Although I’m a big fan of Shakespeare’s Sister, I didn’t like her choice to include, in a post about that “I Am Man” Burger King commercial, a quote from Vanity Fair about Dick Cheney’s weight. Here’s the quote:

The extent of his atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries, which, if it extends beyond the heart to the brain, can cause hard-to-recognize changes in cognition) is unknown. Bypass surgery itself has long been associated with subtle changes in neurological function. At age 65, Cheney is easily 30 or more pounds overweight, seems to have slacked off on what was once a more rigorous diet, and appears to suffer from recurrent bouts of gout. At a roundtable lunch with reporters a couple of years ago, two who were present say, he cut his buffalo steak in bite-size pieces the moment it arrived, then proceeded to salt each side of each piece.

Uh-huh.

1) Why is this even here? SS’s take on the Burger King Ad, is that it says being a man requires eating unhealthy food. She then makes the leap from unhealthy to fat, because - why? No healthy people are fat? All thin people are healthy? All people who eat Whoppers are fat? All fat, unhealthy people got that way eating whoppers? She then jumps to Dick Cheney’s eating, because Cheney is “one of the manliest men of them all,” and he’s fat and unhealthy.

2) I really, really hate the way people feel entitled to monitor what fat celebrities eat. (And do I need to point out the obvious problems of observer bias and reporting bias?)

3) On average, folks who are 30 pounds “overweight” live as long (or slightly longer) than folks at the “ideal” weight; and there’s no evidence that losing 30 pounds would make Dick Cheney live longer.

4) Cheney’s fatness was dragged into the post because Cheney is a disliked political figure (just as Bill Clinton’s alleged chubbiness and overeating was, as I recall, brought up by conservatives back in the 90s). It is only in a climate of widely accepted prejudice against fat people that Cheney’s fatness can be used in this political fashion.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m still a fan of Shakespeare’s Sister. I don’t accuse her of bad motives or anything like that.

But it’s off-putting to follow a link to an ally’s site, going “oh goody, SS on the stupid Burger King commercial, this will be fun!,” only to have a metaphorical door slammed in my fat face.

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This is one of those essays I’ve been meaning write for a while. Let me start by making an observation: I think political progressives are more accepting of transgender identities than they are of transracial identities. If fact, the only time I ever read or hear the word transracial it is connected with adoption. It’s almost as if “queering” gender lines (blurring them for people who are not into queer theory), is hip and cool in some progressive circles, but I get the impression transracial identities are not. Now I should say that I do not think either transgender or transracial identities are accepted by the larger culture, but I definitely think there is a difference between how the two are treated among progressives. I understand that this is probably a controversial position, but the whole notion of a transracial identity hasn’t even been theorized in most of the literature I have read.

Race and Gender Drag Shows
One way of blurring/queering gender and racial lines is the use of drag. Drag tends to be a temporary thing used in performance. The person in drag changes their identity for the purpose of performance, but does not change their identity in all aspects of their lives. I first started thinking about this when the show Black.White came out. The show was roundly criticized by the blogs that I regularly read (Mixedmediawatch.com, Reappropriate, Blackademic). I watched the show, and I tend to agree with many of the criticisms cited by these bloggers. Personally, I am very uncomfortable with many aspects of racial and gender drag when they are used as a technique to get people to understand what it is like to be the other. I’m not so sure that dressing in race or gender drag can really teach people. It would be really interesting to compare and contrast contemporary racial drag and gender drag to see which one is more likely to be used to entertain and which one is used to teach. I get the sense that in this era gender drag is more likely to be used as entertainment, and racial drag is more likely to be used as a teachable moment. It seems that gender drag shows invoke gender stereotypes to entertain, and many people seem to think of gender drag as hilarious. In contrast racial drag invokes stereotypes, to entertain, but in many cases, like Black.White, it is viewed as entertainment plus education. Now I am not speaking in absolutes…I have seen cases where gender drag is used to teach, such as pregnancy suits, and I have seen racial drag used purely for entertainment purposes, such as most of the early Black face performances. However, I am particularly interested in how contemporary progressives view this issue, and my sense is that one type of drag seems to be treated in a different manner than the other.

Transgender and Transracial Identities
Unlike drag, transracial and transgender identities, are more permanent. If people are transracial or transgender, they are altering the gender or racial identity on a long term basis and integrating this view of identity and everyday life. (It should be duly noted that Microsoft word is marking transracial as a misspelling). In most of the literature I read transracial identities are referred to as racial “passing,” and passing is generally referred to in negative terms. Transgender identities are also viewed negatively, but more recently there is a move afoot to accept the transgender, and part of this movement (not all of it) seeks to explain transgender identities through a medicalized view of the “problem.” (I use the term problem here loosely because I personally don’t see it as a problem, but I think the medical profession does.) What I wonder about is what would happen if we started treating racial identities in the same way. To some extent it is already happening, according to research by Maggie Hunter. Hunter found that many textbooks used to train plastic surgeons tend to medicalize the eyes and noses of Asians describing them as in need of repair, although a similar trend does not seem to appear for Whites. But I wonder, will it be a matter of time before we talk about race reassignment surgery? And I wonder how the medical profession would frame this? I think people cold learn to accept and celebrate transgender identities and transracial identities without using a medicalization framework, but I digress from my primary point, which is that there does not seem to be an organized movement to accept transracial identities. So I wonder, what would such a movement look like, and is a movement necessary?

What Do You Think?
I think one of the fundamental differences between race and gender is that the notion of racial mixture or multiracial identity is much more widely accepted than the notion of a mixed gender identity or multigender identity. My sense is that progressives have started to embrace transgender identities as a way to acknowledge such as multigender identity. However, mixed identities are not “trans” identities.

My sense is that progressives have started to embrace transgender identities but don’t even have a conception of such a concept when it comes to racial identities. In fact, many progressives have been critical of racial drag, and transracial identities are often called racial passing or cultural appropriation. My sense is that term term gender passing is something used in transgender subcultures, but the term passing seems to refer to behavior not really an identity.

I’m not firm in my views on this, but there does seem to be a fundamental difference is how transracial and transgender identities are approached (especially among progressives), but comparing how these two identities are theorized (and experienced), raises many questions for me…Why are transgender identities the subject of discussion among progressives, but the concept “transracial” seems to be virtually non-existent? Why do you think there is a movement among progressives to accept transgender identities, but no such movement to accept transracial identities (assuming you accept the premises of the question)? What differences do you think there are between trangender and transracial identities, and do those differences affect how you view each? If you are comfortable with one and not the other, why?

Oops, this is also posted over at my blog Rachel’s Tavern.

Here we go again! You know the drill - feel free to post whatever you’d like, including links to your own stuff, in the comments.

New Blog: The Rape Crisis Blog
Blogging rape-related news stories, mostly from the USA. Looks like it could be a good resource. Check it out.

Women of Color Blog: The Truth of Brown Motherhood
I want to quote from this post, about being a mother of color in a racist society, but there are too many excellent bits to pick just one. Go read it.

Debatige: On The Practice of Women Taking Their Husband’s Names When They Marry

A Womb of Her Own: Excellent Post on Power, Politics, and Adoption

Reappropriate: Unbound Feet
Excellent, not-easily-summed-up post about sexism in the Asian American community, with attention to how racism against Asian American men is used by some men as a rationalization for their own racist sexist against Asian American women. See also this disturbing follow-up, about some of the reactions Jenn received to her “unbound feet” post.

Afghan Women’s Rights Leader Moves Every Night Because of Death Threats

Creative Destruction: Are Men Responsible?
Daran thinks he’s found a contradiction in my views.

Video: A Chink in the Armour
This 25-minute video, created by a Chinese Canadian filmmaker, takes a very funny look at Chinese stereotypes, testing Chinese Canadian volunteers on a number of stereotypes (driving test, math problems, how well they hold their drinks, etc). The last one was especially funny, I thought. Curtsy: Reappropriate.

Third Estate Sunday Review: Excellent Post On That Burger King “I Am Man” Commercial
Focusing on Helen Reddy.

Bitch | Lab: Ad Industry Portrays Men as Children Who Will Never Grow Up

Jay Sennet: Tampons are a Women’s Rights and a Human Rights Issue

Woman of Color Blog: To the Trans Community
Brownfemipower is a model of how people should approach becoming an ally. The discussion following the post is excellent, too - don’t skip it.

Fetch Me My Axe: Speculation about the source of misogyny: The ideology of “true love”?

Hit And Run: Anti-Smoking Activists Spread Statistical Lies About Secondhand Smoke

Immigrants Are Good For The US Economy
And not just the computer programmers.

Kaka Mak: A Feminist Defense of Paris Hilton

Noli Nothis: Defining Bigotry
A response to the “I don’t want to be labeled a bigot, but I think gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed” school of thought.

Feminist Law Professors: The Anti-Contraception Movement
And after you’ve read this excellent post, read further comments on it at The Debate Link.

Abyss2Hope: How Men Can Help Prevent Rape

Gothamist: Interview with Jessica (of Feministing)!

Language Log: How Meth Stings Frame Innocent Immigrants With Poor English Skills
Curtsy: Magicthise.

Plucky Punk: The “Pro-Family” Crowd Is In Fact Anti-Family
Think that drawing up a will and other legal documents in any way provides same-sex couples with the legal protections of a legally recognized marriage? Think again.

Written World: Don’t Step In The Meta-Text
Interesting discussion of how a DC comics writer has reconsidered a minor superhero, turning him from a mind-controlling good guy into a date rapist.

YouTube: Don’t believe racist stereotypes, or you’ll look like a hillbilly stereotype.
A textbook example of why just being against something, without actually having any analysis, isn’t enough. Remember, racism is bad because it makes individual white people ugly, and ugly people are bad. Curtsy: Blac(k)ademic. Some of the comments there are very on-target, check them out.

Livingston, I presume: On Giving Birth in Prague

When I tell people here that Connery was born in Prague, I inevitably get the question of whether I was scared to give birth in a place like the Czech Republic. My answer is always the same: If it came down to a choice just of the better place to have a baby, I would do it in the Czech Republic again in a heartbeat. There’s just no comparison. (Curtsy: Ezra Klien).

Obsidian Wings: The Republican Solution to Corruption? Make Sure No One Has The Authority To Investigate.

So, to recap: Bush appoints someone from his campaign to an important job: auditing Iraq reconstruction funds. That person turns out to be surprisingly independent, and discovers a lot of fraud. […] Our government’s response? Recategorize Iraqi reconstruction funds so that he doesn’t get to audit them anymore.

Majikthise: A reason to like Qwest
Not every phone company turned over its call records.

Daily Kos: How the Right Wins The War Of Ideas

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… boys will be boys?

What if youthful rapists don’t grow out of the habit of raping when they leave an environment where they have easy access to victims?

What if boys and young men who raped their peers got a thrill from rape and sexual exploitation they can never recreate when the sex is fully consensual?

What if those who declare that college rapists pose no ongoing danger are wrong and those rapists only change their MO?

What if many Internet predators go after children not because they are pedophiles in a clinical sense but because children have the fewest defenses against sexually exploitive people and they can pursue their targets without friends and family noticing their little hobby?

Wouldn’t you want to stop these rapists before they become fully developed sexual predators?

Also posted on my blog, abyss2hope.blogspot.com

***PLEASE NOTE***
The comments on this post are open to feminist and pro-feminist posters only.

I recently read Self-Made Man, Norah Vincent’s non-fiction book about passing as a man for a year. It was… okay. Lots of stuff about how men’s lives often suck, men are cut off from their emotional selves, how the pressure to be a man can be crushing, expecting to initiate dating rituals bites, etc.. I agree with that, to a great extent. Patriarchy has always hurt the large majority of men.

I was a bit disturbed by the New York Times review, which said:

But “Self-Made Man” turns out not to be what it threatens to be, a men-are-scum diatribe destined for best-seller status in the more militant alternative bookstores of Berkeley and Ann Arbor. Rather, it’s a thoughtful, diligent, entertaining piece of first-person investigative journalism.

Let’s ignore all the anti-feminist stereotypes in that paragraph. (Remember how “liberal” the Times is supposed to be?) What I can’t figure out is, why would anyone expect Norah Vincent - who is, on most matters, a conservative - to write a “men-are-scum diatribe”? Vincent’s stuff written before this book can hardly be described as anti-masculine (apart from Islamic masculinity, of course).

Some people have questioned the honesty of Vincent’s narrative (in order to protect her subjects’ privacy, Vincent changes names and identifiable details). I don’t think she’s lying about having dressed as a man, or having joined a bowling league, a monastery, a men’s retreat, and so on. But she gives the reader the impression that living as a man caused her to endorse and admire conventional gender roles for men. In reality, her views pre-drag seem pretty much the same as her views post-drag, although you wouldn’t know that from reading Self Made Man.

Plus, Vincent seems to believe that the men she reports on represent all of masculinity. But virtually all the men she describes are White, and all of them are straight. All of them are working-class (except perhaps the monks) and macho. Many of them - the monks, and the men in the men’s retreat - have committed to environments that make sex segregation (and the ideologies that justify sex segregation) a big deal. But nothing in Vincent’s narrative indicates that she has much awareness that this is a book about some men, rather than a book about Men.

I’m not saying the men in Self-Made Man aren’t fascinating characters - they are, and Vincent does a good job fleshing them out. But even though I’m a man, the men Vincent hung out with - men who visit strip clubs regularly and go on John Bly-style male retreats and have Glengarry Glen Ross jobs - are just as foreign to me as they were to Vincent. The gulf between Vincent and these men contains a lot besides the male/female gulf, but Vincent seems unaware of that, and as the book goes on she increasingly chalks up all the differences she sees to biological determinism.

From the Salon review of Self-Made Man:

It’s undoubtedly brave and noble that Vincent tried to cross class as well as gender boundaries, but as aware as she is of that issue on the bowling team, I think the former category is more important than she realizes. Beyond the agonizing dating chapter, she never tries to pass for the kind of straight man she might already know, an urban guy with bobo-style, liberal-arts values and inclinations. (For that matter, she also doesn’t try to be a gay man.) In that context, I don’t think being a man is half as hard as she thinks it is, and whatever one thinks about the biochemical basis of sex and gender, the performance of gender roles is a lot more fluid than she depicts.

My personal experience as a man may have no more general applicability than Ned’s, but, hey, I’ve been a guy much longer than he has. If the legacy of feminism has complicated certain things about being a heterosexual male, I’m pretty happy with that. Maybe men still don’t “open up” as readily as women do, but the intense emotional self-censorship Vincent describes is not ubiquitous or unanimous.

Despite these limits, Vincent’s book is certainly a fun read, and although the male problems she describes aren’t ubiquitous, they’re real for too many men and certainly worth addressing.

Vincent’s description of the emotionless, mean sex played out in strip clubs is particularly affecting, and repulsive. As an aside, before reading this book I had no idea that men are actually supposed to ejaculate inside their pants during lap dances. (At the risk of seeming naive, I really didn’t know what a lap dance was - TV had given me the impression that a lap dance was just like a stage dance, only much closer). Let me just say: ewwww!

But at the same time, because I don’t go to strip clubs, I have no way of judging if Vincent’s depiction of strip clubs is accurate in general, accurate just for some clubs, or wildly off base. The same problem applies for Vincent’s description of male life: what she writes may be accurate for some men, but it’s not what all men experience (certainly not all the time), and I’m not sure that Vincent understands that. By focusing so closely on men who themselves seem to completely buy into and try to live out stereotypical masculinity, while failing to acknowledge any other ways of living are possible for men, Vincent seems to suggest that no other approaches to manhood are biologically possible.

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On Friday, May 12, 2006 at 12:27pm CDT, Markku Frederick Laukkanen — nephew of sometimes-co-blogger bean — arrived after what many moms would probably consider an envy-enducingly short and relatively painless delivery. Markku weighed in at 7 lbs. 14 oz. and 20.5 inches long.

Mom Casey and Dad Heikki are both doing well, and enjoying the new addition to their family.

The dogs, Taylor and Tilly, are also doing well, and, as you can see, already know their place. The cats are still a bit weirded out.

CNN

The judge at the trial of former Enron CEOs Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay handed prosecutors a strategic victory Wednesday, saying he would tell jurors that “deliberate ignorance” of fraud at the collapsed energy company was not a justifiable defense.

If prosecutors in criminal rape cases were allowed to show jurors that the defendant practiced “deliberate ignorance” and the jury was told that this practice is not a justifiable defense, many of the “he said/she said” defenses would crumble.

This wouldn’t be unfair to defendants since they would be allowed to show how they verified that they had legal consent.

Also posted on my blog, abyss2hope.blogspot.com

***PLEASE NOTE***
The comments on this post are open to feminist and pro-feminist posters only.

Andrea at Shrub.com has a good post with a feminist analysis of “Mantham” (YouTube link) the Burger King ad with new lyrics to Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” (although in her count of women in the commercial, she seems to have missed the line of cheerleaders behind the guy burning his tighty-whities). Gayprof has some good comments, as well.

Although not always this blatant (how could it be?), smaller fast-food places have been hitting on similar sexual themes in their commercials for years. Jack In The Box, a few years ago, had a series of commercials based on Jack Box sponsoring a football team (the first commercial featured Jack’s plan to fire the male cheerleading squad - a silly gag, I know, but the symbolism of rejecting homoeroticism in favor of “real man” heterosexuality is hard to deny). And Carl Jr’s (doing business as Hardees in some regions) has had a series of aggressively sexist commercials, from Paris Hilton washing a car to commercials showing befuddled men in a grocery store having no idea what to buy, with the slogan “without us, some guys would starve.”

(It’s amazing how anti-male the “guys should be guys” mentality quickly becomes. Sure, the “some guys would starve” commercials were funny, but c’mon - their premise is that men lack the smarts required to choose a loaf of bread).

So the “guys should be guys” ethos of the Burger King commercial is nothing new, although it’s perhaps a new achievement in the compulsive over-the-topness of its sexism. For example, at the climax of the commercial, the mob of whopper-eating men toss a minivan off a bridge, symbolically rescuing the pleased family dude who got out of the van from his emasculating family attachments. (And if you think I’m reading too much into it, tell me why else they would throw a minivan off a bridge while singing about manhood?)

(Compare the auto-as-symbolic-emasculation theme in this commercial to the auto-as-invulnerable-manhood theme in the recent Dodge Caliber commercial, in which the macho Dodge is the one thing in the world that fairies can’t feminize. Ad writers are convinced that men have a thing about cars…).

But putting the feminist analysis aside, since Shrub.com has already done an excellent job of that, you know what I found striking about this commercial? The absence of fat people. Often, commercials about “everyday guys being guys doing guy things” will include a guy or two with a spare tire, because what’s more everyday than that? Not this commercial. The singer who opens the commercial is if anything a bit scrawny for TV men, and all of the dozens and dozens of guys who crowd through this commercial are thin. There are just two exceptions. First, they cast someone a bit round-faced to play the minivan owner, presumably because family men are stereotypically a bit chubby. Second, the dude pulling the dump truck by a chain isn’t thin, but professional truck-pullers usually aren’t.

It’s odd, isn’t it? On the one hand, the whole commercial is saying “screw the wife/nanny nagging you about health - eat what you want” ethos, while at the same time the casting is trying to assure men that eating at Burger King won’t make them fat.

Now, as it happens, I believe that eating at Burger King won’t make you fat, nor will being fat make you unhealthy (more on that subject here). And I think people should feel free to eat what they want, even if it is unhealthy. But the way this commercial endorses ideologies of thinness and of sexism - even while waving a “just kidding! You’re not allowed to analyze what’s going on, because we’re! just! kidding!” banner - pretty much wipes out any possible beneficial message iit might have carried.

What’s interesting is how the ideology of “healthism” is now predominant enough so that hamburgers are sold the way beer is sold - as an appeal to base male instincts. “C’mon, be bad.” Eating burgers, which are probably the single most popular food in the country, makes you a rebel. Yeesh.

P.S. So why is there a mime? Is that the ultimate example of a feminized man coming back to manhood, or did they just think sticking in a mime would be funny, or both? (Look in the background about 32 seconds into the commercial).

***PLEASE NOTE***
Comments on my posts on “Alas” are heavily moderated. If you’d like to avoid all that, you can post comments on the identical post at Creative Destruction.

Maddox does her uncanny impression of a boneless rag doll.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tom at Just One Minute takes note of the supposed lack of reaction to Howard Dean’s flirtation with homophobia:

I have every intention of keeping this incident in mind when, as the months and years unfold, folks on the right are asked to endure diatribes about our homophobia and pandering on this issue. The silence greeting Dean tells me all I need to know about the left blogosphere’s real commitment to this issue.

Yes, because lefty bloggers condemning Dean are just sooooo hard to find.

Frankly, I’ve condemned Democrats for insufficient support of queers any number of times. Tom, just to make sure you’re not a partisan hack - could you link to a couple of examples of you criticizing Republican queer-bashing? Or is it only something you comment on when Democrats do it?

But what I really object to in Tom’s post is his endorsement of moral equivalence. (Damn, it’s fun to say that to a conservative!) Yes, it’s sickening that Dean is coming out against legal equality on the 700 club. I condemn his words, his acts, and his lousy character. But I don’t imagine that what Dean did is the moral equivalent of proposing to amend the friggin’ Constitution to ward off legal equality.

Not to mention the many anti-queer ballot measures and laws proposed and all-too-often passed around the country: laws which bar lesbians and gays from things like protection from being fired for being queer, or which forbid them from adopting, or which threaten queer teachers’ jobs.

I’m against people punching other people. I’m also against people attacking other people with guns. But I can be against both without having to pretend that shooting someone is no worse than punching.

Many democrats are lousy for queers, leeches with a hand in every queer wallet who crawl away from every queer fight. But that doesn’t justify a false moral equivalency. Bad as the Dems are, the Republicans - the people who write and support every damn anti-queer law in the country, and who agitate for votes by spreading every vicious anti-queer bigotry they can think of - are far worse.

Tom’s attitude, at least as expressed in this one post, is total partisan hackery. “Howard Dean sucks from a queer rights perspective; therefore I can ignore all criticism of the bigotry in my own party.” That’s garbage, Tom. Bigotry is wrong because it’s immoral, not because it gives one side or the other a partisan advantage. Either you’re against bigotry, or your silence enables it.

At the least, if you choose not to oppose the bigots in your own party, please spare us the whining when you get criticized for your choice.

***PLEASE NOTE***
Comments on my posts on “Alas” are heavily moderated. If you’d like to avoid the moderation, consider leaving comments on the identical post at Creative Destruction, instead.

Today’s big news among the she’s-a-liar crowd is the revelation that Mary Doe, who says she was raped by three men at a Duke lacrosse team party, had sex with her boyfriend - as the DNA evidence proves.

Call me a weirdo, but I don’t think that proof Mary Doe has had sex with her boyfriend changes anything. Nor does this prove she wasn’t raped at the party, by people other than her boyfriend. (Not living like a virgin doesn’t magically make someone rape-proof.)

But isn’t it impossible for her boyfriend to have left traces of DNA if later rapists did not? Not as far as I know. Maybe her boyfriend left much more evidence behind (not all men produce the same quantities). Maybe the rapists wore condoms. The truth is, we don’t know. I have my opinion, and other folks have theirs; but to think anything’s been proved at this point, before both sides bring in experts who are subjected to cross-examination, is foolhardy.

***PLEASE NOTE***
The comments on this post are open to feminist and pro-feminist posters only. If you’re not a feminist and want to leave a comment, you may do so at the identical post on Creative Destruction.

Because sometimes you wake up too early and it’s Sunday morning and you’re too tired to do anything but watch funny videos of animals.

Cats, cats, cats. Cats fighting their natural enemies: Dogs, bears, cardboard boxes and (mostly) infants. Typical cheesy funny-cat stuff.

Recasting “Grease.” With a dog in the Travolta part. What makes this video great is how much fun the dog seems to be having.

* * *

Oh, and as long as linking videos, I don’t think I ever linked this, which Kip emailed me a while ago: performance versus skill.

This is juggler/comedian Chris Bliss, performing a three-ball routine that got emailed and linked a billion times on the internet, usually under the heading “the greatest juggling you’ve ever seen” or the like. You don’t have to watch the whole thing, but watch a few seconds to get the idea.

This is juggler Jason Garfield, performing pretty much the same routine (he adds a couple of tricks, like spinning under the balls, that Bliss doesn’t do), trick for trick - but with five balls. Ouch.

A lot of people enjoy Bliss’ video more, because he’s a better performer - he does a lot with his body language and expressions to make fairly easy juggling tricks look very, very hard. But sometimes it gets silly - like around 3:35 into the video, Bliss does the easiest juggle in the world but his facial expression makes it look like he’s doing something that requires intense, intense concentration. (At that point in the parody video, Garfield does a brief imitation of the “this is so hard” look and then shakes his head in exasperation). I love juggling, and I want to be going “holy crap, I can’t believe he just did that” - so I like Garfield’s stuff a lot better.

Washington Post

Eric Haskett was merely taking a nap in a car when he roused suspicion in a rural Frederick County neighborhood. A neighbor traced Haskett’s license plate to an address once used by a registered sex offender.

Then his girlfriend’s parents told him to scram; law enforcement officials, including three FBI agents, began investigating; and Haskett began fearing that the suspicions could cost him his job at a gag shop that sells such kid-friendly items as whoopie cushions.

If this sort of misunderstanding and overeaction keeps happening, public sex offender registries will become worse than useless. This case demonstrates that insufficient knowledge is a dangerous thing. If paranoia becomes rampant, it may come to the point where sex offender registries have to be removed from public view or we will need specific laws to protect those mistaken as sex offenders.

While people are panicking over the wrong people, trusted and unconvicted sex offenders will continue to have access to victims who may or may not be believed if they speak up.

Note: Also posted on my blog, Posted by Abyss2hope in Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 24 Comments »