Not Giving In

The U.S. tortures.

And our President clearly doesn't care.

The Telegraph (a British paper) has reported on this recently, and Obama's press secretary laughed it off, basically saying that British papers are all tabloids, and you shouldn't trust what you read from them.

I need to do something, but everything I think of seems small and inconsequential, or it seems too big, too massive, impossible to do.

Last night, Bluejay reminded me about the Darfur refugees. Many of the women have been raped by the Darfur forces, and then fled across the border into Chad and were raped again by the Chadian ones. Once they have been raped, their families just discard them, as so much trash.

As Bluejay pointed out, it's not like we can boycott products from Chad. I need to do something, but everything I think of seems too small or too massive.

Recently a judge in the UK told a man that his attempted murder of his wife was "understandable." He stabbed her in the neck with a pair of scissors and pushed her down a flight of stairs.

People are dying and nothing is done. We all need to do something, but everything is either too big or too small.

Dr. Tiller was recently murdered, it was the direct result of the anti-choice movement's use of dehumanizing rhetoric, of pictures with him in a cross-hair graphic, of a "Tiller Watch," of the posting of the home addresses of doctors (who perform abortions) and lists which show the cross off names of other murdered doctors. Of them calling doctors "murderers" for helping to save a woman's life. President Obama has said that he was "shocked." How can one be shocked? Dr. Tiller was killed after years of death threats. How is this surprising?


Something must be done. I refuse to give in to the crushing weight of it all. I refuse to be helpless. I am making a committment here and now to spend an hour a week (frankly it's a pittance), every week making phone calls and writing letters to stop this type of madness. To petition my government to stand up and take notice.

Something must be done.

Ignorance is No Excuse

Someone at the Prop 8 protest/rally had a sign that at first glance I found really funny and touching. It said up top (paraphrase):

"Why are we still having to fight for this?"

And on the bottom was: "Women's Rights, Black Rights, Gay Rights"

But then I noticed the check marks next to "Women's Rights" and "Black Rights."


I know this will shock you, but the kid holding up the sign implying that sexism and racism don't exist anymore, was a white male.

SHOCKER.

After the protest I went up to talk to him about how his sign is really alienating, and more over false, and how the top was good, but implying that gays are way more oppressed is totally bullshit and does nothing to further gay rights.

I tried to not get angry, and I think I did a good job at that, though I wish I had been more on top of pointing out to him the LEGAL effects of racism and sexism (he said that he hadn't meant it to say that sexism and racism don't exist, just that they aren't legislated, which also isn't particularly true).


I was still fuming about it this morning when I got up.

As Teh Portly Dyke at Shakesville* said: Even if you could win the Oppression Olympics, all the prizes SUCK.



*as to the actual post, I haven't read it thoroughly, so in this particular instance this is not an endorsement

Cult of Perfection

The Washington Post has a congratulatory article written about a student who has never missed a day of school (from kindergarten through to high school).

The creepiest parts of it come at the end, where they laud her accomplishment of basically being "perfect" while anyone who has any experience in gender/psych studies knows that girls who have this strong a desire to be perfect also often suffer from severe eating disorders.

Yep, let's just feed this cult of perfection that tells women they if they can't be perfect they shouldn't even try. (Or, in this example: "Stef would say, 'If I don't get the A, my life is coming to an end.' ")


I honestly fear for this girl.

Prop 8 (and religiously related child abuse)

So, as many of you may have already heard (if you're U.S. based), Proposition 8 was upheld by the supreme court. Yay for voting on other people's rights. I'm excited to start legislating against olive eaters any day now.

However, since apparently they (the Supreme Court) didn't want a shit storm, they are not invalidating the marriages of the 18,000 couples who were married prior to the homophobic referendum passing.

Yay?

Whatever. I'll be at the local rally/"angry queers get angry"-fest in Boston tonight. If you're in the area, think about stopping by. It'll be at Copley Square at 7.




I've been trying to write this past week, but everything is just too enormous, for instance: have you heard about the Minnesotan 13 year-old with cancer whose parents (and he) cited their religious beliefs to say he doesn't have cancer, as a reason for why he shouldn't go to a doctor? A judge ruled that not taking the kid in for chemo and radiation (which would give him a 90% chance of living) was tantamount to child abuse (because if they don't he has a 5% chance). The mother fled with the son after the court mandated appointment (which showed the tumor had grown since when he was first diagnosed, gee I wonder why), but turned herself in a couple days ago. It just makes me angry to see 13 year old kids dying because their parents are brainwashed idiots.

You want to kill yourself through refusing medical treatment? FINE! Just don't drag your kids down with you, assholes.


On the topic of religious inspired/related child abuse, the report on child abuse in Catholic run schools during the 1930s-1970s in Ireland just came out. I haven't read it, but have been lucky enough to get the gist from Bill Donohue (that's pure snark, some actual writing about it is at Shakesville), who frankly I couldn't hate any more right now. According to him, the "miscreants" and "delinquents" there shouldn't be complaining about "only" being groped and made to shiver themselves to sleep. See that isn't real child abuse, not like breaking people's limbs and rape. And if it isn't the most horrible thing we could imagine, clearly it isn't horrible. *eyeroll*

Indeed, Donohue does in fact call the abused children miscreants and delinquents. Way to stand up for the poor, beleaguered Catholic Church, Donohue. I mean it isn't like they knowingly shuffled around child abusers and had people in positions of power who would SPY ON THEM AS THEY SHOWERED. Not at all. Clearly, all this bad press for the Catholic Church is totally baseless.

Not to mention, I've heard that this isn't even the whole shebang, and that they will soon be putting out another VOLUME (in July, if memory serves)

So yeah, it's been a crappy little while.

Cooking

So a couple weeks ago I was cooking at work with the kids. It's something I do sometimes. A disturbing trend I see is that the girls are always helping me while the boys sit back and then whine and moan when they have to help clean up.

As we're frying something, a much older man walks by and says to the girls (since the boys were sitting elsewhere, while the girls watched how to actually do it) "Pay attention, you're going to need to know how to do this for your husband when you get married!"

(Keep in mind I'm at work, with kids, and this is a resident)

"Well I think it's good for everyone to know how to cook for themselves" I try to reasonably say while wanting to leap at the man's throat.

[Clearly affronted that I insulted his masculine prowess at being the best at everything] "Well of course I know how to cook for myself, I did too before my wife came along. We all know that men are great cooks, afterall we all know the best cooks are men."

"Hehe (ugh)... I bet your wife would disagree with that." (What the fuck! damned if you do cook and damned if you don't.... fuck this jackass)

After he got out of earshot I told the kids "that's not true" but I'm sure that message has already started its evil little passage into their hearts. These girls aren't even 10 and they're getting told by adult men all about their duties...

In the paper yesterday there was an opinion piece about a "horrible" mother. Apparently some girl didn't wear her underwear for her yearbook picture because she'd already learned that pantylines = unattractive and unattractive = utter disaster. He was talking all about how horrible the mother was for bringing her on television to talk about her shame of having the whole school see the photo, when what do you know, apparently the kid didn't sit "properly" enough for the writer's tastes. But what he said (I'm paraphrasing) was that "she didn't learn the lesson well enough the first time"...

And it hit me, in our society girls are supposed to be learning how to behave properly all the time. Someone could break into a girl's bedroom and do a fucking spotcheck on whether she was being appropriately feminine (is she drooling? is she snoring?) and I'd hardly be surprised.

Does he really think that she isn't constantly being reinforced with this bullshit? Why does he think that she thought pantylines were bad, she sprung fully formed from her mother's loins believing them to be evil????


So I say this: sexist old white men (and really sexists everywhere) I'm done with it all. I refuse to let you poison one more little kid's mind with your crap. Pick on someone your own size.