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Archive for February, 2006

Monday baby blogging: Sydney on Maddox on Bed

Posted by Ampersand | February 27th, 2006

If your younger sister sleeps in the same bed as you, the very least she can do for you is provide a handy pillow. Right?

Sydney sleeping on Maddox Sleeping

Everyone together: Awwww….

UPDATE: Actually, now that I’ve been looking at this photo every time I glance at “Alas” today, what’s getting to me is the scale. There’s a two-year age difference between the girls, but Sydney is a friggin’ giant compared to Maddox. It reminds me of the special effects they did to make Frodo tiny and Gandolf huge when the two stood in the same shot in the Lord of the Rings movies.

Posted by Ampersand in Baby blogging | 11 Comments »

Link Farm and Open Thread #11

Posted by Ampersand | February 26th, 2006

Once again, the stuff I’ve been reading lately. Use the comments thread for discussions of these links, providing other links, or just saying whatever’s on your mind. And please, if you want to stick in a link to your own work, don’t be shy.

The Ninth Carnival of Feminists.
So much good reading! (Many of the following links were swiped from the feminist carnival, of course.)

Norman Finkelstein & Shlomo Ben-Ami Debate
Ben-Ami is an Israeli historian and former Foreign Minister (during Barak’s administration); Norman Finkelstein is an American professor known for harsh criticism of the Israeli government. The “debate” isn’t much of a debate - the two actually have a hard time finding areas of strong disagreement until rather late in the interview, and Ben-Ami doesn’t seem like much for forensics - but it’s fascinating reading. Ben-Ami, with his twin perspective as a historian and an insider during the Camp David and Taba negotiations, is particularly interesting.

Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty responds to a recent post by me regarding Israel and Palestine.

Holocaust Denial Among Leftists
Interesting essay by someone who became involved with an anti-Holocuast-denial community because he was arguing against pseudo-lefty Holocaust deniers - but then found that his refusal to refrain from criticizing Israel meant he couldnt’ be part of the anti-Holocaust-denial community.

Struggling With Identity Politics

bell hooks Lecture
Never Say Never… summarizes a bell hooks lecture she attended: part 1 and part 2. Interesting stuff; if you’re not familiar with hooks, this could be a quick, easy introduction, and if you’re already a hooks fan, then you’re sure to enjoy it.

T&A Advertising Debated By The French
Dangereuse Trilingue discusses (in English) a debate going on among some French bloggers, set off by T&A ads for a webbrowser:

It’s about making a particular type of heterosexual male gaze directed towards conventionally attractive female attributes the norm, via using it, and the object of the attention, to incite people to do something entirely unrelated to eroticism and female bodies: use a particular web browser.

Can Someone Oppose Same-Sex Marriage Without Being a Bigot?

Terrorists Have Their Own Talk Shows

New To the Blogroll: Den of the Biting Beaver
Ultra-smart, angry radical feminist blog, posting against pornography and rape and just generally kicking ass. This blog stands out from the crowd. I particularly liked this recent post about masculinity and rape.

Women and Patriarchy
I can’t even begin to summarize this post, which is about if women can be blamed for participating in patriarchy, but also touches on the near-rape aspects of Girls Gone Wild, bullying, homeschooling, and on not living in a vacuum. Go read it.

Feminist Television Studies: The Case Of HBO
I haven’t read this yet, but it looks interesting so I’m blogging it to preserve the link. There’s an article each about The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Sex In The City, but nothing on Deadwood - probably Deadwood didn’t exist when they wrote it.

Rapists Are Terrorists. Rape Is Terrorism.
Also a great post, from another recent addition to the blogroll, “I’m Not a Feminist But…”

You’re Invited To a Pimps and Hos Party

The media tells us that the way to get a man is by looking and acting like a fuck hungry barbie doll who acquieses to man’s every sexual need. What better way, then, to get a man, get some self confidence and be loved and valued than to embrace pornstitution, dress up as a playboy bunny and hold a party which glamourises women’s sexual submission to men?

Debate: The Value of Open Acceptance versus The Value of Leaving Labels Behind

From Man Bytes Blog: Chillingly, I suspect those who quickly cry “it’s just a game” as an attempt to deride arguments, or to justify inappropriate behavior, are being consistent. If that’s the case, I can all too easily hear them saying, “It’s only one restaurant,” or, “it’s not even a very good movie theater,” every time they are exposed to an argument about injustice. But of course, it’s never just a single game, or one restaurant, or a single theater. When people feel free to express hateful views or act upon unspoken bigotry, it’s always a sign of deeper issues within our social space.

From Utopian Hell: The internet, in its infancy was an idealistic utopia. Those of us involved in it back then said lofty, happy things like that it would be the great equalizer. No one would care, we thought, about your sexuality, gender, race, physical-ableness, weight, religion, political affiliation, looks, job, education or your finances. The internet would be the one thing that brought us all together as just people.

Male Afghan Parlimentian Dismayed That Female Parlimentians Travel Without Male Escorts

Zeefunun Safi, another parliamentarian, [says] “If my husband accepts me, and lets me travel and be a member of parliament, then who are you not to accept me?” Yet she acknowledges that some women parliamentarians may end up supporting mahram-e sharaii, if it ever is introduced as a bill. “There are lots of women in Parliament against this, but they have to support it, because people will say, ‘You are not our representative, get out of Parliament.’ “

But did you like the town?

We ended up watching “the game” in Spokane, which is a reeking wound cut into the Earth. I’m not sure if the people who toil there really understand that they live in an entire country full of towns they could move to, or that living there is itself a kind of death.

New Study Shows That TV Doesn’t Make Kids Dumber
Take that, books!

Welfare Agencies Taking Assets From Their Wards
The New York Times reports on welfare agencies using inherited social security payments due children to help cover their budgets - which can leave orphans broke and homeless the day they turn 18. I blame anti-tax activists who’d rather give a huge, unneeded tax break to millionaires than give orphans minimally decent support.

How The Republicans Will Win In 2006: Declare Victory in Iraq

SYMPOSIUM: Men’s Place In Feminism

Mind on Fire (male) asks, Is There A Place For Men In Feminism?

Self-Portrait As… (female) says “yes there is.”
But men have got to lay off the dumb questions and expecting pats on the back.

The Soapbox (female): A Resounding YES!

My own view is that men should not be setting the priorities for the feminist movement, and they need to be careful that their involvement is not the insertion of male authority. That said, I am absolutely for the involvement of men in the advancement of feminism.

Rad Geek (male): Congratulations on Washing!

…When we boys get sniffy over the fact that we’re getting criticized for our behavior and start appealing to our past achievements, or worse, our intentions, we’re expecting rewards for things that ought to be basic expectations, and would be in a humane society in which women were consistently respected and treated as equals.

Den of the Biting Beaver (female): In THIS movement you are just another person.

Feminism as a theory, will stand or fall on its own merit. It doesn’t need me, or anyone else, coddling men to make it work. Do I want to convince you? Sure I do. Am I going to jump through hoops and let you be rude, obnoxious and just plain sexist to make that happen? The answer is an across the board “No”.

Posted by Ampersand in Elections and politics, Feminism, sexism, etc, Link farms, Media criticism, Palestine & Israel, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues, Same-Sex Marriage | 97 Comments »

Seven Short Posts Regarding Larry Summers, Civility, and Censorship

Posted by Ampersand | February 25th, 2006

1. Larry Summers is a mirror of the lefty-basher’s soul.

For Alan Dershowitz, author of a book criticizing Israel’s critics, Summers lost his job because of his criticism of Israel’s critics. For Cathy Young, who has made a career out of blaming feminists, says feminists are to blame. Paul Geary says that Summers’ worst sin, in left-wing eyes, is patriotism.

The truthful reason Summers had to resign - his losing power struggle with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences - is a matter of record, but provides only a minor opportunity for left-bashing, and so is of no interest. Instead, each pundit stares into Summers’ resignation and sees their own favorite excuse for left-bashing staring back.

2. Summers did some good things at Harvard.

It’s not juicy meat for partisan blogging, but a lot of what Summers did - from free tuition for students from low-income families, to an increased emphasis on teaching - was admirable. David Laibson and Peter Bienart (use “alasablog” as both username and password) both have good short op-eds about the bright side of Summers.

Of course, that doesn’t excuse the many times Summers was a jerk.

3. Newsflash for Conservatives: There is no constitutional right of freedom from criticism

Larry Summers was not censored, nor did he come anywhere close to being censored. There is no right to freedom from criticism.

In particular, there is no first amendment duty for feminists to refrain from criticizing the President of Harvard because criticizing him makes him more vulnerable to faculty politics; nor, if the President’s enemies take advantage of the moment, is it fair to blame feminism.

Many conservatives seemingly want freedom from criticism. Recently, Bowdoin College Republicans passed a declaration saying no one should face “recrimination” for their views. “Recrimination” is just a fancy word for expressing a counter-opinion. No one should be free from recrimination.

Similarly, David Horowitz referred to some left-wing professors as having “totalitarian instincts.” What had the lefty profs done? They criticized Horowitz’s new book; that, in Horowitz’s mind, is enough to justify a charge of totalitarianism. Puh-leeeze.

4. Some topics should not be excluded from reasonable discussion.

* Defenders of Larry Summers often say that the mere question of if there is are biological differences in gender should not be excluded from reasonable discussion. I agree.

* Whether or not it is appropriate for the President of Harvard, who has presided over a nosedive in hires of tenure-track female faculty, to argue that women don’t want the top science jobs and are biologically less likely to be able to do the top jobs, should not be excluded from reasonable discussion.

* Calls for the President of Harvard to resign should not be excluded from reasonable discussion.

5. Unfairness and meanness can shut people up

When disagreements are routinely expressed in insulting and extreme terms, that creates a legitimate concern about a “chilling effect” on speech. This is a long way short of actual censorship, but it’s a real problem nonetheless. A lot of people - me included - tend to shut up if the likely result of expressing an opinion is to be called an idiot, a traitor, a wingnut, etc..

I don’t think that merely being meek, or quiet, or kind, means you have nothing worthwhile to say. A style of dialog that tends to cut out the meek and kind in favor of the brash and cruel is therefore problematic, because it shuts up people I’d like to hear from.

As debating technique, over-the-top condemnations are bad strategy. As the Summers case shows, such condemnations can easily be twisted by feminism’s enemies into ammunition for attacking and/or dismissing feminism. More importantly, there’s the question of accessibility. If my grandmother asks me for a good explanation of why Summers was wrong, I’m not going to send her an essay that opens by calling Summers a dick - not even when the essay goes on to make excellent points. The more our tone says “anyone who disagrees with us is loathsome,” the more in-groupy and less accessible what we say becomes.

There were certainly examples of this problem in some feminist responses to Larry Summers’ famous speech on women’s achievement in science (there were also calm, reasoned responses which have largely been ignored by conservatives).

On the other hand, it should be noted that the people who criticize leftists for creating an “intolerant atmosphere,” are frequently eager to engage in name-calling and incivility themselves: for instance, calling Summers’ critics Stalinists and witch-burners and tyrants. Unless these folks are willing to refrain from such insulting and unfair comparisons, it’s hard to take their concern for civil debate seriously.

6. Civility and calmness can shut people up

Here’s the thing that someone like me (who naturally tends towards mellowness) can easily forget: When disagreements are routinely expressed in calm and level terms, that creates a legitimate concern about a “chilling effect” on speech. This is a long way short of actual censorship, but it’s a real problem nonetheless.

I don’t think that merely being angry, or loud, or foulmouthed, means you have nothing worthwhile to say. A style of dialog that delegitimizes anger and outrage in favor of a calm, cool surface is therefore problematic, because it shuts up people I’d like to hear from.

Furthermore, privilege interacts with the “everyone should always be calm and kind” approach to dialog. It’s easier to be calm and kind when it isn’t one’s own ox being gored; a white person may have an easier time talking about racism in a “calm” and so-called “rational” manner, because they’re not being hurt by racism. Just because someone is righteously pissed off doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be listened to.

Furthermore, the style our culture understands as “calm” and “neutral” tends to be a style of discourse that matches how wealthy, white people often comport themselves. I doubt this is a coincidence.

I’m not saying that sex, race, etc, is deterministic; there are countless examples of women who argue against sexism in a calm manner, people of color who argue against racism in a calm manner, queers who argue against homophobia in a calm manner, and so forth. Similarly, it’s commonplace to see white straight men become emotional and abusive when they argue these issues. Nor am I saying that being in an oppressed group excuses being abusive.

Nonetheless, a norm of calm, level-toned discourse is going to unfairly silence some people; and there’s good reason to worry that a disproportionate number of the folks who are silenced will be people from groups (women, minorities, disabled, fat, etc) who are already marginalized too much in our society.

On the internet, I think the solution is different websites with different norms - on some websites civility is expected, others use more freewheeling standards, and the end result is that more people get to speak than would be the case if all websites held to a single common standard. But I’m not sure how, or if, that sort of solution can translate to real-world issues like the Larry Summers flap.

7. Links to criticisms of Larry Summers’ speech.

I haven’t attempted to rebut Summers’ speech about women and science in this post. If you’d like to read such rebuttals, I recommend:

Four Points on Summers’ Transcript, by Colin Danby.

Response to Laurence Summers’ Remarks on Women in Science (pdf file), by WISELI

Raise Your Hand If You’re a Woman In Science, by Virginia Valian

Sex and Science, by Sean at Preposterous Universe.

Statement of the American Sociological Association

Summers Lovin’, by Kieran at Crooked Timber.

Genetics is Only a Red Herring, by Matthew Yglesias.

Open Mouth, Insert Dick, Larry by Bitch Ph.D.

Sexist Calvinism, by PZ Myers at Pharyngula

The following links are not direct responses to Summers, but nonetheless add useful information:

Sex Differences in Intrinsic Aptitude For Mathematics and Science: A Critical Review (pdf link), by Elizabeth Spelke

Debate between Elizabeth Spelke and Stephen Pinker

The Cost of Being a Woman In Science, by PZ Myers at Pharyngula

Is the Science and Engineering Workforce Drawn from the Far Upper Tail of the Math Ability Distribution? (pdf link), by Catherine Weinberger

The discussion in this thread at Pharyngula is interesting, as well.

Posted by Ampersand in Anti-feminists and their pals, Feminism, sexism, etc, Free speech, censorship, copyright law, etc., Gender and the Economy | 57 Comments »

“What if your mother was pro-choice?”

Posted by Nick Kiddle | February 22nd, 2006

[The use of “pro-choice” in the title is borrowing, purely for rhetorical effect, the pro-lifers’ definition of “favouring mandatory, recreational abortion”. This is in no way an endorsement by me of this clearly nonsensical definition.]

I learned an interesting piece of my family history while I was in hospital: in 1949, my grandmother was given the opportunity to have an abortion. (In fact, since abortion would remain illegal in the UK for nearly two more decades, she was probably offered an “emergency D&C”, but the intention was to terminate the pregnancy.) With three small children, one of whom was seriously ill, she had every reason to feel unable to go through another pregnancy, but she decided she was up to the task.

If she’d chosen differently, I wouldn’t be writing this now, because the baby she gave birth to grew up to become my father.

When I heard this, I thought about the question pro-lifers frequently pose: “What if your mother was pro-choice?” What if your mother (or in this case, grandmother) had chosen to end a pregnancy and, as a result, you didn’t exist? Knowing that the possibility was discussed brings me as close as I think I’ll ever be to answering the question, and my answer is a great big “So what?”

Yes, if my grandmother had ended that pregnancy, I wouldn’t be here. But I wouldn’t be able to resent my non-existence, and the rest of the world wouldn’t be aware of what it was missing; it’s hard to say that anyone would have been worse off. In any case, I clearly am here, so speculating about what if I wasn’t is a purely philosophical matter with no practical bearing.

What’s more, there are any number of choices that had to be made the way they were in order for me to exist. If either of my parents had chosen a different university, they would never have met and I could never have been conceived, but university choices aren’t subject to the same debate that abortion is. That doesn’t prove, in itself, that the debate isn’t justified, but it does go some way towards demonstrating that “What if your mother was pro-choice?” is a red herring as far as the debate is concerned.

Another favourite way for pro-lifers to express the sentiment is the bumper sticker that says “Your mother was pro-life”. But I’ve got no evidence to say anything of the sort about my grandmother. Yes, it’s possible that she chose to continue the pregnancy because she considered that the emergency D&C would be murder. It’s also possible that she enjoyed being pregnant and wanted, in spite of all the difficulties, to bring this new life into the world. (If that’s the case, it’s an attitude I inherited from her.) I don’t know, and part of being pro-choice is that I don’t feel I have the right to second-guess her.

She had access to abortion and she chose to give birth. I don’t know what pressures were on her to choose one way or the other, but from what I know of her and the way I heard the story, I’d guess she weighed up all the factors and made the decision she thought was the right one. And since I’ve seen no evidence that she wants to put pressure on any other woman to decide any given way, who knows? Maybe she is pro-choice.

Posted by Nick Kiddle in Abortion & reproductive rights | 122 Comments »

Monday Baby Blogging: Jar-Jarhead

Posted by Ampersand | February 20th, 2006

I’m not quite sure where the rubber Jar-Jar head came from, but we never had it until we moved into this house. Was it left behind by the previous owners of the house, or did Phil, a friend we rented a room to, bring it?

In any case, we found it when we moved in, and stuck in on a stake on top of a tall bookcase, displayed with a plastic sci-fi blaster gun which was of similarly mysterious providence (presumably the gun used to kill Jar-Jar). And like a lot of decorative items left in place for a couple of years, Jar-Jar’s decapitated head became invisible to us.

But that was before Sydney spotted Jar-Jar last week, and pleaded with Bean to be given the “monster.” Then she marched in to the room where the rest of us were hanging out to show off her new look.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Ampersand in Baby blogging | 12 Comments »

Quote: Real Liberty

Posted by Ampersand | February 19th, 2006

People who construe liberty [primarily in terms of political freedoms] are highly privileged: they don’t realize the real constraints on most people’s freedom–poverty and drudgery. In the most fundamental sense liberty is just the absence of physical constraint. Most people don’t have that privilege: work for most means being physically constrained, being confined to a small space–at a desk, behind a counter, at a check-out stand, at best, in a room. You punch in in the morning and there you stay–every day like a long plane flight–until you punch out. Most people have little choice about the work they do. They’re also mentally constrained, doing repetitious tasks that make it impossible to think about anything else–inputting data, dealing with customers, answering phones. […]

The whole aim of liberalism is to see it that people have options–that no one is stuck doing the drudge work I did permanently because they don’t come from rich families. The market won’t make that happen–that is simply an empirical fact. […]

Liberalism is about liberty–real liberty: the provision of real options for people so that they don’t have to do jobs like this if they’re prepared to make the effort to get education and training.

–H.E., The Enlightenment Project

(Curtsy: Majikthise)

Posted by Ampersand in Mind-blowing Miscellania and other Neat Stuff | 80 Comments »

Shorter Ann Althouse

Posted by Ampersand | February 19th, 2006

If you’re ugly, it’s because you’re a bad, bad person.

Posted by Ampersand in neoconservative zaniness, Pres. Bush, etc. | 17 Comments »

I am so going to enter this contest!

Posted by Ampersand | February 18th, 2006

In response to the Iranian paper which is holding a “holocaust cartoon contest,” Amitai Sandy, a Jewish, Israeli cartoonist, has announced his own anti-Semitic cartoon contest, which only Jewish cartoonists may enter.

“We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!” said Sandy “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”

The contest has been announced today on the www.boomka.org website, and the initiators accept submissions of cartoons, caricatures and short comic strips from people all over the world. The deadline is Sunday March 5, and the best works will be displayed in an Exhibition in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

Sandy is now in the process of arranging sponsorships of large organizations, and promises lucrative prizes for the winners, including of course the famous Matzo-bread baked with the blood of Christian children.

Reuters story here. Curtsy: Freakonomics Blog and Hit and Run.

Posted by Ampersand in Anti-Semitism, Cartooning & comics | 16 Comments »

CBS News Lamely Defends Anti-Liberal Bias

Posted by Ampersand | February 18th, 2006

Over at CBS news’ “Public Eye” blog , Vaughn Ververs (what a great name!) has produced an argument so remarkably bad I just have to comment on it, even though I normally avoid blogging about partisan politics. Responding to a Media Matters study which showed, statistically, that Sunday network news panels are consistently tilted to the right (i.e., right-wing guests outnumber left-wing guests), Ververs writes:

This reminds me of the complaints we received about a “Face The Nation” broadcast last October. Critics were outraged that the broadcast featured only three Republicans and no Democrats. As I argued then, it was hardly a comfortable show for any Republican to do considering that the topic was the then-new indictment of former GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay and a host of other problems plaguing the Republican Party. It’s hard for even the best talking points to spin that into any kind of good news. Sure, it added three more GOPers to the Media Matter list, but the content wasn’t exactly helping the country’s move to the right.

But the question isn’t just “did it help the country’s move to the right,” but “was it balanced?”

Yes, the GOP would have preferred that the Tom DeLay story had never existed at all. But since the story did exist, CBS’s decision to use a panel consisting exclusively of GOP spinners was exactly how the GOP wanted the story covered. Meanwhile, Democrats - who obviously would have preferred to be able to comment - were not allowed to speak at all. How can Ververs consider that balanced?

By Ververs’ standards, it would be impossible for CBS to ever be unbalanced - even if 100% of their guests were GOP loyalists, as long as they were asked uncomfortable questions some of the time that would be balanced.

It’s a sign of how completely the media’s pro-Republican bias has been absorbed, that a CBS spokesman sees nothing unbalanced about a panel discussion consisting of nothing but Republicans. (Had liberals been given an equal chance to speak, would CBS News consider that anti-GOP bias?)

In a brief aside at the end of his post, Ververs agrees with Media Matters that progressive and “true liberal” viewpoints are now considered too “fringe” to appear on network TV - but he doesn’t seem to consider this admitted lack of balance as an important problem. Why would he? For mainstream TV news, a pro-conservative bias is considered balanced.

Posted by Ampersand in Media criticism | 22 Comments »

Link Farm and Open Thread #10

Posted by Ampersand | February 17th, 2006

March 8th is Blog Against Sexism Day

Why March 8?

Because it’s International Women’s Day. Because it’s the Global Women’s Strike. Wimmin in more than 60 countries will be participating in the global strike. Why not add dozens or hundreds or thousands of more voices to this struggle through the growing world of blogging?

Only 2 or 3 Days Left To Submit To The Next Carnival of Feminists!

Suffragettes and Disability Rights
Michael BÃ©rubÃ© discusses the historic ways suffragettes were abused with, and committed abuses with, anti-disabled rhetoric. This is a must-read post, imo, as is an earlier post discussing the intersection of race and disability in American history.

Greatest Hits from Antonin Scalia’s “living textualist originalism”
Terrific post from LGM reviews some of Scalia’s more striking hypocrisies.

How To Steal An Election
Entertaining and historically-informed article actually an excerpt from Andrew Gumbel’s book Steal This Vote! about cheating in American elections. Gumbel is a lefty, but that doesn’t prevent him from recognizing that the “Bush stole the 2004 election” claims don’t have much substance to them.

Walking Women To Their Destination After Dark
Happy provides an excellent feminist analysis of this social habit.

One Good Day

I felt like I had to cram six years of talking to him into this one day, because I didn’t know if I’d ever have it again. I had one day to find out if he liked Tae Kwan Do, if he had any friends at school, what he did in gym class, if he was having difficulty in any area. One day to help him with reading and tying his shoes, one day to tell him how much I loved him before he disappeared back inside himself. Which he did, today. That sweet little stranger that curled up in my lap yesterday morning and sang “Rich Girl” and showed me his fancy dance moves and looked right into my face and laughed and smiled is gone today. Is that what parents of normally functioning children have every day? And, if that’s what you have every day, why would there be a rush to put that kind of kid on Ritalin?

Why Health Savings Accounts Will Suck
Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings makes the case very well.

Comparative Funerals: Coretta Scott King and Betty Friedan

The turnout of politicians to one funeral and not another was not a measure of either woman. It was a matter of whose followings could do more for the politicians in the future.

About Those Danish Cartoons. No, Really - About The Cartoons Themselves.

Offensive Cartoons From America
Who’da thunk it? Something funny in Cracked. Curtsy: Crooked Timber.

The Dark Side of Public Sectarian Schools

So the question is whether Christians who are pro-sectarian public schools are honest in their desire for mere democratic choice, or are fair-weather fans of the doctrine who support it only when it yields Christian majorities.

White Teacher Suspended For Saying “Niggah” In Classroom
I think the suspension is justified - not because the teacher is necessarily racist, but because he displayed such staggeringly bad judgment. Incompetence is justification enough for the suspension.

Cathy Young on False Rape Accusation
Good post discussing the implications of a beyond-any-doubt false rape accusation.

Mary Schweitzer has a webpage on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.), or Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS). Mary Schweitzer, a CFS sufferer’s advocate, is one of the best writers about CFS on the internet; even if you think you have no interest in CFS issues, her essays may change your mind.

Sweden Plans To Be “Oil-Free” by 2020

Keeping Men’s Jobs Male

How do you prevent more women from becoming firefighters, police officers, etc.? You refuse to hire or promote them. You compel them to take physical tests unrelated to job qualifications, such as requiring women to lift more than the Occupational Safety and Health Administration permits. You refuse to train women, subject them to hazing or hold them to higher performance standards than their male peers. Curtsy: Feministe

Then I said that a woman’s right to choose was nobody else’s goddamn business. This got their attention.

Western Union Quits the Telegraph Business

Past Bush Administration Cheerleader Admits Guantanamo Is Inexcusable

Bush has pledged that the Guantanamo detainees are treated “humanely.” At the same time, he has stressed, “I know for certain that these are bad people” - all of them, he has implied.

If the president believes either of these assertions, he is a fool. If he does not, choose your own word for him.

Housework Blogging
Belle, Pandagon, Ezra, Lawyers Guns and Money, Matt and Majikthise weigh in. Apologies to those I missed. Of all of these, Amanda’s is the most “must-read,” in my opinion.

PrisonSucks.com: Links to research about abuse of women in prisons
I’m putting the link in here because I think there might be a future post in it, and I don’t want to lose the link.

Holocaust Denier Professor Creates Stir at Northwestern

Theorizing Breasts

My breasts, in and of themselves, have no meaning. They are not inherently sexualized. They are not inherently beautiful. Or objectifiable. They, themselves, do not say, “Hey, I’m a female! Come, objectify me, rape me, fuck me, look at me, stare at me, penetrate me!” Outside of the discourse, they mean nothing. They’re just lumps of fat and tissue and muscle and nerve endings and whatnot.

On Ambivalence Towards Critical Thinking

When I teach moral theory to students or critical thinking skills for that matter how to spot fallacies, construct valid/sound arguments, evaluate evidence, I rarely change a student’s perspective on the world, or make that student more empathetic to other peoples’ situations. I usually make them smarter at articulating the worldview that they inchoately held before. […] My sense is that critical thinking doesn’t make people better people, it just makes them better at playing the game. (Curtsy: The Reaction).

Israel plans to build ‘museum of tolerance’ on Muslim graveyard
Are they really that clueless, or just incredibly sarcastic? Via Jesus’ General.

The Happy Feminist on “Ladies First” and the Titanic

New To The Blogroll: Beyond Choice
Alexander Sanger Margaret’s grandson has an interesting blog about abortion politics.

Michael BÃ©rubÃ© Rips Apart David Horowitz
If I were a better person, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much.

Warren Ellis and Joss Whedon Provide Fan Service, Oh My Yes They Do
If you don’t know who both those people are, then I’m geekier than you. Curtsy: Crooked Timber.

FAT RELATED LINKS
What the heck, there were a bunch of these - mostly swiped from Big Fat Blog - so I thought I’d give ‘em their own section.

New JAMA Study Finds No Link Between Obesity and Lifespan In Americans Over 50

The State of The F-Word
Interesting article takes a look at the various books that have used the word “fat” in the title in the past year. Curtsy: Big Fat Blog.

FatShadow on Celebs Who Lose Weight
Yet another smart, sensitive, and annoyingly difficult to sum up in a single sentence post from Tish.

The Average Sized Privilege List
AKA “The Thin Privilege List.” This isn’t new, but I’m not sure I’ve ever linked to it, and I should have.

A Modest Proposal: The Next Viagra

“We have perfected the weight-loss drug. Enipaznalo not only takes off those excess pounds, it makes you beautiful. Movie-star beautiful. There’s just one catch; it also makes you crazy.”

“Obesity Epidemic” Overblown, Conclude UCLA Sociologists

The link is to a press release about this interesting and nuanced study pdf link by Abigail Saguy. Her webpage includes links to a number of interesting-sounding papers, including a few about sexual harassment and this one pdf link about media coverage of fat and health issues. Curtsy: Big Fat Blog.

New To The Blogroll: Fat Chicks Rule
How did I not know Lara Frater had a blog?

Posted by Ampersand in Fat, fat and more fat, Gender and the Economy, Link farms, Palestine & Israel | 66 Comments »

The Comparison Between Israel and Apartheid

Posted by Ampersand | February 16th, 2006

There was an interesting two-part article in The Guardian asking if modern-day Israel can be legitimately compared to South African Apartheid (curtsy: Behind the Surface).

I’m torn about this approach. Let me say, flat-out, that Israel’s policies - taken as a whole - cannot fairly be said to be the equivalent of Apartheid. (For anyone wondering where I stand on other very basic issues - does Israel have a right to exist, etc? - I completely endorse everything stated in this post at It’s All Connected.)

The Guardian series doesn’t conclude that Israel is an Apartheid state; on balance, I think the article makes a convincing case that Israel has racist policies but, despite some similarities, falls short of Apartheid-level discrimination. Here’s a couple of more-or-less representative paragraphs from near the end of the second article:

Hirsh Goodman emigrated to Israel three decades ago after his national service in the South African army. His son moved to South Africa after completing his conscription in the Israeli military. “The army sent him to the occupied territories and he said he would never forgive this country for what it made him do,” says Goodman, a security analyst at Tel Aviv university. He says Israel has a lot to answer for but to call it apartheid goes too far. “If Israel retains the [occupied] territories it ceases to be a democracy, and in that sense it is apartheid because it differentiates between two classes of people and separates and creates two sets of laws which is what apartheid did. It creates two standards of education, health, of dispensing funds. But you can’t call Israel an apartheid state when 76% of the people want an agreement with the Palestinians. Yes, there’s discrimination against the Arabs, the Ethiopians and others, but it’s not a racist society. There’s colonialism, but there’s not apartheid. I feel very strongly about apartheid. I hate the term being abused.”

Daniel Seidemann, the Israeli lawyer who is fighting Jerusalem’s residency and planning laws, says that he used to reject the apartheid parallel out of hand but finds it harder to do so nowadays. “My gut reaction: ‘Oh, no! Our side? My goodness, no!’ I think there’s a good deal to be said for that reaction to the extent that apartheid was rooted in a racial ideology which clearly fed social realities, fed the political system, fed the system of economic subjugation. As a Jew, to concede the predominance of a racial world view of subjugating Palestinians is difficult to accept,” he says. “But, unfortunately, the fact of the absence of a racial ideology is not sufficient because the realities that have emerged in some ways are clearly reminiscent of some of the important trappings of an apartheid regime.”

So what is accomplished by making the comparison? Well, I suppose that more people will read it because of its controversial subject (witness this blog post). This might be useful, since the article includes information about discrimination in Israel that is not well-known - at least, not here in the States. (Admittedly, things may be different in Britain, where the story was published).

“Planning and urban policy, which normal cities view as this benign tool, was used as a powerful partisan tool to subordinate and control black people in Johannesburg and is still used that way against Palestinians in Jerusalem,” says Scott Bollens, a University of California professor of urban planning who has studied divided cities across the globe, including Belfast, Berlin, Nicosia and Mostar. “In South Africa there was ‘group areas’ legislation, and then there was land use, planning tools and zoning that were used to reinforce and back up group areas. In Israel, they use a whole set of similar tools. They are very devious, in that planning is often viewed as this thing that is not part of politics. In Jerusalem, it’s fundamental to their project of control, and Israeli planners and politicians have known that since day one. They’ve been very explicit in linking the planning tools with their political project.”

At the heart of Israel’s strategy is the policy adopted three decades ago of “maintaining the demographic balance” in Jerusalem. In 1972, the number of Jews in the west of the city outnumbered the Arabs in the east by nearly three to one. The government decreed that that equation should not be allowed to change, at least not in favour of the Arabs.

“The mantra of the past 37 years has been ‘maintaining the demographic balance’, which doesn’t mean forcing Palestinians to leave,” says Daniel Seidemann, a Jewish Israeli lawyer who has spent years fighting legal cases on behalf of Jerusalem’s Arab residents. “It means curtailing their ability to develop by limiting construction to the already developed areas, by largely preventing development in new areas and by taking 35% [of Palestinian-owned land in greater East Jerusalem] and having a massive government incentive for [Jews] to build up that area.”

The down side is that no one’s talking about these aspects of the article. Instead, by framing the article as a question about Apartheid, Israel’s defenders are given license to defend Israel by correctly pointing out that things in Israel are not the same as they were in Apartheid South Africa.

That is of course true - but there’s a lot that falls short of Apartheid that is nonetheless terribly wrong. The moral lesson of South Africa should not be “anything that isn’t as bad as Apartheid is okay.” But somehow, that is where discussions of Israel tend to go.

I’m also distressed by the Apartheid angle because Apartheid is one of our iconic images of “evil perpetuated by a state.” Using such an iconic, stark image of evil to describe the Israel/Palestine conflict has the effect of covering up the extent to which some Palestinians - those that commit or support terrorism - are morally co-responsible for creating the current, appalling situation.

In the States, extremely nasty political rhetoric (”objectively pro-terrorist,” wingnut, etc) co-exists with a crushing political timidity, in which only a tiny range of political opinions are considered acceptable. To seriously criticize Israel - or, for that matter, the U.S. - for the brutality of the occupation, and for the recent use of the security wall (which is a good idea) as an excuse for a land grab, is well outside of the tiny range of acceptable “mainstream” views in the USA. In that context, it may seem strange to object to fundamentally unfair attacks on Israel, such as equating Israeli policy with Apartheid. Since we’re going to be treated as intellectual pariahs no matter what we say, why not use extreme arguments and rhetoric?

But we can’t know for certain that our arguments are irrelevant - indeed, at some level we must believe that political criticism has a hope of making a difference, or why else would we bother? But if we’re going to act as if we believe that our views and statements might contribute, in some way, towards changing the world, then probably it makes sense to try and express our views in a manner that is honest and responsible. Just in case.

Posted by Ampersand in Palestine & Israel | 29 Comments »

Monday Baby Blogging: Tattooed Sydney

Posted by Ampersand | February 14th, 2006

(Sorry I’m late posting this one; it’s been kinda a busy Monday).

Tattooed Sydney!

Lately Sydney has had a fondness for wearing a bit of tye-died cloth like a sarong and letting her mom cover her with rub-on tattoos. A foam crown completes the ensemb.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Ampersand in Baby blogging | 17 Comments »

Why I still more-or-less support same-sex marriage

Posted by Nick Kiddle | February 13th, 2006

This is mostly me thinking aloud.

1. Society’s institutions were mostly created by heterosexuals for heterosexuals.

2. Many of these institutions can only deal with relationships that are formalised with the state by means of marriage.

3. This causes all kinds of problems for same-sex couples who are denied access to marriage.

4. There are two obvious solutions: allow same-sex couple access to marriage, or change the institutions so that they can deal with relationships that aren’t formalised by marriage.

5. Changing the institutions of society, while desirable, is a huge, radical change unlikely to win widespread support. Even if this change could be brought about, it would take a great deal of time and same-sex couples would continue to suffer while the status quo lasted.

6. Allowing same-sex couples access to marriage is a relatively minor adjustment, and enjoys far more popular support.

7. Allowing same-sex couples access to marriage doesn’t rule out the possibility of changing the institutions of society in the future.

8. Therefore, allowing same-sex couples access to marriage is desirable.

Posted by Nick Kiddle in Same-Sex Marriage | 32 Comments »

Phyllis Schlafly: Punishing Spousal Rape Like Rape Is Malicious

Posted by Ampersand | February 10th, 2006

Scott at Lawyers, Guns and Money highlights this amazing quote from anti-feminist founding mother Phyllis Schlafly:

A man’s life has been sacrificed, and three children have been denied their father by malicious feminists who have lobbied for laws that punish spousal rape just like stranger rape and deny a man the right to cross-examine his accuser. They have created a judicial system where the woman must always be believed even though she has no evidence, one in which the man is always guilty.

Every once in a while, I forget that there are some opponents of feminism who still haven’t accepted the basic premise that women - even married women - are people, not property. Thankfully, there are always folks like Ms. Schlafly around to remind me.

As for the case that Schlafly refers to, there doesn’t seem to be anything online about it from trustworthy sources, so I lack enough information to comment. But as Scott points out, it’s clearly not the case that our judicial system automatically believes women - and sometimes, unjustly, it’s just the opposite.

NOTE: This comments thread is reserved for feminist, pro-feminist, and feminist-friendly posters only. If you suspect you wouldn’t fit into Amp’s conception of “feminist, pro-feminist, or feminist-friendly,” then please don’t contribute to the comments following this post.

Posted by Ampersand in Anti-feminists and their pals, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 100 Comments »

Maryland Legislature Votes Against Same-Sex Marraige Ban

Posted by Ampersand | February 10th, 2006

As you may recall, last month a lower court in Maryland ruled that Maryland’s ban on same-sex marriages is unconstitutional. (That ruling is on hold pending appeal.)

At the time, I was glad about the ruling but fretted that it might set off an amendment to the Maryland Constitution banning same-sex marriage. Happily, the legislature in Maryland recently voted against amending their Constitution to ban SSM.

The final decision on SSM in Maryland will eventually be made by the Maryland Supreme Court, and that’s no sure thing, alas; but in the meanwhile this is good news.

Posted by Ampersand in Same-Sex Marriage | 5 Comments »

Magdalene Matters

Posted by Ampersand | February 10th, 2006

According to the New Testament, Mary Magdalene, a prosititute, cleaned Jesus’ feet with her tears and then dried them with her hair. What’s always struck me about this story is that it sounds kinda gross. Who wants to have their feet dried by someone else’s hair? Ewwww.

Plus, Mary would have needed astounding tear ducts to be able to effectively wash more than His Holy Toenail. The poet Richard Crashaw must have had this thought in mind when he described Magdalene’s eyes as “two faithful fountains; two walking baths; two weeping motions; / Portable, and compendious oceans.”

Contrary to what I wrote in the first paragraph, the New Testament never identifies the prostitute who gave Jesus the icky tear-hair footbath by name. Mary Magdalene was identified with this woman, in Christian tradition, to give Mary some much-needed backstory, and perhaps to humble her a bit. There’s an excellent Joan Acocella article in the current New Yorker which describes how Magdalene - according to some Gnostic texts the smartest and most enlightened of Jesus’ followers (and perhaps even Jesus’ successor) - has been reinterpreted and rebiographied over the centuries, including some discussion of recent feminist interpretations. Well worth a read.

Posted by Ampersand in Whatever | 15 Comments »

Day By Day By Amp

Posted by Ampersand | February 9th, 2006

Amanda has a obnoxious (but funny!) habit of inviting her readers to “repair” episodes of Chris Muir’s right-wing comic strip Day By Day by writing new dialog for Muir’s art. Here’s my attempt at repairing a recent strip by Muir about Coretta King’s funeral (you can see Muir’s original at the top of Amanda’s post).

Oh, and if this is too small and hard-to-read, you can view a bigger version here.

A couple of other “repair jobs” I thought were funny are here and here.

And in case anyone’s wondering, yes, I’ve had this done to a cartoon of mine by right-wingers; and no, I didn’t mind at all. :-P

Posted by Ampersand in Cartooning & comics, Race, racism and related issues | 56 Comments »

Other Carnivals of Interest

Posted by Ampersand | February 8th, 2006

Having just posted the first Big Fat Carnival, I’d like to shout out to a couple of other carnivals that I think “Alas” readers will enjoy:

* Reappropriate hosts the First Edition of the Radical Women of Color Carnival.

* Gendergeek hosts the Eighth Carnival of the Feminists.

Posted by Ampersand in Link farms | 2 Comments »

The Big Fat Carnival - First Edition!

Posted by Ampersand | February 8th, 2006

Welcome, one and all, to the Big Fat Carnival’s First Edition!

Introduction

The Big Fat Carnival is a blog carnival for collecting some of the best blog posts regarding fat pride; fat acceptance; critiques of anti-fat bigotry, attitudes and research; celebration of images of fat people; practical difficulties of being fat; fat love (queer and otherwise); feminist views of fat and fat acceptance; the health at every size movement (HAES); and whatever else each edition’s editor feels fits into the theme.

(But please note, The Big Fat Carnival is not a place to advocate weight-loss diets, weight loss surgery (WLS), or feederism.)

(If you don’t know what a blog carnival is, check out this post on Science and Politics).

Some carnival hosts create clever schemes or amusing personas to make their hosting that much more memorable, thus making the whole process not only more enjoyable but also more creative for everyone involved. Gosh, it sure would be cool if I was that sort of host! That would be great!

Alas, my natural-born laziness won out over the impulse to work harder (it was a short fight, TKO, laziness had one hand tied behind its back). So the listings here are pretty plain: The title of each post, followed by a short and (hopefully) representative or intriguing quote from each post.

I have divided the submitted posts into categories, mainly because there are so many posts linked here (almost 50!) that I thought I’d better divide the list into shorter, easier-t0-absorb sections. Many posts could have fit into more than one category, and some are hard to categorize at all, so the categorization is, alas, a bit arbitrary. Also, I decided (again, somewhat arbitrarily) to limit to four the number of included posts from any single blog. Categories, and posts within categories, are listed in a more-or-less random order.

As the compiler of this edition of the Big Fat Carnival, I was delighted with both the quality and quantity of submissions, which came from both blogs that are favorites of mine, and from blogs that I’ve never heard of (but I’m happy to discover now!). Thanks to all of you for making this first BFC edition a big fat kick-ass success.

That said, onto the Carnival!

Section One: Fat, Health and Health Care

Feministe: Because Being Fat Is Worse Than Being Insane. Apparently.

Amanda passed this infuriating article on to me. It tells the story of 17-year-old Nia, hospitalized with schizophrenia, and the psychiatrist who treats her … a psychiatrist who found it so alarming that she was gaining weight from the medication that finally and completely dealt with her symptoms that he took her off the medication.

(Also commenting on this article: I Blame The Patriarchy, BattlePanda, Pandagon, and Shakespeare’s Sister, whose post is also linked in the “body image” section below).

Fatshadow: Untitled Post

Which came first the obsession or the value? I value every pound of my body. I value the lessons learned from the life I have lived in this body. It is an effort for me to value my health but I know that my lack of value for health is a hostile reaction to a world that talks to me about health when it means weight loss. So it’s a value I have to learn. Because if fat people don’t do the thinking and talking about their health they will always be too reliant on people who may not have their best interest in mind. People with products.

Pen-Elayne: Calorie Commandos

You know how ex-smokers are among the most adamantly anti-smoking zealots around? The same goes for people who’ve been on diets, particularly fad ones like South Beach or Atkins. So I casually mention the food chart, and suddenly one coworker decides to gently chastise me for the sodium-free breadsticks I’ve been munching on since I cut back on my salt intake because “you know how many carbs are in each of those?” (According to the pyramid scheme, after all, if I eat 6-11 of those a day all my carb servings are used up!)

Behind the Surface: A Fat Girl Goes Wooing

And it was that constant possibility that I might be harassed for being fat that has had me terrified every time I go to see a new doctor. Last spring as the appointment with a neurologist approached, I thought I was going to start having panic attacks.

I find myself preparing for a new appointment like I might for a date. What outfit should I wear? I want to look like I take care of myself, so something somewhat nice. But not too dressy that it would be hard to get in and out of. Or look like I’m not really sick (yeah, having an illness that is not taken seriously hasn’t helped). Maybe something sporty…

Alas, a Blog: Cathy Young’s Reasoning Is (Insert Generic Fat Reference Here)

No diet has ever been shown in clinical trials to turn obese people into non-obese people over the long run; nor has anyone ever been able to run a clinical trial showing that losing weight improves health over the long run. Furthermore, some studies have found that losing weight deliberately actually shortens life - especially for yo-yo dieters. Why prescribe a “cure” that probably won’t work, and that could shorten life, for a “disease” that simply isn’t that threatening?

Section Two: Self-Image and Body Image

Creampuff Revolution: Creampuff Bares Her Belly

Check it. My stomach is big. It’s big and it’s cuddly and it STICKS OUT. I used to wear only long, voluminous shirts and not just to cover my ass - ’cause, as my friend Jeba says, you can’t hide an ass that big. And really, why would you want to? It’s glorious! My clothing choices were generally based on camouflaging my stomach. My stomach was shy. . . or so I thought! I was looking at myself and my tummy in the mirror one night and I suddenly realized there was a reason my stomach refused to stay hidden, refused to be pulled in or masked or ignored - SHE NEEDED MORE ATTENTION.

Shakespeare’s Sister: Beautiful Madness

I just want to take a moment to address something I found particularly distressing in the piece…the notion that “fat” and “beautiful” are mutually exclusive. My entire life I was teased for being fat. Even when I was thin, I had large breasts, which got translated into being fat by my pre-teen peers. I was 12 years old, and not a pound overweight but already sporting D-cups the first time I got called “a fat cow.” I’ve spent my whole life feeling fat, whether I was or not. And consequently, I never felt beautiful, because there’s no such thing in our culture as being both fat and beautiful.

The Boiling Point: Your Yucky Body; a repair manual
Yay! Mikhaela submitted a cartoon! This is just a sample, be sure to go read the whole thing.

Body Impolitic: Whose Body Is This Anyway?

your body, which should be yours by the most basic of birthrights, is not your body. The media, big business, and the medical establishment take it over the minute you are born and put an enormous amount of time, money, and energy into making sure they keep it. If you want to own your own body, you have to put in an equivalently enormous amount of time and energy.

One Tenacious Baby Mama: The Perfect Fit?
(Note: There is one nude image of a woman contained in this post.)

On good days I’m a G.S.G, a Good Sized Gyal. A Middle of tha way Hoochee out to raise some hell. Proudly sportin’ every single inch of me. All stretch marks and dimples with jiggling bits and tits. Lovin’ it. Hoping to develope/envelope some more substantiality eventually.

Other times I walk hunched and harried. My body…it’s shape…it’s image…so fucked. So fucked. Mind filled to capacity. Cerebrum stuffed. Psche straining. Other people’s confusion seamlessly merging with my own. Other people’s shit, projected, injected becomes my own.

A Mindful Life: Self-Portrait Tuesday

When I moved to Austin, my weight crept up to 160 again and stayed there. This was okay by me. I worked out in a gym. I was flexible and strong. I wore size 14 jeans. I felt pretty good about myself. Then an elderly man who’d become a friend in a grandfatherly sort of way one day told me (after he’d had me as a guest for dinner), “You know, Kathryn, you’re pretty. If you lost 20 to 30 pounds, you might find a boyfriend.” If he’d punched my stomach, the effect would have felt the same.

Section Three: Our Fat-Hating Culture

Feminist Reprise: Choosing Justice

This is why I believe quibbling about whether I’m a big fat dyke by choice or nature is a waste of time better spent fighting for liberation. I am a big fat dyke, and even if you think I should choose to be something else, that doesn’t make it right for you to scream at me in the street, take away my job, evict me from my apartment, refuse me a motel room, beat me up, put me in prison, rape me, or kill me. Arguments for tolerance based on genetics are actually undermining our efforts towards the just society we really want…

Body Impolitic: 21st Century Sin

The world we live in seems to treat food very much like the Puritans treated sex: an obsessively present temptation which is simultaneously sinful and irresistible. Eating high-calorie food is the only thing that contemporary secular Americans call sinful.

Official Shrub.com Blog: Fatty, Fat, Fat, Fatty!

It’s easy for me to advocate for society to adopt a broader image of beauty (and of health) because I’m thin. It’s easy to feel good about my body because I fit into what’s seen as the “correct” weight. But, as much as I try not to, I do think about my weight. I dress it up in pretty words like “healthy” and “toned” but part of it will always be about my body shape. It doesn’t help that every time I see certain members of my family I get comments about my weight. Snarling at, cursing at, and otherwise being angry with them has helped to keep the comments at a minimum, but I haven’t been able to get them to stop completely no matter what I do.

Feminist Reprise: It’s Not The Fat, It’s The Stupidity

Most of the people who sustain me with their affection and support are fat, and when you dis fat people, folks, you’re not just dissing me–you’re dissing the people I depend on to keep me sane in a world that hates me. You’re dissing hardworking honest goodhearted people, and I’m just not going to put up with that. Because if you can write smug simplistic little letters reducing the complexities of our lives to one sentence–if you think it’s your prerogative, because your body type is socially acceptable, to dispense inane nonsensical redundant advice about how we should live and what we should do based on our appearance–you’re just proving you don’t know us.

Body Impolitic: How Young Can You Be And Hate Your Body?

The pressures on adults to be thin and forever young are well understood; what’s not so obvious is that as the airbrushed unreal early pubescent body becomes the image of the adult model, this puts pressure not only on the three-dimensional, unPhotoShoppable adult, but also on the child whose idealized body is being co-opted. If mommy wants to look like a twelve-year-old, what is a twelve-year-old supposed to want? And what will “trickle down” to her five-year-old sister?

Feminist Reprise: Screwed by Southwest

…On Friday the Thirteenth, I was barred from boarding Southwest Airlines because I refused to comply with their “customer of size” policy by purchasing a second seat.

Even though I’ve been some degree of fat my whole life, and certainly have gotten my share of ridicule and rejection because of it, being refused a public accommodation hasn’t been part of my experience. Discrimination has been this bad thing that happened to other people. But suddenly, when I was just going about my business, I was informed by a smug gate agent that I was required to purchase a second seat before I would be allowed to board the plane.

OUPblog: Resolute We Are

According to 43 Things, the online home of lists and resolutions, losing weight is the all-time top goal of all resolution makers visiting their site. Apparently we are more desperate than ever to fight the putative battle against obesity, a war that supposedly begins at home. But let’s think about it. Even if there is an obesity epidemic…an idea which is thoughtfully disputed by fellow-OUP author J. Eric Oliver in his recent book Fat Politics…why would it be that Americans would suddenly be so hefty?

I Hate People: Fat People Are People Too!

This is the kind of mentality that a lot of people have engrained on their systems, the kind of mentality that makes them believe that fat people, and especially fat women deserve to be abused. Because “how dare they to be normal?? How dare they show their fat asses and bellies in public? How dare these women not be sexual objects??”

Travelling Punk: Navigating the complex world of compliments?

‘Have you lost weight?’ someone called, accusatorially across the office as I turned from the printer to return to my desk. Startled by the tone, I wondered, what have I done, before my mind caught up with the content of the question and my mouth emitted a little, unsure, ‘no…’.

Section Four: Fat, Gender and Feminism

Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty: Being Purple

I don’t think the experience of being fat is worse for women; I think the experience of being fat is qualitatively different for women.

Maybe that’s not even what I mean - maybe I mean: the experience of being fat is part of being a woman in the society I live in - whatever size you are.

Feministe: Your Priorities Are Showing

Here’s the lesson I’m drawing from here: the cultural imperative to be thin is so strong that the FDA is willing to put out a product that’s not terribly effective, prone to abuse, and potentially dangerous. Because there is no risk or discomfort too great to be endured for the sake of being thin. And heavens, no, we’ve never had any problems whatsoever with FDA-approved diet pills **coughphen-fencough**!

Body Impolitic: I’ll Just Have A Salad

Here’s what we mean when we say food is gendered. Women are expected to want salads, vegetables, fancy chocolates, and sweet alcoholic drinks with umbrellas in them. Men are expected to want slabs o’ meat, potatoes, apple pie, and beer or hard liquor. Women are expected to comment in restaurants on the size of the portion and the presentation of the food before they take a bite. Men are expected to dig in.

Pound: Fits Like Teen Spirit

I guess it’s no wonder that out of all the different kinds of plus size markets out there, the store that most consistently sets off Fat Apocalyptic alarms is the store for young white girls, because really, hot young white chicks are among our most precious national resources, and without them America’s reality shows and porn would suffer.

Mind The Gap!: Dove: Real Beauty or Just Real Troublesome?

But at the risk of sounding like a humourless, spoil sport, never satisfied feminist I’m now going to come out and say “I’m not happy.” What’s not to like? Well I don’t like the fact that the empowerment is very little, very late, and I don’t like the questions about my own feminist thinking which this campaign raises. What really bothers me is not the fact that the Dove campaign is not radical, it is the frightening probability that, in the context of our current culture, this campaign is extremely radical. As feminists, this is what we should be worried about.

Alas, a Blog: Fatness and Moral Panic

The terror that fat seems to inspire, the moral terror, seems rooted in the same fear and loathing that has traditionally been reserved for the promiscuous woman. She is not obeying. She is “out of bounds”"“much like the fat that oozes over the sides of the airplane seat. Her problem is a surfeit of appetite““which is the reason that no matter what medical studies might actually show, people will continue to frame the problem of obesity wholly in terms of eating and of appetite.

Section Five: Dieting and Weight Loss

FattyPatties: Revisiting the Numbers

Anyway, about 8,304 innocent people lost their lives in 2005 due to bariatric surgeries. (Of course it’s more considering most die slow deaths from years of nutritional deficits and complications, but we’ll disregard those for this exercise.)

According to CNN, there have been 2211 casualties in Iraq as of January 15, 2006 (covering nearly 3 years). […] In just one year, bariatric atrocities resulted in eleven times more innocent American lives lost than from the Iraq War.

Feminist Reprise: An Exercise in Critical Thinking

Because of course fat people never eat apples, and if we did, we’d all instantly become thin. How dumb we must be not to figure that out, how self-destructive, masochistic even, to stubbornly insist on staying fat–and of course unhealthy–when the cure is so close at hand.

Redemption Blues: The Fat Of The Land: Desperate Remedies

“Chew? Didn’t I learn that skill sometime before my first birthday? ‘No. Nobody in the Western world knows how to chew. Dr Mayr showed this. Most people today swallow their food after giving it one or two chews, and it enters the intestines very hard. This puts stress on the gut. Here, you will learn to chew each mouthful of food 40 times’. Forty? ‘Yes. Do not swallow anything until it is a thin liquid pulp. And you must not speak to each other or read when you are eating. This is distracting and wrong. You will sit in silence. And chew’”.

In the past, this approach was known as Fletcherism. Verily I say unto thee, there is nothing new under the sun, especially not when it comes to wacky theories about dieting.

Alas, a Blog: Anti-Fat “Science” (U.K. Edition)

Note the claim that this is a “scientifically-based program” - which means, I assume, that the Top Ten Tips have been shown to lead to significant, long-term weight loss in scientific studies. There’s also a second claim: the Top Ten Tips do not not involve