You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2009.
Rob Long, at the Wall Street Journal, is concerned that the world may no longer be able to protect itself from terrorist transvestites.
His hilarious fear stems from a UN report notable for its nuance and sensitivity towards people who find themselves marginalized due to their gender expression.
Martin Scheinin, UN Special Rapporteur, wrote a report for the UN General Assembly titled “Protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism”.
In it, he makes ‘controversial’ statements like:
Gender is not synonymous with women but rather encompasses the social constructions that underlie how women’s and men’s roles, functions and responsibilities, including in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, are defined and understood. This report will therefore identify the gendered impact of counter-terrorism measures both on women and men, as well as the rights of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. As a social construct, gender is also informed by, and intersects with, various other means by which roles, functions and responsibilities are perceived and practiced, such as race, ethnicity, culture, religion and class. Consequently, gender is not static; it is changeable over time and across contexts. Understanding gender as a social and shifting construct rather than as a biological and fixed category is important because it helps to identify the complex and inter-related gender-based human rights violations caused by counterterrorism measures; to understand the underlying causes of these violations; and to design strategies for countering terrorism that are truly non-discriminatory and inclusive of all actors.
Kitty cats and records.
This is great DIY fun for the whole family both born and unborn.
This is for serious peoples. If you don’t believe me, go to the American Life League website yourself and feast your eyes. You can download your own stencil!
Or not.
It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. It could be as intricate as the design here or as simple as the word “Pro-Life.” Whatever your skill level, be creative and tell the world about the personhood of preborn babies!
Any occasion is the right occasion to be a scary pro-life activist. I’m glad they discovered the synergies they have with the overall spooky nature of Halloween, or “the eve of All Saints Day”, as ALL puts it.
h/t Evil Slutopia
Exciting UPDATE: Here’s my own, with a couple friends.
Just another anti-gay hate crime.
From the Queens Chronicle:
[Jack Price] went to a 24-hour deli on College Point Boulevard and 18th Avenue around 3 a.m. to buy cigarettes. He told police two Hispanic men made reference to his homosexuality, calling him “faggot” and other names.
Police said Daniel Aleman, 26, and an accomplice, Daniel Rodriguez, both of College Point, beat Price after he left the store. Price was able to crawl home 10 blocks away and call police.
…[T]he NYPD says he suffered collapsed lungs, all his ribs broken and he underwent surgery on his spleen and had a metal plate placed in his jaw.
Fun drinking game: take a shot of something fruity every time this article uses the phrase “openly gay”.
A beauty pageant that requires plastic surgery.
From Deutsche Welle:
[G]oing under the knife was a requirement for the 50 contestants of Miss Plastic Hungary 2009.
…The competition was the first beauty show requiring substantial plastic surgery in order to qualify.
…The cosmetic surgeons of the top three contestants also received prizes for their work.“I think this competition was long overdue,” photographer and jury member Marton Sizpal told the Associated Press.
“It is time for Hungarian women to care more about their appearance,” he said.
In-f’in-credible. I really don’t know how to respond to news like this. Your response?
Republicans defend Sen. Jim DeMint by saying he’s like Jews who “take care of the pennies.”
From Gawker:
Bamberg County GOP Chairman Edwin Merwin and Orangeburg County GOP Chairman James Ulmer wrote the Orangeburg Times and Democrat to defend DeMint in a newspaper editorial Sunday that said he was not funneling enough funds to local projects.
“There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy.”
Wow, Jim, you’ve got some great friends. And the votes of antisemites everywhere. Well, at least the ones in South Carolina. Edwin Merwin, huh? For a guy with “win” twice in his name, he’s awful full of fail.
Roger Ebert is so goddamn awesome.
I am naive enough to think that universal care is obviously good.
…The fallacy of the free enterprise argument is that it assumes corporations are motivated to bring about the public good. Corporations are motivated to maximize profits for shareholders.
I highly recommend you read the whole post. Via Kate Harding.
“People tell me I live in a project. Well, this project’s finished. I live in a home.”
Arguably, Jon McNaughton is more patriotic than I am. Below you can see his latest piece of art, entitled “One Nation Under God”. I urge you to visit McNaughton’s website, because this is no ordinary work of art: it’s interactive! By rolling your mouse of different portions of the painting, you can learn about the significance of each character.
Beneath the painting, the artist responds to “liberal criticisms” he has received for this work.
Can you spot Satan?
Sister painting One Nation Under Cthulhu:
This grand new website contains “the list of thirty legislators who were brave enough to stand up in defense of rape and vote against Senator Al Franken’s anti-rape amendment to the 2009 Defense Appropriations bill. We applaud these courageous men! Roll over the portraits with your mouse to see the Senator’s phone number, or click on a portrait to visit the Senator’s contact page. We encourage you to send your kind words to these gentlemen!”
Good to see my old pal Sam Brownback of Kansas up there, as well as both reps from Oklahoma (see previous post).
H/t to Bint Alshamsa.
Oklahoma has a wretched track record when it comes to women’s bodily autonomy. I have written about the law requiring doctors to show them “the baby” on their ultrasound, the law forcing extra medical penetration on women seeking abortion, and the fact that OK allows health insurance agencies to deny medical coverage to women who have been victims of domestic violence.
Anyways, get ready for more of the same.
As of November 1, doctors in Oklahoma will be compelled — under penalty of criminal prosecution — to post the details of each abortion they perform online. Among the details to be posted for every abortion is the patient’s age, marital status and race; her financial condition; her education; and the total number of her previous pregnancies.
This amazing piece of law-making is called the Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act. Women must answer 37 personal questions about themselves that would, though names won’t be posted, make it easy to identify many of the women who get abortions in Oklahoma.
No reason. Oklahoma just wants to know. Or wait, no, that’s not right, Oklahoma is Just Doing It For Women’s Own Good. Because women benefit by… uh… alright, I can’t find even a facetious reason for Oklahoma to do this.
We have two men to thank for this “common-sense legislation” (their term): Republican Senator Todd Lamb and Republican Representative Dan Sullivan.
You can contact Mr. Lamb here.
You can contact Mr. Sullivan here.
Mike the Mad Biologist has an excellent suggestion: “Why don’t we just tattoo a Scarlett “A” on their foreheads?”
Thank the Lord two women are suing the state, Lora Joyce Davis and former state Rep. Wanda Jo Stapleton, with the help of the Center for Reproductive Rights. I’m sure CRR could use your support right now.
Rachel Maddow recently did a show on this very issue.
Thanks to all the hot tippers out there who brought this item to my attention. Anyone who can read and does so regularly must now know of the idiocy of Mr. Keith Bardwell of Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana.
Just so’s we all know what we’re dealing with here:
Bardwell, a Republican, has served as justice of peace for 34 years. He said he has run without opposition each time, but had decided earlier not to run again. His current term expires Dec. 31, 2014.
That’s the caliber of the voters in Tangipahoe Parish. Additionally, a local newspaper’s poll shows that 30% of its readers don’t think he should resign. Seems like Blackwell isn’t so unusual for his community.
Blackwell has been media-shy, but he did give an interview to a local newspaper, the Hammond Daily Star. He said:
“I’m not a racist. I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.”
Another charming bit further clarifying the “I’m not a racist” statement:
Bardwell said from his experience, “99 percent of the time” the interracial couple consists of a black man and white woman.
“I find that rather confusing,” he said.
He also told a local TV station:
“I don’t regret what I did and if it ever came up again, I’d have to do the same thing. I don’t feel right by putting some innocent person that has nothing to do with the marriage in that position, and that’s my only reason.”
Other bloggers have already whipped out nuanced responses to this farce, so I will just leave you with a quote from one of my personal heroes, Bill Quigley, of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Justice.
“Perhaps he’s worried the kids will grow up and be president.”
My friend Keinst who studied in Beijing has created a video project called “Ethnicity and Identity” which you can find in four parts on his youtube channel.
He writes:
I interviewed seven ethnically Chinese people who were born and raised in different countries and I asked them how they identified themselves.
As the world becomes smaller and more interconnected, old ways of thinking become less and less suitable. New ways of understanding things must be introduced to adapt to new phenomenons; this documentary attempts to do just that. For most people, ethnicity and identity are seen as one thing. However, I theorize that in the future these two concepts will grow further apart and at the same time become vague. This piece serves as a window into the future as well as into my own personal thoughts.
Check out the first video in the series below, and find the rest here.
Totally not news: the Human Rights Campaign continues to center the experiences of white middle-to-upper class gays while claiming to exist for the good of all LGBT people. Their tagline is: Working for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights. But if that were the case, why are they so focused on the agenda of a certain class, race, and gender subset of the community?
New York LGBT activist and blogger Kenyon Farrow has an opinion about this.
One quote:
[A recent] study showed that black gay and lesbian couples had higher poverty rates than their black straight counterparts, and three times higher than white gay couples. White gay male couples with jobs and no children had higher incomes than all compared groups – even heterosexual couples.
Apparently, I was part of a protest earlier this year against the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Dance Program, for poor treatment of their students of color.
The protest and the anonymous group who staged it like a guerilla art installation are called THIS. I was posting as idyllicmollusk at the time.
I don’t know what words they chose or why, but it is very powerful to hear that they chose a bit of my writing in their fight. Read through their blog. THIS created some waves. It sounds like they are pretty powerful.
A photo from a THIS guerilla installation in February.
Thank Jesus that the Obama Administration has taken away Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s authorization to enforce federal immigration laws. This means he will be curtailed in his ability to terrorize Latino communities. Naturally, he is enraged.
Here are some interesting tidbits from Alexander Provan’s recent piece on America’s Toughest Sheriff, Joe Arpaio. I recommend reading the whole thing.
Since 2007, Arpaio’s deputies have arrested 33,000 illegal aliens (only 300 of whom were picked up on “crime suppression sweeps”), but they’ve failed to catch any drug kingpins, break up any smuggling rings, or stanch the Mexican drug gang violence spilling over the border. (In fact, the sheriff’s immigration crackdown has coincided with a surge in violent crime and the accumulation of over 40,000 outstanding felony warrants.)
…I ask him why he’s arrested so many immigrants who’ve come to the country to take on menial jobs, but hasn’t caught any major smugglers…[T]hese are not drug dealers; they’re gardeners and dishwashers and men paid six dollars an hour to stand in the sun wearing sandwich boards.
“We’re going after those that have violated laws—they are illegal,” he insists.
…“All these people that come over, they could come with disease. There’s no control, no health checks or anything. They check fruits and vegetables, how come they don’t check people? No one talks about that! They’re all dirty. I sent out 200 inmates into the desert, they picked up 18 tons of garbage that they bring in—the baby diapers and all that. Where’s everybody who wants to preserve the desert?”
With all of this, you would think he was a dyed-in-the-wool anti-immigrant vigilante who burst out of the womb ready to profile some brown people. The thing about Alexander’s article that surprised me the most is that he has only been this rabid about “illegals” for the last four years. Arpaio is 77 years old. What changed after over seven decades of not hating immigrants?
[In 2005} a 24-year-old Army reservist named Patrick Haab pulled a gun on seven suspected illegal immigrants at a rest stop in the desert, forcing them to lie face-down on the ground until the sheriff’s men arrived. “You don’t go around pulling guns on people,” Arpaio said after arresting him. “Being illegal is not a serious crime. You can’t go to jail for being an illegal alien.”
Nativists did not take kindly to this position, and in a matter of days they had thrust Haab into the national spotlight. He played the hero on conservative talk shows, where he denounced Arpaio for letting the country turn into “Americo.” All charges against him were soon dropped, and a chastened Arpaio embarked on a campaign to remake his image. Within the year, he emerged as an anti-immigration crusader.
h/t cp
Last night, I rode my bike home from an event a couple miles from my house.
It was nearly 2 am and I had some concerns about drunk drivers. I turned down a driveway passage that leads between some public housing complexes near my house to avoid the cars racing up and down the major roads.
As I was riding through the central courtyard, I noticed a group of rather large men, dressed all in black, standing together at one end.
As I passed them, they took note of my presence and started shouting at me. They yelled out “HEY!” several times and demanded that I stop and talk with them.
It took me zero seconds to decide that would be a piss poor idea and to peddle all the faster. Usually ignoring such attention from men and leaving the area quickly is enough.
Not this time. I realized one of the men was literally chasing me. I was overwhelmed with fear. I didn’t even want to imagine what a cluster of five men hanging out in a dark corner at 2 am and shouting at women would want with me. My whole body went cold and I peddled as fast as I could, aiming for the bright lights of the nearest busy street.
I heard one of the men shout “Police!” and thought maybe a police officer was coming to the rescue.
Oh how wrong I was.
Because these men were the police.
That realization did not make me feel any better. I quickly assessed my options and decided to stop before any guns were drawn. Though I experience white skin privilege, the police in my neighborhood are so accustomed to abusing the marginalized communities here that I believed white privilege wouldn’t overcome their “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality.
The five police officers approached and surrounded me. Up close I could see that their dark clothing was black or navy uniforms with policey-decorations on them. They were all white, which I thought was odd for this majority-POC neighborhood. They demanded to know what I was doing in “the projects”. I responded that I was riding my bike home, and that the complexes were between my starting point and destination. They told me that this is a “high crime area” and that I “shouldn’t be around here”. I informed them that that was unreasonable because I live “around here”. That sounding deeply implausible, the leader demanded my ID and accused me of fleeing the police. He and three officers went a few paces away and huddled, speaking in low tones, for the next 15 minutes. One officer was left to monitor me.
I was thoroughly frightened and confused. I had only planned on a quick 10-minute bikeride from hanging out with friends to my home. Being shouted at, chased, and surrounded by a group of five big-bodied men… it hadn’t really occurred to me as a possibility. I expressed my confusion at this turn of the events and questioned my detention. They told me to wait.
Eventually, the leader of the group stalked up to me and in a raised, aggressive voice informed me that I was charged with disorderly conduct and riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. He informed me that I had known all along they were police, that I had shouted insults at them, and that I had deliberately tried to flee them.
This was, of course, news to me. I explained that when I pass noisy groups of men who shout at me in dark passages in the wee hours, it is simply a matter of survival that I get out of the situation, and that any woman in my place would do the same. He repeated that I had known they were police and had intentionally committed this crime.
He handed me the tickets and I got out of there fast. I have never felt so unsafe in my own neighborhood. I have never been harassed in this manner in my neighborhood before. I feel thankful that I came out of the situation with my life. That may be my white privilege. Around here, as around the country, police have a reputation for murdering black people. They murdered one man earlier this summer for the crime of being on his porch and telling a disguised under-cover cop to stop loitering on his property. He was killed in his own front doorway.
Some other reflections:
1. All this shouting and chasing and harassing was in the courtyard of a large housing complex full of families. I am talking hundreds of people. How safe can they feel when police officers are loitering outside of their homes screaming at the top of their lungs at every passer-by? Especially when this community, being low income and of color and partly immigrant, is already subject to excessive amounts of police harassment?
2. My own white privilege was revealed to me as I came to realize that this is what my neighbors experience every day, and that I usually escape it. It’s possible that the same darkness that prevented me from seeing the police uniforms prevented them from seeing my skin tone. They may have planned on harassing a public housing resident of color, and I just blundered into the situation by assuming that I can go wherever I want without police harassment. The fact that I never realized how police interactions interlace the daily lives of my neighbors is a wake up call for me.
3. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THOSE OFFICERS? How dare they harass a woman who is traveling alone at night in an isolated location away from any busy roads (where there would be witnesses and the potential to call for help)? Are they out of their minds? How can they be so blind to their male privilege and the legitimacy privilege of possessing state power? Could they really not see why the situation they chose to create was a terrifying nightmare-scenario for their victim? How in the world is public safety achieved by men shouting at and chasing women in the night? I have never felt so unsafe in my neighborhood as I do now. My neighbors haven’t ever done anything to make me feel unsafe, and so until now I had no fears. The behavior of these men was so egregious that I believe it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find similar instances perpetrated by the supposedly dangerous inhabitants of the public housing buildings.
4. Essentially, my crime here is that I was biking while female. I acted as any rational women would react in this situation. For my natural behaviors of simply trying to survive on the street, I actually have to be a defendant in court.
5. I want to state clearly that this is an intersection of institutional and state classism and racism, and that I will not be accepting comments to the effect of “Oh you’re so naive to live near public housing and/or to think good on your neighbors.” Those comments would be classist and racist and that’s not what this post is here to talk about. Why would I be the “naive white girl” to live near these apartments, but the residents are “hardened black criminals” simply for residing inside the same apartments I live next to? The location of your home does not define you as a criminal or not, nor does your skin color nor your poverty. I guess I should say “should not” instead of “does not”. We all know that people of color, public housing residents, immigrants, and poor people are criminalized simply for existing as such.
Puke.
Share your stories of police harassment if you like. NO RACISM & NO POOR-BASHING.
Late on the draw, but I feel that this is an important issue, so [fill in obvious cliché here].
A bunch of awesome disabled feminists have recently addressed the ableism present on popular feminist site Feministing. Read about the sequence of events and those involved at this ain’t livin’.
If ableism is an unfamiliar word for you, you can learn more at my 101 collection page.
See my previous posts on this topic here and here.
Shackdwellers Movement under attack in Durban, South Africa
Friday, October 9 2009
12:00pm- 1:30pm
outside the South African consulate
333 E 38th St, btwn 1st & 2nd Aves
(near 4/5/6 trains at 42nd St)
Members of Picture the Homeless, the Poverty Initiative, and Domestic Workers United, three NYC grassroots organizations, met with representatives from the South African Shack Dwellers Movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) in NYC in August. As AbM faces attack and repression in Durban, poor and struggling people and our allies in NYC make common-cause & stand with our friends in South Africa!
For more information, contact Picture the Homeless at 646-314-6423 or brandon@picturethehomeless.org and tej@picturethehomeless.org
More information about what’s going on in South Africa: http://abahlali.org
***
Abahlali baseMjondolo is making the following suggestions, in terms of folks doing actions in solidarity with their movement:
1. Affirm our right to exist and our right to be critical of the government.
2. Organize in support of our demands.
3. Support those of us who have lost their homes and all their possessions with material support.
4. Support those of us who are traumatized, including the children, with counseling and spiritual support.
5. Organize serious discussions about the nature of democracy in our country – and include delegates from poor people’s organizations in those discussions on the basis of equality.
You can also take action NOW by calling or e-mailing the South African Consulate and supporting the demands of the Shack Dwellers!
Call: 212-213-4880 or e-mail: consulate.ny@foreign.gov.za
If I spent the next week typing “LOL”, and taking only two 15-minute breaks a day and sleeping only three hours a night, I still would not be able to properly express my reaction to this amazing news.
Professors and feminists have emasculated and dumbed-down the Holy Bible, and inserted their socialist agenda, you see. To be precise, “The committee in charge of updating the bestselling version, the NIV, is dominated by professors and higher-educated participants who can be expected to be liberal and feminist in outlook.”
Vomit-worthy, if you ask me. Who wants anyone with higher education, or who holds the opinion that women are people, to be translating ancient Greek and Hebrew texts? Disgusting. Next thing you’ll tell me is that there was a ghey in the translating room.
In response, the Conservative Bible Project has begun to translate the Bible in accordance with conservative principles.
Does it matter to these Bible-rewriters that the Bible was originally written before socialism, feminism, conservatism or liberalism were invented? No it does not. Not one wit. Because emasculating socialist feminist professors can time travel. Satan taught them how.
I mean, are you not troubled to learn that:
Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the “social justice” movement among Christians.
For example, the conservative word “volunteer” is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word “comrade” is used three times, “laborer(s)” is used 13 times, “labored” 15 times, and “fellow” (as in “fellow worker”) is used 55 times.
Or that liberals have somehow inserted forgiveness into the Bible in such a way that it sounds desirable:
The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34:
Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.
Or that liberals totally made up John 7:53-8:11, where Jesus tells the angry crowd about to stone an adulteress, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”:
Amid this scholarship, why is the emphasis on this passage increasing? The answer lies in its liberal message: do not criticize or punish immoral conduct unless you are perfect yourself. Liberals cite this passage to oppose the death penalty, a misuse that has been criticized.
Actually, this part of the Conservative Bible Project gets a bit scary, as the article goes on to say:
The Mosaic laws clearly state death as a punishment for sin. So the argument that an individual must be perfect is not relevant. The God-ordained government has the responsibility for punishment.
My quibbles with the godly rewriters of the Bible on this point:
A) Um, doesn’t “Mosaic” law say something like “Thou shalt not kill”? Or maybe I’m getting the Bible mixed up with something I read in the liberal media, like a NYT article.
B) Are we talking about a theocracy that kills people for sinning against the Conservative Bible?
C) Where do I sign up for that!?
The Conservative Bible will also remove the liberal bias that squelched Jesus’ true message of free-market capitalism, which is explained in Conservative Translation Guideline #7: “Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning.”
And, just a little FYI, while you were off reading the Communist Manifesto or killing babies, a new language has developed, the “conservative language,” and the Bible must be translated into it posthaste.
Additional less important guidelines include… recognizing that Christianity introduced powerful new concepts that even the Greek and Hebrew were inadequate to express, but modern conservative language can express well.
Is this an example of Poe’s Law? I.e. that it is vanishingly impossible to distinguish real fundamentalism from parody.
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