Mouse Words

Announcement

2005-03-25T19:37:00.000-06:00

Sticking this at the top for those who may feel lost.

I will be blogging permanently at Pandagon. The fate of Mouse Words is still in the balance--for now I will be having mostly duplicate stuff at both blogs, which means that you can just blow off trying to comment on this Blogger piece of shit and direct your comments to Pandagon. I'm really excited about this opportunity to add ammunition to the "women bloggers question". Mostly I'm happy to have an opportunity to subvert the dominant link hierarchy from a blog that has a whole lot more readers than Mouse Words ever got.

Here's my introduction link.

Edited to add: Sorry for de-linking you, Ross. I thought your site was broken, but it was my button. I'll add you back.

Jesus hates a long distance runner

2005-03-15T13:05:00.000-06:00

Well, I was going to write about the California state court's sudden bout of common sense that led them to overturn the anti-gay state laws, but I'm sure everyone has heard the news. Instead, since I have been deluged with requests to do so, I'm going to make fun of this article about why Jesus wept so see a woman kick a soccer ball.

For quite a long time, women resisted the feminist call to play sports, since they just weren’t interested like men were. But this didn't sit well with the feminists; they felt this was the fault of male oppression. In the name of “equality,” feminist leaders poked and prodded and pushed women to join the games, until women in droves finally succumbed to the pressure.

I know it's hard to see in this photo, but in the background, if you squint really hard, you can see the feminist overlords holding whips and sending secret messages to the US team not to try to make a break for it. What looks like faces of truimph in this picture, then, can actually be read as cries for help--no, don't make us accept that trophy! We want to be good Christian housewives. Please, no!

One of the trends in schools is the participation in sports by women; therefore it shouldn’t surprise us that so many Christian daughters today participate in sports. But is this really all that bad?

Of course it's bad. For one thing, there's evidence that girls who participate in school sports are less likely to fall pregnant during high school, which means they are less likely to be married off by the time they are 21 and set to the task of popping out pups until their bodies give like Jesus wants them to.

I propose that sports greatly hinders the development of godly, Biblical, feminine character. Parents today expend extraordinary amounts of time and energy taking their daughters from one sports event to another, week after week, even to the point where it exhausts the family and family resources. The fruits we see are that today’s Christian women are often ill-prepared to be Biblically obedient wives and mothers.

If a girl gets raised in a family that treats her and her interests as if they were important and worthy of time and resources as if she were a son, she'll grow up to be that woman who actually sits down at dinner to eat instead of hovering above her husband all night making sure he's satisfied before she dare sneak a bite in the corner of the room.

Even some of the traditionally more feminine sports like gymnastics and ice skating are now influencing women to be more masculine.

The Bible talks about women developing a quiet and gentle spirit; I think sports fosters anything but that. They instead develop a competitive and contentious spirit that will cause them to have great difficulty in their marriages.

Translation: she'll backtalk her husband and say unfeminine things like, "Oh dear, I don't think it's the best idea to go to the school board meeting and say that you want our kids to be taught that dinosaurs and humans lived together." That's the sort of thing that can cause a marriage to go sour fast.

Most men I know admire a woman who is reasonably healthy and fit; they are also attracted to a woman who is somewhat “soft” and cuddly. This does not mean she should be delicate like tissue paper; no, a woman should be reasonably strong, and the normal duties of life will make her that way.

You'll get all the exercise you need lifting a baby in and out of a crib. Since you understand that family resources don't go to females, you won't need much exercise since you won't be eating enough to get fat anyway.

Female athletes also sneer, wince, push, and fight just like the men. I notice these things all the time in pictures in our hometown newspaper. The sneers are most obvious; they make young women very unfeminine. The masculine uniforms and sweaty bodies aren’t very attractive, either.

Women aren't to sneer, wince, push or fight for fear of offending a husband; apparently men sneering and pushing women is perfectly alright. Sports are not sexually attractive to middle-aged ministers, and as we recall by the Sermon on the Eyeliner, Jesus exhorted young women to remember that their ability to turn on old farts was their ticket to heaven.

Of course, the problem is that while it's not sexually appealing to men to be an athlete, it's also way too sexually appealing to men.

"A telltale sign of paganism is nudity. Historically, a primary means for introducing nudity into a culture has been through athletic competition which emphasizes form, movement, and the prowess of the body.... Christians should be wary of any educational process or cultural event which justify nakedness on the grounds of athletic freedom...."

It shouldn’t be a secret that women’s sports promote immodest attire. The pressure to be immodest is just one more reason women should avoid sports, and in many cases we shouldn’t even watch women’s (and sometimes men’s) sport competitions. The Apostle Paul often referred to how athletes ran races “unencumbered” (i.e. nude), because of the Greek influence in sports during his day. Based on what Mr. Eldridge writes, the question of whether or not women should participate in sports should be easy to answer.

So many questions pop into my head all at once reading this. Women participate in sports nude? I guess by this guy's reckoning, clothes that don't encumber movement are overtly sexual and pagan nudism. Which does cause one to wonder how fundies can have sex or even take a shit without falling into Athena worship, seeing how both activities require a lot more nudity than gymnastics.

But all that is less important to me than the picture he uses to illustrate how women in sports are all man-tempting nekkid harlots.

If this sort of thing gets the juices running, then maybe we need more, not less porn, to desensitize men and make them suitable to be let out of their cages.

Cross posted at Pandagon.

Mouse is a punk rocker

2005-03-14T18:12:00.000-06:00

Volsunga has a post up about one of the topics of endless fascination for youngish fans of the music--what is and isn't punk? Luckily, she's a smarty-pants and has insightful things to say. I probably don't, 'cause I was never really that good at convincing people that my enthusiasm for any strain of punk rock was any more profound than, "Fuck yeah!" I think, however, there is something to be said for that attitude.

The commodification of punk has been an irritant to the faithful since it first made its way over to England, if not before. It's just being pissy and ignorant, though, to take the simplistic view that treating punk rock as a commodity is Evil--all art is a commodity, and it's just a matter of who's got their hands on the controls. Or, even just if you like it, really. People who are enamored of "ironic" retro fashions, like I've been since I was a teenager, we might kid ourselves into thinking that because we're not feeding the current loathed beast that dictates trends and fashions that we are somehow making a statement or above it all somehow. Truth told, I just like certain older styles for aesthic reasons and while some friends of mine are irate to see retro fashions like full skirts and fitted waists coming back into style, I'm just happy that there's more clothes for me to buy and that everyone is looking so damn cute lately.

That doesn't mean I don't have my limits. For instance, I loathe clothing that is the modern equivalent of playing peasant--I will die before I pay $100 for a pair of jeans that are faded and torn. Fashions like that make mockery of people like me who have to work for a damn living and who buy our jeans brand new and dark indigo and wear the new ones out at night to look snappy and wear them on Saturday afternoons at the grocery store when they have holes and stains, not because we're making a statement so much as we don't see the point in throwing out something usable until there's a big hole in the ass.

That's what's so damn infuriating about the commodification--the trendy, inauthentic, money-grubbing commodification--of punk, or anything else for that matter. (Hip-hop has suffered the same fate of being run through a corporate commodification machine and then being sold back to the gullible at a huge profit margin.) It's inauthentic and therefore it's a mockery--Ashley Simpson wears a shirt that's supposed to look punk but costs more than I spend in a year on clothes and sings her shitty music for ungodly amounts of dough while I know people who may be geniuses that are couch-surfing and it seems like the corporate fucks are blowing raspberries at you , turning symbols that once had meaning for you into the same old crap that you were retaliating against in the first place.

The saddest thing is that they've caused us to eat our own. Pop punk styles are charting now, and that means that it's not cool anymore and you're embarrassed to like the music that you always liked before, that gave you joy. We're chasing our tails and it's time to stop, take a breath and remember that the most important thing is not if you're rebelling, but if you're simply being honest. I find myself wanting to dig deep and write about how my favorite band is something other than The Ramones, something more obscure, hipper somehow. But that would be a lie--The Ramones really are my favorite band, and yes, their music means something to me.

The music causes wall-building and debates about what is or isn't Punk, and while that's tiresome and stupid it is indicative of a certain passion that should be lauded. For instance, because of punk I was well-versed in the DIY aesthetic, and because of that blogging made immediate sense to me and that's why I jumped into it with two feet. A thoughtful approach to the philosophies behind it should be empowering, not frustrating. And of course, if you're empowered you feel that you are the person who decides what is and what is not, and so these debates become empty and meaningless. Who says what's Punk? Well, I do, that's who.

If you deny it, it only makes it worse

2005-03-14T14:01:00.000-06:00

You Are Pride !
You're competitive about most things. And feel
compelled
to constantly assure yourself of your greatness.
But hey,
It's not all bad - maybe you are that good! You
generally
look presentable, and are well educated because you
wouldn't let
yourself be any other way. People are intimidated
of you though,
so try and tone it down a bit - after all nobody is
perfect.

Congratulations ... You are the 'Best Kept' of the
7 deadly sins!

?? Which Of The Seven Deadly Sins Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

From Trish Wilson.

Texans don't bite and David Brooks reveals the source of his neurotic fear of pussification

2005-03-14T11:05:00.000-06:00

The swarms of the hip are beginning to crowd into my fair city even as the students have left for Spring Break. I expect the usual weirdness in dealing with those from out of town who suspect that Texans are abnormal, like this blogger who I found from BlogBites.

We really, really hope all those stories of Austin being "cool" and "hip" and, mostly, "liberal" are true -- we get scared of potential conflicts with Red Staters once we pass Pinole on 80. Can they see it in our eyes that we support same-sex marriage, universal healthcare and public transportation funding?

Ah yes, we are different from everyone else, but we actually don't bite. Even people who have different politics from the blue-staters (and Austinites generally don't) will not actually descend on you to rend you limb from limb, so no fear, gentle hipsters from out of state! The worst you have to worry about is that we will laugh at you because we have never fully managed to truly accomodate The Fashionable and we find people wearing carefully put together hip outfits to be sources of amusement. Seriously, one year we had a good five minute gut wrenching laugh at the expense of a poor Manhatten-dweller who wore a greasy black cowboy hat with the brim carefully curled up.

We'll have operatives on the ground for the duration, bringing you team coverage. Is Shiner Bock better than Anchor Steam? Can the Salt Lick stand toe-to-toe with Brother-In-Law's? Will their burritos have rice and beans? And if Paris Hilton and Gavin Newsom start making out in Union Square, and no one's there to blog about it, will they make a sound?

Answers: Yes; you won't eat there because The Salt Lick's not actually in Austin; yes and better than yours; and no, they actually implode on themselves.

Speaking of exaggerrated differences between different parts of America, David Brooks tipped off his readership to the reason behind his obsession with both red staters and reinstating the boot on women's necks--he's a big weakling who drinks decaf.

I could have guessed it anyway, but it’s always nice to hear a confirmation of one’s suspicions. Brooks is a wuss and he wants women, liberals and red staters to fix him. As someone who manages fit into all three categories, I don't know which of Brooks' expectations of people like me is most offensive--that we women should turn into dependent baby machines to make him feel manlier, that we liberals need to castigate ourselves for being cheese-eaters so that Brooks can have some company for his guilt-caused misery, or that we red-staters should mojo our gun-toting, cheap food-eating toughness over to Brooks so that he can briefly experience what it's like to be a real cowboy. Of course, monsters like me--independent women (bad) who are middle Americans (good) that voted for Kerry (bad)--may not actually seem possible in Brooks World. Perhaps I should write him a letter notifying him of my existence and see if that causes his head to explode.

For fuck's sake

2005-03-14T08:39:00.000-06:00

The question of questions makes the big time. I am sorry I ate my breakfast already as my stomach is burbling. At least this article puts the blame squarely where it belongs--white men dominate the top run of the blogosphere because they like each other so damn much.

Let's all hope that the top rung white men can refrain from guilt-tripping themselves for a day after reading this before moving onto more important task of linking endlessly to each other.

On the personal side, because being female I have to de-politicize this blog with personal ruminations, the hours spent building my garden in the springtime sun have turned me into a painful ball of pink. Every year I forget that I am as pale and sensitive as I am, to the point where I wonder if I should have been a Victorian heroine dying of TB instead of a modern woman who actually gets some exercise, and every year I manage to get sunburned while it is still officially winter. But I have no cause to complain. Yesterday my mother called me from the hospital, where she is currently recovering from the mother of all gardening accidents. Yes, a rattlesnake bit her hand, through her gloves no less, while she was pulling weeds. Luckily, she is still with us and still had the energy to ask polite motherly questions about my life. She would deny it, but she really is a tough lady.

Apparently they don't razor the bite open and drain it anymore to treat snake bites. They have drugs called anti-venom now that they give you instead. I suggested to my mother that she embrace our new chemical millenium and use chemical weed killer in the future on her garden. I also suggested the manufactor should make a new Weed and Snake Killer especially designed for West Texas.

2005-03-13T19:11:00.000-06:00

The finished product. This morning, this was all just grass.

Porn and gardens

2005-03-13T09:29:00.000-06:00

This review of the new Legs McNeil oral history, The Other Hollywood, is really interesting and makes me want to read the book. McNeil put together a really compelling history of the rise of New York punk with just interviews, and I'll bet that this book probably does live up to they hype. Hopefully, this will be the book that gets people past the partisan style debate about porn--it's great, fulfilling, fun/evil, exploitative and addictive. Interview both Nina Hartley and Linda Lovelace and get at the crux of the matter--like anything else in this world, different people have different opinions on it and one experience does not negate another.

One thing in this review really struck me as a reflection of what I always say about porn, or more specifically, about the misogyny in it--that it's a symptom of a larger social problem, not a cause. The review states that the book makes the case that Linda Lovelace was horribly abused by her husband and that everyone else stood around and ignored it. But also that they didn't ignore it because they approved, but for much more mundane reasons than that.

And here is where the exhaustive chronicling of "The Other Hollywood" becomes not just compelling but important: In the back-and-forth between the couple on the page, and with memories from other actors and crew members thrown in, it becomes clear that Lovelace might have indeed been rather flaky or dumb or, in Traynor's word, a "dingbat," but she was also so battered physically and emotionally that it is little wonder that she felt coerced. And because her co-workers saw her problem as a private matter, they stayed out of it.

It reminded me of how abuse is ignored in every other arena of life, how people view it as a "private" matter and stay out of it. Traynor would have beat his wife no matter what they did for a living, and the people around them would have ignored it regardless of what they did for a living. You can argue that the sexual nature of the work made the abuse and you could have a good case. But it's more important to see the abuse that occurs in porn not as a cause of the abuse in the rest of life, but as part of the fabric of the rest of our society. A symptom, not a cause.

Anyway, sorry about the lack of posting today. I spent most of the day not building a new Mouse Words, though progress is being made on that front, but actually engaged in the real world task of building my garden. This is the first non-rainy weekend we've had in awhile, so we took advantage. The Man of Mouse is handy as hell and he also managed to tear apart a spare bench we had and turn it into a 2 foot tall wall for a massive compost pile in the time it took me to bag five 30 gallon bags of leaves to toss into our brand new compost pile. We then tilled and partitioned off an 8X8 foot area for the garden, composted it, put a pathway in it and planted tomatoes and some herbs. More herbs will be planted during the spare moments in the week of SXSW.

Pictures of said garden to come.

Doh! Correction time

2005-03-12T15:26:00.000-06:00

I am not good on calling out terrorist actions, am I? Yesterday, I expressed worry that the murder of that judge might be a terrorist attack, and I was wrong. And on the flip side, I wrote about the kid who went to jail for writing zombie stories earlier and guessed that his family was overreacting. Wrong again. Looks like the kid was lying.

However, Poole's teachers told police they had not assigned such a story or talked to him about it -- and had they seen it, they would have been obligated to report him to authorities.

And, as it turns out, Poole's writings include no brain-eating dead folks.

What they do contain, Winchester police Detective Steven Caudill testified yesterday, is evidence that he had tried to solicit seven fellow students to join him in a military organization called No Limited Soldiers.

Now, they may or may not be overreacting, but I'm actually inclined to agree with the authorities in the case now, because now we have evidence that this kid was lying to conceal what he really did. And the nature of the lie--one designed to maximize his own fame and manipulate and deceive well-meaning people--indicates that this kid might have exactly the sort of superiority complex that previous school shooters have.

Elayne Riggs has more.

Class and warfare

2005-03-12T13:25:00.001-06:00

The Slactivist has a useful suggestion for resisting the current transfer of money from the poor and the middle class to the rich--strip down credit card ads on campus. The credit card companies want nothing more than to have the students paying off a lifetime's worth of debt by the time they graduate and it's sick. I know people who are in their mid-30s still trying to catch up with charges they rang up before they turned 21. That's all this bankruptcy bill is about, making sure that nothing even slows down the process of transferring the wealth of the nation from the hands of the many to the hands of the few and getting us on track to being feudal as soon as possible.

Avedon Carol wonders what the Bushies think they're going to live on once they have finished pillaging our nation's assets. I have been wondering the same thing myself for a long time now--exactly how do Bush and his cronies picture their goals for this country? I mean, even though I'm thinking they want what is essentially a feudal society with them as the landed gentry, they are foolish to think that's going to happen if Americans aren't producing anything we can pay up in entitlements. Of course, the entitlements won't be a direct payment, but through a system of supressed wages, cronyism, and usury, the end result will be the same if they manage to get everything they want. But the lack of actual production inside our borders seems to be problematic for that theory.

Yesterday I was standing in line at 7-11 and sort of idly looking at the green "Support Our Troops" wristbands and I noticed that the box they were in said, "Until they come home." Meaning, I guess, wear the band until the troops return. And it made me sad to think about all the people who have purchased one of these bands and earnestly wear them until certain loved ones return from Iraq. To wear such a thing is to have faith that the troops will be coming home soon, that there is an end in sight and that the Shrub has good intentions with his war and will see to it that there is an end. But odds are the plan on the BushCo table is that once they can take enough troops out of Iraq, they will just invade another country, most likely Iran. The troops, in other words, aren't coming home.

Then it hit me--it isn't quite the feudal societies of Europe that are the aimed-for ideal, but the Roman Empire. Little fucker probably thinks he's Caesar. They don't plan to live on the assets of Americans but on the assets of other countries. A country that produces nothing still produces bodies, however, and that's probably what BushCo is thinking will be the key to getting at the assets of other countries. Take away our actual production and turn us into a military machine.....

Granted, it was a crazy thought but now that it has its claws in me, I see evidence of the plan everywhere. For instance, the sudden surge of leglislative attempts to strip women of their reproductive rights--most people tend to think it's a sop to the religious right, but viewed from another angle, it could be the first baby steps towards redefining women as bodies to produce more soliders, an attitude that's common to completely militarized societies. (Nazis, Spartans, you name it.) The almost insane push to strip Americans of their ability to stabilize their personal fortunes? Well, if you're poor, you can always join the military, now can't you?

I realize on a certain level, I'm not saying anything new--the neocon obsession with military power is the primary characteristic. Still, I can honestly say that I never thought that there might be an overall plan to turn us into a more militaristic society than we ever could have imagined. But now that I think about it, yeah, I think that there's a belief that this could be the century of the American Empire and the neocon plan for the next generation is to turn them into cannon fodder.

Weekend show recommendations

2005-03-11T18:32:00.000-06:00

Tonight at Room 710, we're going to see the Bulemics and then later on the Dicks. A full night of bands with names you don't want to use in front of your mother.

The Weirdos are also playing at Emo's. Oops! Scratch that. According to the site, they cancelled again. Fuckers. Anyway, that means you can get into Emo's for free and the Applicators and the Ends are playing, and they are always fun to see.

Tomorrow night Beerland has a good line-up--Kodiaks, This Damn Town, and Manikin. The last two I like a whole lot, so it's well worth going.

SXSW is coming up next week and I'm planning to blog it. We'll see how well that goes over with all the activity in my house, but the houseguest that's staying with us for a whole week is also a writer, so at least I have moral support in that.

Wombs don't have rights; too bad for that fleshy thing surrounding them

2005-03-11T10:26:00.000-06:00

All sorts of bad news on the reproductive rights front. Minnesota has joined the fight to make the sluts pay and pay some more for getting out of line and thinking they have rights to their own bodies. The House is planning to move $2 million dollars from Planned Parenthood to places that will lie to women seeking abortions and humiliate them until they accept that bearing a baby and giving it away is their just punishment for touching a pee-pee. This quote from Feministing really gets to the root of the anti-abortion rights cause.

“They asked questions about Planned Parenthood's mission, how it counsels pregnant women who come to its clinics seeking abortions and how much state funding it gets...Rep. Tim Wilkin, R-Eagan, asked why more pregnant Planned Parenthood patients don't choose to have children and give them up for adoption.”

Rep. Wilkin thinks that women are just brood bitches and doesn't see why the fine people at Planned Parenthood don't agree. Every uterus that's working needs to be, if not for the family of the woman that owns the functioning uterus, then for the family with money that doesn't have possession of a functioning uterus.

Charlie Kilian sent me this story from The Kansas City Star about more abortion restrictions being put on women in Missouri.

The bill would require abortion doctors to obtain hospital privileges within 30 miles of their clinics to continue performing abortions. It also would redefine an abortion clinic as an "ambulatory surgical center" subject to state standards for surgery facilities.

The bill also would make it a felony for someone to accompany a minor across state lines to receive an abortion without a parent's permission.

Naturally, the bill, which is set up to make it harder for women who want abortions to get them, is being pushed as by a Republican who claims she's only trying to help women who want abortions.

Rep. Jane Cunningham, a St. Louis County Republican and sponsor of the legislation, said the bill would protect women by making abortion clinics safer.

Rep. Cunningham, you know what helps women who want abortions? Getting their fucking abortions. You're not being protected from what you really want to be protected from, which is being pregnant any longer, if the doctor who performs abortions gets shut down.

The bill also tries to make it harder for young women who can't get parental notification to cross state lines and get abortions there.

Cunningham filed the bill to crack down on Missouri minors who travel to the Hope Clinic in Granite City, Ill., to obtain abortions. Illinois does not require a minor to get parental consent for an abortion; Missouri requires one parent to approve.

"I think we have to keep young girls safe," Cunningham said. "These are Missouri children, and this is just closing a loophole."

Keeping girls safe means exposing girls who are afraid of a beatdown from daddy to having to tell him that they are pregnant. Those girls who won't risk it can safely go to a back alley abortionist or safely throw themselves down the stairs or safely have their boyfriends beat them until they miscarry. Cunningham can come over to my house and I'll show her what safe things I can do with a baseball bat to people who lie and claim to be helping the very people they are dying to hurt.

As Rad Geek explains:

This is no accident. They are coming for the young and desparate first; they are the easiest to go after. They have already created a byzantine system of explicit restrictions and burdensome regulations to create a limited class of authorized abortion providers and make the conditions of obtaining an authorized abortion from them as harrowing as possible.

Well, Jesus did say that the strong should devour the weak, that strength is the same thing as morality, didn't he?

Edited to add: Fred at Stone Court thinks that the murder of a judge today might be an anti-abortion terrorist act. I wouldn't be surprised--the laudatory attitude on the right wing fringe towards the killing of Judge Lefkow's husband and mother last week is just the sort of thing that inspires further terrorist acts. And while the causes--white supremacy and anti-abortion rights--are ostensibly different ones, they aren't really. For one thing, they are both about returning control to the dominant groups. For another, the attitude that women are just breeding machines locks in nicely with the obsession that white supremacists have with lineage, etc. Hell, the notion that women's rights are a direct threat to the survival of the white race is becoming a mainstream idea lately, with David Brooks hinting around the subject in his odes to natalism.

Update on that: It looks like it wasn't a terrorist killing, but a man on trial for rape who was trying to get away.

Friday Random Ten--"The Quiet Before SXSW" Edition

2005-03-11T06:16:00.000-06:00

Yes, I'm still on Blogger. Apparently, I need more time. Here's our marching orders.

1) "I Believe to My Soul"--Ray Charles
2) "Be My Guru"--The Hoodoo Gurus
3) "Voodoo Lady"--Ween
4) "You're Gonna Miss Me"--13th Floor Elevators
5) "Rid of Me"--PJ Harvey
6) "Bermuda Triangle Shorts"--Man....or Astroman?
7) "God Only Knows"--Beach Boys
8) "Hey Hey Ha Ha"--Crazy Girls
9) "I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea"--Elvis Costello
10) "Hit It Run"--Run DMC

Only one of those is going to actually be at SXSW--Elvis Costello. I doubt a plebian like me will be able to get into that show, however.

Edited to add: Now there's a logo!

2005-03-11T06:09:00.000-06:00

Max attacks the grass like a tiger after an antelope.

Trying the "Desperate Housewives" thing again

2005-03-10T17:54:00.000-06:00

Okay, this is the original article at PopMatters by Raphaël Costambeys-Kempczynski that inspired me to write this. He lives in England and watches "Desperate Housewives" and wonders a bit if this show means that American women are a bit crazy. (Answer: no more than anyone else.) He also has the misfortune to read Brent Bozell's idiotic call for boycotts against the advertisers on "Desperate Housewives" because the show doesn't promote conservative values enough, which is the only reason for television to exist in Bozell's mind. CZ doesn't get what Bozell's beef is--to him, the show is conservative, since the women on it don't really question the basic values system where women's role is to labor in the home without a paycheck.

Oh silly educated Europeans! In Bozell's world, anything that suggests that a housewife's life is anything but the pure bliss that can only come from ecstatically giving her entire self over in the service of others is man-hating feminist propaganda. This show in particular is blaphemous--it suggests that women occasionally feel that children are a burden, or that they even, and I know it sounds crazy but it's true, make jokes.

These wives and mothers hate their lives. "Ease up, you little vampire," says one as she breast-feeds. Her older boys are so nasty they run over ladies with shopping carts. The divorced housewife tells her 12-year-old daughter, "Tell me again why I fought for custody of you?" The girl says, "You were using me to hurt Dad." Mom kisses her on the forehead: "Oh, that's right."

Cracking jokes is the sort of non-feminine behavior that we surely don't need to be exposing Americans to in primetime. Bozell also has issues with female anger in its purer form.

Scary Bree accidentally gives onions to her onion-allergic husband Rex. He said, "I can't believe you tried to kill me." She casually replies, "Yes, well, I feel badly about that."

Bozell neglects to mention that the husband in question is cheating and asking for a divorce. I would be thinking murderous thoughts, too. Of course, I'm free to do so since I'm not beholden to think of my man as the head of me and god as the head of him. It's a little difficult, I imagine, to question your own head's decision to cheat and then run off.

Well, Bozell can bitch and call for boycotts all he wants, but I doubt the networks are going to care very much for his preferred programming "Contented Housewives", a show that follows four women around their homes as they prance around them with a baby in one arm and a feather duster in the other, humming hymnals in a contented voice. Oh, I know there'd be some excitement on church Sundays, when she has to calm an exasperated husband down--in fact, every time the husband shows his face, there's a chance for exciting emotions like frustration and anger! But I don't think the networks will buy it.

Frankly, I don't think the show has a political ax to grind. Overtly conservative shows like "Seventh Heaven" suck, so they couldn't go that route. And if the housewives were always questioning their position in life, it wouldn't be believable, since they had to have bought into the whole suburbia thing to be there in the first place. It's a soap opera that treads into satiric territory. I would say they skewer the right a lot more, but that comes with the territory of writing about the suburbs. It would ring hollow if everyone in the big houses in the 'burbs were a bunch of liberals.

Panda-blogging and something to wonder about

2005-03-10T13:59:00.000-06:00

Well, my stint of Panda-blogging (as my RL friends called it) has come to an end. There were fewer lame cracks about how remarkable it is that three people can manage to blog while be-vagina-ed than I was afraid there would be and a lot more clever jokes about the same than I thought there would be. It was nice to work on software that works and it was fun to have co-bloggers, though I don’t know how I’d handle that in the long run, because I’d be all afraid that I was writing too much and shoving them to the side. It was not nice having to deal with a troll whose testicles apparently pulled up into his body at the mere thought of an explicitly feminist writer at such a large blog and tried to rectify his problems by harassing me. But I won’t dwell on that, because it was such a positive overall experience and I’m honored that Jesse asked me to do it.

One thing that really stuck out to me in reading comments over there from those on the right wing side of the culture war was that there’s this odd tendency of conservatives to assume that because they are on the side of the angels, that older accomplishments by progressives can be safely adopted by them. I don’t know how else to put it, but most of the right wingers over there seemed to think that this fight to deny someone their rights in this day and age has absolutely nothing to do with older fights for rights, which they admit were just battles. The cognitive dissonance must really be painful.

Can anyone explain to me how people who are against gay marriage now are so damn sure they would have been just dandy with interracial marriage had they lived 70 years ago? Do the people who adamantly oppose feminists striving for wage equality and other women’s rights really think that they would have been pro-suffrage in the day? Do those against affirmative action or pretty much anything the NAACP supports really think they would have been marching in Birmingham? If they’re full of shit, who do they think they’re fooling? If they actually believe their own horseshit, if they really don’t think they’d be calling black/white marriages “unnatural” the way they do same-sex marriages now, how do they manage to believe that without causing an aneurysm from their brain scurrying around concealing evidence of their own small-mindedness from themselves?

I’m open to all possible theories, if you can get Blogger’s comments to work for you.

Blogger hates me

2005-03-10T11:22:00.000-06:00

Double goddamit! Blogger ate what I thought was a really clever post this morning on "Desperate Housewives". I'm sick of this shit. Tonight I'm going to start working on moving Mouse Words to a WordPress blog. Any advice is appreciated.

Fuck shit piss dammit motherfuckering stupid crap Blogger shit.

The eternal mystery of girl groups

2005-03-09T21:01:00.000-06:00

Having a deep affection for girl groups, meaning the 60s pop type and all their bastard cousins, is one of those things that people tend not to really understand, especially at first. My boyfriend initially tended to wonder why I had a sick need for MP3s of the Angels and the Shirelles and why I had firm opinions that Phil Spector is a genius that I would like to kick in the nuts. After a simple application of playing the music all the damn time for him, he gets it now and I got out of the shower tonight to find him playing video games while listening to an obscure mix of British girl groups that imitate the American girl group style.

It's hard to explain the appeal. It feels oddly empowering to listen to it, which is hard to justify to others, considering the typically insipid lyrics of your average girl group song. (There are exceptions, of course. For instance, some Motown stuff is actually clever or moving.) The music itself is often surprisingly inventive, pulling in pop and R&B elements, clever production and even pulling on the rock and funk sounds at time. But still, it's hardly art rock or anything else you would whip out to impress people with your smarts.

Pop music should be a modern version of folk music--simple and honest, yes, but surprisingly innovative and indicative of the artistic ingenuity that is part of the human spirit and not reliant on academic training or living in artistic ghettos or being educated at impossibly exclusive schools. But pop music now is soulless and micromanaged and expresses almost nothing about us normal people's feelings, except the urge to go to the mall and buy something you really have no place to wear.

Older pop music is calculating in its way, but since no one really took it so damn seriously, there isn't all this micromanaging going on. Throw some girls in front of a mic since the public likes to hear girls sing now, some insipid lyrics about loving a boy, there you go, not much thought in the management of it. Because of that, there was a sort of weird time in the late 50s and 60s where women's voices came through with the sort of honesty that tends to make people freak out now. The effort at the artistry, their own view of themselves as musicians, the belief that even silly songs about crushes deserve a soulful treatment--all this stuff comes across and I think that's the appeal.

Even women working under oppressive management, like the Ronettes or the Crystals under Phil Spector, still had an opportunity to put themselves forward in their music in a way that Britney Spears will never get to experience. It's easy to relate to it, romanticize it. I still get a cheap thrill out of Ronnie Spector's bad girl image. She makes it all too tempting to abuse eyeliner.

Plus, it's fun. The lyrics you want to deride as silly actually describe the feelings that tend to make us battiest from our teenage years on--falling for someone, worrying about loss, navigating the treacherous path between passion and sense. There are a million rock songs by men, some by Very Serious Artists, about the very same themes. But to be female and write love songs, you have to strike a pose, embody a stereotype of sorts, make some sort of statement on your sexual status in relation to men. There aren't any female artists that are popular that don't strike a dishonest pose of sorts. (There are tons underground that do their own thing, thank you very much.) Alanis Morrisette is for the Angry Bitches. Avril Lavigne for the Kooky Chicks Who Think They're Cute. I'm not even touching Britney or Christina. A few women in hip hop sell without embracing a tedious stereotype, but even they are sadly rare.

I like the songs because they are fun love songs that are open-ended, so their female audience can relate without feeling pressure to fit a stereotype. I can listen to "Then He Kissed Me" and even think about the fun of kissing someone for the first time without feeling it makes much of a statement on my womanhood. Plus, some of that shit is damn good. I'm just saying.

The importance of feminism to liberalism

2005-03-09T11:16:00.000-06:00

This is one of my pet topics that I don't actually write about much, because I feel like a broken record, but today I think the topic needs to be refreshed a little. Hugo Schwyzer linked to this nauseating jerk-off of an editorial that was supposed to be "satirical" but was pretty much just the writer, Michael Lewis, bragging about how he talked a smart, beautiful woman (Tabitha Soren) into giving up her career in order to be just the Missus. Believe me, those men who don't see a big problem with that kind of ego-stroking, if I wrote an an article bragging about how I found a man to give up fame and fortune in order to stay and home and look after my children, you'd be pissed, too.

Anyway, Hugo left this comment about his views on marriage and staying at home to raise children:

I'll catch some flak for this, but in my opinion one of the greatest gifts a husband can give his wife is the freedom to choose to what degree she wishes to remain in the public sphere after they've had children.

Meaning that men should be gracious if their wives want to keep their jobs but willing to shoulder the financial burden should their wives want to stay at home. I told him he was being classist in the comments, and I was right. Most men don't have an opportunity to be the big champion for "letting" their wives work or the big supporter for "letting" their wives stay at home; most married couples need two incomes to get by, so the whole subject is irrelevant to their personal circumstances.

The problem with comments like this is that men in this country are already oppressed by the American Dream, the male version, at least. As far as I know, there's no female-centered version of the American Dream. In the American Dream, our hero Ward Cleaver is a Real Man because he has a job that pays for him to have a big house, a family and a most importantly, a wife who is financially dependent on him and under his direct control. This is how masculinity is defined for so many, many men in our country. The problem is that fulfilling that dream of having a woman sequestered away at home tending to you and your children is that it's out of the financial reach of the majority of men.

Of course, what this means is that we have a huge population of men in this country that both believe that in order to be Real Men they have to have a wife that is both at home and subservient, but out of financial necessity, they have wives who work. And it's hard to get subservience out of someone when you can't tell them, "Well, who makes the money around here?" There's a lot of resentment there.

In step the Republicans, who can't give these guys what they really want--jobs that pay enough to have a family with one income--but they can give them an endless list of people to scapegoat: welfare moms, illegal immigrants, disobedient women getting abortions, gays who want marriage when you can't even have the Leave It to Beaver one you wanted for yourself, and so on and so forth. Plus, the President is all too willing to be a walking phallic symbol for all sorts of masculine fantasies of power to be projected on. Maybe you can't be Ward Cleaver, conservative men of America, but at least you can pretend you're Dirty Harry.

I see some pontificators who have toyed with the idea of "compromising" with the Resentful Male Republicans by kicking feminists around a little, I mean, "compromising" on women's right to an abortion, etc. This strategy isn't going to work. Every attempt to assuage those who vote from anxious masculinity is just going to be topped by the Republicans, who I have no doubt would go so far as to strap a codpiece on President Bush and parade him around riding on the back of a woman on all fours, especially if they could do it out of sight of the female voters they are trying to lure by saying "children" a lot.

Gender issues are not of secondary importance to conservative politics at all--they are front and center. Ultimately, the resentful NASCAR dad voters are voting for a return to unquestioned straight male dominance. And when liberals ghettoize "women's issues" or suggest that they can compromise with the right-wing on what rights to "let" women have, it reinforces the belief that male dominance is the way of the world, and thereby weakens the liberal position.

There's been a lot of ink spilled as of late bemoaning the lack of direction and lack of goals for progressives. This sort of thing really perplexes those of us who concentrate on feminist progressivism--I have no problem whatsoever stating what my direction and goals are for feminism. Feminists want full legal equality for women, parity between the sexes in every aspect of public life, social relationships between men and women based on equality, the rights of children to be acknowledged and respected, the right of women to use every tool science has to offer to maintain control over our bodies, wage equity, social policies to help parents, and healthy social attitudes towards sexuality. We also have tons of plans and ideas that we'd like to implement. You want goals and ideas? Feminists got 'em.

Liberal Democrats need to enthusiastically embrace feminism, and have the courage of our convictions. Courage is what attracts voters--if you don't think that's so, then look at all the women who vote against their own interests because they are lured by the confident way conservatives put the boot to the neck. Oh yeah, and in case we forgot, women are half the voters out there, but women voters are wishy-washy about supporting the Democratic party. Why? Well, because the Democrats are wishy-washy about standing up for what women want. Enthusiastic support for women's rights and women's needs is the best way to get the attention and support of women voters. I cannot tell you how many women I know who express feminist opinions and vote for the Republicans. They would probably be more inclined to rethink their choice if they saw the Democrats outlining programs that woudl be of a direct benefit to them.

Alas is back up!

2005-03-09T08:46:00.000-06:00

Woo-hoo! Let's all hope that Amp's server troubles are finally over.

This makes me feel like a clown--laughing on the outside, but crying on the inside

2005-03-08T12:42:00.000-06:00

Reader Avalon Carthew sent me this barely coherent rant against feminism that is really a cut above your usual strawman thrashing in terms of sheer enjoyment. The writer Rachel Chunko manages to embarrass herself twice over--once for being a dreadful suck-up to male dominance in hopes to get some scraps, perhaps praise for being pretty smart for a dumb cunt, and once more for, and I can barely make myself type this, making up a fictional crowd to approve of her idiocy and injecting this fantasy into her editorial. For what purpose I don't know. It's not like it's hard to get at least a handful of smug assholes to offer condescending praise to a woman who willingly puts down other women, especially if she looks good in a miniskirt.

The crowd falls silent. Rachel Chunko steps onto the soapbox.

Something went wrong between the quiet battles fought by Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Astell and the graceless, whimpering feminism of today. And it's annoying.

That would be my fault. I ran into the corner of a door with my foot this morning and stubbed my toe. After falling to the ground, I let out a whimper, thereby destroying all credibility that feminism ever had. Feel free to strip away my right to vote.

The feminists I know are not the strong women I hoped they'd be. In reality, they are catty and full of unfounded self-pity.

Meow! You sure showed those feminists from catty!

I'm sure feminism really does rock like a girl with dreadlocks at Lillith Fair, but I have no evidence to that end. Feminism is inherently flawed for two reasons:

Perhaps your problem is that you think rocking with dreadlocks to Sarah McLaughlan is like the height of kicking ass. But don't let me make you feel like your limited experience should have any bearing on your ability to thrash a strawman.

1. Ask a feminist what feminism is, and she'll tell you, "It's about equality between the sexes." Tell a feminist why, logically, the prefix of the movement should not be "fem" and that the concept is therefore inherently flawed, and she'll tell you you're wrong and then not be able to tell you why. Feminism should be "equitism" by their logic, but it's not.

We have our first lie. This conversation never happened, or if it did, it only happened once. Why do I say? The answer to this inquiry is obvious--feminism starts with "fem" is that we don't have an "any means necessary" approach to achieving equality, but instead choose to promote the interests of "fems" until equality is achieved.

And now some free psychoanalysis:

2. It seems as if feminists, for the most part, find themselves in some way incompetent or incomplete as women.

Yep, she used the "feminists just need some dick" argument. It's true, of course. I haven't had sex in, damn, like hours or something and already my uterus has begun to wander around, causing hysterical thoughts like, "Why the hell do women still only make 76 cents to a man's dollar?"

All neo-feminism does is dwell on the differences among people, rather than work from the starting point we're all given. In this modern environment, aren't we past the need for such pronounced separations?

Who knew that Larry Summers was actually spreading covert neo-feminism? I thought I saw him dreading his hair at the Lilith Fair.

For some reason, it's unpleasant to be reminded of the feminist dogma. There's nothing worse than people who can't laugh at themselves.

I can think of something worse--people who make imaginary supporters to applaud them.

The feminists are everywhere.

Like roaches in Houston. And like Houston roaches, we can fly, too.

I am female, strong and capable.

Well, your imaginary admirers certainly agree.

When Virginia Woolf stood and proclaimed that a woman needs a room of her own to sit and think -- that a woman does think -- it was never meant to transform into worship of the mason jar that holds Gertrude Stein's testicles preserved in formaldehyde.

I read that sentence like 15 times trying to make fun of it and then realized that really, it's circular and whole and needs no embellishment from me to make you spit your drink all over your keyboard.

It does raise the question--don't you all think that Woolf would have a blog and write an introspective, soul-searching post about how she'd like to link to women bloggers but she doesn't know any besides Wonkette?

In a gesture of triumph, Rachel throws up her arms. The crowd looks at her quizzically, and then bursts into rousing applause. She quiets them and continues.

The imaginary crowd had a very real moment there when they thought she was done and they were free, but nope, they are stuck with her longer. Perhaps she will next suggest that Frieda Kahlo painted with her penis.

Even white males are oppressed in today's society in some form or another, and so is the woman who just wants to sing Chaka Khan and be every woman.

All those women who marched on D.C. last year where marching for the right to have men who don't screw around because we're all they need. I think. I mean, what else could it have been about?

It's generally not pleasant to be around a modern feminist. She has to tell you about it.

Who do those feminists think you are, Rachel? Foolish women, thinking Rachel is some female, and that she should give a shit about women's issues as if that had any bearing on her life.

But where is the activism? She keeps talking about what she believes. But what is she doing about it?

Hear hear! I'll bet those lazy feminists are sitting on their asses right this minute.

Modern feminism is a load of crap. Conceptually, it is a wonderful force to help women through their hard times and to band together in times of fragmented strength. In practice, however, feminism falls short.

Cause we're all cats, no doubt about it. I hate all those other feminist bitches and they hate me and we just can't ever do anything together peacefully.

A joyous cry is heard from the crowd, "Finally, somebody said it!"

What bravery! My god, no one has ever had the guts to criticize a feminist before this moment in time. It is truly an act of selfless courage that is both tantalizingly feminine in its selflessness but also refreshingly masculine in its courage. Women want to be you and men will give you honorary manhood, I'm sure of it.

Feminists say they're strong, but they aren't.

It's true. I can't bench press a jar of spaghetti sauce.

It doesn't count to be sitting in a room with a feminist and to be told why you're wrong.

Persuading other women to join the cause has never done anyone a lick of good that we know of.

I drink for free when I wear a low cut shirt. Now that's powerful.

Hell, that's nothing. Suck a cock on South Congress and you can get your payment in cash. Now that's powerful.

The female body is powerful, just like the female mind. It has inspired great art, courtly love and the Wonder Bra. Let's all just enjoy it.

We feminists stand firmly against women enjoying their own bodies.

Your convictions arose freshman year when you didn't know anybody and went to a Campus Women's Organization meeting to make friends.

When you should have been letting frat boys buy you lewdly named shooters in exchange for staring at your boobies.

You're lying: You're not strong nor are you equal, because you separate yourselves.

Okay, y'all. I know Rachel is a drag what with the Boobies Are More Powerful Than the Sword crap, but look what shunning her has caused--she has to make up friends.

Rachel Chunko descends from her soapbox. The crowd gives her thunderous applause.

However, I do think the soapbox is real.

Rachel Chunko is a chauvanistic pig. Castrate her at (and no I'm not including her email address).

Castrate her?! What a sorry choice--be a feminist and be told you need some dick or be an anti-feminist and think you have a dick. But I think I'll go with the former, because otherwise I may get caught in an airport Spinal Tap-style trying to trick people.

Subvert the dominant link hierarchy

2005-03-08T07:37:00.000-06:00

Subversive ideas found here, here, and here.

Blondesense is doing a series proving that the claims that the 10 Commandments are the basis of our law are false.

Bean has a two part post examining why victims of domestic violence have problems leaving their abusers. She fearlessly addresses the elephant in the room--it's hard to admit someone you love and trust is abusing you. Trish Wilson has a great follow-up.

Also from Trish Wilson, who specializes in divorce and child custody, this extremely important story about how "friendly parent" laws help hostile parents turn children into tools to get back at their ex-spouse. Women who have walked out of abusive marriages particularly stand to get hurt by this.

Ms. Jared hates being told that she has an inborn maternal instinct even more than I do.

Astarte defends Martha Stewart and I agree with her. Okay, Stewart was guilty. But she paid her debt to society and then some. Quit yer bitchin', haters.

Pseudo-Adrienne talks about BushCo's attempts to woo black voters by playing up the religious stuff.

Flea is having a contest to see who has the best stripper name. (Childhood pet+ childhood street, no cheating.) Here is the list of submissions. I'm Crackers Nautical, a name that would get me exactly no money in tips.

DED Space, a tennis junkie, honors Billie Jean King for Women's History Month.

As part of her plan to take over the world, Sheelzebub handed out a ton of ministries for relatively low bribes and thorough genuflection. I'm the Minister of Advice Enforcement.

Shame as a "family value"

2005-03-07T11:52:00.000-06:00

Via Feministing, we find out that Bell is under no illusions about what the "family values" crowd thinks makes something obscene--the female form in and of itself. This ad is clearly meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but even so the joke doesn't make sense unless the intended audience is comfortable with the misogynist notion that the female body is something children must be "protected" from seeing and also with the notion that keeping people ignorant is an acceptable way to keep them "moral".

John Ashcroft became a national joke when he insisted on draping a statue because it had an exposed breast, but apparently Bell thinks that mainstream America is warm to the idea of spreading shame about the female body. Any day now I expect to hear about some Christian organization getting together to close down art museums that display works that have female nudity, arguing that children can be corrupted with lust by seeing a painting of Mary nursing Baby Jesus.

And since when did such flagrant anti-intellectualism become so mainstream? I guess I shouldn't be surprised that in a nation that thinks as long as you don't tell kids what a condom is, they won't figure out the mechanics of sex and instead of fooling around in high school, they'll spend their time running church bake sales would be open to good-natured ribbing about how they'd rather have their kids be stupid than ever see even a crude drawing of a breast or genitals. Well, we can't do a whole lot about people who think that if you just pretend we're smooth down there like Barbie dolls, then that makes it so. But we can let Bell know what we think of their willingness to pander to the fragment of America that thinks Shame and Ignorance are family values. Contact them at executive.office@bell.ca.

Making plans

2005-03-06T20:37:00.000-06:00

Kameron Hurley has a good post up today regarding thoughts that came to her while waiting for an appointment at Planned Parenthood. It's one of those posts that most women can probably relate to, especially those of us who didn't have a regular job with health insurance for much of our early adulthood. The organization is really successful, and it's awe-inspiring the way that they manage both to provide services to the community while also politically advocating for the population they serve.

Because PP works, they are the target of much, if not most, of the vitriol of the anti-reproductive rights crowd. There is a prevalent belief amongst The Wingnuttery that PP is cash cow of an organization, razzling and dazzling weak-minded females with their flashy propaganda about having all the crazy sex you want without ever having to bear the consequ-, um, babies that result because you can have 5, 10, 2 dozen abortions! Step right up and give PP your money, so that the fat cat feminists can have their expensive cars and designer footwear they wear to the decadent orgies they attend every night, reveling in all the cash that the abortion "business" makes. Recently, an anti-abortion nut trolled my blog trying to convince us that we'd been the dupes of the PP mind control game that tricks us into having all sorts of abortions. Some wingnuts who think that PP is an abortion mill, making cash hand over fist by performing abortion are deluded and some are lying, but none make a lick of sense. PP has probably done more than any other group in this country in preventing abortions by getting affordable contraception in the hands of people who need it. Anyone who is genuinely interested in reducing the number of abortions in this country needs to write PP a check right now.

That they are big and that they are effective explains why they are the target of so much anti-woman fervor, but sometimes I wonder if there's a little more to the story. As Kameron describes in her story, and as I recall from my broke days of going there, they have a ton of security measures and instructions all over the place on how to escape if you are attacked. PP knows from being under constant threat of a terrorist attack, my friends. I think that PP is a target for so much misogynist fury not just because they are effective, but also because of something as simple as their name.

I'm sure the name Planned Parenthood was chosen because it was accurate, and also to generate interest and empower the clientele. Nowadays, the notion that women plan when they have children is the norm, and that's created a lot of resentment. Planning is power and control.

The woman who makes plans is pretty much always a negative stereotype in our culture. Sylvia Ann Hewlett got on all the talk shows by writing a book scolding women not to plan to have their children later in life when it was easier for them for fear that they may not be able to have them, and a great time was had by all on the shows pitying women who got their comeuppance for thinking they could exert control over their own destinies only to be left childless. Even in situations where women are doing their best to fulfill social expectations, taking control is viewed negatively. For example, we adore ourselves a blushing bride, but a woman who manages her own wedding planning is going to be labeled a Bridezilla before all is said and done.

Plans indicate control and plans also indicate desire. You make a plan because you have things you want and you need to figure out the best way to get them. Every time a woman swallows her birth control pill, there's a world of desires behind that decision and the pill is one of the tools she's using to achieve those desires--a job, an education, marriage to the man she really wants not just to the first that got her pregnant, no marriage at all, a smaller family, more income to spend on hobbies, more time to herself, you name it. There's a lot of feminist ink spilled on the discussion of how female sexual desire is demonized in our culture, but even more than that, almost all female desires are suspect, except of course the desire to serve. (One reason that fields like math and science are still underpopulated with women is that intelligent women often turn their talents to fields where service is still emphasized, like medicine.)

In the book The Mommy Myth, Douglas and Michaels discuss the media beatification Bobbi McCaughey, the woman who bore septuplets. McCaughey's pregnancy was an exercise in exactly the masochistic feminine sacrifice demanded of women by patriarchal institutions like the Baptist church she belongs to, giving up her mobility and even comfort (she had to be contorted into all sorts of positions to prevent labor), giving her entire body over in service to others. Her story was offered up as a not-subtle rebuke to your average pill-taking, condom-pushing, abortion rights-supporting American woman, with her plans and desires.

One step forward, two steps back

2005-03-06T18:41:00.000-06:00

I wrote a long post praising my state and especially my city last night, and then I went out with some friends to take in some badass country-western swing music stuff, where my friends and I had a moment of pure Texas arrogance laughing at the non-natives attempt to dance to the music. (I can't dance, but then I don't try, either.) Feeling momentarily like all was right in the world, I returned home to read at Norbizness's blog that the Austin police department has once again waded into armpit-deep shit again, getting caught cracking jokes about a fire at a nightclub that has a predominantly black clientele. Thanks, assholes. Nothing I like more than living in a state with a racist reputation.

The way that a handful of racists can ruin the reputation of an entire community is the ultimate example of the old saying about a bad apple ruining the bunch. The city of Austin isn't really in danger of losing its good reputation, but the Austin police department has a really horrible reputation at this point, and this story is just going to make it worse.

David Neiwert writes about racism, fascism, and various other hateful philosophies that linger on the edges of American society and how people who have these beliefs infect the rest of the community with their hate. Hate crimes in particular leave wounds in a community that don't heal--Neiwert has observed on his site and in his books that a notorious hate crime in a small town can badly mar a town's reputation. I can attest to that. I saw a perfect example of it a couple weeks ago when sitting around talking about random stuff with some friends when my boyfriend mentioned a girlfriend he had a long time ago who was from Vidor, a small town in East Texas that is notorious for harboring KKK members. And you could tell that everyone was thinking the same thing, because merely being from Vidor leaves a taint on a person, even if that person is personally anti-racist.

Jasper is a name that people here actually whisper now, as if by lowering the tone of our voices, we can disassociate ourselves from them. If I were from Jasper, I'd be tempted to lie about it to people I meet to avoid having them wonder if underneath my normal exterior I harbor hate in my heart. People of all races now floor it when they have to drive through Jasper or Vidor.

I tell people all the time that the stereotype about white Texans--that we are all a bunch of Bible-thumping, racist, illiterate morons--simply isn't true. But sometimes I feel it's an uphill battle, since so many of my fellow Texans can't get it together and drop the racist shit. From small stuff like the morons in the Austin police department who couldn't check their glee at seeing a black nightclub catch fire to the big stuff like the moron in the White House who thinks that our government and military are there to help him maximize his friends' profits, regardless of loss of life and liberty, I feel like I spend all my time apologizing for stuff I didn't do.

If this were a fair world, I would have a bullwhip and a chance to take out my frustration on those amongst us who are hellbent on making the rest of us look bad.

Oh, the humanity!

2005-03-06T12:24:00.000-06:00

Alas, a Blog has been kicked off their server. Details here. It may be a week or so before Ampersand can get it fixed, and I guess we Alas fans will have to suffer without the crazed, heated feminist debate and discussions on what superpower you would choose. In the meantime, if you can help Amp, please click that link I provided and read through it.

Yeah, this is Texas, but....

2005-03-05T20:12:00.000-06:00

A anonymous commenter asked me to write about why I like living in Texas. I've talked about this before, but it's always fun to hit on it, at least for me. Fear not, soon-to-be-grad-student! Austin is a hell of a city, not the least because I posted about the Whip-In's new blog and the owner offered to buy me a beer in the comments. It's that sort of town. Big and yet small.

Austin and the Hill Country generally are not like The Rest of Texas, and Texas is pretty different from the rest of the South in a lot of ways. Ways that I won't go into here, because my Texas pride would make it sound like all other Southerners are toothless inbred hillbillies, and that's really not true. I'd be lying and I don't like to lie.

Texas is a big state, which people from the outside know, but don't really know. When I met my boyfriend's dad and stepmom, who were down in Beaumont visiting his sister, they asked how far away it was to El Paso, where I was born. I said, "Oh get on I-10 and drive about 850 miles." That much space means that there isn't one Texas culture by any stretch of the imagination.

Austin is a city where almost no one is actually from here, much like Denver. That means that the veneer of Bohemia always lingers in the air--most people here have escaped something, remade themselves somehow, and being vaguely ashamed of the podunk place you escaped is practically required. If you don't have podunk origins to make fun of while out with friends, make some up. The town motto has been "Keep Austin Weird" as of late in retaliation towards the rapid development that has plagued the city since the dot com boom and has strangely not tanked along with the dot com bust. I think that people here are a bit paranoid about the surge of yuppies who want to call South Congress "SoCo". They have been trying to rid that neighborhood of 60 year olds in Birkenstocks and rednecks who shoot cats from their front porch for nearly as long as I've lived here and they have only succeeded in getting rid of a porn theater.

We have kept the best parts of Texan culture and tried to discard the rest. Here you do say "ma'am" and "sir", which kills my boyfriend's parents. Hell, I'll just list some positive aspects of Texas/Southern culture:

The word "y'all" and the phrase "fixin' ta". All other Americans suffer from the lack of these phrases and struggle to address groups of people or express the idea that something will happen in the indeterminate but decidedly near future.
Texans are better looking than everyone else. It's a proven, indisputable fact. Austin betters most of the state, 'cause we drink wheatgrass here, too.
We eat good. We have BBQ, Tex-Mex, and even really fantastic Vietnamese food here. My friends from New Jersey didn't know what queso was when they moved here, but they are thoroughly in love with it, though they still insist on calling it, "a bowl of hot cheese".
For all that everyone else makes fun of Texas and the South for our supposed lack of cultural contributions, just imagine what kind of crap you'd be listening to right this minute if Southerners hadn't courteously invented jazz, country, and rock and roll.
Cowboy boots and cowboy hats. However, you have to live here a set amount of time before you can pull it off.
Texan-speak is a weird mix of bluntness, fanciful metaphor, and mannerly obfuscation. Yes, we are both blunt and obscure at different times for different reasons. For instance, I knew some people who named their dog Puta, but would not actually call her by her name. It's a pain in the ass, but we think it's charming.
Texans pride themselves on having a rowdy sense of humor. I'm a prime example.

But we in Austin don't refer to the rest of Texas as The Rest of Texas for no reason. You'll be relieved, grad-student-to-be, to hear what we reject.

The scary beauty culture isn't part of Austin. The whole culture of big hair, tons of make-up, architectural underwear, cheerleading, and beauty pagents has been rejected by the women of Austin. However, if you like to wear big hair and make-up, we respect that, too. Especially if you have flair.
Austin voted for Kerry.
Austin prides itself on its diverse population and we even embrace a lot of more urbane cultural things, though awkwardly. We have an art museum, for instance, even if nothing can compete with Willie Nelson shows.
We encourage you to be as eccentric as you wish.
The city has a vibrant downtown that is easy to find, and is not spread out like Houston or confusing like Dallas/Ft. Worth.
Even though we like country-western, the music scene here is so diverse that it's hard to describe. Suffice it to say, the musicians here are really creative, able to combine "Texas" with other styles to various degrees and usually with a lot of success.
We don't do "family values", though this is a great city for kids. The average age is really young and we're goshdarn slutty. Or, as the lifestyle magazines would put it, we have a good dating scene. I think some people who read my blog think that I am exagerrating the amount of cruising, hitting on, dating, breaking up, and general dating drama that I see. I'm actually downplaying it.

Austin probably has the best music scene in the country and we have a burgeoning film geek scene that is a sight to behold. Don't be afraid of being bored or being set upon by wild-eyed rednecks here. My friends and I stand in my backyard drinking beer over the grill and saying, "Yep" alright, but we aren't rednecks.

A revelation

2005-03-05T19:20:00.000-06:00

My grandmother did the coolest thing ever--she sent me a congratulations card for winning the Koufax. No matter how old I get, it's always nice to know that my grandmother is out there, rooting for me.

The thought of which reminded me of how old I actually am. I turned 27 back in September, which means that I only have 6 months left to become a famous rock star and then die in a mysterious heroin-related incident, leaving behind millions of bereaved fans who turn me into the icon of the generation while occasionally debating if I was really murdered. I think I might have fallen a bit behind in pursuing this goal. I have never even tried heroin, much less learned to play an instrument or sing. I think I may to give this up.

However, there are many other worthy goals to work on. For instance, I really need to learn to cut my bangs in such a way that leaving the house isn't an exercise in shame.

The horrors of the world are never-ceasing

2005-03-05T17:56:00.000-06:00

Nicholas Kristof has an article in the NY Times today about the ongoing tribulations in the life of one Mukhtaran Bibi, a Pakistani woman who was gang raped by six men in front of the entire community. The whole thing apparently was some kind of "punishment" for her brother. Anyway, Mukhtaran prosecuted her rapists and ended up using her compensation money to start a school.

Things just can't lie still. The government has overturned the convictions of six of the rapists and have set five free to go back to where their victim lives. She is fighting the decision but ultimately wants to stay home. If she does, I hope she has a shotgun, but I know that's just me imposing my American thinking on her.

Which is actually why I don't write about international issues very much; I don't think I have much useful to say. In this case in particular, the gang rape issue is difficult for me to comprehend. It's a phenomenon that cuts across cultural barriers and I just can't understand it. I mean, in theory I can, I know all about groupthink and male entitlement and all that jazz. But still, to consider what a feat of cowardice it must be to follow everyone else in victimizing someone..... It makes me ashamed to be human, it really does.

Anyway, I thought I'd draw your attention to the story. Kristof can grate in that he feels like he's a huge hero for writing about international women's issues and needs to constrast himself favorably with feminists so you get the point, which makes him seem a bit insincere about his concern at times. But this article is really well-written and comes highly recommended.

10 things you need to know about men

2005-03-05T09:12:00.000-06:00

From iVillage and by Richie Sambora. Sambora couldn't tell you shit about playing guitar, and he's a guitarist. So why do we assume he knows something about being a man? As usual, we women are presumed pretty clueless when it comes to men. Men, however, know everything they need to know about us.

Men know what women want. But if we gave it to you all the time, then you'd want something else and we'd be screwed. We know you want us to be sensitive and romantic and sweet. We can do that. But we want to keep you guessing. If you had sex and diamonds every day, pretty soon you'd be sick of sex and diamonds -- and then where would we be?

Ah yes. The relationship-as-war model. The philosophy behind it is that if you give the other person what they want, even things that seem mutually beneficial like sex without head games, then the other person "wins" and you must "lose". The downside to this? The crying and fighting. The upside, however, is that when you make someone cry, that's how you know they love you.

We actually like to be romantic. Believe it or not, we like to cuddle and kiss as much as you do. We just need the occasional nudge. Preferably, the nudge won't come while we're watching football or The Sopranos. And, when you want us to be romantic, remember: There's no such thing as a bad G-string.

Upon reading this, I imagined Sambora in a G-string and, no offense good sir, but there is such a thing as a bad G-string. I mean, romantic gifts are nice and all, but when I buy clothes for my guy as a romantic present, I prefer--

Oh, I'm sorry. I think he meant that if you want him to be romantic you should parade around in a G-string. Hopefully after the kids go to bed, of course.

We know you call and hang up. But it's cool. Being checked up on is kind of flattering.

Nice to know that he still dates 15-year-olds. I guess it's hard to get grown women who have some pride to flatter you like this.

If you say, "call me," we won't -- at least not for a few days. It doesn't mean we don't like you; it's just our way of playing hard to get.

The way you know he likes you is he acts like he forgot your name and only called you when masturbating got kinda boring. If he calls and generally acts like he enjoys your company, he doesn't like you. Sweet....Thanks for the tip. Luckily, whether the object of interest is a game-playing asshole or not, the way you should behave is exactly the same. Only date people who are polite enough to show interest by returning calls promptly. That way, the polite ones get dates and the game players have to rethink their strategy. Simple!

We do masturbate -- almost as much as you do.

Ya' think? And here I was thinking that all those advertisements for movies on the Internet with nekkid women in them demonstrated a sudden, inexplicable interest in European coming of age art films. Well, at least now I know that the gamine ingenue hasn't actually given way to modern marvels of plastic surgery.

We want to make you feel good, both physically and emotionally, but you have to tell us what to do.

Okay, well to start off, don't play games by withholding sex or "forgetting" to call to get women under your thumb. Having your self-esteem lowered to make you more pliable doesn't feel as good as you'd think.

We wouldn't care what we look like if you didn't care what we look like.

However, there's every reason to believe that if women didn't want to impress men, the world would still have the Wonderbra.

We want you to be our mothers.

Heather Locklear is a saint. And now I have the unfortunate image of her man calling her Mommy and I'm all upset.

We don't mind it when you dress us.

If he asks for a sponge bath next, I hope Locklear takes a moment to remember that she is a stunning beauty who has exactly zero reason to fear that she's headed for spinsterhood if she suddenly gave up playing Airplane in order to get her husband to eat.

We're terrified you'll break our hearts. All men are afraid of getting too close, too fast. So, if we seem standoffish, it's not because we don't like you.

The logic behind getting someone to think you don't like them in order to get them to stick around is pretty much the same logic in use by people who claim that they don't want to wear a seatbelt because they'd rather get "thrown free" from the car in an accident. Getting tossed into a wall at 70 mph isn't a great way to survive, and making someone think you don't like them isn't really the best way to get them to stick around.

Alas, one thing Sambora neglects to mention is if he believes in the Pussy Oversoul, a concept described by zuzu here and, coincidentally, the name of my new imaginary punk band. Though I am keeping the name Clitty Litter in the pocket, just to be on the safe side.

Post in haste, repent in leisure

2005-03-05T07:17:00.000-06:00

The very thing that is considered the weakness of blogs can be its greatest strength--the immediacy of it and the way that information travels along citizen-driven lines. Yes, it's chaos. Yes, it's messy. But it means there is always someone there to correct you if you are wrong and if you use this to your advantage, it can be a great tool.

There was a rapid amount of information that flooded the blogs about statements made by Bradley Smith from the FEC where he floated the idea, probably to get a reaction shot, if you will, of regulating blog endorsements of candidates. My initial inclination was that this whole thing was aimed at Daily Kos--political witch-hunting and muscle-flexing power plays to scare people are pretty much the M.O. of the most powerful people in D.C. right now. There were a ton of plausible interpretations of such statements.

Commenter Patrick pointed me to Electrolite's posting on this. As of yet, this has been the best tip yet. There's a good chance that this is a "drown it in the bathtub" strategy, an attempt to get liberals to support stripping the FEC of its powers. You know, similiar to the bullshit they are feeding young people now about Social Security, that the Boomers are going to spend all our money so we have to take it back. The purpose is to kill Social Security. Or the No Child Left Behind Act, an act specifically designed to get people to support pulling funds from needy schools by "flunking" them in order to help dismantle universal education.

Friday Random Ten--"Who Told You Tomato Was a Vegetable?" Edition

2005-03-04T17:45:00.000-06:00

Lauren is our leader now.

1. "Lonely Girl"--The Lovettes
2. "Atomic Fuck Machine"--Cafe Del Mar
3. "From the Gut"--Husker Du
4. "Up All Night"--The Gore Gore Girls
5. "Best Friend"--The Dandy Warhols
6. "Not Living At All"--Mr. Airplane Man
7. "I Love a Man in Uniform"--Gang of Four
8. "Master and Dog"--Quasi
9. "Hand of Doom"--Black Sabbath
10. "Berzerkertown"--The Plugz

Woe to the young conservatives

2005-03-04T12:13:00.000-06:00

In today's Texan, there's an editorial denouncing the people who swarmed the YCT table on the West Mall on Tuesday to denounce the organization for the ridiculous cry for help that was "Capture the Illegal Immigrant Day", run by the North Texas branch. The UT Austin branch, no doubt after carefully considering what it means to be tainted with the racism of their fellows, decided the best thing to do was set up a stand celebrating Texas Independence Day. We hope they refrained from putting any anti-Mexican sentiments in their signage as they celebrated kicking some Santa Anna ass in 1836.

Well, according to the editorialist, it was a violent nightmare of Latino supporters with crazed looks in their wily eyes attacking innocent conservative Texas-lovers with projectiles. Or something like that.

At one point, I managed to wrestle my way to the front of the crowd and was hit in the back of the head by candy. Yes, candy. The "peaceful" protestors who will simply not stand for violence or hate had taken YCT's candy and baked goods and were literally pelting the members with them. I even got to hear one charming girl yell at the YCT chairman, "Why won't you fight me? I came here to fight. I want a fight."

Okay, okay. Throwing candy and yelling isn't right. They shouldn't have done it. And that girl should have remembered to be charming above all else. Ack. The sarcasm took over again.

Apparently, the anger that was building up in the crowd was due to a rumor that the UT Austin YCT was planning on having their own illegal immigrant hunt. Instead, they got a display on our state's founders, the guys who moved to Mexico and then decided that they'd really rather just own Texas themselves and revolted.

So, the lunacy continued. Conner arrived midway through and answered questions for the better part of two hours. I listened to her patiently engage six people simultaneously in a discussion that had veered off into a debate as obscure as historical racism in the Catholic Church. Come again? What happened to Texas independence?

Indeed. Racism and Texas Independence have nothing to do with each other, well nothing more than lingering issues between Mexico and America that come out in battles over immigration would have anything to do with each other.

The Mexican laws banned slavery, required the Texans to become Roman Catholics, and forbade further settlement by Americans in Texas.

The Texans requested changes from Santa Anna, but he ignored their requests. The Texans then defied Santa Anna, revolted, and declared Texas to be independent.

I wish that people who would come out to protest the YCT would hold their tempers, I really wish they would. But because a few people threw candy does not, by any stretch of the imagination, absolve the YCT of indulging racist displays and then playing dumb about it.

More wingnuts theories on when you can tell something is a rape

2005-03-04T11:07:00.000-06:00

From No More Mr. Nice Blog, we find out that Kansas attorney general Phill Kline has finally addressed why, if he's really only looking for child rapists, that he's only looking at abortion records and not at birth records of underage girls. Kline said, "Screw it. You caught me. I don't give a rat's ass about getting child molesters off the street. This is about making the baby-murdering sluts pay for escaping the Biblically mandated pains of childbirth in return for their wanton behavior."

Just kidding. He's never going to tell the truth about what he's doing.

Instead, he offered up some standard issue wingnut reworking of psychology. You see, you can tell the sex was consensual if the girl carries the baby to term.

Kline said he doubted many child rapists would allow their victims to carry out their pregnancies. And he said his office would not prosecute consensual sexual activity between children of similar age.

"I have stated that repeatedly; we are looking for the child predators," Kline said. "You do not find child predators standing in a hospital as their prey gives birth to the child that they father. That's common sense."

Abortion clinics and rapists, working in hand in hand--first you take a girl's god-given virginity and then you take away her chance at motherhood. Kline and company may not be able to stop rape, but by god, they aren't going to let the doctors deprive girls of the chance to carry their attackers' children.

The best part of this quote is the just so story about childbirth--every girl, even the ones as young as 10, that have given birth in Kansas has a loving husband pacing back and forth in the waiting room in a blazer with his tie loosened, smoking a cigarette and hoping for word soon that his beloved has given him a son. Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver, with the Mrs. just pubescent.

Despite this compelling view that abortion indicates rape and childbirth indicates domestic bliss, I have to admit that I am confused on what the official scientific view of abortion and rape is from the anti-choicers. I mean, just the other day, we learned from a knowledgable fellow down here in Texas that rape victims don't need emergency contraception because they can't get pregnant anyway. I'm guessing that the Texas Allianance for Life wouldn't support Kline, because they know that there are no rape victims in abortion clinics. Right?

No, you really don't have to sleep with him for his self-esteem

2005-03-04T08:26:00.001-06:00

Cary Tennis had an advice column a couple days ago where the writer described what most women will probably recognize as a sadly all-too-common occurrence--men ask her out, she turns them down, and they get extremely hostile with her. The writer was black and suggested that this might be a black thing, and if she wanted assurance that it's not, she wrote to the wrong person. Men who don't do this sort of thing are usually oblivious to it. Mythago and I educated quite a few of them over at Hugo's blog that being called "bitch" or otherwise treated disparagingly because you don't just drop your panties when asked is way common.

The guys at Hugo's remained unconvinced that a woman who rejects a man only to suffer harassment or a woman who raises a fuss when groped in public can expect to be treated with more contempt by the general public than her harasser. Well, fellas, meet the people who wrote into Salon this week to explain to this woman why she should be downright grateful that men condescend to get angry with her and otherwise express the belief that they are entitled to access to her body just because they asked.

Puh-leeze. Perhaps you did not feel you could take her to task for being vain and shallow because she played the race card, but this woman's "dilemma" has nothing to do with race, or male/female interaction; it's about her own ego, narcissism and insecurities.... It's telling that she only mentions the men's physical traits and never seems interested in their character. She could be missing a real good Brother because of her own hang-ups or shallowness.

Actually, when you shoot a man down for whatever reason and he calls you a name, that's a pretty good indication you aren't missing out on shit. The advice asker did indulge her own vanity a little bit, but nothing outrageous--bottom line, she is telling men "no" and they are not accepting her answer. That is inexcusable and these men should not be sided with.

The next letter is full of pity for men for having to do the approaching.

Because many men feel that the onus is on them to start a conversation or the opportunity may be lost, maybe women who are approached -- by any man, in any league -- should be gentle with any man who has the rocks to go on up and say something. Plus, she can take it as a compliment.

I don't disagree that approaching someone can be difficult. But this is no excuse to disparage someone for rejecting you. Period. Feeling entitled to a woman's intentions is not having "rocks". It's being a bully. By the way, it's quite a trick there, turning someone's hostile temper tantrum into a "compliment". Most of us don't have that rich a fantasy life and know when we're being insulted. And having someone act like you stole something from him just because you won't go out with him is an insult.

The next letter is the standard "women need to lower their standards" letter coupled with the "women owe men their time" letter.

What kind of man would she consider "out of her league" -- and why? And what is she afraid of? What if some man she considers out of her league finds her delightful, interesting, or fun to talk to, not caring if her education or income match his? And how does she know that some of these "unsuitable" men might not be interesting, smart, insightful, warm, loving, loyal and sexy?... I would just suggest, as does Tennis, that she at least give them a minute or two of her time before dismissing them.

I hate to keep hammering at it, but a man who gets angry when you reject him has told you everything you need to know about his character. You may turn Mr. Anger Management into a warm, loving, blah blah in your own head, but odds are that the rest of the world will think you're a fool anyway. But this letter has so much more going on. I would suggest to anyone who is preparing to tell a woman that she needs to consider dating men she finds unappealing whether or not they would give that advice to a man. I know I wouldn't tell a guy friend to date a girl who doesn't feel attraction for, so why would I tell a girl friend?

One person who wrote in today nailed it on the head. Kudos to her.

Just look at films, where someone like 60-something Harrison Ford or Sean Connery is romantically paired with 20-something actresses. Or television, where the stupid, insensitive, balding, dumpy schlub has a hot, thin wife who looks 10 to 20 years younger. And let a woman dare to turn a man down because she finds him physically repulsive, and we're called shallow. Yeah -- he's 50 and is hitting on 19-year-olds, and I'm shallow.

When I read these letters, I tried to imagine what would happen if a woman hit on a man who looked at her, didn't like how she looked, said no, and then got an angry response where the woman says thing like he should be grateful to get attention at all or called him a shallow asshole. I'm sure it's happened, and if there's any guys who can tell me their stories about it, I'd be grateful. But I don't imagine a woman who did this would be getting letters of sympathy from strangers if her behavior was described in a public forum like this.

Edited to add: If you aren't thoroughly creeped out enough for a Friday, read JC Christian's ode to men who love women who can't say no.

What does a 10 Commandments monument symbolize?

2005-03-03T18:02:00.000-06:00

I finally got around to starting Don't Think of an Elephant today. Lakoff's books are like crack to people like me, who have big interests both in language and in politics, so it's been fun. Anyway, Lakoff dives right into ground he's covered before, how he thinks that conservatives and liberals have different moral frames that we look at the world in, both referencing the metaphor of the nation as a family. He calls the frames strict father/nurturant parent frames. Lakoff is more interested in describing the different metaphors that spin out from these initial frames than looking at these frames as a dichotomy, probably because he knows what immediately popped into my head, knowing what I know about linguistics. (Which isn't much, but I do know some from studying literature.) Which is that one dichotomy tends to suggest others to people, and as much as Lakoff claims that a strict father is oppositional to a nuturant parent, we all know that father is oppositional to mother. Still, I understand the urge, because if he invokes the father/mother dichotomy, the male/female dichotomy is invoked and for metaphorical purposes, you pretty never want to be associated with female, since it tends to come out the worst of the vast majority of other dichotomies that are suggested--strong/weak, smart/dumb, rational/emotional, you name it.

Anyway, I thought about the other dichotomies that are invoked from the strict/nuturant dichotomy. It's a fun game to play if you are a nerd and have nothing better to do. And one popped right away into my head, and if I'm right about the following theory, it popped into yours--Old Testament/New Testament. Now, I'm not vouching for the actual text of either book, but the popular understanding of the two is that the former is all Strict Father--rules, punishment, making divisions between the worthy and the unworthy. The second book is about forgiveness, extending love to all instead of just the worthy, and being saved. In fact, calling Jesus a shepard and people his flock is pretty much the nuturant parent model in a nutshell--protection, not punishment.

Defenders of monuments of the 10 Commandments at courthouses and Capitol buildings argue that it is a testament to the nation's Christian heritage. This confounds liberals. Or, actually, anyone who thinks about the statement rationally--if we want to reflect a Christian path, why not a monument to the bona fide Christians we are referencing, like the Puritans? Why not a monument to Christ or text from the New Testament? Like a lot of others have said, the Beatitudes is probably a better proclamation of American values of equality and democracy than the Commandments. (I think neither is applicable, but that's a different story.)

Well, first of all, the supporters of the monuments are so full of shit their Aryan eyes have gone brown. This has nothing to do with the gentle figure of Jesus Christ or his arguments to his followers not to worry overmuch about government because of the End Times and all that. Nor does it have anything to do with our actual laws. In fact, if people took to heart the commandment not to covet, we would shortly be facing economic collapse.

But you know what? I believe them that it's about "heritage", or at least taking possession of what Americans believe that our heritage is. Going back to the relational way that people think of dichotomies, it's easy to see. Conservative/liberal is to strict father/nuturant parent is to Old Testament/New Testament. A monument to the 10 Commandments is a symbol of the Old Testament and therefore evokes the multitude of things that we relate to that half of the Bible dichotomy--maleness, discipline, rules, favoritism, everything that is dear to conservatives. The heritage that is being asserted may not be religious at all so much as political. The Commandments symbolize a belief that American history adheres to conservative values and to make people think that liberalism is an uppity newcomer. It's a symbol--that's why the text of the Commandments is pretty much irrelevant to monument supporters.

It's no mistake that this issue is cropping up at this critical time in American history, when the struggle of who were are as a nation, what are values are, seems like it's being decided. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution, being documents born from the Enlightment, are worthless as symbols to retroactively assert that conservative values have always been America's values. Instead, we have growing support for viewing the Old Testament, at least the popular understanding of it as a document of a very Male, very vengeful god, as the text from where our ideals spring from.

The FEC has been sicced on Kos

2005-03-03T15:01:00.000-06:00

I know Daily Kos has already noticed this. However, I first saw this on Media Girl. Seems like the FEC has decided that "bloggers" are getting too much money to candidates. So the plan is to count links to campaign websites from your own website as a political donation.

This is more than an attack on free speech. This is a big "fuck you" to the very idea of democracy. Bloggers are ordinary citizens and we present ourselves as nothing more or less, really. How can it be illegal for an independent person to endorse a candidate?

This is nothing more than a bunch of Republicans using their power to shut down citizen influence on a democratic government. How dare Daily Kos encourage ordinary people to give money to campaigns, thereby enticing the candidates to stand up for the people instead of big money corporate power? FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith:

If someone sets up a home page and links to their favorite politician, is that a contribution? This is a big deal, if someone has already contributed the legal maximum, or if they're at the disclosure threshold and additional expenditures have to be disclosed under federal law.

No word yet on if the FEC will investigate how many millions upon millions of dollars non-citizen Rupert Murdoch spent promoting President Bush's campaign through Fox "News".

Mastrubatory Austin posting meets blogging about blogging

2005-03-03T12:23:00.000-06:00

The Whip-In has a blog. Hell yeah.

One more reason to spend way too much money trying beers and wines I've never had before.

First they came for biology, then for enviromental science....

2005-03-03T11:12:00.000-06:00

It's a shame the way that science can't just conform to right wing ideology. If science would just cooperate and fudge evidence in order to help the wingnuts, things would just go more smoothly, don't you think?

Evolution has been under attack by the wingnuts on and off for a century now. And it's a shame for wingnuttery that enviromental scientists won't ignore evidence for the enviromental consequences of pollution. And now it seems that another branch of science--psychology--is fixing to get the attention of the hoardes of censoring wingnuts. The crime? Refusing to pretend that homosexuality is a disease to placate the sexphobes.

The topic of homosexuality is taboo in the Nebo School District.

So the school district in southern Utah County is having trouble finding a replacement for outmoded psychology textbooks at its three high schools....

State law bans teachers or texts from advocating homosexuality, but Nebo District's policy is more restrictive. "Our policy is that it will not be taught unless it is teaching the negative consequences thereof," said Nedra Call, Nebo's director of curriculum.

The schools are in a bind. Who knew it was going to be so hard to find a textbook publisher that was unwilling to lie to kids the psychology community's assessment of homosexuality, that it is not a disease but simply a sexual orientation like heterosexuality? Too bad Utah's not as powerful as Texas, where we can get textbook publishers to publish books stuffed full of lies for our schoolkids.

Things are not as bleak as they may seem to the wingnuts of Utah--they can at least count on many fine teachers who understand their job is not to educate, but to restrict student access to information so they grow up to be fine, close-minded reactionaries. Priscilla Leek is one such teacher who knows that a teacher's job is to keep knowledge from students, not impart it.

Leek said. "I don't teach homosexuality. But if it appears in a textbook, there's nothing I can do to keep students from reading it."

Keeping students from reading is a difficult part of the job of an educator, and yes, it is easier to do if the textbooks never fall into their hands.

Via The Republic of T.

Education for the students

2005-03-03T06:55:00.000-06:00

Flea has a really good post up about a teacher she had that took it upon herself to use her writing class to squash creativity whenever it reared its ugly head. She posted in response to this sad story about a kid who is charged with a second degree felony terrorist threatening charge for writing a story about zombies attacking a high school. The worst part is the people who turned him over for writing a zombie story were his grandparents.

I can almost guarantee you I know what's going on here. I would bet $20 those grandparents belong to one of those fundie churches that think horror movies and Ouja boards are all missives from the Satanic cults that all live around us in secrecy. Lest you think I am making this up, let me assure you that the people who believe this stuff are numerous. When I was in high school, a friend of mine whose dad was a preacher at a sane church and I were invited to another church's youth group "party". We went for cookies and punch and instead got a long lecture on the dangers of Satanism and how to know that Satanists are trying to recruit you. We were told to avoid any books or movies with supernatural elements, period. And of course the wicked Ouija board. And, weirdly enough, we were told to look at for Satanic symbols like pentagrams, the Star of David, and peace signs. Yep, the Star of David and peace signs. Though, if I remember right, they didn't call the Star of David by its rightful name. We booked it out of there.

Anyway, teachers and parents who think school is for squashing potential may not be doing their job as educators and parents, but they may be doing those in power a favor. There's more than enough reason to think that universal education is under assault, after all.

Helping rapists is just part of the job, ma'am

2005-03-02T20:15:00.000-06:00

The infamous Rep. Frank Corte of San Antonio has excreted another one of his brillant bills designed to spread pain and chaos through our great state, and The Daily Texan has got the story. The bill is one of those bills to give pharmacists the right to refuse to give women their prescribed contraceptions. I find it ill-advised in a state where everyone is armed to the teeth for a pharmacist to smugly tell a woman who's been sitting for god knows how long in traffic to get her birth control pills that he's not going to help her escape her feminine duty to breed, breed, breed. Hopefully, the logical conclusion to that frustration will occur sooner rather than later.

Frustration sucks but what sucks even worse is that this bill is designed not only to encourage two-bit misogynist bullies to become pharmacists and knock women up by proxy that would never actually touch them, but it is also a way for your friendly neighborhood health worker to come to the aid of your rapist instead of you if you've been victimized. Yes, friends, under this bill, tyrannical Christian health care providers can stare a recently raped woman in the eye and refuse to help her not become pregnant by her attacker. Screw emergency contraception--if you didn't want a baby, why you go and get raped? Why let the rapist get all the pleasure out of hurting the victim? Everyone can join the fun!

Just when I thought things couldn't get meaner, the article turns to the local Texas Alliance for Life to get their opinion on what scum-sucking monsters they are to want to help rapists finish the job. Their opinion? Well, rape can't get you pregnant, they say.

Arguing that a raped woman has been extremely traumatized, he concluded: "A woman has gone through a trauma; for these reasons her body may not be fertile."

That is easily the most fucked-up version of "she was asking for it" I have ever heard. After all, if rape can't get you pregnant, it follows that if you are pregnant you must have consented. Well, I suppose it makes sense that if you believe pregnancy is god's punishment for naughty, naughty girls to disbelieve that he would be handing that particular punishment out to the innocent. However, it does make me wonder if the members of this group also think that god's other punishment for people who have The Sex, sexually transmitted diseases, also cannot pass from a rapist to the victim.

Yes, Virginia, there is such thing as social conditioning

2005-03-02T07:05:00.000-06:00

I wanted to stay out of the Larry Summers thing, I really did. That some men in power are willing to say any fool thing that pops into their heads as long as it justifies their belief that The Penis is what got them where they are are, and that they can expect a chorus of true believers to sing hosannas about what dimwits women are by birth when they do so, is not news to me. But then Salon had to jump into the whole fracas with a cobbled-together article of "proofs" that we women are better equipped for bottle-feeding than for long division and I cannot sit still any longer.

This article doesn't even start out strong before it slides downhill fast. The author, Lorraine Dusky, immediately accuses feminists of hypocrisy because feminists were largely accepting of studies demonstrating that women are more likely than men to be whistle-blowers, and that women overall tend to make decisions that incorporate moral thinking more than men. Since we feminists accept that men and women are different in this way, she argues, why can't we accept that Summers was right, that men and women are different when it comes to mathmatical ability?

I had just started on my first cup of coffee and I could immediately see the hole in that argument. Feminists, at least most feminists I know of, and I know a whole lot of them, don't disagree that men and women are different, sometimes dramatically different. But Summers didn't just say that men and women are different; he said that we are born different, that mathmatical abilities are somehow written into our genetics. Studies demonstrating that grown men and women have different views on similiar situations don't prove squat about genetics. All they prove is that a difference is there, and odds are that the differences can be attributed to social conditioning.

For instance, the social conditioning of the noted moral differences between men and women can be observed by breezing through one of the textbooks that pass for sex ed nowadays, the abstinence-only textbooks, where the gender roles in teenage dating are laid out--boys try, girls resist. Or, from a sexual "morality" angle, girls are the moral gatekeepers, assigned to keep themselves and the boys in line. It's not really a mystery why girls grow up to be women who still think of themselves as moral guardians.

There's no reason to rule out social conditioning, much less sexism, off-hand as the reason that more men than women excel in math and science. Even physical brain differences that Dusky details cannot be written off as pure genetics, which she admits and then blows off.

While some argue that this is a result of conditioning -- when girls take up throwing a ball, their spatial ability increases by leaps and bounds -- conditioning doesn't explain why males' IQ scores are more variable than females'. More males than females end up at the low end of the IQ scale, and not surprisingly, relative to females, there are more male high school dropouts and more men in prison. But the opposite is also true: More males than females have extremely high IQs.

I see no reason why if conditioning can push boys to the heights and it can't also drop them to the depths. Dusky's assumption that average neurological differences between men and women can be readily understood and explained--as if calculus just goes on in the left brain unaided by the right side and that in fact the right side of the brain interferes with all its girlish gossip--simply isn't true.

But the biggest gaffe of all is to pull out the argument that we know men are smarter because men have historically dominated math and science, an argument that makes sense right until you remember how women have been systematically denied access to the same education that men have enjoyed.

And like it or not (I don't like it), this is probably why the world has more male geniuses à la Einstein, Mozart and Michelangelo. We can thank the goddess Nike for Marie Curie, but where's another woman in our pantheon?

The miracle is not that most historical geniuses are men. The real miracle that there are any female historical geniuses at all, considering all the obstacles in women's way. For instance, the exceptional Marie Curie did what none of the men nodding away in agreement with Summers's low assessment of women's scientific abilities have probably done--she taught herself physics and acquired her degree by exam.

Mozart was a genius, and also a prodigy that was pretty much forced to practice day in and out from the time he could reach the piano keys. I think it's safe to say that if Mozart were born a girl, this would not have happened. We can't know if there could have been a female Michelangelo--a woman in his time would not have been allowed to paint the Sistine Chapel.

We don't have evidence that points definitely one way or another on whether or not women are mentally limited compared to men, but we have mountains of evidence that women have been socially limited for all of history. It's a shame to see otherwise smart people ignore the known--the historical oppression of women--in favor of a bunch of cobbled together theories about women's genetic inferiority that have rather scant evidence to support them.

The death penalty divide

2005-03-01T21:41:00.000-06:00

Today's news that the Supreme Court found, at an alarmingly close margin of 5-4, that it's unconstitutional to execute minors has caused a great deal of rejoicing amongst us liberals, who have little cause to rejoice lately. A bunch of people sent the news to me in my email with a note of relief attached. I'm relieved, too. But the spoilsport in me immediately knew that this was going to be one of those court decisions where people were going to fall along partisan lines quickly and not much communication would happen.

The first email I got today about the decision specifically refuted and rebelled against Scalia's angry dissent that outright stated that Americans are backing away from supporting the death penalty because we are afraid of what a bunch of foreigners think of us. My friend said that we were finally in line with the rest of the world on at least one issue. In a sense, I agree with him, but only because I think the majority of the Western opinion on this issue is right. But the stubborn side of me, the Bubba side, immediately revolted against the notion that we should conform to world opinion just because.

I know that my fellow liberals don't actually think that we should conform to world opinion. World opinion is something we lean on in many cases because it's a lighthouse in the storm, a way for us to recognize that once you step outside of the onslaught of conservative propaganda, reality is a lot easier to see. By pointing to world opinion, we aren't saying that we should conform for its own sake. But to be liberal in America is to be told that you are out of the mainstream and so it's both comforting and revealing to point out that we are with a mainstream in the world, a mainstream that has access to truths many Americans don't know.

This decision not to execute minors is mentally linked, for me and I'll bet for many others, with the issue of torturing our prisoners in the War on Terror, or if you prefer like I do, War on People with Resources We Want to Confiscate. Predicatably, the denials that we are torturing prisoners quickly turned into painful justifications for torture. How are the two similiar? Well, it's pretty simple--try to make a nuanced argument against the execution of minors, much less the death penalty itself, or against torturing terrorist "suspects" and face down a bunch of counter-arguments that you support murder or terrorism itself.

Well, or that you're a wuss. That's the most common argument, that we liberals are weak-willed and are too muddy-brained with sympathy for our fellow human beings to see that some people need killing. Or torturing.

The hard part is that many of the liberal persuasion probably are sensitive human beings whose emotional reaction to execution or torture really does stop them cold. Or they are hardasses who know all too well that give an inch to torture of enemies of the state leads to the callous insanity of the Holocaust. I am not picking on them. But I am offering that many of us have entirely different reasons for our opposition to state-sponsored torture and death.

I was pained to read an all too typical conservative viewpoint that implied that anti-death penalty opponents don't "get" the severity of murder at Hugo's blog.

Not so for Christopher Simmons, who plotted both the burglary and the murder with two younger friends specifically because he wanted to murder somebody, and because he thought they could all get away with it because they were under 18. He then broke into a random house in the middle of the night looking for someone to murder, stumbled across a woman he happened to recognize, tied her up, threw her over a bridge, drowned her, and bragged to his friends about having killed a woman because "the bitch seen my face."

CMC, if you want to be the guinea pig and have Mr. Simmons live in YOUR neighborhood as part of his rehabilitation, be my guest. Just make sure your new neighbor doesn't get anywhere near my neighborhood.

Anyway, I think it's just a shame that this misconception about death penalty opponents--that we have undue sympathy for monsters--persists. I personally don't care if someone who commits crimes like this is killed by being skinned alive. But there's a reason that this commenter wowed us with the horror of the crime rather than impressed us with the evidence in this fact. Horrific crime makes us demand retribution. It overrides our sense of justice and turns us into creatures of vengenance, wanting blood for blood. The death penalty gives us that opportunity.

I know myself and I know that if I were sitting on a jury for an ugly murder and was given an eye for an eye option, the temptation to take it would make it very difficult for me to hand out a fair verdict. Looking at the victim's family, knowing the details--it's a nightmare. Even without the death penalty, it's difficult to get a just conviction. With the death penalty, if some new evidence comes to light exonerating the convicted party, well, he's dead.

Let's make it clear--most opponents of the death penalty aren't overly worried about the fate of the guilty. We worry about the innocent. We worry that participating in an inherently unjust system will turn the innocent into the guilty. That's why we oppose torture. We have no love for those who plan to commit terrorist attacks against us. But we know that torturing and murdering turns the innocent, in this case the young people who are our soliders, into the guilty, people who let blood for what ultimate purpose is lost to the fog.

And that's why not to execute--the finality of death means that those who execute are innocents turned to guilty, having acted with finality upon someone for reasons that turn to ungraspable smoke once the dead have passed.

Women's History Month and Estrogen Week

2005-03-01T20:01:00.000-06:00

You wants the womens, you got the womens. March is Women's History Month. Just like Black History Month, every year it's a time both to reflect on the oft-ignored parts of history and regret that we still must set aside this time to remember what should be an intergrated part of our historical understanding in the first place.

But this is just not Women's History Month. This is the blogosphere, and we are in love with the present. And we, the Broads of the Blogosphere, the very ones you hear about every three months, have a ton of interesting stuff to read up on this month.

To begin with, Jessica at Feministing is going to go to a conference in Cambridge on women in the media. If I didn't live so far away, I'd probably go to this. For those who can get there, they will be having a session on blogging and feminism.

Because there is a recurring debate every three months or less regarding whether or not there are many women who blog about politics, a number of prominent bloggers have declared this week Estrogen Week, a time to promote female bloggers, all worth reading. Elayne Riggs has decided to honor both Estrogen Week and Women's History Month by turning her blog over to Estrogen Month, an entire month dedicated to unearthing and promoting obscure female bloggers. If you have any favorites, go over there and let her know. If you don't have any suggestions but are looking for new and different blogs, go over there and get some suggestions.

The best part of Estrogen Week is that it's the darling of some extremely funny women. Rox Populi has a round-up of some very, very funny women writers you may not have heard of. Roxanne is most honored to be an early addition to David Horowitz's enemies list, and frankly the rest of us are burning with jealousy.

And of course, Estrogen Week was initially declared by the World's Sexiest Blogger, Lauren at Feministe. Lauren also got the final word in on the female-run blog thing.

The Angel of the House wants a checking account of one's own

2005-03-01T11:35:00.000-06:00

I cannot wait for the day that David Brooks comes out and plainly states that he thinks that in order for the race, I mean, the nation to be strong, women must gracefully accept a subservient position. Through Steve Gilliard, we find that he's taken one step closer, pushing on from his columns in the past complaining how American women aren't making enough Aryan babies to keep our morals high and our finances strong to a column today complaining that the joint checking account is in decline. Apparently, if women control their own money, that means that the family is on the verge of collapse.

He warms us up by explaining the importance of "self-abnegation and sacrifice", the sort of loving female sacrifice that he illustrates with a story from Tolstoy. For without a woman at home, firmly under the thumb of her husband, with all herself turned over to children and husband and not a thing for herself, there is apparently no such thing as the pleasures of hearth and home. Sometimes I have to wonder if Brooks has put himself on a reading diet and allows himself to read nothing written after that nightmarish day that Virginia Woolf picked up a pen. He is a firm Victorian, completely convinced that a man's life is empty without the rustle of petticoats in his home, soothing the tired brain after a day of man-work.

It also illustrates how the family is a countervailing force in society. Public life is individualistic. It's oriented around goals like self-development, self-advancement and personal happiness. (This is, of course, even more true in America today than in the Russia of the 19th century.) The goal of family life, on the other hand, does not revolve around individual choices but around the unconditional union of souls. When we get married, and then when we have kids, we learn, sometimes traumatically, to say farewell to the world of me, me, me.

What this has to do with joint checking accounts, I couldn't say. But this paragraph does wipe away any notion that Brooks is alluding to anything but the Angel of the House philosophy from the Victorian era, a belief that there were two realms, the private/feminine one and the public/masculine one, and that women were to be relegated to the private one with their main duty to be subservient to men and make the home pleasant for men who were doing the hard, manly work in the public realm. Brooks avoids using gender-specific terms in this paragraph, but the fact that the only examples he uses of spouses who are too fond of their independence are wives makes it clear who he thinks has the duty of sacrificing for the private realm.

But some of the people quoted in Shellenbarger's article seem unaware that there may be a distinction between the individualistic ethos of the market and the communal ethos of the home. A Texas woman celebrated her family's separate accounts, remarking, "It's so freeing to be your own person, and not feel like someone is looking over your shoulder." It's not clear whether she's talking about a marriage or a real estate partnership.

What is wifehood if it's not having someone controlling your every decision, preferrably by hanging onto the purse strings? Brooks tries to horrify us by counting out a number of instances where married women dare maintain their own accounts and don't have to answer to a husband as if they were individuals with rights, sure that his audience understands that women's independence and marital intimacy are mutually exclusive.

The irony of all this is separate checking accounts have probably saved many a marriage, by making it easier for couples to avoid fighting about money.

If it weren't so infuriating that he has a column in the NY Times, these editorials detailing how women's independence threatens the home and therefore the morals of the nation, editorials where reguritates arguments used over a century ago against the peril facing the nation if women got the right to vote, it would be worth laughing off. I wish I made this much money rehashing fears that were disproven by 1950. But Brooks does have an influential platform and it's important to note that he's using it to convince us that things were better in the days of corsets and robber barons, even if he doesn't come right out and say it.

The women blogging at Pandagon thing

2005-03-01T08:17:00.000-06:00

For those who haven't yet strolled over there and noticed, I have been tapped to post at Pandagon for the next week while Jesse Taylor takes his Springer vacation. Since time is an issue for me as much as everyone else, believe it or not, I'll pretty much just be cross-posting between Mouse Words and Pandagon. Kudos to Jesse for being less talk, more action on the women blogging thang and actually using his platform to promote women bloggers like myself and S.L. Zoll from World O'Crap and Lindsay Beyerstein from Majikthise.

Since I'm not half so smart as my readers, I'd like to take this opportunity to fish for suggestions on topics I write about that you would like to see addressed in a Mouse-y way for this larger audience.

Bubba pride

2005-03-01T06:17:00.000-06:00

After that last post I wrote, something sort of interesting happened that's well worth noting. First of all, my troll who insists that I accept his belief that relinquishing my rights is just a matter of "convienence" and the woman who wrote the post about how it's critical that we force a high schooler to wear clothes that embarrass her so that we don't give an inch to the homosexuals 'cause next thing you know they'll be all homosexual as if their right to live their life in a way that makes them happy is more important than her right not to deal with diversity took offense at being called "Bubba". Well, I didn't call y'all Bubba, so relax. By using "Bubba" I was poking gentle fun at Digsby for what I saw as a minor lapse in an otherwise on-target post in tying the southern white male so firmly to intolerance. There is a strong relationship, no doubt, but not all Bubba is an asshole and there are a lot more assholes than just plain Bubba. So get it right, non-Bubbas. You aren't Bubba. However, you are shoring up lots of evidence for the asshole moniker.

(Now that my traffic is quadrupaled, I'm going to have to give up the pleasure of mocking my rare trolls. I have a feeling they won't be rare any longer.)

But I believe that they aren't ignorant rednecks. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of Bush voters who voted to get the gays have ever stood drinking beer with friends "King of the Hill"-style. Yeah, I would definitely say that a lot of white Southerners vote for the Republicans because the mouthpieces for the party, Limbaugh and pals, run around telling us that liberals snicker at us behind our backs and call us ignorant rednecks.

Well, there's a grain of truth to that--I've had the pleasure of being regarded as an ignorant redneck because of my accent. Of course, there's a grain of truth to the ignorant redneck stereotype, too. We do have huge swarms of dipshit conservatives down here who are racist, sexist, and homophobic, too. And we send a bunch of them to Congress, so many at this point that I have to suspect that it's almost an attempt to get them out of here and keep them busy.

The divisiveness that the Republicans are sowing in order to get the spite vote extends beyond coming to the South and trying to drum up Bubba pride. (Or more alarmingly, white pride, which needs to be regarded as a separate thing but is also being not-so-covertly drummed up in order to solidify the Republican base.) But the Republican strategy of coded racism and naked support for male dominance is hardly limited to the South, in case you haven't noticed the surge of wacky Christian fundamentalism that's rising up in Colorado, the boldly racist election strategies in California, or the Senator for Pennsylvania, Rick "German Shepard" Santorum.

Not that I'm letting Bubba off the hook entirely. It shames me greatly that we have huge numbers of pushy, ignorant rednecks and even worse, pushy, ignorant Bible-thumpers who sneer at your ordinary redneck (your President is a good example of the latter) who make the rest of us look like fools. Nor am I backing off my agreement with Digsby that intolerance can't be tolerated, if you will. But I am arguing that we have to see intolerance for itself and quit equating it with the South and Southern culture.

Bubba's in the hot seat again

2005-02-28T16:08:00.000-06:00

My initial reaction to Digsby's post today about how futile it is to try to get Bubba to vote for the Democrats was, "Right on!"

But again, that's the problem, isn't it? It is not enough to be tolerant. We must adopt both their style and their policies before they are happy. Everyone must be a NASCAR fan. If you are not, they will take it to mean that you disrespect their love of NASCAR. Everyone must hunt. If you don't, then you are being intolerant of their love of hunting. If you don't talk about religion the way they talk about it, you are not properly religious. Rappers must wear cowboy boots, hispanics must speak English, we all have to drive American trucks with confederate flags on the back and drink Jack and be exactly like these macho, southern white men before they will feel secure enough to vote with us.

And let's not pretend that we will not also have to tell the various constituencies in the party who find their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be contingent on being allowed to control their own bodies, marry whom they choose and practice or not practice the religion of their choice that they are shit out of luck. That's part of the deal.

Bubba can't catch a break, but my pity for him is small compared to my pity for those who are hurt worst by Bubba's love for our brush-clearing, horse-fearing President. It's nice to see someone call bullshit on the idea that you can find middle ground with someone whose view on diversity is, "You or me, but not both." One of the most frustrating things for those of us who observe things through the lens of sexual politics is trying to get our fellow liberals to understand that for some of our opposition, compromise is weakness and nothing but total capitulation from the left will satisfy.

Digsby's right that we need to write off those on the right who think "tolerance" is a dirty word. People who stand against sex ed, reproductive rights and other signs that not everyone chooses the same sexual path as they do obviously aren't happy to let us partake of the pill, abortion and sex toys in Alabama, even though we on the side of sin are all too happy to let them avoid birth control and The Rabbit all they'd like. Anti-gay marriage activists seem believe that if gays and lesbians can marry, straight marriage will disintegrate, meaning they sincerely believe that it's just not possible for people to have to peaceably share the same rights. And now we have people that seem to be positive that if a young woman doesn't dress like all the other young women in her class, then something very bad will happen.

Trying to woo people who seem to believe that if they aren't oppressing someone else, then they will be oppressed is a fool's errand and I hope that the Democrats won't be tempted to try it. However, I think there are a couple misconceptions about Bubba that need to be cleared up.

The people who vote because they've been whipped into a frenzy over fears that tolerance of people different from themselves might actually put their own lifestyles in danger are a surprisingly diverse crowd. It ain't just Bubba. In fact, many a Bubba could care less what you do, as long as you don't do it in his backyard. I know a surprising number of fundamentalist Christians who believe very firmly that I'm going to hell, but they aren't too hot on the idea of passing laws to save me from sending myself there with my pill pack in one hand and my copy of Backlash in the other. And many a Bubba thinks this whole gay marriage/abortion/boobies on TV stuff is utter nonsense, but he still voted for Bush and would do it again. And not necessarily to spite urban liberals, either.

So, I think Digsby's right that compromise with some is impossible, and I would add that trying to compromise with people who'd rather we just disappeared off the face of the planet will probably just bring the Democrats down another notch in the estimation of the Bubbas that are inclined to be sympathetic to the social politics of tolerance. The people in our democracy who see the voting system as a way to inflict their beliefs on others are still not a majority; Bush won this last election in a squeaker, and that's only because they blanketed people's homes with the message that their choice was Bush or death by terrorist attack. It was scary and even I had a moment of doubt about voting for Kerry, even though I knew damn well that all the security stuff coming from the Bush camp was all lies.

It seems to me that the Republicans have cobbled together a rather uneasy alliance between the rich who control the party and use it to inflict class warfare on the rest of us, the intolerant who are willing to be used as tools as long as it means they can exert control over their neighbors' sex lives, and a whole bunch of people that are sitting on the fence. The fence-sitters either don't know how many liberties of theirs the Republicans are actively working to dismantle or simply think that they have to put up with these lost liberties in order to be safe from terrorism. This is the group that the Democrats need to focus on in order to get more votes.

But what about Dad?

2005-02-28T06:52:00.000-06:00

Salon had a couple of angry letters this week in response to an interview with Judith Warner about the burdens of motherhood and her dismissive response to the idea that a lot of women's problems would be alleviated if men did their fair share of the housework and childcare. One of the letters is a self-congratulatory letter from a man who says that he does his fair share of the work, and he wants a cookie for doing what he's supposed to do.

My wife and I have two children, ages 3 1/2 and 18 months. We are both attorneys; she works for a private firm and I work in the public sector. While my schedule is less flexible in terms of when I am where, it is more regular and allows for more generous sick time, family or otherwise. As a result I do the majority of the daycare drop-off pick-up and sick time with sick children, and care at home is very much a joint effort. I would argue that the same is true of my immediate peers. I would be interested to see the statistic that shows that this generation of "lost cause" fathers devotes the same or lesser efforts to their children's well-being than those in the past.

While there is no question that across the board the situation could not be defined as equal, I would hazard a guess that significant progress has been made in terms of fathers' active involvement in meeting their children's day-to-day needs. Characterizing this entire "generation" of fathers as a "lost cause" is as insulting as healthcare professionals who assume I do not know my children's medical history, daycare providers who refuse to address issues to me and instead wait to see my wife, whom they see far less frequently, or individuals who practically give me a gold star for correctly stating my children's birthdays.

One wonders if he's not looking for praise for doing his job as a father why he wrote in to brag on himself. I assure you there are far more pressing problems in the world than a doctor who can't understand that dad does doctor duty. The ugly truth is that while men on the whole are doing better, they aren't doing their fair share yet. And the recent uptick in men's housework hours that has pushed men's work into being a little more than half of women's probably doesn't mean that men as a whole are doing more, but just that the few that do their fair share are pulling up the numbers and making everyone look better.

Salon cleverly published this Cary Tennis letter next to the letters of complaint. The letter-writer's partner has pushed all the domestic duties onto her, including care for her two and his two children. Not surprisingly, she is tired and miserable all the time, but whenever she tries to take a break for herself, everyone in the family complains. Cary sensibly advises that she make her strikes stick--capitulating at the first complaint is making them realize that all they need to sacrifice is some whine time and they will get her to do everything. Well, and her partner has sacrificed sex and the pleasure of having a happy partner. It's hard from the inside to see it, but from the outside it's easy to see that a man who will give up sex and a good relationship with his partner in order to avoid doing some housework is someone who isn't going to just up and do the right thing after a mere one-day strike on her part.

It's an interesting letter and answer, but Cary drops the ball when he characterizes feminism as a philosophy that ignores economics.

Now, the slogan of the 1970s that launched a thousand domestic arguments was not "The personal is economic!" but "The personal is political!" A slogan must sound good to work right. "The personal is economic!" doesn't sound good; it trippeth not pleasingly on the tongue. Plus economics was not a sexy subject like politics. So you had men and women battling about the distribution of household labor in intimate relationships as though they were political adversaries rather than actors in a marketplace. If the battle cry had been "The personal is economic!" maybe there would have been less zero-sum political bluffing and calling of bluffing and more businesslike partnering toward mutual profit and "win-win" situations all around, including lunches at the Copper Penny and occasional gift certificates to Staples. Or maybe not. I'm just saying.

I guess he forgot about Marxist feminism. But the sad thing is that I think that liberal feminists tried to make housework and childcare a political issue instead of an economic issue precisely to avoid zero-sum thinking. The sexiness of politics and the possibility of a complete overhaul of the system we have now seems the only way to get men on board--they aren't going to "lose" anything if everything is different.

But economics is a dry exchange and the losses are all too apparent. For instance, the letter-writer's partner knows exactly what he stands to lose if he picks up his share of the domestic work--his time and energy. Hey, he sees how busy and tired she is all the time, so how could he not know how much time he could lose to this?

Cary is being coy, but he knows that striking is the last resort of workers after negotiations have ceased to work. And it does get read by those who are losing the cheap labor as disloyalty, so I'm sure it's even harder when the boss/worker relationship is also an intimate one. Anyway, reading this letter I realized that I would be a really bad union organizer. My first thought when the letter-writer said that her family complains when she tries to strike is to laugh at them and remind them how much they demand from someone who knows where they sleep. An ominous laugh might help, too. Yep, I would be giving protection money to gangsters in no time.

Boring Sunday night

2005-02-27T20:16:00.000-06:00

"Desperate Housewives" is not on and apparently pre-empted by something painfully boring about movies released in 2004. My dude has usurped the Mouse Manor's living room in order to flip back and forth between Independence Day and Silence of the Lambs, two movies I enjoyed the first time out but bring me pain to watch again, albeit for very different reasons. The former is just awful once you get past the fun special effects and actually watch it for content-related reasons. The latter is a great film about a subject that is pretty much too awful to ponder for any length of time.

I have not seen any of the Best Picture nominees. My aforementioned cousin finds it grossly neglectful the way that I never manage to get out of the house to see a movie and yet can find the time to see the same damn band play at Beerland almost every week for two months. I make no excuses for myself outside of what I tell him, which is that it will eventually come out on DVD. In many ways, I am a 65 year old woman on the inside.

My ignorance of the recent movie scene aside, I have decided to root for Jamie Foxx in Ray because I read this extremely compelling article about it. Also, I really like Ray Charles and figure that considering the mediocrity that can often dominate the Hollywood scene, this movie is bound to be better than average simply by featuring this music in it. You could throw a loop of random images on a screen and toss on some 60's R&B on as a soundtrack and I'd probably like it a whole lot better than most movies I see.

Movie in the making

2005-02-27T18:53:00.000-06:00

My cousin, who is hoping to be an up-and-coming film director and who I think has the goods, all family loyalty aside, has undertaken an ambitious new project. It's a movie about the nightmare that is part of the fabric of everyday life in the part of the world we grew up in, the El Paso/Juarez area--the serial killer that stalks Juarez and has killed at least 400 women that we know of, and probably twice that. Ryan is calling his movie Muertas. From the website:

Located at an arms length from El Paso, Juarez is a city known for its industrialization, drug trade and brutal crimes. In the last 10 years over 400 women have been murdered in the town of Juarez, Mexico with over 400 others missing. People travel to Juarez from all over Mexico in hopes of a life more promising. Nearly every week, with another woman murdered, we are left with the broken pieces of untold stories, unanswered questions, and apathetic responses.

Ryan's a good director and after a long discussion over coffee with him a month and a half ago, I feel that he's chosen this project for the right reasons and will do a bang-up job of it. He's still raising funds, so if you got extra cash...

The apathy Ryan talks about on his website is a mainstay in the ongoing crisis of the serial killings of Juarez. Not to say that people like it or accept it at all. In fact, I would say it's not apathy that greets the murders so much as helplessness. The accepted story on both sides of the border is that young men from wealthy, powerful families are killing and raping the impoverished factory workers for fun and that police are protecting them. On top of it, the fear of violence is a constant part of life on the border, even for people who have absolutely nothing to do with the drug trade or criminal elements of the area. The randomness of these murders is symbolic of this--the victims are so utterly blameless of anything that it strangles any remaining belief in the people of the area that violence is avoidable as long as you mind your own business.

Death is woven into the fabric of life in the desert in a way that seems alien now that I live away from it. You wander too far away from your home during the wrong time of year and you can die alone of dehydration in the desert. My stepfather was anal about making sure we had at least two gallons of water in the car before we went on a drive anywhere. Once I was two hours late from a hiking trip in the desert, and sure that I had fallen to my death off a cliff, my mother called the police. For those who live day in and day out with the burden of poverty, the nearness of death is even more tangible. People die of disease, starvation, and exposure every damn day. People are killed by drug dealers fighting for territory. Criminals in Juarez take potshots with handguns at border patrol agents, police and fireman all the time. On the other side, border patrol agents have been known to fire for no real reason themselves. The military was called to the border without notice when I was a sophomore in college; they shot a man in the back who was herding sheep because he had a gun. To us, that was a line of bullshit you could smell from a mile; carrying a gun while herding sheep where coyotes and even mountain lions could attack you or your herd at any minute is a necessity.

Ugly, meaningless death is part of life where I grew up and so these murders threaten always to fade into the landscape. It's easy to let one more injustice pass, but this shall not stand. People are standing up for justice for these women murdered for nothing more than trying to scrape by and make a living.

Settle for the jerk who whines that he's a "nice guy" now

2005-02-27T17:48:00.001-06:00

The rest of us are tired of hearing him bitch. Well, that seems to be the motivation for this advice column from iVillage titled "Give Nerds a Chance". Apparently, nerds are supposed to be nicer than the average guy, a myth that can only persist for people who have never spent a moment chatting with people in an online video game. This is a columnist for iVillage I've never read before, but already she irritates me by profaning the word "grrl" by using it as a moniker.

Looking for a nice guy?

No, you're not. Not according to DoubleYourDating.com and AskMen.com. These sites, and dozens like them, say that what women really want are jerks who will treat them badly.

Yep, the guys at AskMen are classic nice guys--obsessed with manipulating and controlling women, endlessly whining about how women don't try hard enough for their affections while simultaneously asking why they can't get more women in bed, trashing women's rights and otherwise behaving like jerks and wondering why women don't appreciate how "nice" they are. It would make no sense in another world, but in ours, right-wingers are so used to saying one thing and meaning another that this makes perfect sense. "Nice" on AskMen means "complete asshole". Why he can't get the women? Well....

Why are women attracted to jerks?

I often look to nature for answers to these kinds of complex questions. My fascination with animal behavior stems mostly from a crush I had on Jim, the sexy dart-gun guy in khaki shorts on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

Translation: "Nice" men, don't fear me! I am not one of those scary women who learns and knows things because she likes it. Goodness no! The only driving force in my life is sex; so don't fear that I would correct you when you are wrong or anything awful like that. I only care about how you look when you spout off that brainiac stuff like how women are naturally inferior. Larry Summers, for instance, made me swoon when he said that women aren't good at math. I knew then and there that's the sort of man who would indulge me for spending too much on clothes and shoes because my silly female brain just couldn't comprehend the prices.

Human females need to follow the lead of our guppy sisters and progress to choosing men based on qualities that aren't ultimately damaging to us. We are choosing jerks, which, through the process of natural selection, is causing there to be more jerks.

If men are jerks, it's our fault, ladies. First of all, they get laid occasionally. Second of all, and more importantly, jerks are woman-born and therefore our fault. This is useful information and something to remember when you're thinking of calling the cops. If he did something to you, it's either your fault or the fault of some other woman.

It is my honest feeling that men like my boyfriend William, who are former members of the high school audio-visual club and are obsessed with high technology, are the men who are the best hope for evolution. Plus they make great boyfriends. They are sweet, gentle and fabulous in bed, and they are eternally grateful to be with you ‑- who doesn't want that?

William may be all that, but I assure you, from one nerdy girl to another, that nerd does not equal nice. Nerd can also mean guy who talks over you, both attracted and alarmed at how smart he thinks you are. Nerd can also mean Ayn Rand-reading outcast who doesn't get why a smart girl like you can't conform to his opinions.

"Look," I whisper to Renata, "the thing about nerds is, they can't really talk to you on their own, but if you can just get them talking about some gizmo, well, that primes the pump, so to speak."

Why do I have an eerie feeling that someone's sexual fetish is being pushed on the rest of us as a formula for happiness? Look, I have a sordid history of going for rebellious types and musicians, but I would hardly recommend it for everyone.

Renata, a curvy redhead, gathers her courage and wades into the sea of headgear. She heads for a slightly balding guy with a fit athletic build. His face is obscured with giant fly-eye goggles.

And then she got the first hard, cold lesson of Women Who Date Geeks. You may think your smoking hot body will get his attention, but there's no way in hell you're going to win a contest between yourself and his video game.

And then we get a darling story that never happened:

As she approaches, he reaches out his cupped hands toward her ample breasts. His hands come within millimeters, and she smacks him away. Shocked, he lifts off his headgear.

"What the hell do you think you're doing!" Renata screeches.

"I, oh God, I thought you were part of the VR program. I'm, oh God, I'm so sorry-"

Red-faced, he begins to slink away, but Renata stops him by laying a hand on his arm.

"Hey, it was an honest mistake. I'm sorry for overreacting." Renata smiles.

Our writer made this story up or Renata and she are dumb enough to think that the story's hero cannot tell the difference between the animated women of programmers' dreams, fictional women whose dimensions put Jayne Mansfield to shame, and the mundanity of a real life woman's body, no matter how ample.

"Listen," Renata persists, "I'm really interested in... that thing you had on your head. Can you tell me about it?"

Oh, can he ever. About a thousand gigabytes later, he and Renata have exchanged phone numbers by beaming their information into each other's palm pilots.

The moral of the story: Women, in order to have a man, you must either put up with abusive asshole or someone who bores you to death blathering on and on about shit you could care less about. Your choice. But don't forget that being boring never put anyone in the slammer.

And guess what ‑- when he says he's going to call, he calls.

Damn, give that boy a gold medal in Basic Manners 101. I say we tag-team him in gratitude, ladies. Who's with me?

And when he takes her to a movie, well, it usually has aliens in it, but that's a small price to pay for dating a nonjerk. Renata is doing her bit for the survival of humankind, so ask yourself, are you doing your part?

Fuck a nerd for your country! What, do you hate America or something?

My fellow Texans keep on making the rest of us look like fools

2005-02-27T07:31:00.000-06:00

Feministe links to this story about the Supreme Court's decision to look at the case of the Ten Commandments in front of our Capitol building here in Austin. The pearl-clutching reactions of the religious right on this issue are so overblown that if you have to wonder if a single one of these motherfuckers believes a word that flies out of their own mouths. I mean, when does lying to the courts and to the media and to the American people, aka violating one of those dear commandments, stop being a political ploy and become just your natural way of speaking?

America can't scrub the role of religion from its history, said Kelly Shackelford of the Liberty Legal Institute, which defends religious freedoms and First Amendment rights and filed briefs in support of keeping the monument.

Yep, once that monument is gone, it will be illegal to discuss religion in our nation's history. No doubt about it. I can't say what Shackelford would make of someone like me, who is an atheist who owns a Bible, a firm believer in the separation of church and state who thinks that you can't teach American history without explaining how the church shaped so much of our culture. In fact, you can't understand the importance of the separation between church and state until you know the history of the church and how after hundreds of years of oppressing religious freedom and taking lives with the state's authority, people finally got fed up and excised its power over the state. And many lives have been saved because of it, I'm sure.

Anyway, Shackelford is bearing false witness to the press and to the Supreme Court when she characterizes herself and her institute as pro-liberty and pro-religious freedom. In reality, the institute stands for curtailing First Amendment rights and pushing her faith on people who don't share it.

According to their own website, the insitute has worked diligently to increase the state's right to censor people in direct violation of the First Amendment.

In March of 2003, the Institute coordinated an amicus brief for the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA) case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

They have worked on forcing their religion's beliefs about marriage on the rest of us, in direction violation of the First Amendment's freedom of religion clause.

In 2003, Institute attorneys served as national spokespersons for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

After all, under current law, if your church officiates a marriage between two members of the same sex, that marriage cannot be legally recognized the way that marriages performed by churches that are favored by the government are.

The institute also dislikes the equal protection clause, and is working very hard to have two different standards of right to privacy between men and women.

joined other groups in getting Women's Right to Know Act passed, and aided in a victorious battle to get Prenatal Protection Act passed.

As it stands, men still have a right not to have the government force propaganda and lies into their hands before they make a medical decision. Men also have full rights as citizens that are not in the slightest subsumed to the rights of any non-citizen creatures that may have taken up residence in their bodies.

The institute has worked on making government grants contigent on an organization's ability to tailor its services to fit the religious beliefs of the insitute and its members.

In July 2003, LLI took action to defend the state in the case against Planned Parenthood. LLI filed an amicus brief in support of the Texas law to prohibit federal and state funds to be used for abortion services.

Hopefully, they won't be suing soon on the right of anti-contraceptive churches to dictate Planned Parenthood's policies.

The institute works to strip away the rights of individual citizens by using the state to force non-believers to help people who wish to push their anti-intellectual religious beliefs onto our scientific community.

LLI is representing a student who was denied a letter of recommendation by a professor because of his Christian beliefs. The professor even posts his discriminatory policy on a website hosted by Texas Tech and paid for by tax dollars. The professor requires all students receiving a letter of recommendation to affirm a personal belief in evolution.

Your right to not recommend someone because you think that person doesn't deserve the recommendation apparently should be stripped away if it interferes with the right wing push to turn this once great nation into a nation of superstitious morons. What next? A physics professor getting sued for withholding a recommendation from a student that refuses to believe in light photons because light is created when god glows or something like that?

According the institute, you don't have a legal right to not recommend someone because they espouse religious beliefs that directly interfere with their ability to do their job, but you do have a right to harass people all you want as long as you claim it's in the name of Jesus.

LLI is representing four women who were denied admission to the Planned Parenthood public library because they expressed pro-life views. After a First Amendment suit was filed by LLI, Planned Parenthood completely severed their relationship with the Waco Public Library and paid money in damages to settle the case.

I wonder if this institute would defend my religious freedom to run into any old public library and start running around screaming that the Bible is all lies.

I'd keep going, but I've thrown up three times already. Needless to say, it's important to remember that when right wing Christian groups who support laws forcing their religious views on everyone else claim they are trying to preserve freedom, they are lying. I'm not sure when deceit became the great Christian virtue, but organizations like LLI make it clear that they hold dishonesty close to their heart and that it's one of their greatest weapons.

Alright, I'll join the shit storm

2005-02-25T15:51:00.000-06:00

Dan Savage makes a proposal to help curb HIV infections due to neglectful sexual behavior this week that he knows damn well is going to cause a lot of people to go bananas.

No, my radical plan to curb unsafe sex among gay men is modeled on a successful program that encourages sexual responsibility among straight men: child-support payments. A straight man knows that if he knocks a woman up, he's on the hook for child-support payments for 18 years. He's free to have as much sex as he likes and as many children as he cares to, but he knows in the back of his mind that his quality of life will suffer if he's irresponsible.

So why not drug-support payments? If the state can go after deadbeat dads and make them pay child support why can't it go after deadbeat infectors and make them pay drug support? Now that would be radical. Infect someone with HIV out of malice or negligence and the state will come after you for half the cost of the meds the person you infected is going to need. (The man you infected is 50 percent responsible for his own infection.)

I'm not going to go into all the various reasons that this may or may not be a good plan that are sure to be in all the letters flooding Savage's mailbox this week. I personally agree that anyone who knows he is HIV positive and deliberately has unprotected sex with people without disclosing his HIV status to his partners should face some kind of punishment. But aligning that punishment with child support is not the way to go about it, because that implies that child support is punishment.

Child support is not punishment. Child support is taking legal responsibility for your children when you don't live with them. Period. Really, it has zip to do with sex or punishments for sex or anything like that. You are legally obligated to take responsibility for children you conceive. There are a couple cases out now that are making it clear that it's not the sex that is the issue, but the children and who made 'em. You are obligated to pay child support for the same reason you are obligated not to lock up the kids in your house in the basement--your responsibility as a parent is to take care of your children. Someone's got to take care of the kids, and we look first to the parents.

Children are not a punishment for sex. Dan Savage, who has an adopted child, needs to think about this more thoroughly. Treating child support payments as the equivalent "punishment" for male sex to women's "punishment" of having to bear raise children is the sort of thinking that has given birth to the men's rights assholes and anti-contraceptive, anti-abortion thinking. HIV is a public health problem, but children are the responsibility, not the problem, of their family.

Of course, since HIV is a public health problem that is a fiscal nightmare, I understand Savage's desire to get some of the cold, hard cash needed to deal with the problem out of the hands of those who make the problem worse. This urge I sympathize with, so maybe a superior punishment could be docking wages to go into a general fund to pay for medication for people who can't afford it? I don't think this is going to generate much in the way of money, though, because it's probably pretty hard to prove that someone's neglect was deliberate or malicious.

Edited to add: Riggsveda's comment below made me think about this even more. Someone who is supposed to receive child support payments and doesn't because the guy's a deadbeat is in a tough spot--trying to figure out food and clothes and rent. Someone who is relying on that money for life-saving medications may be in an even worse spot. We do not need to foisting more responsibility for keeping people alive, fed and clothed onto individual citizens who fall down on their duties all too often.

Weekend show recommendations

2005-02-25T12:01:00.000-06:00

Well, that last post was a big, fat downer, so here's my usual show recommendations for the weekend for the two-three readers who will be in Austin and looking for something to do this weekend.

Beerland's got it going on, as usual. Tonight, Mr. Lewis and the Funeral Five at 8:00. Later on that night, the Black Angels and Camp X-Ray. The latter is a band that I predict will be building a solid audience in time. They are really good. The closing band is the Crack Pipes, but I'm not really a fan of theirs. Tomorrow night is Go Go Rama with the Boom Chica Boom Girls dancing to some garage rock and then Sons of Hercules later. I love the Boom Chica Boom Girls, and if I didn't have a prior engagement, that's where I'd be.

Tonight at Triple Crown, you can check out the Bulemics, the Ugly Beats and Amplified Heat, all great bands. Alas, the bar is in San Marcos, so I'm not going. But if you are in San Marcos, enjoy having some good bands in town. For once.

Also, it would be wise to buy your SXSW wristbands this weekend. They went on sale yesterday and by the time we got to Waterloo Records, the first 2,000 that were on sale for $110 a piece were gone and we had to buy ours at $130 a piece. (It wasn't that long ago when they were like $40 a piece. *sigh*) The 2005 schedule is online now, so go check it out.

You gave up your freedom when you chose to have ovaries

2005-02-25T10:45:00.000-06:00

No one tell the wingnuts that female fetuses have ovaries and a uterus before they're born, or they might start putting forward bills demanding DNA sex testing before abortions get approved. Just kidding! After all, the daughter of the woman you force to bear children against her will today is the woman you'll be forcing the same thing on tomorrow.

Molly Ivins brings this home in this week's column about the Texas legislature's attempt to turn parental notification laws into parental consent laws by simply reprinting some of the requests for a judicial bypass. Warning--I nearly cried reading some of these.

"My little sister was raped. Our parents are somewhere in Mexico, but I don't know if I can find them." -- older sister.

Grandmother of a 15-year-old: "She just told us that she was raped. We had no idea that she was pregnant. Her mother is dead, and her father is being transferred to (another prison). Is there any way we can get this done?"

"My mother's boyfriend used to hit her and sometimes I would try to stop him, but then he'd start hitting me. I left home to live with my boyfriend when I found out I was pregnant the first time. My mother wouldn't let me have an abortion, so I knew a baby would be safer living away from her and her boyfriend. But my boyfriend started hitting me as soon as I moved in. So I got my own place, a car and two jobs. I'm pregnant again, but I can't tell my mom because she would stop me from getting an abortion." -- 17-year-old high school graduate, mother of a 2-year-old daughter, father deceased.

Parental notification/consent laws are sold to the public as a way that the government can keep your darling daughter from turning into Jezebel behind your back. In reality, they function to punish young women for the crime of having parents they can't turn to when they have problems. I like to think of them as laws that seem perversely designed to help rapists who prefer minors in their charge as victims. Even if you are one of those who think that all women should fulfill their potential to be mothers, even if they are very young, would you really go so far as to say that they should even if the father is her own father?

Anyone who supports parental notification/consent laws needs also to stop and think about the logic. It's not enough to say, "I would want my daughter to tell me if she had an abortion!" Wouldn't you also like your daughter to tell you if she planned to have the baby? Some parents would like to force abortion on their unwilling daughters, but there are no laws helping them. If you think minors aren't fully capable of deciding to have an abortion, why do you think they're capable of being mothers? Must not think much of motherhood, if that's the case.

And of course, lest we women start getting uppity and thinking that our right to privacy actually means that we have a right to privacy like we were non-ovaried Americans, the attorney general of Kansas is here to put us in our places.

The Kansas attorney general is demanding abortion clinics turn over the complete medical records of nearly 90 women and girls, saying he needs the material for an investigation into underage sex and illegal late-term abortions.

Two clinics are fighting the request in Kansas Supreme Court, saying the state has no right to such personal information.

But Attorney General Phill Kline, an abortion opponent, insisted Thursday: "I have the duty to investigate and prosecute child rape and other crimes in order to protect Kansas children."

Of course, we all know that Kline is being disingenous with his blather about protecting underage rape victims. Rape victims who avail themselves of their right not to bear their rapists' children are the ones who will be treated like criminals, having their files poked through and families interrogated. Those who bravely endured having a child by their rapist apparently have been punished enough for the crime of being a victim of a sex crime.

The other women who will be under scrutiny will be teenagers who presumably had consensual sex and had to get abortions and women who had late-term abortions. Like Kline, we can assume the latter category is a bunch of selfish bitches who waited until after 22 weeks to terminate their pregnancies because it's more fun to get abortions later. We can safely assume that none of them waited because they intended to have the baby and then found out that they couldn't or shouldn't for health reasons.

Okay, okay, okay. It's silly to think that there are hoardes of women waiting for 5 months to terminate their pregancies simply for the thrills. They may have had medical reasons, but it's selfish for a woman to want to keep her life instead of fulfilling her duty to suffer and perhaps die for the sake of right wing ideaology, is it not?

Friday cat blogging

2005-02-25T06:48:00.000-06:00

February is confusing for cats. One day it's 75 out and the windows are open and the smell of grass is in the air. The next day it's 45 and raining and the windows aren't open and they are climbing the walls.

Friday Random Ten--"The Ramones Ain't No Herb Alpert" Edition

2005-02-25T06:19:00.000-06:00

In honor of the woman who leads us and her declaration that this is Estrogen Week, all the bands on the Friday Random Ten have to have at least one female member. How did I pull off this amazing feat? Uh, after I hit shuffle I just read the names of the bands and skipped any that have no women.

1. "Truth"--New Order
2. "Lexicon Devil"--The Germs
3. "Little Boy"--The Crystals
4. "Wake Up"--Sahara Hotnights
5. "Who Needs Forever"--Astrud Gilberto
6. "Poor Little Critter on the Road"--The Knitters
7. "The Great Love Sound"--The Ravonettes
8. "Anorak Girls"--Anorak Girl
9. "5 O'Clock in the Morning"--The Donnas
10. "Wild Honey Pie"--The Pixies

Also through Feministe, I found this link from Cruella-blog, about a study that found that men and women define "sense of humor" as an attractive quality differently. Yep, men generally defined it as "laughs at my jokes" and women as "makes me laugh". Of course, this is more evidence that I'm actually a man, since I too think that you have a good sense of humor if you laugh at my jokes. Or it could just mean I'm vain.

Wingnuts keep pushing

2005-02-24T15:43:00.000-06:00

More from the crazies who think that if only women knew that being pregnant means that you are on the road to having a baby of your very own, then you certainly would never consider getting an abortion.

BOISE - Republican Representative Ann Rydalch wants the state to require doctors to show women pictures of a fetus before an abortion. But her legislation may not be supported by all of the state's anti-abortion groups.

Rydalch's bill also would force doctors to give women information about abortion alternatives, and tell them that abortion could increase the risk for breast cancer. The National Institutes of Health denies any link between abortion and breast cancer, however.

"Informed consent" is an anti-choice catchphrase that has absolutely nothing to do with the traditionally understanding of what information is--you know, the whole facts and truths stuff that the rest of us think of when we think of being "informed". Telling women that they are going to get breast cancer if they have an abortion is lies, not information. You might as well tell them that if they dare abort, god will curse them for life by making toads and snakes fly out of their mouths when they speak.

As for the pictures thing, I doubt the pictures that Rep. Rydalch wants to show of fetuses would be constrained to pictures of fetuses at the same point in the pregnancy that most women are aborting at. It just doesn't have the same impact to show a one-month fetus that doesn't resemble a human as it does to show an 8-month one.

These proposed laws that treat women like ignorant children that need to be scolded in order to get an abortion get sillier all the time. What next? A law stating that a woman has to sincerely promise never to fornicate again before she earns her Constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy?

This has been bugging me

2005-02-24T11:56:00.000-06:00

I tried just to leave a little skidmark of snark in the comments section, and yet I am still unsatisfied. I'm going to refrain from talking about Matt Yglesias's post on Le Tigre itself, mostly because the one-off comment he leaves makes it clear he was probably joking. But egads, the comments! Of course, this is pretty typical of the comments in the bigger blogs when the subject of music comes up--yep, it's time for the dick-swinging contest. Me, I prefer the bald bragging of the Friday Random 10. A sample of some pissy comments left on this post:

Le Tigre is no Bikini Kill.

(Besides, I don't especially like the last band Matthew posted about (Arcade Fire), and they are mostly boys. And I DO like Bikini Kill (although my taste in girl music is more Missy Elliot and Alicia Keys).)

Quite true... though Bikini Kill is no Sleater Kinney.

Sleater-Kinney is no L7.

Frankly, I say the Foo Fighters are no Nirvana and Nirvana is no Mission of Burma.

Okay, well that last comment was mine. But what exactly was the point of this little comment exercise that went on there? I mean, besides the commenters demonstrating that they know that Le Tigre was started by the same woman who started Bikini Kill, something that you would know anyway if you even know who Le Tigre is. Or that you know that liking Sleater Kinney is the thing to do. Really guys, it's scientifically proven that owning 2 or more Sleater Kinney albums makes girls who wear 501s drop those 501s in your presence.

Mostly I'm just annoyed at the premise of this thread, the premise being that all these bands are jostling for the slot of the Offical Girl Band. To quote a famous man in the best documentary of all time, "In the end, there can only be one." This is the unspoken answer to the infamous women bloggers question. Why do women bloggers go unnoticed? Not because we are unworthy, not because we don't self-promote, not because we're too busy cradling babies to type, not because we're scared to the big mean men with their ability to spell scathing words, but because of the overriding belief that there's only a limited number of slots for the girls, and if one is to get in, then another woman has got to go.

Edited to add: Of course, I could be looking at all this from a perspective of ungodly nerdiness that might be skewing my opinions just a little bit. As soon as I published this, a friend popped up in a messenger window with this greeting: "So, I've been thinking about the resurgence of post-punk." And it occured to me that I really may just be angrier at people who think that knowing the Le Tigre has a member in common with Bikini Kill makes them a bunch of smarty-pants than anything else.

But then again, maybe everyone has a well-formed opinion on the resurgence of post-punk. I know I don't, except to wonder if this means that I might as well just start my lounge music band now so that all our songs are written and we're completely tight in time for that trend to pick up.

Crosswalks

2005-02-24T06:25:00.000-06:00

A friend from D.C. was down here last weekend for a wedding and we managed to squeeze in a lunch with her, her husband, my boyfriend and myself before they were whisked away into the wedding dimension, where everything is flowers and hairspray and standing around waiting for something interesting to happen. My friend is a fellow Texan but she married a man from around Seattle, so naturally we were entertaining him over lunch with tales about the famous disregard Texans demonstrate for the niceties of personal safety, tales with punch lines like, "Here, hold my beer while I shoot the fire."

Just to make his life a little harder, my friend laughed and turned to her husband and asked him to tell us about the crosswalks in the suburban Washington neighborhood his parents now live in. Apparently, each crosswalk has a stack of orange flags on each corner. The legal protocol for crossing the street is to hit the Walk button, wait for the signal to turn, grab two flags and wave them in front of you as you cross the street, for maximum visibility. How dramatically you wave them is completely up to you, as is the choice to throw in a little soft shoe as you make your way across the street.

The conclusions you draw from this story are completely up to you. The conclusion I drew was that we should have orange flags at the crosswalks here in Austin, but only at the big crosswalk where the mall at UT intersects with the middle of the Drag, where in the middle of the day when things are busiest on campus each Walk signal dumps hundreds of students into the crosswalk. It would just make things a little rosier if each of those hundreds of students was required to wave orange flags as they crossed. Sort of like a mini-parade every 2 minutes or so. They could make the flags burnt orange, if they like, to keep it in the school spirit.

NASCAR explained

2005-02-23T20:55:00.000-06:00

As previously mentioned, many of my good friends are huge motorheads. I don't get it, either, but I am an expert at nodding and smiling as this friend drags me to stare at a Corvette he rebuilt or another friend jumps up and down while we watch an incomprehensible Formula 1 race and tells me why she loves Ferrari or another carefully explains why Rossi is the greatest motorcycle racer of all time. I have friends that are addicted to muscle cars, even ones with a flaming chicken painted on the hood, friends who could tell you to the penny what Michael Schumacher made last year, friends who earnestly tell me that I could make money as an umbrella girl. (Yeah right.) Racing maniacs. And to the last one, they loathe NASCAR.

I thought of this when reading posts by Greg and by Hugo trying to figure out the popularity of NASCAR. For those standing outside of the whole thing, it's tempting to be open-minded and generous towards NASCAR fans. They merely like racing and it's just what they know. They aren't racist, they just like to see racers that look like them. I sympathize with that urge.

My racing fanatic friends disagree strongly, to say the least. A couple of them I know can be can be encouraged to expound on it at length given a cocktail, a cigarette and a sympathetic ear. According to fans of other types of racing, superior types that have sophistication and technological advances like Formula 1, the only reason to prefer NASCAR is that one is a xenophobic redneck who would prefer substandard sport in order to never be assaulted with images of people who speak English as a second language giddy with victory and the cash and sex with supermodels that comes with it. This does not come from a bunch of blue state Americans who sneer at our redneck brethern. I am of our redneck brethern and still we look down on idiots who would rather watch Ford race Dodge instead of BMW race Ferrari.

Truth told, the growing popularity of NASCAR is one of the signs of the Apocalypse. There is no excuse for giving a shit about one substandard American manufacturer bettering another substandard American manufacturer in a contest that deliberately excludes foreigners who might make it interesting. When Toyota joined the Truck Series, it gave me a perverse glee to watch them start kicking ass right off the bat. Please don't condescend to my fellow Southerners and figure that we don't know better. They know better. They are just being assholes. Getting a tattoo referencing the late Dale Earnhardt is asshole behavior, and no one should be obliged to expend effort trying to understand it.

NASCAR succeeds for the same reason the American spirit we all remember from our youth and cherish, the belief in the spirit of freedom and the power of individuals working together, is giving way to ass-licking subservience to The Man and lavish yet ignorant patriotism. It gives people a cheap thrill without the challenge or fear they might get by actually engaging international racing. For fans of real, aka international, racing, NASCAR is reminiscent of football--a sport that no one but Americans enjoy, and one that Americans enjoy while trashing on a sport that is actually enjoyable--soccer--for no other reason than a bunch of foreigners like it.

I won I won I won I won!

2005-02-23T16:23:00.000-06:00

Hard as it is for me to believe, I won the Koufax Award for Best New Blog! I was also reminded of a campaign speech I made when I was a finalist. Damn those search buttons!

Suffice it to say, I was drunk when I made that promise. But hell, for all you know, I'm drunk now. I don't actually type my entries so much as stomp back and forth through my office wearing a diaphonous robe with a feather collar and feather-topped mule slippers while smoking from a cigarette holder, drinking a martini and dictating my blog entries to my shirtless cabana boy, whose muscles are surprisingly rippled for someone who sits at a computer all day.

Thank you all for voting for me. Thanks to the the crew at Feminist Blogs and at XX for rocking so hard. Thanks to all those who shall go unnamed who keep asking where all the women bloggers are at. Thanks to my boyfriend for being patient with my cabana boy. Thanks to my readers who come here for the jokes about advice columns and off-kilter feminist analysis and tolerate my prattlings about Austin bands they have never heard. Thanks to Max and Katy for being so damn cute.

And thanks to my writing companion.

And for Roxanne and Lauren, here's some tits:

And for all of you who came here to see some boobies, here you go:

Don't forget, folks, what happens at the post-Koufax parties, stays at the post-Koufax parties.

Braggin' rights

2005-02-23T13:54:00.000-06:00

My boyfriend's photos from the Yuppie Pricks' CD release party at Emo's are up on their website now. His photos are sets 2 and 3. He's a good photographer and don't let no one tell you otherwise.

Ode to a Dull Drumbeat

2005-02-23T12:11:00.000-06:00

Mad Kane has published a poem on the women blogging thing. Go read it and laugh between sobs for the fate of men who sincerely believe, in a Zen-like way, that if they don't see a woman than she ceases to exist.

This belief that women are not only out of sight, out of mind, but actually out of existence does explain certain ex-boyfriends' amazement at all I could accomplish in a day when they weren't looking.

Roe vs. Wade left unchallenged for now

2005-02-23T11:37:00.000-06:00

The Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to Roe vs. Wade today.

Without comment, justices declined to hear the appeal from Norma McCorvey and thus dodged a highly charged political debate for now. McCorvey's protest of Texas' abortion ban led to the Roe v. Wade ruling establishing a constitutional right to abortion.

McCorvey, who says she now regrets her role in the decision, argued in court filings that the case should be heard again in light of evidence that abortion harms women.

The high court's move Tuesday wasn't surprising. A decision to reopen a case based on so-called "changed circumstances" is rare, and two lower courts had already refused to reconsider the ruling.

I'm not surprised that they don't want to waste their time. If they had to hear this, they would probably end up holding up Roe vs. Wade anyway, so what's the point? The time to worry is if Bush gets some anti-choice people into the Supreme Court.

Norma McCorvey is an interesting character. She's the original "Jane Roe" and is now a pro-lifer who wants abortion rights revoked because she's had a religious conversion. Like many on the Christian right, she has missed out understanding that the laws just can't be tailored to her benefit. Granted, she felt that way when she was trying to obtain an abortion and couldn't. The one factor in her life is the belief that the law and the rights of others should be tailored to her current needs.

Supreme Court decisions are about a lot more than the person who brought forth the initial lawsuit, but are hand-picked to settle sticking Constitutional issues. McCorvey's current feelings are irrelevant--if it's a right, it's a right, whether the real Jane Roe wishes to avail herself of that right or not.

Let's hear it for divorce!

2005-02-23T07:00:00.000-06:00

This poor woman who wrote to Cary Tennis this morning needs a cheerleading squad.

I am married to the man of my dreams -- except for one thing: He won't touch me. I'm not just talking about sex; I mean he's averse to basic human contact. We're down to a chaste kiss as he leaves for work, an occasional hug when I ask, and sometimes another chaste good-night kiss before he turns his back to me and falls asleep.

Yep, she needs to leave him. I know--easier said than done. But what people don't like to talk about is that starving someone for sex and affection year after year after year can drive them insane. This woman is putting up with insults from the man who supposedly loves her that would likely make her slap a stranger who said these things to her.

For the first several years of our marriage, he blamed my weight as the sole reason we were not having sex. Let me clarify that I am an attractive woman with a beautiful face, long blond hair and a curvy, voluptuous body, which many men find very attractive -- just not my husband. He told me about five years into the marriage that he'd felt deceived, that he'd believed I would change and lose weight.

Divorce is too good for the person who marries and then starts attacking their spouse and telling them they have to "earn" love--how was she supposed to know that he didn't find her attractive? He married her, didn't he?

The letter-writer has an affair, which causes her husband all sorts of grief. Frankly, he should have taken a pill and looked at the bright side--he gets to keep his wife without to make love to her. She set it up so he wins all around. Of course, he doesn't see it that way. So now that the husband has learned the hard way that contrary to popular belief, women really do want sex, he's given in to the occassional obligatory night of romance, letting her know that she should be slaveringly grateful for any attention in the most romantic way possible.

Every once in a while (three times last year), my husband takes pity on me and says that it's time to reset the clock. That means we do the deed. Then I can no longer say, "Come on, honey, it's been three (four, five, six) months since we made love," since the clock is reset to zero. After such a resetting, it is an unspoken rule that I am not supposed to ask again for a really long time.

Okay, we've all been nasty to people we're supposed to love. At what point do you take a look at yourself and say that for all the grief you've been giving this person, you may actually hate him or her?

So what's the hold-up? Why hasn't she kicked him to the curb? Well, it turns out that she's bought the whole story that it's selfish to get divorced, that you are a failure if you do it, and that you have to "work" at marriage. Of course, we all know who does most of the "work" in a marriage that needs working on. She lost a bunch of weight and puts up with his shit and goes to counseling and tries to understand. He does the hard work of condescending to fuck her once in awhile as long as she understands that he's doing her a huge favor. And through all this, she still manages to find a way to avoid feeling selfish by making it clear to Cary that she wants basic human things not for herself; oh no, this if for the children. Or the lack of.

I'm starting to go a little crazy from being starved for simple affection. And, yes, for sex, too. And deep down, I fear that I will never have a family, something which is extremely important to me (and, I thought, to him).

Cary tells her nicely to kick this guy to the curb. This is why I'm sick of people who bemoan how our divorce rate is so high because people are selfish. (And we all know what sex the selfish people are that are pictured by the person saying this.) Rarely will you people regret their divorces--each individual divorce has a very good reason for it. Mostly you'll just hear people regretting getting married in the first place, as this woman will be doing very soon down the line. Her husband, if he has any ability to self-examine, will be regretting screwing the whole thing up.

In Texas, we joke about the "Your Honor, he needed killing" defense. Well, some people just need divorcing. It'll do this guy some good to be dumped on his ass. It's the only way he's going to learn that he can't just walk all over someone like this and expect loyalty in return. Or learn that if he doesn't like sex, then it's not right to get into conjugal relationships.

I'm sick of everyone picking on the fine institution of divorce. All we see is the negative part--it breaks up marriages, it's sad, boo-hoo. We neglect to note that for many, if not most, people who divorce, by the time they are pushed to it, they are so miserable that divorce is like getting freed from prison. I think we should have a Divorce Appreciation Day, if for no other reason than helping people like this have the opportunity to see divorce in a different light--not as a sign of failure, but as a long overdue escape route.

Minister of Advice Enforcement

2005-02-22T11:35:00.000-06:00

President-for-Life Sheelzebub thinks that silly little blog awards are nothing. Instead of mere awards to polish and slap on your sidebar, Sheelzebub is handing out ministries. I would like to be the Minister of Advice Enforcement, due to my self-proclaimed expertise in ridiculous advice columns. My duties would be to make sure that everyone in the advice column industry is on message, exhorting women at all times to be active in their passivity and appearing cool while remaining anxious. Oh yes, and to have nothing more important in their lives than pleasing men while pretending to be busy little beavers to improve attractiveness to men. If we can keep women under an onslaught of helpful advice that will keep them running after their tails, they will be unable to wake up and oppose President Sheelzebub's plans for world domination.

In hopes of obtaining this position, I wish to highlight one of the advice columns from MSN that is right on target with its message to women that anger is just unsavory in a female.

He did the unthinkable, and now you want to get even. Ok, you’re entitled to blow off a little steam, tell all your friends (and his) what a horse’s ass he is, maybe even lay a major guilt trip on him — complete with waterworks.

Right off the bat, this writer is out to confuse the audience. Anger is okay, sort of, well actually it's best if you show a more ladylike sadness.

Things you want to do:
Key his car — and risk retaliation.
Seduce his best friend — and face possible rejection and humiliation.
Tell his mother what he REALLY thinks of her — chances are she’ll side with her son.
Boil his rabbit (oh, and his furry little pet, too!) — and risk going to jail.

Before the audience can put up resistance, our clever advice columnist knows to chastiste the audience for being small-minded and petty females, too dumb to key a car without getting caught, too insecure to avoid sleeping with someone who probably means you ill will, too loud-mouthed and gossipy to know how to pick an audience and swamped by a hysterical clinginess that the movies tell us affects only women.

And now for the best part--the part where we women are reminded not to focus our anger outward at the source of our troubles (in this case, it appears to be a cheating man), but instead to turn our pain inwards to the cause of self-improvement. Because if he's a jerk, it's your fault.

Cleanse. Time for a little spring cleaning to clear the cobwebs from not only your heart and head, but your house, as well. Toss out all reminders of him, good or bad.

Proper women don't get mad, they get to scrubbing!

Work it out. Work it out of your system with a good workout routine. It will get you out of the house, help lift your energy and spirits, and help you keep that hot — perhaps even hotter — body you know he’s missing (just another benefit if you happen to run into him).

This is especially good advice for those who cut out a man for cheating. As you jog along, think about how you could have kept him by being in better shape to begin with. Blame yourself for not trying hard enough to be perfect. Much more pleasant than unfortunate anger.

Move on. The sooner you get on with your life, the sooner you let him know that your world didn’t really revolve around him after all.

Get past him so that you have the satisfaction of knowing that he thinks you're past him when you sit around thinking about him. A properly confusing piece of advice guaranteed to distract the female half of the population from worrying about world domination.

Forgive. No one says you have to forget what happened, and you may wonder why you should ever forgive such a crime of the heart. But to forgive is to free yourself from another’s emotional hold. Anger means you care, and of course the last thing you want is for him to think that you’re still harboring some sort of feelings for him and mourning your relationship.

Why should he have to suffer someone's anger because he hurt her? Goodness knows that anger can just give someone too much clarity--to be angry at someone for hurting you is to know that you don't deserve to be hurt, which might lead to the unfortunate result that you demand better for yourself in the future. And if you eliminate cheating bastards from your potential boyfriend pool, that shrinks the pool and may delay obtaining another boyfriend.

This writer is also perfect for President Sheezlebub's purposes. Women who can't work up the enthusiasm to stand up for themselves in their personal life could possibly be guilt-tripped into not standing up for themselves politically. Not all, but many. I'll leave it up to the other ministers to work on the men. Perhaps a Minister of Conservative Talk Shows could work on getting the men to be so afraid of female welfare recipients and greedy divorcees after their money that they don't see what they have to fear from our President?

Cootchie coochie coo

2005-02-22T06:18:00.000-06:00

Redneck Feminist gets going on her new blog with a link to a hiliarious account by Kerry Howley at Reason about the anti-feminist right's favorite new party trick--beating a straw victim.

Meet the put-upon conservative coed, the prototype pushed by conservative feminists to demonstrate liberal bias on college campuses. We'll call her Claire. Claire doesn't want any part of this vulgar spectacle known as The Vagina Monologues, but her Feminine Mystique-touting, Germaine Greer-quoting friends are tying her to a chair and making her watch. She desperately wants to be chaste, but condom-peddling feminists are driving her to her knees at the frathouse next door. She really just wants to be a mom, but her mentors in the gender studies department say that's just not acceptable.

The article starts off with a bang but then devolves into the same complaining that modern feminists are obsessed with victims and helping them. While there's no doubt we would be a lot more fun if we didn't point out how male dominance creates real victims of rape and violence, I'm afraid that creating pleasant tea party fodder isn't really the point of feminism, so there's not a whole lot I can say to assuage the ignore-the-victim-makes-her-go-away crowd. Then again, my brand of fun is a hell of a lot more fun than the IWF's suggested brand of fun, I'm sure. Then again, I've never fully explored the charms of keeping a hope chest and thinking up names for the half dozen moppets I plan to start bearing at 22 (oops, missed out on that one), so I can't know for sure.

One thing that's a lot of fun is The Vagina Monologues, as Redneck Feminist finds out in her story. I know--hard to believe. The anti-feminist spin on the play is such that one does walk into it trembling with fear that it's going to be a tedious two hour ordeal of listening to moony hippies doing chants to the origin of the world or something like that. But it's just a serious of stories from real women about their experiences with their bodies and sex and because of that, it's really funny at parts. And that is exactly what is so empowering about the play--it reveals to women that it's perfectly fine to regard our genitals with the same warm affection and good humor that men have towards theirs.

So this is why I have to disagree with Howley, who argues that the play shouldn't be a cause of concern to anti-feminists. The humor and affection in the play is extremely effective in normalizing women's genitals to members of the audience who were brought up in properly anti-feminist enviroments and therefore feel ashamed to even have a vagina, much less the entire vulva area. (I cannot tell you what a relief it was to find out the fish thing was a myth after an adolescence of being afraid that I had a stink to me that I couldn't even perceive.) The play confronts fear with its mortal enemy humor, and that's why it's so threatening.

Of course, anti-feminists can't just come out and admit that keeping women fearful of their own bodies is a necessary component of the proper gender roles they promote (pretty much admitting that a woman's place is anything but roses and affectionate pats on the ass from a loving husband that leave you walking on clouds is verboten), so they have no choice but to lie and build up outrageous fears that you walk into the play a normal, man-loving, cunt-fearing woman and emerge smelling of patchouli and carrying your castrating knife. How else are they going to sell their anti-Vagina campaign? "This play is one more thing that will help convince your daughter that she too can feel good about her body?"

Being bummed all damn day

2005-02-21T19:21:00.000-06:00

Hunter S. Thompson's death has bummed me out all damn day. Rereading this article he wrote a few days before the election brought it all home to me. PJ said in the comments of Roxanne's blog:

Damn it Hunter, why? You made it through Nixon, Reagan, Bush/North and you would have made it through Bush Lite. Yes, the swine are running amok. All the more need for you.

Holding off despair is a weighty task. And there's no evidence whatsoever that it can or even should be done. Every time I flip on the TV and see more images of the malevolent forces running this country and contemplate the complacency and ignorance that allows it to happen, I have to stave off despair somehow. Anger sometimes. Distraction. Wild optimism that this soon will pass; it has to. But the ugly truth is that it doesn't have to. This evil has its fangs in us and we may not shake it off before it kills us.

Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorite movies of all time. In it, a bunch of people hole themselves up in the house to protect themselves from the increasing hordes of flesh-eating zombies and we stay with them the whole time, watching them try to figure out how to survive, watching their petty in-fighting over survival strategies, and thinking that having gone through this ordeal, the hero is bound to come out on the other end of this alright. But no--he survives a night of zombie attacks only to be shot in the morning by some fellow living human beings who mistake him for the enemy.

Those of us who oppose the vampiric Republicans who run this country are true patriots, struggling to save America for ourselves and for others. And in the last election, our fellow Americans shot us down, mistaking us for the enemy. How can they not see that we are trying to save them?

BULLETIN: KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSEMENT; DR THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH "THE SYPHILIS PRESIDENT".

"Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis," the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado.

"Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush. He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November." Thompson, well known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts, went on to denounce Ralph Nader as "a worthless Judas goat with no moral compass."

"I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next president of the United States."

Despair is feeling completely helpless, like you have no control, no choices left. Without hope. Bush and all the vampires that wish to suck the good people of this country dry are just nothing without their human allies who have been suckered into helping them. I keep waiting for my fellow humans to get a clue, certain that they will figure it out any day now. I've been lying to myself in order not to despair.

I don't know what caused Thompson to do what he did, what made him decide that hope and him had permanently parted ways. But I think we all have our suspicions. And I am freaked the fuck out that if Thompson, who put up with so much shit in his life, had finally decided to give up hope, then the rest of us might be doomed. But then again, maybe it was just his age that had caught up with him.

A nice little tale from East Texas

2005-02-21T16:51:00.000-06:00

News from Nachodoches, Texas that was emailed to me from my sister--apparently a new movement is underfoot called Straight Pride. Seems like the homophobes are a little jealous of the white supremacists and decided to co-opt their general ideas. And to kick of a little Christian hate-fest the straight pride people at Stephen F. Austin University decided to hold a "debate" between the head homophobe at SFA, representing the "we hate them but don't kill them" moderation of straight pride and someone even more scary radical than him, a minister of a Baptist church in Nachadoches named Rev. W.N. Otwell. This guy is a real treasure. And brave, too, willing to be on the same college campus as homosexuals in order to condemn them.

“I’ve been there a few times,” Otwell said. “I know it has quite a few homosexual males and females on the property, but we don’t fear that.

There is a real danger of catching gay off of the students, so we can all imagine how fearless this fuck must be.

“But homosexuality is a different sin from lying and drunkenness. It’s against nature. There’s no social value, no reproduction and it can’t bring forth fruit.

Well, many of us do know how drunkenness can bring forth fruit, so he's got a point.

There’s a lot of men who lie and commit adultery who bear fruit and we can permit these people, but with the homosexual, we can’t.”

And here you thought that guy on Jerry Springer who have five women in five states all pregnant by him was a scumbag. Indeed, he is a man of god, bringing forth fruit as fast as he can pump it out.

“The curse of the homosexual agenda is AIDS, HIV,” he said. “Immorality and their filthy lifestyle is breaking down the family unit that our Lord instituted when He created man (as) Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

Eve was a man?! Then what the fuck's the problem?

Lest you think that this Otwell character who was invited to debate at SFA has a Phelps-like focus on homosexuality to the exclusion of all else, he makes sure that we know that there's plenty of room for hate in the Christian heart for disobedient women and black people.

Otwell and his followers have visited SFA in the past with signs of protest against what he describes as the militant feminist movement; women in the military holding jobs and running for political offices. According to Otwell, the civil rights movement is also in part responsible for the rise in homosexuality in America.

“Civil rights is an abomination,” Otwell said. “It gave the sodomites the right to practice this filthy lifestyle they practice without prosecution.”

Damn, if militant feminists are the ones who want jobs and political office, what are moderate feminists? The ones who think that women should merely be spanked on the ass for disobedience instead of socked in the eye?

One thing you got to love about some of our unreformed wingnuts in the South is that haven't yet figured out that it's not politically expedient to align themselves with Islamic terrorists. Even Falwell has figured out that it's not wise to hope for suicide bombers from the sky to punish people who he disapproves of, but not our homegrown asshole Christian from East Texas.

“Osama (bin Laden), Al Qaeda, all of those men – God uses them like his sword to punish weakness. It was not just an act of terrorism but an act of God.”

Despite the Christian love emanating from this man, a debate with the straight pride people who merely loathe homosexuals but don't necessarily damn them straight to hell was far too much tolerance for him.

Thursday’s debate on homosexuality between Adam Key, Spring junior and public relations director for Straight Pride, and the Rev. W.N. Otwell of God Said Ministries ended when Otwell left after the first portion of the debate.

Otwell said he felt unsafe at the forum, moderator Clay Walker, a Lufkin senior and Christian comedian from First United Methodist Church in Lufkin, said. Walker acted as moderator in place of an absent Doyle Srader, communication lecturer.

It was a contentious point that the unpleasantness broke out over. Otwell felt like gays and lesbians should be banned outright from marrying. Key, the straight pride proponent, felt that they should be allowed sexless, miserable marriages to members of the opposite sex. The rest of us are in awe of Key's generosity in extending a right to gays and lesbians that they don't have any use for. Perhaps he also feels that people should be allowed to marry box turtles if they so wish, full well aware that there are no people that wish for this.

My sister has a friend who attended the debate who swears that Otwell didn't just leave over his inability to imagine a homosexual having a right to anything other than being berated night and day for daring to exist by a loving Christian. She says that Otwell incurred the audience's wrath by expounding a bit on his godly belief in the inferiority of black people, but this is just hearsay. My goodness, you would think there was some connection between hating one kind of person for being different from yourself and hating another kind of person for being different from yourself! You might also be inclined to think that the anti-feminist forces who want to get women out of work and back to baby-making might have some kind of racist motivation, some sort of odd belief that white women need to start pumping babies out as fast as they can lest whites have to actually share this country with people of other races. But I don't want to get too hasty here. Clearly, this man was just speaking to the good students of SFA on behalf of Jesus Christ, who did after all hold forth endlessly on his hatred of women, blacks, and homosexuals.

More FCC complaints

2005-02-21T11:56:00.000-06:00

Good to know someone still has a sense of humor out there.

According to a report on Mediaweek.com, four people submitted complaints to the Federal Communications Commission – the broadcast regulator in the U.S. – following the broadcast.

Of those, two people complained that McCartney's performance wasn't racy enough.

The complainants said that the show put on by McCartney was boring and didn't entertain them.

I wish I had thought of this first. There's a long list of TV programs that I would like to complain about. For instance, my boyfriend was entertaining himself in a masochistic way yesterday by watching a show called "Voice of Virtue" with a strange woman interviewing a priest about how virtuous the church was to dodge responsibility for the child molestations committed by priests. He blamed movies and books--can I complain about this bullshit?

And while I'm at it, I would like to file a complaint against "Seventh Heaven" for giving me cavities.

I would also like to file a complaint against every new sitcom that has a fat, boorish husband paired with a foxy wife who is a saint amongst women. And have the writers' paychecks revoked for not even trying to do their job.

And I want to file a complaint against the Fox News Network for driving me to drink.

Nothing funny

2005-02-21T07:06:00.000-06:00

Hunter S. Thompson has committed suicide.

Thompson could be a real jerk, of course, especially in pursuit of the funny. But always lurking underneath his sarcastic, wicked humor was the heart of a frustrated idealist, someone who sincerely hoped for a world that was better than this. I always strongly related to that push-pull in him between the cyncial desire to bury and obscure and mock everything that causes pain and the heart that reveals its hope for better a bit starkly at times. I feel it now, the push to make light of how sad it makes me feel that he finally tipped over the edge versus my desire to just admit it.

I'm not looking forward to my boyfriend waking up and finding this out.

Roxanne has a reader for y'all.

Teen idols and frenzied females

2005-02-20T16:37:00.000-06:00

I saw a documentary this morning on Trio called "The Scream Heard 'round the World" about a phenemenon that amuses the hell out of me--teen idols and the hysteria they induce in their female fans. I've said before that I think that the frantic screaming and wailing that followed the Beatles and their ilk all the way up to N'Sync is just so much sexual repression finally finding an outlet. The whole thing reminds me of a watered-down Bacchanalia with Paul or Justin or whatever filling the role of Bacchus for these teenage girls, and that impression was strengthened hearing these teenage idols all grown up and reflecting on the past and the fear that if they let the hoardes of girls at them they would be ripped from limb to limb. I doubt anyone was in real danger of that happening, but there is a precedent of sorts, so I guess you never know.

The whole thing would be merely amusing to me if it was just a matter of a bunch of girls finding a socially sanctioned space to blow off a little sexual steam in a culture that denies that they even have such steamy feelings. But of course it's not. The interviews with Maurice Starr and Lou Pearlman, the managers of New Kids on the Block and N'Sync, destroyed any illusions one might have that this is an innocent phenemenon. Pearlman in particular seems hellbent on mining the childish fantasies of teenage girls and turning them into a formula he can feed back to them over and over again until he dies a fat, bloated millionaire. I'm afraid that the cyclical nature of these things has thwarted him for the time being, but I wouldn't be surprised if he manages to jump on the bandwagon again in the future.

The whole thing did cause me to wander off and think about the nature of these teenage fantasies. I can see why someone like Pearlman would see the whole thing in reductionist terms--the things that all teen idols from the Beatles until now have in common are pretty easy to figure out from a quick perusal. Get some young, pretty boys together and write them some song with over-the-top lyrics glorifying the charms of a female love object in such general terms than any girl can project herself into the role of the object, and there you go. A lifetime of crushing disappointment when you find out that no one is willing to compromise his/her pride that much on your behalf is all ready to go.

Is that why these young girls feel compelled to embarrass themselves by screaming and crying? Is it a sort of compensation, a way of telling the boy that is prostrate before them in their fantasy worlds that they return the feeling? The more I think about it, the likelier that seems to be the case. Boy bands really do fit into the chivalrous mode, with the songs about begging for affection a precursor to the ritual of proposal-engagement-wedding where a young man defers to his bride by asking her for marriage on one knee and in exchange he gets an elaborate ceremony where she is delivered to him by her father.

I think more than anything, the lack of ambition in the fantasy the teen idols provides is what saddens me. In the interviews with adult women who were swooning teenage girls once, they repeatedly said that they dreamed night and day that they would one day be Mrs. Paul McCartney, David Cassidy, whatever. There's a naked honesty in that fantasy, and it shows that girls are still absorbing the cultural message that a woman's value is measured only in relation to men.

Weekend round-up post

2005-02-20T12:03:00.000-06:00

Sorry about the lack of posting. I've been really busy this weekend, though naturally I haven't gotten one damn thing done I intended to do this weekend. I did manage to see roughly one million bands play, though. I also got to have lunch with a high school friend and her husband on Saturday. They were down from D.C. to go to a cousin's wedding and so I took them to the sort of restaurant that can only crop up in Austin--Mr. Natural, a vegetarian Mexican food restaurant that actually has really good food.

Austin may be the easiest town in the country to be a vegetarian in. Oh, I'm sure that other cities have tons and tons of vegetarian food, but those cities probably don't have the benefit of being smack dab in the middle of Texas, where eating is a holy activity and where a bunch of different strains of Texas and Southern cultures and their foods comingle. Add to the mix that there are like 3 restaurants for every person here, because this is a town where everyone is single, doesn't cook ('cause it's almost pointless for one or even two people) and needs lots and lots of places to meet up with friends. And then add in that a huge percentage of people are vegetarians. You pretty much have to have some vegetarian dishes on your menu if you want to capture the lucrative market of young, single people--even those who eat meat have friends who don't, meaning that they will favor places with vegetarian dishes. It's inspired a lot of creativity.

While we were dropping my friend and her husband back off at the hotel, we passed the bride and her entourage as they swept out on the way to the wedding's location to finish getting dressed. They breezed passed us with serious faces, well as serious as one can look with your hair in curlers, under a scarf. They were toting giant tackleboxes full of make-up and duffel bags full of hair supplies, contemplating their task of dressing, make-up and hair with a mix of determination and giddiness. They were artists and this was their gallery night.

The rest of the weekend was dominated by shows. And of course the people-watching at shows. Last night we went to see Ben Bell and the Stardust Boys at Ego's, a show that had an eclectic crowd--older people from the neighborhood (Ego's is a hole in the wall with the crappiest parking in town), a flurry of young women drinking wine and tequila sunrises, the usual crew of goofy musicians, a gaggle of college kids who weren't there to see the show and us. Ben was in full guilty pleasures mode, and we got to hear covers done in western swing style of everything from "Staying Alive" to "Wish You Were Here". It turns out that disco translates really well to western swing.

We left after the show, while a bunch of indie dudes that looked like they had just happened to wander in started actually setting up on stage. It caused me to wonder if those guys went out of their way to look like they just stumbled in there, or if they were really just stoned and therefore couldn't look like they had a purpose if they tried. We went to Beerland and saw the Ugly Beats, a band that may not be doing anything really new but makes you not give a shit because they are so damn good at what they do.

And now I've got a pile of laundry and some reading and non-blog stuff to catch up on.

Friday cat blogging

2005-02-18T17:37:00.000-06:00

Max gives a raspberry to the forces that delayed his cat blog.

Credit where credit is due

2005-02-18T13:47:00.000-06:00

The emails and blog posts about PEEK turned into quick action on their part.

You may notice the new additions to our baby blogroll. While feedback to PEEK has generally been very positive, several readers -- many of whom are bloggers themselves -- have expressed disappointment at the paucity of women and people of color in our blogroll, a regrettable error for which we apologize. The blogroll was posted as a reflection of our reader survey and was not an editorial determination of the blogs or subject matter we find most important. So, in an effort to correct this inaccurate reflection of our focus, and the blogosphere in general, we humbly offer a handful of the blogs written by women and people of color that are, and will remain, on PEEK's radar, and assure you that the coming days and weeks will see more of the same. I'm heartened by the concerns and tenacity of our readers and their willingness to act on them. It's that yearning for dialog that makes the blogosphere the most exciting and dynamic development on the media landscape! -- Evan

I am really heartened by this, and flattered that this blog is one of the new additions. And I'm going to throw my support to them for taking the criticism so well and blogrolling them myself.

Women don't really want to be free, you see

2005-02-18T12:51:00.000-06:00

I just got around to reading this article in Salon where a bunch of wives of men who contributed to a book on the subject of commitment get a chance to offer their side of the story. I'm sure it's an interesting book, and I hope to god it isn't as dedicated to trotting out the stereotype that men have to be cajoled, deceived, or forced into committed relationships with us lowly women as this article leads one to believe. One interviewee, Danielle Mattoon, seems to believe that women crave matrimony and men fear it.

Women find a sort of solace in a certain amount of solidity; they eagerly move toward these things that bind them to the world, like a husband and family. And men see it as a taking away of their freedoms; for them, each step is a reduction of their liberties, whereas women find certain amount of liberation in knowing where they stand.

You know, it would be interesting to gather up an informal survey asking people who are married or in committed relationships who pushed for commitment. I'll bet you'd find that it's not nearly as much woman-pushing/men-fleeing as you'd think. I'd hazard a guess that half of people would say that no one pushed, it just happened. And the other half would be divided up evenly between who was the one who asked for a commitment and who was the one who agreed. Though I wouldn't call it pushing--my boyfriend "pushed" for the commitment from me, but it's not like I was fighting him on it or anything.

If you're a single woman and you want to get a rise out of people (and do, it's fun), tell them that you don't think of yourself as a settling down type. This is especially funny to do to a man who is fixing to take a drink of beer. Well, if you're a mean person like I am, it's funny. Emphasize that you like to be "free". When you're a woman, people won't even pretend that being "free" from monogamy means anything but that you want to slut that shit all over town.

I'd almost rather hear people be upfront and spread the bullshit stereotype that men like to sleep around by nature while women like to knit over the fire. It's even more insulting to talk vaguely of freedom and say that men cherish it more. That means both that women stifle men and that women don't mind being stifled. Whatever--I assure you that women cherish their independence and their personal space as much as men do. And, to make it worse, a lot more women lose a lot more of their "freedom" to marriage than men, if only in free time, if nothing else. "A Room of One's Own" was written nearly a century ago and still people want to believe that women don't long for their freedom from domestic commitments.

And as for "freedom" as a euphemism for being able to sleep with whomever you please, well, truth is that it's human nature both to desire many different people and to want your partner to want and be with only you. These two feelings are not unrelated. However, good, old-fashioned male privilege has created a situation where men feel relatively free to express these desires where women have to toe the line a little more and be what men hope we are. And straight men, of course, hope that we don't have a roaming eye. And a few fools actually seem to believe the "rather be knitting" myth.

Male privilege in this department has been whittled down considerably over time. Men can pretty much no longer expect to get away with philandering while demanding fidelity from their wives, so that's a start. But there's still many bad attitudes that need rooting out. The myth that women crave marriage and men crave freedom helps reinforce male dominance in a way that's especially cruel, since it's so personal. After all, when negotiating the myriad of compromises that go on in committed relationships, it's awfully helpful to have your partner feel like she should be grateful that you even bothered to show up in the first place.

Cramming a bunch of Austin links in before this crashes again

2005-02-18T11:09:00.000-06:00

Let's all pray that it works.

The Austin Chronicle has a good story on the FCC "crackdown" and how Austin broadcasters are running scared. They focus specifically on the paranoid fear that has plagued the goofy morning show on KLBJ. It's hard to gauge how justified the DJ Dale Dudley is in his paranoia. On one hand, I don't think they've garnered any FCC complaints and may just not be a big enough target for the witch hunts for "indecency" that are going on right now. On the other hand, Dudley has used his morning show gig as a bully pulpit to denounce Bush for a long time now, and I doubt that's gone unnoticed in the capital of Texas. It should be clear now that the Texas Republicans feel free to run the government like the Mafia. If I were him, I'd be scared shitless that some Texas Republicans would trump up a bullshit complaint and sic the FCC on him as petty revenge.

Weekend show recommendations:

Friday--Mr. Lewis and the Funeral Five, of course. Beerland at 8:00. Later that night Attack Formation, Animals of the Bible, Kodiaks, and the Nervous Exits are playing for Ben Webster's birthday.

Saturday--The hard-working Peelander-Z, a Japanese anime superhero group, will be at Beerland, according to the Chronicle. Beerland's website says it's going to be the Ugly Beats, who play straight up garage rock and who I think are the bomb. Either way, we in the audience win.

Ben Bell has sent me an email letting me know that he's playing his birthday show at Ego's starting at 8:00 on Saturday. Ben plays roots-style country music and he's a lot of fun. We'll definitely be going to that and then, if we still have our shit together, we'll probably end up at Beerland. We'll see.

Also that night--Grupo Fantasma at Emo's and Amplified Heat at Room 710.

Friday cat blog--1st half

2005-02-18T07:29:00.000-06:00

Katy assesses the situation carefully before stepping outside.

I'm going to kill myself, the computer, or a random stranger if Blogger doesn't quit fucking up soon. Picture of Max will be up later when I manage both a) to be at home to access the file and b) have a hour to kill while it loads. There better be beer in the fridge when I undertake the momentous cat blogging task, if only so I have something to hang onto.

What She Said!

2005-02-18T07:09:00.000-06:00

From the blog about women who blog, this news.

Not a very promising start for PEEK. Same blogs, different day. Your blogroll is all guys except Wonkette, which isn't really a blog. She has a staff working for her, you know. Real bloggers do their own code and graphics.

Every blogger you listed was male, which is an interesting trick since most bloggers are women.

Needless to say, I'm disappointed that Alternet, which I always felt offered more than the requisite token nod to feminism every once in awhile that the "where are the women bloggers" crew gives, couldn't blogroll a single blog that is explicitly feminist.

Oh wait. Yes they did. And it's written by a man. Not to put down Alas, a Blog at all--god knows I love hanging out over there and appreciate the community that has grown up over there. But c'mon! Feminism, suffice it to say, is nothing without women.

Friday Random Ten--The Raincoats Stole My Sunshine Edition

2005-02-18T06:10:00.000-06:00

You know the drill. You know the woman. Wish her happy birthday.

1. "Powder Blue"--Ween
2. "QMart"--808 State
3. "Jungle Rock"--The Chimes of Freedom
4. "'Til the Blood Ran"--Dos
5. "I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore"--Dusty Springfield
6. "The Future"--Leonard Cohen
7. "Fairytale in the Supermarket"--The Raincoats
8. "Rudie Can't Fail"--The Clash
9. "Da Doo Ron Ron"--The Crystals
10. "Stealing Hubcaps"--Billy Ledbetter

Most of this music is sort of gloomy, which does fit our rainy weather today. I have friends visiting from D.C. this weekend and I was hoping that it would be a warm Texas February, like high of 75, for their visit. You know, if only to convince them to move back.

More on an ugly obsession

2005-02-17T15:45:00.000-06:00

Well, the filming of the MTV show that shall not be named has begun in Austin. And we have a cast list, at least a rumored one.

Areula 22 - Cauasian short dark-haired punk girl
Cheng 20 - Cantonese party girl
Dan 23 - Cauasian musclar guy
Freddy 22 - gay puerto rican guy
Jeff 23 - Cauasian country guy
Jo Anna 23 - Cauasian long haired brunette girl
Marc (or Marcus) 19 - black guy

Rumor has it that they have been seen all over the downtown area. This site has a list of etiquette rules to follow for fans of the show who interact with the cast and crew. For our purposes, consider a guide not of what not to do, but of what to do if you have half a chance.

All the crew really cares about is being able to film an undisturbed sequence without too many local goofballs screwing it up. So, what does this mean to you? Ignore them. Thinking about mugging for the camera? Don't. You will *never* be put on the show and will only end up looking like an ass-hat to anyone nearby.

Translation: Acting like an ass on-camera ruins their shot, so do exactly that every opportunity you get. Think of it as giving the editing crew overtime pay.

If all goes smoothly, a crew member carrying a release form on a clipboard will walk up to you and have you sign a form allowing your image to be used (and not blurred out). If nobody approaches you to sign a release, then whatever you did isn't going to be used (or you're going to be blurred out). Please try not to cry.

There are a number of things you can do with this advice, but the number one thing I suggest is bawling like a baby because they didn't give you a release form to sign after you made a lewd gesture at the virgin. And if you've ever watched the show, you'll know who the virgin is.

The producers have complained of photos being taken using flashbulbs. This has ruined a couple of good scenes more than once.

I don't think I need to elaborate on the Mouse Words alternate suggestion. I'm just amused that last night I was actually complaining that my camera flashed too brightly.

I can't believe that I even have to say this, but please don't think that you can hang around outside The House anytime you please. Especially at 3 AM after you've had too many Shiner Bocks. There is usually an undercover police officer watching the place 24/7.

That's good to know. Scratch the egging plans.

Remember the cop? He wants to throw you down on the ground. If the cop still decides to cuff you and drag you away, try not to cry.

I agree. A better plan is to yell, "MTV is brutalizing me!" as they drag you away kicking and screaming.

To sum up: Be yourself. Don't mug for the camera. Don't use a flash. Don't stalk the house. No crying.

And just because you may not want your face on MTV doesn't mean there aren't many other fabulous, if insufficiently sun-kissed body parts to get on camera.

I get a pretty award

2005-02-17T12:57:00.000-06:00

A lovely heart from Media Girl for snarking on Valentine's Day. Next I shall snark on President's Day and see what comes of that.

Books and partners

2005-02-17T12:55:00.000-06:00

I got Nick Hornby’s book The Polysyllabic Spree as a Valentine’s gift and it’s even more amusing that I thought it would be. You know you’re a real nerd when you read books about reading books, and I just upped the quotient by turning around and blogging about reading a book about reading books. Hornby meanders all over the place, musing about so many different subjects that it’s downright inspiring to us fellow meanderers.

Anyway, Hornby mentions his family quite a bit in this book, dropping in references mostly to his children but occasionally to his partner. And every time he says the word “partner”, it jars me, as I imagine it would most American readers. Most word choice differences between Americans and the English are inconsequential, but I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t some significance to their willingness to use the word “partners” to describe an unmarried straight couple. In America, “partners” is sort of the consolation prize we’ve given to gay and lesbian couples who would be “spouses” in a more just society. But I don’t think that’s why straight unmarried couples necessarily avoid the word.

I for one gag on the word “partner” to describe my boyfriend. I pretty much only use it when filling out paperwork. It just seems so stuffy to me, even more tedious than the word “husband” would be. It seems kind of sexless. Lawyers have partners; I have a boyfriend. Makes me wonder if the Brits just don’t care to wear their sexual status on their sleeves. Or maybe it really is that Americans are pathetically youth-obsessed and the word “partner” just sounds too mature. I’m leaning towards the latter, especially seeing as how I have realized since cutting my hair short that I am beginning to go gray and it made me pout for a day or so. Which made me feel stupid—did I think it was never going to happen? Mortgage, gray hair, using the words “promotion” and “credit history” when talking to friends, and I balk at the word “partner”. Sad, really.

The irony of all this is that I have a sneaking suspicion that for Homophobic America, the word “partner” doesn’t sound stuffy and sexless at all, but instead invokes a delicious, sexy, forbidden world. Of course, unlike the oceanic gulf that changes the connotation of “partner” between America and England, people like me who think the word is stuffy are living and working next to people who flinch to hear it.

That thought does cause me to despair a little of people ever getting through to each other—when you can’t even use a word like “partner” without invoking wildly different reactions in people who all ostensibly speak the same language, how to speak in complete sentences and be understood? But hell, we have mountains of historical evidence that people do in fact manage to cross boundaries and change minds.

The insanity continues

2005-02-17T06:51:00.000-06:00

So, let me get this straight. Bush barely won an election in no small part because his campaigners ran around the country telling people that if they don't vote for Bush, dudes will be kissing each other right in front of them in church. And now that he's back in office with a mandate to stop gays from marrying each other, he's tossing that out the window and instead working on his true love--empire building. Also, dismantling a century's worth so social services that made this country great, because it's making the poor too uppity. The lives of millions of Iraqi citizens and probably people all over the Middle East are at stake, as are the lives of millions of young Americans who will have to go over there to put the lives of Middle Easterners in danger to control them. Back home, the lives of all of us who aren't going to retire rich are at stake, and if Bush gets away with destroying Social Security, all sorts of other havoc will ensue. Entire cities in this country are built around public services. For instance, Austin is built around UT and if the anti-government nuts destroy the university, the city's economy will go with it.

Empire building, killing, and ruining lives is a pretty difficult thing to get past the American people. What's a President to do? I know, let's find an ass-licking toady to sit in with the White House press corps and ask ass-licking questions to while away our time that might otherwise be spent exposing our evil plans to the people who could stop us! Great idea, Karl! But who.....?

They found themselves a gay prostitute to do the dirty work. I'm sure there's a reason they didn't go with anyone else, but that's not the point. Why is anyone on the left wringing their hands over the politics of outing the guy? Bush would love nothing better than to put his family and party in charge of an empire while you and I spend our retirement eating fucking dog food, and he's getting away with it, in no small part because his willingness to pay lip service to homophobia is making people think he's a godly man. What's the issue here? BushCo is hoping that our better natures keep us from exposing their facades to voters they intend to impoverish with one hand while thumping a gay strawman with a Bible with the other hand. If we can't get people to see that they are going to be really sorry for voting for him due to walletbook and dog food issues, then I don't see why not show them that even the homophobia they voted for was a sham.

I cannot work up a modicum of worry for this Gannon asshole. I see no point in letting him denounce other gay people from the safety of his closet while helping the administration spread war and poverty across the planet. I for one am cheering on those who are digging into this and announcing every piece of dirt they find. Go for it, people, and let's hope it makes a difference.

And that's a wrap! Rant over.

Onto the mundane

2005-02-16T20:46:00.000-06:00

Life is in the details here at Mouse Words. And after spending a couple days reading all the sturm und drang at Alas over the presence of men in the feminist movement, I'm ready to talk about silly shit. Which, weirdly enough, worms its way over to me from Hugo's blog. (I refuse to talk about how these are both male-run blogs. Well, unless you really want to start shit, which people are always welcome to do at my blog, knowing full well I never ask my commenters to be civil. Rip some shit, people. Seriously. I'm bored.)

Anyway, in the entire discussion about deconstructing male and female roles, it sort of drifted over to the one expectation that weighs heavily on men in the ever-fascinating courting process of actually initiating contact. This is actually a somewhat new expectation, relatively speaking. In the past, introducing yourself to someone was pretty much rude across the board. In our modern life, it's pretty much expected that you have to do this sometimes, lest no one gets laid ever, and the burden has fallen to men. (Don't even start to whine. You may think that it's a huge burden to work up the courage to speak to a woman, but that's like a 10 minute ordeal. Shaving, doing hair, picking out clothes, and doing make-up to make you someone want to work up the courage is a hell of a bigger time issue. And it's a bigger leap of faith.)

It's as obvious as a beehive hairdo that under the New Feminist Milieu that working up the courage to approach someone should be an equal opportunity thing. However, many heterosexual feminists like myself find that we still manage rarely, if ever, to approach men. It's not an ill will issue; it's a logic issue. Lynn Gazis-Sax puts it perfectly.

I have to confess, I didn't do a lot of initiating in my single days, even though I do and did believe, as a feminist, that that role should be shared. The reason is, when I know that all the guys expect to be initiating, it's hard for me not to assume that the reason a guy hasn't approached me yet is that he just isn't interested in me anyway, and so why bother?

She's got it. I have always felt guilty about my indifference to pursuing men with the dogged determination I have been on the receiving end of in my time. Not that this is a constant problem or anything, but even one guy pursuing me is 100% better than the nothing from my side. See, it's all relative.

It's a weird sort of feminist guilt to look back and realize that I let men initiate pretty much all dates, relationships, whatever. I mean, on an individual level, each one is not really a big deal. My current boyfriend and I met because I bitched out some dick who was hassling some random girls I was standing beside and myself at a show. Those girls turned out to be friends of my boyfriend's and so they pushed him into asking me out. As shit just sort of happens like that, it's hard to really frame it terms of 50/50 or anything like that. But looking at my whole romantic history, it becomes clear that I never really directly approached a man pretty much ever.

And it's like Lynn says, it's because the gender assumptions create these sort of hard to break patterns that have a logical intergrity. Men are trained to take the risk, so if a man doesn't take the risk, you can assume that he doesn't like you. (On the other side of it, if a woman glares at you and looks away, men know to give up. Or they should.) It's pretty frustrating, because this little trick of logic has created this odd pattern where men and women become more and more equal all the time in negotiating their relationships, dicussing their sexual needs, the whole bit. And yet getting the ball rolling is still pretty much left up to men.

I'm in a steady relationship now that has the sort of inertia anyone with a good grip on reality delights in, but I know that if I were single, I'd probably fall back into my old habits. Again, it just makes sense. If you like a guy and he's ignoring you, odds are he doesn't like you so why waste your time? I see how it plays out and it frustrates me, but I don't see a good way out of it. You can't teach guys to be more reticient--that's not fair to them. But teaching girls to be forward has only limited use, and efforts in that direction will be dashed on the first guy that strings them along and they take solace in books with obnoxiously long titles about how guys are just not going to be into a sort like you, and everything goes to shit.

It's just kind of odd to me that in so many other ways, men and women are actually making progress towards egalitarian relationships, but this is just a sticking point that seems pretty hard to unstick.

You too can be just like Carrie Bradshaw

2005-02-16T15:49:00.000-06:00

Don't know why you'd want to be the most annoying, neurotic, self-obsessed of the four characters on "Sex and the City", but MSN thinks that is some new kind of feminine ideal to aim for. Apparently, to idolize Carrie, it helps if you've never watched the show. Or at least I'm guessing from this article.

With her fabulous living space, fetishtic fashions, fantastic lovers and an even more fantastic job as a columnist, no one seems to radiate "cool" more than the stylish Carrie Bradshaw from Sex in the City.

Well, Carrie seemed to make about a half mil a year for writing one measly column a week where she just stole her ideas from her friends, so yeah, I'd like her life. Except for the fact that she was totally...not....cool. I mean, the tutu she wears in the credits is the sort of thing that de-cools you for life, unless you wore it before age 12. Or if you're really a ballerina, and even then you're pushing it.

For example, Gloria, who resides in the Midwest, says you do not have to live in New York to have a cosmopolitan influence to your life. "It is all about making yourself feel that you're not part of the pack, but have diverse and sophisticated tastes," she says. "You can do that in a small town."

You know, I live in a medium sized city and I see my friends less than Carrie did, so I'm guessing that it's probably easier to live her life in a small town. Right down to knowing the one town slut and having the friend who is obsessed with having the perfect wedding.

Well, anyway, if you want to be as "cool" as Carrie, and "cool" seems to be defined as a sex appeal thing, which I guess it is in a way, despite it being oh so much more and really, who wants to be "cool" if that means that you are an annoying neurotic who sleeps with guys for silly reasons...fuck it, here's the tips.

*For example, are you open to new love, strange love or different love? "I've always admired those people who took a chance, or even a big risk, on a relationship that might frighten most people," says Rachel, a magazine editor. "I've always thought those were the coolest people, just like Carrie Bradshaw."

I tried to figure out how the hell one is supposed to learn anything except, "Don't date every Tom, Dick and Harry, because it's a massive waste of time," off Carrie's escapades on the show. And then I realized that this tip is just another way of exhorting the female audience to lower our standards or we'll never find a man. It's the hip new way of settling for fear of being a spinster.

*Are you fashionable but are you also frugal, asks Alicia, a graduate student?

Streeeetching the definiton of frugal just a little there when discussing the Manolas and the Prada that Carrie wore on the show, leading us to wonder if she was a high-priced hooker on top of her high-paying writing gig. Maybe by frugal they mean that you should skip eating in order to afford high-priced fashion. After a couple months of starving and tottering around on stillettos, you may make it as a fashion model and finally have the money to afford some of those clothes.

"But I always thought it was great when you could stand out in the crowd, like Carrie does on the show."

This, she says, can be done by choosing a wardrobe from a vintage clothing store as well as a Fifth Avenue shop. "In fact, there is something that is so individual about finding clothes that say you are eclectic, but far from expensive," she says.

Ah yes, the advice to go to vintage stores so that you can have "individual" looking clothes. This makes the hair on the back of my snotty little neck go up. You can't just plunk someone who's been shopping at Banana Republic all her life down in the middle of a vintage shop or, for hard core thrift shoppers, an actual thrift store and expect her to just toss together something that looks almost like Armani. Hell, you can't expect that of your typical vintage shoppers, who tend to have a definition of "original" that might be a little bit outside of the TV character "originality" standards.

*Does your living space feel like no other place?

Nope, looks like every other dumpster in town.

"It's not as much about having an apartment in the hippest part of town as it is making the place feel distinctive and unmatched," says Leona, a teacher. "I think some of the coolest living space has been in the funkiest buildings in the most diverse neighborhoods."

Yep, if you're a fan of the Pottery Barn but want to be "cool" to attract more guys, you are definitely going to get on super-well with the ones that love your pad after you make it look Bohemian. There are few times when you feel cooler than when you're trying to explain to your "musician" boyfriend that you dated to demonstrate that you don't do the same old thing over and over why he can't move in without getting a job first.

I kid, I kid. This isn't necessarily what happens when you date musicians. Like, only half the time does this happen.

*Are you smart and worldly, asks Jeff, who works at a television station? "I think the coolest thing about women such as Carrie is her ability to communicate and interpret," he says. "Being smart makes a woman interesting and attractive, but knowing how to find information — and, more importantly, how to use it — is just plain sexy to me."

Any guy's definition of "worldly" and "smart" is a girl who can look shit up on Google is neither.

*Can you move on with your life, asks Lisa, a graphic artist? "I think the cool thing about the Carrie Bradshaw character is how she had evolved on the show — whether it was with a new relationship or it was a career shift," she says.

More evidence they never watched the show. I cannot for the life of me figure out how mooning over the same guy for 5 years is "moving on". And she never had a career shift, and I don't blame her. If I could gossip about my friends once a week and make enough to keep me in Prada, I'd cling to that job as if my life depended on it.

However, she did change her style like once a month, and if that's what they mean by "moving on", I wouldn't be surprised.

The mommy backlash is now really underway

2005-02-16T11:43:00.000-06:00

Seems like Judith Warner's article in the New York Times was just a warm-up to a longer one in Newsweek. Of course, the trend of pushing back at the mommy myth was kicked off by the book by Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels. Douglas and Michaels had an astute feminist view of the whole mommy myth thing, which is that it is backdoor way of rebuilding a culture of female servitude--if we can't demand that women live for men anymore, then we will simply say that women live for children.

Anyway, because it was in Newsweek, I had real fears that the feminist critique of the problem would be watered down, but it wasn't as bad as I feared. Warner, for instance, breaks protocol and blames society.

They've been bred to be independent and self-sufficient. To rely on their own initiative and "personal responsibility." To privatize their problems. And so, they don't get fired up about our country's lack of affordable, top-quality child care. (In many parts of the country, decent child care costs more than state college tuition, and the quality of the care that most families can afford is abysmal.) Nor about the fact that middle class life is now so damn expensive that in most families both parents must work gruelingly long hours just to make ends meet. (With fathers averaging 51 hours per week and mothers clocking in at an average of 41, the U.S. workweek is now the longest in the world.) Nor about the fact that in many districts the public schools are so bad that you can't, if you want your child to be reasonably well-educated, sit back and simply let the teachers do their jobs, and must instead supplement the school day with a panoply of expensive and inconvenient "activities" so that your kid will have some exposure to music, art and sports.

Good so far, and even better than she makes practical suggestions for collective action later in the article. But am I asking for too much when I ask that these things stop being considered the problems of just women or just mothers? Men want their kids to be safe and well-educated, don't they? Warner gives a nod to the fact that men are overworked, too, and that this is a problem for families but then drops it.

I don't think she's deliberately trying to excuse men, really, it's just that women are probably the ones that are most frazzled by the demands of child-rearing. And that's because they do most of the work. It's a difficult tightrope to walk, acknowledging that men have time issues too while trying to figure out a workable solution while oh-so-gently trying to hint that maybe women would be a little happier if they didn't have to do everything around the house.

Now that I've complained, I don't have any solutions. I'm not going to have kids, in no small part in order to wiggle out of finding out if I could get their father to pull his fair share or not. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to that particular battle. But I know well enough that this problem isn't going to go away without a some men's Me Time getting sliced into, and the only intellectually honest route is to just admit it.

Zepplin is tedious, so please get over it

2005-02-16T06:51:00.000-06:00

What's a blog for if not expressing redundant opinions? Just like in the last post, I resisted commenting on this earlier, but I can't help it now. The Led Zepplin fans have swarmed on Salon to attack Neal Pollack for saying he thinks Green Day is better than Zepplin, and frankly, they need to get a life. (So says the woman who is attacking the attackers on her blog.)

Here's my opinion, and you're welcome to disagree, if you'd like. But don't think I won't worry that I will soon be spotting you at a kegger with your hair in a ponytail wondering why the cute girl who looks like Bjork won't talk to you. Zepplin is a tedious bore. And demanding that other fans kneel before them in worship, and thereby kneeling before their tedious fans in adolation is exactly why people feel the need to pick on them, their fans and muscle cars, just to cover all our bases.

Am I an insufferable hipster because I hate Zepplin? Sure, why not? I don't think I really have the time to be an insufferable hipster and my attitude is far too "Gee, shucks" really to pull it off, but whatever. Regardless of my reasons for saying so, the fact of the matter is that classic rock is a fucking racket. The only purpose behind setting aside certain bands from the 60s and 70s and deeming them "classic" is to flatter male Boomers. And to dare say that anything else might be better is apparently to cause an entire generation's balls to retreat directly into their bodies, as is evidenced by this letter.

Pollack continues to undermine his credibility by publicly proclaiming his ignorance of the existence of one the preeminent guitar legends of classic rock -- Dickey Betts.

The bottom line is how can a person be a music critic, and actually a published author, while seemingly possessing the musical acumen of a pre-pubescent teenage suburbanite?

Aw, seriously--fuck that. I don't think you have to be braindead to like rock music or anything, but this guy used the words "preeminent" and "acumen" in the same fucking letter about a rock band that took a bunch of classic blues riffs, tore them shit, barfed them all over the stage and got their cocks sucked nightly for it.

And younger people who worship the music of the Boomers at the expense of all that came before or after? Have some dignity, please.

I am calling you naive -- actually, ignorant, naive and/or biased. I think you need to do some homework on Zeppelin. Just because your teeny-bopper days were spent listening to Green Day (as were some of mine) doesn't make this a monumental band. You can make such a statement because you've heard "Stairway to Heaven" on the radio.

Slurring Green Day as the music of your teeny-bopper days--oooh, burn! God knows that Led Zepplin always had a fan base of mature, thoughtful adults, as my mother no doubt was when she got her first Zepplin album in high school. Don't let the giggly inscriptions in her yearbook fool you--she was a first class burgeoning music critic. And sure, it may have seemed that my stoner dad and his friends just liked to smoke pot and listen to Zepplin and Floyd and yes, Fleetwood Mac to pass the time, but they knew that they were making music history. How could they not?

Like Zepplin if you want to, but I got sick of the adulation in high school and I'm sad to see even younger people than me falling for this shit. Anyway, it's downright cruel to worship Led Zepplin or even listen to a radio program that says, "Get the Led out" at any point in its broadcast. Robert Plant's ego is big enough and if it gets any bigger, he may blow up from the pressure. Hmmmm....then again, maybe it would be best to keep puffing him up.

Trying not to get sucked in, failing miserably

2005-02-15T18:24:00.000-06:00

I've been watching the debates on the movie Deep Throat over at Alas with interest, though rarely commenting. I never watched the movie beginning to end, and consider anyone who would watch a porn beginning to end someone who is missing the point entirely. Despite this, I fully agree that the plot is a retarded, juvenile male fantasy, but I can't work up the enthusiasm to care. If my sexual fantasies were held up for examination, I doubt that I would pass the maturity test, much less the not using the opposite sex as mere objects test. Nope, I'd flunk.

What I find interesting is the discussion around Linda Lovelace/Boreman's various accounts of that period of her life. From what I understand, after she became born-again and married a Christian man, L/B joined up with the anti-pornography feminists. I don't doubt that she was abused during her years in the porn industry, especially by her husband. Like I said in the comments at Alas, back then it was a criminal industry that operated like prostitution does now, and pimp behavior is to be expected. In a sexist culture, misogyny and exploitation of women is bound to be the standard on the edges of society.

But I really do think that anti-porn feminists might be a tad too eager to embrace Boreman's sad story to indict the very existence of pornography. Not that it isn't a legitimate thing to say that rape and abuse of women in the industry is an argument against it, of course. And maybe my issue comes from the fact that I don't think that rape and abuse have to be a part of pornography--as I've said before, I think that abuse is the result of misogyny, not sexual explicitness, and attacking porn itself instead of dealing with how misogyny gets eroticized in the first place is a band-aid solution that is bound to backfire. But here's the thing that drives me batshit crazy when I see Boreman's story brought up--born-again Christians dedicated to a patriarchal ideal are just another manifestation of the same sexism that you see in the porn world.

Two sides, same coin. Good, Christian patriarchal households breed just as much rape and abuse of women, and probably a hell of a lot more, than the porn industry. Well-meaning feminists should reconsider standing with anti-porn activists that come from the Christian right, regardless of whether they really do think they have a common enemy or not. I'm not going to waste time arguing my pro-porn feelings, as I have wasted enough space doing that. Sexists in porn want all women to be whores; sexists in religion want us all to be virgins. The lot of them can kiss my ass.

I really hate seeing feminists who hate porn suck it up and admire someone for submitting to what amounts to just a different set of soul-sucking standards for female behavior in order to solidify their case. I was talking with a friend today about this and that and I mentioned that I am all-too familiar with what I call the Good Woman's smile, common enough to Good Christian Texan Women. It's easy enough to spot--tight smile, sad eyes, resigned shoulders. It freezes on your face after years of having your soul crushed repeatedly by having family, town, husband, everything demand that you be a solid rock of pleasant femininity, with no needs or desires of your own. Yeah, and that includes the desire to let loose once in awhile and go crazy in the sack. Or just the desire to blow off smiling beatifically at your husband while wishing that you were at home watching your TV show in peace instead.

By no means am I saying that porn is a cure for that. Far from it. I'm just saying that insipid male fantasies of women whose only sexual pleasure is pleasuring men isn't at all different in my mind from the social demand that good Christian wives float through life without any apparent desires other than serving others. Maybe Linda Boreman saw things differently, and that's her right. If her new religion and her new family was a respite from domestic violence, then god knows I don't blame her. But it would do well for those of us looking at this from a political angle to be careful not to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

Transit issues and a reader request

2005-02-15T08:28:00.000-06:00

Lawrence Krubner sent me an email requesting that I link to this blog by Alex Marshall, which covers urban issues. I have to admit, the post on the main page impressed me--for some reason, transit issues tend to get people emotionally bent out of shape, but rarely do you read anything that addresses why it is that people's emotions cloud their thinking on this issue.

Of course, I'm wildly biased because I have been supportive of building a light rail in Austin from day one. But I still have to say that the anti-public transportation people I meet tend to get far more riled up than any of the pro-public transportation people I meet. Maybe they feel defensive. I'm sure it also has something to do with the fact that pro-public transportation people aren't usually arguing against cars so much as arguing for diversity, as Marshall makes clear in this article. Anti-public transportation folks are in a position of arguing "my way or the highway", which can probably be a strain on the nerves.

Here in Austin, things have grown particularly ugly around the issues of a light rail and better bike lane access. It's a Rednecks vs. Hippies thing. And more than a few Rednecks are positive that if they start seeing train stations and bikes all over the city, then the Hippies will have won and we are all going to hell. The "lifestyle" divide has really drained a lot of the common sense out of people, something you can witness frequently in the letters to the editor at the Chronicle, though things have kind of simmered down after light rail passed in this last election.

On the Redneck side of the divide, I can sort of understand the frustration with the bike lanes. Bike lanes have to be built into the side of already existing roads, and many roads in Austin are already narrow. Stick a bike lane on them, and it's hard to navigate, especially for people who drive enormous pick-ups or SUVs. I understand the frustration, but I can't help but say, "Tough." Drive a gas-sucking monstrosity if you want, but don't complain when stuck behind someone who is doing their part to balance out your wastefulness. It would do well for the Hippies on the other side not to use their self-righteousness to exaggerate the amount of hostility they receive when out on their bikes, however.

All common sense has gone out the window for a number of Rednecks I encounter who oppose the light rail, especially those who live waaaaay out in the suburbs and have to crawl along in traffic everyday, burning the hell out of that $1.90 a gallon gasoline. If the light rail reduces their time in traffic, why bitch about it? It's particularly maddening to hear someone bitch who lives outside of Travis County--shut up and be grateful that we are paying to lighten your traffic load, I say. But Marshall here is right. The issue is one of image, and people are so in love with the "individuality" of driving a car that they are blocking common sense and they are also blocking the fact that you aren't much of a free spirit when sitting in traffic driving the same Ford Expedition as half the people on the road as you'd like to think you are.

Anyway, it's a good post. I wish I could think of strategies to lessen anti-public transportation sentiment borne out of the anxiety that it's somehow un-American to ride a light rail or even to ride a bike somewhere. Pointing out the emotional context of the arguments is a good start, though.

Children wrecking romance

2005-02-15T07:12:00.000-06:00

Jill at Third Wave Agenda links to this article by Judith Warner about how paying too much attention to your kids can suck life out of your marriage. I have to admit, my first reaction was, despite my desire to build bridges and all that, a bit of gloating. Though not really at anyone who has post-child marital problems, really, but just at those who say that the entire purpose of marriage is child-rearing. Whoops!

But then I got over it, because this article is based on a false premise--that you only have X amount to love to give and if you give it to your children, you can't give it to your spouse. I don't see any real evidence of this, and if child-bearing is hard on marriages, it's probably not an abstract love issue but a solid time and money issue.

But the thing about this article that really grated on my nerves is that once you strip away the gloss of modernity, the weak nod to the fact that there are two parents who may be neglecting their duty to love each other, you are left with just another tedious exhortation to women to be all things to all people. Yes, you need to be a good mommy, but don't forget that there's nothing sexy about burp rags and sippee cups. Always, always, always remember, if shit is going downhill in the family or love department, it is solely the fault of women.

In many marriages, erotic love has been supplanted by what The New Yorker once called "the eros of parenthood." Up to 20 percent of couples now report having sex no more than 10 times a year, qualifying them for what the experts call "sexless marriages." Many mothers freely admit to preferring their children's touch to their husband's, without regret or shame.

Lesson: It's great to love your baby, but don't neglect to baby the Big Boy. There's no indication here that a wife can feel neglected, too, and that can actually damage a marriage as well. Instead we have this peculiar image of a woman handing out caresses and not being careful enough to dole a fair share out to her husband.

Thanks for that inch, may we please have our mile?

2005-02-14T18:14:00.000-06:00

Damn. Jesse Taylor fisks this article by Dawn Eden where she objects to an anti-rape campaign, because apparently teaching college kids about the importance of consent, they are implying that, well, it's okay for girls to consent. The sluts. The article plumbs new lows of immorality in the right wing quest to blame cunt-having women for absolutely everything, sure, but the leaps of logic are really quite a thing to behold.

Picture students, many of them teenagers, wearing "Consent is Sexy" buttons on a college campus. What kind of message does that give? It's intentionally provocative. By using the words "Consent" and "Sexy" together, it implies, "Say yes! I'm easy! Do me!" — a message that is, or rather should be, the exact opposite of the V-Day campaign's intended mission.

Yeah, I read it five or six times for some semblance of sense, too, and couldn't find it. It's understandable, though, that a campaign about the importance of consent would confuse your average right-winger. After all, this is a campaign about sexual morality aimed mostly at men, and, as we all know from our abstinence-only educations, the people in charge of sexual morality are women. Well, men are supposed to not fuck each other, but that's it.

But yes, this is grossly immoral. The comment about how offering consent ("do me") is an open invitation to being raped functions only to blur the lines between consensual sex and rape. And of course, it's in that blur that rapists become innocent victims of their own penises that they have no control over and victims become the victimizers, running around provocatively female and just asking for it.

I imagine your average teenager is a hell of a lot more capable of understanding the point behind this campaign than Dawn Eden is. I think that it's extremely important for young men to get some kind of message that their relationships with women will be much more fulfilling if they treat women like full human beings instead of cunts on legs. And it's a hard task to undertake when there are writers out there like Eden who are encouraing the notion that if a young man sees the word "sexy" anywhere near the body of a young woman, he is simply incapable of considering what she's saying and instead is forced to have sex with her whether she likes it or not.

Extremely random thoughts on romantic comedies

2005-02-14T12:15:00.000-06:00

One habit I've been spared from developing is a love of romantic comedies, aka "chick flicks". They make me want to kill myself, particularly any with Meg Ryan in them, being oh-so-adorable and just a little but not too quirky. But pretty much all of them make me wildly self-conscious, because I am far from immune to wanting to believe in the fantasy. Who doesn't want some man to come out of the blue and see you as the wonderful gal you really are and sweep you off your feet? But then you get back to normal life and people who are just taking each other for granted and frankly, it depresses the hell out of me. So romantic comedies and me are not friends.

Romantic comedies make me sort of wish that the women's weepers would come back, especially the ones where everyone doesn't realize how much they really loved the heroine until she's passed. Well, okay I don't want them to come back because the mere thought of watching something like Beaches again makes me throw up a little in my mouth, but really, it just seems more satisfying to me to fantasize about how sorry everyone would be if you just disappeared rather than fantasizing that one day someone might really notice how great you really are. Of course, this all makes me think that a real blockbuster movie would combine the two elements--you know, instead of the heroine dying, she is carted off by John Cusack in a convertible, leaving behind her ungrateful husband and kids to gnash their teeth and wish that they had appreciated her while she was there. Of course, someone has probably already made this movie for all I know.

The romantic comedies that are exempt from my "kill 'em all" rule are the ones from the 30s and 40s where the hero and the heroine wear each other into love through endless teasing. That's just good, clean fun. True, it's just as much a fantasy as anything else--in real life, most people do not even befriend someone who rides their ass, much less fall in love with them--but at least in this fantasy there are some good jokes. And of course, there's sexual tension, which makes the romance far more believable than a story about why Wildly Romantic Men and Annoyingly Cute Girls simply have to be together. Annie Hall gets to live as well, because while it's classified as a romantic comedy, it's really more of a failed romance comedy. If you haven't had your own version of the spider scene happen at least once in your life, my friends, you don't know the weird ways of love.

If you want to be a romantic sucker this Valentine's Day, I recommend small, easy-to-manage bursts of romantic fantasizing. 'Tis a far, far better thing to enjoy a good love song rather than an insipid date movie. RJ at Night Light has a great suggestion list. He is my new hero for including "Amanda" by Don Williams, the one and only song with my name in it that I like. If Barry Manilow ever finds himself alone with me in a dark alley, I'm telling you now that he's gonna wish he had never written "Mandy".

Valentine's Day disappointment protection

2005-02-13T20:22:00.000-06:00

The pressure is on to be a sex goddess, a nubile virgin and a fairy princess all rolled into one this Valentine's Day, or at least to have one mind-numbing orgasm followed by a bout of basking in the glow of good lighting and the adoration of your well-muscled yet sparsely hairy mate while you lay beatifically with your hair spread beautifully out on your soft white pillows. iVillage is here to help if you can't figure out how to do this on your own. Be not afraid, good women! We will help you have a sexy and fulfilling holiday!

Make this a special time to focus on love. But instead of buying into the tireless emphasis on chocolates and roses or longing for that perfect mate (no one is perfect), adopt an attitude of gratitude about the good things that love can bring to your life. Do it with or without a partner by your side.

Oh yes, we forgot to tell you. This article is aimed not only at women who struggle to be happy despite being all-too-human women in love with all-too-human men, but also at single women. Just because you don't have a boyfriend doesn't mean you are exempt from skipping our advice on boyfriend-related activities. Just pretend you have a boyfriend--same difference. I mean, since you're doing all the work anyway, the actual physical presence of a man is just a formality.

Uplift your environment. Play romantic music in your boudoir and bring in luscious velvets or anything else that makes you feel sexy.

Luckily, since you are a wealthy woman from the 19th century who happens to have a stereo and a mail order catalog, you get to both have a room in your house you call a boudoir and the music and made-to-order fabrics. And your lucky man gets to have a woman who knows her way in and out of a corset. Hopefully, he can work a bottle of smelling salts for you.

Make specific plans to show your love to your partner.

I guess we forgot about the single women there. Or, I guess you could leave that "steamy phone message" they speak about to yourself. The nice thing is, it won't surprise and embarass you that way.

Start a special ritual for self-love. Some ideas include creating a sacred spot in your bedroom or private closet where you place pictures of ones you love (even a pet may do),

Now see here! I cannot condone the practice of self-love in your closet to a picture of Fido, goddammit! Masturbation is a beautiful thing, so beautiful in fact that you can make good money selling pictures of it. And I fully support masturbating away to all sorts of weird fantasies--Ginger, Mary Ann, and Gilligan sneaking away in a never before seen episode, gang fights drifting into all-male orgies, religious figures and Jenna Jameson--go wild, I don't care. But rubbing one out while gazing on the family pet? I can't go there. Even on Valentine's Day.

I always suggest favorite messages that can propel you into a sense of being loved, like Post-its with little affirmations you write to yourself that you are a worthy woman, a beautiful soul, a sexy beast, an alluring babe.

I see this advice everywhere and I don't see how it works. I mean, I write a message to myself and leave it on the mirror for me to find later and all I can think is, "Damn, that's sad that I had to write to myself," when I see it. Of course, I have really bad and extremely distinctive handwriting. Maybe it's easier for people with indistinct handwriting.

Make the first move. That's what Valentine's Day is really all about, the extension of romantic love. Invite your honey to a dinner on the patio, ride a hired a horse and buggy through the park, take him to the beach or new mall for a pre-dinner walk, go ice-skating or watch a romantic movie, such as Doctor Zhivago, Casablanca, Gladiator or Sleepless in Seattle. You pick!

Oooh...this is the advice for those women who just know that if their men have to plan a damn thing, they won't have any romance at all and will be stuck drinking Pearl in front of the TV for Valentine's Day. I'll tell you a secret, ladies. Taking the initiative isn't going to work, because he'll probably just wonder what's going on and whether you're going to get back in time for his show. If he's too daft to notice the calendar date, dropping big fat hints like carriage rides in the park isn't going to correct his romantic ineptitude.

Wear something revealing such as a lace bodysuit with no bra or a slinky, high-neck dress that snuggles against your skin. Never mind if there are little puffs of flesh here and there. Let go of your expectations about how it's "supposed" to look.

Fun as this is, if it's an addendum to the strategy before this.... If you're pushed to the point that you have to dress like an extra in a Bobby Brown video from the late 80s/early 90s, throw on a normal sweater and jeans, leave him to whatever the fuck he's doing and go fuck someone else. I assure you, it's a far easier way to get his attention.

Get in touch with your inner child. Think of the playful you, and tap into the memories of Valentine's Day when you were young. Before hearts and flowers meant something to you as an adult, Valentine's Day was a celebration filled with anticipation and laughter.

Yep, if Valentine's Day leaves you with paroxysms of anxiety, how better to escape than to go back to that time when you were deathly afraid that you would be getting less cards with silly Garfield pictures on them than anyone else in the class?

Remember the fun you once had, handing out those little lace and red construction paper doilies or grabbing a handful of those sweet hard candies with romantic words like "I love you" or "You are cute!"

Or staring with amazement and envy at that one girl who got these cards from the boys for some mysterious reason while everyone else got cards that said, "You're a great friend!" or "Nice knowing you!" You want real comfort? Remember that girl and think about how she now has a fat husband and four kids and lives to watch "General Hospital". It's wrong to make yourself feel better that way, but it's better than masturbating to your Friday cat blog.

Now for the don'ts.

Try not to wait until the last minute to make a beauty plan. Don't spend the last daylight hours before your date or dinner reservation at the salon getting a new haircut that you may not like -- or worse, getting a bikini wax. Ouch! Be prepared and spend the time you need to feel ready for romance again.

Don't fool yourself. If you weren't loveable this morning, ain't no hairless pussy going to make you loveable tonight.

Never tell yourself that you are not pretty enough, smart enough or valuable enough if a lover doesn't ask you out this year. Find things to do that are going to enrich your day, such as being with good friends, indulging yourself at a spa or taking the kids to a funny movie. Whatever makes you feel good about yourself is exactly what you should do.

Fat husband....four kids...."General Hospital". Damn, I feel better already.

Avoid overdoing it, trying to do everything for everyone. Let the kids go somewhere else for the night, or get your hubby out of your way so you can prep and pamper yourself into a real state of feeling sexy.

This is where iVillage really lets their readers down. How can you dump the loser you married and the kids you bore for a day while you get all prepped up for your date tonight? We need practical advice, dammit!

Don't stress over doing it right.

But please allow yourself a little stress over doing it wrong, especially if wrong is pet pictures.

Bonus cat blog for Valentine's Day

2005-02-13T12:51:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite pictures of my favorite couple.

Vote for Mouse Words!

2005-02-12T23:08:00.000-06:00

Hard as it is for me to believe, but Mouse Words is a finalist for the Koufax Awards for Best New Blog. Earlier, I promised that if I win, I will make a massive ass out myself, with drunken speechifying and boobies. I stand by that promise, even as I realize that I may be closer to winning than I initially thought.

So go vote for me! The blog's name is M-O-U-S-E-W-O-R-D-S. If you're torn between Mouse Words and another, possibly more deserving, blog, consider it your affirmative action vote, a way of reminding people that there are liberal female bloggers. Or vote for me because the other bloggers seem to be the sorts who think their posts through and edit them instead of just throwing any old random shit up and seeing what sticks. Stand up to the tyranny of writers with good grammar and a handle on their dependent clauses and coherent themes! Vote for Mouse Words!

Books I've read recently

2005-02-12T20:51:00.000-06:00

No time like the time that one's boyfriend and house guests are all at band practice to write a blog post about books you've read recently to alleviate boredom. I considered taking up the 50 book challenge after Roxanne and Neal Pollack did it, but since I know myself and my inability to stick with a program, I decided not to. But that doesn't mean I haven't been reading, so here's some stuff I've read since Christmas. A lot of these books were Christmas gifts.

Girl Groups. It's a round-up of various girl groups, written by a guy who collects records of singing groups. I wrote about this book earlier--I have a thing for singers, especially female singers, so it was a lot of fun to read. I don't have the attention span to read full-length biographies of musicians I like, so these collections of short ones are a good way to get the behind-the-scenes fix without getting bored.

Teenage Confidential. My boyfriend bought this for me, mostly for the artwork, I think. It was a quick and interesting read. I'm guessing that most people don't think much on how "teenagers" are a modern concept, pretty much invented in the 20th century. I know I didn't. The sections on the rock and roll culture that arose in the 50s are enjoyable, of course, and the author was careful to remember that the juvenile deliquency "problem" really began during WWII, when young people were left adrift.

America. Yup. "The Daily Show" book. I think everyone got this for Christmas. I had some good laughs reading it, but I have to say that the most fun part was watching my conservative Republican relatives start looking through it cautiously, as if the liberalism might infect by the mere touch and then getting sucked into the humor and just enjoying the book.

We Owe You Nothing. It's a collection of interviews from the magazine Punk Planet. I'm surprised I never checked it out before--the cover photo of Kathleen Hanna is the sort of thing that usually catches my attention. I really enjoyed this book. I liked the inclusive, open-minded attitude of the interviews--even though the editor has strong political views, he was able to get good interviews out of people who disagreed with him or just didn't really give two shits about politics.

Nerve's Guide to Sex Etiquette. Cute, breezy read. A nice antidote to the wretched advice columns that I like to make fun of--the writers, Emma and Lo, make it a point to refute the sexist stereotype that women aren't really that interested in sex. Also, they are very funny women, which may seem like a physical impossibility, but I promise you it isn't. I now know how to behave at an orgy, though I have strong doubts that I will never need that information.

Does this mean Fred Phelps will start making signs that say "God Hates Penguins"?

2005-02-12T19:39:00.000-06:00

Well, this is what decadent liberalism was bound to lead to--flightless sodomite waterfowl, breaking every rule in the book.

(Bremen, Germany) Attempts by a Germany zoo to "convert its gay penguins to heterosexuality have failed the zoo's director said Friday.

On Tuesday 365Gay.com reported that the Bremerhaven Zoo had imported four female penguins from Sweden which it hoped would split up its three gay penguin couples and turn the birds "straight". (story)

But the six gay penguins were not interested in dallying with the other sex, remaining faithful to their same-sex partners.

"The relationships were apparently too strong," said zoo Director Heike Kueck.

The gay males were separated from their mates and one by one the females were introduced. The males pined for their mates until they were reunited.

They could have asked any straight women who like to go dancing in gay clubs about the likelihood of this plan succeeding before they went and wasted their money like that.

I'll bet penguins were the original rebels, anyway. Twenty bucks says they just swam the Great Flood out rather than make the trek down to the desert in order to board Noah's ship like all the godly animals did.

Via XGW.