Sundays.

I dread going to work on Mondays like everybody else, but at the same time, I think I appreciate my job most on the weekends. When I wake up on Saturday and think about what I did that week, I can say that I fought for something. I decided what I wanted, and spent my time and energy pushing us closer.

On Sunday when I think, "Hell. I have to go to work tomorrow," I'm also thinking, "I'll get something done this week. I know it."

People at the doors are stupid, and blind, and too preoccupied with the petty proscribed lives that they were always told they'd have, and never thought could change. But when I leave their doors, they're a little less so. It's exhausting, and I'm always a hair's breadth from not raising enough money to keep coming back to this job every day. But hell. At least it's worth doing.

Sometime this week when someone tells me that they don't get involved in this stuff, or that they don't want to talk to someone from CAC, I'm just going to smile, and tell them, "That's cool. In the end... we're going to win."

Because we will. Because we're the only ones who have something to wear ourselves out for, and that means everything. During the week I'm tired but on weekends it's easier to see what my job is for, and who I am when I'm doing it. I can get a better perspective on those things, and I really do like what I see.

Man...

Why in the world should it take me more than an hour to try and explain to a Marine that using the word "Hajji" to refer to all terrorists/Arabs/Muslims/whatever is racist, and that this makes it bad?

Gaaah, such a waste of my time and energy. But whatever. Maybe some white person that he'll actually listen to will give him the lecture again later, and then maybe he'll get another one, and eventually we'll wear his ignorant ass down into something resembling decency. If the best I can do for the universe is to waste a little time explaining to someone that it's not okay to talk about people that way... then hell, I guess I can do that much.

Seriously obnoxious, though. This shit is not fucking sorcery, people. I get that in the military the norm is to be racist to the enemies you kill and rape the allies you serve with, but the rest of the world cannot fucking operate that way. At least, not in my goddamn IM windows. If that's the only space I can police, then so be it.

Shameless Boasting

Look what we have!



Handfasting hasn't happened yet, and we won't be doing any of the legal end of things for quite some time (changing of names mainly, since we aren't signing a marriage contract as long as the laws are discriminatory), but we have our indestructible engagement rings. Look at them!

Yet another "Oh, except you" for LGBT Americans

So pissed.

From reannon.

Iowa, we were so proud of you. Now two Republican state reps have proposed to EXCLUDE LGBT kids from the Safe Schools law that protects kids from harassment and bullying. What. The. Fuck. It's right here: the bill itself.

What bothers me more is the utter lack of news coverage. It's all on the blogs. Come on, Iowa newspapers! I realize TV's been on Super Bowl for the last three days, but you still have pages to fill!

Windschitl, the guy who started this, is part of Iowa's "Liberty Agenda." (He also looks about 12 years old. It has brilliantly camouflaged itself by putting two conservative-friendly and fairly inoffensive ideas around this: "Allow Iowans to vote on the definition of marriage." The other two are "restore the number of state troopers to pre-1998 levels" and "the Iowa Good Neighbor Act," which lets neighbors and grandparents watch kids after school without registering as day care providers.

Iowa Pride Network has more. This is the sort of thing that sneaks in under the radar, guys. Iowans, wanna shout some? Clearly no one's hearing yet.

*tears her hair out*

We're gonna be hearing about this for a while...

You know how California is getting sued over Prop 8 because it's a flagrant violation of the Constitution?

The anti-equal-rights activists just realized they got randomly assigned a gay judge.

Oops!

I mean, we're all having a good laugh over this because they're seriously standing up in front of a gay man and attempting to convince him of the essential depravity of gay people (including predictable but bizarre assertions about their propensity to rape children). Their case was shit before--and they knew it (and you can tell they've known it from the start by the way they've tried to hide their arguments and lie about their motives and backing), but now this.

The down-side is that they'll obviously turn this into another narrative about the oppressive liberal establishment imposing its Supah Sekrit Homo Commie Agenda on the Good Decent Christian People of this nation. Never mind that according to the Constitution, we have judges to doublecheck laws and make sure they're Constitutional; actually using them is "unamerican."

Walker here is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. On the one hand, he has the option to cement into judicial precedent his own status as a second-class citizen. On the other hand, if he brings the 14th Amendment into the discussion, the defendants in the case will slink off growling about how gays are so mentally twisted that they aren't even qualified to evaluate the Constitutionality of laws.

Can't be teachers, can't be parents, can't be judges, can't be married, can't be people. Same old, same old. They were going to find a reason to pretend an unfavorable ruling isn't legitimate. We just know now in advance what that's going to be.

"Discussing this purely scientifically."

You want to talk about abortion, fine. You want to look at numbers to make sure your impressions are in line with facts, awesome! That's great! But please remember that this is more than an intellectual question, with more at stake than how many angels can dance on the head of a fucking pin. People who are calmly and curiously discussing just exactly how to take away my rights, and to precisely what extent they can get away with it, should not proceed to get pissy and huffy with me when I point out that real people are involved. Seriously.

I am not violating the rules of proper debate by appealing to emotion. I am reminding you that when you make policy, you may harm real people. You should face the fact that they exist, and if you're going to hurt them knowing they're there? Fine. At least I'll know that you're doing it fully conscious of and comfortable with the damage you are causing. Call my rights an acceptable loss if you like, but do not look down on me for polluting the perfectly-detached academic nature of your debate.

My rights are not an interesting curiosity or a diverting puzzle to me, you fuckheads. You are playing games with my life, and the lives of people like me, and the lives of people who aren't like me, and you had better believe I'm going to remind you that we're real people and not merely statistics for you to play with.

I hate that every discussion of abortion turns women into numbers based on how their pregnancy happened, proceeded, and was resolved. I hate that every time I protest being reduced to a number based on the circumstances of my reproductive history, men and even women in the thread will get upset, like I'm missing the point of the discussion.

I am fucking not missing the point. You are missing the fucking point. You're missing the point because you have the culture-granted privilege to sit and talk about this like the consequences don't matter, simply because the consequences will be happening to people you don't care about.

Wow, class privilege wtf.

So unusualmusic linked this post on a debate community which has some of the worst faces of humanity laid out in the comments.

The question:

A single mother has a child with a disease that will kill him if he goes without his medicine. She works two full time jobs but they still struggle. Sometimes the kid's prescription does not get filled right away because she has to pay rent or childcare. One day, the mother is rushing from work to get to the pharmacy before it closes because the kid has been without meds for a week. She has no car and her boss did not let her leave early. She misses the bus because the driver was running significantly early and did not wait to get back on schedule. She does not make it to the pharmacy in time. The kid dies in his sleep that night.

Who is at fault?

The answers? Some people point out that if she's in America, she lives in a country where health care is a luxury, and if it's not a right, then her kid doesn't have a right to it. This is a fucked up place to raise a child who needs health care. My love to the people who point this out.

Less love to people who reply with shit like this:

I feel bad, but the mom. Letting the meds lapse that long just left her wide open for murphy's law to just align like that. Talk to the landlord for an extension? Mention to the boss ahead of time when you need to leave early instead of trying to dash out the door or ask to take a long lunch break and grab it then? Hell, call the pharmacy or the child's doctor to get permission for a friend to pick the meds up for her if she can. There were lots of routes she could have taken and, though she's not psychic, she shoulda known at least one of those could go wrong. It's unfortunate the fates aligned so badly, but it all started with the rent or meds decision. =(

This does just showcase a lot of holes in society these days, but then again, the people on the other side of the situations are probably put out by more than one person needing more time on the rent or are just late with no notice, or needing time off at the last second and they have to find someone to cover. The mom really needed to cover her bases and it sucks that the whole mess was paid for with her child. =(

No prosecution, though, even though the one week of no meds was pretty terrible. =(

Or this!

If the kid was a week without meds, that's just damn neglectful. It's easy to justify it with "reasons" but they still are just excuses.

Fuck you. Fuck you people for not having any goddamn idea what it means to have less than enough. Fuck you all for bolstering your own desperate hope that this could never happen to you by assuming it must happen to nasty lazy shitty people who are nothing like you.

Lots of people said that she should have done anything--anything, anything--to keep the kid's meds from lapsing for a week.

Do anything? Do anything to ensure her kid gets that medicine? If she's working multiple jobs and is never home to be there with her kid, you'll call her a bad mom who doesn't pay enough attention to her family, and if something goes wrong, she'll be to blame. If she sells drugs to get the money, you'll call her home dangerous and take her child away and throw her in jail. If she sells sex to get it, not only is she a bad woman and a criminal, but she's a dirty whore bad woman as well.

Do anything, they say. Do anything. They have no idea what they're talking about. Agh.

Left Behind

A coworker mentioned at one point that she had the keys to the Kingdom, and that's what matters to her. She pointed to the nice Jewish fellow we work with and mentioned that he does as well. Pointedly no comment was made to me.

I said, "Well. My Kingdom's here. I got shit to do."

She replied... that she thought I'd be left behind as a teacher. That I have that light about me.

I know she probably meant this as a compliment (and given how often she compliments my fire and intellect and whatever, it seems likely), but man. I don't go to work to hang out with people whose highest available praise for me is that I'll be left behind after the Rapture.

*sigh* These people. I love my coworkers; I really do. This one woman, though, just drives me up the wall with this shit.

Dear Rapturist Christians: Find better ways of complimenting atheists or Pagans or... y'know. Generally other people who don't share your batshit insane views about when God's gonna beam us all up to the mothership of heavenly bliss, and who's not gonna get to come and what we'll be doing while you spend eternity playing Celestial Golf with Saint Fuckface, patron of Dumbass Zealots.

Prop 8 (no, it's not over)

Remember Prop 8? CA is getting sued over it, and Focus on the Family is trying to get the trial held SECRETLY. If they're ashamed of the shit they're unleashing, that's their problem. Sign the petition in here to ensure press is allowed in. Boost the signal however you can; this shit IS NOT OVER.

Keori has details.

Are you reading Keori yet? Seriously? You should be.

"Vanguard?"

I'm reading discussions about the idea of a communist "vanguard" for the working class, and trying to sort out my feelings about the whole thing.

The bare bones idea seems to be that you can't wait for a group of people who've been marginalized, denied educational opportunities, and denied opportunity for political expression to figure out how to start a revolution and then do it effectively (since all that crap piled on them seems aimed at preventing precisely that). The solution some people have come up with (if I'm understanding what I'm reading correctly) is that what's needed is for a "vanguard" of intellectual working-class-allies to agitate the working class, get them all riled up and carve out some room for them to express themselves and start exercising the power they were always told they didn't have or deserve.

This sounds fairly reasonable, especially because it's speaking to the part of me that gets very frustrated with low-income self-identified conservatives who repeatedly vote against their own self-interest (oddly, in the name of protecting the sanctity of self-interest itself). However, I feel like I have to check that part of me. That part of me also says that these low-income self-destructive conservatives are obviously too stupid to know what's good for them, and clearly a bunch of educated elites like me (since, though it seems odd to me, an education is kind of an "elite" quality, for good or ill) to come in and take their whole lives and all their problems out of their hands so that someone who knows what to do can make it all better.

How fucking disempowering is that logic? That's why I resist it. If I look at people who disagree with me as though they must be saved from their own decisions, I stop being the person who's trying to help them realize their own power.

Seems to me that's the power and the danger of the "vanguard" notion as well. Obviously not all corners of middle- or working- or lower-class society are going to be class-conscious enough (or have the energy to spare, or have safe enough conditions, though those are obstacles I don't see mentioned much in leftist discussions) to go out and kick patriarchal classist capitalist ass. Obviously those people who have a better idea should lend those skills to something useful instead of using them to further their own power.

But they can use this to further their own power. We've seen this with TEA Parties organized by multi-billion dollar insurance companies that are agitating less-conscious working-class people to give their power over from working for their own welfare to working for the welfare of their oh-so-helpful-and-sympathetic new corporate masters. That's the really nasty thing about astroturf organizing like this; it uses people's suffering and gets them all riled up to diffuse that bitterness and hope in a direction that accomplishes nothing and is therefore "safe" for the companies holding their leashes.

How to organize without doing that? How is it possible to get people interested in a cause without taking their energy and directing it as a commodity belonging to whomever can take it?

I think it comes down to something I learned in a women's empowerment circle (and yes, I attended one for a little while, and still would be if my work schedule allowed it). There is a huge difference between offering support to someone while she works through her problems, and taking her problems out of her hands to solve them for her. One of these affirms her right and ability to control her own life, and one undermines it even as it attempts to assist.

It seems to me there's a place for a "vanguard," but the term makes it sound cohesive enough to worry me. The only reason I'm even conceding the term is that--should the seemingly-impossible occur and a revolution come or... or something--these people will have power. They will. Since I am firmly against power being wielded in secret (since power that is openly named can be more easily held accountable), naming this kinda-sorta-group of people is okay with me right now.

I'm just trying to sort out my feelings on the whole thing, and trying to figure out just what it is that people are advocating when they talk about a "vanguard." I guess it might just be like any "ally" out there. White allies to POC are good, but shouldn't use their advantages to take over anti-racist work. Same with hetero and cis allies to LGBT people, men who support feminism, etc.

Maybe this is a case of an archaic word being jammed into a discussion which has moved beyond it. I'm still not sure what I think; I'm just rambling here and hoping it goes somewhere useful.

Things Republicans tell environmentalists:

I hear a lot of oddball stuff at the door from people who don't believe that what Citizens Action Coalition does matters. We generally go for the consumer rights angle with these people, since talking to them about the air they breathe doesn't work (it just reminds them that Rush Limbaugh doesn't believe in global warming), talking to them about the water they drink doesn't work (since most of them have enough money to buy bottled water and do), and talking to them about their rates going up doesn't always work either (because they believe that standing up to the utilities will only increase the cost of doing business and therefore raise their rates in the end).

All that I can deal with. It's really not that unusual or difficult, since it all amounts to one thing. "None of those things can happen to me. I have money, therefore I am invincible."

But there are a few things that they bring up that are really sort of mind-bending. Not all Republicans are dumb like this; there are a lot of them who are far more environmental in their approach than they want to admit (perhaps because it might get them associated with liberals to admit that they care whether we pollute our groundwater). Some of the best logical disconnects I've seen are as follows:

"Wind and solar can't replace coal. What we need is more nuclear." Never mind the fact that wind and solar can and--in some states--do replace coal. The good bit is what often follows. "In France they get all their power from nuclear, and they've even got a way to recycle the waste so that it's clean now, too. That's what we need to do."

That's right! I have heard hardcore Conservative Republicans tell me that America should be more like France. Are you seeing why this totally blows my mind? The appropriate reply to them is obviously that French citizens pay half or more of their income in taxes, a huge amount of which goes toward paying for their nuclear program. Don't believe nuclear is expensive? Then why do nuclear states have electric bills twice as high as non-nuclear states. If Republicans want their rates or their taxes to go up, they should pick which way they want to pay. Either way they will.

AND ANYWAY WHEN DID THEY WANT US TO BECOME MORE LIKE FRANCE WTF

I also love hearing from these people that nuclear is so clean because the reactor only puts steam into the air. What the fuck do they care? These people don't believe in global warming anyway, so it ought to matter to them that the reactor puts out less air pollution, but at the expense of

• contaminated water (and less of it, since nuclear power plants require billions of gallons of water that they're legally allowed to take from nearby cities' drinking water in a drought, since the choice between thirsty poor people and dying crops is cake compared to a nuclear meltdown),
• national security risk (since even a decommissioned nuclear plant is an awesome target for a terrorist attack, and we can't mine all our uranium in the USA anyway, often getting it from countries that don't like us),
• higher utility rates,
• and the use of taxpayers as collateral for everything nuclear-related (see the Price-Anderson Act, which means that if a company wants to build a nuclear plant and defaults on their loan, if a company makes a mistake and the plant melts down, or really anything goes wrong, they're not liable; taxpayers are).

So yeah, it's a little better for the air, but all of those others things outweigh that. They should outweigh that even further for Republicans.

So why are they so pro-nuclear? Because the coal-dependent utility companies who make more money by spending more money (and yes, they're paid based on their expenses, which means their projects don't have to be successful or efficient--just expensive) did an advertising campaign decades ago talking about how great nuclear power was for the environment. These ads stopped because those companies got sued for lying in their ads, but not everyone knows that or cares.

Now, the fact that our government is actually acknowledging that global warming happens means that this is coming up again. They're being more careful not to state that nuclear power is actually environmentally-friendly at all (since now they know they can get sued over it and will lose), but they're still pointing out that this'd be an awesome way to reduce our carbon footprint (never mind that 1% of our coal plants in this country go to power uranium refinement and that'll only increase if we build more nuclear power plants).

This is something I hear a lot. "You guys aren't in favor of nuclear, are you? You've kept them from building any nuclear plants in this state; I don't support you guys."

The appropriate answer is, "Nuclear power is expensive, and if we let utility companies charge you for a nuclear plant, your rates would double. Everyone's rates would double, which is our members don't want. Also, we're not the ones who shut down Marble Hill. The regulators did that because the spending had gotten so high that it was no longer the project they'd approved. We're just the ones who got ratepayers a refund for all the money that had been wasted building a plant that never went online. We keep rates low in Indiana. Is that work you can support?"

At which point I point them back down to our support statement, and if they say no, I walk away and hope their neighbors are smarter than they are. Staying and arguing wastes my time, and only lets people like that think they're important.

I feel like I have to rehash this constantly

I'd just like to say super-quickly that being pro-choice or anti-choice has nothing to do with being pro-abortion or anti-abortion.

Most of the people I know who are pro-choice are personally anti-abortion. However, that's their personal decision, and they respect the right of women to make a different one, even if they disagree.

"Pro-choice" doesn't mean you don't have an opinion on abortion, or that you actually like it. It means that you believe you can only choose for yourself, and other people all have to choose for themselves. If you respect the right of other individuals to make decisions for themselves that you wouldn't make in their place, you're pro-choice. Period dot. You don't have to like abortion.

Personally? I am pro-abortion, and this is totally distinct from my identification as pro-choice. I think that there are so many children out there who need good homes that, if I were to bear my own child instead of taking in one of them, I would effectively be taking food out of the mouths of starving kids. If I can afford to care for a child, I want to take care of the ones we've already got before birthing a new one.

Yes, that means if I get pregnant I'm getting an abortion. Hell fucking yes I am. This may seem shocking to you, so if you want to look at me as a baby-hating monster, you go right ahead. I'm not the one who's increasing the human population knowing full well that we aren't feeding all the brothers and sisters and sons and daughters who are already here.

Look at me as a child-hater if you want, but keep in mind that when I see you playing with your own biological child instead of one that you adopted to give them a better chance at life, you keep in mind that if I were that kind of asshole, I could point the finger and be saying the same damn thing about you.

Most people reading probably already understand this, though. I'm pro-abortion because my first duty is to the people who need me who are already living, and this is how I express that. I'm pro-choice because you can decide differently, and that doesn't make either of us a bad person.

Get it?

Huzzah!

MN Society of Friends wins at civil rights.

The congregation will continue to hold both opposite-sex and same-sex weddings at its meeting house, but will no longer sign the legal marriage certificate for opposite-sex couples. Instead, couples will need to have the certificate signed by a justice of the peace.

"Everything else proceeds as it normally has, except that we will not sign the marriage certificate," Landskroener said.

You go, guys.

(ht karjack via rm)

Iran update.

Iran protests by pro-democracy advocates on National Student Day were attacked by security forces on Monday. The country's Green Movement has found new ways of organizing and keeping its message alive.

Istanbul, Turkey - In Iran, riot police clashed with thousands of protesters Monday in the latest round of demonstrations, which took place despite a concerted six-month effort by Iran's security services to stamp out the opposition Green Movement.

Witnesses said that at Tehran University, just one of several flashpoints in Tehran and other cities marred by violence, police used tear gas and batons, and plainclothes agents wielded electric stun-guns against students and other demonstrators throwing stones. Protesters chanted slogans against the security forces and "Death to the dictator"; passersby were beaten with batons in alleys off the main streets.

Iran specialists say the persistence of the protests in the face of powerful counter-measures from the regime indicates that politics in Iran has irreversibly changed.

"This is not a revolution, this is the commencement of a civil rights movement," says Hamid Dabashi, a prolific historian of Iran at Columbia University in New York. (...)

While Monday's protests focused on students, they were the largest in months. Efforts by security forces to arrest student leaders did not appear to work — partly because of new organization techniques developed since June.

"Communication is all through [personal] networking — they have adjusted so that they do not make decisions as a single group," says Ali Akbar Mousavi-Khoeini, a former prominent member of Iran's strongest student organization who moved to the US earlier this year.

"They have changed to do networking activities, so that decisionmaking is not longer taking place at a top level," says Mousavi-Khoeini. "The decisionmaking process has changed to avoid having to meet and vote."

NYS Senator Savino speaks on Marriage Equality

Thanks to keori for this video link.



She has said everything that should be said. Everything. One bit hits particularly close to home for me, since looking up to a lesbian couple is one of the core reasons why I won't marry my partner in a state where they can't do the same. This video is really profoundly amazing. Share it.

What in the damn it.

Many thanks to ethrosdemon for posting a link to this pile of stinking misogynist horseshit.

Summary: A woman writes to Ask Amy of the Chicago Tribune asking if being date raped, well, makes her a victim of rape. Ask Amy responds that the questioner is indeed a victim--of her own "awful judgment." She adds after that that, yes, "no matter what, no means no," but that doesn't change the fact that the first thing she had to say was the same stupid victim-blaming that makes coming forward about rape that much more of a miserable experience for the victim of the assault.

I suggest emailing Ask Amy rather than commenting on the article page. askamy@tribune.com if you're interested.

Have fun, kids. Here's what I sent.

"First of all, thank you. I hope your letter will be posted on college bulletin boards everywhere. Were you a victim? Yes. First, you were a victim of your own awful judgment. Getting drunk at a frat house is a hazardous choice for anyone to make because of the risk (some might say a likelihood) that you will engage in unwise or unwanted sexual contact."

Good news! This is indeed being posted everywhere. It's being reposted by women and men who are horrified that your response to a woman sharing a story of date rape is to tell her that she brought it on herself.

All you should have said was this:

"No matter what -- no means no. If you say no beforehand, then the sex shouldn't happen. If you say no while its happening, then the sex should stop."

That's good stuff, and that's the long and short of it. You had no call qualifying and diminishing this excellent statement by prefacing it with the same old endlessly-repeated line of crap about how it's the rape victim's job to prevent rape by not being a naughty immodest drunken slut. Women have heard enough of this, and I hope that next time a woman comes to you with such a question, all you'll say is, "You didn't want to have sex. Someone had sex with you. That's rape." Because that is all there is to it.

When doling out responsibility and dishing out the blame, whether her level of intoxication provided an opportunity doesn't matter at all compared to the blame owned by the man who TOOK THAT OPPORTUNITY AND RAPED HER. A little perspective, please. You said "no matter what, no means no." No matter what means NO MATTER WHAT. It means don't include that victim-blaming crap next time, please. The fact that you included that is basically taking a woman who has been violated and kicking her when she's down. I hope you can see the problem with that.

You owe "Victim? in Virginia" an apology, and it might be a good idea to throw in an apology to every other woman who has looked to an authority figure for help after an assault and been told that she had it coming because it was her job to prevent it, and she failed because she's a bad woman. They deserve an apology for the insult you just added to their injury.

-(my name).

Catholic Bishops Enact Plan For “300,000 Terri Schiavos”

For fuck's sake, people.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops released an "Ethical and Religious Directive" this month that would ban any Catholic hospital, nursing home or hospice program from removing feeding tubes or ending palliative procedures of any kind, even when the individual has an advance directive to guide their end-of-life care. The Bishops' directive even notes that patient suffering is redemptive and brings the individual closer to Christ. (...)

A 60Minutes piece this weekend looked at the cost of dying in America, showing that Medicare paid $50 billion in the last two months of patients' lives in 2008. Compassion & Choices focuses on the suffering at the end of life, not federal dollars, but they agree in general with the portrait shown by 60 Minutes. Incredibly, suffering is one of the selling points in the Catholic Bishops' directive. "It's quite specific about the role of suffering in Christian dogma," Coombs Lee explained. "It says that suffering is redemptive, that it's part of Christ's passion. So they are pretty clear on their concern for the suffering of the patient."

I don't need to say any of the things I'm thinking. You already know what they are.

(ht unusualmusic for this gem)

Surprising? No.

File this under "why I hear someone identifying as Christian and don't immediately think great things of them."

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill under consideration in Uganda was sparked by a conference in Kampala earlier this year at which fundamentalist Christians from the U.S. identified homosexuality as a threat to "family values".

The draconian law will institute the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" and criminalize human rights work.

Yeah. Tell me "not all Christians are like that" all you like, but you can't deny that there are Christians like that, and you can't deny that their Biblical justifications are no less valid than the ones used by people we like.

They may not be all Christians, but they're still real Christians, and they are why I don't trust people who identify as followers of the same religion. And, while I'm at it, this is why I don't trust Conservatives, either. You identify as a member of a group that does this, expect to be mistrusted by the people your fellow adherents wish were dead.

Just expect it. And if all you can do is complain about how this hurts your feelings, you can go fuck yourself.

Being pathetic doesn't mean you're not also a rapist.

This post is dedicated to someone that I removed from my LJ friends list because he alluded to bringing home drunk girls as a symptom of his own loneliness and the bleakness of his romantic life.

Rapists Who Don't Think They're Rapists (Or, as I would subtitle it: Why women are right not to trust men. Even friends.)

Thomas looks at a study of 1882 college students who were asked four questions to determine if they had ever raped (or attempted to rape) anyone:

1) Have you ever attempted unsuccessfully to have intercourse with an adult by force or threat of force?
2) Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone who did not want you to because they were too intoxicated to resist?
3) Have you ever had intercourse with someone by force or threat of force?
4) Have you ever had oral intercourse with someone by force or threat of force?

Questions like these are bound to lead to underreporting—what guy is going to admit to forcing a girl to give him head? As it turns out, a lot of guys will admit to this, 120 to be exact: That’s six percent of the survey’s respondents who copped to either rape or attempted rape.

An excellent comment directed at men was made in Thomas MacAulay Millar's entry (linked in the above article) Meet the Predators.

I’m directing this to men who inhabit het-identified social spaces, and I’m not really limiting it more than that. Women are already doing what they can to prevent rape; brokering a peace with the fear is part of their lives that we can never fully understand. We’re the ones who are not doing our jobs.

Here’s what we need to do. We need to spot the rapists, and we need to shut down the social structures that give them a license to operate. They are in the population, among us. They have an average of six victims, women that they know, and therefore likely some women you know. They use force sometimes, but mostly they use intoxicants. They don’t accidentally end up in a room with a woman too drunk or high to consent or resist; they plan on getting there and that’s where they end up.

Listen. The women you know will tell you when the men they thought they could trust assaulted them; if and only if they know you won’t stonewall, deny, blame or judge. Let them tell you that they got drunk, and woke up with your buddy on top of them. Listen. Don’t defend that guy. That guy is more likely than not a recidivist. He has probably done it before. He will probably do it again.

Change the culture. To rape again and again, these men need silence. They need to know that the right combination of factors — alcohol and sex shame, mostly — will keep their victims quiet. Otherwise, they would be identified earlier and have a harder time finding victims. The women in your life need to be able to talk frankly about sexual assault. They need to be able to tell you, and they need to know that they can tell you, and not be stonewalled, denied, blamed or judged.

Listen. The men in your lives will tell you what they do. As long as the R word doesn’t get attached, rapists do self-report. The guy who says he sees a woman too drunk to know where she is as an opportunity is not joking. He’s telling you how he sees it. (...)

We are not going to pull six or ten or twelve million men out of the U.S. population over any short period, so if we are going to put a dent in the prevalence of rape, we need to change the environment that the rapist operates in. Choose not to be part of a rape-supportive environment. Rape jokes are not jokes. Woman-hating jokes are not jokes. These guys are telling you what they think. When you laugh along to get their approval, you give them yours.

I repeat: This post is dedicated to someone that I removed from my LJ friends list because he alluded to bringing home drunk girls as a symptom of his own loneliness and the bleakness of his romantic life.

I would chat them up, desperately trying to come across as smooth and attractive, and if they were drunk enough, maybe I might get a kind word or a kiss for my efforts. On the extremely rare events that I would bring one home, it was meaningless physical copulation, followed by hours and days of emotional hand-wringing. More often, I would spend all my money and energy in a fruitless attempt to have some sort of human contact, and at the end of the night I would still come home alone. It was a waste of time.

Because the period in his life in which rape was the only way he could get laid was so terrible for him. The consciousness that he was (and likely always will be) a rapist who doesn't see himself that way made me uncomfortable enough that I couldn't read his LJ about anything else, but... not uncomfortable enough to comment and tell him that he raped those women. I knew it would cause drama to use the "R word," and that made me a coward.

To you. I'm sorry to all the women whose rapes caused you such hand-wringing that I helped create the environment of silence that you operate in. I don't care if you or your friends get pissed at me for flaming or causing drama by mentioning this in a public entry. I don't care if you're uncomfortable that the fact that you're a rapist makes me uncomfortable. Anybody whose immediate reaction is to defend this should be fucking ashamed of themselves, and should comment only to let me know that I need to defriend them (if I haven't already).

Evolutionary Psychology BINGO

Hat tip to ievil_spock_47i for posting this amazing Evolutionary Psychology Bingo Card.

This post is dedicated to the guy who told me it is his unavoidable essential nature as a man to sexually harass younger women, and thinks I just ought to understand that and not sweat it. This is one of the things that women and social scientists laugh at because it's the only way not to cry.



If it wouldn't be needlessly antagonistic, I would print a copy of this and bring it with me next time I had to talk to that person. (Actually, that probably wouldn't stop me. The likelihood of me remembering in time to do this hilarious and awesome thing is low enough that it'd get in the way far more often than my essential grace and gentleness would.)