feminist blogs

WTF is wrong with these self-loathing gays? That at least two California newspaper knew and didn’t say that State Senator Roy Ashburn is gay is almost par for the course; after all, Rep. David Dreier’s open secret is safe with local media.

But how could all the guys partying with him at Faces, the bar Ashburn apparently frequented and was arrested not far from for DUI with an “unidentified man” in the car? Other homo-collusionists were obviously not perturbed by the lawmakers 100% anti-gay voting record. What does it take for some of our people to get the hint that this is NOT OK. (Joe. My. God):

The Californian decided that Ashburn’s sexuality wasn’t “relevant.” The unnamed Sacramento paper apparently did too and never published. To recap: It’s not relevant that a state politician with a 100% rating from an anti-gay group is gay himself.  Can you fucking BELIEVE that?  And it turns out that the openly gay mayor of West Sacramento has known about Ashburn for a long time.

Christopher Cabaldon, the openly gay mayor of West Sacramento told KOVR he has spotted Senator Ashburn at gay hot spots a number of times.  According to Project Vote Smart, Ashburn’s has consistently voted against gay rights legislation including no on recognizing out of state same-sex marriages, no on creating a state recognized Harvey Milk Day, and no on expanding anti-discrimination laws.  “To live a secret life and at the same time be attacking the people who you’re one of but are too ashamed to admit, that’s hypocrisy,” said Cabaldon to KOVR CBS 13.

That hypocrisy apparently didn’t bother Mayor Cabaldon enough to actually fucking say something. And you know that if Cabaldon knew, many other queers in Sacramento knew. If I lived in West Sacramento, I’d want to have a long angry talk with my mayor.

This is heinous. That Ashburn was dragged out of his unlocked-padlocked closet to the rest of us is a major problem here. Well when Ashburn was asked about his sexual orientation, perhaps his answer gives us a clue about the political culture of apathy of the gay community where the bloodshot-eyed, state vehicle-driving drunk legislator likes to cruise.

“Why would that be anyone’s business? Including The Californian‘s? “I think there are certain subjects that are simply not relevant and this is one of them. It has no bearing on the job I do.”

Even with a 100% anti-gay voting record, along with organizing family values demonstrations to protect the sanctity of marriage. Something is really f*cked up out there in Sacramento.

Catching up on reading Balloon Juice, I saw that John Cole was thinking what I’ve been thinking: Democrats need to be saying the phrase “up or down vote” until they’re blue in the face. I’ve been amused all this past week, watching Rachel Maddow run a contest to see who could rename the filibuster problem in a way that was soundbite-friendly and attention-grabbing.  When people ask my advice on getting people engaged with your message online, I tend to suggest just this---reward them for creativity and listen to their opinions, and you’ll find progressives respond really well to that.  And that’s what her show is doing with this contest, driving people to the website and, more importantly, getting them to really think about and care about the filibuster issue so they’ll talk to friends, blog, and call their Senators.  I also applaud the daily touting of Senators who answered their calls, which is a good way to shame those who didn’t. 

Here’s the “but”.  But the problem is that the winner---"The Tarantino"---is cute but not actually a good frame, since it doesn’t make you think about the actual problem, but about a bunch of movies.  Granted, the intention of the contest was never to actually come up with decent framing of the filibuster issue so much as to raise awareness of the “boring” problem to political junkies who don’t think it’s actually boring, and to have an excuse to talk about it when the news cycle doesn’t produce any impetus to do so.  But I think it’s time to talk about the actual frame to use.  And luckily, the Republicans have done all our work for us, both in terms of coming up with the phrase and popularizing it.  They even perfected the tone of moral indignation with which to pronounce the phrase.

“Up or down vote”. 

God, it’s a brilliant phrase.  (Another reason I vote “evil” in the “stupid or evil” debates, because many Republicans are good at being simple in a way that’s deceptively hard to do.) Why?  Well, it’s simple and descriptive.  You don’t have to know the particulars of how a vote is being blocked to know that it’s going on, and to relate immediately to the frustration being expressed.  It conveys the idea that the minority party threatening to filibuster is preventing the government from working, and this pisses people off, because we fund their paychecks.  But above all other things, the phrase taps into Americans’ deep and understandable loathing of interminable meetings.

This loathing is why movies and TV shows that have cops impatient with meetings and protocol that decide to cut the crap and do it their way are endlessly popular.  Few of us have escaped a work environment where you and probably some to most of your colleagues just want to start to work on something, and you feel you know what needs to be done, but oh my god, someone’s called another meeting where everyone can rehash the same issues over and over again.  And while you’re sitting around discussing the work, the work is not getting done, and you have that dreadful feeling you get when you begin to realize that while you thought you had a lot of time to finish your work, it’s getting eaten up by fucking meetings and you’re beginning to panic.

Or worse!  You’ve been in a work environment where the bosses prefer to call meetings to tell their disempowered underlings things that would have been communicated nicely by a memo, thank you very much.  If you’ve worked in service, you’ve experienced these meetings.  Everyone is forced to come in an hour early so the boss can tell you that you need to wear 20 pieces of flair now, asks for comments, and then gets aggravated because no one has anything to say because the whole fucking thing is a farce anyway, and no one is unaware of the fact that speaking up and arguing with the boss will mean exactly nothing. 

The filibuster is both these meetings rolled into one. The Republicans are both wasting time for the hell of it, and playing the role of the aggravated boss man who feigns interest in having a discussion and gets pissed when you correctly assess that he’s full of shit and won’t---or can’t---budge an inch.

The phrase “up or down vote” is the cop who plays by his own rules in this system.  It hits on a major fantasy enjoyed by the vast majority of voting Americans who’ve been subject to boring meetings, that you could simply cry foul and take a vote that would shut down the meeting so you can all do something that isn’t a meeting.  Democrats should be using the phrase to describe the issue both because it’s a good phrase, and also because you can demonstrate that the Republicans feigning outrage were singing a different tune when they were in power. 

New Labour’s not so ‘new’ slogan (see The Sun for more), “A Future Fair For All”, has interesting discursive connotations. My lecturer informed us on how back in their heyday, Labour became more focused on fairness as a buzz word instead of equality due to the words popularity amongst focus groups. Whilst this is not to deny that equality is still central to Labour’s rhetoric, it is important to note the reconstruction of equality in mainstream politics. Equality is increasingly centred on improving equality of opportunity and less so on equality of outcome. Labour’s adoption of ‘fairness’ is symptomatic of their more tamed approach to inequality within society.

So, what about the Liberal Democrats’ use of fairness in their campaign? Well, I have given this more thought than in previous blogs where I supported the term: fairness is not a powerful or substantial enough term. Thus, equality should be the buzz word. However, not only do we need it to regain central recognition within political discourse, it needs reformation – who better than the Liberal Democrats to help form this?

There are pleasing developments such as a growing support amongst Liberal Democrats of the left leaning social liberal New Economics Foundation. This needs to be developed further, there needs to be more talk of real equality, not equality defined on a false premise of meritocracy.

The use of fairness by Labour and the Liberal Democrats shows how powerful language is for communicating a message to the public. It represents how over the last 30 years, in politics there has been a gradual move towards the right. I think there is a genuine worry that a slogan such as “A Future Equal For All” would result in ‘Equal ‘being equated to extreme left wing policies.

This needs to change, equality is a more powerful term than fairness, and the Liberal Democrats should have used it instead of fairness for their election campaign. Equality needs to be reformulated, it is too close to right wing politics. The Liberal Democrats should reclaim equality with a well thought out discursive campaign; after all we have the policies to illustrate we are the real party of equality.

Uh oh, I see the word 'vagina'  *faints*

I know we covered this in yesterday's What We Missed, but I just had to give it a bit more ink.  The Menifee, California school district has pulled all copies of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary because it contains definitions for "oral sex."

And now, the school district is forming a committee to decide whether dictionaries that contain sexual terms should be permanently banned from classrooms.

The decision was made without consultation with the district's school board and has raised concerns among First Amendment experts and some parents.

Other parents and Menifee residents, though, have praised the district's decision, saying a collegiate-level dictionary is inappropriate for younger children.

A memo from the district's assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction this week called the Merriam-Webster dictionary a respected resource but noted district officials found that "a number of referenced words are age-inappropriate."

Goodness knows we wouldn't want children learning the accurate definitions for words they're probably hearing all the time from their peers. Better that they stick with "blow job" and "fucking." Information isn't dangerous, overzealous parents and schools are.

Via Shakesville.

When a friend is sick, you bring her soup. When she loses a loved one, you bring her flowers. But what do you do when she has an abortion?

Last week, one of my good friends announced to me that she was two and a half months pregnant, and had booked an appointment for an abortion that weekend. I offered to come with her, an offer she refused, saying she preferred to be alone.

Saturday morning came and went, and she had her abortion. She wasn't emotional about it; she had only recently discovered that she was pregnant, and felt no attachment to the fetus. She wasn't nervous or afraid; it wasn't her first abortion, and she knew what to expect. Nor had it been a difficult choice for her; she didn't feel ready, either emotionally or financially, to raise a child. An abortion was the obvious choice for her, and luckily, she was able to afford it (with some help from the father) and arrange an appointment early in her pregnancy.

On Saturday afternoon, I stopped by her place to find her in good spirits, bundled up on the couch watching TV. On my way over to her place, I wondered what the accepted protocol was for visiting someone who'd just had an abortion. I wanted to bring her flowers, or soup, or a magazine to read, or something, but none of those seemed appropriate. So I just gave her a hug.

The reason that none of those things seemed appropriate was that my friend wasn't sick, or grieving. She had had an abortion; an uncomplicated first trimester medical abortion, about which she was in no way conflicted or upset. I knew she didn't want comforting or moral support: she just wanted to sleep it off alone, and get back to work.

A few weeks ago, Heidi Fleiss, currently a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother in the UK, caused something of a controversy when she said on camera, "Thank God for abortion. I don't mean to offend anyone but I wouldn't be a good mother. I shouldn't have kids." Some found it refreshing to hear a woman speak so unapologetically about abortion; others found it shocking. Personally, I was surprised, upon hearing something that so totally deviated from the cultural script to which we expect women who have had abortions to adhere, by just how well I had internalized that script.

In the US, abortion is framed as a deeply moral and highly emotional issue. In the public imagination, the choice to have an abortion is a wrenching one, one that often leaves women feeling emotionally fragile for months and years afterward. No doubt this is sometimes the case. But for many women, my friend included, it is not a wrenching or painful decision, but an easy and obvious and matter of fact one.

But we don't have a cultural script for those women. When women speak publicly about their abortions - which, given the stigma around abortion, happens very rarely - we expect them to speak with reverence, not relief. We expect to hear stories of excruciating indecision, not of easy, obvious choices. We don't have a blueprint for women who weren't wracked with indecision, women who felt emotional attachment neither to the fetus nor to the decision to terminate it. And as a result, we also lack a script for supportive friends that doesn't somehow frame abortion as a tragic illness.

Because abortion is so controversial in America, because we have such strong ideas in this culture about the kinds of women who have abortions, it's incredibly difficult to talk about. Women who have abortions rarely talk about them, and when they do, they often feel the need to adhere to the cultural script of reverence and indecision that Heidi Fleiss so publicly flouted.

My friend didn't, and I'm sure there are many women out there who don't either. But there's no space in public discourse for that kind of frank, irreverent discussion of abortion, and there won't be until abortion becomes less taboo. At the end of the day, the personal and the political aren't just intertwined, they're symbiotic: The taboo around abortion confines us to a certain script, and sticking to that script keeps the taboo around abortion firmly in place. For me, changing that script began at home - specifically, at my friend's home, on her couch. It began with the awkwardness that comes from not quite knowing what to say to someone who wasn't at all upset about her abortion. For me, change began with a hug.

For more about speaking unapologetically about abortion, check out Jennifer Baumgardner's book Abortion and Life and her film I Had an Abortion, as well as the site I Am Dr. Tiller.