Notes to Self

this goes out to people telling me that the amendment was necessary for the overall bill to pass

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:54:57 -0500

As usual, if you want to get anything done in America, step one is to sacrifice the mental and physical health of women by making it an Abortion Issue. So although HR 218 passed about forty minutes ago, it passed with an amendment which prohibits any insurance company receiving federal funds from covering abortions. This has the charming effect of probably killing insurance coverage for abortion altogether, notes NARAL:

The Stupak-Pitts amendment makes it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new system to offer abortion coverage to women. This would have the effect of denying women the right to use their own personal private funds to purchase an insurance plan with abortion coverage in the new health system — a radical departure from the status quo. Presently, more than 85 percent of private-insurance plans cover abortion services.

Charmingly I expect that in the next few days all your liberal dude friends will be trying to explain to you that this is really no big deal, look, they had to get the Republicans onboard SOMEHOW, this is just a battle but we won the war, etc etc. It all makes me want to crawl back up across the border. Why don’t these men ever notice that their go-to bargaining chip is women’s bodies? And if they do notice, why doesn’t it bother them? (harpyness)

okay seriously about that broadsheet article though

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:41:00 -0500

ekswitaj:

isabelthespy:

guerrillamamamedicine:

amberlrhea:

reachingtheshore:

isabelthespy:

this one, written by kate harding who is no lie one of my very favoritest internet people! i think i cried when i found her site! but ouch, this paragraph:
If I can see that the adult is trying to get the outburst in hand, and the kid is simply having none of it, I chide myself for my own knee-jerk uncharitable thoughts and try to focus instead on how frustrated that parent must be, what a crappy position she finds herself in. I believe this is The Decent Thing to Do. But at the same time, there really are parents out there who do nothing, or almost nothing, when their kids start making life miserable for everyone else on a plane or in a restaurant or in a store — and I reserve the right to smugly judge them, dammit.

i just… don’t think anyone should reserve the right to be smug, ever. can i say that? can i say that i think smugness is inherently assholish? smugness involves a closing off of your mind to alternate possibilities. also, i just don’t see the point of it. it’s self-serving at the expense of others and even if it IS justified, just… why expend mental energy on that, instead of something more positive? like you could smugly judge your fellow airplane passengers, i guess, or you could wonder about how many of them are going and how many are returning (does anyone else like to do this on airplanes?) and whether any of them are getting married, or if any of them are leaving home planning to begin a new life and if they’re sad about this or happy or a bit of both. airplanes are so great for speculating about people because you know, if nothing else, they are traveling a great distance, for usually no small cost, so they’ve got to have some kind of reason.

and you may say, “well isabel, i am not interested, personally, in making up backstories to people i don’t know” to which i say, “well great, bring a book then.” but see, when you are smugly judging the Bad Parents who Should Be Minding Their Kids, Dammit, you are already doing that! it’s like david foster wallace speech i’m completely obsessed with and reread like once a month and link all the time because it should be required reading for life, when he says, “it’s really easy to view people in terms of how irritating they are to you right now, but for all you know they are super wonderful people who have committed minor acts of heroism, and maybe it’s not the most likely thing but it sure is possible and it is to your own benefit to try and entertain that possibility when you can.”

look, i’m not going to say there are no bad parents. THERE ARE. one of mine is. i am just going to say that you absolutely cannot fucking tell from observing a parent with their children for very long whether or not they are good parents. FOR EXAMPLE: my brother and i were really shockingly well-behaved kids, by and large. if you were to see us hanging out in public with my father, you might have assumed that he was a very good father because, look how well-behaved his kids are! you would NOT have seen, in watching me and my brother entertain ourselves peacefully in our father’s company, the fact that my father is an actual sociopath incapable of loving anyone, including his children, who did a number of things to make our lives hugely stressful while we were growing up!

on the contrary, if you had seen us with our mother in the grocery store - because my mother was the actual parent in this relationship, which meant she had to take us to the grocery store sometimes, unlike my father who never needed to because we only saw him on weekends - you may have caught us in one of our whinier moods. you may have seen us fighting at each other, tattling on each other, yelling about how we wanted to go home. and you may have thought to yourself, “shit, that woman really needs to get her children under control for my personal benefit.” you would NOT have seen the fact that she was still several years from finding a treatment that would consistently alleviate the pain of her fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. you would NOT have seen that she was freaking out about how she was going to feed us on a grad student’s wages because my father wasn’t paying child support. you would NOT have seen the fact that we were ordinarily very well-behaved but the past few months had frayed all three of our nerves.

so this is why you should never judge - smugly or otherwise - parents based on a single glimpse of them in public. because you don’t fucking know what they’re dealing with, what they’re normally like, what it was that may have been that last straw today. you don’t know if the kids are quiet because they know if they misbehave they’ll get beaten till they bleed later [this is not me, for the record, this is a hypothetical but probably very real situation]. you don’t know - and Kate addresses this in her piece and then just… ignores it, which is weird - whether the kid does in fact have special needs, whether they are autistic and can’t deal with crowds but can deal less with being separated from their parents because their parents don’t have the money for a steady caretaking assistant. you just don’t know.

so shut the fuck up and read your book. it’s better for your soul than judgment.

I think that’s what bothers me the most about this sort of thing. In general, I try very hard not to be judgmental, and I had to giggle a bit when you were describing backstories for these people because I do that all the time. And when something is annoying me, I turn up the volume of my music or start reading my book or whatever distraction I need. I mean really, this is only a few hours of your life so why the hell are you wasting it worrying about what somebody else is doing? And if it’s bringing you some small amount of discomfort, just get the hell over it and move on.

It boggles my mind whenever I read people on the internet saying they have a PROBLEM with this. Really? I wonder if some people just like to sound more tolerant than thou. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be around screaming kids. Parents need to get their kids in order. Consistent parenting works; letting your kids run the show does not. And I absolutely DO reserve the right to be smug.

Oh and what I REALLY hate is when people suggest that I just feel this way because I don’t have children, and therefore I have no right to an opinion and should just shut up. First of all, I know plenty of people who DO have children and who share my opinion - for example, my mom. Secondly, do they think I’ll magically LIKE screaming, rude children once I have some of my own (because obviously THEY’LL be screaming and rude too, it’s just inherent, right, nothing to do w/ parenting styles…)? Third, yes in fact, I DO plan to have a child in the next few years, so check back in with me then and see if I feel any different. We can take bets if you want.

oh whatever. how are parents supposed to control their kids? what exactly does that look like? it is not the role of a parent to ‘control’ anyone especially their kids. they are kids. which means that they are people. and we dont have the right to go around controlling people unless those people are actually infringing on someone else’s personhood. kids yell sometimes. kids scream sometimes. kids laugh loudly sometimes. that is what kids do. i live in cairo. and one of the reasons that i do not live in the united states. is because it is sickening to me as a parent to live in usa anti-child society. it is anti-child to insist that children act like someone they are not, namely adults. in cairo. kids are everywhere. in bars, on trains, in stores, on the streets. they run. they yell. they giggle. they say hi to you 50 times. some of them work full time for almost no wages. not everything about this culture’s attitude toward children i like. but one thing that i love here and in mexico and in most of the third world. is that adults do not expect to go through their lives not having to deal with children. let me say it again. it is oppressive to expect children to act like adults. talking about children in that way is analogous to able-ism (as if making sure shit is accessible is a huge fucking burden) or fat-phobia (i shouldnt have to look at fat people who are soooo unhealthy) or ppl who speak english as a second language or so on and so forth. what a screwed up culture that we have that makes us think that we have the right to go through a world where there are no children. (or only quiet ones). where do you think all those children are? where do you think all those mothers (and fathers but lets be honest its usually mothers) are? if they arent in the plane, the store, the cafe with you? let me make this personal. i have traveled three or four continents with my daughter who is only two years old. she has fucking cried on a plane. of course. it is uncomfortable to not be able to walk, all that pressure building up in your head, the strange environment, probably a lot of stress from the parents trying to get on the plane, of course, she might get upset, overwhelmed, need to cry. she is a baby! a toddler! what do you expect? what? am i supposed to teach her -not- to express her emotions? yeah, that is what the world needs one more quiet demure repressed little girl who is a people pleaser…yep… of course we try to calm her down. but not for the passengers sake. but because i love flying and i want her to share that love with me. and if you dont want to be around children who act like children. then dont leave your house. dont go to the store. dont take a plane. isolate yourself. get all your food delivered. but stop expecting mothers and children to isolate themselves. because difference makes you uncomfortable. oh and as for the whole - consistent parenting works! - parents need to get their kids in order - im sorry. but that is just straight bullshit. kids are not loud and energetic because they lack consistent parenting. sometimes kids are loud and energetic just because they are kids. and you dont need to be a parent to know that. you just need to respect kids.
what guerrilla mama said.
also, i actually don’t expect anyone to like it when children scream. i certainly don’t, and i love children.

but mostly, what guerrilla mama said.

See, I understand that parents can’t and probably shouldn’t always stop their children from being loud, but what happens when it’s an issue of conflicting needs? I have sensory sensitivity issues. I CAN’T turn up my music when kids are being loud on a plane because it would hurt my ears. And read a book when there’s a horrible loud unpleasant noise? Not going to happen. So if I’m stuck in a space where that’s going on for any extended period of time, I end up in physical pain (headache+) not to mention at the end of my ability to cope which just is not OK if I have further travel arrangements to make at the end. (I also know people for whom this an even greater problem.)

I realize this isn’t what the original article was talking about and that this is slightly off-topic, but I think it is something important to consider in discussions like this. Some of us really can’t just deal with it.

I’ll tell you what happens, ekswitaj. Then it doesn’t fucking matter, that’s what. Because the same people who might be all super-receptive BECAUSE THEY CARE ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE online when you talk about, say, disability rights issues and how disability has affected your life… well, those same people are going to suddenly JUMP DOWN YOUR DAMN THROAT when you dare to say you don’t want to be around their screaming kids, and by the way why don’t you just never leave your house. (Which is basically what SOCIETY tells disabled people to do every fucking day.) And we’re off to the Oppression Olympics! What, what was that about intersecting something-or-other? Oh, never mind…

Anyway - not all kids scream and carry on and go crazy - and sometimes when I read these oh-so-impassioned missives about how “oppressive” it is to expect children to act like adults (whatever THAT means), I wonder, how much projecting is going on here, hmm? Have you NEVER seen a kid who doesn’t act like that, REALLY?

FML. Instead of waiting a few years, now I’m all riled up and want to have a kid RIGHT NOW just out of SPITE!

"The problem is that when you get people to think about this logically, they’re pro-choice. But when..."

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:34:35 -0500

“The problem is that when you get people to think about this logically, they’re pro-choice. But when you appeal to them emotionally, they’re all too easily sucked into hating on sluts, believing female sexuality is dangerous, and wanting it to be controlled. When asked specifics about how it should be controlled, people balk—-they want it to be controlled, but they don’t want there to be actual force involved, in part because most Americans have female sexuality as part of their own sex lives, and they don’t want their own bedrooms invaded. The key to creating a sex panic is making the panickers believe this is about Other Women. And unfortunately, 65 Democrats are convinced that this amendment is about punishing Other Women, not their own voters.”

- pandagon.net - we are the public option (via notemily)

"I guess I’m one of those people who will continue to say that stupidity, ignorance, and even mental..."

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:32:55 -0500

“I guess I’m one of those people who will continue to say that stupidity, ignorance, and even mental illness do not demand that people stand silent when victims of those afflictions thrust themselves forward and demand respect for their views. Polite silence and encouraging words of reassurance is how we got to Idiot America in the first place.”

- PZ Myers

Rudeness required : Pharyngula

(via bmckinney)

What the fuck, PZ Myers. Thanks for the stereotypical hating on those of us w/ mental illness.

fuckyeahbirds: digitalbath: (via ache)

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:05:56 -0500

fuckyeahbirds:

digitalbath:

(via ache)

ohmyowls: (via killerwhales)

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:01:37 -0500

ohmyowls:

(via killerwhales)

notemily: Charts showing how much US residents pay for health...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:58:59 -0500

notemily:

Charts showing how much US residents pay for health care compared to people in other countries - Boing Boing

fuckyeahbabies: neehner: sleeepy time The baby is adorable...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:54:25 -0500

fuckyeahbabies:

neehner:

sleeepy time

The baby is adorable (hence the reblog) but those fake hands are FUCKING CREEPY.

DO NOT WANT.

okay seriously about that broadsheet article though

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:45:20 -0500

reachingtheshore:

isabelthespy:

this one, written by kate harding who is no lie one of my very favoritest internet people! i think i cried when i found her site! but ouch, this paragraph:
If I can see that the adult is trying to get the outburst in hand, and the kid is simply having none of it, I chide myself for my own knee-jerk uncharitable thoughts and try to focus instead on how frustrated that parent must be, what a crappy position she finds herself in. I believe this is The Decent Thing to Do. But at the same time, there really are parents out there who do nothing, or almost nothing, when their kids start making life miserable for everyone else on a plane or in a restaurant or in a store — and I reserve the right to smugly judge them, dammit.

i just… don’t think anyone should reserve the right to be smug, ever. can i say that? can i say that i think smugness is inherently assholish? smugness involves a closing off of your mind to alternate possibilities. also, i just don’t see the point of it. it’s self-serving at the expense of others and even if it IS justified, just… why expend mental energy on that, instead of something more positive? like you could smugly judge your fellow airplane passengers, i guess, or you could wonder about how many of them are going and how many are returning (does anyone else like to do this on airplanes?) and whether any of them are getting married, or if any of them are leaving home planning to begin a new life and if they’re sad about this or happy or a bit of both. airplanes are so great for speculating about people because you know, if nothing else, they are traveling a great distance, for usually no small cost, so they’ve got to have some kind of reason.

and you may say, “well isabel, i am not interested, personally, in making up backstories to people i don’t know” to which i say, “well great, bring a book then.” but see, when you are smugly judging the Bad Parents who Should Be Minding Their Kids, Dammit, you are already doing that! it’s like david foster wallace speech i’m completely obsessed with and reread like once a month and link all the time because it should be required reading for life, when he says, “it’s really easy to view people in terms of how irritating they are to you right now, but for all you know they are super wonderful people who have committed minor acts of heroism, and maybe it’s not the most likely thing but it sure is possible and it is to your own benefit to try and entertain that possibility when you can.”

look, i’m not going to say there are no bad parents. THERE ARE. one of mine is. i am just going to say that you absolutely cannot fucking tell from observing a parent with their children for very long whether or not they are good parents. FOR EXAMPLE: my brother and i were really shockingly well-behaved kids, by and large. if you were to see us hanging out in public with my father, you might have assumed that he was a very good father because, look how well-behaved his kids are! you would NOT have seen, in watching me and my brother entertain ourselves peacefully in our father’s company, the fact that my father is an actual sociopath incapable of loving anyone, including his children, who did a number of things to make our lives hugely stressful while we were growing up!

on the contrary, if you had seen us with our mother in the grocery store - because my mother was the actual parent in this relationship, which meant she had to take us to the grocery store sometimes, unlike my father who never needed to because we only saw him on weekends - you may have caught us in one of our whinier moods. you may have seen us fighting at each other, tattling on each other, yelling about how we wanted to go home. and you may have thought to yourself, “shit, that woman really needs to get her children under control for my personal benefit.” you would NOT have seen the fact that she was still several years from finding a treatment that would consistently alleviate the pain of her fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. you would NOT have seen that she was freaking out about how she was going to feed us on a grad student’s wages because my father wasn’t paying child support. you would NOT have seen the fact that we were ordinarily very well-behaved but the past few months had frayed all three of our nerves.

so this is why you should never judge - smugly or otherwise - parents based on a single glimpse of them in public. because you don’t fucking know what they’re dealing with, what they’re normally like, what it was that may have been that last straw today. you don’t know if the kids are quiet because they know if they misbehave they’ll get beaten till they bleed later [this is not me, for the record, this is a hypothetical but probably very real situation]. you don’t know - and Kate addresses this in her piece and then just… ignores it, which is weird - whether the kid does in fact have special needs, whether they are autistic and can’t deal with crowds but can deal less with being separated from their parents because their parents don’t have the money for a steady caretaking assistant. you just don’t know.

so shut the fuck up and read your book. it’s better for your soul than judgment.

I think that’s what bothers me the most about this sort of thing. In general, I try very hard not to be judgmental, and I had to giggle a bit when you were describing backstories for these people because I do that all the time. And when something is annoying me, I turn up the volume of my music or start reading my book or whatever distraction I need. I mean really, this is only a few hours of your life so why the hell are you wasting it worrying about what somebody else is doing? And if it’s bringing you some small amount of discomfort, just get the hell over it and move on.

It boggles my mind whenever I read people on the internet saying they have a PROBLEM with this. Really? I wonder if some people just like to sound more tolerant than thou. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be around screaming kids. Parents need to get their kids in order. Consistent parenting works; letting your kids run the show does not. And I absolutely DO reserve the right to be smug.

Oh and what I REALLY hate is when people suggest that I just feel this way because I don’t have children, and therefore I have no right to an opinion and should just shut up. First of all, I know plenty of people who DO have children and who share my opinion - for example, my mom. Secondly, do they think I’ll magically LIKE screaming, rude children once I have some of my own (because obviously THEY’LL be screaming and rude too, it’s just inherent, right, nothing to do w/ parenting styles…)? Third, yes in fact, I DO plan to have a child in the next few years, so check back in with me then and see if I feel any different. We can take bets if you want.

Seriously, though.

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:33:11 -0500

ekswitaj:

thecurvature:

There are a whole lot of things that enrage me in life. But dudes who respond to women talking about the difficulties, constraints, fears and traumas associated with living as a woman in a rape culture with, “Get a gun!” are really fucking high up there.

Co-signed.

Also, I suspect that if I had at any point followed this advice, I would be in jail right now.

Co-signed times a million.

Stupak Amendment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:23:14 -0500

ekswitaj:

abbyjean:

sexartandpolitics:

Thank this shitbird for adding the phrase “Supplemental Abortion Coverage” into our discourse.

let’s hope he thought ahead and bought supplemental misogynist asshole coverage, because he’s certainly developed a bad case of that condition.

A bad case sure, but my guess is it was preexisting.

sexartandpolitics: Look at this fucking hipster.

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:22:17 -0500

sexartandpolitics:

Look at this fucking hipster.

The Next Chapter » March of the daybeds

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:20:34 -0500

The Next Chapter » March of the daybeds:

Help me decide on a daybed!

"“I did whatever I do whenever anyone mentions a Celebrity Vagina Sighting. I looked it up on the..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:55:34 -0500

“

“I did whatever I do whenever anyone mentions a Celebrity Vagina Sighting. I looked it up on the internet. Because I know that rumours of the Celebrity Vagina Sighting are greatly exaggerated.

Despite all the glimpses of famous nether regions we’ve all been treated to in the last 10 years or so, I can’t think of a single time we’ve seen a vagina.

We have certainly seen pubic hair. And Labia Majora. Labia, which is Latin for ‘lips’ is also the name given to the two sets of folds concealing the actual VAGINA from the harsh outside world. Frankly, in order to see an actual vagina you need a) a woman’s permission and b) a very direct pose.
You will no more see a candid shot of a vagina than you will a candid shot of a lung or a sinus or a medulla oblongata.”

”

- This Drives Me Absolutely Penis « Just Another Pretty Farce Katherine Coble informs anyone who doesn’t know yet where their Vulva and Vagina are. (via materialworld)

And thus we see my problem with The Vagina Monologues. Especially the one where the speaker says, “My husband liked me to SHAVE my vagina.” Um, that’s impossible.

"There is a dark, insidious quality to the ideology promoted by the positive psychologists. They..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:44:17 -0500

“There is a dark, insidious quality to the ideology promoted by the positive psychologists. They condemn all social critics and iconoclasts, the dissidents and individualists, for failing to surrender and seek fulfillment in the collective lowing of the corporate herd. They strangle creativity and moral autonomy. They seek to mold and shape individual human beings into a compliant collective. The primary teaching of this movement, which reflects the ideology of the corporate state, is that fulfillment is to be found in complete and total social conformity, a conformity that all totalitarian and authoritarian structures seek to impose on those they dominate.”

- Chris Hedges - Empire of Illusion, Ch 4: The Illusion of Happiness (via tiredofbeingignored)

Okay, this sounds like it was created by the Academic Sentence Generator. The “collective lowing of the corporate herd?” O, emo college boys! Give me a break.

i think in sex ed for boys they should have them spend ten minutes meditating on the fact that GIRLS POOP and then getting over it

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:41:53 -0500

isabelthespy:

txtsfrmlstnght:

(480): Our hot neighbor just came over and asked for a toilet plunger…not so hot anymore

Think only 'their' teens get pregnant?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:35:59 -0500

jbrotherlove:

According to research conducted for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, only 28 percent of those who report having given birth or fathered a child as a teen lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty line.
And just 30 percent of those who report having given birth to or fathered a child as a teen say they were living with a single parent. We are not only wrong - and probably bigoted - about whose teens get pregnant. Those of us in middle-class, intact families have our heads seriously in the sand if we think it can’t happen to us.

via The Baltimore Sun

Posted via web from {brotherlovable} | Comment »

"Empirical work indicating that providing schooling for women and girls will address these problems..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:30:29 -0500

“Empirical work indicating that providing schooling for women and girls will address these problems includes study after study showing that educated women have fewer children, are wealthier and are less likely to accept fundamentalist extremism. If we want a safer world, we should consider the utility of spending dollars on educating young people as an alternative to troops and weapons.”

- How Women Can Save the Planet: Scientific American (via bmckinney)

"If you ask girls and women how they would feel about encountering a group of guys while they’re..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:42:04 -0500

“If you ask girls and women how they would feel about encountering a group of guys while they’re alone in a deserted area, I bet the fear of gang rape and assault would be quite tangible, even if the men did not harass them. Why? Because even if we don’t know terms like “homosociality” or “hegemonic masculinity” and haven’t read the theories behind such terms, we know that most men are less like to stop or to listen to women when they are in groups. We know they want to impress their friends and many of them will do that at all costs. We know it’s best to book it out of there as fast as we can before they decide to do anything. And guess what, even if this isn’t true of all men, we don’t know which ones it will be true for. Our safety is not worth the risk of trusting a group of male strangers. (and if you say that’s unfair to boys and men who don’t hurt women, I agree, let’s do something about it!)”

- The cost of living in a patriarchal society « Stop Street Harassment! (via clingtomymouth)

Yes. For more on this (especially for the dudes out there in the audience), please oh please read the Shapely Prose article on Schrödinger’s Rapist.

(via thepoliticalpartygirl)

(via robot-heart-politics)

(via thecurvature)

(via katoleary)

bmckinney: theduty: never forget.

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:28:22 -0400

bmckinney:

theduty:

never forget.