i had to report a CTA bus driver today. after waiting for a bus that would take me back to my office i got on the #10, which had been slow coming up State street because of all the traffic and construction nonsense. between my stop on State/Randolph and my office, the bus driver had engaged in behavior so completely inappropriate i had to call the CTA: talking on his cell phone for the whole ride, being sexually lewd and suggestive to two african american girls on the bus and being so incredibly rude to the tourist passengers the rest of us took pity on them and tried to help them out.

was this some new CTA record? he was rude to 6 different people in under 10 minutes over the course of 3 bus stops.

but what really got me was the way he talked to the two young women. when they asked him if he stopped by water tower, not only did he ignore their question, he gave them that long, dirty look that older black guys so love to give a black girl and said very loudly to her, 'Unh, girl, just stand there! Come here and stand by me so I can look at you!' he said it twice: "Come here! Just stand here! Stand here!" then, when the tall girl turned away in disgust after not getting her question answered, he yelled down the aisle that she knew she was fine and she needed to come stand next to him.

yeah, dude, because that's what cute young 20-something girls are made for - to stand next to your nasty ass while you don't do your job.

i mentally made a note of the bus and route number so that when i got back to the office i could call CTA customer service immediately. after being on hold for 10 minutes i calmly described the incident, described the driver and gave the dispatcher my name and phone number. then i said to her: 'you know, he was unprofessional all over the place but as an african american women i was especially offended. no one should talk to black women like that. do you know what i mean?'

she said, 'ma'am, i'm african american, too, and you're right. i know exactly what you mean.'

here's to hoping some nasty old man gets fired today.

talk about unintended consequences

apparently, this is what happens when we export our mini-series: we play into the hands of genocidal insurgents!

Refugees fear sharing same fate as Kunta Kinte Chicago Tribune

best headline EVER

oh, the tears from my laughing.
the tears.

snort.

AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Republican Rep. Exposed Himself to Female Employee, Chased Her Screaming, "Suck It"

on judgment and 'sisterhood'

i was thinking yesterday about the ways that groups of women look and talk about each other. particularly, though we say we support and respect one another, we can't help but make some really hardcore value judgments about our so-called 'sisters' or friends. i've found that they usually revolve around how we raise our children (or have decided not to have children) or who we have sex with. (funny how we don't spend quite as much energy when it comes to how we make professional decisions - just about reproduction and sex.)

let me know if any of the following sound familiar:

' how can a mother stand to leave her child in day care?'
'why go out with him if he's not, you know, The One?'
'i can't stand these women who can't control their kids.'
'if i had to be a stay at home mother i'd commit suicide.'
'why can't these women use birth control?'
'i just couldn't have a one night stand. it's not for me. i think i'm worth more than that, you know? but, hey, i'm not judging you!' (my favorite)
'how can you sleep with someone and not feel anything? it just seems so...cold.' (a variation on the above and also a favorite)
'why have kids if you're not going to raise them?'
'i would never have an abortion but i'd never tell another woman she couldn't have one. but i really think they shouldn't be allowed to have one after the first trimester.'

'i could never be one of those women who stayed with a guy after he hit me.'
'she's born again. whatever.'
'slap me if i ever tell you i'm moving out to downer's grove.'
'choices, people, choices! if you're drunk, you have no business being at a bar!' (strange logic but you know what i mean.)

the way we live; where we live; who we sleep with; how we act. our feminine censorious eyes leave nothing untouched.

i'll own up to mine. i've said at least half the things up there; if you do a thorough search of this blog you'll probably come across them. i've even felt superior while saying them, comforted by how 'together' my life is compared to some other woman's life. but that's what it is: comparison. by comparison my life is pretty good. i've made pretty good decisions in comparison to ... what? and if that woman's situation didn't exist for comparison, what then? would i still think i was hot shit?

that's a cheap sort of comfort.
i have a friend who would say 'it is what it is' when there was someone or something she didn't 'get.' she'd shrug and just say, 'ok. it is what it is.' and she'd move on. why can't we move on? why are we compelled to watch other women for perceived shortcomings and then prey on them? it's like we're baptist or something. (or HappyMom. remember her?)

but i'm not saying that we should suddenly become silent female switzerlands, neutral on everything. i don't think we have the capacity for that kind of forbearance. in my opinion, being judgmental comes with being human. we can't help it. our judgments make it easier for us to determine who's in the 'tribe' and who's out. but let's be honest about them, for honesty's sake, if nothing else.

and let's be honest about the limits of sisterhood. i was having dinner with a coworker tonight and we were venting about the office and one of us (cough) said: 'just because you're feminist doesn't mean you can act unprofessional and not get called out on it.' i guess i'm sort of conflicted about the 'all for one/one for all' model of sisterhood we get presented with alot.

eh, i'm blathering.
...
i made a list of my value judgments over lunch the other day. it was a list of binaries that accurately summed up the so-called 'neutral' values that inform my judgments on. (the privileged term is first):

urban/suburban
educated/non-educated
literate/illiterate
middle-class/working-class AND middle-class/wealthy
single/married
childless/parenting
sexual/celibate
woman/man
me/you
individual/collective

whether or not i acknowledge them, these values color my world (and i suspect that it's not even a complete list.) they taint every conversation, every interaction and i'm not aware of them half the time.

it was a useful exercise; feel free to share some of your own, if you like.

...
posts i've come across this week about judgments we make:
The Park Slope Parent Trap - New York Times
Trusting Women Who are not You - Feministing
Broke, part 1
Broke, part 2

when religious dudes go nuts

is it the heat? the storms? the humidity?
because there's an inordinate amount of bad news and weirdness all over the place.
moving slightly away from gender politics, let's turn our eye to godliness which, if you listened to these guys, includes knowing how to make bombs to blow up other churches.

Star-Telegram.com 07/07/2007 Three men in jail over bomb at church

what the frak is going on??
from the article:

Cmdr. Chris Havens, the Police Department spokesman, said the suspects boasted about belonging to a leaderless group of 10 or 15 who share a belief that society has become too focused on self-improvement and self-gratification and has lost focus on the glorification of God.
"They admit to being Christian and being brought up Christian, but they believe there should be one denomination and one church, not multiple denominations," Havens said. "They did not say they had a name for their group, other than they were a radical Christian activist group. That was the way they explained their group," he said. The suspects said the group has three levels of involvement: Bible study, consensual fighting and destructive acts. Because one of their beliefs is free thought, however, participation in all three levels is not mandatory, they told police.

'consensual fighting and destructive acts.'
i love the escalation of the 3 levels: first you learn about the TULIP, then you beat your brother in christ, THEN you build a bomb.
good lordy.

here's an idea: let's build a big, fake, walled-in city and dump our crazy religious psychos with their crazy religious psychos, let them totally suicide bomb each other and then, when it's all over, we women will rule the world at last. it's not a perfect solution but at least we'd be frak-tard-free.

maybe they should have been more 'womanly'

i'd read a couple of alerts about this and i didn't believe it, at first.
i mean, a dude is choking a girl on the ground and HE gets off while the girl and her friends who are defending her get sent to jail, despite some forensic doubt that they did this.

i guess this is what it means to be a woman (let alone a lesbian woman): folks can attack you with impunity and when you step up you get sent to jail.

what a man that dwayne buckle is. what a man.

I SHOUT LOVE » Blog Archive » Help the Newark Women

however, that bill o'reilly 'maurauding lesbian gangs' story is still bullshit.

here's an alert i received from planned parenthood:

TV Networks need condom sense

Two television networks have decided to reject a new condom commercial. The ad is intended to cause a stir — turning the “men are pigs” maxim on its head by suggesting that a guy willing to take responsibility for safer sex by using a condom isn’t so bad. But the real controversy is coming from FOX and CBS, which have
declined to run the ad, even in the late-night hours typically reserved for
adult-oriented products like Viagra.
According to The New York Times, FOX’s explanation reads, “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.” Yet, half of pregnancies in this country are unintended, and teen pregnancy is a public health epidemic. The truth is, condoms prevent sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy - making them a commonsense public health solution.

Learn more: View the ad on YouTube.
Take Action: Send a letter to FOX and CBS

ok. we can't talk about how condoms can prevent pregnancy?? since when? we're so squeamish about sex we can't even talk about preventing pregnancy?

the mind boggles. what utter stupidity.

horror, torture and misogyny! all mixed in together.

like a disgusting stew.

Jill Soloway: Remove the Rating for Captivity - Living Now on The Huffington Post

goodness knows i'm a fan of a certain kind of horror film.
self-referential horror that makes fun of itself while it scares me? check.
well-written old school ghost stories, vampires, haunted houses, monster flicks, scary cemetaries? i'm all for. (like, The Haunting, The Changeling, Ghost Story, Scream, and even The Exorcist because it was creepy as all hell.)

but there's a certain kind of film i can't stomach anymore: the Saws, the Hostels, the Turistas. all of them. can't. take it. the torture, the eroticized killing, the elaborate fetishistic murder just skeeves me out and makes me hurt the way looking at porn now makes me hurt.

just lately, i've been watching the quick tv ads for Captivity and it turns my stomach: stalker capturing a woman and some guy and torturing the hell out of her. this is entertainment? this is what we need to see to get our rocks off now? woman-hating death porn.

gross.

and, if you read solloway's column, you'll see the grossness isn't an accident. it's done on purpose; it's a thoughtful kind of 'accident'; the misogyny is how the film will succeed. it's built into the marketing and business plan. sick, really. and if you read here, you'll see that the disgusting dude who created it is counting on our shock and repulsion to drive more people to the film.

well, i don't want to drive folks to see the film. i want the film to disappear. so we're thinking about that at the office - how exactly to make it disappear.

i mean, if the fundamentalists can make a regular old movie about evolution disappear, can't we make a piece of woman-hating crap just fizzle out of existence?

[read about it at feministing and it's been bothering me all day.]

obama on the SCOTUS decision: school desegregation

from the archpundit:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Barack Obama today released the following
statement on the Supreme Court’s diversity ruling.

“Today’s Supreme Court ruling has placed a serious obstacle in the way of achieving the vision of America first outlined in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, where we see racially integrated education as the best way to reflect our great diversity, unite our nation, and make real our promise of equal opportunity for all.

“Though we have come a long way in those fifty years since Brown, our schools remain segregated by race, as well as resources and opportunities. Three-quarters of black and Latino school children attend predominantly minority schools and white children are even more likely to attend racially isolated schools. And yet, hundreds of school districts across the country have taken noble, yet modest, steps to address this problem, while still accommodating parental and student choice. They have done so because they too believe that our nation’s prosperity depends on our children learning to understand each other better, work together, and solve problems together.

“This wrong-headed ruling underscores the critical importance of a President’s appointments to the Supreme Court and a Justice Department’s commitment to civil rights enforcement. It is the but the latest in a string of decisions by this conservative bloc of Justices that turn back the clock on decades of advancement and progress in the struggle for equality. Chief Justice Robert’s opinion reflects a disturbing view of the Constitution that equates voluntary integration with Jim Crow segregation – a view that is both legally and morally wrong. The policies that led to racially diverse schools in Seattle and Louisville are a far cry from the policies of racial subordination that led to blacks-only and whites-only schools in the pre-Brown era. To equate the two is to turn a blind eye to our nation’s history.


“I filed a brief in these cases, along with several of my colleagues in the Senate, which explained to the Court that a racially diverse learning environment has a profoundly positive educational impact on all students, and I remain devoted to working toward this goal. The Congress has the constitutional power and responsibility to address the resegregation of our schools, and I am committed to using that authority. I will immediately call for hearings to determine the most effective steps that Congress can take to move forward. And as President, I will appoint Supreme Court justices who understand the constitutional importance of
Brown. Those Justices will ultimately vindicate Brown’s promise, as Justice Breyer and today’s dissenters put it, of “one law, one Nation, one people, not simply as a matter of legal principle but in terms of how we actually live."

i highlighted that section because it reminded me that the supreme court is not necessarily the last resort - the Congress has the ability to void a ruling. i think it's time we all start writing some letters to our congressfolks.

lovely day

roomie was out of town all weekend and i took the opportunity to catch up on sleep, read, attempt to buy a bed, got rejected because of weird credit, got depressed, bought a pair of shoes and comic books and then felt all better.

today was the kind of day i seldom take: slow, meandering. there was no point to this day. no meetings. no urgent appointments. no real schedule to keep. no one to answer to. that kind of untethered freedom is rare for me.

i showered and dressed slowly, pulling on a floaty sundress, and watched as my neighborhood came to halting life, pairs of neighbors shuffling down to the coffeehouse, jogging or walking their dogs. i listened to the cta bus rumble up to my corner and blow past. i caught my bus just as i made it across the street to the corner. everything going my way.

downtown, on the red line, i was stuffed in a train with cubs and brewers fans and even this did nothing to sour my mood. and the relief when the train emptied at addison - ah! heaven. is it cliche to say how good it felt to sit on the train in a window seat and feel the hot sun on your shoulders while the train rocked back and forth like a hand on a cradle? sometimes, the red line can be too gritty, filled with grizzled men who stare a little too long or wrigleyvillians who are too drunk and too loud to tolerate for very long. but this afternoon, the red line was perfectly empty (past addison) and i was able to fall in love with this city again.

in los angeles, the city passes in a blur of bland. it's the same stucco, palm trees or mock spanish villas. every corner has the same strip mall and they all seem to have an el pollo loco in it. but chicago on the el gives me the backside of the city - the porches, rooftops, soccer fields and the rare glimpses into city gardens tucked behind fences or at the end of streets with no exit. to see chicago's backyards and alleys is like waking up with someone and not minding their morning breath.

on bryn mawr, i walked west to clark and the walk made me wonder why i had moved from the northside. everything was so pretty, so feminine - the winking shadows, the warm red brick, the houses with their demure porches and shaded windows. (but then i thought about how long the train had been to get me up here and i remembered why i moved.)

i met my friend W- at m. henry and we had a long, slow gossip over brunch and a cold bottle of wine he'd brought. the silent crunchy couple sitting next to us sent us disapproving stares at some of our topics (i really don't think she liked W-'s story about being saran wrapped to a pole while his dom cattle prodded him) but that didn't stop me from enjoying his company. when the bottle was empty and there was nothing to do but settle our check, we strolled back down to GirlsTown and ate an ill-advised scoop of ice cream (we're both growing more lactose intolerant, the older we get) while sitting behind a tree (W- freckles) and watching the people parade.

after a couple of hours, i looked at my phone, caught the time and we hugged goodbye just as the clark bus appeared in the distance. passing wrigleyville after a game from the height and distance of a bus makes me think of wartime montages, like a scene from Saving Private Ryan: the soldiers are on a truck rumbling slowly through some bombed out town, staring silently at the carnage.

by the time i got home i was relaxed, tired, smelled of sun and diesel and sweat, with enough dairy and sugar coursing through me to fell an asian diabetic. i settled in to read my last comic book when my mobile buzzed. a text: 'we'll be at fresco in 10 min. come join us!'

i went into my bedroom to change into jeans. the sun had dipped lower and it was chilly out.

[edited because previous post sucked. this one is much better.]

the SCOTUS: recent decisions and what it means

Justices Limit Use of Race in Placement of Students - New York Times

if you haven't been paying attention to recent rulings by the SCOTUS (supreme court of the united states) then you're missing out on some good stuff.

today the archconservative majority decided to severely limit:

"the ability of school districts to manage the racial makeup of the student bodies in their schools.

The court voted, 5 to 4, to reject diversity plans from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., declaring that the districts had failed to meet “their heavy burden” of justifying “the extreme means they have chosen — discriminating among individual students based on race by relying
upon racial classifications in making school assignments.”

what does that basically mean? it means that the court stupendously just struck down voluntary integrations programs in louisville and seattle. in other words, the court just told us that if school districts want to redress racial discrimination, they can't use RACE as a factor in that remedy.

scott lemieux, over at Lawyers Guns & Money, gives an always readable and succinct parsing of this decision. an exerpt:

"Nothing in the text of the Constitution compels these programs to be struck down. Essentially, Roberts's plurality opinion rests on the assertion that racial classifications intended to perpetuate a caste system should be considered the precise legal equivalent of racial classifications intended to remedy segregation. This is exceptionally unpersuasive, and also makes it almost impossible to actually remedy the ongoing de facto segregation of American school systems, much of which has roots in various forms of state discrimination (not just formal apartheid in the South, but the drawing of arbitrary school district lines to create segregated systems, local ordinances encouraging residential segregation, etc.) As Breyer says, "This context is not a context that involves the use of race to decide who will receive goods or services that are normally distributed on the basis of merit and which are in short supply. It is not one in which race-conscious limits stigmatize or exclude; the limits at issue do not pit the races against each other or otherwise significantly exacerbate racial tensions. They do not impose burdens unfairly upon members of one race alone but instead seek benefits for members of all races alike. The context here is one of racial limits that seek, not to keep the races apart, but to bring them together." To compare what these cities are doing to states that maintained apartheid is historically blinkered and morally untenable."

people, people, people.
if it's not clear now, i don't know when it will ever be clear: who sits on the SCOTUS is extremely important . this whole asinine, topsy-turvy interpretation of precedent and the law is the direct result of democrats caving during the roberts and alito confirmations.

when the next seat becomes free, i want the dems to skirmish to the death. to the death!
the fabric of our country depends on it. (not to overstate things too much.)

...
what else has the SCOTUS decided this year?

well, they tanked women's reproductive rights with their ruling on Gonzalez v. Carhart
they tanked fighting workplace discrimination with their ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear
they crapped on free speech with Morse v. Frederick
(but they also tanked illegal recruiting practices disguised as free speech in Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association v. Brentwood Academy - go figure)
they thumbed their noses at church/state separation with Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation

however, last year, they did give the POTUS the finger when they ruled the bush administration couldn't try Gitmo detainees before military commissions.

[update: feministing has a similar round up on their site - ha ha! great minds!]

coming to a seminary near you: the pr0n elephant

Feministing has a riotous post about the big blue porn elephant that's making the church rounds as a way to educate congregations about our christian (i.e., hidden) porn addiction.

heh.

mark your calendars, folks. october 7 is porn sunday.

(and, hey. i got rid of my pr0n, thank you very much. it made me sad.)

does the F word count?

Nebraska judge lacks clue re: Truth at I Blame The Patriarchy

if you follow the links, you'll eventually get to the story of a nebraska judge who has banned the used of the word 'rape' in, uh, rape trials. apparently, the word rape (the crime being prosecuted) is too inflammatory. yeah. that's why SO many rapists are in jail these days. because emotional juries just throw the book at them and their raping ways.

what else will disappear from the lexicon because it's just too mentally distressing for men to handle?

if women cannot name what has happened to them, if we're forced to call it some other cleaner less intrusive word, then what happens to the actual rape? does it really disappear or does it make people feel better about not having to deal with the fact that women still get treated like shit?

(and i don't mean that in a 'you hurt my feelings' way. when i say women get treated like shit i mean that their unique experiences are ignored and aren't given the same weight as men's experiences. it's great for the guy accused of rape if his accuser can't say the word; it sucks for the woman who's operating from a default position of being assumed a liar.)

and of course, in the back our minds is the duke/lacrosse team thing. they're exonerated and now the woman who accused them will never ever be believed. women will never ever be believed. we can't say rape, we can't control our own reproduction, we can't avoid being killed by intimate partners.

is this really what being a woman is all about in this century?
is this the little progress we've made?

baby daddies are dangerous

first, did you know that the second biggest injury-related killer of pregnant women is homicide?
amazing.

i'm sure you've read the news stories about that pregnant woman in ohio, jessi davis, who was killed by her boyfriend and found in a field. and then about that woman and her kids killed in illinois by her husband. what's up with men?? you have issues and the first thing you do is murder your girlfriend and kids?

it boggles the freaking mind. these stories of murdered women build up and sometimes it makes you look at the other half of the population all aslant.

this woman wrote her boyfriend a note in response to these latest stories of domestic violence against women:

If for some reason I am pregnant, and you suddenly realize that I am just days away from delivering, don't kill me. I know you might not be "ready" to be a father, but there are better ways out of it. Of course I would prefer it if you were a loving and supportive husband and father, but you might freak out. Maybe you're having an affair. Now being a man, you won't think things through. Killing me is NOT an option. Counseling IS an option. You do realize you would be the first person police questioned if I were to go missing right?

If you must be rid of me, just up and leave. I'll go home to live with my dad, or find solace in the arms of a best friend. But I will be alive, and that's the clincher. I'd rather be a single mom on welfare than found murdered in the wilderness.

...
when my dad was visiting, he got embroiled in a rather heated group discussion with my girlfriends about our singleness. (because we are all speaking english but busing it differently, it's a futile conversation; but we keep having it and my girlfriends are gracious enough to indulge.)

but his constant refrain, which kept puzzling us, was "be a woman."

we had no idea what that meant. i mean, we have ovaries. we're women. there's no escaping that simple, biological fact.

oh, be 'feminine!' that's what he means!
well, i have an issue with that, too.
a girl friend told us (including my dad) the story of walking her dog in her 'hood. she passed this guy also walking his dog and he just got all aggressive on her and called her a dumb bitch and got in her face; she got back in his. my dad said that the correct response would have been to go soft and demure. uh, no. here in the city, you come at me, i come at you back.

if i took my dad's advice i guess i should have let that drunk guy bust in on me in the bathroom at a party some years ago. i should have let him intimidate me and publicly humiliate me. i should have gone all soft and giggly while he physically threatened me instead of defending myself while hurling a wooden brush through the air and knocking him on his ass.

but to look at the larger culture, i guess 'being a woman' also means 'being killed.'

thanks, i'd rather not.

[post corrected to be more accurate - thanks, lilith!]

hm. like the GOP is a friend to labor.

Senate Republicans Block Union Bill - New York Times

so. read this story and you get the idea that the republicans just saved the working man from a fate worse than death. but when has the GOP ever really been on the side of workers who want to organize, especially in new arenas like corporations or hospitals? the first step in critical thinking: whose interests are being protected?

to give you an idea of what they're not telling you, here's a local chicago blogger who's been pretty active on this issue and not only made a solid argument for this piece of legislation, he got burned for it by those very republicans who wanted to bury the working man under a lot of misinformation.

look like it worked.
i'm also curious to know which Dems voted against this. just wonderin'.

adulthood blows. no, it's great. really.

Roomie just bought a place and the purchase puts in high relief that i need to get my adulthood act together. sure, i'm an adult and everything, with a great (burgeoning) career and friends, but perhaps it's time to finally get off the roommate train that i boarded back in 2000. it's been fun, supportive, fiscally feasible and wonderful to have a partner in crime but i'm almost 40. maybe i've been using it like a crutch. (and Roomie and i have talked about this so this isn't something she doesn't know has been kicking around. she sometimes sees things before i do.)

but i was looking at my so-called options yesterday and it gave me a stomach-ache. financially, nothing can happen before italy (I-TAL-IA!) but i still need a plan, right?

what is it that i want?

what do i imagine the next stage of my life becoming?

is it a single, 40-something life in a streeterville studio? (affordable but depressing for me)

is it a single, 40-something life in a west town apartment? (not depressing and affordable if i get a whopping raise)

is it a financially strapped single 40-something life in a condo in west town or logan square? (stressful and totally not affordable)

i'm trying to think about these things as clear-eyed as possible, with as little emotion as possible. (i think i do my best thinking when i'm not emotional about it.) but, very viscerally, i have one image in my head of what i don't want my life to look like: the female version of B-'s life. one fork, one spoon, one plate, one towel. i may have made fun of it but i should have paid more attention to how alike we actually were, because right now, i'm pretty much one fork, one spoon, one plate, and so on.

(we can include one bed, two bookcases, one bench, two chairs, tiny tea cups, one tv, one bench...you get the picture.)

but while i also feel the pull to be adult (i.e., accumulate) i also don't want all that stress-inducing work, you know? setting up a household. it sounds so daunting. i'm certainly not one of those die-hard folks who want to lessen their 'footprint.' my footprint is what it is: less than other people's, more than a homeless guy's. but i also want to throw a sop to my vanity and live a life that's really wonderful, you know? that's not chintzy. one that's full. self-indugent? perhaps. but that's what it is, too.

but, hey. at least my fibroid will be gone in two months. yay.

men and violence against women: a new poll

this was really interesting. it studies men's attitudes toward sexual assault and domestic violence.

some findings:
Men recognize the prevalence of domestic violence/sexual assault
More than half think a woman they know will be a victim
Many men believe they can make a difference in addressing the problem of violence against women
Most men are willing to get involved in efforts to address the problem of domestic violence/sexual assault
Many men are already getting involved by talking to children about healthy, violence-free relationships
Many men are willing to express their disapproval when individuals - either friends or celebrities - make jokes or demeaning comments about women or exploit them
Men do not give any institutions high marks for doing enough to raise awareness and address the problem of domestic violence and sexual assault
Men broadly support employer-based efforts to address domestic violence and sexual assault

if you follow the link you can find the study itself and check it out.
...
in other news, my summer dating project is getting off to a great start.

heh.

coercive morality: not just for gay people anymore

when they come for one, they'll come for all:

US: Unmarried couples lose legal benefits where gay marriage banned - By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

States that have banned gay marriage are beginning to revoke the benefits of domestic partners of public employees.

Michigan has gone farthest, prohibiting cities, universities and other public employers from offering benefits to same-sex partners. In all, 27 states have passed constitutional amendments defining marriage as the legally sanctioned union of a man and a woman.

A Michigan court ruled in February that public employers may not offer benefits to unmarried partners, gay or straight, because of a 2004 amendment defining marriage. Government employers there had offered benefits only to gay couples.

Kalamazoo and the Ann Arbor school district have notified employees that they will end domestic partners' benefits. An appeal is before the state Supreme Court.

Kentucky Attorney General Gregory Stumbo ruled this month that the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville may not offer benefits to domestic partners, gay or straight. A U.S. appeals court last year upheld Nebraska's amendment barring government employers from granting benefits, including health insurance, to same-sex couples. It didn't address benefits for unmarried heterosexual couples.

Ohio state Rep. Tom Brinkman, a Republican, has filed a lawsuit to bar Miami University of Ohio from offering benefits to same-sex partners of employees.

"We're in kind of a giant race, a historic race, with all these court cases," says Matt Daniels, president of Alliance for Marriage, which lobbies for a marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution. "When the dust settles, we'll have a national standard for marriage. What is going on in the states is a dress rehearsal."

Gay-rights activists say they are fighting for families, too.

"Anti-gay organizations have tried to attack currently existing protections for gays and lesbians and unmarried couples for a long time," says Camilla Taylor, an attorney for the gay-rights organization Lambda Legal. "They don't want to limit marriage between a man and a woman — they want to attack the protections that exist and make life difficult for non-traditional families."

Most of the 27 state amendments were passed after a 2004 Massachusetts law allowed gay marriage. An additional 17 states passed marriage laws but did not amend their constitutions.

remember the dan savage column exhorting us apathetic straight folks to get off our asses if we didn't think social conservatives wouldn't eventually start making some legal inroads in our hetero-normative lives?

I've been running around with my hair on fire trying to convince my straight readers that religious conservatives don't just hate homos. Their attacks on gay people, relationships, parents, and sex get all the press, but the American Taliban has an anti-straight-rights agenda too. As I wrote on March 23: "The GOP's message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no lifesaving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You're going to have those babies, ladies, and you're going to make those child-support payments, gentlemen. And if you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that's too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut."

in the words of dan, this is some serious shit, breeders.

my favorite bible stories: jael & sisera

when i was a girl, i remember reading this story in the old king james version of my mother's worn ivory bible. the pages were edged in faded 'gold' and the best stories had vivid color plates to accompany them. in the new testament, the pictures were mostly of jesus - surrounded by crowds, carrying little children on his lap, being crucified - but in the old you had the drowning of the egyptians, david killing goliath, the ark finding the olive branch and the tent-pegging of sisera. the color plate was vivid to me: there was a tall, attractive jael in her robes and there was the sleeping sisera at her feet. she held a big hammer in one hand and a big tent peg in the other and she looked down at sisera with the faintest smile. i was hooked.

the basic story:

there's a war going on and israel's enemy is routed; the enemy general, sisera, is on the run and flees to the camp of an ally. there, jael tells him he's safe and when sisera has fallen asleep (after some milk and a warm blanket) she takes a tent peg and totally nails his head to the ground and he dies.

awesome.

i vividly remember reading this story during church one afternoon while old pastor jake was preaching. at the time, i was too young to pay attention to jake's sermons and spent my time writing little stories on the back of the program or reading bible stories from my mother's bible. what my sister did to occupy her time while jake preached is a mystery to me; like all good baptist jeremiads, jake's sermons ran at least 60 minutes. sitting out there while the hot sunday afternoon burned around me, i read this story in my mother's bible and i remember giggling so hard she had to pinch my arm. i don't know if it was the simple cadence of the king james version that struck me:

'Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand,
and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it
into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.'

or if it was just the absurd image of a man being unexpectedly pegged to the ground while he was asleep and tired and full of warm milk. whatever the reason, it made me giggle so hard my mom actually took the bible away for a few minutes until i calmed down.

(and it also explains why the judith and holofernes story resounded with me, too. a beheading, this time!)

movie nights to come

i don't know about you, but i'm excited about The Golden Compass release.
a few years ago, a friend of mine from grad school was in town and while we walked through borders the way we'd walked back in ann arbor, he recommended phil pullman's series, His Dark Materials. my friend called it a version of Paradise Lost but told from lucifer's point of view and said that it was the anti-harry potter: dark, complex, subversive.

i read the first and second book and had to agree: these were terrific books. if you're a churchy person who likes children's books to be at all simple and easy, then these ain't for you. these are books that house a challenging moral universe that does not conform to 'christian' analogy, necessarily. in other words, it's not C.S. Lewis, but it's terrific literature just the same.

the movie's coming out in december and if they don't keep the dark complexity it'll be a piece of crap. but if they do, it'll rock.

(if you've read the book, you'll be familiar with daemons and if you go to the site you can create your own. the site's pretty neat. anyway, mine's albus, a male lion who personifies modesty, pride, solitude and inquisitivity. yeah, that's pretty much me in a shell.)

oh, and another movie i'm looking forward to?
I am Legend. this has to be one of the best vampire stories around and when i saw the trailer i breathed, 'awesommme!'
such a dork.

jesus camp

just got home from 'jesus camp' movie night at a friend's house.
yikes. we all had to have a couple of cigarette breaks to just get through the thing.

some things i noted:
first, i never grew up pentecostal so the whole speaking in tongues thing to me is just silly. i mean, it's gibberish, people. no one can understand you. watching little kids get whipped into a frenzy of tongues-speaking disturbs me a little; it's irrational, hyper-emotional and seems just a bit psychologically irresponsible and manipulative of the adult who controls it.

second, my issue with the movie has nothing to do with biblical doctrine. if you're a homeschooling, anti-evolution, fundamentalist, pentecostal evangelical and this is the way you want to raise your kids, then have at it. but it made me ask what the ramifications are of raising a group of children to be totally paranoid, with huge persecution issues and believing in the rhetoric of war?

for me, it doesn't matter if you're evangelical or a hippie on a greenpeace boat: the process the movie traces is a perfect one for raising a flaming radical who may or may not bear a significant resemblance to timothy mcveigh. in particular, i'm thinking of the scene where the kids are exhorted to smash porcelain cups with the word Government written on them. the symbolism is simple, yet effective. what's the difference between smashing the government to make it more holy and smashing the government because of its politics and policies? sounds like two faces of terrorism to me.

and i think of the scene at the end of the movie, where little rachael approaches a group of older african american men in an effort to 'witness' to them and she asks them if they died, do they know where they'd go? (typical witnessing gambit) one of them says heaven, she presses how does he know and then they leave when it's clear that the men aren't going to say any different. as she's crossing the street with her little friend she says, 'i think they were moslem.'

my friends and i laughed our asses off. it was funny. but it was also telling: here's this little girl, totally raised to look at anyone who doesn't believe what she believes as the Other. and what's the form of this Other? a moslem.

disturbing, man. (oh, and never mind the part where the kids are practically genuflecting in front of a cardboard cutout of president bush. euww. idolatry, anyone? oh! or the part where they tape little plastic fetuses on their hands and pray for an end to abortion. do i want these kids in charge of my reproductive health access? hell no.)

should folks see it? i think so. it sparked a lot of discussion in my group about our different faith traditions, what being 'saved' is and if that's a requirement for all faith groups and then led to a broader discussion of recent supreme court decisions and why alito and roberts perhaps need to experience the Rapture before anyone else.

(oh, and the ted haggard stuff is just priceless.)

dear jesus: help me be a grown up

slowly but surely, i'm getting my act together.
it started with paying off my school debt, then my tax debt and now, it's about securing my retirement. my father would probably look at this as 'worrying' and not trusting in the Lord but that's why we have IRAs, so i won't have to bother the Lord about my retirement.

i spoke with a fund guy this morning and felt mature while doing it but also like i was totally faking it. but the long and short of it is now i have a diversified fund that will grow aggressively over the next few years and then we'll start taking it back a notch as i get older and more risk-averse. the end point? i think the goal is to accrue as close to a million dollars by the time i retire (if i remember the prospectus correctly.)

a bonus: next year, i can access some money for italy (which i've also started saving for) and the penalty actually isn't that bad if it's under $1000. heh.

what's next on the adulthood checklist?
perhaps buying property (only after italy and figuring out my next job move, which may have just presented itself at work)
perhaps, uh, another person (however, the likelihood of that is remarkably slim; i have more chance of going around the world than that)

or perhaps the next step in my march toward adulthood is just buying a grown up bed.

movie night with ding's friends

a scene of weekend movie watching with ding's friends, who all come to the church via different roads if at all:

JMD:
Movie Night? This Sunday, maybe? KS has Jesus Camp and if she's available and you guys are, maybe that'll work?
Roomie:
Jesus Camp at your place? Praise be.
TG:
Would love to see you all but I'm afraid I cannot endure another viewing of
Jesus Camp.

AK:
Fine by me. Can we move the TV to the balcony so I can smoke? Just curious.
JMD:
Okay, let's just say Sunday is it. KS, if you can't make it I can find the movie but we will miss you. TG, you will miss our sing-along, but that's your loss ;-)
Roomie:
7 pm is cool with me, but I'm not averse to making it 6:30 on your deck with a cold one. I need to bone up on the words. Shut Out De Do' Keep Ou' De Debil....
AK:
Can we get a hymn book? I grew up Methodist and didn't learn all those crazy Jesus songs for kids.
KS:
I believe that overhead projected sheets are more the thing. Happily, since all the songs basically have one 4 line stanza repeated ad nauseum, they aren't too hard to pick up - as an example of the top of my head, I present...

Ri-ise and shi-ine and give God the glory, glory;

Ri-ise and shi-ine and give God the glory, glory;

RISE and SHINE and (clap) give God the glory, glory;

Chil-DREN of the Lord.
JMD:
Don't even get me started. Oh, okay.

Cuz friends are friends forever if the lord's the
lord of them. And a friend will not say never because the welcome does not end.
And though it's hard to let you go, in the father's hands we know. That a
lifetime's not too long...to live as friends.

This is, of course, for the last night of camp. Big tearfest.
Roomie:
You pulled out Michael W. Smith. He trumps Amy grant. But you know what? I don't care about the singing, all I care about is the diorama. I will call the black
yarn right now for my lion's 's mane..... something something about some kid in a lion's den. i'm changing the kid to a penguin. I'll bring the shoebox.

Ding:
If you turn DANIEL into a penguin I think I’m going to pray that Thursday's hurricane hover outside your window.
Roomie:
Screw you. My Daniel can be anything he wants to be. Message over the man, dude.
Apologies--and huge shout out to TG. I am so, so, so sorry you're being dragged into the eye of the fundamentalist dragon show. Praise Holy Mary, mother of god, catholic sistah.

Ding:
Whatever.
As soon as we watch the damn thing I’ll go into a fundamentalist flashback and melt into a pool of drool, it'll be that traumatic.
It’s our only way of coping.

GP:

My personal favorite...

I am the churchYou are the churchWe are the church, together. (My favorite line)
All who follow Jesus, all around the world,Yes! We're the church
together.

It's a global message, and yet, completely exclusive. Trickery!

Ding:
Which shows the total cognitive dissonance it takes to be a part of it.

KS:
Indeed. My favorite necessary cognitive dissonance is:

'We are better than the Catholics because we reject the idea of an intermediary coming between God and the individual - oh, and by the way, here is exactly what the Bible means and requires of you - just trust us on it - please, no questions. Really. This is what it means. Yes, I know even the very first book of Genesis seems to contradict itself, but believe me, for reasons you can't possibly understand
having to do with the Fall being masterminded by Eve, you just have to trust us
that the rib/helper of Adam version is more right than that simultaneous
creation of man and woman crap. OK, lets move out of Genesis and turn
to Paul's reminder that women should be silent in church.'

No I'm not bitter at all.

goodyear: not good for women

you know, i was thinking.

if goodyear thinks it's so hot to screw women over, why should we buy their tires?
frak 'em.

you can read a few reactions and analysis at:
Lawyers, Guns and Money
Huffington Post
Amanda at Pandagon

it's half day friday

Knocked Up - Movies - Review - New York Times
i love seth rogan. he's adorable.

my Roomie calls this movie "a premise that could be solved with one visit to Planned Parenthood" and while that is true, it does not prevent me from wanting to see it and AO Scott's thumbs up just makes me want to see it more.

(a hardened New Yorker moved to almost tears? awesome.)

being a girl, pt 2

i'm totally bloated. and i have a date tonight. niice.

but this isn't about that.
if you haven't noticed, this week is not shaping up to be good to a girl.

for instance, if you've discovered that you're getting paid less than your male counterpart because you have ovaries and he has testicles (which somehow means that he needs his whole dollar and you don't - you only need .77 cents because once you have a baby that clearly means you've lost all right to a full paycheck - or something asinine like that), then the SCOTUS has something to say to you: Shut the frak up!

and, if you're a girl who lives in montana and you'd like to continue using the Pill, well, there's a certain pharmacist who has a special message for you, too: too bad, you whore!

[update: and did you read about this? an intern sent me this news item last week and it just about made my head explode. a highschool girl gets gang raped then rescued by 3 other women at a college party and, for some reason, the DA decides not to press charges against the 8-10 guys who raped her for 'lack of evidence' even though their were plenty of witnesses, including the 17-year old girl who was raped! aargh! the comment thread is really good.]

being a girl

thanks to my friend L- who sent me this article about the woman who stonewalled the inquiry at the justice department: How Monica Goodling played the gender card. - By Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine although i read newspaper reports i haven't been all up in this story. (i have a job, you know!)

but it's a smart, savvy take on gender performance and how our public eye is still more comfortable and accommodating when women weaken themselves rather than stand from a position of strength. (which gives credence to that recent study about 'uppity' women being targets of sexual harrassment more frequently than women who adhere to traditional gender roles.)
...
speaking of being a girl, it's dating season (for good or bad.)

had drinks last week with a very naughty actor guy and yesterday had dinner with a divorced father of two who lived in the burbs. (thanks, eharmony. those 29 dimensions really know how to pick 'em!)

but i think the surprise of the weekend was running into an old boss of mine in the supermarket and, while we were chatting and catching up, suddenly thinking, 'dude. he's totally hot.'

it's going to be a rough summer.

totally can't concentrate.

Roomie just reserved a villa in italy for next year!

we're going with a bunch of friends!
italy!
tuscany!
villa!
wine!
cheese!
pasta!
vistas!
i have to learn italian!

all of us are in a tizzy of planning (wardrobes, activities, day trips, food, music, wardrobes.) we haven't been able to work sensibly for the past hour.

dude. this is completely better than the cocktail date i have planned for tonight.

when it comes to women getting killed, the MSM is a little slow on the uptake

this is the front page story of today's paper: Iraqi girl's horrific death | Chicago Tribune.

this is the story when i first read about it on may 8 - on feministing. in between these two stories are 10 days of virtual silence - 10 days for a horrific stoning of a girl to make it to our mainstream, 'the pussycat dolls are feminist,' eyes.

in the trib article we have this reaction:

"Kurds, who include Yazidis, suspect Sunni Arabs of circulating the gruesome images to fuel anger against Yazidis and undermine the Kurdish community, which exercises a degree of autonomy in northern Iraq and is seeking more.

"It seems they are trying to make it big for political purposes," said Mohsen Gargari, a Kurdish member of parliament.

In an interview, he and two other Kurdish lawmakers condemned Aswad's killing. But they noted that in February a Sunni woman had been killed by relatives for having a relationship with a Yazidi man. "Nobody talked about it. Nobody filmed it or turned it into a big issue," he said."

in other words, it's 'normal' for this to happen, it happens all the time (over there), it's what happens to women and it's not about how women are still invisible and vulnerable and killed in our world because they're women, but about political power structures scoring points off other political power structures. it's about those people and their culture.

but 10 days before this article, samhita at feministing had this take and put the focus right back on the issue at hand - it's not about culture or religion, it's about patriarchy:

"Violence of this kind is a production of male ego and woman-hate and this truth is pitifully disguised when justified through religious or cultural circumstances. There is no cultural defense when it comes to mob mentality, woman-hate and violent murder. Unless, you want to talk about the global culture of patriarchy.

As I browsed articles, questions of whether or not the woman had converted to Islam, or whether or not it was just an honor killing, or if she fell in love with the wrong man, were used as possible explanations. As though any of those reasons can justify such a hideous display of violence."

i spoke with a hate crime investigator a couple of weeks ago and he said he didn't understand why crimes against women weren't called hate crimes. he said, 'i go into a neighborhood and this woman has been attacked by her husband or a boyfriend or a guy off the street - we've been called but there's nothing we can do. her being a woman doesn't give her the protection that the other categories of discrimination would give - even though we see crimes against women surging and we know they're targets because they're women.' i was surprised at his reaction. i honestly didn't think a man would get it. i wish more got it.

one of the demonstrators in the kurdistan protest carried a banner that said honor killings were terrorist acts against women. i wonder what the world would look like of women the world over began to fight against this kind of terror.

r. kelly: narsty ped

R. Kelly to magazine: 'I'm the Martin Luther King' :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State

if i had to compile a list of the most egregious women-hating men who make me gag, i think i'd put kelly right on up there with joe francis, jailed sleazebag. come on, 14 counts of child pornography??

i know there are black women who are disgusted by r. kelly but i wonder at the deafening silence coming from black male activists who don't call out kelly for being what he is: a nasty sexual predator.

Jerry Falwell: meh

Jerry Falwell, Leading Religious Conservative, Dies at 73 - New York Times.

"I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One's misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status. Blacks, Hispanics, women, etc., are God-ordained minorities who do indeed deserve minority status."
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, USA Today Chat, quoted from The Religious Freedom Coalition, "The Two faces of Jerry Falwell"

'god-ordained minorities.' ah, that jerry. whatta guy.

manly men for god and nation

please, sweet baby jesus, tell me this isn't true:

What can we say about a country so anxiously hypermasculine that it can give rise to Godmen, a muscular-Christianity movement that seeks to lure Real Men back to church with services that feature guys bending metal wrenches with their bare hands and leaders exulting, "Thank you, Lord, for our testosterone!"

read the article here.

all clear!

my ob gyn called today to let me know that my irregular pap is all clear! whoo hoo! the biopsies they took are clear, too! more whoo hoo!

i've been so worried about my fibroid (aka, Agatha) that i totally forgot i had a weird pap. so: no std's. no cervical weirdnesses (as of right now). just one poolball-sized fibroid to be eradicated.

life's good.

(oh, and i broke down and re-upped with eHarmony. frakking commercials!)

when law school students run amok

fascinating.
i wonder how you'd design an experiment to see how fast it takes for a group of guys to totally devolve into a pack of Lord of the Flies-ish anti-semitic, misogynist racists with rape fantasies.

i mean, does the transformation from clean cut ordinary dude to spittle-covered savage take an average of 24 hours? two weeks? a year? or, is it just something that occurs instantaneously whenever a bunch of them gather on an anonymous chat board?

Bitch Ph.D. writes about it here.

and if any of my law grad friends are out there, have you even heard of this board? what's up with that?!

the onion: smarter about the current state of choice feminism than most feminists

Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

my favorite part (other than the whole thing):

Whereas early feminists campaigned tirelessly for improved health care and safe, legal access to abortion, often against a backdrop of public indifference or hostility, today's feminist asserts control over her biological destiny by wearing a baby-doll T-shirt with the word "Hoochie" spelled in glitter.

"Don't tell this bitch what to do," said Kari Eastley, 24, a participant in the Oberlin study and, according to one of her T-shirts, a "Slut Goddess." "I wear what I want when I want, and no man is going to tell me otherwise. We're talking Pussy Power, baby."

and, in an eerie echo of linda hirshman's main thesis in her manifesto, Get to Work!, there's this part:

Klein said empowerment is now accessible to women who were long excluded.

"Not every woman can become a physicist or lobby to stop a foundry from dumping dangerous metals into the creek her children swim in," Klein said. "Although these actions are incredible, they marginalize the majority of women who are unable to, or just don't particularly care to, achieve such things. Fortunately for the less impressive among us, a new strain of feminism has emerged in which mundane activities are championed as proud, bold assertions of independence from oppressive patriarchal hegemony."

i bow to the onion. this piece is a fantastic skewering of how the women's movement has been rendered banal by the deliberate misreading of 'the personal is political.' bowing bowing bowing.



[the Big Idea in hirshman's book:

"The Opt-Out Revolution may be in reality only a leveling off, but in this context it is the end of the beginning. Deafened by choice, here's the moral analysis these women never heard: The family - with its repetitious, socially-invisible, physical tasks - is a necessary part of life and has obvious emotional and immediate rewards, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust." (p.24-25)]

ah, the female gaze

it's gettin' all springtime everywhere, and i don't know about you, but my sap is running. (it's running nowhere, but that's another, more private, post.)

yesterday, the roomie (who is, incidentally, enjoying her unemployment more than a normal human being should) went to Artopolis with a girl friend of ours. she saw some awesome art and came home swooning about industrial, metal furniture that she wants for our new place (when that happens, i'll let you know) but then the swooning over furniture evaporated when she started ranting about all the female nudes all over the place:

roomie: i couldn't believe it! i mean, if i saw one more nipple i was gonna die. painting after painting, statue after statue, naked women! i mean, what the hell?! even the female artists - all their feminist painting and crap and STILL ONLY NAKED WOMEN! i started to get seriously pissed off.

ding: hm. (keeping her mouth shut because roomie gets mad when ding mentions 'patriarchy.')

roomie: for the love of god, show me some naked men! where where the naked men? oh, yeah, over by the sensual masculine gay art! arrgh! you know? and, seriously, where do they expect me to mount a wall length painting of some naked chick and her pudenda? my dining room?!



anyway, Where Sheelzebub indulges in the female gaze at Pandagon.

of course, any and all beefcake suggestions are welcome down in comments.

heh.