No Cookies For Me

Briefly...

2009-08-25T19:29:00.003-04:00

I find the commercials for "Toddlers and Tiaras" so completely disturbing... I'm not sure I have words. I just cannot get my mind around the mentality that says "I have a toddler... you know what a brilliant idea is? To hyper-sexualize my child, dress her up in leather and chains, and have her act seductive for an audience!"

I'm reading Lolita for the first time right now. How "Lolita" has come to be understood as a seductive young girl, I do not understand, either. It's pretty clear to me, at over halfway through the novel, that Humbert Humbert is a horrible monster and that Lolita is very clearly the victim of a sick, sick man who lies, manipulates, abuses, and molests her at every turn. It seems to me that it'd be like reading, say, "Johnny Got His Gun" and coming away thinking "Yeah! War is awesome! Everyone should join the military and blow stuff up!" Missing the point for $1,000, Alex?

Read on another site:

2009-07-08T08:23:00.002-04:00

British poster says: "When your house is on fire the fire department doesn't ask if you have insurance, do they? [If they do that system is a fucking disgrace]. And if they don't, why is a house considered something the Government is duty bound to safeguard but not the health of its country's citizens?"

Why, indeed?

Shooting zombies in the face with a side order of racism and sexism, please.

2009-06-12T14:03:00.003-04:00

A couple of months ago a friend of mine picked me up a copy of Left 4 Dead for my birthday. Given my love of video games, and the fact that I loathe the undead, it seemed like a perfect match. As far as the game itself goes, I think it's pretty solid. It's a lot of fun most of the time, despite a few bugs and the controversy around the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2.

For those unfamiliar with the game:
Left 4 Dead is presented as being sort of a cinematic experience. You play a campaign in 5 acts. The AI controlling enemy behavior and item drops is called the Director. The game takes cues from film in the way that it alerts players to changing events--when a mob of zombies is about to come running onto the scene you get specific "zombie mob" cue music. When there are boss zombies around, they have special theme music alerting you to their presence. That kind of thing.

Every campaign follows the same four survivors trying to go from Point A to point B in an effort to escape to a safe zone free of zombie infection. They do so by traveling from safe-house to safe-house. The game does a very good job of creating atmosphere and mood--the safe-houses are filled with the scrawled graffiti of past survivors, and you sometimes come across the bodies of former survivors who died trying to escape, or houses/buildings where survivors attempted to make a stand but fled.

The game is generally pretty light on story, being mostly focused on presenting an engaging multiplayer experience, so we don't get a whole lot of backstory about the survivors, except through the things they say to each other, or the dialogue they have throughout the game. Zoey, Francis, Bill, and Louis.

I have a few groups of people that I usually end up playing with, and most of the time, if I limit myself to those people, it's fine. But if I start playing with random groups, I get treated to constant bickering about Zoey and Louis. See, Zoey is a woman, and Louis is a black man.

Louis gets pounced by a zombie? Oh, it's because he's black.
Louis wanders off alone? Yeah, he's black.
Louis makes a comment about finding weapons in another room? Of course he did... he's black.

A male player plays Zoey? "I always knew you were really a girl."
Zoey gets attacked by the smoker? "Even the zombies want to rape Zoey!" Yeah. For real.

It's at the point where I refuse to play on random servers because I just cannot stomach the level of hate and bigotry on display. The other day I was treated to ten minutes of listening to a back and forth about how gay various players were, before I finally quit. I've tried calling people on it, but, it doesn't seem to help.

Mostly this is just a rant, because I'm fed up with it. It's too bad, because if you get rid of all the complete assholes, L4D is a pretty fun co-op game. When you pull of a really well coordinated attack, or fight through a particularly tough episode as the survivors, it's a ton of fun. Unfortunately, you always risk the complete assholes.
*sigh*

Regarding Shadow of the Colossus...

2009-06-08T19:04:00.003-04:00

Tycho, at Penny Arcade, had this to say:

The dread starts at the very beginning, simmering in your gut, and it never gets better ever - hour upon hour. You know immediately that you are engaged in something like evil, if not evil itself, but our appetites as players demand that we seek objectives and conquer them - and the game scourges us for this dereliction of conscience. The technology at work often obscured the game itself, but the emotional wavelength has resounded years after the fact. At this late hour, I can recall no camera foibles or performance valleys. All I can recall now is the black bargain, and concentric waves of anguish.

And that's exactly why people like me point to that game as an example of how games can become art.

Deadliest Warrior

2009-06-06T11:41:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I find myself watching shows and I think to myself "Oh, dear lord, this show is so clearly aimed at dudes, why am I enjoying this?" And yet, Deadliest Warrior has totally sucked me in, because it's exactly the sort of stupid geeky debate that guys like me had when we were in our teens. Except that now they've got "experts" and a computer program (named Slytherin!) to try to determine the "real" winner. It's ridiculous and stupid, and yet I can't stop watching it if I come across it on the tv. I didn't even know I wanted to know who would win in a fight between the Green Barrets and the Spetsnaz, but once the show started, I had to find out.

It's like Mythbusters meets History Channel meets teen boy "who would win a fight" debates.

I want to see them pit Amazons against someone, though. I know that the Amazons are one of those groups where there's less fact than fiction to the myth, but, hell, they put ninjas vs. Spartans up, and ninjas are completely fictitious in the way they showed them, so why not pit the Amazons against someone?

I also find it interesting to note who I end up liking and disliking in this show. During the Green Barret vs. Spetsnaz episode, I ended up finding the Spetsnaz guy sort of humorous and likable, even though, you know, he's a trained killer. The Green Barret guys just came across as overly macho assholes, and I found myself rooting against them. Which is weird to me, because it's not like either group lacked testosterone. If there was any more chest beating or posturing, they'd have had to pull their dicks out to compare. Which I'm pretty sure would have made it no longer Spike TV material.

This fits into a larger conversation that I've been having and thinking about for a while, but I'm still sort of working out and fleshing out, about violence and the media. Here's a show that airs at 3 in the afternoon on Saturdays, where they spend the whole time talking about and demonstrating how deadly various weapons are. They test the weapons on pig corpses, impale test dummies, and then, at the end, they have a simulation of a battle, and one guy/team dies at the end. It's a pretty violent show (as if the title alone wasn't indication enough). On the one hand, as I've already stated, I find it fascinating. On the other, it does seem a little fucked up that it's presented as regular old Saturday afternoon entertainment. Like "Hey, let's watch dudes kill each other, and find out which of these two guys is the more deadly fighter!" And, honestly, I found a couple of the matchups a little... I don't know...

Taliban vs. IRA? Maybe not super cool. I don't think that many people have an actual investment in Spartan vs. Ninja or Pirate vs. Knight, but there are people alive today who've lost friends and relatives to the activities of the IRA and the Taliban. It just seems insensitive, at the very least.

Anyway, welcome to my new guilty pleasure: a show on Spike TV of all things.

And, since I finally watched Funny Games, I hope to eventually get a post up about the violence thing, in more depth. Eventually.

I don't even know what to make of this story...

2009-04-27T13:37:00.003-04:00

So... this is a weird and disturbing story The short version: A guy in Meshchovsk, Russia, tried to rob a hair salon at gunpoint. As he was collecting the money, the owner knocked him down, tied him up with a cord, and then locked him in a closet. Instead of calling the police, she told him to drop his pants or she'd turn him over to the police. After that, she spent three days feeding him viagra and raping him, before letting him go and telling him to get out of her sight. He ended up going to the police, and now they're both probably going to jail.

I'm sort of sitting her slack-jawed at the story. Like... what the hell?

On the one hand, I feel like it's good that he went to the police and that his claim was taken seriously... but, on the other, it's not so good that he was trying to rob someone at gunpoint.

I'm also glad that the story calls it rape, even though the headline makes it sound more like he was going to rob her but they decided to get into some S&M play instead.

Honestly, I'm still trying to decide if the story is real or not. It's so... bizarre.

I looked for verification, but, sadly, I mostly found the sorts of comments I'd expect from a story like this. Lots of variations of, "Oh, what a lucky robber!/That's hot/I wish my hair dresser would handcuff me and 'rape' me", and lots of "A woman can't rape a man/I can't believe he went to the police/he must be gay to complain about it".

And since this happened in Russia, there's the obligatory anti-Russian sentiment as well.

Anyway, I don't really know what to say about it, and I should be working on homework anyway, but I thought that it was such a weird story, that I'd go ahead and share it.

Regional differences?

2009-04-23T23:14:00.002-04:00

So, I picked up Wii Fit last week, and only got around to using it this week. I'm very surprised by it. I don't expect that it will get me in the best shape ever or anything like that, but I've heard from several people that it helped them stay on a routine and that it was good as a warm-up or as a supplement to working out, or for days when their regular workouts weren't going to cut it.

So, moment of truth: I'm in *terrible* shape. I haven't worked out regularly since... uh... how long ago did I have to take gym class, again? Seventh grade? I went through a phase in undergrad where I was working out semi-regularly, but mostly running and stair climbing. And the reality is that I'm getting older, my diet has been pretty consistantly crap for the last few years (for a variety of reasons), and I've gone from working a retail job where I was doing a lot of lifting boxes and climbing stairs and generally being active for 7 hours a day 5 days a week, to holding desk jobs and being a grad student who plays more video games than he should.

So, to say that I'm not in the best shape of my life is, in reality, laughable. I'm clearly in the worst shape I've ever been in. And I know that my weight is not indicative of my health, and I try to remind myself that it doesn't matter how big my waistline is, as long as I'm healthy. Of course, that would carry more weight (no pun intended, actually) if I was actually healthy. Which I think it's safe to say that I'm not.

Anyway, the point is that I picked up Wii Fit because I'm trying to make a commitment to getting healthier. I'm also giving up soda and chips (two of my MAJOR weaknesses, thank you very much. I've gone from multiple cans/bottles of soda a day to only one bottle of soda in the last week. Unless you count seltzer, which I don't, since it has no sugar or chemicals in it, and doesn't actually taste very good).

Anyway.
The first time you turn on Wii Fit, it goes through this whole process of figuring out how healthy you are and setting up goals and all that fun stuff. I selected my Mii character (the little character you make on the Wii that represents you). I put in my age and my height, and then I stepped on the magic board to, I assume, get weighed. Then it spit out my BMI.

Now, I fully recognize the problems with BMI, but as noted above, I already know I'm not healthy, so when it told me that I was seriously overweight, almost at obese, I was not actually surprised. What I was surprised by was when it took my little Mii guy and blew him up like a balloon to show me how fat I am!

He looked very unhappy at the process, by the way.

And then, when I started doing exercises, if I didn't do them very well, it would sort of give me this passive aggressive or outright mean remarks. Not like "Come on you lazy fuck, hold the pose!" But, on one of the balance exercises, I was having trouble keeping my center of gravity where it wanted me to. So, after the exercise, while it's showing me my results, it says something like "Wow, you had trouble with that one. Do you often find yourself tripping over your own feet?"

Ouch.

As it happens, I don't.

Anyway, I started thinking about it, and I realized that there was another game that exhibited this kind of blatantly hostile attitude towards players when you wouldn't expect it... Animal Crossing, back on the Gamecube. You'd move into this cute little town, filled with cute anthropomorphic creatures living in cute little houses. You dig up shells, you buy cute furniture for your house, and you're supposed write letters to the other townscreatures or do errands for them. The thing is, you go up to them to say "hi" and they greet you with things like "Oh my goodness! I was scared. I thought you were a monster, but then I realized you're just wearing an ugly outfit!" They're just plain mean to you, the whole time. They tell you you're funny looking, they tell you how much better other people are at writing letters, and they insult your intelligence and your taste in art/furniture/clothes/etc.

It's weird.
It's got me wondering if there's some weird translation thing happening, where they increase the a-hole quotient when they translate the game for American audiences. Or maybe I'm just interpretting the interactions differently than other people?

I don't know, but it's very curious to me.

In Animal Crossing it made me write them really nasty, mean letters. Which was funny, until the other people who were playing the same town with me started to complain because the animals would brag about what a great letter they got from me, and it would be a letter telling them that I was going to burn down their house.

Long time no see...

2009-04-15T20:18:00.003-04:00

Warning: Long, navel gazing, meta post about posting ahead.

So, I've largely been lurking on other people's blogs for the last year or so, and, in the process, I've been seriously neglecting this little corner of the intertubes. I've been meaning to update or write about a million different things at different times, and I just can't seem to get around to it, which is actually a meme that has cropped up in different areas of my personal life, too. But that's for another post.

The reasons I've largely stopped commenting and writing are myriad, and probably uninteresting to anyone but me, but I'm going for openness here. One major thing that I've learned about myself is that I find the internet really exhausting. I find it emotionally and mentally draining. I really started noticing this about a year and a half ago. I spend way too much time online and I spend most of that time reading and responding to blogs and participating in forum discussions, and I realized "Holy shit, this is really starting to take a toll on me." I just felt like I didn't have the energy to keep at it, in some ways. Honestly, I don't know how people do it. Some people post almost every day, about serious topics, providing real analysis and engaging with commenters (how is that not a "real" word yet?). And they do it while holding full time jobs, social lives, school, and the like. I really don't know how they do it, because it was really burning me out, and making me a hostile and unhappy person. I found myself increasingly sarcastic, increasingly bitter, and just really miserable.

Despite this, I'm really attracted to blogging, and I think that the internet does provide a really great opportunity to converse with people that you wouldn't normally get to meet.

So, right now I'm in the process of thinking about what I want to do differently with my second go-round with this little space. I'd really like to cultivate this space, but I want to avoid falling into the same routines that were burning me out before. If it's true that you can sort of build your own spaces on the internet, then I'd like to carve out something a little different here. At least, different from what it's been. If there's anyone still around, you're part of this little experiment too. After all, if you're still checking here despite my posting, like, eight times in twelve months, then you must have some interest in what I've got to say, right? So, what is it that you're looking for when you check back here, despite the utter lack of real substantive updates in, like... forever? What kinds of things do you find really great about blogs that you think should be pursued? What do you hate?

My own perspective: I think that my writing became really too focused on negativity. I think that I need to make sure that I'm posting about positive things sometimes. I need to do so in order to prevent myself from sinking into emotional pits. And, quite frankly, I think that the positive doesn't get enough press anyway. Just like in the evening news, it's a reality that bad news is blog business. People--myself included--love to get a good outrage on. But, I'm not sure that it's emotionally healthy to spend so much of my time swimming in piss and shit. I think that there are times when I really want to get excited about good things. Obviously, I'm not going to spend all of my time pretending that the world is nothing but sunshine and rainbows and happy unicorns, but I don't have the energy or desire to spend 90% of my time being angry and shouting down people anymore.

I think that another thing that I want--and this post, as meandering as it is, is a part of this--is to have a much clearer idea of what this space is. I don't necessarily mean that it needs to have a narrow focus--although, maybe it does? But, I think that I need to have a very clear idea what this space is supposed to be, and treat it like that. Is this my personal blog? Is this a blog about feminism? Activism in general? About a male perspective on feminism? Is it just about my life?

So, I've already decided that on a few things. First of all, I think that I need to make it clearer that I don't see myself as The Voice of anything. I don't want to be The Voice of anything, except myself. If I say something smart and people like it, that's cool, but, ultimately, I'm just a no-longer-twenty-something guy who likes to argue with smart people, and who would like to see people treat each other better. I'd like to discuss my relationship to the world a more, and some people have, in the past, said that they were hoping I'd talk more about (and I'm paraphrasing here) what it's like to be a guy, and I think that's not a bad idea. I won't pretend to speak for every guy or that my personal experiences are anything more than anecdote, but I can, and I think should, write about what I know.

Second, I don't think that I want to write about other people's blogs unless I have something nice to say. I'm not suggesting that other people shouldn't do so, but for me, it's just really fucking toxic. I don't feel good about it, and I don't feel good about the ways that it's easier for me to say really horrible things about people or to make really mean assumptions about other people on the web. It's like, someone says something that I strongly disagree with, and suddenly their entire body of work and their entire history is assumed from that post? I think that, in some ways, this is unavoidable online. I don't think that the internet makes us completely anonymous in the way that some people will argue, but I think ti does make things really impersonal in some ways. You can't really see the sincerity in a person's actions, or read the emotion in their words the way you can when you talk face-to-face (not that those interactions always go well, either).

It's Paradox of the Personal on the internet, for me. Because I feel strongly about the things that I'm writing about, I'm more likely to feel the slings and arrows personally, but because of the anonymity of the internet, I'm less likely to recognize the personal investment other people have in their work.

Which is just... well... shitty.

So, as of right now, I'm thinking:

More positive posts.

More posts about my direct personal experiences.

Less/no posting angry missives about other people's blogs/posts.

I think that what I'd really like to see is more of a conversation happening, in some ways. I think that the posts that tend to be the best, from my perspective, are not the ones where I go off on something in great detail and tear it down with sarcasm and snark, but the posts where I post about something that I've found really interesting and have questions about, and I can engage with other people and learn from them.

So, consider this a transition and a work in progress. I expect that, given that I'm in grad school, there will be posts about books and things I'm reading for my studies, and I'd definitely like to post more discussions about movies and video games.

Anyway, this is s ridiculously long winded post just to say "I might be back, and I'm thinking of changing things up a bit".

Sorry if you actually read all that.
Next post?
Probably thoughts about what kind of commenting policy I should have. Feel free to offer suggestions. My general policy, thus far, has been to only delete spam, but I figure it's a good idea, as long as I'm rethinking how I post, to come up with a more explicit comment policy.

Thought of the day...

2009-03-02T12:06:00.002-05:00

Women of color and queer women are women. We are women. Our issues are women’s issues. They are inextricable from our womanhood. They are part of our feminism, and part of we want feminism to pay attention to, because these things are women’s issues. Your version posits that there’s regular women, who just do feminism, and then there’s those allies who drag those regular women in the trap of paying attention and giving energy to other causes–like the concerns of the women next to them who are brown, trans, and queer.

via Little Light, in a comment at Feministe

Not a ton of analysis on my part, except that it's a pretty clear explanation of why the issues of all women matter, and it was a "Hell yes" moment for me.

Thank you everyone...

2009-02-21T13:33:00.003-05:00

I'm still having trouble talking about this, so please excuse if the language/structure seems... formal? Stilted? I just... this is very hard to talk about, otherwise.

So, about a week after my last post, I got a phone call from my mother, back in Michigan, at about 11:00 at night. I was elbow deep in washing dishes at the moment, so I didn't pick up the phone when it rang or see who it was, but after I'd dried off and saw that it was my mother, I knew that something was wrong. I'm quite used to getting calls from my family, as we're pretty close. I'm not used to getting calls at 11:00 at night, though. That's not how we do.

I immediately called her back, and I could tell by her voice that something very bad had happened. She informed me that my little brother had had another seizure, and had fallen and hit his head. That's all she could say. I knew this meant that he was either in a coma in the hospital, or worse. Finally, I asked, "Is there any chance he's going to be okay?"

"No. No, he isn't going to be okay."

I don't know how long we sat on the phone, and I don't really remember if we said much else. I know I said "I'm coming home" several times, but everything is sort of a haze. I remember feeling really numb, and thinking that I'd literally just talked to him a week or so earlier. We'd been making plans to play a game.

I learned later that it wasn't the fall that killed my brother, but that he probably had two seizures in rapid succession, and his heart stopped. None of us knew you could die from a seizure. I mean, we knew you could get hurt--he'd broken a bone once during a fall from a seizure. But that it could stop your hurt or lungs? I didn't know that.

I have a lot of things to say about the situation, but, like I said, it's really hard to talk about. And, honestly, I don't know how much else I have to say on here about that, anyway.

What I did want to do, openly, is thank everyone who helped me through this really difficult time. When I got that call, I gathered together a handful of clothes, and drove back to Michigan to be with my family, not knowing what I was going to do once I got there. I'm in school, and I was basically living paycheck to paycheck to get by. Originally, I'd been hoping to work full time during the winter break to build up a little bit of a cushion again. But, once I got back to Michigan, I just needed to be with my family.

Had it not been for the amazingly generous donations of a lot of people, I wouldn't have been able to do that. I've tried to thank everyone personally, but I wanted to make a public thank you, too. I don't know if people want their names named, so I won't unless they say otherwise, but I want to say that it meant the world to me that I was able to spend December with my family, and that it was mostly because of the generosity of the online community. People that I've never had the pleasure of meeting offline heard about what happened to my brother, and they sent donations to make sure that I could spend time with my family.

I know that money is really tight for a lot of people right now, and I know that there are probably lots of other ways that people could have spent their money, but... well, thank you all.

It's good to know that women at either extreme can expect shaming...

2008-11-26T09:44:00.008-05:00

Well, now... this thread is really interesting. Lauren, over at feministe, posted about a series of photos of female body builders, and how she found them interesting because, in her words:
It’s interesting to me that many female body builders who work on attaining what are considered masculine traits play up their feminine characteristics, perhaps to counteract the kind of physique that is usually culturally marked male, sometimes to an extreme that appears to be a conscious genderfuck. Whatever the case, the human body is so, so cool.

Which, hell yes! The human body is really cool. I'm constantly fascinated by the ways that our bodies move and grow, by the infinite variety of shapes and sizes of our parts and wholes, by the uncountable variations that all of our parts come in. It's really amazing to me.

But, that's not the bit that rocked my brain this morning. The bit that blew my mind was the comments that Lauren's post prompted from a lot of people. The very first comment in response to her post was about how "disgusting" the women look, and how the commenter simply doesn't "find that type of body attractive at all". I'm not going to do a count, but a surprisingly high number out of the 53 responses are echoing that basic sentiment--that each of these women is a "representation of grotesquerie".

There were, thankfully, a number of people who stepped up to point out that criticisms of these women as unattractive misses the point, and that those kinds of comments were, to say the least, not cool. But, that being said, it still seems like one of those times where an awful lot of people engaged in some pretty shitty behavior without really taking the time to analyze it or learn from it.

I don't know why I'm surprised that these sorts of blow-ups still happen. Honestly, I guess I'm not surprised at all. I've written about it too many times and seen it come up too many times for it to really be surprisng.

So, get out your broken records: It doesn't matter if you find those women attractive or not. They're very likely not doing it for you. That you find body building "grotesque" is completely beside, behind, or even miles away from the point. Nobody gives a shit that you find it disgusting. If you find it disgusting? Don't do it. Nobody is trying to make you become or date a body builder--certainly, nobody writing at Feministe is.

When you start talking about women's bodies with terms like "disgusting" "grotesquerie" "disfiguring" or disturbing", you're engaging in exactly the kind of body shaming that a lot of us have been fighting against. So, thanks for that. A woman who can bench 450 lbs without breaking a sweat is no less deserving of respect than a woman who weighs 450 lbs. It's one thing to question the social forces that lead us to view our bodies in various ways. It's quite another to look at pictures of particular women and proclaim them gross.

And the conversation is almost exactly like the typical fat shaming thread. If we remove the specific references, it's practically a MadLib:

"Hey, look at these pictures of women X who break the typical beauty mold. This is interesting."
"Oh my God. Those women are gross. I don't find them attractive."
"Yeah, they're nasty. And also, they're damaging their health because Y."
"You'd have to be dumb to think that these women are attractive or healthy, because Z"

It's the same pattern over and over and over.

And it's completely bunk.

So, here's my advice: If you find yourself on a feminist thread--or, hell, anywhere else, for that matter--about women's bodies, and you're thinking of posting a response that consists of or is related to "Wow, that's gross/ugly/nasty/disgusting", take a moment and
Stop.

Don't do it. Just don't. Because the odds are really good that what you're about to do is make some ignorant, superficial insult about another woman's body. A woman that you probably don't know, will probably never know, and about whom you're probably woefully uneducated about. You're thinking about posting how unhealthy she probably is? And about how your disgust is justified because you're really concerned about the health implications? Yeah, that's bullshit. You're more than likely not her doctor, so you're really not in a position to give her health advice.

Maybe you're actually interested in and concerned about a larger social issue? Maybe you're concerned about ways that the commercial cosmetics market and the entertainment industry push a certain beauty ideal? Maybe you're worried about systemic problems that involve body dismorphic disorders? Maybe you're genuinely concerned about the ways that we view our bodies? That's great! Channel that interest and make a difference. But, remember that slamming and insulting and mocking a particular woman or a group of them is not the way to do that. That's not helping--that's adding to the problem. You want to talk about the larger issues, do that. But don't throw those women under the bus in the process.

If you can't talk about about the ways that our society idealizes unrealistic body types without calling another woman "gross" or "disgusting", then you're doing it wrong, and you should take a minute to figure out why.

So... what is an adult again?

2008-11-10T19:16:00.002-05:00

This story is very sad. Details are still coming out, so it's hard to say what to think of everything, but one thing really strikes me as... well... odd. The story: A child, 8, shot and killed his father and his father's friend on Wednesday. The current report is that this was not a spur-of-the-moment thing, either, but that the child planned the attack out. There's speculation that he might have been abused, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of that yet. The part that I'm currently bothered by is the fact that the police want to charge him as an adult.

An eight year old. Charged as an adult.

Now, maybe someone has some insight into this that I'm missing... but if we're at the point where we charge eight-year-olds as adults, what is the point of having a distinction? Why not just make all murder trials "as adult" then?

Because it seems to me that we, as a society, have agreed that there's an important emotional/intellectual difference between adults and children, and we've generally placed the transition at 18. Now, that's sort of arbitrary, and that's why we recognize that there's some leeway, and sometimes we see value in charging, say, a 17-year-old as an adult. But at eight, a child is less than half the age we consider an adult--still a decade away. If that's not firmly in the realm of "child", what is?

And if the argument is that we need to more harshly punish this kid for what he's done? If we don't have a serious enough punishment to fit the crime? The solution isn't to charge him as an adult, but to fix the laws that we think are broken and need to be fixed.

It seems profoundly screwed up to me that someone as young as eight is going to be charged as an adult.

Just a reminder of what is at stake.

2008-11-07T10:58:00.002-05:00

I know that a lot of people get it, but there are people who don't.
The passing of Prop 8 is a failure on a many levels. It's a failure from start to finish.

That a modern society should even question the right of same-sex couples to enter into a marriage is a failure.

That a modern society should vote to prohibit same-sex marriages is a failure.

That a modern society would even think that it's legitimate to vote on other people's rights is a failure.

Our rights should not be subject to the whims and passing fancy of other people. Our rights should not be up for popular vote. The rights of a minority should not be subjected to tyranny of the majority.

We should have the reasonable expectation that our rights be honored by those around us, whether they like us or agree with us. I'm profoundly disappointed by the fact that Prop 8 and others like it succeeded, but I'm just as profoundly disappointed and saddened that so many people consider it right to have voted on the issue at all. That we, in 2008, still think that popular vote is a fair and right way to determine whether someone should be allowed access to his/her rights... is disturbing.

Would we accept, in this day and age, a ballot initiative to prohibit women from owning property? Would we accept the notion that it is fair and right to vote on whether Asian people should be allowed to register to vote? Would most people just accept it if someone suggested we should vote on a reinstating slavery?

People should not be denied their rights because the majority takes a vote.

Already, on some of the forums I visit, people are saying "but, gays could have civil unions! What's the problem?"

The problem are the over 1,000 benefits that are associated with marriage, most of which do not come with civil unions. The problem is in pretending that seperate is equal. The problem is in telling one group of citizens that their rights and their relationships are less valuable and less "real" than others.

There are over a thousand laws associated with marriage, many of which provide benefits and privileges to married couples. It's a long list, but worth looking at.

Someday, history will vindicate. The best I can do, sometimes, is take solace in the fact that history will prove us right, and we'll eventually recognize that institutional bigotry is wrong. But, I know that doesn't help people in the here-and-now, and that doesn't help the people who are actually hurt by these sorts of laws. I can only hope that history comes soon.

Tonight's Town hall meeting in Cambridge, MA...

2008-11-05T17:44:00.003-05:00

This is What Women Want is putting on a town hall meeting tonight, as I mentioned last week. There's been a slight change in venue, however. The meeting will be taking place at Lesley University Ampitheater, at 1815 Mass. Ave in Cambridge. Hope to see you there for this very exciting post-election meeting.

If you can't make it, don't fret, you've got another option. Thanks to the wonderful world of web technologies, you can catch the Town Hall right here!

That's the feed, friends. If you've got questions, send them through the chat function there, because I won't be here to pass them along, but people will be taking questions from the feed and asking them at the event.

Hooray!

Support Obama? No candy for you!

2008-11-03T14:45:00.002-05:00

Okay, seriously?

What is wrong with people? It's Halloween. You're going to turn kids away from your door because their parents support the other guy? Really? That's some kind of ass-hattery. Little kids are little kids, and there's no way of knowing whether they'll swing towards or away from their parents politics as they grow. And I think it's pretty low to campaign through children, anyway--if you're giving out candy on Halloween, give it out. Don't try to push your politics on kids coming to your door. Disgusting.

The Day After: A Feminist Town Forum

2008-10-29T17:05:00.003-04:00

Just taking a moment to pass along some info from CNW

The Day After
A Feminist Town Forum
Wednesday, November 5 @ 7:00PM

PARTICIPATE IN PERSON: Cambridge Family YMCA, 820 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

PARTICIPATE ONLINE IN REAL TIME: Participate by logging on 11/5 at 7PM EST to any of our participating blogs, including Feministe, Feministing, Girl with Pen, WIMN's Voices, No Cookies for Me (hey! That's me!), Writes Like She Talks, Heartfeldt Politics, TakePart, or at our mogulus channel.

It's been a long election season, and now it's time to come together to figure out what it all means and what's next.

At this culmination of our This Is What Women Want election project, please join us, our panel of national leaders and the feminist community nationwide to discuss what happened on Election Day, and what we should be thinking about and doing now to fight for equality and justice for all.

This is a first of its kind event convening feminists from around the country live via the blogosphere! Watch live, converse with other audience members around the country and submit your comments and questions in real time.

Panelists will include:

BYLLYE AVERY
Founder of the National Black Women's Health Project and MacArthur Genius Award Recipient

MICHELLE GOLDBERG
Journalist and author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

ANNE ELIZABETH MOORE
Critic, activist, artist, journalist and author

PAULA RAYMAN
Founding Director of the Radcliffe Public Policy Center

LORETTA ROSS
National Coordinator, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective

ANDREA BATISTA SCHLESINGER
Executive Director, Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

Come optimistic, disgruntled, angry, or just exhausted. Come in person or online. But come. We need to hear every voice and idea!

(Facebook users: Click here to RSVP and invite your friends!)

_______________________
Center for New Words
Where Women's Words Matter

This is What Women Want

2008-10-29T17:00:00.004-04:00

Check it, people: an online station showcasing highlights from the This is What Women Want speakout tour. Very cool. Remember, it ain't over til it's over--the election is still coming up, and it's important to keep interested and make sure the vote gets out.
**edited**applet removed since it's reposted above

Suddenly, it all begins to make sense...

2008-10-23T12:07:00.002-04:00

Ever since she was added to the ticket, people have been wondering why Palin was picked. What did she add to the ticket? Now, I know that some of the more cynical amongst us thought that it was a shallow attempt by McCain to try to pick up the woman vote--that he believed that having a woman veep would sway women voters to his side. I can't say I blame that train of thought--it's not like McCain has done much to give the impression that he thinks particularly highly of women, so it wouldn't be a stretch to think that he was trying to pull one over.

But! But!

I'm here to announce that I've finally figured it out. In order to understand the genius of the McCain Election Plan, we need to go back a bit. I'm not the only one, I think, who thinks that McCain has changed in recent years. It wasn't that long ago that many on the left were thinking "You know, a split ticket with McCain on board wouldn't necessarily be terrible." But, in recent years, McCain has made a strong push to get back in line with the values and goals of the conservative right. This change was very disappointing to some of us who saw McCain as being an example of someone from the right that we could respect, even if we didn't agree. Now, some of that might be attributed to the greater attention he's getting now, so we're seeing more about him than we had in the past, but I think there's a deeper plot involved here.

I'm going to come out and say it:
John McCain is secretly a liberal plant, trying to move the nation in the right direction by intentionally sabotaging his run for the presidency and doing everything in his power to make the right look like maniacs and crazies.

A bold claim? Perhaps, but let's consider the evidence.

First of all, he picks a running mate who nobody has ever even heard of. A running mate who disagrees with him on some pretty significant issues. A running mate who can't give a straight interview, who can't answer even the most simple of questions... and we've all seen the SNL skits by now.

Second of all, look at the way he composes himself- he wanders around the stage aimlessly during debates. He gets lost on stage after questions. He goes bug-eyed during interviews. He refuses to apologize when it comes out that he told rape jokes. The angry stares and the bittterness that's practically oozing off of him at all times... He does his best to act like a man on the verge of breaking at every moment--he couldn't act more like a man on the brink if he took LSD before stepping into the bright lights to take questions.

And now this!

A subtle message to voters that the left is right and the right is wrong? An attempt to subliminally influence the vote in favor of the Dems?
...

Or just a really funny--and expensive--fashion faux pas on the part of one of the most ridiculous presidential tickets in modern history?

You be the judge!

Sitting in my seat of judgment, judging people.

2008-10-21T11:20:00.003-04:00

Sarah Palin recently gave an interview to CBN's David Brodey, and was asked about gay marriage.

Brody: On Constitutional marriage amendment, are, are you for something like that?

Palin: I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that's where we would go because I don't support gay marriage. I'm not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can't do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that's casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it's the foundation of our society is that strong family and that's based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.

So... um... when you say "I'm not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting a seat of judgment telling what they can and can't do" you actually mean "I am going to be".

Got it.

This is serious, though. A McCain/Palin ticket is another four years of oppressive policies: of faith based legislation aimed at denying citizens equal rights based on sexuality, of attempting to control women's bodies through increasingly restrictive abortion law, and of doing everything possible to ensure that we, as citizens, live our lives in compliance with Conservative Christian values. Whether we're conservative Christians or not.

But, this interview just keeps making you wonder... why, exactly, was she picked as his running mate? They disagree on so many issues, and she sure seems like she's been nothing but a liability since he announced her. They've got so little faith in her ability to carry on a debate or a real conversation that they've been keeping her protected from interviews as much as possible.

Who wouldn't like to have been a fly on the wall when he picked her?

Minor update...

2008-10-01T16:08:00.002-04:00

Obviously, posting contiues to be sparse. It's weird what grad school will do to your free time isn't it?

In other news: I hear there's a debate of some kind happening soon, yeah? I'm very interested to see how it goes. Will Palin continue to respond with non-answers, doubletalk, and scripted soundbites as devoid of content as they are full of shit? Let me consult my magic 8 Ball... "It is decidedly so." Well, there you have it.

The other question... will Biden be able to resist putting his foot in his mouth?
8 Ball? "Better not tell you now."

That's what I was afraid of.

Someone needs to have a conversation with the man, and put some kind of muzzle on him. Don't tell stories if you don't know the facts, man. Don't suggest that a FDR was president when he wasn't, or that he was on tv before they'd even been invented. I get the point you were making. Make the point, but don't pull out assfacts to do it. Don't keep referring to the driver of the truck that killed your wife as a drunk when there's not a shred of evidence that he was, and when he was cleared of all wrong doing. I can understand grieving, and maybe you really think the guy was. That's not what people see, though. What they see is a Veep candidate slandering a dead man and trying to milk sympahty at the expense of a man whose family says that he lived with the grief of having accidentally killed someone until the day he died. Don't ask a man in a wheelchair to stand up. Just... don't. You're a smart man. Stop doing things that make people think you might be an idiot. Do not blow this.

*sigh*

In other debate related news: don't forget to check out This Is What Women Want.
They've got up some great videos of the Mississippi event. A list of the videos is up, so check 'em out!

There's another event in St. Louis, MO tonight at 7PM, over at the Phyllis Wheatley Heritage Center, 2711 Locust, doing more speakouts. So, if you're in that area, head over- it's a free event, and you can speak your mind about what you actually want from the presidential candidates.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get some more work done (reading about the free software movement, and about information access and the digital divide and assorted other such things).

I'm glad someone in the government gets it.

2008-10-01T16:06:00.003-04:00

Bailout, bailout, bailout.
Why aren't more politicians asking these questions?

Straight talker?

2008-09-17T00:12:00.001-04:00

Indeed.

It'd be funny if this wasn't such an incredibly important election.

Huh. Who is a rat?

2008-09-16T10:55:00.003-04:00

So, as part of a class, I was directed to take a look at Who's a Rat?

Essentially, we were asked to contemplate the site and what it does, and be prepared to finish the sentence "This site makes me feel..."

Unsurprisingly, the site has been the source of controversy ever since it was unveiled. It's received numerous requests from the law enforcement community to shut down or remove information, which it has declined. It's been the subject of lawsuits, which it won.

I'm not going to lie, the site makes me profoundly uncomfortable. I don't doubt that what the site does is legal- the information contained on it is apparently information that is available to the public via public records, and it's my understanding that you're required to provide substantiation for reports about informants that you're adding to the site. So, probably legal. Fine and good.

Legal doesn't necessarily equate to ethical, though. And I've got some real reservations there. Despite the site's disclaimer that it doesn't endorse violence, it doesn't take a brain trust to figure out that violence is a reasonable expectation when you're dealing with something like this. We're talking about criminal informants and undercover agents who deal with, you know... criminals. One of the site's spokespeople said of the risk of violent retaliation against informants and undercover officers:

I think it’s pretty safe to say that informants and cops know that there is danger involved in that line of work, and it would be unfair to burden whosarat.com with one’s career choice. In our opinion, the only potential danger that exists due to the site, is the danger of the government losing at trial, due to defendants using the website to gather information to prove that the informants and agents that are testifying against them are not credible.

Now, the site claims that it's only for non-violent crimes. The site was created when the site's creator was charged with drug-related offenses, and was upset about the use of informants in the charges that were brought against him. So, one can assume that he's okay with outing drug informants.

Because, clearly, retaliation against drug informants isn't an obvious consequence of being outed. Unless you were Rachel Hoffman, who was murdered back in May. Or Kenneth Smith, murdered in January. Or Chad MacDonald.

Is corruption a violent offense? I wouldn't have thought so, but informants Christine and Terrence Hodson would probably disagree.

But, the site's owners wash their hands of all this. After all, they don't endorse violence, and they're not calling for retaliation against informants. They just offer things like a $500 award for posting the most interesting or best informant to the site (this was back in Jan). And call them "rats".

There seems to be a pretty clear conflict here between the right to free speech and the expectation of privacy on the part of informants. Informants rely on secrecy and privacy to ensure their safety. Many informants are just like Hoffman- young people busted for possession for their personal use who get the book thrown at them in order to increase the odds that they'll turn over their source. Faced with the prospect of the years in jail and a destroyed future, it's not surprising that people would take a deal, even if it means becoming an informant.

And if the point of the site is just to give defendants a chance to learn about the person who informed on them, to test that person's credibility (the stated purpose of the site), then why are they also outing undercover agents? I can sort of understand the idea that a criminal informant might have some credibility issues by virtue of being a criminal and an informant. Now, maybe I'm overly optimistic, but isn't the idea of an undercover police officer supposed to be that they are so credible that the police are willing to put them undercover in a criminal situation in order to capture someone? I know that the police aren't always trustworthy, but the fact that they're undercover doesn't make them less credible than any other cop is. And while being a cop is already a dangerous job in many places, outing an undercover officer most certainly raises the danger level.

So, there you go. We didn't really get a chance to talk about it in class, but I really wanted to, so those are my thoughts at the moment.

Shorter Sremchevich: "It's not discrimination or bigotry, I just don't like them because of who they are."

2008-09-09T13:52:00.005-04:00

Out of the land down under comes this story.

In short: Emil Sremchevich, president of the Camden/Macarthur Residents' Group, opposed the Quranic Society's application to build a 1,200 student school in the Camden community, but is giving a Catholic school expansion the go-ahead without even having read their proposal.

In an interview, Sremchevich said:

Why is that racist? Why is it discriminatory? It's very simple: people like some things but don't like other things. Some of us like blondes, some of us like brunettes. Some of us like Fords, some of us like Holdens. Why is it xenophobic just because I want to make a choice? If I want to like some people and not like other people, that's the nature of the beast.

I think someone should get Mr. Sremchevich a nice dictionary. If you're making a choice not to like Muslim people, that is disriminatory.

Discriminatory: applying or favoring discrimination in treatment.
Discrimination: a: the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually b: prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment (racial discrimination)

So, yeah, Mr Sremchevich. It is discriminatory to decide that you just don't like Muslims but you're fine with Christians.

It only gets better, too. See, back when the Quranic Society made their original proposal, there were protests, and some of the people of Camden stuck pig's heads on sticks and hung the Australian flag between them, and displayed them at the proposed school site. Classy. In response to the proposal, Kate McCulloch (a Camden resident) said that Muslims wouldn't fit into the Camden community because "the ones that come here oppress our society, they take our welfare and they don't want to accept our way of life."

I can't imagine why. I mean, I know I'd feel really welcome and want to accept a people's way of life if they welcomed me by sticking pig's heads on stakes and accusing me of taking their welfare and of not fitting in.

It's about freakin' time! Bye Bye Kilpatrick!

2008-09-04T11:35:00.003-04:00

The soon to be former mayor of Detroit has finally admitted to lying under oath and obstructing justice. He'll resign, serve four months jail, pay up to a million in restitution, and be on probation for five years.

This has been a long time coming.

Thursday notes...

2008-08-28T09:30:00.003-04:00

1. RIP Del Martin, founder of the Daughters of Bilitis, gay rights advocate, and one half of the first same-sex couple to legally exchange vows in San Francisco.

2. It's that time again! No, no, not the return to classes and being stuck behind yellow buses on your way to work (well, okay, yes, potentially that too), but time to answer the WAM! call for proposals! Sadly, with my starting my first year of grad school, I probably won't be making my own submission (although, you know, if anyone is looking for a someone to present about video games or comics, it wouldn't take a lot to convince me), but you should be thinking about it. On this, the sixth year of the conference, they're bringing in a theme. If you've got something to say- and I think most of us do- you should definitely consider answering the call.

3. For the love of Gromit, can someone tell The Media to stop making asses of themselves? First it was "One Legged Hooker Slain", and now a story about an obese woman accused of murdering a child that ends with the line "So, currently, the lady remains at large."

Now, I get it, apparently any story about a fat person must include some kind of jokes at their expense. Because, HAHA! Fat! But... no, wait. I don't understand that. I actually don't understand why a journalist thinks that it's okay or professional to make fat jokes in an article.

If nothing else, can we show an ounce of journalistic professionalism in the face of the fact that a child is dead, killed by having his head crushed?

Maybe I'm weird, but I don't think that's an appropriate place for jokes.

English as a necessary skill for golf...

2008-08-27T09:45:00.002-04:00

I admit to not knowing all the ins and outs of golf, by virtue of not playing the game myself, but the LPGA's new rule that all players must pass an English proficiency test is bugging me. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but this was my understanding of how golf is played:

Whack the hell out of a small ball with a club.
Avoid smacking the ball into sand, water, trees, tall grass, or spectators.
Try to smack the ball into a tiny hole marked by a flag that's kind of far away.

Oversimplified? Perhaps. But, I'm not seeing where "speak English" is particularly important to the game.

But, of course, it's not actually about the game. It's about the sponsors.

Because, gods forbid that the best player on the green not speak English very well or at all.

Not a credible threat?

2008-08-26T12:33:00.004-04:00

So, this is news.

I'm curious about several things.

First of all:

However, federal sources have said that the incident may have had more to do with drugs than with a plot to assassinate Mr Obama, despite local police claims.

The federal officials said that the verbal threats against Mr Obama were made during one of the arrests, but were not considered credible. "It could turn out that these were nothing but a bunch of knuckleheads, meth heads," a US government source has claimed.

They're caught with a spotting scope, two high-powered rifles with scopes, walkie talkies, and a bulletproof vest. What, exactly, does it take to be considered a credible threat?

Second of all: Who in the hell jumps out of a sixth story window and thinks that they're getting away from the police that way? For gods' sakes, I don't like to jump from six feet. Six stories? That's just stupid.

Craziness.

At this point, I guess I'm just glad that they're bad drivers and got their dumb asses pulled over before they could put the plan into action.

And that one of them jumped from a sixth floor window to try to get away.

Because it makes me happy when bad people do really really dumb things in the process of getting captured.

Sneak Preview of "Traitor"

2008-08-26T11:48:00.004-04:00

Last night I got a chance to check out the new Don Cheadle flick "Traitor" at a limited sneak preview thing. I'm not a professional film reviewer, so let's just get this out of the way right now- I'm very likely going to spoil the hell out of this movie. If you have an interest in seeing it in the theaters and not knowing what is going to happen... stop reading.

Last chance.

Alright, I've been trying to get out of the habit of giving reviews "grades" and such (although I failed miserably last night in describing the movie to Jaclyn). Grades are really arbitrary- if I hated something that you don't care about, what's my grade mean to you? Nothing, that's what. So, instead, let's just talk about the movie.

So, I've glanced at a couple of other reviews of the film, and part of me is thinking "Did we watch the same film?" Because, really, there's nothing remotely unexpected about the plot. I swear to gods, every step of the way, I felt like I knew exactly what was going to happen. The problem here is partly the fault of the advertising. The film wants us to think that our man Don is a terrorist. But... well... he's the lead protagonist, and it's pretty damned clear from the trailers that he's not a terrorist. The first half of the film is set up with the expectation that we not know whether Don is or is not a terrorist. But we already know. He's not.

But, really, the plot is so completely conventional that even if it weren't for the advertising, there'd still be no real question about him. The setup is just too obvious. Once it's finally reveiled that he's not, in fact, a terrorist, but is actually in deeeeeep cover, the tension shifts from "is he/isn't he" to "will he get caught". This is more interesting, but, again, utterly predictable.

I don't even have to tell you what the "twist" is, here, and I bet you can guess. When it's reveiled that Don is in deep cover, we're given three pieces of information. From those three pieces of information, I'd bet a cookie you can tell what is going to happen.
1. He's in deep cover.
2. He has only one contact on the outside.
3. His contact hasn't told anyone about him.

Go ahead. Guess. You won't be wrong.

This kind of utterly predictable plot just keeps pressing through. And the thing is, it's not a bad plot, exactly. It's just... well... it's been done a million times. It's not bad, but it's pretty much completely forgetable.

The good news, however, is that the film treats the problem of terrorism as being a little more nuanced than the typical "Muslims hate us because Islam is full of evil!" that we're usually given. I'm not an expert, though, so I can't say how accurate the presentation is. And saying that it's more nuanced should be taken with a grain of salt. It's like pointing out that a pizza is better than Domino's pizza. It may be better, but that doesn't necessarily make it good, either. Almost anything that treats Muslim characters with more than paper-thin motivations and personalities is going to be better.

There are a number of Muslim characters in the film, of varying levels of devotion. One of the more interesting aspects of the film is that it presents the heads of the terrorist cells as being, essentially, war opportunists. They profit off of the death and destruction while leaving those of faith to accept the consequences and to suffer the casualties.

Don Cheadle and Said Taghmaoui turn in very good performances, but mostly left me wishing that this were a completely different film- maybe one that actually delved more deeply into their lives instead of trying to be all espionage/thriller. The rest of the cast aren't forgetable exactly. They're too cliche and ridiculous to be forgetable. Guy Pearce, in particular, is completely wasted here. His idiotic accent and hackneyed dialogue just completely overpowered every scene he's in. When he started on in his faux Texas accent about his "daddy" being a minister, I just wanted to tape his mouth shut.

Speaking of dialogue: it's bad. It's not just Pearce, either. The rule here is this- if you're a member of the US government, you will talk almost completely in trite jingoistic cliches.

Ultimately, Traitor isn't at all what I went in expecting. That it even attempts to treat terrorism as a complex issue and that it goes to any length to suggest that, you know, maybe not all Muslims fit neatly into a box both go above and beyond what I've come to expect from a film like this. Despite that, the film still feels like it could have been a lot more interesting if they'd focused on those issues more instead. It was more than I expected, but a lot less than it could have been.

I basically agree with this review.

This is a more generous review.

Spain 2, Argentina 1

2008-08-21T12:00:00.001-04:00

Posted without further comment.

Okay, but I don't want to pay for the war, either...

2008-08-20T10:22:00.003-04:00

So, apparently, I lost or never created a new login for the updated Feministing site. Which means no leaving comments there for me for the time being.

Anyway, in the comments of their shout-out to This Is What Women Want, cheezwizard responds:

Universal childcare

This is one area where feel like I can sympathize with those “childfree” folks. Raise your own children, please, and I will raise mine (assuming I decide to have any, that is).

I'm going to sort of vent for a minute. To put it bluntly, I think that's a shortsighted and selfish perspective to have on something like childcare. We're a society. The key point to society is that it's social in nature. There are major benefits to being social creatures, and we reap those benefits all the time. This attitude of "Well, I don't have children so I shouldn't be responsible for contributing to your children's welfare" is almost offensive to me.

First of all, we all contribute to things that we don't gain immediate or direct benefit from. For that matter, we contribute to things that we don't even want to. People who don't drive contribute to roads they'll never even see. People who don't enjoy nature contribute to maintaining parks and rec areas. People who aren't sick contribute to the healthcare of those who are. People who've never had a fire in their house or who've never been the victim of a crime contribute to the expense of keeping a functioning fire and police department. The list goes on and on.

Second of all, we all benefit from these things, whether we directly use the service or not. You may not have a child in school, but you benefit from other people's children being in school. An educated population is important for progress and growth. As people get older and retire or die, you want the younger generations to be able to fill in the empty positions, and it's important that they be properly educated to do so. Ideally, you also want to see social and technological advancements- new and better treatments for sickness, cleaner energy sources, etc. Those things take an educated population.

As far as childcare goes, it's, again, in all of our interests to have accessible childcare. In an age of single parent or two working parent homes, childcare is a big deal. As it stands, childcare can quickly eat up a family's budget, particular with more than one child. At which point the family is forced to chose between job or childcare. Neither one is good for society at large- pushing people down into poverty because they can't afford to pay for childcare puts a drain on society and removes potentially good workers from positions where they contributed. Having children being poorly cared for or free to roam around and get into trouble because their parents can't afford proper childcare contributes to youth crime rates.

Nothing about the "I don't have kids so I shouldn't have to help with yours" is convincing, to me, and I think that it absolutely reeks of selfish entitlement most of the time.

On violence and the media...

2008-08-19T10:28:00.003-04:00

From an interview with Michael Henek:

Cineaste: Funny Games seems to be a contribution to the self-reflexive films about media and violence along the lines of Natural Born Killers or Man Bites Dog.

Haneke: My goal there was a kind of counterprogram to Natural Born Killers. In my view, Oliver Stone's film, and I use it only as example, is the attempt to use a fascist esthetic to achieve an antifascist goal, and this doesn't work. What is accomplished is something the opposite, since what is produced is something like a cult film where the montage style complements the violence represented and presents it largely in a positive light. It might be argued that Natural Born Killers makes the violent image alluring while allowing no space for the viewer. I feel this would be very difficult to argue about Funny Games. Benny's Video and Funny Games are different kinds of obscenity, in the sense that I intended a slap in the face and a provocation.

Full disclosure: I have not watched Funny Games (either version), but I have seen both Natural Born Killers and Man Bites Dog. In fact, when I was invited to present at symposium my last year of undergrad, it was for a paper I wrote about Man Bites Dog. Anyway...

I think that there's something to that criticism of NBK, and it was one of the same criticisms I had of MBD, too- for a film that seems to be suggesting that the media has at least some burden of the blame for excessive violence, these films glorify and entertain through the use of violence, too. Having not seen Funny Games yet, I can't say whether it falls into the same trap, but it's a problem I'm certainly interested in. I can't say how good the rest of that interview is- I stopped reading it because they go on to talk about a number of other films that I'm interested in seeing but haven't yet, and I didn't want them spoiled, so to speak.

I'm a big film fan, and I recognize that a lot of the films I like contain some pretty violent stuff. I'm a big horror fan (with the exception of slasher films- I hate most slasher flicks), which tends to involve some violence. But, one thing that I think is interesting is that I'm really fond of films that push me to places I don't usually go, or that create extremely strong reactions, or that force me to confront uncomfortable feelings or truths.

Take the film Hard Candy, for example. I'm a big BIG fan of Hard Candy. It's not a fun film, though. It's not the sort of thing that I think I'd sit down with a beer, a bowl of popcorn, and some friends and say "Hey, guys, let's throw in Hard Candy and get tipsy!" It's an extremely intense and horrifying film full of extremes. After watching it, I couldn't stop talking about it and discussing the premise of the film with the people around me. It was a film that was essentially a piece of wish fulfillment, but where, I think, many viewers found themselves placed in an uncomfortable position of almost feeling sorry for the antagonist of the film- while we might wish terrible things on people, when we're forced to see those terrible things taking place, the reality can make us profoundly uncomfortable.

Now, of course, this is manufactured. The film is designed in such a way on purpose. Would we feel as uncomfortable if the protagonist were someone else? Would we feel more comfortable if the action were presented in a different way? The ways that violence is used in a film can completely alter our perception of the film.

For me, violence in film can be many things. It can be entertaining, it can be gratuitous and exploitative, it can be interesting and informative, it can be educational, it can be an important tool for forcing the viewer to question something, etc. It all depends on the context.

I could (and still might) write at great length about this, but I'm interested to know how other people perceive violence in film- do you avoid violent films? Only certain types of violence? Do you think that films can use violence to teach a point or a raise important questions? Is it possible for a film to use violence to implicate the viewer (as Funny Games supposedly does), and if it does so, does it also implicate itself (as, I think, Man Bites Dog does)?

What Women Want...

2008-08-18T13:08:00.004-04:00

Just a little shout-out to This Is What Women Want (not, thank gods, to be confused with this).

To kick off the project, they're hosting an event in Boston. Check out the CNW site for more details.

Or, read the press release below:

This Is What Women WantBoston kickoff!
Thursday, August 21 @ 7:00PM
Cambridge YMCA Theater, 820 Mass. Ave, Cambridge

For more info, call 617-876-5310 or visit our website

Tired of being talked about this election season? Done with being represented by skewed polls and stereotypes?

This Is What Women Want is your chance to cut through the spin and tell the media, the candidates and the world exactly what you want this election season.

We're embarking on a This Is What Women Want Tour of speakouts across the country, starting in Boston on Thursday, 8/21 and then taking place in each debate city the night before the debate. At each location, local and national media will sit up and listen to women - from the very famous to the not-yet-known. It could be your voice at that mic!

The Boston event will feature speakouts from Cynthia Enloe, Kety Esquivel, and numerous other national and community leaders, plus a wide-open mic and… you! Come tell us exactly what you want from the candidates, the media and the next President.

However you participate, we’ll be sending the best speakouts to the media and the candidates every week.

From sexism, racism, and other bias in the media’s coverage of the campaign, to immigration, war, poverty, health care, reproductive justice, sexual freedom, worker’s rights, violence, education, environmental concerns and more, this is an unprecedented chance to set the agenda for the country. Whether you’ve got a criticism of the status quo or a visionary idea that no one has yet considered, we want to hear from you.

Our goal is simple: to ensure that the real and varied concerns of women are a force to be reckoned with this election season.

Because I love nothing more than to argue during my lunch hour...

2008-08-15T11:34:00.003-04:00

Over in a feministing thread about China and the little girl who sang versus the little girl who "looked cute" on tv, Jackal1994 (I know, it's a jackal! Is it a jackal?) threw up a comment that sie apparently tried to put up on a post that was eight pages back already. While I'm not sure why you'd bother responding to a post that's eight pages back, I ended up reading the comment. And now I'm going to talk about it. It's pretty long, but I've definitely seen some of the arugments pop up before, and I feel like responding. I do wish I had a "below the fold" option, though.

Oh well. Onward!

...A) Puckalish, I will accept that there is work-place discrimination against women. You had a possible(?) move to shift and meet somewhere in the middle, retreating from the 26% figure (albeit with outright attacks upon me for having the nerve to disagree and being able to articulately state my opinion). Is it wide-spread, systematic, and around 26%?
I highly doubt it. And I will tell you why. The business mantra is: money. Morality and ethics go out the window as we saw in the 70’s when Lee Iaccoca (then in ford top brass) along with others decided to NOT recall the pinto (prone to exploding when struck in the rear even at low speeds) because some pencil pushers figured out that the lawsuits from the dead and injured would cost less than a recall.

How does this apply to women’s pay discrimination? Well, didn’t Merril Lynch just pay $2million dollars for a discrimination lawsuit? Going by the business mantra (money) it’s plain lunacy to presume that all companies everywhere are discriminating against women.

This would open these companies up to such a huge liability that businesses would be going under left and right.

Annnd, time out!
Sie goes on some more about this. At length. But, I want to interject for a moment. See, the argument is essentially "Businesses want to make money. Discrimination opens them up to lawsuits. Lawsuits are expensive when you lose. They'd lose more money in a lawsuit than they gain by discriminating. Therefore, they don't discriminate." Which sort of seems like it makes sense if you just think about it casually. But, if we look at reality, we know that's not how it really works.

First of all, this argument assumes that the discrimination is both intentional and planned out. That is, that the people who are doing the hiring and determining pay are sitting there thinking "Oh, this is a man, therefore, we will pay him more. This is a woman, we will pay her less." Maybe I'm being dumb, but I just don't think that's what most people believe is happening, nor do I think it's how most wage discrimination is occuring. I think it happens, but I think that a more subtle discrimination is at work a lot of times. I think that men are given preference because they're seen as being go-getters, etc. The person doing the hiring or determining raises isn't thinking "that's a guy, so he deserves more" he's thinking "Oh, this guy has x, y, and z qualities, so he deserves more". It's just as bad, but it's not as simple as Jackal is describing, either.

Second of all, there's a cost benefit that you have to take into account. Discrimination cases are notoriously difficult to prove, so there's actually no reason to believe that businesses would be folding left and right if there was discrimination happening. Particularly when a lot of discrimination is happening under the guise of other factors- a woman doesn't get a position because there are concerns that she might take too much time off, for example. It's not as simple as "She's a woman, so we're not going to hire her.

Okay, Jackal, sorry about the interuption, please continue.

Now are there some industries companies that are still discriminating? I would presume so, but these industries would have to be A) dominated by jackasses, and B) have enough clout/money to figure they can do this and get away with it, or don’t care about a (potential) out-of-court settlement of thousands. There aren’t many companies with both of these things. Grocers are out (they make pennies on the dollar in profit), as are department stores, and a lot of other companies except maybe things like IT, Pharmacueticals, stock brokerage houses MAY have a culture conducive to discrimination and the means to pay lawsuits without blinking.

As you can, we're still functioning under the misapprehension that discrimination is always very blatant and easily proven. Given that only the most blatant and offensive examples of discrimination ever make it to trial, I just don't think we can assume that only the most jackassed and wealthy of businesses can "afford" to discriminate.

While some women may have pay disparity (even after variables) of 20% or 30% I would be surprised if even companies in this group with possible discrimination cultures routinely discriminate (as an aggregate total to all female employees) more than 8%. Why? The business mantra: money. The liability is just too great. Each discriminated-against woman may be saving the company $800 per year. That’s worth a potential liability of hundreds of thousands? No. Businesses may be unethical and cruel, but they love money.

Okay, now I'm not a math major, but I'm pretty sure that math is flawed. Let's take a mid-level analyst at my last job. You're looking at a position that's worth about 60k a year. Now, let's assume that a woman in the same position is making 8% less than her male colleage. 8% of 60k is 4,800. So, she's making 55,200 to his 60k. That's a savings of 4,800, not 800. Over time, that can add up, but that's not the point, anyway. Again, I just don't think that discrimination is about saving money. I don't think that a manager is thinking "if I pay her less than a guy, I can save some scratch!"

While businesses are primarily concerned with making money, they're also run by people, and people have biases. The business is about making money, but all it takes is one manager who is doing hiring or determining pay who is sexist, and you've now introduced bias into the equation. And it may be subtle- honestly, 55,200 to 60k? Not a huge difference. Is it enough to raise eyebrows or stand up in court? Or is it possibly something that might be chaulked up to differences in negotiation skills or different quality reviews?

I'm going to pass over the B point because: 1. I'm not familiar enough with the conversation to respond yet. 2. I think that some of the premises of the B section are really suspect.

C) Petpluto (I believe) mentioned that feminists are fighting against the types of oppression that men face in the “provider” role model. I will give a couple of examples of why I (anyway) don’t believe this to be true.

Let’s look at divorce.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s divorce was unheard of. I think this is because marriage was more an act for survival instead of fulfillment.
By the 1960’s technology in leisure devices and increased standard of living (thanks in large part to Unions—I believe) meant men and women sought fulfillment instead of survival. During the 70’s no-fault divorce swept the land and was passed as law in 49 states. The leading argument was that women shouldn’t have to be in stagnant unfulfilling marriages, or violent ones either.

As I wasn't particularly aware of politics when no-fault divorce laws were being drafted, I can't say whether the "leading argument" he's claiming was actually such, but even if it was, I think it's worth noting that men shouldn't and don't have to stay in bad relationships, either. Carry on...

The argument also was that this enabled women to break from the accepted and safe “housewife” role.
Now, here is my point. A huge tsunami of divorce enabled women to “shatter” their gender roles. But what did divorce do to men? Why were so many women unfulfilled with their husbands in the first place?

In what way did divorce allow women to shatter gender roles? What does that even mean in the context of the conversation?

I put forward this supposition (and try not to think about men, but how YOU WOULD FEEL working 8-10hrs a day with a newborn or toddler at home). When a man (or anybody) has to work long hours and miss his/her baby’s first crawl, first words, first steps, first day at school that person has to accept that he/she is doing something necessary for the family (providing an income) but must disconnect himself/herself from their emotions or be swept up in sadness.

To which I want to point out that someone working as a stay-at-home parent is making just as many sacrifices as someone who goes to work. How would you feel, Jackal, if you busted your ass keeping up a home and caring for a child for 12-18 hours a day? If you had to work long hours taking care of a family and home missing out on getting out of the house, of being involved in a carreer you love, of being intellectually challanged at school or work, etc. How would you feel if you lived your life depending on someone else to bring home all of the money so that you didn't lose your house and so you could put food in the belly of your baby?

Being part of a family is hard, and I have no doubt that if one parent is working full time while the other cares for the child that there's some frustration about missing out on some aspects of the child's growth, but this one-sided representation of what family life is like- that it's all the "breadwinner" giving up and sacrificing and turning off emotions lest sie be "sept up in sadness"? It's bullshit. Both parties are making sacrifices and giving things up, and have reasons to be happy and sad for their respective roles.

...So greater freedom in roles for women meant an INTENSIFYING and STRICTER gender roles for men! So, freeing gender roles for women is NOT “fighting for men too.” In most cases it makes things worse for men. Women are NOT fighting to enter into:
Logging, mining, commercial fishing, roofing, sewage, or construction. How do I know? Because I haven’t heard about one single sex discrimination lawsuit in those fields (and I read the paper & internet news all the time).

And clearly, because Jackal hasn't heard of a single sex discrimination case in those fields, women must not be getting into them. I mean, sure, it only took me ten seconds of online searching to find articles about women having a hard time getting into construction work, or about how more women are trying to get into the field. In 1993 about 600,000 women were in construction. By 1999, that number had grown to almost 900,000. That's still only a fraction of the industry, but it's growth.

And, honestly, most men don't particularly want those jobs, either. Some do, for sure, but they're not the sort of jobs that most men dream about doing.

So women are using their greater gender role freedom to fight to become: doctors, lawyers, pilots, IT professionals, CEO’s, judges, etc… NOT the death professions.

And this is surprising... because?
Is it weird that people tend not to be attracted to jobs that are highly dangerous but, instead, to safe jobs that carry social respect and high wages?

With more men unable to acquire these white collar jobs, and fewer men attaining an education that means more men will turn to the death professions for employment. This means more workers chasing fewer jobs = wage reduction.

*bzzzzzz*
Wrong.
First of all, this pretends that every time a woman gets a white colar job, some guy is forced to turn to a death profession for work. That's just not true. If we're going to pretend that there is exactly a set number of jobs and that every time a woman goes into a job that would have otherwise gone to a man, he necessarily must take some other job, why are we assuming that he's going to turn to highly dangerous "death" work? What, exactly, is stopping him from getting into whatever job that woman would otherwise have had? If she would have been a nurse but is now a doctor, why isn't he going for the nursing position? Why are we tossing him onto a fishing boat?

Second of all, the claim that "fewer men" are attaining an education is patently untrue. In fact, men and women are both going to higher education in higher rates than ever before- women are attending in higher numbers than men, but it's not at a loss to men. That would be like my handing Jackal five dollars and some other person ten dollars only to have Jackal claim that he was somehow losing money. You still gained, you just didn't gain as much as the other person.

So you see when feminists “fight” for ONLY **FEMALE** role expansion it doesn’t help men at all, in fact it puts men from the frying pan into the burner!

Again, to go back to my earlier point, it does this only if men refuse to free ourselves from gendered thinking. If we refuse to see how women breaking out of their traditional gender roles creates opportunities for us to break out of ours, then, yeah, it can mean problems. If you think that your only options are and should be typically "male" fields, you're going to find competition increasing. Feminists are primarily concerned with the jobs that women have because women are currently underrepresented and making less money, but their work is definitely opening doors for men- men can now be a stay-at-home parent without getting as much flack or as many raised eyebrows. Men can work in jobs that have typically been women's jobs but that some men might find fulfilling or interesting- working in fashion, hair, nursing, education, etc.

When is the last time you have seen a feminist leader or webpage moderator talk about the most unconstitutional anti-male law ever made: selective service.

If an 18y/o man doesn’t sign up for selective service he can be imprisoned for up to 7 years.

Why? Because he was too sensitive to kill. This forced (upon pain of prison) societal coercion of men into the male role of killer IS NOT AND NEVER WILL be addressed by feminists.

Why? Because if you’re going to make the argument that men are your class enemy (and oppressor), you can’t admit that women are also oppressing men.

Again, bullshit.
1. Selective Service isn't "women also oppressing men" at all. Women didn't start or create the draft, nor did they decide that women should be excluded. That would be, wait for it... other men who did that. Look at Rostker v. Goldberg for more information, but essentially, the thing that prevents women from being drafted is the fact that the draft's purpose is to get combat troops. Since women aren't allowed to be a part of many combat roles, they can't be drafted. The whole point of a draft is to get combat ready troops quickly. If women aren't allowed in combat positions, what would be the point of drafting them?
2. Feminists do talk about the draft. They have for decades, in fact. The general consensus seems to be "the draft sucks, and nobody should be drafted" from what I've seen. And, as you can see, NOW went to far as to say "If there has to be draft, men and women should face it as equals". Which is to say, if you're going to claim that feminists don't oppose the draft, you should do the ten seconds of research it took to find that information out. Also, if you're a guy, and you feel strongly about the draft being a problem, there's nothing stopping you from trying to get it abolished, and asking for feminists to back you up/give your movement support.
3. A person who is too sensitive to kill won't be thrown in jail- they can register as a Conscientious Objector, and placed in a non-combat position.

Wait... you mean belching detracts from your "hot" factor?

2008-08-15T09:45:00.004-04:00

Oh, wait, no.
It only matters if you're a woman, I forgot.

I know I shouldn't be surprised about an article like this. I mean, it's on men.style.com. What can you really expect there?

And there's so much obviously wrong with the article. I mean, really?

It would be one thing if these female Shreks were cut from the same cloth as Roseanne Barr or Rosie O'Donnell. But the trouble is they're all smoking hot. It's their job to primp and preen and push stuff up to look sexy—what's the point of putting in all that effort if you're only going to undermine the whole operation with gruesome behavior?

Really?

Weirdly enough, I think that some of us have come to the bizarre conclusion- and bear with me, because I know that this is really advanced thinking here- that women have roles, desires, and purposes that extend beyond and sometimes don't even include "being hot for men".

Woooaah. Hold on, I think I'm getting dizzy. It's such radical thought, my mind might be blown.

I'm just tired of seeing the same old "women's purpose in life is get all hotified for men. Unless you're fat or ugly. Then it's okay for you to be vulgar."

And it's such a blatant double-standard. It's cool for men to be vulgar and obnoxious because it's funny. But women? No, no, no. They've got to be prim and proper and sexed up.

I have to say, I'm also tired of total dolts like this guy being seen as the voice of Manhood. I know that I'm not the only one who feels this way, either. How many times do we need some idiot half-brain telling us what we should and shouldn't find hot? How many times do we need some magazine puppet telling us that we should only find women like Model X attractive, and that women like Model Y? Well, there's clearly something wrong with you if you find that hot.

If you think that you're ever going to find a partner who never burps or farts, I think you're really in for a rude awakening at some point. But thanks, John, for reminding me (as if I needed it) some of the things I really dislike about typical "men's" magazines.

The only really good thing about the page is the comments section. As of right now, there are 17 comments, and it looks like most of them are actually calling the guy on his stupid article. Maybe there's some hope.

I'm not really a sports fan...

2008-08-14T14:45:00.003-04:00

But I was really hoping this match would go the other way.

Because, like... this?

Not so much awesome.

Maybe I'm just weird, but I learned that particular gesture wasn't very nice when I was, like, five.

Mirror's Edge...

2008-08-06T08:17:00.004-04:00

via: Twenty Sided

My total interest in E3 this year was... well, not very high. I asked my friend who works in the industry about it, so I guess I had some interest, but his "Meh" was enough to make me think that I probably didn't miss much. I mean, really, it's not like that much happens at E3 anymore, anyway. Most of the things they show there have already been making buzz on the magical intertubes for months, at least, by the time E3 arrives.

But, Mirror's Edge almost makes me wish I'd paid more attention to E3 coverage. Almost.

Mirror's Edge sounds pretty interesting, and I've been enjoying the information coming out, for the most part. First person game that looks like it's going to break away from some of the more traditional aspects of the genre and put emphasis on exploration and movement instead of on weapon collection and shooting stuff? Interesting. Level design that requires the player to think vertically as well as horizontally when planning movement? I am intrigued. Sci-fi story that involves a dystopian future disguised beneath a highly polished finish? Fascinating. All those little touches like the head movement while you run, the ability to see your own feet in a first person game, the sounds of your breathing and grunts as you exert yourself, the shouldering open doors as you run into them? *insert synonym for "interesting"*

I could go on and on about how great some aspects look. Okay, maybe I will just a minute longer. I *love* the look of the city as presented in the videos. My impression is that the game takes place at some point in the relatively near future. There's something about the city design that gives the impression of "future" without going full-on Blade Runner or 5th Element on us. No flying cars or anything like that. Just a highly polished cityscape (beneath which, apparently, hides DYSTOPIA! OMGS!). I'm a total sucker for the whole "things are not as clean and orderly as they seem" sorts of sci-fi stories.

So, yeah, color me interested. There's a lot there to be intrigued by. Watching the character discard weapons as soon as a fight is over? What kind of first person game does that?! And I don't see any onscreen info about the character, either- no health bar, no inventory, etc.

I even mostly like the main character- Faith. The eye tattoo is a little... whatever. I mean, it just feels like, at this point, creating a character with a tattoo or mark over their eye is ridiculously cliche', but I can overlook that, I guess. Other than the mark on her eye, she seems like a decent design- she seems to be fairly appropriately dressed for what she's doing. She's looks athletic, and is wearing exactly the sort of outfit I see messengers running around in. So, kudos to that? She's doesn't really seem to be hypersexualized that I noticed, which is also good. The only area that bugs a little bit is that she's sort of the Asian martial arts master cliche'. Obviously, we'll know more about that as the release approaches- November, I think?

Anyway, check it out, let me know what you think. Between this, Spore, Rock Band, and Left For Dead, EA is really turning things around. When did EA start caring about making good games again?

Wonder Woman, coming soon...

2008-07-31T11:31:00.004-04:00

They're releasing an animated Wonder Woman feature in Spring of next year. It looks promising for the most part. The tagline at the end bugs, but the feature was co-written by Gail Simone, who is sort of like Awesome personified.

But, come on... you've spent the whole trailer pointing out how much ass she kicks, and how she's a born hero, but you finish with "Justice Never Looked So Good" and "It's not polite to hit a lady"?
Really?

Oh. My. Gods.

2008-07-29T10:48:00.003-04:00

Wow.
That is very bad.

Creating better games...

2008-07-28T15:01:00.000-04:00

I'm still touch-and-go as far as internet is concerned, and so I've only been loosely following what's been happening on other sites lately. Last week, I think it was, I read a post about a "Fat Princess" game, and the first four or five comments about it, over at Feminist Gamers. Well, it looks like there was sort of the expected reaction- i.e. lots of trolling and ridiculous name-calling- from the HardCoreGamers.

And while I don't have a lot to say that hasn't been said a billion times about these sorts of reactions, I do have a lot to say about game design. Because, quite frankly, there's a lot of room for improvement. So, I'm thinking of a few posts about gameplay and games and how they could be made better. I'm sure that some of this will rehash what other people have already said, for which I apologize, I'm just sort of letting my thoughts flow, here.

So, a month or so back, I finally got around to completely finishing Mario Galaxy- I got all of the stars with both Mario and Luigi, and I got the final bonus star. And yes, that is me pulling a muscle patting myself on the back. And I have to say, I thought it was tons of fun (except the damn "blow all of this garbage up with bombs that have long fuses even though you've got very little time" minigame. That was, in fact, the opposite of fun. Which is to say, stupid. But I digress). But, after I beat it, I started talking to Jaclyn about it. The conversation about Fat Princess reminded me of my conversation with Jaclyn, in that our conversation turned from "the ways that sex/gender are portrayed in Mario" into "ways that Mario could be made better".

Now, I'm hardly the first person to tackle a Nintendo game on this front, but I have to say, Mario doesn't fare that well in the ways it represents women. There are only a few female characters in the game at all:

Obviously, there's the Princess, whom you're out to save from a kidnapping at the hands of, who else? Bowser. She's hardly the most empowerful of characters, as presented. I mean, despite the fact that she's ostensibly the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom, her main job seems to be "getting kidnapped. By an angry turtle. Repeatedly." I did, however, notice something interesting at the end of Mario Galaxy. Without giving away the story *coughMarioSavesHercough*, there's a scene where Peach, Mario and Bowser are all in the same place. I don't think it's a coincidence that the scene ends with Peach making with the soft eyes at Bowser. I'm just saying, maybe she's less "kidnapped" and more "run off"... Just something to consider. Or not.

Besides Peach, there's also Rosalina, a sort of mysterious woman who is the caretaker of the lumas, and your guide to the galaxies. The good news is that you're never charged with rescuing her from a kidnapping. The bad news is that she spends the majority of the game asking you to go out and find her missing stars. Which makes her only marginally less helpless than the princess for about 90% of the game. So, not so awesome on that front. There is, however, a really great part where she's responsible for blowing through a dozen or so of Bowser's warships without much effort. Which is pretty cool. She also seems to grow to about twenty feet tall, which suggests that she'd kick some ass in a fight. So, she's kind of a mixed bag, but for the majority of the game? Yeah, not so awesome.

Except that part where she tears through Bowser's fleet. Damn. That part was sweeeeeet.

*ahem*
Anyway.
The only other specifically female characters are secondary. I think that one member of the Toad Brigade might be female, but they're really there for comedy relief, and I paid very little attention to any of them. There's the Queen Bee, but we only really see her a few times, and, like the princess, she ends up asking you for help because she's incapable of doing things on her own. Her entire design is meant to make her look like a giant helpless creature.

The Lumas don't appear to have a gender, and neither do many of the enemies in the games, since most of them are things like plants, angry stone blocks, and walking mushroom creatures, although I suspect that most people probably read them as male. Bowser definitely reads as male, as does Bowser Jr., but the Kamella Koopa is almost certainly female. Still, most of the things characters that have a sex read as male.

Now, I'm sure that none of that comes as a surprise to anyone familiar with the franchise. In a game like Mario, we've come to expect certain things. We expect that the game will focus on Mario. He'll spend a lot of time doing ridiculous and dangerous things involving jumping on floating platforms. He'll be responsible for completely screwing up the local economy by discovering and recovering thousands upon thousands of gold coins. He'll probably put on a costume that gives him some insane and drug-induced powers like flinging fireballs from his nose or turning into a flying raccoon or something. And, he'll probably end up rescuing the princess. Again.

The thing I want to talk about for a moment is how a game could be made that would give us the Mario action we all love, but also do a better job with representations of women. Because it's my belief that we could get a great Mario game that wouldn't have to rely so much on archaic representations of women as helpless victims in need of ~~prince~~ plumber to rescue them.

Now, with that in mind, I actually think that Mario Sunshine was on the right track. Instead of having Mario start off having to rescue the kidnapped princess, Mario was charged with cleaning up graffiti being spread by a lookalike. Of course, it quickly became a case of rescuing the princess, but it didn't need to be. Or consider Super Mario 3, where, for the first seven levels, Mario was charged with saving various kingdoms under siege, with the belief that the princess was safe at home. It wasn't until the end of world 7 that it turned out to be a trick by Bowser to ... kidnap the princess.

At this point, it'd be downright subversive to have a Mario game where the point wasn't to rescue a princess. I'd love to see a Mario game where Mario sets out to prevent some other disaster being perpetrated by Bowser that doesn't involve a princess in captivity. Given that plot is really an afterthought in most Mario games, it's not like it'd need to be something particularly deep. Bowser is a stereotypical mustache twirling Dan Backslide evil villain, so it could be that he's planning to destroy the Mushroom Kingdom with his weather dominator or something like that, and Mario is out to save the kingdom, instead of just Peach. I mean, Bowser is exactly the type of character to do dumb evil things just for the sake of doing dumb evil things, why not capitalize on that?

That alone would go a long way to fixing some of the issues, I think. Getting rid of the helpless women cliche would certainly be a good start. I think that the next step would be to include women as characters that have some strength and agency. This is tougher, because pretty much everyone in the Marioverse is completely inept except for Mario, and even that's questionable. But, it'd be nice to see that there were women doing something active to help the situation. Instead of the princess just mailing letters, it'd be nice to see her doing something. Even if it was just in cut-scenes, it'd be nice.

One of the best ways that Nintendo could give some agency to the princess would be by making her playable again. I don't even think it'd be necessary to go back to Mario 2 style play (although I think that'd be awesome), but I think it'd be swank as hell to beat the game and discover that Peach had become a playable character. Or, perhaps spread some secret bonus levels through the game where you play as various Mario characters like Peach, Toad, Luigi, and even Yoshi.

Since they love to spread bonus worlds throughout the games now, anyway, why not do bonus worlds where you're tasked with playing levels from the perspective of other characters, and build the levels with those characters in mind? It'd be a neat way to get some of the other characters some screentime, and diversify the gameplay a bit. Imagine that you're playing and you come to a bonus level where you have to play as Peach. Peach has her hover ability, and the gameplay is designed around that. You get to the end of the level, and it's a Switch Palace, Princess flips the switch and, like in Mario World, it turns the yellow outlines into yellow blocks, thus making it so that the Princess is playing an active role in helping Mario defeat Bowser.

There's no reason, at this point, why princess Peach has to stay a 2 dimensional cardboard cutout of a character. Or why the Mario world couldn't include some new women. I'd love to see more villains like Kamella, and the supporting cast could use some women who aren't in peril. And I firmly believe that it could absolutely be done in a way that wouldn't require substantial changes to the gameplay we've come to love from the Mario franchise.

Would adding some sections where you play as other characters or bonus levels where you can choose characters ruin the game? Would having Mario set out to save someone other than Peach or even set out to do something that wasn't "rescue a princess" ruin the game? Would having more prominant female characters that aren't helpless victims destroy the franchise? Obviously, I don't think so. Nobody plays Mario for the deep stories or nuanced plots- I play because I like running around ridiculously impossible dreamscapes full of talking mushroom people and wacky, ridiculous costumes. There's no reason that I couldn't do that just as well without the Princess Being Kidnapped Again.

This made me cry...

2008-07-15T07:02:00.005-04:00

I'm on my way to work this morning, listening to the radio, when the news comes on.
A man in Lancaster, CA stabbed his girlfriend to death with a sword, in front of their four children after an argument. The 911 tape of their daughter pleading with the opperator to get help was played, and it was the most horrible, gut-wrenchingly sad thing I've heard in ages.

Now, it's been about an hour and I'm sitting here thinking about it, and the thing that's pissing me off right now is that I know that the thing that's going to get paraded out as soon as this starts gaining traction is that there was a history of domestic violence, and some people are going to start saying things like "Well, she should have left."

And while the question of why a particular person stays when they're a victim of domestic violence is an important one, it's not actually helpful in this case at this point. We'll never know why stayed, because he murdered her. And the fact that she stayed should not, in any way, excuse, validate, or implicate her in her murder. The question "Why?" is important in that it can allow the people who care to provide assistence and help the victim escape the cycle of violence. In retrospect, the why is less helpful, and if it's used as a weapon to implicate or denigrate the victim, it's in particularly poor taste.

I hope they catch this guy very very soon, and I hope that those poor kids get the care that they'll need. I can only imagine how completely screwed up you'd be after watching your father stab your mother to death with a sword.

..edited 9:06 am...

Apparently, there's already a discussion happening over at Feministe about the question "why don't victims leave?" It's not about this case in particular, but more about the general questions around domestic violence. I'm reading through it right now, and some of the comments are very good- the point about how the question "why" is too big and cumbersome, while questions like "what is preventing the victim from leaving" tend to get more concrete answers (some of which Thomas mentioned in the comments here already). I hadn't thought of that before, but that makes some sense. Anyway, just thought I'd point to it, since it was a weird coincidence, and since some of the points are very good.

I'm still alive...

2008-07-07T09:56:00.002-04:00

I promise.
Still getting set up in Bean Town and trying to get all my ducks in a row so that I can start classes in the fall. Also, no internet at home yet. Annoying.

Anyway, nothing screams "triumphant return" like a meme.
The rules: Things I've done are highlighted in bold, and I've added one to the end.

01. Bought everyone in the pub a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain A small mountain. And I didn't make it all the way to the top. But I was climbing on it.
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone.
08. Said “I love you” and meant it.
09. Hugged a tree.
10. Done a striptease
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Stayed up all night long and watched the sun rise
15. Seen the Northern Lights
16. Gone to a huge sports game.
17. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
18. Grown and eaten your own vegetables.
19. Touched an iceberg
20. Slept under the stars
21. Changed a baby’s diaper
22. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
23. Watched a meteor shower
24. Gotten drunk on champagne
25. Given more than you can afford to charity
26. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
27. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
28. Had a food fight
29. Bet on a winning horse
30. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
31. Asked out a stranger
32. Had a snowball fight
33. Photocopied your bottom on the office photocopier
34. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
35. Held a lamb
36. Enacted a favorite fantasy
37. Taken a midnight skinny dip
38. Taken an ice cold bath
39. Had a meaningful conversation with a beggar
40. Seen a total eclipse
41. Ridden a roller coaster
42. Hit a home run
43. Fit three weeks miraculously into three days
44. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
45. Adopted an accent for an entire day
46. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
47. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
48. Had two hard drives for your computer (Two? I've got three hard drives, an external hard drive, a thumb drive, and two disc drives right now.)
49. Visited all 50 states
50. Loved your job for all accounts
51. Taken care of someone who was shit faced
52. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
53. Had amazing friends (I like to think that I still do.)
54. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
55. Watched wild whales
56. Stolen a sign
57. Backpacked in Europe
58. Taken a road-trip
59. Rock climbing
60. Lied to foreign government’s official in that country to avoid notice
61. Midnight walk on the beach
62. Sky diving
63. Visited Ireland
64. Been heartbroken longer then you were actually in love
65. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
66. Visited Japan
67. Bench pressed your own weight
68. Milked a cow
69. Alphabetized your records (and my books, and my movies, and my video games, and...)
70. Pretended to be a superhero
71. Sung karaoke
72. Lounged around in bed all day
73. Posed nude in front of strangers
74. Scuba diving
75. Got it on to “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye
76. Kissed in the rain
77. Played in the mud
78. Played in the rain
79. Gone to a drive-in theatre
80. Done something you should regret, but don’t regret it
81. Visited the Great Wall of China
82. Discovered that someone who’s not supposed to have known about your blog has discovered your blog
83. Dropped Windows in favour of something better
84. Started a business
85. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
86. Toured ancient sites
87. Taken a martial arts class
88. Sword fought for the honour of a woman
89. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
90. Gotten married
91. Been in a movie
92. Crashed a party
93. Loved someone you shouldn’t have
94. Kissed someone so passionately it made them dizzy
95. Gotten divorced
96. Had sex at the office
97. Gone without food for 5 days
98. Made cookies from scratch
99. Won first prize in a costume contest
100. Ridden a gondola in Venice
101. Gotten a tattoo
102. Found that the texture of some materials can turn you on
103. Rafted the Snake River
104. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
105. Got flowers for no reason
106. Masturbated in a public place
107. Got so drunk you don’t remember anything
108. Been addicted to some form of illegal drug
109. Performed on stage
110. Been to Las Vegas
111. Recorded music (In high school for a friend's album. It was horrible, but it happened).
112. Eaten shark (and gator, and snake, and boar, and buffalo, and bear, and grasshopper, and eel)
113. Had a one-night stand
114. Gone to Thailand
115. Seen Siouxsie live
116. Bought a house
117. Been in a combat zone
118. Buried one/both of your parents
119. Shaved or waxed your pubic hair off
120. Been on a cruise ship
121. Spoken more than one language fluently
122. Gotten into a fight while attempting to defend someone
123. Bounced a check
124. Performed in Rocky Horror
125. Read - and understood - your credit report
126. Raised children
127. Recently bought and played with a favourite childhood toy
128. Followed your favourite band/singer on tour
129. Created and named your own constellation of stars
130. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
131. Found out something significant that your ancestors did (helped explore and settle Canada, thank you very muchly)
132. Called or written your Member of Congress
132. Had them write back (Nope, but I did receive a letter from the head of the tourism board of Alaska once).
133. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
134. … more than once?
135. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
136. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
137. Had an abortion or your female partner did
138. Had plastic surgery
139. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
140. Written articles for a large publication
141. Lost over 100 pounds
142. Held someone while they were having a flashback
143. Piloted an airplane
144. Petted a stingray (I petted a tiger shark once, which is waaaay cooler than petting a stingray, if you ask me)
145. Broken someone’s heart
146. Helped an animal give birth
147. Been fired or laid off from a job
148. Won money on a TV game show
149. Broken a bone
150. Killed a human being
151. Gone on an African photo safari
152. Ridden a motorcycle (Ridden? Yes. Driven? No.)
153. Driven any land vehicle at a speed of greater than 100mph
154. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced
155. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol (All three)
156. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
157. Ridden a horse
158. Had major surgery
159. Had sex on a moving train
160. Had a snake as a pet
161. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
162. Slept through an entire flight: takeoff, flight, and landing
163. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
164. Visited more foreign countries than US states
165. Visited all 7 continents
166. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
167. Eaten kangaroo meat
168. Fallen in love at an ancient Mayan burial ground
169. Been a sperm or egg donor
170. Eaten sushi
171. Had your picture in the newspaper
172. Had 2 (or more) healthy romantic relationships for over a year in your lifetime
173. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
174. Gotten someone fired for their actions
175. Gone back to school
176. Parasailed
177. Changed your name
178. Petted a cockroach (I've squashed more than a few, but who pets them? Why would you want to?)
179. Eaten fried green tomatoes
180. Read The Iliad
181. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
182. Dined in a restaurant and stolen silverware, plates, cups because your apartment needed them
183. … and gotten 86′ed from the restaurant because you did it so many times, they figured out it was you
184. Taught yourself art from scratch
185. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
186. Apologized to someone years after inflicting the hurt
187. Skipped all your school reunions (all one of them so far)
188. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
189. Been elected to public office
190. Written your own computer language
191. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
192. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
193. Built your own PC from parts
194. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
195. Had a booth at a street fair
196. Dyed your hair
197. Been a DJ
198. Found out someone was going to dump you via LiveJournal
199. Written your own role playing game
200. Been arrested
201. Written/filmed/produced your own pornographic material
202. Dated someone with a page on IMDB.

Welcome to Bean Town...

2008-05-11T22:25:00.004-04:00

So, as mentioned earlier, I've moved to Boston. I've been trying to get the lay of the land and get a better understanding for the area, so I haven't really had the time or energy to post. I've been here a week as of today. It's been harder than I thought it would, but it's also been really awesome. I've already got an apartment, and I've got some leads on jobs, in addition to being signed up with a temp agency, so we'll see how that goes.

So, until I get posting a little more regularly, here's a little bit of Boston to share. Consider it Monday Music Videos on Sunday. Or something like that.

Got a tiny letter from Simmons yesterday...

2008-05-01T08:12:00.001-04:00

With a note letting me know that I got in.
...
I got in!

Eastward bound...

2008-04-30T16:37:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to give a little heads-up that posting will be... erm... will continue to be a little sparadic for the time being. I'm packing up, saying goodbye to my home state, and heading east to settle my roots in bean town for the time being. Moving is a pretty big deal, and it'll be the first time in almost three decades that I've lived outside of Michigan. I love Michigan, but it's time to move on. Anyway, it also means that, while I get moved and try to settle in and figure out everything, I'm probably going to be a little bit preoccupied and maybe not super great about updating. I'll certainly be doing my best to keep content coming, but I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a bit distracted.

Wish me luck!

Oh, right... Grand Theft Auto is coming out...

2008-04-29T10:39:00.003-04:00

Samhita has a post up about a GTA4 trailer. I haven't watched the trailer, because... well... I'm at work, and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it's a bit on the ol' NSFW side. Just a hunch.

Anyway, I read the post, and started reading the comments, and I can't help but be surprised by some of them. The Grand Theft Auto series of games are an easy target for analysis. They're full of racism and misogynistic violence, and they don't really do anything to hide that fact. In fact, the series has pretty much embraced that fact, and the creators go out of their way to try to outdo themselves with each game.

So, some of the defenses are really surprising to me. The suggestion that killing prostitutes "is never a story goal" or was "obscure" and that it's a game of "choices" bothers me. It's been a while since I played any of the GTA games, but it was *never* a secret that you could kill prostitutes. From at least GTA3, it's been pretty common knowledge that you could go out, pick up a prostitute to regain your health, and then kill her to get back the money you lost when you picked her up. It was never an obscure part of the game at all, even if it wasn't manditory. The bit about it being a choice is irrelevent. There are plenty of things that the game doesn't let you do- there are no children in any of the GTA games, so you won't find yourself a child-killer, for example. So, the choice to include prostitutes that one can then murder? It's about choice- the choice of Rockstar Games to include that element.

Similarly, a commenter suggests that the "in-game consequences are only negative" when you kill one of the prostitutes. That's not accurate. Killing NPCs in front of the police or other characters has a potentially negative consequence- it increases your wanted level, thus making the police try to arrest or kill you. But, killing anyone- prostitute or not- also has positive consequences in that you can steal any money or weapons that character is carrying. Further, killing someone in a place where you're not being watched or where there aren't any police doesn't increase your wanted level. And, for many players, increasing your wanted level isn't actually a negative consequence- I knew plenty of people who made a game out of getting the highest wanted level possible just to see how long they could last.

I really took umbridge to Scilian's comment, though:

Well Grand Theft Auto is simply a game based around violence and crime.

Violence, sex, and more violence.

Anyone can be killed at any time - so would the game be ok if women were removed completely from the game?

Or maybe if women couldnt be killed in the game?

But then the rife hypocrisy here at feministing rears its ugly head as usual - since the violence is about 99% towards males, wouldnt that reek of misandry?

Kind of funny, you know, this bullshit post coming from samhita when she constantly talks about racism against black males who tried to kill someone by kicking in their heads with steel toed boots, but then shooting people in a video game is suddenly misogynistic?

So real world violence is ok, but a game that has nothing to do with killing females is suddenly misogynistic?

Logic must have the day off today.

Where to start? First of all, it looked to me like Samhita's post was largely about the fact that "not only are the sex scenes very real looking, most of the women are killed shortly after forcibly performing sex acts." It's not just that the game is violent- it is. Yeah, you can kill pretty much everyone in GTA. But, there was a choice made about which characters you could pay for sex with and then murder, and, hint- it wasn't the characters with penises.

And Scilian's bringing up the Jena Six case is disturbing, as well. That case is ongoing, and I don't think that anyone has attempted to say that the fact that one of the white kids was attacked was good- only that the Jena Six aren't being treated fairly, and they're being punished in a way that exceeds their crime, while the white kids who also engaged in serious acts of violence are going free with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. It's not that violence in the 'real world' is okay.

And, really, this attitude that, because she's complained about the treatment of women she must necessarily also complain about the treatment of men or it's a double standard? It's bullshit. It's a game made by men targeting a male audience about a male character who spends a lot of time doing terrible things to other men. There are complaints to be raised there, for sure- but Samhita, a woman, is under no obligation to discuss them given that the game *also* features nasty treatment of women, too.

Hell, we can discuss the treatment of men all day- and I'd personally suggest that, if Scilian is really concerned with the treatment of men, a better tactic than accusing Samhita of hypocrisy would be to become an activist and write about or do something about it. Pissing on somebody else's movement isn't a good way to get your issue addressed. And, I find the criticism difficult to swallow given the width and breadth of male characters available absolutely dwarfs the portrayals of women in games.

More generally:

I'm certainly not in the habit of trying to tell people what is or is not a feminist attitude. If someone tells me that they're going to play GTA4, I'm not going to try to revoke their feminist street cred. Nor do I think that the GTA series of games are completely without merit. The sandbox style and the ability to create tremendous car crashes, do Hollywood action movie style car chases and jumps, etc? That stuff is all a lot of fun. I love that part. But, the sad fact is that they've consistently packaged a really fun free-roaming car driving game inside of a really nasty narrative. The game is full of racist, sexist, and heteronormative/homophobic bile. And for that? Yes, I do think it belongs in the hall of shame. Which is too bad, because, yeah, I've actually had a lot of fun outside of the story of the game, flying helicopters and racing bikes through the city.

Ultimately, I have no interest in playing GTA4, despite the consistently high marks that it's getting. I'm not interested in more racist drivel being passed off as story. I'm not interested in seeing what kind of stupid, ignorant stereotypes they'll embrace in the portrayal of an Eastern European character. I mean, we've been treated to an Italian who joins the mafia, and a black gang member, so we've got reason to believe that they'll treat him with respect and not fall back on stereotypes. Right? Right?

edited 3:38 PM -
Shamus has a great quote about the difficulty of rating a game like GTA4. He makes a comparison between rating the game and rating a restaurant: "How do you rate a restaurant that serves mouth-watering steaks for $5 and a punch in the face before the meal?"
Too right.
Anyway, his piece is about how some publication was granted an "exclusive review" of the game prior to release. Penny Arcade mentioned the same thing, and I'll go ahead and throw my gamer hat on to agree: Exclusive reviews raise some significant questions about, you know, objectivity. Color me "not a fan".

Double-you tee eff, huff-po?

2008-04-25T16:56:00.004-04:00

Why, precisely, do I give a rat's ass about whether or not Miley Cyrus is flashing her bra?

Also, why does the headline state this as fact, when the first line of the damn article makes it clear that, well, it's not clear that they're of Miley at all?

Outside of giving readers an opportunity to post such enlightened comments as "I hope she starts doing porn as soon as she turns 18." and "Disney produces a lot of whores", what, exactly, is the point of running with this non-story? I guess it gives some people the opportunity to defend Miley's apparently maligned integrity by pointing out "I don't know who this little slut-wanna-be IS but it's definately NOT Miley! She only vaguely resembles her.
Shame on you for insinuating it is to fool people and slander that sweet wholesome girl (the REAL Miley)."

Which brings me to another point... who fucking cares if it is Miley?!

They're pictures of a young girl with her *gasp* stomach showing! Or of her *swoon*, exposing part of her bra! Are we supposed to labor under the idiotic and repeated disproven notion that teenagers don't explore their sexuality? Are we supposed to continue plugging our ears and covering our eyes and singing that tired tune "Good girls don't do that!"?

Thank the gods that there are articles about important things like Julianne Moore's sheer top, FHM's "sexiest woman in the world" award, and the always progressive "guess who's wearing this bikini" game to distract me. There's just not enough coverage of women's bodies and sex and slut-shaming in the popular culture. So, to that end, thank you Huff-Po.

Very progressive, indeed.

Friday Phallus Fun...

2008-04-25T10:26:00.003-04:00

This reads like a joke- I mean, they're "looking to have a firm grip on Government spend"? "They're going to get more column inches"?

And, while they're a real org, that's not the logo on the homepage.

So, my general feeling is that it's a joke (insert pun about "yanking our chain" or "pulling our leg" if you must), but, I have to admit, I giggled. Yes, it's fifth grade penis humor, but it's also fifth grade penis humor done with fonts.

And fonts are fun.

And I thought McCain's "I'm like Teddy" comments were bad...

2008-04-25T09:33:00.005-04:00

h/t Latoya at Racialicious

So, let's play a game...

One of these things is not like the others.

Joe Francis is making my blood boil again, this time from the pages of a GQ men.style.com feature. How is it that, even from fucking prison, this jackass just can't shut up? The good news is that this article makes it even clearer, if that's possible, just how completely relentless his assholery is.

There's a particularly amusing bit where he's talking about his time in jail, and how it's not what he expected. He talks about how he's "a god" on the inside- that he's revered like a rock star because of his association with Girls Gone Wild. But, he continues: "The one thing I fear is one of these fucking people showing up at my house. I’m a different class. They’re dumb. They’re the people you see on Cops. Those are the people you see in jail."

Hey, Francis, speaking of "dumb"?

You're in jail, too.

Twit.

Still, that passage is really significant, in my mind. Not just because it's quickly followed by his making an incredibly inappropriate remark towards a female guard (who, according to the author, "gives him that disapproving-but-flattered half frown."), but because I think it's a strong message about how we treat and view people like Francis. Here's a man who has made a name for himself by being a violent, abusive maniac. Oh, yes, Girls Gone Wild is what started it all, but it's not GGW that made him a public figure- there are thousands of pornographers who never gain a fraction of the notoriety that Francis has.

Why?

Because Francis goes out of his way to abuse, humiliate, and intimidate everyone he comes in contact with. The Times article was the first time I really started to learn about who this guy was, and every interview he gives, every appearence he makes just further cements the perosna he's cultivated. Even the GQ article mentions it a few times- he's portrayed and plays up this image of being "a 15-year-old boy who just can't help himself". He's the very image of "boys will be boys", grown up.

If ever there was somebody who more purely embodied that ideal, and just how dangerous it is, it's Francis. Even the GQ article, which seems at times weirdly sympathetic towards Francis, makes note of how manic the guy is, and how it'd probably be good for society if jail broke him a little bit. We ought not tolerate a 15-year-old acting like Francis does. The lack of self control would be enough to get most of us in trouble at that age. And Francis isn't 15. He's over twice that.

But Francis's personal douchebaggery is only part of the problem... and not even the biggest part. That Francis is an asshole is a personal failing, and it should be enough to get him ostracized, and has clearly been enough to get him in trouble with the law. But the sad fact is that it's also made him a celeb. As he points out, he's "a god" in prison. These are people he despises- he calls them idiots, and does everything he can to avoid them, but they still treat him like a rock star?

Latoya quotes the most impressive display of clueless assholery from Francis over at Racialicious, and I think it's worth repeating. It comes on page four, when Francis begins talking about the people he considers enemies:

His enemies list has grown as he sits in jail, and it was recently expanded to include Access Hollywood reporter Maria Menounos, who did an interview Francis didn’t like. “She called me the ‘ever defiant Joe Francis,’ ” he howls. “Fuck yeah, I’m defiant! It’s like that defiant Rosa Parks won’t give up her seat. Fuck you, Maria. The ever defiant Nelson Mandela just can’t stand apartheid. The ever defiant Martin Luther King. The ever defiant Jesus Christ. You fucking stupid whore. If I saw Maria Menounos, I’d punch her in the face.”

As the tirade ends, he quietly starts repairing the phone he busted by banging it against the glass. “I’m not comparing myself to Rosa Parks or Jesus Christ. I’m comparing myself to someone standing up for their rights,” he says. “I’m just saying you can have an unpopular person who is criminalized and demonized. Jesus Christ was crucified by Pontius Pilate at my age. He was not a popular guy.”

1. When you attempt to point out a similarity between yourself or your situation, and someone like Rosa Parks or Jesus Christ and their situations, you are, in fact, comparing yourself to them. When you suggest that your legal troubles and the fight you've picked are somehow similar to Martin Luther King Jr.'s fight, you are, in fact, comparing yourself to him.
And you, sir, are no Martin Luther King Jr.
2. You're an unpopular person because you're an asshole, a liar, a rapist, and a violent maniac. There's a very significant difference between being an unpopular person because you're challenging the status quo in the pursuit of equal rights, and being an unpopular person because you're a violent rapist asshole who cheated on his taxes. Oddly enough, I find myself seriously lacking in sympathy for the second.

The article is disturbing, and I think that the author misses the mark when he tries to claim that Francis's "real passion is dominating other men." It may be true that he has a passion for that, as well, but his disregard and hatred of women is so thick, you'd need a machete to get through it.

And, seriously? He spent a year in a detention center that let him order pizza?!
*sigh*

Yeah, that's justice.

A note on apologies...

2008-04-24T13:27:00.004-04:00

Apologizing is hard to do.

It's not fun to realize that you've fucked up. It's not a great feeling to be told that you were wrong. Hell, it's not really that great to be wrong. But, the reality is that we're all human, and we're going to make mistakes. And when the time comes, I think that the ability to stand up and take responsibility for our mistakes and to say "I was wrong" is really important.

But, the thing about apologies is that they don't mean jack all if they're not sincere. Now, a lot of times, particularly if you've really screwed up, the sincerity of an apology is going to be under question. After all, if you've made a major mess of things, there are likely some hurt and/or angry people questioning you and your motives. Which is to be expected. Part of making a sincere apology is realizing that people may or may not accept your apology. If you've hurt people, they're under no obligation to read your apology and say "Oh, well then, that's fine."

And it should go without saying, but clearly doesn't, insincere apologies are no apology at all. Case in point: Racialicious has a post up about an article appearing at cornellWATCH. A blogger there put up an April Fool's post that was allegedly intended as satire. It was some pretty vile and insensitive stuff. The blogger apologized, and removed the offending article, and later met with members of the Asian and Asian American Center, and issued a more comprehensive apology.

Meanwhile, over at Feministing, Jessica posted about a particularly vitriolic (and idiotic) letter she received from the Public Relations Officer of the Southern Illinois University College Republicans. In the comment thread, the author of the letter, Alex Kochno, eventually showed up to offer an apology, and inform the thread that he had resigned from his position with the College Republicans.

Now, the apologies themselves aren't what I'm particularly interested in. As far as apologies go, they're... well... they're apologies. It's what happened after the apologies that I think is interesting. When people didn't immediately throw out their anger and welcome Mulvihill's apology with open arms, the blogger responded:

Clearly, this is a very emotional subject for a lot of Asian-Americans, and I didn’t realize that. I’m sorry that I played around with stereotypes, and made fun of an ethnic group. Apparently this isn’t enough for you guys–what more do you want? You are reading a lot more into this than is necessary. Please let it go.

I signed the note. Happy?

Likewise, in the Feministing thread, Kochno responded:

You are absolutely right I thought of that after the post basically everybody that is offended by my remarks I am deeply sorry about that now could you please accept that.

Now, here's the thing... if you've fucked up, and if you've hurt people with your words? Yeah, you don't get to be pissy and short with the people who are angry at you. You don't get to cry "let it go" or "could you please accept that" like they're unreasonable for being upset. And, really, how pathetic does it make an apology look when you follow it up with that, anyway?

I'm still up in the air about whether a shitty apology is worse than no apology at all, but neither is good.

edited- 4:27

Or, as Kristen points out (taking 561 words down to 5):
"You're not entitled to acceptance."

Precisely.

That's my idea of "brainless" reading too!

2008-04-18T09:59:00.005-04:00

Over at Racialicious, there's a post up about the rereleases of Sweet Valley High. Now, while I was never particularly inclined to read Sweet Valley High (I'm going to guess I wasn't the target market, there), I'm pretty sure my sister did. I may ask her about it.

But, the thing that actually really caught my attention was comment number one: My idea of "brainless" reading was Christopher Pike... which in retrospect probably can be torn down as much as SVH.

I looooved Christopher Pike!

And, yeah... I'm going to guess that there are probably some problems in the old Pike books. As I recall, they were very white and very heterocentric. The Final Friends series are the only books I can remember of his that strongly featured any characters who weren't... well... white. And of course they (Nick and Maria, I think?) end up dating. Who else would they date?

Still, I'm tempted to go find my copies and reread them. It's possible that they're better than I suspect. But I doubt it. Looking back, I seem to recall that a most of the characters were sort of annoying stereotypes. There were, as I recall, a whole lot of upper-middle class white girls obsessed with being popular and pretty, and guys who were into sports, or were outcast nerds. Probably a lot like Saved By the Bell meets Nightmare on Elm Street. Or something.

I make no promises, but if I find a Pike book while I'm packing... I may give it a quick read.

Castration as punishment...

2008-04-16T09:31:00.003-04:00

Fox News (I hate to link them) is reporting that the LA senate passed a bill yesterday, 32-3, that gives judges the ability to add subject convicted sex-crime offenders to chemical castration after a first offense, and requires it for repeat offenders. Convicted criminals will have the option to opt for surgical castration instead of chemical, if they desire.

I'm still thinking about this, but I have to admit that it makes me profoundly uncomfortable. More after I've had time to figure out what, exactly, I think.

In the meantime... your thoughts?

Video Game Review: "Dead Rising"

2008-04-15T15:54:00.005-04:00

So, a few weeks ago, my roomie picked up Dead Rising for X-Box 360. I've been playing here and there when I get a chance, which, unfortunately, isn't very often. Anyway, I'm most of the way through the game, now, and I thought "why not do a review of a years old game, now?" So, that's what I'm doing.

Dead Rising isn't very complicated in terms of concept. It's basically Dawn of the Dead meets, say, Beyond Good and Evil. You're freelance photojournalist Frank West out looking for the scoop that's going to make your name. At the start of the game, you're flying into a small mid-west town via chopper, on some kind of tip or something you've got that something is going down. So far so good. As you're flying into town, you notice that the military appear to have cut off all the roads to the town. As you get closer, you quickly see why.

Zombies.

The chopper drops you off at a mall, and you spend the next 72 hours of game time (12 hours of game time = 1 hour of real time) fighting zombies and psychopaths, leading survivors to safety, photographing scoops, and trying to uncover the truth about the zombie outbreak.

From a strictly gameplay perspective, Dead Rising is more hit than miss. The mall setting is fully realized- it's easily as big as most major malls I've been to, including a large green space, and even an attached full sized grocery store. There are working escalators, generic mall music, and almost every store can be entered. And the stores have individual personalities, even if they've got similar wares. Add to that the fact that almost every object in the game world can be picked up, smashed, thrown, or somehow used to aid you in some way, and you've got a pretty awesome sand-box world. I still haven't got tired of exploring the mall's many corners.

Of course, none of that would matter if it weren't for the combat. I've said it before, but it bears repeating, zombies are generally a safe pick for gaming enemies. If you want to have a bad-guy that almost everybody can agree deserves to be taken out, the living dead are the way to go. They're one of the trinity of ultimate badguys. Zombies, robots, and nazis. These are pretty traditional zombies- they shamble around trying to grab you and take a bite out of you. They're well animated and designed. They stumble around aimlessly until they spot you. They groan and moan and generally act creepy. Many of them are still holding onto things like shopping carts. They occaisionally fall over, trip, or fall down stairs/escalators. The real appeal of the game is the ability to use everything in the environment as a weapon. Baseball bats, frying pans, swords, guns, a frozen fish, televisions, cash registers, golfballs, clothes hangers, a lawnmower, a car, propane tanks... if you can find it, you can probably smash a zombie with it.

I'm not gonna lie, it's very satisfying.

It's not all good, of course. The survivor AI is horrible most of the time. You'll be trying to lead survivors to safety and, instead of running *around* a group of shambling undead, the idiot survivors will plow into the middle of them and begin screaming for Frank to come back and help. Another problem for people who don't have HD televisions (me), is that the missions objectives are waaay to tiny to read. Most of the time, the mission becomes obvious when you show up, but it'd be nice to know what the heck you're in for before you show up to a machette wielding madman. And, lastly, the use of a radio for getting missions was particularly frustrating. Otis, the janitor, calls you to tell you when he spots survivors, but if you answer his call, you have to listen to his entire message, and you can't speed it up in any way. Which wouldn't be a problem, except that you literally can't do anything but walk while you're on the radio. You can't fight zombies or jump while on the radio. And the radio is loud when it's beeping. Which often puts you in a position of being annoyed by the radio or letting yourself get chomped by zombies. Oh, and if you get attacked while on the radio? Yeah, Otis calls back and starts the message over from the begining. Lovely.

Now, that's from a strictly gameplay perspective.

I have some concerns/issues to take with other aspects of game. Let's talk about -isms.

Let's see... the good news is that there are some things to be pleased with in the game. First of all, despite the fact that Frank is a white guy, it was refreshing to see that he was actually a pretty normal looking, if possibly slightly "ugly" guy. I'm so used to seeing ridiculously attractive characters in games that it was kind of awesome to see, in Frank, a guy who wasn't a paragon of beauty. he looks like he maybe had his nose broken before, and he dresses sort of frumpy, and he's kind of... well... a normal looking white dude. As always, I'd have rather had the option to choose from a few characters, rather than have the default be a white guy.

Frank's main ally in the game is Brad, a black federal agent in charge of locating and a scientist. Brad is an interesting character- he distrusts Frank at the begining of the game, but he provides good support and fights alongside you through a number of battles. I don't have any complaints about Brad, really. He was sort of a jerk at times, but it fit his stuffy DHS persona, and he avoided most of the really nasty racial stereotypes I've come to expect in games. *Spoiler* He was fully realized enough that when Carlito locks him in the room full of zombies, my roomie and I both sort of went "Oh... shit... no!" And kept hoping beyond hope "Well, maybe he's okay... I mean, we've survived more zombies than that... maybe he's okay..."

Yeah. Not so much.

I'm going to have to pay more attention as I walk around, but there are two areas that I'm feeling disappointed about. First of all, unless I'm mistaken, all of the survivors are white folks. Every single last one that I've noticed has been a white person. I could be wrong, and I'm going to go back through to make sure, but I'm pretty sure. Which just feels... weird. In a town of 53,000+, every single person is white? Except for the DHS agent, a janitor, and the Hispanic siblings from the fictional town of Santa Cabeza?

The area that I'm much clearer on is the weird gender issues in the game. It's very... weird. Now, the good news is that, as far as I could tell, the women in the game fight just as well as the men if you give them a weapon. There are a couple of women you have to pick up and carry to safety because they've been injured or are too scared to do anything, but for each of them, there's a corresponding male character in the same situation, so I felt like that was actually pretty even. And while it's hardly evidence to anything larger, the survivor I had the easiest time saving was one of the women who, once I gave her a gun, managed to keep clearing zombies off of me while I saved a guy, and the guy who should have been easiest to save because I found him wandering around with a shotbun blowing away dozens of zombies, ended up getting himself eaten.

But, while the game did a good job there, it does a less good job with the photography aspect with regards to women. You get bonus points for taking photographs that depict extreme situations- get a picture of a zombie being killed or killing someone and you get a bonus. Get a picture of a rescued couple embracing each other? Bonus. Get a picture of a zombie with a hanger stuck in it's head? Bonus. Get a picture of a female zombie's cleavage? Bonus.

Wait... what?

Yeah. That's right. Female zombies with cleavage get you an erotic photo bonus.
*barf*

Further, many of the female survivors will yield the same bonus if you photograph them. And, I've been told that one of the survivors will actually give you a special photosession in which you're supposed to privately photograph her.
*sigh*

Why?
This is one of those cases where, to paraphrase how Naomi put in our WAM! session, it seems like they felt like they had to put wank-material into an otherwise good game. It doesn't make sense, and it's actually pretty distracting to me. It doesn't fit with the rest of the game.

Another thing that I noticed that I haven't decided how to take is the ability to dress Frank in... er... a dress. When you go into various stores in the mall, you can try on different outfits and basically play dressup with Frank. Change his clothes, and you're treated to a short sequence of him modeling whatever outfit it is. Put on a snappy suit, and he'll sort of turn and check himself out in the mirror and tug on the cuffs a bit. Put on some sharp shoes and he'll extend a foot and check them out. Put on a dress... and he dances provocatively and runs his hands over his body in a stereotypical "stripper dance." Which... I don't know. It rubbed me the wrong way. Not that you can put him in a dress, but that doing so is immediately hypersexualized. It's just... weird. Maybe there are dresses that don't do that, and I just haven't found them yet? I don't know.

Overall, I really enjoy Dead Rising. I've been having a ton of fun with it when I get a chance to play. It's the sort of sandbox game that I really enjoy. If it weren't for the weird sexualization issue and the completely idiotic survivor AI, I'd actually say it was near perfect. It does exactly what it sets out to do, and does it pretty damned well. Oh, sure, I'd still have some complaints- some items do way less damage than they ought to, but... yeah.

Anybody else got strong feelings on Dead Rising?

Getting back to my roots...

2008-04-11T14:46:00.002-04:00

I don't know how I missed Token Minorities before, but let me point you there, now. I originally stumbled upon the link via a guest post at Racialicious, and I went back today to read some of the archives, and got completely sucked in. Great, great anlysis of video games, there. Check it out.

If your friend is on fire, I'd avoid pouring more fuel on the flame...

2008-04-11T10:16:00.003-04:00

Holly and Amp and about a million other people, I'm sure, have posts up about the most recent... conversation? taking place in the feminist blogosphere.

I hesitate to call it a conversation for the most part, because a conversation is, by definition, an exchange of ideas, but there's not really that much exchange happening, because lines have been drawn and sides have been taken, and that never really goes well for anyone.

I'm not going over the details of this particular incident- Holly's post is a good place to start- it's filled with links to a lot of the blogs that'll do a much better job than I could hope to of explaining exactly what happened and why people are upset. What I'm interested in talking about is building bridges. Specifically, how we go about it.

These sorts of events, and it's becoming increasingly obvious to me that they're a pretty regular thing at this point, make it clear that we have a need for building bridges. There's a lot of a anger, and there's a lot of criticism, but, unfortunately, a lot of it gets dismissed or ignored. And I can understand how that happens. I think that most of us feel really invested in the work we're doing or trying to do.

The things we write, the networks we build, the comics we draw, the conferences we organize, the music we make... it's important to us, and we're pouring our hearts and souls and blood and tears and anger and joy and excitement into it all the time. And, no, we don't all come from the same place and the stakes aren't the same for all of us- some of us, and I'll readily admit that this includes me, are coming at it from a more detached place. I'm not a woman, and I'm not sure that I can ever realy understand the lived experiences of a woman. That will always taint my understanding and color my perception. For others, their work is their lived experiences. Their work is vital because it's about surivival. I can walk away... not everyone can.

But, even recognizing that, I think it's clear that for most of us, it's personal. I don't mean that in a bad way or in a divisive or dismissive way- it's the truth though. Our words and our work are very personal, and our passion for what we're saying is high. And now, there's history, too. And so, when people start arguing and when the air gets thick and hot and tempers flare and people are responding in anger... it is personal.

Maybe it shouldn't be, and maybe these kinds of conversations would be a lot easier or more productive if we could be clinically detached, but I just don't see how that can happen. I imagine if I read a post that I thought had appropriated someone I care about's work, I'd be pissed. And if the person doing the stealing was associated with a group that I felt had a history of appropriation, or that I had a personal problem with, I suspect that my anger would be... significant. And if the appropriation was pointed out, and the person in question, rather than saying "oh, damn, you're right, and I should have linked to some of the people working on this" and providing links, acted defensive and hostile? Well, I'd probably be fuming, to say the least.

At the same time, if I saw dozens of posts accusing me of stealing other people's works, and talking about how selfish, or stupid, or arrogant or whatever I was, I'd be angry and hurt. And, no, I doubt I'd react with cold detachment to the allegations. I can't fault someone who feels attacked for being defensive or upset about serious allegations. Because I am a human being, and I know that there are times when I simply don't act rationally or when I'm unable to see the bigger picture because my feelings are hurt, and I think that's normal, if not particularly helpful to larger issue discussions.

And maybe this is just my perspective as a feminist guy, but, it's sometimes very hard not to take some issues personally. When we're talking about sexism and misogyny and patriarchical systems and privilege, and someone is talking about what "men" do... yes, it's difficult sometimes not to take that personally. When people say "we need to educate men about rape" I sometimes feel like "Wait, what? But... I'm a man, and I got it." And, yeah, sometimes conversations about race end up feeling the same way. I'm not about to deny that- I admit and own that the feelings are my own, and that it's my responsibility not to let that feeling dominate the discourse.

But, that's the personal level. There is, as both Amp and Holly point out, a much bigger issue that's not personal. There's the bigger issue of how women of color are treated by largely white feminist circles. There's a bigger conversation about appropriation and about how well or poorly we address the intersectionality of race/gender/sex.

And I think that's where the people- like me- who actually aren't directly involved in a particular argument, come in. As I'm looking over the conversation at Feministe, I notice that there are a lot of people making it clear that they're taking sides, which, I think, is a natural reaction. If someone I have personal attachments to looks like sie is being attacked, my first reaction is to want to jump to that person's defense or point out the ways that the attacks are unfair/baseless/whatever.

But, the reality is this: It's not helpful.

There's a really interesting comment by Pinko Punko over at Feministe that I'm still rereading and thinking about:

It is clear that many people want to deal with big picture stuff because they are personally detached from the specific situation, no matter how personally invested they are in the larger framework.

It also seems pretty undeniable that there are personality conflicts that taint motives. Note that motive and argument are not the same. Beyond this, as usual, in blog comments it is always a 5 million way argument and many things get conflated. So you have 100 people on each side arguing that the other side is conflating their arguments with things they haven’t personally said. I;m sure we could spend weeks parsing everything that came before this thread and identify the asymmetry in every persons understanding of where we are now.

Given what has been said, I have to say that I find it ridiculous in practice to level serious allegations against someone and expect them to deal with it like an emotionless robot. Holly has illuminated an alternate way of lighting an analogous situation that seems fruitful, the only problem being the situation isn’t really analogous because it just didn’t go down that way for Amanda.

This thread is full of intelligent people but how intelligent are we if we are demanding that right his second Amanda needs to act totally rationally in some predetermined way when it is obvious, at least to me, that there is no way I could be acting in an emotionless fashion under these circumstances, and I don’t really expect than many others would either. I do not think she is overstating what has been said about her, even if not everyone is saying it, that just doesn’t matter, because many people have.

Additionally, if one is already friends or enemies with AM, how are we to judge either their partisan defense of her, as we’d all love our friends to defend us when attacked and the alternate side, the people that she rubs the wrong way, for any number of reasons, reasons that predate the latest business. They all have arguments to make. They ll have motives that can be questioned, separately from their arguments.

The last batch of people just wants to survey the field and talk about the other stuff, the bigger stuff, the stuff touching AM and BFP but much bigger than that. This is commendable, but how reasonable is it to act like right this second these are the issues we’d like to demand AM deal with, and if she doesn’t right this second we’re gonna find her responses “telling.” I just don’t think it is reasonable, though it may be rational.

I’ve spent the last few days reading up on stuff to understand as much as I can just about the personalities involved and the baggage people have with one another because this seems to be the dominant forced in this specific debate.

Everybody wants a piece right now, and they want an answer to many legitimate questions, questions about the bigger picture, questions about how ideas are related to, how they are trafficked, how blogs work as blogs (whether they are like shorthands for conversations between people, but they are also like legitimate publishing) and what does that even mean? It just seems unfathomable that anyone could expect AM to be able to give a satisfactory response just right this second. Not in you know, a couple of days, or maybe a week, or maybe one on one.

I’ve suggested the ol’ back door policy before, and have been called a concern troll on this very blog. I can see that argument, but I can see a different, more pragmatic argument based on just what do you want your comments to accomplish and just what do you really think they’ll accomplish?

I’m all for disagreements in public. I think this would be great. It is not gonna work in all cases, and everyone here that thinks that this thread is a great way to get the calm, emotionally divested response from AM has just not been reading the internets the last few days.

I agree with a lot of that, but I think that one of the things that can happen, is that those of us without a direct and personal stake in the argument can talk about the big issue. I don't expect either BFP or AM to be in a place where they can remove themselves from the personal attachments- maybe they can, and if they are able to, that's great, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that it's hitting a little close to home right now. But, there's no reason why the rest of us can't try to address the bigger issue, I think.

In fact, at some point, we have to.

And it's not like I have a magic solution that will build bridges and make us one big happy feminist family. Hell, I have my doubts and reservations that we'll ever be some kind of utopian feminist collective. Ignoring that there's a lot of bad blood between some people and groups, there's the simple reality that, for example, I will never find myself a perfect happy ally with feminists who think it's okay to accuse transpeople of being mentally ill or for whom advocating and working for the rights of sex-workers is anathema to the feminist cause. But, I do think that we can be a lot better than we are. And, honestly, as many WOC bloggers have repeatedly said, it's not that hard..

Example: When I posted about Seal the other day, I linked to BA's blog. But, I remembered that, in other threads, I was pretty sure that I'd read BA mention that there were times when she didn't want to be linked. My solution?

I e-mailed her and said "Hey, I'm writing about this, and I mention your blog, is it cool if I link." It took all of forty seconds. And you know what? She e-mailed me back and said go for it.

I just noticed that Sheelzebub, in the comments at Feministe, has a really great comment that has advice that I was going to mention:

Amanda, if it wasn’t intentional, fine. Whatever. But much of the reason why you run into so much rancor from people is the way you react when your posts or actions are criticized by your allies. I remember the “joy-killing” line over criticism of the cover of your book. Now you, Lindsey, and Hugo seem to think that this whole thing is feuled by jealousy, that BFP, Sylvia, Donna, and BA aren’t acting in good faith, and that they’re somehow out to get you.

I said it at Hugo’s place (in a far pissier post) and I’ll say it here: If you just explained where you got your ideas from AND THEN added links to BFP, a blogger whom you’ve read for at least two years, this whole thing would have died down. Even something along the lines of, “BFP spoke about this at WAM, you can read the text of the speech here, you should check it out.” But instead, there are accusations and rhetoric that are reminiscent of Kos’s “sanctimonious women’s studies set” bullshit.

They aren’t calling you out on this because you’re the big blogger with a book deal. BFP wasn’t some random blogger whom you’d never heard of; she’s written plenty about immigration in the past two years you’ve been reading her. And the thing is, I’ll bet the mortgage that I’ve done the same thing you’ve done. I get that you feel defensive. I DO TOO when I’m called on my shit. But it’s not as if we don’t know who these folks are–they don’t do this shit for sport, and it would be really nice if we could all consider what they’re saying, and what they’ve been going through, instead of invoking Stalin or some such crap. IOW, BFP, Donna, BA, Sylvia. . .they’re all acting in good faith.

As for Belledame–look, I get that you two don’t like each other. Certainly, there are people who have criticized you whom I don’t particularly like or trust. But that’s beside the point. It doesn’t negate what WOC bloggers are saying. If I was calling out, say, Kos on something as part of a much larger issue, another blogger posted in support of me, and Kos accused that blogger of sucking me into a personal vendetta, you bet your ass that would piss me off no end. Same goes for right-wing baiting–Christ on a cracker, I get enough of that shit from misogynist “progressives” who think that not worshipping at the altar of the sexual status quo means that I love me some Phyllis Schafly. This isn’t a tactic of the right wing–have BFP or BA encouraged people to send you rape threats? Are they putting pressure on Seal Press to pull your book? NO. They aren’t interested in hurting your career. From where I stand, they’re beyond frustrated with the response they get from White feminists like you, LIKE ME, like Lindsey, when they voice their concerns.

It would really, really help things a LOT if people would consider what WOC bloggers are saying. And if you don’t want to, or cannot, for the love of all things holy and profane, stop throwing gasoline on the fire.

Like Sheelzebub, I know that I've thrown fuel on the fire before. I'm sure I'll do it again. When it happens, I hope that I'll have the good sense to step back and rethink what I'm doing and get back on the right track. Because, here's the thing: Even if some of the people in these discussions are acting in bad faith... even if there were some personal vendettas coloring how people look at the issue... even if there were people acting out of jealousy or out of personal bias or out of whatever... how, exactly, does throwing fuel on the fire help?

Holly is absolutely right, if you've got a megaphone, if you've got a big audience, if you've hit the maintstream and you're getting out a message that a more marginalized group of people have been working on for a long time, you've got some obligation to point in their direction. Whether a particular article was inspired by that community or by something else, it's just the right thing to do. One of the major benefits of blogging and the internet is the ability to create networks and to link to the things that you've read and been inspired by.

It costs nothing to say "Damn, you're right" and link to people who've made it a point to work on a particular issue, and, in fact, helps get those marginalized voices heard and get their work more attention and respect. Likewise, to the people who think that they're helping AM by jumping to her defense or by dismissing or deriding the people who've raised concerns: it's not actually helping. It's reinforcing what has become a really nasty problem. It's thowing fuel on a fire.

There's a reason why I've been trying to take time to think about these kinds of blow-ups when they're happening, rather than jumping right in and wading into the fray. Because, even if my first instinct is to jump in and back up the people I like, that's rarely the best tactic.

Like I said, I can completely understand where AM and BFP might have strong feelings about what's happening, and I'm not in a position where I feel comfortable condemning or lambasting them for taking the events personally, but for the rest of us? If we're acting from a place of jumping to the aid of our friend and we're dismissing or ignoring the Big Picture aspect in favor of the personal?

We're becoming part of the Big Picture Problem.

Quick Hits...

2008-04-09T16:23:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the relative quiet lately. I feel like every other post is my apologizing for light posting, at this point. That's embarassing. I'm in the process of preparing for a cross-country move at the moment, stressing out about looking for a good job in MA (anyone looking to hire someone with a BS in Lit/Phil? Because I'm looking to be hired!), and generally feeling overwhelmed by how much stuff I still have to do in order to get my ass moved. So, here are a few things I'm also thinking about/being annoyed by...

1. Discussions about being trans that generally ignore or deny the experiences of people who identify as such really piss me off. Read the comments- there are a lot of them, but you can mostly jump to the end and see what I'm talking about. When you start dismissing the experiences of transpeople and suggesting that it's all just a big mental illness? Yeah. That's a problem to me.

2. Comparisons between homosexuality and incest.

3. The ways that some people seem to think that "it's just a movie" or "it's pop culture" make something beyond reproach or critique. Pop culture is tremendously important, and, quite frankly, we don't spend anywhere near enough time examining it. We ought to be taking more time to critically examine the things that succeed as pop culture, and examining how our attitudes are shaped by the media we consume. Pop culture both reflects and shapes culture, and it's just stupid, imo, to ignore it or pretend that it's "just" anything.

4. I'm making tacos for dinner tonight, and I'm really hungry. I'm really interested in learning how to make my own taco seasoning. I wonder how hard it would be to do that with fresh ingredients? I mean, what even goes in it? There's almost certainly tomato in there, right? Maybe? I don't know. But, damn, I loves me some tacos.

5. I don't even know what to say about this story, yet. It's heartbreaking.

6. I was sitting in a diner waiting for my food when I first heard about this compound.

Four decades ago...

2008-04-04T09:13:00.003-04:00

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, where he was showing support for striking black sanitation workers. King was as he stood on the second floor balcony, and died an hour later. Listening to King's final speech had me on the edge of tears this morning. He was an amazing man, and his words remain as powerful and important today as they were when he first said them. Our world is worse for having lost him so soon, but infinitely better for having known him.

On April 3- the day before his assassination- King gave a moving speech at the Mason Temple. Here are some excerpts of that speech. The full text can be found at Martin Luther King Online.

As you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?"...

...Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy." Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same — "We want to be free."

And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we're going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence...

...We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do, I've seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round." Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water.

That couldn't stop us. And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing "Over my head I see freedom in the air." And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, "Take them off," and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing, "We Shall Overcome." And every now and then we'd get in the jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn't adjust to; and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham...

...Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

I'm watching and cringing and thinking "Gods, no!"

2008-04-03T19:25:00.004-04:00

There's a very intense and depressing discussion happening over at Blackamazon's blog.

I saw the wreck coming a mile away, but this is just... it's... my head explodes.

Beth said: What I'm seeing here is that BA is allowed to be mad and write what she wants but Seal Press can't react off the cuf because they should know better. Seal Press gets told how to react to something written about them and then gets told how they should comment.

It's always the same thing. If Seal Press had just approached BA in a different way no one would be attacking them.

Right.

And what I'm seeing is a comment that so grossly mischaractorizes the situation that I'm almost at a loss for words. BA is allowed to be mad and write what she wants because it's her space. Ignoring, for the moment, that one of the comments that was being attacked wasn't even BA's, it's still BA's blog, and, the last time I checked, that means that that she gets to write about whatever she wants. So, yeah, she does get to write about whatever she wants. And, no, Seal Press can't react off the cuff because they should know better. They're representing a publisher and posting at BA's in at least a marginally official manner when they say "Seal press here." They came into another person's personal space. Whether you agree with them or not is irrelevent- it wasn't a very professional way to handle the situation.

Further, they weren't told how to react. Nobody said that agents of Seal Press couldn't be upset or annoyed or hurt or angry or any other reaction you want to name. The criticism is with how they acted on BA's site. And, yeah, they're told how they should or shouldn't comment there. You know what? That's perfectly fair. It's BA's blog, and she's got every right to decide how she wants people to post there. I don't think that's particularly unusual amongst bloggers.

And if you're trying to help the situation? Dropping lines like "it's always the same thing" is a really bad tactic to take.

I didn't see anybody promise that they wouldn't have attacked Seal Press if Seal had come into the conversation differently. For all I know, nothing that Seal could have said would have changed the attitudes of those involved. But, the tactic that was taken was pretty much sure to fail. For all of the reasons listed in that thread.

Telling any marginalized group "you're marginalized because you don't do enough to become unmarginalized"? Never a good strategy.

WAM! final thoughts...

2008-04-02T10:24:00.002-04:00

So, I already talked about the sessions I attended, but I wanted to take one more post to talk about the rest of the conference, because, honestly, the sessions are just one piece of the conference. The other, equally important, part is the networking and keynotes.

And, oh, what keynotes they were! Helen Thomas (Patron Saint of Not Shutting Up!) opened the conference on Friday with a funny and critical discussion about the ways that the media does (or does not) hold the president accountable. For the most part, it was a pretty good speech. She's got a good sense of humor, and has six decades of experience and stories about her work to talk about. She talked about the struggles of breaking into journalism when it was still closed off from women, and she talked about the obligation journalists have to keep an eye on the government. And how many mainstream journalists have been failing that obligation.

At one point she did make the claim that racism is more verboten than sexism in our society, which, um... no. I have to admit that I cringed at that. I just don't like to see/hear claims that sex trumps race trumps gender identity trumps sexuality, etc. She was also a very strong supporter of Clinton, and made it clear that, for her, the fact that this is a viable woman candidate is enough for her to cast her vote. My impression, however, wasn't that she was interested in criticizing supporters of Obama. She made it very clear that she actually thinks that debate and disagreement between Obama and Clinton is a good thing. She repeated asked "What's wrong" with division or debate or disagreement.

There was also a really touching moment where a Lebanese woman thanked Thomas for her work, and talked about how much it meant to her and her family that a Lebanese woman was working the Press Corps. I don't know about any one else, but it was really moving to see this woman, who seemed on the verge of tears, talking about what a tremendous impact it made in her life to see someone who looked like herself covering the president. She said that her whole family would come running to watch whenever Thomas was on. It was really moving.

The second keynote was delivered by Haifa Zangana, and was incredibly powerful. Zangana was tortured under Saddam's regime, and has been an outspoken critic of that dictatorship for a long time, but she discussed the many ways in which Iraq is crumbling under the weight of the current occupation. She discussed the rampant poverty and unemployment that has been created by the war, and how the infrastructure of the country has all but been destroyed. I have extensive notes on her speech (at home, of course.*sigh*).

In a speech filled with sad and disturbing facts about what life is like in Iraq now, it was really upsetting to hear a woman who was detained and tortured by Saddam's forces say that, for most Iraqis, life was actually better under Saddam's rule. When you hear about children being detained in imprisoned by American forces, and you hear about people not knowing what has happened to their loved ones- have they been killed? Detained? Trapped somewhere? For many Iraqi citizens, there's no way of knowing. And then you hear about the millions who've been displaced or fled the country, and I don't know how you can feel anything but upset about the situation.

At the end of her speech, Zangana requested that, instead of straight Q&A, people talk about and pitch ideas for change. She was really interested in hearing what kinds of ideas people had for how we could all work together to improve the situation. She made it clear that she was looking for ways to stand together, not for ways that Americans could give charity.

I believe that Zangana's speech was recorded, and should be out there in the interwebs somewhere. I'm going to look around for it, and see if I can find it or a transcript of it, because it really was a pretty amazing speech.

In addition to the keynotes, one of the most exciting parts of the conference was getting a chance to network and meet so many amazing people. I'm a pretty avid blog reader, and, I'm happy to admit, I think of some writers as being sort of like celebs. I think of them the same way I'd think of meeting a novelist I really like, for example. Which is both amazing, weird, and funny.

On Sunday, after the conference was over, I was hanging around the lunch area, saying goodbye to a few people, and just sort of hanging out. As I'm standing there, a woman walks up to me and says something like (as close as I can remember) "Hi, you're Roy from No Cookies, right? I'm Amber- I don't know if you know know who I am, but I read your blog and I think it's really great." Which was awesome, because it's great to meet someone that reads you. And I started thinking, Amber... Amber... I can't think of any of my regular commenters who go by Amber... And then, all of the sudden, she says something, and it hits me... Amber Rhea!

So. Awesome.

There were moments like that all through the weekend, too. There were so many people there whose writing I read on a regular basis, and whose work I really respect. Like I said the other day, I met Nadia Ann Abou-Karr, which was really cool. I've been excited about the Allied Media Conference being in Detroit since I heard about it last year. I met Latoya Peterson during my session, and got a chance to talk with her a bit afterwards. Oh, and Nancy Gruver, who founded New Moon Girl Media magazine, introduced herself to me during one of the receptions (I'm getting business cards now, I swear!). I got to hang out with Lisa Jervis. I finally got a chance to meet and talk with Jill and Holly, was introduced to Ann and Jessica and "Tech Goddess" Deanna Zandt. Did I mention Derek? And those were just the people I met whose work I was already really familiar with. I can't even begin to list all of the amazing journalists and writers that I met.

Which is all to say, I'm completely blown away by how incredibly awesome the conference was. Three days of learning from amazing and talanted feminists. Three days of networking with really interesting and motivated people who've been busting their asses to make change. It was really, really great to attend a conference where, as Lisa Jervis put it, you don't have to try and explain your politics to everyone. You know, when you're at WAM!, that most of the people there are, if not on the same page, at least reading the same book- we agree that there are problems with the mainstream media, and that sexism is still a problem, and that we need to do something about it. It was easily the most important and informative conference I've ever attended. Aboslutely brilliant.

WAM! session thoughts...

2008-04-01T11:02:00.004-04:00

Ahhh. I'm back in lovely, windy, cold, wet Michigan.

I'm feeling a little more rested and recovered, and still extremely excited and invigorated by my experiences at WAM!. I just wanted to share a few of my favorite sessions and moments at the conference. It all seems like such a blur in a way. I might be experiencing an information overload, in fact. There was so much energy packed into three short days- between attending sessions and meeting all of these amazing feminists and listening to the killer key notes... it was a lot to take in.

Let me start off by reiterating just how completely awesome "Breaking the Frame" was. I get a little giddy just thinking about it. Emily Douglas was the session moderator, and introduced the other three members of the session. I knew that I was in for a treat when Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, of the Pro-Choice Public Education Project started talking. I wish I could have recorded the session, because her words were like lightning- sharp and hot. She pointed out how far we, in the pro-choice movement, miss the mark when we focus almost exclusively on reproductive justice as abortion rights. The maintstream media has us convinced that The most important issue in reproductive rights and justice is the right to have an abortion. But, for many, many women that's just not the case. Current campaigns use the language of rights to talk about ending pregnancy, but those campaigns often fail to connect with the minds and realities of many young women and/or women of color.

And that's due, in part, to the framing we've allowed to happen. We've let the right convince us that the most important discussion is whether a woman has a right to end her pregnancy, but for a lot of women, the real questions are about having the ability to make all kinds of choices. Thorne-Thomsen talked about the concept of justice for women as being the economic, social, and political power to make healthy choices for themselves and their communities.

In other words, it's not just about having the choice to get an abortion should you desire one. It's about having access to preventative measures. It's about having access to sex-education and contraception. It's about having access to healthy food and medical care should you want to have a baby. It's about reproductive rights of all kinds and about the socio-economic and political barriers to making informed and healthy choices for yourselves.

The discussion about justice as intersectional versus rights as more individualistic was important as well. In the interest of actual justice, one has to dedicate time and energy towards the people who are most impacted by the issues. We have to work on engaging with and working with the women from all backgrounds to find out what kinds of issues they're actually dealing with, and to find out how their lives can be improved by working together on the issues that are most impacting their lives.

Cristina Page, the author of How the Pro-choice Movement Saved America, was a great compliment to Thorne-Thomsen. Where Thorne-Thomsen was focused a lot on how we, as feminists, need to work on embracing the diversity of experiences and concerns within women of color communities and younger women, Page discussed the anti-choice movement and some of the ways that we've let them control the discussion. One of her major focuses was debunking the myth about the concern for reducing abortion rates. The anti-choice movement's most vocal and political supporters often talk about there being a right to life, and being a movement concerned with reducing the number of abortions and wanting to protect the sanctity of life, but, as Page points out, they've consistantly taken steps that actually contribute to abortion rates.

It's no coincidence, she says, that abortion rates are lowest in places with strong pro-choice movements, but high in places with strong pro-life/anti-choice movements. The reality is that many of the most vocal supporters of the movement aren't pro-life, they're anti-women. This is one of the major reasons, Page claims, that so many politicians who claim to be "pro-life" do things like oppose comprehensive sex education, oppose funding to programs designed to provide support to children and working mothers, attempt to redefine contraception as abortion, etc. Anti-choice politicians routinely strip out the very tools that would otherwise contribute to women's abilities to raise children, making it harder to have and raise them.

The connection, of course, is that often times pro-choice advocates don't do enough to retarget the debate onto those issues. Often times, we're so focused on Roe v. Wade that we lose sight of the fact that, for example, a woman getting an abortion because she can't afford to raise a child isn't actually making a free choice- she's essentially being coerced. It's only when we've created an environment where women are truly able to make the choice to abort or carry the fetus without fear of social damnation or economic ruin that the choice is really free. If the choice is between aborting or losing your home, it's not much of a choice.

I thought a particularly awesome moment in the session came when it was pointed out that the so-called "pro-life" movement, which typically bills itself as the part of family values, is, in point of fact, opposed to traditional family values. The opposition to contraception, to enjoying sex, to abortion, to providing support for children... all of those things seem to run against many of our lived experiences... and yet, few of us call them out on this.

Amanda Marcotte, of Pandagon, was the final speaker, and her focus was on the strategy aspects of discussing reproductive justice. Her advice was not to be afraid of engaging critics- challanging the misinformation and lies that they spread are an important part of our work. It's important to be able to call bullshit when you see it. She also advocated moving away from overly academic language and discussions of reproductive justice in the abstract, and forcing anti-choicers to take the discussion to a real level. That is, to start talking about the women who are really effected by these issues and to talk to people in the ways that people really do communicate.

When the mainstream media ignores discussions about reproductive justice and the very real women who have experienced abortions in favor of the six second soundbite and the political message, it hurts the movement. It erases the lived experiences of women in favor of political talking heads- typically male.

The Q&A part of the session was equally mind blowing. There were so many great questions and comments made from women all around the room. I wish I had the names of the people asking, but, alas, I wasn't able to get them in time. There was a point made about how one of the ways that more academic feminists miss the boat in the discussion is by conflating anti-choice with religious. The commenter pointed out that there are strong women of color communities for whom faith is an important part of their pro-choice work and their identities as women of color and feminists, but, when we talk about the anti-choice right, we end up treating faith as something to be mocked or something that only our enemies have, and we end up silencing our allies because of this.

I'm still thinking about all of the great things that came out of the session. It really was a profoundly moving and inspiring session. It also set the bar really high for the rest of the conference. The speakers were so powerful and packed so much into such a short time, that, I have to admit, I couldn't help but be nervous about my own session. I don't know if I was lucky or not- Naomi and I presented our session in the final slot of the conference. We were the last presentation slot on the last day. Which, of course, meant that everyone who came had already attended, potentially, four other really amazing sessions.

No pressure.

Really, though, the session was amazing. I have to give serious thanks to Naomi- she put together a spectacular PowerPoint presentation for our session. I also want to give a huge shout-out to Latoya Peterson, who can be found over at Racialicious (and as their new editor! Huzzah!), too. She was practically a third presenter once the Q&A started. She had a lot of really great information to share, and, I'm not gonna lie, it made me go "Squee!" inside when she told everyone who she was.

Like I was saying, the session itself went really well, I think. I was originally worried that we wouldn't have enough to present or that we wouldn't have much of an audience, but both fears turned out to be completely unfounded. There were people from all kinds of gaming backgrounds- from a board gaming enthusiasts (Hello Anna! Again, very excited to have a contact for gaming!) to people who infrequently game, to a half dozen or so people who actively describe themselves as gamers. Naomi and I launched into our session, and it quickly became apparent that we weren't going to get through all of the information we had prepared, which was both sad and exciting. Sad, because a lot of work went into preparing the information and a lot of it was really good, but exciting because it just further illustrates how important the conversation is, and how much people are interested. In the end, we did almost an hour of Q&A, and only stopped because we'd run a half hour over our allotted time, and the conference was, you know... over!

We mentioned some sites in the presentation, and I just wanted to make sure to put up some of the links we talked about- for people who are interested, there are some really great feminist communities forming around gaming. One of my favorites and pretty much a daily read for me is Mighty Ponygirl's site, Feminist Gamers. There's also Andrea Rubenstein's blog Official Shrub.com, the online gaming magazine Cerise (which covers a variety of gaming types, from tabletop to video), and, of course, The Iris Network, which is an amazing project. There are tons of great links at all of those sites, too, and the community of feminist gamers is growing all the time. And, of course, please share any links in the comments section, too.

I'll have one more post on my experience at WAM! later, because not only were the sessions really great, but I had an opportunity to meet some really terrific and inspiring people, too.

Oh, right... I actually attended three other sessions, too- they were great, and I may still talk about them later, but I attended a session on Strategies for Making Change which focused on some of the ways that progressives can work with independent media and DIY culture as well as leverage more mainstream outlets to help get the message out and improve the lives of women and make sure that women's voices are silenced in the media. I attended a session called "Stereotypes and Typecasting in Reality Television", too. That one was a great look at the ways that pop culture influences and impacts our perceptions of women in society, and how the narratives that are being created on shows like The Swan or Beauty and the Geek play into and reinforce harmful stereotypes about women. Also a great session. I can talk about them more later, if people are interested, but, for now, it's back to work with me.

WAM! Report...

2008-03-30T22:38:00.003-04:00

WAM! 2008 ended today, and it's late but I just wanted to say what an amazing experience it was. I was completely unprepared for just how incredible the conference was going to be. It was just mind blowing to see so many people- over 600 of us- so excited about activism and looking to learn from each other. I'll have a more detailed discussion of the particular sessions I attended after I've gotten some sleep, but can I just say how incredible it was to hear Helen Thomas and Haifa Zangana speak? Thomas is legendary, and it was really good to get a chance to hear her talk about the shift in the ways that the media deal with presidents, especially given how many presidents she's covered. And Zangana? I couldn't stop taking notes on the things she was talking about, and about how much life in Iraq has changed since the "liberation". She's a powerful speaker, and her descriptions and comments really highlighted the biased presentation of the situation in Iraq, and how the voices of women who are living in Iraq are being ignored and silenced by this administration. I'm going to look, but I'm pretty sure that her speech was recorded.

There were just so many great things happening, and so much energy at the conference. I met a number of fellow Michiganders, including Nadia Ann Abou-Karr, from the Allied Media Conference. I've heard nothing but great things about AMC, and I was really sorry to have missed it last year. It's very exciting to have such an important conference right in my own backyard, on the campus of Wayne State. So, just to get the word out, now- the conference is June 20-22. So, mark your calendars, people.

And, of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't say at least something about my own session. It went really, really well. Naomi put together an amazing Power Point presentation for us. Anyway, it was great. The turnout was great, and it was a nice mix of people who knew a lot about gaming, and people who knew almost nothing but were interested or knew people who are really into gaming, and wanted to know about the discussion. We actually stayed a half hour past our end-time answering questions and talking to people about our session.

Anyway, I'm exhausted, and it's late. I'll have a more thorough and less rambling post later.

Oh, bullying...

2008-03-27T09:51:00.003-04:00

Over at Pandagon, they're talking about bullying. It's well over 200 comments at this point, so it's probably futile to try to wade in and see what everyone is saying, but I did glance through. One of the questions that seems to have come up is what to do about it. In particular, how does one respond to a bully?

Because, despite the possibly well intentioned adult advice of my youth, "ignore it and it'll stop" is bullshit. Ignoring bullies doesn't make it stop. I'm sure that some bullies will stop if they don't get a rise out of you, but most? I doubt it. Because even if they don't get a rise out of you, they get a rise out of other people. When a bully knocks your books out of your hands, it doesn't matter how you react, because the act is done, and you've got to pick your books up.

I'm not really sure what the best way to deal with a bully is. I spent a lot of my youth getting bullied. When I was in first grade, a bully who was at least three or four years older than me used to pick on me every day on the bus. He'd knock my books out of my hands. He'd flick my ears constantly. He'd trip me while I was walking. He'd push me down when we get off the bus. He wouldn't stop, and the bus driver wouldn't do anything about it. One day I'd finally had enough. He flicked my ears and I turned and told him that he better stop. We stood up to get off the bus and he flicked my ear again. I turned and smacked him in the head with my snoopy lunchbox. It was a metal lunchbox, and I smacked him with it as hard as I could. He fell over and started screaming, and I got kicked off the bus for a month. But, he never picked on me again.

Now, obviously, I'm not suggesting that we arm kids with metal lunchboxes and tell them to go to town on bullies. I got lucky that this kid decided one smack was enough. You can't always count on that, though. And you shouldn't have to. Some of the other kids who picked on me would have only taken that as a sign to escalate the abuse- they'd have become more violent and have beat me up if I tried to fight back.

One of the things that I noticed about the bullying I received is how much it affected me later in life. I was picked on and abused for so long that, when I got to highschool and the other kids apparently forgot or moved on and decided that I was okay, and even kind of cool, I couldn't see it. It made me paranoid that people were always looking for a new angle to abuse me through. And that still happens to this day- I find that I have a difficult time in many social situations. I find myself expecting people to think the worst of me, or thinking that people must have alternative reasons for being nice to me.

I attribute a lot of that to the bullying that happened at such an important and formative time of my life. When you're learning who you are and what kind of person you're going to be, and the people around you- your peers- are constantly picking on you and denigrating you, I can only assume that has an important impact on the type of person you'll begin to see yourself as.

Eff you, ABC... "Transgender Teens Turn to Prostitution"

2008-03-26T13:44:00.003-04:00

This story is pissing me off.

1. At 22, one is a woman, not a girl.
2. The use of scare-quotes around "trans women" and "trans men" is distracting.
3. The focus appears to be pretty exclusively focused on trans women, while ignoring the experiences of trans men. Almost three pages of stories about the experiences of trans women, but only two paragraphs on the experiences of trans men? It just seems to really play into the fetishization of trans women. Especially with so much focus on the prostitution aspect of the story.
4. The story left with the impression that it was "poor trans people, their lives are completely fucked up, and they're out there killing themselves, injecting themselves with brake fluid, and turning to drugs and prostitution to get by. And then they get raped and infected with AIDS. It's just a completely horrible experience." I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but the story really feels like a big sensationlistic piece that reinforces the fetishization of and stereotypes about the transgender population. Maybe that's just me?
5. There are a number of quotes about what "most" trans women are doing- like buying hormones off the black market. That kind of thing always makes me suspicious. How does ABC know what *most* trans women are doing? Sensationlism, or fact? I don't know.

It's not that I doubt or don't appreciate the seriousness of the situations described, but it just feels like a really exploitative story to me. It feels less like a story aimed at helping make the situation better or informing the public to get support for some kind of movement, and a lot more like a modern day "freak show" story- a "wow, look at how fucked up this is" kind of tabloid piece. It's really pissing me off.

We're just days away, now...

2008-03-26T12:15:00.002-04:00

I'm flying out tomorrow for Boston, to attend this year's WAM! conference. It's going to be a huge event, and there are tons and tons of awesome, awesome people attending. I'm really looking forward to the chance to meet and network with some of the really amazing bloggers and feminists that I read about, and I'm also really looking forward to the chance to present. As I believe I mentioned on here before, I'm presenting with Naomi Clark, on video games and gaming culture. Honestly, I'm terribly nervous, but also very excited. I'm really looking forward to seeing what other people have to present, and to getting a chance to speak about my love of video games and the importance of feminism to changing gaming culture.

Anyway, if you're going to be there, or if you're in the Boston area, you should let me know- I'd love a chance to meet and talk with people, and I'd love to start building a bit of a network. Particularly if you're even remotely interested in gaming. Not only would it be nice to help further the serious discussion of what feminists can do about gaming, but it'd be good to get a chance to find people who game. =)

Also: Sorry about the light posting lately. Apparently, I'm a little slow to blog in '08. I got all of my college applications in, and I'm preparing for to move to a new state, and I'm trying to get my work for the conference finished, and etc, etc. Which is to say, it's a busy time.

How is everyone else doing? Is it a busy time for one and all?

The answer is clearly "Yes"...

2008-03-13T21:59:00.004-04:00

This might be one of my favorite ever "you stumbled on my site via what google search?" searches.

Well, that, and the one about the truth about chocolate milk.

Who called it?

2008-03-13T08:28:00.000-04:00

I just noticed Q&A With a Call Girl: Former call girl opens up about the industry on MSNBC. The Q&A asks the all important questions "What did you carry in your purse?" and "How much did you spend on clothes?" Oh, and "Was there anything you wouldn’t do?" My favorite might have been "What do you think of the movie “Pretty Woman”?" and the follow-up question "Is the movie realistic?" Because, yeah, those are the real hard-hitting questions.

I was surprised, though, that they published the question "What’s the biggest misconception about the business?", to which McLennan responded:

I don’t want to make it seem more glamorous than it is. I don’t want to candy-coat it, because there certainly is a dark side to the escort/call-girl industry that exists and destroys people’s lives. The common misconception is that that’s all it is – that’s it’s all glamorous or it’s all dirty, and it’s all of the above. It’s a well-rounded industry.

Now, let me think... who called it? Who pointed out that the media vultures were looking for exactly this kind of story?

Oh, right! That'd be Ren. Let's see... 3:47 on the 11th, Ren posts:

the media wants to talk to sex workers about it. I know, because oddly enough, a certain Renegade and a certain DC reporter had a conversation. I thought maybe it might be an opportunity to bring some light to issues such as sex workers rights and the hypocrisy shown by fellows like Spitzer. However, that is not what the media is interested in. That's not what they want. They want to know how one goes about hiring a "high-end" escort, how prevelant is it, what goes on, do the working girls care if the men are married? What else do they spend money on when with the woman? They want the scandal, the titilation, the naughty little thrill....but nothing too dirty. Nothing about the women on the streets. They don't want to hear about the truly unseemly side of the biz. They want to hear about the men...the rich and powerful men who spend the money on "high-end" girls. They want to hear how the men will fly in to see a girl, or fly her in, spends thousands on her and on the dinners and events and everything else. They want to know how he likes it.

And less than 24 hours later, MSNBC obliges.

Ren also mentions not wanting to take part in interviews like that one, because:

The media hardly needs another "tell all" about sex workers and the powerful politicos that hire them when they don't even want to see the women as human...not just the "high end ones". Besides, I distrust what would end up not making it through the editing process.

I can't help but wonder what didn't make it through MSNBC's editing process, too. Especially when questions like "Did you ever feel threatened on a “date”?" get only a one word response: "No." Really? That's all she had to say about the question? Why do I find that hard to believe?

In related news, Spitzer, in his resignation speech:

Over the course of my public life, I have insisted, I believe correctly, that people, regardless of their position or power, take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor.

Oddly enough, I don't recall any reports of him turning himself in to the police for violating the laws that he so ardently enforced. Anyone want to bet he serves a day in jail? That he even sees the inside of a court? Because I'm betting that his resignation is as far as that goes. Because, you know, there are some pretty different concepts of taking "responsibility" in effect here; if you're a prostitute, taking responsibility means going to jail, but If you're a political figure, taking responsibility is as easy as resigning.

Oh, no doubt, it sucks to have to resign. I imagine it's a real big disappointment to have attained such a position of power, only to see it crumbling beneath you.

Boo-fucking-hoo.
I was pretty sure that he was involved in criminal activity, and that we usually dealt with crimes through the criminal justice process. What the hell do I know, though?

Breaking news: Spitzer resigning...

2008-03-12T09:56:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure whether to be surprised or not. I guess I'm a little surprised. I mean, it's not like Detroit's mayor has resigned over the dozens of illegal and unethical things he's done. But, then, he didn't make a career out of taking down prostitution rings.

The part that makes me the most sad is that I almost said "I'm glad he's doing the right thing now." What kind of fucked up standards for politicians do we have where resigning after you've engaged in illegal activities- the very activities you made a name fighting- is "the right thing." How about doing the right thing by, I don't know... not engaging in illegal activities in the first place?

Color me annoyed.

Weekend update... Auction and a movie..

2008-03-11T13:10:00.004-04:00

I was out in Boston over the weekend, and had the extreme pleasure of attending the GLAD Winter Party 2008 at the Artists for Humanity EpiCenter. It was a fantastic event to raise money for GLAD, and to celebrate "30 Years of Making History and Changing Lives". The highlight of the evening were the six live auctions- A South African Photo Safari, Red Sox vs. Yankees tickets, a Summer BBQ with GLAD's Senior Staff, a Starwood Hotels "Honeymoon" Package, Cocktails with Joan & Robert Parker, and, if I remember correctly, a trip to the South of France. All of which were, unfortunately, waaaay out of my bidding range (I did, however, bid on and win a case of wine).

It was a really great event, and the live auctions alone raised something over $18k for GLAD. The speakers talked about the the discrimination faced by the LGBT community at the St. Patty's Day Parade in Boston, and one of the speakers related her own experiences as one of the people who marched in the last parade that the LGBT members were able to take part in, and how, one year, the organizes of the parade cancelled the parade rather than let LGBT marchers participate. They cancelled an Irish parade in Boston, rather than let gays take part.

It was a moving story, and a powerful reminder of the sorts of discrimination and the lengths that people will go to, to exclude the LGBT community from taking equal part in our society.

I also had a chance to go to a movie while I was in Boston, and took the opportunity to see Persepolis. Now, I haven't seen it, but can someone explain to me how the movie about the cooking rat beat this? Because, seriously? This is some powerful stuff. Now, admittedly, Best Animated Feature is a pretty new category, and so it's tough to generalize, but I do think it's interesting that almost all of the nominees and winners have been pretty, shall we say... kid friendly? Persepolis is definitely not a kid's movie, and is only the second PG-13 rated film to be nominated in for the award.

At any rate, as you may be able to tell, I loved it. I've read Marjane Satrapi's books, upon which this was based, and the film brilliantly captures both the story, and her unique visual style perfectly. The animation is beautiful, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the individual frames from the book are replicated in the film.

The film- an autobiographical telling of Satrapi's life during and after the Iranian revolution- is an extremely powerful tale. One of the things that the film does a really great job of (and books, as well) is show how Satrapi and her family are caught between hostile forces on both sides. After the revolution, personal liberties were strictly controlled, and women were forced to adopt head coverings and there were armed police who could arrest women who were suspected of being at all immoral or immodest. There are scenes of people fighting over the last of the food remaining in a nearly empty store, and at one point, a person dies because a group of people decided to throw a party and dance.

But, at the same time, Satrapi faced serious descrimination when she was in Europe, too. People who had heard about the Iranian revolution talked about Iranians as though they were subhuman. At one point, a group of fellow students at her university call her savage. She talks about feeling lost in two worlds- she's a stranger back in Iran, because her experiences in France have changed who she used to be, but she's also a stranger outside of Iran, because people view her through a disturbing lens.

Like I said, it's an incredibly powerful and moving film, and I don't think I can recommend it enough. It is, at times, heart-breaking, and disturbing, and full of hope... and it's also incredibly well animated (and, apparently, not computer animated). All I can say is that the rat movie had better be really fucking good to show this one up, because this is one of the most impressive and intelligent animated features I've ever seen. Two big thumbs up.

Regarding "African"...

2008-03-06T14:29:00.003-05:00

From the comments at Feministing

A commenter by the name of GopherII writes:

Personally I prefer to identify along culture lines [rather] than color of skin. I prefer to see people along cultural lines, ie Italian, Jewish, Egyptian, African ect. so its more individualized. I hate to group people by skin color.

Now, I often see and hear people using "African" in the same way that we use "Italian" (for example), i.e. as if it were a national origin or a country. Rather than, you know, a continent comprised of over 50 seperate countries and 900 million people. The issue I have there is that distinctions between European (read "white") cultures are respected as being distinct- people generally recognize that there are cultural differences between Italians and Germans, for example- while the cultural distinctions between African (read "black") cultures are completely ignored. Africa is treated like a single, monolithic culture in a way that Europe is not. I pointed this out:

"African" is not a cultural line. "Africa" is not a country, nor is it a single monolithic culture. You lumped the entire African continent as one cultural line as though it's the same as talking about "Italian" cultural lines. Africa is a pretty damned big continent, and it's made up of 53 seperate countries, 900+ million people, and makes up about 20% of the total land-mass of the planet. As it happens, there are some pretty significant cultural differences that exist within the African continent.

GopherII responded:

Right. I know Africa is made up of other countries, thats why I mentioned Egyptian (which is part of Africa). I meant I prefer to see Americans who come from a variety of African backgrounds as African, just as for whites I prefer European.

and, later:

I wrote that I prefer to see Black Americans as Africans (because they come rom all over Africa) and prefer to call Western Europeans by their culture (or wherever theyre from) rather than just white, or Arab. I like to be more specific. For example, if youre from a variety of cultures within the European countries I prefer European.

And more recently:

I know to distinguish between the different races of africa. I meant as far as black Americans because their race is mixed from all parts of africa. Same with caucasian people which is why I consider them european. If you read my posts it was because I was looking for an alternative to identifying people by skin tone.

Which... ooookay. Quite frankly, I think that goes directly against the original claim that GopherII prefers to make distinctions along cultural lines, not skin color, so as to be more individualized. All it really does is replace skin color with broad continental descriptors. When you start lumping people together based on the color of their skin, it doesn't really matter what you call them after that- you're still lumping people together by skin color. You can claim that it's about cultural lines... but that doesn't make it so. And, really, I don't understand how broadly lumping all white people together as "European" and all black people together as "African" is somehow supposed to be:

1. More individualized.
2. More specific.
3. Remotely related to cultural values or identities.

The whole conversation sort of went downhill after I suggested that one could probably find greater cultural diversity within the continent of Africa- again, because it's makes up 20% of the land area of the planet, has 900 million people, and over 50 nations- than within the country of Italy- about the size of Nevada and fewer than 60 million people. That was when I was informed that I was a stupid, pompous, anti-Italian racist.

The list should probably have included obsessive, argumentative, and pig-headed, too.

Late, as always: International Sex Workers Rights...

2008-03-06T11:01:00.002-05:00

h/t Cara

I'm several days late on this, but, then, I didn't even realize that it was Sex Worker's Rights day on the 3rd. Until I read Cara's post, I didn't even know that there was an International Sex Worker's Rights day. I am woefully out of touch, I think.

Anyway.

I've written about my complicated feelings on pornography before. Part of the problem is that the arguments about how porn is harmful can be quite compelling, relying, as many of them do, on emotional reactions to the statistics about the types of violence that people involved in sex-work face. It's hard not to be moved by stories about "sex tourism", or the violence that sex-workers sometimes face at the hands of Johns.

But then I remember that I dislike violence against women precisely because it's violence, regardless of what occupation the woman has. I remember that I'm opposed to the sex tourism industry because raping children is wrong, regardless of what motivates you to do so.

A commenter- Betty Boondoggle- raises a good point, over at Cara's:

Aren’t our efforts better employe in improving the conditions so that all the workers are safer? I would like to assume that this is the “official” position. I’m getting the feeling though, that I might be wrong.

I certainly don't think that the sex-industry is perfect. It's pretty obvious that there are some serious problems. But, it occurs to me that pushing the industry underground isn't necessarily the best way to help the women working in it. If my boss is treating me unfairly, I have legal means to pursue justice. If I'm not paid fairly, I can get compensation. If someone is working illegally as a prostitute, and has been wronged in some way- cheated out of money, forced to work in unsafe conditions... whatever- what recourse is there? None. You can't go to the police, or else they'll likely arrest you. You can't take your employer to court... what would you say?

And, no: I don't think that men have some kind of "right" to women's bodies. I think that all of us have a right to have sex, so long as we don't attempt to infringe on another person's right to personal autonomy. My right to sex ends where another person's body begins. And, I think that all of us have a right to safe working conditions, and fair wages- to enjoy the fruits of our labors.

I also don't think that prostitution or stripping or whatever are somehow empowering to women. They might be personally empowering, but empowering in the broad sense? No. Why should that matter, though? Most jobs aren't particularly empowering. Pointing out that sex work isn't empowering isn't an argument against sex work. It's an argument against most work. Or not really an argument at all, I suppose.

My point, in-so-far as I actually have one, is that criminalizing and denigrating women for being involved in sex work is the opposite of helpful. Talk about how women are brainwashed into sex work strikes me as dehumanizing and offensive. The problems that sex workers face aren't solved by sweeping them under the rug or by further alienating them by insulting them or by criminalizing their behavior. The problems they face are much better solved by actually engaging in dialogue with sex workers to find out what kinds of support they want and need. The problems are solved by helping change the ways that we view sex and sex workers.

I'd be remiss if I didn't suggest checking out Renegade Evolution and Being Amber Rhea (also at the GA Podcast Network, since I can't read Being Amber Rhea at work!). Oh, and $pread Magazine.

And, I also wanted to take a moment to link to SWIMW: Sex Workers' International Media Watch. They've got a lot of really great information there, even if the organization is "currently inactive", and I've found a lot of interesting information and essays- including Addressing Sex Work as Labor, by Melissa Ditmore (for the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery), and Sex Worker's Rights and Media Ethics:
Notes for Journalists, by Jo Weldon.

Why I hate David and Goliath...

2008-03-05T16:20:00.000-05:00

I know I'm behind.

Aside from the fact that the owner of David and Goliath T-shirts ~~is a thieving bastard~~ *ahem* alledgedly inappropriately appropriated another artist's achievements, they've got a ton of sexist, homophobic, and racist shirts on their site. Woo, trifecta.

At least they got their banner right "We make stupid stuff so you don't have to".

Yes. Yes you do.

Let's see, there's the Miso Hor Ni and "Chinese" secret shirts. Or maybe you like fruit? Some conflating of cross-dressing with homosexuality, as well as reinforcing the same tired cliches about gay men on their your boyfriend is gay shirt. The statuatory rape is funny shirt. And pedophilia is twice as funny. Oh, and prison rape, too. Nothing like a little black stereotyping to get a laugh. That and domestic assault. Fat shaming. Mocking and endorsing eating disorders.

The list goes on and on.
And their response to the furor over the shirt just reinforces their classy image

My polka dot problem...

2008-03-02T16:29:00.004-05:00

This is pretty much just me complaining and describing a personal problem that I'm having. I doubt very much that I'm going to relate it back to anything, so if you're not interested in reading about my personal life, I'd skip this one.

I've taken to joking a little bit that I'm going to bring back spots, but I have what is known as a "skin condition". Say hello to my right and left legs. Those lovely red spots are called plaques, and are caused by psoriasis. If my derm's reaction is any indication, I've got at least a moderately seriously case. The words "Oh, that's not fair" have left his mouth on multiple visits. Sadly, his sympathy has done little to ease my discomfort. As you can see, it's kind of all over my legs, particularly my lower legs. It's also covering my torso, arms, face and head. Even on and in my ears. Which is to say, pretty much my whole body. I sort of think I'm lucky, in a way, that it's worse on my legs than anywhere else. And, really, it could still be worse, even there. Unluckily, it's second worst on my head and face.

If you don't have psoriasis, I think it's generally considered a relatively benign thing to have. Relatively speaking, of course. It's not going to kill me, for example. As far as I know, it's not going to cause any major organ damage, either. It's not going to attack my brain. It's not going to do... well... much of anything, except cause those rather bright red spots to appear all over my body.

Did I mention that they burn? No? Oh, well. They burn, too. They itch almost constantly, but I use moisturizing lotion to try to cut back on the itching, and that helps a lot. Periodically, though, I experience what I can only describe as an intense burning sensation. Like my leg is covered in acid. While that comes and goes, it's most intense usually when I'm getting a little tired, and I'm preparing for bed. A few times, the pain has been intense enough to give me spasms. Which can make it difficult to fall asleep, to say the least.

Another interesting fact about psoriasis: it's exacerbated by stress.

Which is awesome, because, as you might imagine, having itchy, burning, bright red splotches all over you body, including your face, can be a fairly stressful situation. Particularly since, and this is really awesome, too (which is to say, distinctly not), they become dry and flake off. The skin on the spots gets very dry, and almost leathery in texture, or sometimes raised and coarse. Then it flakes and peels off, almost like a sunburn. Only, this happens on a daily basis. And has a tendancy to look like dandruff, when it comes off my scalp.

See, psoriasis is basically the body producing skin at an accelerated rate. Normal skin cells mature and fall off the body about every 28 to 30 days. Psoriatic skin cell take only 3 days to mature and move to the surface. Then, instead of being shed off, they pile up and form those bright splotches. Which then crack and flake, since they're mostly formed by piles of irritated dying and dead skin cells.

It was bad enough when it was just my legs that were afflicted. It was painful, and annoying to be constantly putting on lotions and trying to resist the urge to scratch. But, as it's spread over the rest of my body, I've also had to start dealing with other people's reactions. Because, uh... people stare. I've taken to wearing a hat, even while I'm indoors, unless I have to to take it off, because it helps cover up the flaking skin on my scalp and along my hairline (Oh, did I also mention psoriasis can lead to extensive hair loss? No? It can lead to extensive hair loss), but it's not like I can hide my face. I've let my beard grow in, which helps a little, but I think that's mostly psychological.

My friends and co-workers know about it, but I'm not going to stop and tell every random stranger that gives me weird looks when I'm trying to shop "Oh, yeah, I'm not diseased or dirty. Well, I mean, I guess I am sort of diseased, but it's a genetic skin condition called psoriasis." Nor would I want to.

If you do any research on psoriasis, one of the things you'll discover is that there's lots of talk about the link between depression and psoriasis. Or how psoriasis sufferers go through a loss of self-esteem. Well, duh. You know why? Because people tend to be both fascinated and repulsed. The worst is when I'm having a good day, and it's not itching too much, and I manage to forget about it for a little while, and I'll go out, and someone will look at me in that way that makes it clear that they're... I don't know exactly what they're thinking... but they're staring at me. And I don't know whether to be angry, or offended, or embarrassed, and I mostly just want to go hide.

I've been ruminating on talking about this for a while, now. I'm sure I could relate it to all kinds of different things, but, hell... even while I'm sitting here looking at that picture on my blog, and thinking about how depressing it is that I pretty much look nothing like that now because, yeah, I'm fucking polka-dotted, I also feel terribly guilty. Because the thing is, compared to the other two men in my immediate family, I won the genetic jackpot. All three of us suffer from a chronic, incurable ailment. At least mine is mostly cosmetic. MS and seizures seem a lot more significant by comparison.

Anyway, there it is. I don't know what else to say. So I won't.

On definitions and synonyms...

2008-02-29T13:35:00.006-05:00

I know I stepped in this before, but my opinion hasn't changed.

According to dictionary.com:
Child - noun, plural chil·dren
1. a person between birth and full growth; a boy or girl: books for children.

According to American Heritage Dictionary:

n. pl. chil·dren
1. a. A person between birth and puberty.
b. A person who has not attained maturity or the age of legal majority.

According to WordNet 3.0

noun
1. a young person of either sex; "she writes books for children"

The defining trait of all children is age. Child does not, however, mean a loud, irrational, destructive person with poor communication skills.

If you use "child" as a synonym for the above, you're using it incorrectly. Just as a misogynist who uses "woman" to mean something other than "an adult female person" is wrong.

EG is a fucking champ in that thread, btw.

You're uncomfortable around children? Fine. Own that. It's about you and whatever issues/perspectives you have. Making it about some supposedly "objective" assessment of children's behavior turns it into "children deserve my dislike--it's not me, it's them." And the assessments used are almost always assessments that can equally apply to adults.

Exactly right.

Good video games news...

2008-02-28T09:42:00.003-05:00

I realize that most of the writing I do about video games is to complain about the sexism or racism contained in a game, or to talk about the problems within gaming culture, and that there are times when people coming here must think "and this guy likes games?"

So, I want to thank Mighty Ponygirl for writing this post about libraries in my home state providing access to video games. It's a brief article, but very interesting. Some of the local libraries have started keeping video games as a part of their collections, and have even begun hosting competitions for games like Guitar Hero.

The same article appears in the Houston Chronicle, but allows comments. Which, as you might imagine, are less than enthusiastic. Of course, there's the manditory "what about people who go to the library for peace and quiet?" comment. I have to wonder when the last time someone who makes a comment like that was actually at a library. Many libraries have: computer and internet access, televisions with movie viewing, children's play areas, music listening stations, etc. None of those things have stopped the library from also having plenty of space for people who are looking for peace and quiet. Many libraries have specific rooms set up to allow for groups to meet or for allowing people to view videos or listen to music.

My favorite comment is probably the third one down:

And the degradation of society continues. Is the library system here actually dumb enough to think that by renting video games that the kids will actually maybe check out a book? No...all they are assisting in is the expanded breeding of zombies with no social or intellectual skills.

Ah, yes, the good ol' "Video games will rot your brain!" argument. That never gets old. First of all, is anyone else tired of hearing about "the degradation of society"? Because, really, I'm not seeing it. We hit bumps and snags, but you know what, I think, in the scheme of things, society gets better over time. At what point in time do these people think we were better off? The 80s? The 50s? The 1850s? When were so much more cultured and morally virtuous? We're by no means perfect, and we've still got a long way to go, but, really... we were better off when people of color and women were treated like property, most people in our nation didn't have indoor plumbing, and the average life expectancy was less than sixty years?

Oh, right, when people talk about how society is crumbling, they usually mean either "there's something new that I don't like, and it scares me" or "my moral values are being questioned and opposed, and I don't like it." My mistake.

But, seriously, what does this person think that the library is full of, right now? Nothing but Great Works By Important Dead People? Becuase, as MP points out, there are plenty of, shall we say, socially and intellectually bankrupt books in a library. I used to check out Christopher Pike books all the time when I was young. If Tales From the Crypt and Saved By the Bell got together and created paperback spawnlings, Christopher Pike's books would be the result.

Which is to say: they're total pulp.

Delicious, delicious pulp, but pulp none-the-less.

The points that writer was getting to are a pretty common, though. There's this idea of The Library that's currently at war with what libraries are becoming. It used to be that people thought of The Library as some kind of massive brick or stone structure full of Important Information. Like Ye Olde Hall of Knowledge.

I think that's why we have the stereotype of the librarian as a mean old woman with glasses who hisses at us to be quiet all the time, and why we imagine rows upon rows of old, dusty books on stacks up to the ceiling.

The reality is that the role of libraries has been changing for years. Libraries themselves are changing. They're not just those massive intimidating stone slabs, anymore- they're becoming more and more modern, all the time. Many put as much emphasis on technology and art as they do literature. Libraries are an archive, yes, but they're not just a text archive. They're also a social institution.

As society has changed, so has the function of a library. One of the greatest things about a library is the invaluable service that it provides a society. Libraries not only collect and archive the products of a society, but they provide access to information and services and to the people who would otherwise be unable to share in them.

There's a social benefit in providing access to things like computers and film and, yes, video games. Even if video games were a completely worthless pursuit (which they're not)... so what? I actually think that, yes, the mere fact of getting the kid into the library to play the game has the potential to get the kid interested in books. Especially if, as MP suggests, the staff are using the opportunity to cross-promote related books, like displaying music related books around are in the area where you're hosting a Rock Band competition.

I think that there's still a lot of discussion to happen about how, exactly, we see the role of the library- particularly in the information age, when it's starting to seem like everything is available online and in digital form. But I think that the concept of the library as the Hallowed Hall of Written Text and Knowledge is long over. If someone is completely offended by the idea of the library as community space, I suspect that they're not visiting enough libraries.

In other, related, news:

I mailed my graduate application today. Let the nervousness of Waiting to Hear Back begin.

Make Sure You Get That Sex-Work Slam In...

2008-02-22T22:05:00.002-05:00

Jill just posted about the murder of a gender non-conforming teen. Simmie Williams is being described by most articles as "cross dressing" or as "a male teen dressed as a woman".

A kid is dead.

Thank gods that the Miami Herald is there to point out that he was "shot in a Fort Lauderdale neighborhood known for transvestite prostitution".

Wouldn't want people to be too sympathetic, now, would we?

Where Activism and Advertising Collide...

2008-02-22T17:31:00.002-05:00

I just stumbled upon Osocio today. It's an interesting site that describes itself as being "dedicated to social advertising and non-profit campaigns." It's a blog that collects and links back to a variety of non-profit and activist advertisments.

They collect posters and ads from around the world- and there are some that I think are really interesting- like these DV ads. They're visually striking, and I think that they illustrate the point well (that the threat of violence doesn't always come from outside).

I also like these ads about teen romance, dating, and sex, advertising Real Life. Real Talk., which was initiated by Planned Parenthood, and seeks to "positively change the social climate in communities by creating more open, honest, and balanced talk about sex and health" and "reframe sexuality as a component of healthy relationships, instead of as a commodity, the way it is often promoted in popular media."

Anyway, it's a very cool site- go, check it out!

What white people like...

2008-02-21T09:13:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, Jill, over at feministe, made a very short post about Stuff White Poeple Like, which is a blog, aptly, about the stuff that white people like.

There were a lot of different reactions to the site, both in the comments there, and at feministe. While some people thought it was pretty insightful, there were a number of people who thought it was offensive. And then there were the people who took the site as a call to act like racist idiots (which you'll see a lot of if you read the comments there). One of the biggest complaints seemed to be that the site, itself, encourages racist thought, or that it's bad because it encourages silly stereotypes about white people, and that this is divisive and harmful.

Initially, I was a little torn abo...
That is, I was...

Oh, damnit. Wait. I'm sorry, I'm just a little distracted. I just have to take a moment to recommend a few things.

First: If you haven't seen it, I strongly suggest watching Dr. Strangelove (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). It's absolutely brilliant- given how things have been going in the United States, it's hard not to see shades of General Turgidson ("I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed. Tops. Depending on the breaks.") in some of our leaders.

Second (and for much the same reason): I have to recommend the novel Catch 22, by Heller. In the face of stop loss, the absurd catch 22 of the novel* starts to seem disturbingly real.

Third: Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy A Modest Proposal? Genius.

So, anyway. As I was saying, initially, I was a little bit torn about the site. I couldn't decide if it was just kind of stupid, or if there was something really good going on. When I read it, #71 (Being the only white person around) was at the top, and, well... I just didn't get it. I reread the post a few times, and thought "I must be missing the joke..." I kept reading other entries, though, and by the time I had read a dozen of them, I sort of got it. It wasn't really "Stuff White People Like" it was "Stuff (young middle/middle-upper class, college educated, 'hipster') White People Like". Understandibly, that doesn't have quite the same punch that "Stuff White People Like" does.

As I said, there were a number of commenters at feministe who weren't thrilled by the site, or who were made uncomfortable, or unhappy by it. There was a sense of feeling like there was some double-standard at play, or criticism about the narrow focus of the blog- that it claims to be "Stuff White People Like" but is really about a certain sub-section of the white population- that it conflates race with class, or that it misses a lot of other things that "White People" like- NASCAR, country music, etc.

Which is important, and very obviously deliberate. The point of the site almost certainly isn't just to list stuff that we, as white people, like. And it isn't a general criticism of white people as a whole; it's a criticism of a very specific group of people- generally, white liberals. That's why the comment about double-standards probably misses the mark. Unless the point of the site is to actually list the Stuff White People Like- which, again, I suspect it's not. The site is a criticism- but the criticism isn't that we actually like the things listed- I mean, really? Divorce? Difficult breakups? Lawyers? Not having a TV? No, I don't think that it's actually about "Stuff White People Like".

And if it's obvious that the point isn't what the site says that it is, it ought to make us question "Okay, so what is it really about?"

It seems to me that the point is less about the things that we, as white liberals, like, and more about social commentary. It's about, I suspect, making trying to make us uncomfortable with and more aware of our own racial blind-spots. And if that's the case, then it's important for the site to do exactly what it's doing- keep the "stuff" of a pretty limited nature. In order for it to work as satire, it has to take the forms of stereotyping that happens to other racial/ethnic groups, and subvert them, by applying them to a specific segment of the white population.

I don't think it's because, as some people suggested, that including these other segments (the stereotypical Republican, or "Southern red-neck", etc) would let hipsters pat themselves on the back about how cool they are or what-not. I suppose that could be part of it, but my read is more about who we expect to be racist, anyway. That is: given how frequently republicans or southerners are portrayed as racist assholes, is there a lot of value in targeting them? If the point is to make a group who generally think of themselves as "post-racial" aware that, "Hey! You're not there yet!", it doesn't make sense to target people who society already condemns as being racist.

So, yeah, the list isn't inclusive- it's not supposed to be. By conflating "white" with "middle-class liberal", the blog completely employs the all too common trope of conflating social traits with race. That, for example, "black" is the same as "low-income inner-city". And I think that the point is to make us uncomfortable with ourselves (assuming that we're middle-class white liberals, obviously)- we're supposed to recognize:

1. That we're guilty of some of these things.
2. That we're not guilty of a lot of them.
3. That it's a really unflattering picture.
and most importantly
4. That it's the same kind of thing that we're guilty of doing to other people.

And, honestly, a number of entries are pretty damned awesome in how close to home they hit. Take 18, for example:

An interesting fact about white people is that they firmly believe that all of the world’s problems can be solved through “awareness.” Meaning the process of making other people aware of problems, and then magically someone else like the government will fix it.

This belief allows them to feel that sweet self-satisfaction without actually having to solve anything or face any difficult challenges. Because, the only challenge of raising awareness is people not being aware. In a worst case scenario, if you fail someone doesn’t know about the problem. End of story.

What makes this even more appealing for white people is that you can raise “awareness” through expensive dinners, parties, marathons, selling t-shirts, fashion shows, concerts, eating at restaurants and bracelets. In other words, white people just have to keep doing stuff they like, EXCEPT now they can feel better about making a difference.

Raising awareness is also awesome because once you raise awareness to an acceptable, aribtrary level, you can just back off and say “Bam! did my part. Now it’s your turn. Fix it.”

So to summarize - you get all the benefits of helping (self satisfaction, telling other people) but no need for difficult decisions or the ensuing criticism (how do you criticize awareness?). Once again, white people find a way to score that sweet double victory.

I imagine that hits a little close to home for some of us. Which is not to say that awareness raising isn't important. Rather, that raising awareness should be a part of the journey, not the end of one.

Which is to say, if it's making you a little uncomfortable in places, that's probably good. That's part of the point of satire.

*Yossarian is trying to get out of a flying combat missions during WWII. He can't stop flying missions because they keep raising the tour of duty limit, which was 25 when he started, but is raised to 80 in little over a year.

However, regulations say that he can stop flying missions if he submits a request to his flight surgeon demonstrating that he is insane, and therefore unfit to fly. Regulations also say that any sane person wouldn't want to fly combat missions because of the dangers involved. Ergo, any person who submits a request not to fly missions is acting in a sane manner, and is thus fit to fly. Further, the regulations state that any person who expresses a desire to fly missions is clearly insane, and ought to be excused from flying, as that person is unfit to fly. In order to be excused from flying, such a person needs to submit a request to his flight surgeon demonstrating that he is insane...

It turns out, maybe I'm not from Mars after all...

2008-02-20T12:43:00.003-05:00

h/t: Jessica

If there's one kind of study that's likely to make me want to pull out my hair and grind my teeth into dust, it's the typical "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus" studies. And they're everywhere. You can't walk through the damn grocery store without seeing magazine covers yelling at you that "women do X while men do Y!" or "learn how to think like your man!" or "25 secrets about the female psyche- what she's thinking!"

And isn't it just *so* convenient that almost every time, it turns out that the "secrets" that the study reveils turn out to reinforce the status quo? Oh, how very shocking- a study finds that women talk more than men! I know I've never heard that one, before. And, for extra points, the author of that study points out that "women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road." Thank you, Dr. Brizendine, for that completely gender-busting study.

Lucky for me, I'm a data-hound, and I stumbled upon this article in the APA website. It's about the findings of psychologist Janet S. Hyde, of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. It turns out, there doesn't really seem to be that much difference between the sexes after all:

Gender differences accounted for either zero or a very small effect for most of the psychological variables examined, according to Hyde. Only motor behaviors (throwing distance), some aspects of sexuality and heightened physical aggression showed marked gender differences.

So... men are moderately more aggressive, and can throw things farther.

Wow.

I mean, seriously... wow. Throwing things... that's pretty awesome. I mean, I guess that's great. I should take up bowling or something. I could get angry at the pins and use my manly throwing powers.

And perhaps the most unshocking, but shockingly ignored, aspect of studies about gender:

Furthermore, gender differences seem to depend on the context they were measured in, said Hyde. In studies where gender norms are removed, researchers demonstrated how important gender roles and social context were in determining a person’s actions.

I mean, who would have guess that gender- a socially constructed and enforced attribute- would be at all impacted by the social context within which it's being measured. I mean, you wouldn't expect to find that expressions of masculinity are different in a controlled lab with anonymous participants than in a high-school locker room, right?
Right?

I also found a great article by Deborah Cameron, called "What Language Barrier? Remember how it turned out that women speak more than men?

If we are going to try to generalise about which sex talks more, a reliable way to do it is to observe both sexes in a single interaction, and measure their respective contributions. This cuts out extraneous variables that are likely to affect the amount of talk (like whether someone is spending their day at a Buddhist retreat or a high school reunion), and allows for a comparison of male and female behaviour under the same contextual conditions.

Numerous studies have been done using this approach, and while the results have been mixed, the commonest finding is that men talk more than women. One review of 56 research studies categorises their findings as shown here:

Pattern of difference found / Number of studies

Men talk more than women / 34 (60.8%)

Women talk more than men / 2 (3.6%)

Men and women talk the same amount / 16 (28.6%)

No clear pattern / 4 (7.0%)

· Source: based on Deborah James and Janice Drakich, 'Understanding Gender Differences in Amount of Talk', in Deborah Tannen (ed.), Gender and Conversational

Whoops. Looks like women aren't necessarily all that talkitive when compared to their male counterparts.

Cameron has a number of books out, including one released last month called The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do men and women really speak different languages?, that I'm thinking I'll need to pick up. (I'm also very interested in some of her other books: Verbal Hygience sounds interesting, and The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader or Feminism and Linguistic Theory. Oh, and The Lust to Kil: A Feminist Investigation of Sexual Murder).

sings "And I don't wanna miss a thiiing"

2008-02-15T09:30:00.004-05:00

I got a message in my e-mail this morning from a friend of mine- I'm passing it along without further comment, because... well, what more is there to say?

Um... Is George Bush really now literally stealing national defense strategies from movies? I wonder if he's booked Aerosmith to do the soundtrack for the military maneuver....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080215/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/dead_satellite

Don't wanna close my eyes... don't wanna fall asleep...

(okay, one comment: Seriously, 80%?! I mean, we're launching a missile at the thing, and we're only giving it an 80% chance of hitting? I'm not saying I've got a better idea, but, damn, that doesn't really seem that great.)

In Praise of Judge Shalina Kumar

2008-02-13T11:41:00.004-05:00

After reading a story about someone admitting to wrong-doing getting away with it, it's good to see a local story about an abusive monster getting a real setence.

48-year-old William Pattison was convicted of four counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of pandering for sexually abusing his daughter, starting when she was only a child, and pushing her into prostitution by not allowing her to see her own child unless she complied with his demands.

All of this, and the man was a corrections officer.

The judge in the case- Oakland Circuit Judge Shalina Kumar- sentenced Pattison yesterday, to 40-60 years- despite sentencing guidelines calling for a minimum sentence of only 10-15 years. The judge said that the guidelines failed to account for various elements of the case, like his position of power.

Pattison still faces charges for allegedly abusing another relative, and the woman with whom he had another child.

Judge Kumar also setenced a Cleveland man, Timothy Jeffrey, to 25-40 years yesterday, for the kidnapping and molestation of an 8-year-old girl.

And, back in November, she ruled against Kid Rock, asking "What's special about him? Why does he get to violate a court's order?" She then entered a default against him in another complaint seeking damages.

In a time when I keep seeing report after report of judges dismissing or under-sentencing serious offenses, it's good to see a judge that appears to give these crimes the serious sentences they deserve.

Detroit and the Divine Right of Mayors.

2008-02-13T10:15:00.005-05:00

Huh.

And all this time I thought he was on assignment by the people who voted him into office.

I really like how Kilpatrick says that his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, resigning was "the right thing to do". It was the right thing for her to do... but not for him. He's "on an assignment from God", and, according to the article, he's "never been a quitter and doesn't plan to start now."

Not only is Kilpatrick not stepping down, he's planning to run again in 2009, saying that he will "make a case at that point, too, why [he's] the best person for the job."

I can't wait to see that.

This scandal alone has cost the tax-payers over 9$ million. That's not exactly a drop in the ocean. Kilpatrick has a long history of scandalous behaviors that reflect poorly on a city that desperately needs a turn-around. Now he's facing perjury charges. A former Detroit auditor general estimated that Kilpatrick charged in excess of $50k in personal expenses to the city, back in '05. Three former aides- two of them former classmates of Kilpatrick's- embezzled almost $50k from the mayor's petty cash account. And then there's the bad publicity the city received in the wake of the Tamara Greene murder and the Manoogian Mansion party. Or the lease of a Lincoln Navigator that cost the city $24,955 ($5 under what would have required city council approval- convenient, yes?), but that was to be used by Kilpatrick's wife and children. There's the blatant nepotism that Kilpatrick has repeatedly engaged in- placing family and friends in high-paying positions for which they have few qualifications. There's the fact that Washington D.C. police refuse to provide Kilpatrick's entourage with the level of police protection offered other mayors because of Kilpatrick's "inappropriate" behavior on previous D.C. visits. Or the use of almost $9k of a charity fund meant to improve the city of Detroit to take his wife, sons, and babysitter on a week-long vacation to the La Costa Resort and Spa in CA. Add to all of that the countless charges of physical violence that reporters and photographers have levied at Kilpatrick and his security teams.

The city is suffering- unemployment keeps going up. The housing market is tanked. The auto industry- the life-blood of the city- is slashing jobs. And maybe he can't fix all of those problems, and maybe they're not necessarily his fault... but he is responsible for his behavior, and for the people he puts into positions of authority. And he is responsible for being the public face of the city.

And if Kilpatrick is the best person for that job, I'd hate to see the worst.

Headline News: Video Games Blamed Again. In Other News: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is Still Dead

2008-02-12T11:28:00.001-05:00

h/t Twenty Sided

I'd say I'm shocked... but, well, this kind of story is pretty common, now. Not the disappearance- although, that, too, isn't really shocking to me, either- but the fact that video games are being blamed.

The story: A former marine who was seriously wounded in a bomb explosion, and who witnessed his best friend be decapitated, disappeared last week, after he rode off on his motorcycle following a gaming session of Call of Duty. Apparently, the man had been hallucinating and having flashbacks, following his return to the States.

Honestly, I'm surprised by how softly games are blamed in the article. I'd have expected the headline to read "Video Game Traumatizes Soldier, Tears Family Apart" or something like that. As it stands, the headline and the story aren't completely inaccurate- it's true that the game may have sparked the disappearance, in that the game triggered what sounds pretty clearly like post traumatic stress disorder.

But it also seems pretty clear that the guy was having some serious problems way before he played Call of Duty. If you're hallucinating and having flashbacks, you're probably not in a good place to begin with, and while Call of Duty may have prompted an episode, it could have just as easily been a Rambo commercial that did it. Or a car backfiring. Or, hell, the smell of dinner cooking.

That's the thing about war stress- the things that can trigger flashbacks are limitless. Call of Duty didn't screw this guy up- being nearly killed in a bomb explosion that literally took his friend's head off did. Spending 13 weeks in the hospital recovering did. Being forced to spend extended periods of time in life-or-death situations, shooting at people and being shot at did. And all of this when he was 21 years old.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine (via this article.), about 20% of U.S. troops who face combat situations will return with serious symptoms of depression, anxiety, or PTSD. If 20% are coming back with serious symptoms, imagine how many are coming back with moderate or light symptoms, too.

But, hey, Fox News, way to miss an opportunity to talk about the serious issue of how little we're doing to help the men and women we're sending over to bleed and die for "freedom and country". I mean, it's not like we've got soldiers being stuck over there 2 or even 3 times as long as they were ever supposed to be, right? Of course not. It must be because he played a video game that he took off.

I see articles about how hard it is to be away from your family, and the pressures on the men and women who are serving over seas, being asked to do far above and beyond what they were originally told, or what was ever expected when they enlisted, but I see very little attention given to the serious problems that these men and women face when they return to the private sector. And, really, that's been the elephant in the room since, like, WWII. We've known for decades that war takes a serious mental toll on the men and women who fight, but very little is really done to help.

I hope that he's found alive, and that he can finally get the help he needs- he was released almost 3 years ago, and he's still having hallucinations and flashbacks. As someone who has friends and relatives who've served, and who lived with the ghosts of their time in combat, my heart goes out to this man's family. It's tough on both the soldier and the soldier's loved ones. But that's not as good a story as "Video Game Makes Man Dissappear", I suppose.

Super Tuesday Analysis...

2008-02-06T10:36:00.000-05:00

Despite my bitterness about the primary (or lack thereof) in my state, I'm obviously interested in the results of Super Tuesday (which I always imagine being said in an echo-y booming voice, like a monster truck announcer). Pam Spaulding, at Pandagon, discusses the reuslts over here. She notes that this is a pretty close race so far, and that it's refreshing to see a primary that's actually a race, and not a quick coronation.

I was checking out the results on Salon this morning, and there were a few things that jumped out at me.

If you look at "Tuesday's results by state: Democrats", you see some interesting things happening there. As far as delegates won, Clinton is in the lead with 458 to Obama's 357. But, the breakdown of where those delegates come from is what was really interesting to me. While Clinton took the majority so far, in the places where she won, it was pretty close for the most part. In the 8 states that she won, she won by an average of 56.13%, with her biggest victory coming in at 69% (which was the only victory she had above 57%). She took 3 of the 4 biggest states, and both of the states with over 200 delegates (NY and CA).

Obama, on the other hand, has a number of states where he took an overwhelming majority, despite having taken fewer delegates, overall. The first thing I noticed was that Obama took more states overall- 13 to Clinton's 8. On top of that, in the states where he won, Obama tended to win by a larger margin, with an average win of 63.15%. His biggest win was a whopping 79%, with three wins coming in over 70%, and 8 of his 13 coming in at over 60%.

I'm not sure what, if anything, that means, but I found it interesting.

Things continue to be intersting when you start looking at the Republican results, too- The Republican vote is being pulled three ways, so, overall, the candidates tended to come out with lower percentages than the Democrats, but, right now, McCain is pulling the most delegates. This, despite the fact that he doesn't have a single result over 55%. Romney, even in a 3-way race, takes the single biggest win with 90% of Utah, and 60% of Colorado. McCain has a pretty strong lead there.

Also, Huckabee is the only candidate not to get a caricature illustration. Not that they could have picked a less flattering picture for the guy.

On blogging... an update.

2008-01-28T14:29:00.000-05:00

So, I've been mostly taking a break from blogging this month. Counting this post, it'll be six posts total in January.

Blogging really stresses me out.

There are things I love about blogging- I enjoy engaging with people. I enjoy reading what other people have to say. I enjoy having a place to say what I'm thinking and find out what other people have to say in response. I've learned a lot of things because of blogging- not just from people blogging about current events (which is also great), but from people correcting or analyzing the things that are written. When blogging is like a conversation, it can be a really interesting and exciting process.

But, there are a lot of things that I really hate about blogging. I hate how easy it is to read one thing that someone has written, and see that as the sum-total of that person's opinions and experiences. I hate how easy it is to misread or misinterpret what people are saying when they blog. I hate how easy it is to miss tone, or misunderstand sarcasm, or misread humor. I hate how quickly conversations escalate into arguments into flaming. I hate how easy it is to forget that bloggers are real people who have real feelings who have real experiences outside of the web who have complex opinions about issues that don't always come through in every post. I hate how easy it is to forget or ignore or simply not know about a person's many other good works and history of thought and action and activism when you read something that they've said that you disagree with or don't like. And on, and on.

And, no, it's not that all of those things happen to me (although, yeah, I absolutely hate it when they do)- it's also that I end up doing those things, too.

And I also hate not knowing if any of this is actually doing any good. I hate that I can spend a week researching and writing and rewriting something- hours and hours spent thinking about writing and working on a post, and I put it out there, and I have no idea whether it actually helps the cause. I hate feeling like I've put my heart and soul into something and feeling like the only people who are going to read it are:
1. People who already agree with what I'm saying.
2. People who are 100% against what I'm saying and only reading it to tear it apart.

And, it is hard writing. Writing is work. It's good work- it feels good to find the right words, to really bite into a tough subject, or to realize that you've just found exactly the right way of saying something so that it clicks in your head in a way that it hadn't before. But, it's still work. It's hard. It's hard, in part, because of constraints I put on myself.

And I'm having all of these feelings, and then I go to the doctor, and I find out that I have a stress related chronic condition. The more stressed I get, the worse the condition gets. Which is a vicious circle, because the worse the condition gets, the more I stress out, but whatever.

So, I'm not sure what to do. Blogging is hurting me, and I'm not really convinced that it's actually doing good, but not blogging is actually starting to stress me out a little too, and I miss it, and I miss the sense of community that I felt when I first started.

I haven't yet figured out how this all works. I'm unhappy with the way things were going, but I'm not ready to throw in the towel, either. I'm thinking that I need to change my idea of what this blog should be, but I'm not really sure what it looks like or what it ought to be, either.

Question Time: Enjoying art despite the artist...

2008-01-18T12:35:00.000-05:00

Bobby Fischer is dead.

For a lot of people, the name Bobby Fischer probably doesn't mean a whole lot. But, if you're a big chess fan, you probably have some feelings about the man. Bobby Fischer was an American chess prodigy at a time when Americans weren't seen as "real" chess players. He reached the rank of Grand Master- the highest title you can get in chess- at only 15. In '72 he became the first American to win the World Chess Championship. He wasn't just an amazing player, he was one of the greatest players of all time, and- when I was growing up and learning the game- was a huge inspiration.

He was also, as it turns out, a huge antisemite. He denied the holocaust, and said, in radio interviews, that he was the victim of an "international Jewish conspiracy" and that the United States was "a farce controlled by dirty, hook-nosed, circumcised Jew bastards."

When I was growing up, studying Fischer's endgames, and learning about his theories, these aspects of his personality were completely unknown to me. Bobby Fischer was the greatest. Now, as an adult, I'm forced to reconcile my love for the man's talant on the board with what a horrible person he was off the board. How do you do that, though?

And it's not like it's just Bobby Fischer, either. I love H.P. Lovecraft. I think that his contributions to horror writing are remarkable- the man was a genius. Also a huge racist and antisemite. Ian Flemming's writings are filled with blatant sexism and racism.

I've been sitting here thinking about whether I can still respect someone like Fischer, now that I know more about him. Can I enjoy and respect the work, knowing where it comes from? I think that I can still recognize the great things that Fischer did for the game and his genius on the board while recognizing that he was a horrible person in a lot of other ways.

I think that with Fischer it's a little easier, though, because the game doesn't reflect his views in the way that, say, a movie or a song might. I can't watch Falling Down because of the troubling racism it's filled with, but you can't see antisemitism on a chess board. Then again, James Bond books are, as I noted, filled with racist and sexist imagery, but my reaction to them isn't the same as my reaction to something like Grand Theft Auto.

So, what do you do when that happens? What do you do when a person that you love or respect for some talant they have or some contribution they've made to a field you're interested in turns out to be... well... an asshole? And not just a run-of-the-mill "I'm a jerk" asshole, but a racist/sexist/homophobic asshole? Can you seperate the contribution from the contributor, or are they forever linked? Or maybe it depends on the circumstances?

I think that this counts as bad credit...

2008-01-15T12:54:00.000-05:00

The criticisms of Subway's newest commercial reminded me of another commercial that I saw recently that I found pretty egregious, too. Have you seen the commercials for Free Credit Check (dot com, of course)? The first one involves a guy singing about how he dresses as a pirate at a crappy restaurant, because, I assume, it's the only job he can get now that he has bad credit or something... the connection between working as a singing pirate and having bad credit isn't really explained, but, I have to admit, I always end up singing along with the commercial. Well, be that as it may, they have a new commercial that I absolutely hate.

And so I will share. Because I'm cool like that.

So he married his dream girl and it turned out that she had bad credit. Okay, that happens. I can understand wanting to know before you get married "uh, say, how is your credit, just so that we can plan for the future a bit", but, the moral of the story is that he wishes he'd checked her credit, because if he had, he'd have dumped her and he'd be happier because he could have his own home and a dog?

Wow. That's a strong love they share, yeah?

What's stopping him from buying a house if his credit is good? Also, she's the only one I see actually doing work in the commercial. She's cleaning and doing laundry while he hangs out with his friends singing a song about how he wishes he'd dumped her before they got married. Yeah. That's cool.

Shorter McCullough: I've never played video games and here's why we should ban them...

2008-01-15T09:26:00.000-05:00

I don't read Townhall.com, and I don't really know that much about Kevin McCullough, but this story makes me glad that I'm not a regular reader, for sure.

To save you the pain of reading it- McCullough is outraged- Outraged, I say!- about Mass Effect. It's pretty obvious that he's never played the game. He's got a great list of claims about it, everything from claiming that game-players are universally male (fyi- the only people I personally know who've played the game are actually women), to claiming that it allows players to engage in "the most realistic sex acts ever conceived" and that they can "hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of." (Conceived! Get it? That's funny! And "hump"? Really?) *ahem* Anyway- It's got a very realistic relationship, but the most realistic sex ever conceived? It's less than a minute long, and less explicit than half the stuff you see on network television.

I also love that McCullough thinks that character creation is a "disgusting idea" that "tends to objectify women, sex, and human relationships". Nevermind that the only customization you can do is in a limited area, and that the ability to create custom characters is actually a beneficial gameplay aspect that allows players from diverse backgrounds and physical types to create avatars that they can personally identify with. And ignore that the sex only happens as a result of multiple hours of relationship building. Showing people (and aliens, I suppose) as having complicated relationships- relationships that, yes, involve sex- isn't objectifying. The argument seems to be that any depiction of sex must necessarily be objectifying.

The criticisms just go downhill from there, ending up with the claim that Mass Effect:

can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the gameplayer wishes.

With it's "over the net" capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away.

It's worth noting, here, that Mass Effect isn't an online game.

I know I've talked about this before, but this is just another example of someone taking an issue that's important and should be discussed- the sexism that exists within games and gaming culture- and completely missing the mark by not knowing what sie is talking about. There are games that allow the player to, yes, rape with the push of a button. And there are games that go to great lengths to objectify women or that push unrealisitic and unhealthy attitudes about sex, or gender, or relationships. But, spreading lies or untruths about games and gaming culture doesn't do anything to address those problems. Instead, it makes the conversation harder to have. It obfuscates the real issues, and puts gamers into a defensive mindset. It destroys the credibility of your argument when you can't even be bothered to find out what level of customization you have over a game, or whether it has online play.

The silver lining here is that a lot of McCullough's readers have called him out on this article. The comments (over 500 of them right now), are filled with plenty of people pointing out "Wow, you've clearly never played this game."

A couple of stories prompting a quick post at lunch...

2008-01-03T11:03:00.000-05:00

Via Echidne and Mighty Ponygirl, two stories.

At first glance, this Matthew Yglesias story, and this Japundit blog post probably don't really seem to have all that much in common. The former is a very brief story about hockey, and how Yglesias would prefer if there were "ice girls"- the hockey version of cheerleaders. The later is about how a taxi service in Japan that tried to provide special service to people who have mobility problems has been forced to close doors because too many without disabilities were trying to take advantage of the service.

And yet, there's some overlap there.

It's not completely there in the stories themselves- although that's rather clearly the point of the Yglesias post. The story about the taxi service is actually a lot sadder than this Canned Dogs post makes it sound. I agree with MP's take, pretty much completely. Here's a taxi service that is trying to make it easier for people who have a hard time moving to actually get out into the world by making sure that there's an extra person to help. As an idea, having a taxi service that supplies caregivers for people with mobility problems is a really good idea. That there's a focus on maintaining a sense of equality between the rider and the caregiver, instead of the former feeling dependent on the later, is even better. As Keiji Endo- president of the company that ran the service- described the purpose behind the service:

We wanted to be able to give the disabled a taxi service that they could use in a light-hearted manner, in much the same way as they’d ride around in a go-kart at an amusement park. With carers and those being cared for, there’s always a tendency for a relationship of dependency to build up. We wanted the disabled to be able to use the car without any fuss, so that’s why we got the maids in to do the job.

And yet, there's a flaw in the plan.

It's that always looming "sexing up" of a thing. That assumption that X is always better if you add a little T&A. The assumption that anything is better if you just add a little XX to it.

It's the designing of things with stereotypical "straight guy" in mind.

In the case of the Yglesias post, it's the idea that hockey would benefit from scantily clad women. With the taxi service, it's the idea that riders would be more comfortable with a woman dressed as a maid. And, of course, the reactions that people have to those ideas, too.

It's not a call for cheerleaders, which could include men, too. It's a call for women's bodies. It's not a service that provides a companion who has been instructed to be casual and entertaining instead of formal. It's a service that provides women dressed as maids.

The really unfortunate part is that theh taxi service is an otherwise great idea- It is a good service to provide reliable transportation to people who have trouble getting around, and I'm sure that there's a market for a wheelchair accessible van with a driver and a caregiver who is friendly and conversational. It's fact that their model of a person with disabilities is pretty obviously straight and male that creates problems.

The other overlap is exactly what Echidna is talking about- our words (and actions) say more about us and our attitudes than we necessarily mean. Yglesias's post was, as Echidna put it "some trivial entertainment", and the press release from Keiji Endo was describing the goal of the service. But, both of them said a lot more about their intended audiences than they may have realized.

Not just "hockey fans" or "the disabled" as I suspect they'd have said if you asked.

Welcome to the new year...

2008-01-02T13:06:00.000-05:00

Welcome to '08, everyone. My posting will continue to be a little light for the next few days- but I wanted to say that I'm still around.

I'm still dealing with things- some of it related to the blogging, but a lot of it not. I'm still shocked and sort of speechless about the news of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Kevin's point about how the leadership of our nation has rested in the hands of two families for almost two decades is alarming, but, sadly, not shocking. My alma mater getting hit with the biggest fine for a violation of the Cleary act of any school in the history of the act ($100k higher than any other school) is good in the sense that I'm glad to see that the violations are being punished, but sad, because I loved my time there, and, ultimately, these fines don't hurt the people who made the call- they hurt the entire university. The knowledge that this is just one example in a string of really bad administrative choices that have seriously damaged the reputation of what was once a great public university is depressing. This was a university that offered excellent educational opportunities to students who otherwise might not have been able to afford the huge cost associated with higher education. In other words, the actions of the administration haven't hurt them- they've hurt the students, both current and future. Which is to say nothing of the personal stuff I'm dealing with, too.

Anyway, I'm a lot busier than I realized, as I sit here thinking about all of the things coming up that I have to get my ass in gear on. Which is to say that things might be a little light for a short time, but I've got posts in the works and things that I'm thinking of, and I'm still waiting for more news on the Lakota (cue the sounds of crickets chirping from almost every news site), and I'm trying to catch up on the blogs I love to read, and, yes, I'm still feeling stupid and about two inches tall. And I think that almost all of those are good things (except for the lack of coverage about the Lakota. Seriously, CNN. You could at least mention it. Even FOX did a brief story about it, you jerks). I think that it's good to feel uncomfortable and out-of-sorts during a time of change, and while I'm not going to make a New Year's resolution, I'm totally okay with finding myself in the midst of a changes during the coming of the New Year.

So long to 2007- one of the most intense years I can remember. I expect 2008 will be, as well.

In which I eat crow...

2007-12-24T02:36:00.000-05:00

I've caused a lot of anger and resentment about this post, and my responses to the criticisms people had about it. Blackamazon, in particular, had a lot of important things to say about it, over at Having Read the Fine Print, and irn had a really insightful response in the comments, too.

The criticism about my getting the pronoun wrong was something that I wanted to immediately fix, but I also wanted to step back and take some time to think about the rest. Because... honestly? It's really hard to read something like that and not feel ridiculously defensive and frustrated and angry and about two inches tall, and, and, and... well, basically, to try to justify why I'm Right and All Of My Critics Are Being Unfair and I Didn't Do Anything Wrong and I'm Doing My Best.

Which, obviously, doesn't actually do anything good for anyone but me and my bruised feelings.

I don't like pissing the people I respect off, and it's troubling to see people that I know are doing good work, and that I know are living and breathing this, and that I know are smart as hell about these issues looking over and thinking "What the fuck are you doing?" Because, well... it suggests that, you know, maybe I'm doing something really wrong.

So, I realized that what I really needed was to step back and think about the situation, and really think about what was being said to and about me and my post before I opened my mouth again. Because, yeah, my first instinct was to react- to respond. Instead, I turned off the computer and walked away. I think it was the right call.

Because, after obsessing over it for most of the weekend- running it around my head, going back and rereading Blackamazon's posts, rereading the comments on my and other sites, I have to admit that I was being an asshole. Ignoring, for a second, my failure to properly cite Blackamazon's site (which was also egregiously stupid and rightly criticized, and for which there is no excuse), I still really dropped the ball here, and I want to take a moment to apologize and recognize what is being said.

It's not remotely fair to expect other people to see the proposal with the same eyes that I do, or to have the same feelings that I do. And the fact is, Blackamazon is absolutely right, my stake in all of this is significantly different, and it does let me "blithely pullout resumes as predictors and say at worst were no better off." Because, yeah, I'm no worse off... that doesn't mean that nobody is. That I come to this from a place where the stakes are low if it's not handled properly doesn't mean that there aren't a whole lot of people who have very good reasons for being really concerned about what happens.

Which is to say that it's ridiculously shitty of me to accuse other people of coming in bad faith because they're coming to and looking at all of this from a place that I will never experience. It was a shit move, and did nothing to engage with the very real criticisms and concerns that a lot of people were having. It doesn't answer their concerns- it ignores them and, worse, silences them by distracting from what people are really trying to talk about.

And whether or not I agree with all of the criticisms of the proposal or not, I should be able to understand that it does come from a place of genuine concern, legitimate frustration, and a history of really fucked up shit. Not least of which: the open dismissing of critics out of hand, or the implying/outright stating that they're insane or unreasonable for having the concerns and criticisms that they have. Both of which I did, and which are... well... "disturbingly common shit".

I am sorry that I couldn't and didn't disagree without being ignorant and offensive about it, and without recognizing that my place of privilege was giving me a significantly different read on things, and blinding me to the really significant concerns of other people. I don't want to offer any excuses. As irn pointed out, intentions are secondary to consequences. Right now, I can admit that I was wrong, offer my apology, and acknowledging that I've got a long way to go, and a lot of work to do.

A tip: Assaulting people is not a joke.

2007-12-21T15:10:00.001-05:00

Via Feministing:

Some people think assault is funny stuff.

Two men held down a woman and tried to cut her underwear off with a pocketknife.

The story:

A woman enters the bar and sees two men that she considered friends at the bar. She walks up to them, and they begin to talk. At some point, the men begin joking about her underwear, and asking her what kind she was wearing. When she told them it was none of their business, one of them "joked" that he was going to cut off her underwear. She apparently replied that he wasn't "man enough" to do that.

Then, one of the men held her down against the bar, as she screamed for help, while the other man reached down her pants, and cut each side of her underwear. The bartender refused to help because they'd "make things worse" for him. She finally managed to get away from them, but lost her shoes in the process. They offered to return her shows in exchange for the underwear, which she did so that she could go and get help.

When the police questioned the men, one of them said that they were just joking around, and that it was time for her "to take one for the team". What the fuck does that even mean? The other man claims to have done similar things in the past, and that everyone else in the bar was watching and laughing.

He conveniently forgets that she was in the bar. And that she was apparently not laughing. In fact, she was yelling for help.

He claims that he tried to apologize, but that she wouldn't talk to him.

Gee... I can't imagine why not. I mean, it's not like you held her down and tried to cut off her underwear in a bar full of men who apparently found this hill-are-ee-us, while one of them poked her breasts and suggested you cut off her bra next, and then refused to return her shoes until she gave you her underwear, or anything.

Oh, wait, no. That's exactly what you did.

That someone should have to explain to these assholes that it's not okay to hold people down and cut off their underwear makes me sort of ill.

The First Day of Freedom for a nation?

2007-12-21T12:06:00.000-05:00

h/t Sara, at Sara Speaking.

Today is a very special day.
It's a day that I am both excited, and terrified by.

Today is the first full day of the Lakota nation's independence.

The Lakota Sioux have officially, and permanently withdrawn their nation from all previously signed treaties with the United States government on the grounds that the United States has historically ignored and continues to ignore the conditions of those treaties. Like many Native American tribes, the Lakota sought, repeatedly, to gain the respect and fair treatment they deserve through treaties and by following the orders of the United States government... but to no success. They signed these treaties in good faith with the government, and the government has consistently refused to honor those agreements, So, they've decided to take a stand:

After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative... the only alternative is to bring freedom into its existence by taking it back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway.

We are the freedom loving Lakota from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have traveled to Washington DC to withdraw from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law.

The Lakota are pretty explicit about why they've taken this step:

For far too long our people have suffered at the hands of the colonial apartheid system imposed on the Lakota Sioux. Our treaties with the United States government are nothing more than worthless words on worthless paper - repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life.

The devastation this has wrought is clear:
Lakota men have a life expectancy of less than 44 years, lowest of any country in the World (excluding AIDS) including Haiti.
The Lakota infant mortality rate is 5x the U.S. Average.
The Tuberculosis rate on Lakota reservations is approx 800% higher than the U.S national average.
97% of our Lakota people live below the poverty line.
Unemployment rates on our reservations are approximately 85%.
Teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than the U.S national average for this group.
Our Lakota language is an Endangered Language, on the verge of extinction.

On the one hand, I'm tremendously excited, because I want to see the Lakota succeed- the treatment of the Lakota at the hands of our government has been, to put it simply, horrific, and it's wonderful to see them pushing back, holding the United States responsible for failing ot honor their treaties, and becoming a part of the international community (they've been meeting with representatives from a number of other nations, including Bolivia and Venezuela).

And, to be honest, part of my excitement comes from a really selfish place. I have Native American ancestors, and I don't know anything about them, except very generally what tribes they were probably from, because all of the records of their lives have long since been destroyed, often by the orders of the government, but also by the desire and need to "fit in" with a society that devalued the lives and experiences of "savage" natives. So, it brings my heart great joy to see a tribe taking a stand.

On the other hand, it's also scary.

Mostly, it's scary wondering what the official reaction of the government will be. This is not a government known for its level-headedness. I honestly can't even begin to think of what kind of reaction to expect. A shrug? A refusal to accept the withdrawal? A show of force? The complete destruction of all treaties with all tribes? The "taking back" of all reservation lands, basically forcing all Native Americans off of their land again?

It's scary not to know what to expect from the government. And, honestly, I don't even know what to expect from the general public. How many people are going to see this as threatening? There's already tremendous misinformation spread about what Native American reservations are like- they're generally not very pretty, and they don't usually have lots of casinos and money floating around- and I can imagine that there are a lot of people who still think of Native populations as being savages living backwards lives. Even now, people continue to have this image of tribal nations as being completely without electricity, full of uneducated people drinking away their lives. Very little effort is taken to see what any of the tribal nations are really like.

Many of the comments I've seen on various sites about this have been supportive, but there are still comments like this one, from Suhlig, at USAToday:

I understand the frustration of the Lakota nation, but this is all part of our HISTORY.. what happened to the Native American all over the country (not just the Lakota,) is a horrible part of our nations past.. lets leave it there..we should not forget but we should also not dwell on it. If the indian people are having a hard time on the reservations, maybe they should get of the res. and join the real world. It is not the rest of the countries fault that some of the Lakota people cannot seem to function in society. I have had opportunities to be around many Lakota people and they are smart, funny likeable and honest.. I think maybe you need to find someone other than Mr. Means to lead you to success..

If you really understand the frustrations of the Lakota, you wouldn't think that this is all just a part of history. Yes, it's a part of history- but it's a part of an ongoing history. What happened is definitely horrible- but it's not over. The suggestion that the Lakota shouldn't "dwell on it" is insulting, but only marginally as insulting as suggesting that they should get off of the reservation and join "the real world". Because, what? Life is only real if you're working to become like middle-class America? But, of course, it's because the Lakota "cannot seem to function in society." And that's not our fault. It's not like our government has done everything possible to see them fail for 150+ years.

I sincerely hope that this turns out for the best. It sounds like the Lakota are working with other nations to build an infrastructure- they're apparently building alternative energy sources: "Energy independence using solar, wind, geothermal, and sugar beets enables Lakota to protect our freedom and provide electricity and heating to our people." And they're going to start issuing their own passports and driver's licenses. Unemployment, and lack of resources for education and health care have been significant problems for the Lakota, but I haven't seen anything yet that discusses what plans are in place for dealing with those issues.

I'm going to be following this story very closely.

If you're interested in learning more: Lakota Freedom

You can see the Declaration of Continuing Independence by the First International Indian Treaty Council at Standing Rock Indian Country June 1974 here.