Posts

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‘Merkins for Mediocrity

Can I just ask, how is it these people who are protesting the Cash for Clunkers program AND national health insurance have never cared about anything before? Is it just Fox News all of a sudden having an investment in getting these people out of their chairs? Maybe. I don’t know. I’d just like to say that I find it astounding that Americans can be so absurd as to be totally enraged by isses about health insurance but a fake war is no big deal.

Baffling.

If I see one more woman on TV who knows nothing about her family finances who has swallowed her husband’s dumbass politics hook line & sinker who doesn’t understand the first goddamn thing about how women and children would benefit the most from a national health insurance system I’m going to go find them & smack them.

They embarrass me, besides, going on television knowing nothing but the freaking republican talking points. I mean, shouldn’t they feel some shame in admitting they never gave a shit about politics before? Enough shame to keep them off TV?

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NYT: Male Rape Increases in Congo

There is too much rape in the news coming out of Africa, but this story, covering the recent spike in male rape victims, should be required reading. It’s not easy to get through.

Aid workers struggle to explain the sudden spike in male rape cases. The best answer, they say, is that the sexual violence against men is yet another way for armed groups to humiliate and demoralize Congolese communities into submission.

And as with female rape victims, the male rape victims are mocked for their suffering:

But nobody knows the exact number. Men here, like anywhere, are reluctant to come forward. Several who did said they instantly became castaways in their villages, lonely, ridiculed figures, derisively referred to as “bush wives.”

Gender-baiting is a worldwide fucking sport, and it tires me. These poor guys. That said, this phenomenon certainly is another excellent argument for why we should give a shit when women get raped – because obviously, gender stops mattering and a whole country is being traumatized.

(another h/t to Sarah)

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“Corrective” Rape in South Africa

Talk about triggery, but this piece on “corrective rape” in South Africa is absofuckinglutely horrifying.

Corrective rape, for those who haven’t heard the term (it’s less than ten years old, since it was just recently coined by human rights activists) is the criminal phenomenon where LGBT people, especially lesbians, are raped by a member of the opposite sex as a means of trying to “correct” their sexual orientation. It’s a particularly vile practice, and while it’s not exclusive to South Africa, the country has become especially notorious for it. So notorious in fact, that the Triangle Project, a South African LGBT organization, is now saying that they deal with up to ten new cases of “corrective rape” each week.

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Dickens Suddenly Relevant Again

There’s a great piece today in the NYT by Barbara Ehrenreich about the criminalization of the poor.

But will it be enough — the collision of rising prison populations that we can’t afford and the criminalization of poverty — to force us to break the mad cycle of poverty and punishment? With the number of people in poverty increasing (some estimates suggest it’s up to 45 million to 50 million, from 37 million in 2007) several states are beginning to ease up on the criminalization of poverty — for example, by sending drug offenders to treatment rather than jail, shortening probation and reducing the number of people locked up for technical violations like missed court appointments. But others are tightening the screws: not only increasing the number of “crimes” but also charging prisoners for their room and board — assuring that they’ll be released with potentially criminalizing levels of debt.

As more Americans become this kind of poor, maybe we’ll finally pay attention.

(h/t to Kate Bornstein for tweeting it)

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Worse Than Janice Raymond

On a trans blog, during a conversation about Lady GaGa & her being supposedly intersex (information that I didn’t blog, because I don’t think it’s anyone’s goddamn business), I’ve been described as

boyd ain’t no ally, that’s for sure. she’s worse, in a way, than even radfems and the Raymond crowd – the latter are up front with their hatred of trans women. boyd, on the other hand, stabs trans women in the back

and

And yeah, Ms Boyd is a giant problem. Making money off trans women, setting herself up as an expert, and getting stuff so wrong so often.

and

Helen Boyd has some serious boundary and entitlement issues.

all of which is utterly fascinating to me. If anyone has all the money I’ve been making, please do give it back. In all seriousness, though, Betty’s and my finances are joint, & have been for more than a decade, so any money I’m making is helping Betty transition. Which is, you know, the worst thing any transphobic asshole could do – financially support someone who is transitioning. It’s evil, I tell you.

I am occasionally wrong; I’d be suspicious of anyone who claims they aren’t. That I disagree with some people within the trans community nearly goes without saying: if I found one person who agreed with every opinion or “fact” shared within the trans community, I’d stay well away from their confusion. The diversity of the trans communities is one of the things I like the best.

Anyway. All in a day’s work. That I was initially quoted as criticizing the hyperbolic style of argumentation employed by some trans people makes it exactly perfect that I should be called worse than the radfems and Raymond crowd, since it’s – um, hyperbolic.

I am, as others of my dissenters have discovered, very much open to criticism. That said, I will only do so if the person making the charges has a name, and a face, and a track record. I will not argue with sock or meat puppets, and I don’t abide name-calling.

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John Hughes Cuts Out

The creators of the 80s seem to be dying in packs. The most recent news is that John Hughes, the director, died at 59 – which for anyone is far too young. But this is the guy who directed The Breakfast Club and Some Kind of Wonderful and Weird Science and – everyone bow their head respectfully – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is, to my mind, still one of the best movies ever made.

The other ones pissed me off at the time, bringing all the cool music I loved – Echo, Oingo Boingo, etc. – to my more mainstream friends. In retrospect, it’s probably at least partly because of these movies that that music has also survived. His teenagers were unlikely, spoiled and rich, and not much like anyone I knew, but still they were there, flashing a kind of iconic power at people who knew me – so much so that my sister always said I reminded her of the girl in Some Kind of Wonderful, while honestly, I always felt a lot more like Ally Sheedy’s character in The Breakfast Club.

Watch it all flash before your eyes:

(video via Andrew Sullivan)

& People wonder why I’m feeling old these days, but you know, Sting’s turning 57 this year.

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There Is No Ex Gay

The NYT is reporting that the APA has officially decided that therapists

should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments.


More interestingly:

Instead of seeking such change, the association urged therapists to consider multiple options, which could include celibacy and switching churches, for helping clients live spiritually rewarding lives in instances where their sexual orientation and religious faith conflict.


which is something that sometimes is glossed over otherwise.

Still, let’s all welcome the APA to the 21st Century, shall we? Hopefully it won’t be another 100 years before they realize that gender variant people are just gender variant, too.