feminist blogs

There’s some really good commentary out there. Among other things, it’s interesting to me how many of my fellow bloggers identify as Unitarian.

First, Sara Robinson, over at Orcinus, offers a moving tribute to Unitarian principles, and talks about how, in a time of crisis, those principles shone through.

One of the dead, Greg McKendry, apparently took a shotgun blast full in the chest while trying to shield other members from the line of fire. Three other members of the congregation almost immediately charged the gunman and took him down, breaking his arm in the process. Still other members acted sanely and calmly to quickly get the dozens of children out of the sanctuary, and summon the police.

Those are the Unitarians I know. Smart, tough, fearless, calm in a crisis, committed to right action. It could have been any UU church in America, and they’d have behaved pretty much the same way.

It could have been any UU church in America — and that’s the problem.

Pam discusses both the homophobic motives of the shooter and the presence in the shooter’s home of hate literature by Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly.

Before opening fire, one witness said Adkisson shouted something to the congregation that suggests he was there for a purpose — “It was hateful words. He was saying hateful things.”  The FBI is officially investigating whether this brutal attack in a house of worship was a hate crime.

David Niewert at Orcinus has some information on the links between this assault and the eliminationist rhetoric of the right.

Right-wingers love to “joke” about mowing down, rounding up, and otherwise “wiping out” all things liberal. It’s become a standard feature of conservative-movement rhetoric. And whenever anyone calls them on it, they have a standard response: “Aw, c’mon — it’s just a joke!”

In reality, of course, rhetoric like this has historically played a critical role in some of the ugliest episodes in American history, as well as thousands of little acts of xenophobic brutality: functionally speaking, it gives violent — and frequently unstable — actors permission to act on these impulses. People like this always believe they’re standing up for what “real Americans” think — and the jokes tell them that this is so.

Brad Hicks, who’s always interesting, has a post up about all sorts of things . . . Angry White Males, eliminationist rhetoric, free speech, and the decency of the Unitarians themselves. His final paragraph pretty much sums up my thoughts on it.¹

Dave Neiwert, and I, aren’t actually calling for the Rush Limbaughs and Bill O’Reillys and Sean Hannitys of America to go to jail for ordering the murder of two people, and the attempted murder of many more, at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, or the murder of so many other liberals by those commentators’ depressed or enraged fans. Nor are we calling for such rantings to be made illegal; we’re both First Amendment absolutists. No, what we’re calling for is for Americans to wake up, and change their attitudes. We want to live in an America where when a prominent spokesperson for a political party “jokes” about sending their audience out to mass-murder their political opponents, it should and must shock our consciences. That person must become the kind of instant social pariah that people quite justly become when they make openly racist remarks. What you talk about in private, with people who know you’re not serious, is one thing; what they broadcast or publish to an eager audience gets innocent people killed by the dozens, and if that doesn’t bother them enough to stop them from continuing to do it, then there is just plain something that malevolently wrong with them, something just that deeply disgusting about them. And no matter what your politics are, if you aren’t just plainly that disgusted about their ongoing eliminationist rhetoric, there’s something wrong with you, too.

1. As if it wouldn’t be obvious, I don’t agree with everything he has to say in this post (!), but I think, especially towards the end, there’s a lot he gets right.

Well, I came home from school this evening to find this on my Google homepage.

An out-of-work truck driver accused of opening fire and killing two people at a Unitarian Universalist church apparently targeted the congregation out of hatred for its support of liberal social policies, including its acceptance of gays, police said Monday.A four-page letter found in Jim D. Adkisson’s SUV indicated that he targeted the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church because “he hated the liberal movement” and was upset with “liberals in general, as well as gays,” according to Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen IV.

Adkisson, 58, had a shotgun and 76 shells with him when he entered the church Sunday during a children’s performance of the musical “Annie.” Six adults were wounded in the attack.

Tonight in class, we discussed the 1957 integration of Little Rock Central High School. The thing that people don’t remember, especially in the North, is that Arkansas was considered a moderate southern state, and Little Rock was a moderate city within it. The Arkansas State Universitiy at Fayetteville integrated in 1948, Little Rock city buses were integrated by 1956, and the Little Rock school board was actively planning on desegregating their high schools. Things were going … if not swimmingly, then at least not unspeakably horribly.

All that changed, of course, when Arkansas governor (and douchebag) Orval Faubus, in a bid to win political support from segregationists and fend off challenges from his political right, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent black students from attending the high school. There were riots. Eisenhower ended up federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and mobilized members of the 101st Airborne to protect black students on their way to and from classes. Acid was thrown in the eyes of one of the students. The next year Faubus shut down all Little Rock high schools rather than allow them to be integrated.

I’m sure you all know the story.

The reason I bring it up is that there was every expectation that integration of Little Rock Central would go smoothly, until Governor Faubus decided to demagogue in an effort to win votes. There’s even a Time magazing article: Making a Crisis in Arkansas. The entire situation was manufactured.

What’s my point?

Demagoging has consequences. Appealing to hate and bigotry creates more hate and bigotry. It creates riots. It creates vandalism. It creates murder.

We have a president who campaigned for governor on the promise that in his administration, consensual sex between adult males would be considered a crime. We have an entire political party that sees nothing wrong with the idea that in the year 2008, gay people in most states still aren’t allowed to marry the people they love. We have respected (well, Jonah Goldberg, so maybe not respected, but tolerated) conservative pundits who apparently in all seriousness believe that Adolf Hitler was a liberal.

Do I think that they actually believe this? Sometimes, sure. Sometimes not. It doesn’t matter.

As surely as I lay the Little Rock riots at the feet of Orval Faubus, I lay the assault on this church at the feet of those who have claimed that gay marriage would destroy western civilization and those who equate liberals with Nazis.

See, it turns out that when you said all that shit . . . people were listening. Jim D. Adkisson was listening.

Guantanamo detainees can challenge their detention in civilian courts.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority.

and

The court said not only that the detainees have rights under the Constitution, but that the system the administration has put in place to classify them as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.

The administration had argued first that the detainees have no rights. But it also contended that the classification and review process was a sufficient substitute for the civilian court hearings that the detainees seek.

It’s about damn time.

This is an excellent article from the New York Times on why safe and legal abortion is important. And it’s from from an interesting perspective . . . that of a retired pre-Roe-v-Wade gynecologist who saw first-hand the kind of damage homemade abortions could inflict. As you can imagine, the linked article is not for the faint of heart, so take care.

My favorite bit comes at the end:

It is important to remember that Roe v. Wade did not mean that abortions could be performed. They have always been done, dating from ancient Greek days.

What Roe said was that ending a pregnancy could be carried out by medical personnel, in a medically accepted setting, thus conferring on women, finally, the full rights of first-class citizens — and freeing their doctors to treat them as such.

Amen.

I’ve not posted for quite a while for a variety of reasons . . . I’ve lost my job, decided to go to law school, and generally been immersed in being very busy. What fun!

Now, part of what this means is that I missed the big WoC appropriation blow up completely. This is probably good, since I just don’t feel like I have anything useful to say that hasn’t been said better already by someone else. In the midst of all that, though, I was forwarded several wonderful blog posts written by African women, and I’ve finally got the time to write about them.

The first, and the topic of this post, is How to Beat Girls And Women by Mama Wangari of A Life Less Perfect. Everyone should read it in its entirety, of course, but it’s an autobiographical post about being beaten by her father when she was 16, how she avoided it, and the larger expectations and culture surrounding beatings.

“Please don’t beat me. I’m having my period,” and he turned abruptly away from me, dropping the belt to his side, and marched away to the end of the path to stand staring at the fence for a few dangerous moments. Then he turned and marched back to me and handed me the belt. My heart leapt.

“What you just mentioned to me,” his voice had gone low. “Never mention it to me again. Never. That’s between you and your mother. Go!”

It’s a great story, but the part that really makes it shine is her mother’s reaction, later:

A few days later I was walking home with my mum, down a steep rutted path, when out of a silence she suddenly asked, “Why did you ask Daddy not to beat you because of your period?”

“Pardon?”

“The other day, when you asked Daddy not to beat you because of your period. Did you think it would make you bleed more heavily or something? Why did you - ? What did you think would happen?”

I was puzzled. I decided to stick with pure fact.

“I wasn’t having my period,” I said.

“What? You weren’t?”

“No. I wasn’t,” I waited for her to burst out laughing and congratulate me.

“You mean you lied?” she was shocked.

“Of course!” so was I.

“But why?” she asked.

That really sort of sums it all up, doesn’t it? It’s not just that women and girls are expected to take their beatings, it’s that they’re expected to take them, and not object. The concept that she would object to being beaten is shocking and incomprehensible to her mother, because violence against women is a part of the natural order of things, like the weather. It’s just how things are.

Lying to avoid a beating is like lying to avoid a thunderstorm. It’s just not done. There’s no point. Why bother?

This, then, in a lot of ways, is one of the victories of feminism . . . the concept that, beyond women having the right not to be beaten, they, as human beings, have the right to object at all, to say, “this is wrong,” and, “no, I won’t just take it.” Abuse, institutionalized abuse, the culture of abuse, relies on maintaining the expectation that women will not say no and maintaining the expectation that objection to your own abuse is taboo.

It’s really an amazing post, and I encourage everyone to go read it.

Thank you, XKCD, for being so very, very right. This is exactly how ‘it’ works.

When I read this excellent article by Amanda Marcotte, I couldn’t help think of Mandolin’s post last October, “Children Fucking Children“.

The gist of Amanda’s article (and, in a lot of ways, Mandolin’s post before it) is that American adult attitudes towards teen sexuality are a huge part of why American teen sexuality is all fucked up. Of course, I agree with this, and I have for quite some time, but what’s nice is that Amanda has (gasp) evidence:

. . . Dutch teenagers, who have sex at the same ages as American teenagers, do better on the common indicators of sexual wellness. They change partners less frequently, they get pregnant less often, they use birth control more consistently, and they don’t contract STIs as often. The interviewers decided to measure parental attitudes about teenage sex by asking parents if they allow the romantic partners of 16- and 17-year-old children to sleep over. American parents almost universally recoiled at the idea, and Dutch parents almost universally accepted it.

From there, the interviews went into more depth, discovering that Americans and the Dutch conceptualize teenage sexuality and love much differently from each other. Dutch parents tend to accept that teenagers fall in love and generally have the expectation that teenage sex is a legitimate expression of love. Americans, meanwhile, to put it bluntly, reject the idea that teenagers can love each other.

So that’s pretty much it, isn’t it? Our contempt for teenagers is what’s doing this. Our refusal to respect their intellectual and emotional depth and to treat them accordingly.

I was 16 when I first had sex (actually, the day before my 17th birthday), and although (in retrospect) I think my mom might have been okay with my girlfriend, Tiffany, spending the night, I certainly never would have asked. I was too caught up in the prevalent social attitude that sex is something to be feared and hidden. So instead, Tiffany and I drove home from the high school at lunch to have sex, had sex after school, skipped school to have sex . . . luckily, we were both smart enough to use birth control scrupulously, but still, we acted as though sex was a hidden illicit pleasure . . . because, if you’re 17, it is. We were in love, though, and it shouldn’t have been.

And, you know, I think that perhaps the impact of parental/social/adult attitudes on teen sex works in another way as well. If adults are telling you that you’re too young to fall in love, and too young to make major life decisions (except of course, for when they’re telling you that the grade you get in Chemistry will affect your future irrevocably) and you, as a teenager, know that’s that’s untrue, well, I think it makes it that much less likely that you’ll listen to what they have to say about avoiding pregnancy, avoiding STIs, avoiding abusinve relationships, etc.

I think of it like the war on (some) drugs. If the government is telling you that pot drives you crazy and makes you think you can fly, then once you try pot and discover that that actually it just makes you hungry and kinda goofy, you probably won’t believe the government when it tells you that heroin is really the bad stuff. See, because they’ve already said that everything is really the bad stuff.

I think teen sex is like that.

The recently posted Carnival of the Godless is your source for all sorts of atheistic joy.

Visit! Comment!

This is the best thing I’ve read in probably a month, and it’s am absolute must-read for anyone who’s ever wondered about the political and theological confluence of events that became the religious right.

It’s 3 years old, but I just read it this afternoon, so it’s new to me. Also, it’s long, but I found myself entertained and interested all the way through.

It is, of course, of special interest to those among us who would like to live by Biblical principles, since there’s a fair amount of talking about just exactly what those principles are.

It’s broken up into 5 parts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The author, bradhicks, is awesome in several other ways as well. It’s worth poking around his LJ, especially for some of his political writing.

PS. This was originally posted at my LiveJournal page, but I decided to repost it here for the general quality of conversation.

This is absolutely shattering.

In short, the situation is that a Florida woman, in order to deal with her 13 year old daughter ‘having sex with older men’, shaves her head and forcibly pierces her genitals, so as to make sex more painful for her daughter. The problem is (or at least, one of many many problem is) that the ‘older man’ she was having sex with was her mother’s 30 year old boyfriend . . . and rather than deal with this as ‘oh god, my boyfriend committed a horrible criminal violation on my daughter,’ she apparently dealt with it as, ‘my slutty daughter is trying to take my man.’

The prosecutor, fairly reasonably (IMHO) pushed for a greater crime than child abuse, and the jury acquitted.

Or, as La Lubu put it in comments:

Shit, damn, motherfucker. Lemme see if I got this straight—

1. Boyfriend rapes 13-year old daughter.
2. Mom does not call police on boyfriend; mom blames daughter.
3. Mom has daughter’s head shaved, in the hopes that boyfriend will find daughter too ugly to fuck.
4. Boyfriend continues to rape daughter. For years.
5. Mom has friend “pierce” daughter’s genitalia, in such a way that it will make it even more painful for the daughter when mom’s boyfriend rapes her again.
6. “Piercing” gets infected.
7. Child protection finally called in.
8. Piercer goes to jail.
9. Mom put on trial for the piercing, but not for allowing the rapes? WTF, Chuck?
10. Mom acquitted.
11. Finally, an arrest warrant is put out for mom’s rapist boyfriend.

Christ, this poor girl. This makes me very angry. My fists are clenching and I am seeing red. I want to break something. As other people mention in coments, possibly the worst part is that now it’s likely that the daughter will be sent back to live with her mother.

Her mother who blamed her for her own rape. Her mother who shaved her head. Her mother who violated her. Her mother who held her down as a needle was pushed through her genitals. Her fucking mother.

A while back, in one of our discussions of Male Circumcision, I made the point that I consider nonconsensual and elective alteration of another person’s genitals is unacceptable, period, whether you’re the parent or not. As chance would have it, at the time, I compared circumcision to piercing your child’s genitals against their will. There were some people who argued that nonconsensually piercing your kid’s genitals is actually no big deal . . . I mean, it’ll heal, right?

I wonder where those people are now, and I hope they’re ashamed.