EDIT: I realize the post is long, but I am having the devil of a time cutting it. I am so so sorry.

To celebrate the fall of Section 377 in India,at teh hands of Delhi’s High Court (may it survive the challenge) here’s Human Rights Watch’s This Alien Legacy:The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism Take a look at the Naz Foundation, which took the lead in challenging this leftover piece of colonial Victorian racist, sexual prudishness. Here’s a blog that breaks down the decision: Part One, Part Two Part Three

15 Shocking Tales of How Sex Laws Are Screwing the American People What do you all think of teen sex leading to sex offender status and jail time? Why is it that sexting is being hit with the full force of pornography law? How much is too much in terms of years between teen couples? (Re the Wilson case, I must say that there are issues of consent that I am not too comfy with). Frankly as long as the sex is consensual and between people in their teens I am of the school where a strong sex education curriculum is crammed down the little darlings throats, including issues of consent, (drunk people cannot consent, in my book), contraception is made available, and what will be will be. Cause as far I can tell, there ain’t any way in human history that anyone has managed to stop sex between teens from happening, no matter what holy books say. Sexuality is intrinsic to a large part of the human species, and I believe in meeting it head on, accepting it, and working with it so as to produce the best outcome…happy healthy people.

Bisexuality 101 This article just popped up on my LJ reader today, so, I’m sharing it with you all!

This is a very interesting blog, so much so that I cannot excerpt all the stuff that I like…because I would choose every post on teh front page! So, just go read:The Asexual Explorations Blog: Thinking Critically About Asexuality. For this next blog I rec these two posts particularly Sexual, Romantic and Secondary Orientations –Summary of the Series and No More Passing from the equally splendid Rainbow Amoeba’s Petri Dish but I do suggest that you read everything else. Asexuality.org and Apositive.org exist for more info and links.

From the “Yeah and?” department, science has finally caught up with reality and come to the conclusion that :
Women like watching porn. News at 11 There are issues, though.

Now I promised a friend of mine that I would start paying attention to disability issues. I have been SORELY remiss in fulfilling that promise. I would therefore like to start doing it now…

Sex and Disability Nerve Magazine Special Edition

Disability and sexual confidence

National Resource Center: Sex and Disability

The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability for all of us

Ignorance is never a good thing. Why do people insist on propagating it? Can a book be burned at the stake, literally?

We turn now to the subject of Masturbation

Masturbation: Good Girls do touch themselves Indeed they do. And should. Especially in the face of selfish men: The Orgasm Gap Much giving, not much receiving. smh.

Why masturbate when you can have a fling? Because masturbation can be  free, and I want you to spend your money with me! Also, I am SICK of companies putting pink packaging on anything that involves marketing to women. Cut that out!

Apparently May was the National Masturbation Month? Did you all know that?

When comics are outlawed exactly who is safer? Dear Uncle Sam, please fix healthcare and stay the hell out of our private libraries, thanks!

NSFW and you probably should not be eating or drinking either. Representing Sexually Transmitted Diseases The authors book looks interesting, and here’s an excerpt (PDF) I remember those pics during what passed for sex ed at my school. Basically were used to try to scare us from not having sex as teens. Didn’t exactly work as far as I can recall.  Naturally, women’s sexual organs are the ones that they chose to make the statement with, though. Oh, double standards!

David Caradine comes and goes, and the media loves it Honestly I felt like slapping some of the more idiotic reporters.

As I wondered about the internet, I came upon funky brown chick Here are some of the posts that I like…

How to have casual sex, Cougars and Cubs: Older Women, Younger Men, Manly hot Asian Men, Manly Monday: Why Do Men Date GILFs, MILFs and Other Older Women? and How to Seduce a GILF.

And finally, in terms of book recs? S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College (Paperback) yeah it says teens but beleiv m,e, adults such as myself can learn tons from this. (Hello, fucked up sex education classes!)The author also runs a website:Scarleteen.com:Sex Ed for the real world and a blog (PS, when they say all you need to know? They MEAN it!)`Have a fun weekend!

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I wasn’t very pleased with Spam Karma — it let some obvious spam through, and blocked our “recent comments” sidebar from working — so I’ve gone back to Akismet, this time modified by Simple Spam Filter. In theory, if you write a post that Akismet thinks is spam, you should now have a chance to prove that you’re human by filling out a capcha (using the recapcha system, which uses crowdsourcing to digitize books).

Please let us know if you spot any bugs in the system.

There’s been a change in how we’re blocking spam — In an attempt to address the “false positives” problem, I’ve switched “Alas” from Akismet to Spam Karma. Hopefully it will now be possible for people to post links in their comments!

As always, if you run into problems or think a comment has been spam-blocked, please contact us right away so we can rescue your comment. Also, I believe Spam Karma has a “whitelist” option, so if regular commenters find their comments being blocked we’ll be able to fix that. (I hope).

(Image from stgermh).

Blame Wordpress. I didn’t intend to link race and class issues today. In fact, I was feeling much more lighthearted. Then I hit the wrong button and everything was gone. And unlike LJ, you have to actually press the draft button to get anything saved. So I got grumpy and pissed off. Went to soothe my annoyance with some kirk/mccoy slash…and when I returned, found the links leading me to a heavier theme. oops. I shall strive to collect lighthearted stuff next week, I promise….

Massachusetts decides to curtail healthcare coverage for 30,000 legal Immigrants Huh. And in a progressive state too. Funny thing how budget cuts never seem to affect the military industry, but somehow human resources are blithely targeted. Interesting priorities we’ve got here.

Generation R(ecession)

In the press this week were intriguing portraits of young people finishing high school during turbulent economic times, stories that individually — and especially collectively — illustrate the powerful ways in which starting points shape one’s life trajectory.

The Nouveau Poor, The Working poor The New York Times has been lately consumed with profiling the straits that the obscenely rich have now plummeted to, now that they can no longer afford that extra yacht or whatever. Contrast that that, of course, with those of us whose health care is caput, or whose children are suddenly on free lunches, or who have lost their homes entirely….

Teaching With UrgencyThe difference between teaching in a school with resources as opposed to a school with little or none.

Teachers File Racial Discrimination Suit Against Obama Administration’s School “Turnaround” Plan What I want to know, is how exactly does the United States expect to remain on top when it keeps squandering all its human resources like this? Commons sense would tell you that this is BS. Then again, educating the young does not make megabucks. Unlike creating weapons of mass destruction.

On the rec list for today is RaceWire a blog that you all should be reading. Here’s a selection:

Food Inc. Shines a Light on the Immigrant Labor That Makes That 99c Patty Melt Possible [VIDEO]

University of California Regents Vote to Give Honorary Degrees to Interned Japanese American Students

Race Wire goes to teh Movies: Harry Potter Edition

What Race Really Has to Do with The CA Central Valley’s Fight for Water

While all of that is going on, Adam Sheppard, a college educated, able-bodied young white straight single American, decided to prove that you can too, pull yourself up by your bootstraps! (With a credit card in your back pocket just in case. And the ability to get off the experiment when your dad gets ill. But I digress.) Naturally, he got a book deal I, having had quite enough of the BS, dug up the following series (sparked by teh wide interest in the introduction to the priviledge checklist to teh blogosphere) by Racialicious last year.Has Class Trumped Race Part 1 Part Two Part Three And they address some of his shenanigans here.Part Three Point Five From the same period:Has Class Trumped Race? From The Rickshaw Diaries

Book of the week: Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization This is one of the best books on immigration that I have read so far. Here’s an interview with the author and here’s an excerpt. Have yourselves a good week!

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But Verb Noire needs to raise some cash to defray the expenses of WorldCon. We thought we could bridge the gap out of pocket, but money is tight and my kid’s face is expensive. So, we’re hoping book sales, merch sales, and anything else you guys want to suggest can make up the difference. We’re already putting together the second book (an anthology of short stories) and I was vaguely contemplating some sort of naming contest, but if that’s not what gets you excited then please suggest something. We really want to be there, but finding the money for attendance and such is putting a hurt on ye olde pocketbook.

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This week has been a veritable smorgasbord of RAGE-inducing reports of various incidents. Here’s some of the stuff that has been fanning the flames on the side of my face….

How I lost my health insurance at the hairstylist’sFreemarketer: “But if we offer a public option the insurance companies will go out of business!!!” Me through gritted teeth: “That would be the goddamned point!”

Organization Pays Addicted Women to Undergo Permanent Sterilization

Which Women play center court at Wimbledon, the sexy or the talented?? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.

How sexism in women’s sports is linked to homophobia

Choice Quote:

As Granderson writes:

Organizers are trying to sell their sport and believe the casual, straight male fan is more apt to watch attractive women—because if they had a love of the game, they wouldn’t be casual fans, would they? In a sport in which Anna Kournikova, a player without a singles title, can become the most popular on tour, no one should be surprised by any of this.

While Granderson is entitled to his own opinion, that doesn’t mean he’s entitled to his own facts. We now have some definitive answers as to whether sex sells women’s sports or if it just sells sex. Dr. Mary Jo Kane, sports sociologist from the University of Minnesota, specializes in gender and sport for women and undertook a far-reaching study of images of women athletes putting their bodies on display for a wide-ranging focus group of both men and women. Kane found a very basic truth: sex may sell airport frat-porn like Maxim magazine, but it doesn’t sell women’s sports.

Kane believes these images "alienate the core of the fan base that’s already there. Women, age 18 to 55, are offended by these images. And older males, fathers with daughters, taking their daughters to sporting events to see their favorite female athletes, are deeply offended by these images."

A-fucking-men. It surely drives me up the wall when I see this everlasting unrelenting push to make women sexy no matter what the hell they are doing at the time.

Sexy and the Gender Binary Naked women are a selling point, naked men…are porn?!

Don’t know much about history…Abolition as self help movement It doesn’t help that Texas assholes want to further downplay minority civil rights leaders in the history texts. Cause they take up so much damned space already. But then the only history that counts is the history of white Americans amirite?

The Not so Hidden Politics of Class Online

How Coco Cola has fucked up India for profit

‘Cisgender’ isn’t an insult. No really, it is NOT an Insult How to check your cis priviledge Please apply the above info to this next post. Why I hate filling out forms

Horndog Billionaire: The Philanthropist Sullies A Good Man’s Name I am sick unto death of shows like these. SICK of them. Take your midlife crisis, grief, need to save the world, need to make a difference, need to fuck the natives, need to get personal fufillment, WHATEVER… and shove it.

On a less crazy-making note…

Musing on Queer People, Fandom and Slash

What does feminist urban policy look like?

Bayou has been updated.

Yellow Peril Supports Black Power

And finally…

Trailer for Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo.

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So previously, based on nothing but a nice trailer with cool music, I made a commitment to see Transformers. I am now being warned that that commitment might be a bad idea, due to my recently reached decision to sharply decrease toleration of gender and race and sexual orientation shenanigans in my entertainment. I find that many reviews of Transformers:Revenge of the Fallen are interesting in their own right, with the added bonus of NOT costing me $10 a pop. So…presented for your intellectual appetite (and the stimulation of your funny bone from time to time), here be four reviews. (Because there is apparently so much wrong that not many people managed to get it all in one review) WARE SPOILERS…

Soem Came Running focuses on Why action movies should do away with comic relief. Racialicious inquires Why is it so hard for white writers to write three dimensional characters of colour? And why oh why do they hate women of all colours?. Lj user nihilistic kid informs us:Uh film makers? You all seem to have forgotten the plot. And RogerEbert: In sum, EVERYTHING sucks!. The bottomline, of course, is that it has made a pile of cash. That phenomenon says a great, great deal about us as a society.

While we are still on the subject of the media, visit with me by way of the LJ comm Racebending, an interview with the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender circa 2005. Compare this with M. Night Shyamalan latest interview about his adaptation (named The Last Airbender to avoid conflict with the James Cameron property Avatar) Bear in mind precisely what he and his producers and Paramount have done with the characters of the film. Combine with a bit on the History of Yellow face in Hollywood. Are we going to let Paramount get away with this? Will we make this into another Transformers?

The Anxious Black Woman offers some cutting edge commentary, on race, gender, sexual orientation and pop culture. Have a taste:

From Chamber Maid to Princess: The Story is Always More Complicated

Someone’s go to tell it like it is: James Baldwin in San Francisco

The Corporate Takeover of Youtube: Why its no longer Fun

Homophobia [on American Idol]? Blame the Show, not the Voters

Reappropriate gives us an interview with Secret Identities: Parry Shen Unmasked. Mr. Shen, if you will recall, is one of the contributors to the absoultely awesome comic book anthology Secret Identities, featuring Asian Americans. She also links us to the first ever Asian American ComiCon happening on July 11 in New York. Why oh WHY does New York and California ALWAYS get the pretties??? *pouts* (Yes, I’m exaggerating. No, I don’t care.) *pouts*

And in terms of Recs: I recommend two bits of reading material today. From Girlchild press: Just Like A Girl: A Manifesta Awesome, awesome AWESOME anthology that I was just rereading today. It is so WORTH the money. Teh cover alone makes me smile! Buy a copy for yourself and any female and (male) relatives that you might have. It is THAT awesome.

I have just gotten into the world of zines. And I highly highly HIGHLY rec:Shotgun Seamstress 1, 2 and 3 from Paper Trail Distro. (Go to bottom of website. Hit “zine catalogue. Hit “Q-S”. Scroll down.) Just look at Osa (the writer’s) motto:

osa writes that her zine is “by & for black punks, queers, misfits, feminists, artists & musicians, weirdos, & the people who support us. this zine is meant to support black people who exist within predominately white subcultures, & to encourage the creation of our own.”

People? It is awesome. In fact, one of her articles got picked up by Colorlines Magazine!

Have yourselves a lovely independence weekend!

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So. Micheal Jackson is dead. I am having serious trouble processing that. I expected to hear this when I myself was much older. Not now. I wasn’t ready for now. Damn. *sigh* His songs were always there… I liked most of them, but these were my favs Stranger in Moscow and Dirty Diana May he RIP. Damn that’s so freaking surreal…

Anyway. Links.

First, the heavy posts:

Timing Is Everything: Nicolas Sarkozy Defends Women’s Rights by Restricting Them More feminism being used as a pretext for racism. Perfect.

I Didn’t Know "Rest In Peace" Came with a Citizenship Requirement! Yeah, I can’t comment on this one. Because the language I would be using is not allowable in polite company. At all.

And…with very very very STRONG TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Intersectionality and Rape There is a large conversation about rape going on on LJ and I thought that this post was a very very good compilation of links to intelligent posts on the topic.

Then, the thinky posts:

The Intersection of Race and Steampunk: Colonialism’s After-Effects & Other Stories, from a Steampunk of Colour’s Perspective [Essay] Excellent article. But Racialicious consistently brings the cool, don’t they?

Speak CD

Finally, the lighter posts:

The writer of the Steampunk article above, Jha, introduced me to the blog of one Talulah Mankiller. People. You read to be reading her. Seriously.

Take for instance her hilarious and on point eviseration of romance novel tropes in I Love My Dead Gay Husband I&II.

Orgasming Through Penetration Alone

Guys, I took Women’s Health: for most women, this just does not happen on a regular basis, if at all. It’s not because they “haven’t found the right man”; it’s because it’s often physically impossible. So please stop writing this–in some states, romance novels are what passes for sex ed. Think of the children who will one day grow up to be disillusioned, sexually frustrated adults if you keep writing this shit. Do you really want them killing you in a fit of post-coital rage? I didn’t think so.

People, speaking as someone whose expectations are STILL messed up by that pervasive bit of batshittery? I cheered! How can you not love her like I do? And she has more! See I Love My Dead Gay Husband III: Still Dead. Still Gay. And Now with Bonus Manic Episodes (especially the part about the Creamy white thighs *snerks*) and The Werewolf Ate my Homework for a dissection of the wonderful (barf-inducing) world of YA Fiction!

In terms of recs for this week? The Al Jazeera English Program Artsworld, on youtube. Its an absolutely fascinating look at art from around the world, from English gardens to Canadian DNA art to Ghanaian coffins (when I die, I want a book-shaped coffin let me tell you) to Tunisian glassblowing and tons more!

And that’s it for this week! Have yourselves a peaceful weekend!

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For some reason, we’ve seen a huge increase in spam recently — I’m not sure how many spams I’ve deleted in the last couple of days, but it’s probably over a thousand.

The more spam we get, the more likely it is that genuine comments that are accidentally caught by our spam-trap will get deleted along with the spam. To make this less likely, please let us know right away if you think a comment of yours may be stuck in the spam trap.

I know that our current anti-spam software — Akismet — has been crappy for a while. At this point, it’s basically impossible to post a link in comments without being mistaken for spam. I’m hoping to have time to deal with the problem, and institute a better spam solution, in mid-July.

Today is Octavia E. Butler’s birthday.  If she were still alive, she’d be 62 and awesome.  She wrote science fiction and fantasy, and one of her aims was to change the world with it.  I think she did.  I think she still does.

I was privileged to be Octavia’s friend, to know her and hang with her during the last years of her life.  I went shopping with her, ate at (vegetarian) restaurants with her, attended stage performances with her, sat on author panels with her.  I got me a lot of Octavia E., though of course not enough to make up for her being gone now.

Octavia was pure-D gorgeous, beautiful in every way, inside and out.  “No, I wasn’t,” I can hear her saying in my head.  “You didn’t know!”  But I did know, and so did so many other people.   At the memorial service held for her in 2006, another science fiction author who had met her and been in her presence for only one short hour was in tears as he spoke about how deeply she had affected him.  Another man who knew her in connection with her video interviews there at the Science Fiction Museum walked up to the podium, looked out at the people gathered together, said “Thank you” in a trembling voice, and walked unsteadilyback to his seat. 

People often ask me how Octavia influenced me as a writer.  I tell them that aesthetically I’m much closer to Samuel R. Delany when it comes to what I try to do.  But Octavia did affect me in two ways.  First, she emphasized how important it is for writers to tell the truth.  To find it, figure it out, dig for it if you have to, climb for it, fly for it.  Go where it is and get it and bring it back whole for your readers.  Second, she gave me money.  Over $1000.  And if you don’t think that has something to do with what I write and what I’ve been able to get written, you are not an author or any kind of artist yourself.  And if you are an artist or author of  some kind, you understand the connection intimately.

At Octavia’s memorial service in Seattle in 2006, I lit a candle in her name and poured a libation for her spirit, as is traditional in my spiritual practice.  I brought out the Christmas cards she’d sent me: a mother tiger and two cubs in the snow; Mount Rainier towering above the clouds, just the way she did.  I spoke about her early membership in the Carl Brandon Society, a nonprofit organization that supports increased representation of people of color in the fantastic genres.  And I repeated her directive, what she’d told me about her membership: “Use me,” Octavia had said.  “Use my name.”

Soon after the memorial service, a some of the many people who she had affected put together a scholarship fund in her name and gave the fund’s administration to the Carl Brandon Society.  The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund has just sent off its fifth full payment for a student of color to attend a Clarion or Clarion West Writers Workshop.  Five writers of color have been able to attend Clarion or Clarion West, the workshops where Octavia got her start as a professional science fiction author and where she taught several times.  She’s having an influence.  She’s changing the world, and I’m using her name, exactly the way she wanted me to.

If you loved Octavia, if you still love her, no matter how brief or distant your encounters with her, no matter if you knew her, rode the bus with her once, or only (”only!”) read her work, celebrate the passing of her birthday today with a smile of thanks.  And if you’re able to donate to her scholarship fund, either by sponsoring Tempest in the Clarion West Write-a-thon so that part of your contribution goes to Clarion West and part to the fund, or by donating directly via the Carl Brandon Society’s website at www.carlbrandon.org, well, so much the better.

If you haven’t read any Octavia E. Butler yet, now’s a good time to start.  Though she’s best remembered for her novels, I adore her short story collection, Bloodchild.  If you’d really prefer a novel, I recommend you start with the last one she finished.  That’s Fledgling. 

Let me know what you think.

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And hhhhheeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeee’s your linkmistress:Unusualmusic! \o/
Today (or tonight, depending on your time frame) you get to choose from subjects as diverse as American healthcare and education debates, American history, American economy and secret service shenanigans, Famine in Africa (helped along by one Bill Gates) AND American culture! Its all about America today! (or tonight!) There are short articles, long articles, and even a podcast for your listening pleasure! There is stuff to infuriate, educate and elucidate! Step right up and lend me your brain (and tell me what you think in the comments, of course:D)

Breadline USA (Podcast) When the month is longer than the money… You need to listen to this. Really.

Let them eat cash!!!(PDF) Bill Gates says he wants to stop famine in Africa. So why is he using methods that will actually make it worse?

Guess who is recruiting unemployed Wall Street Lords of the Universe?

Nathan Bedford Forest has beautiful eyes

Single Payer vs Public Option Your handydandy easy to understand chart!

Insurance companies admit that they cancel insurance when their patients’ care will be expensive…and they tell Congress that they won’t stop it (video at link)

Out of Reach:Is College only for the rich? It would take 80 billion dollars to make public colleges free of cost.

Berea College I wonder who is footing the bill?

The Universities in Trouble

Why Can’t Those Working-Class Kids Value Education Like Our Middle-Class Kids?

“Fallen Princess” Jasmine Raises Questions About Stereotypes Frankly I think the pictures are an artistic waste of time anyway, above and beyond the stereotypes.

The 10% Fight is Back: Texas Universities want to get rid of a successful programme that sets side a guaranteed spot to the public university system to the top 10% of its high schoolers. Why?

…

Personally, I tend to need to balance the heavy duty posts with a bit of light stuff, or I tend to get depressed. With that in mind…

Movie/Book/TV Series rec of week: Royal Pains on USA Network: One of the few shows on Tele with an actress of Asian Indian descent: Reshma Shetty

Music I am jamming to: Whole Wheat Bread “Throw your sets up!”

Question of the week: Is anyone gonna watch Transformers? I am, but only because of the soundtrack. Especially 1:05. …Okay, the robots are freaking awesome too:D

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I was having a conversation a few weeks ago with a friend about some very deep subjects and in the midst of it I said something like, “We all have our Fail moments. People fuck up. Even I fail sometimes. It’s what you do when you fail that counts.” My friend said, “Can I put that on a shirt? ‘Even the ABW Fails sometimes!’” It’s totally true.

Latest example happened just a bit ago. At WisCon I had a chat with someone about a post from my personal blog that they found very troubling and problematic. And there have been other instances in the past, some of which I’m probably not aware of.  I have no illusions of being perfect and know quite well that one can be an activist or be aware of issues and very intelligent yet still mess up.

I hope that what sets me apart from people who fail badly is that I am willing to admit when I’ve messed up, put the brakes on being defensive, listen to the people I’ve hurt or offended or angered, do what I can to make recompense, and strive not to fail in that way again. I personally only got to the point of being able to do this because I’ve been so involved in ABW stuff for the past few years. I feel that I can’t ask others to walk this path unless I’m willing to walk it myself. Plus, it’s the right thing to do, and I strive to do the right things.

It is rather frustrating when I have my fail moments because I go: WTF I should know better! But life is learning, everyone makes mistakes, and living a fail-free life is probably a lot like attaining enlightenment. It requires work, a lot of looking inside yourself, a lot of time, and possibly some Yoga training.

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Hi guys!!! *waves excitedly* So Tempest requested that I introduce myself. This has been giving me a bout of writer’s block all week, because I really do hate talking about myself on the internets. Face to face, fine. Internets? Not so much. *eyerolls* However, I have decided to narrow it down to the following:

1. My name is unusualmusic

2. I read a lot.

3. I link a lot of what I read into my blog.

4. Which is the reason why Tempest asked me to be a guest blogger (which I still can’t believe! SQUUEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!) Um, Ahem.

So. Over the weekends, I’ll be providing you all with a pile of hopefully interesting links to stuff dealing with politics, int’l affairs, atheism, religion, racism, feminism, womanism, environmentalism, education, class, sexay men and women, comics, books, movies, basically any and everything that catches my interest that maybe you all might be interested in as well. Hope you enjoy it!

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A while back I saw this comic strip.  Can’t remember the name.  The setting was white suburbia, a family, which as my friend Sara points out “really narrows it down.”

The female lead of the comic strip (let’s call her Wilma) has a black friend of, shall we say, “a certain size.”  Wilma spends three panels hinting around about an exercise class to her black friend (let’s call her Joyce).   Telling Joyce the time, the location, the cost, how much fun Wilma’s having taking it.  “How very nice for you,” Joyce responds, walking away with wobble lines emanating from her large rear-end.

In case you missed it, that’s the punchline.  The joke is, see, Joyce is fat, but she doesn’t realize that about herself.  Poor Wilma is trying to help Joyce help herself, but Joyce is so deep in denial, so far up that river in Egypt, that she simply can’t be helped.

And as I read this I’m thinking, okay, what’s wrong with wobble lines?  This woman looks good to me.  Maybe she looks good to herself.  Maybe she already has an exercise program that she likes just fine.  I do.

I look a lot like Joyce.  Larger breasts, though.  I weigh more than 200 pounds.  I’m pretty sure.  I haven’t weighed myself in three weeks, but that sounds about how I feel.  I’m maybe 5 feet, 8 inches tall. 

At the Y in April, I was on the treadmill, doing my 40 minutes, all of it uphill.  The man next to me asked how much I weighed, and seemed deeply shocked at my answer.  “But you are fat!” he exclaimed.  “And you are always here, working out so hard!”  Well, yes.  I am.  I do.  And I would say I’m in shape.  Round is a shape.

I’ve subscribed for a few years to an online dating service.  I read the ads for entertainment, even when I’m not interested in meeting the men that posted them.   In the singular they’re funny; “Satisfaction guaranteed EVERY TIME,” says Marv’s headline.  There’s a man with the user name “Tumbleweed Heart,” and another whose user name is “Asslicker.”   En masse, the profiles I read are pathetic and provoking.  There are canned phrases one can use to describe both one’s physical type and the physical type one desires: “Slender, Average, Athletic, A Little Extra Padding, Rubenesque.”  I have chosen to describe myself using the ALEP option.  By far the most widely sought qualities, though, are “Slender” and “Athletic.”

Very few subscribers advertise for a specific ethnicity, but there are some of those, too.

Then there’s the men who are asking for skinny black women to email them.  I raise my voice and wave my arms at the computer screen in exasperation.  Skinny!  Black!  They exist, of course, but statistically speaking?  So do microscopically small black holes.

I think black women in the US are far more likely to be fat than women of other races.  Women are more likely to be fat than men; we’re built to store it up, cause we might need it to support a pregnancy.  And in the US blacks are often the descendants of survivors of slavery, which tilts the genetic pinball machine in favor of holding on to that fat for dear life.  Dear, dear, sweet, sweet life.

There are some who want me, right now, the way I am, so round, so firm, so fully packed.   So brimming with dear life.

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Obama has picked Sonia Sotomayor as the next Supreme Court nominee! …But already the bullshit begins:

“Judge Sotomayor is a liberal activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, an activist group. “She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.”

Riiiiiight. Like sex, race, and ethnicity doesn’t affect the decisions rendered by the white men who’ve dominated the court for all these years. Uh-huh. Yeah.

I’m too tired to really analyze this; just got back from Wiscon, where I got to meet several dozen ABW readers in person (hi, ya’ll!), and where the possibility of Sotomayor getting the nom was the subject of quite a few conversations. But I have to say, I’m bracing myself. Even though some are predicting smooth sailing in the confirmation process, I just don’t see conservatives letting this one slide, because she’s their worst nightmare. They’ve already tried to trash her by appealing to the worst intersectional stereotypes, painting her as domineering, a bully, and “not that smart”. In other words, an angry brown woman, wielding her inferior brown intellect like a girl-cootie-infested bludgeon. I predict this is only the beginning. The mouth-breather chorus has only begun to clear its throat, and I don’t want to see what it’s about to vomit up.

But for the time being, I’m just going to cheer.

Here’s an email I just sent to the ISP that hosts “Alas, a Blog.” This is regarding the cartoonist Donna Barstow, who work has been criticized on “Alas” here and here. Donna sent an email to the ISP, which the ISP forwarded to me.

Part of Donna’s complaint is that two of her cartoons have been reproduced on “Alas” (which I think is fair use). However, it’s clear that her complaints relate to the entire posts, not just the copyrighted cartoons. For example, she complains about the charge of racism, calling it “defamation.” She also quoted some other ISP’s policy against “Threats & Harassment,” which I think is misplaced, since criticizing her work is not a threat nor harassment.

The email I sent the ISP:

Dear Ben,

Thanks for forwarding Donna Barstow’s email to me.

I believe I have a first amendment right to criticize Ms. Barstow’s cartoons, including reproducing a cartoon of hers under the “fair use” provisions of copyright law.

However, I hope it will help your situation that neither cartoon she refers to is currently hosted on your server. They are both “hotlinked” from the blog but hosted on another web server. So you can honestly tell Ms. Barstow that neither of her cartoons are on your servers, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with your ISP. I hope that will convince her to stop bothering you.

It is my understanding that political criticism of published, publicly available cartoons falls squarely under the “fair use” standard, and that I’m well within my rights to show my readers a political cartoon in order to critique its politics. As a professional political cartoonist myself, I’ve had the same thing happen to me countless times. Donna Barstow is attempting to use bullying and legal threats to shut down legitimate, legal criticism of her publicly displayed political cartoons.

I really hope you’re not going to give in to something like this. It’s a real threat to freedom of speech if ISPs are willing to remove political criticism removed from blogs if the person being criticized sends a strongly worded email.

I am certainly willing to discuss this further with you. Please email me if you have any further questions or concerns.

Best wishes,

Barry Deutsch

Related.

Too busy for analysis right now, but submitting this for your consideration. I think most of us have noticed how right-wing pundits are using racist fearmongering tactics to blame the swine flu on illegals from Mexico — even to the point of referring to it as the “Mexican flu.” The fact that the carriers were actually a bunch of prep-school kids from Queens who went to Cancun for Spring Break seems to have been lost on them. Anyway, the Guardian notes another possible source:

Early today the US owner of an industrial pig production facility around 12 miles from La Gloria said it had found no clinical signs or symptoms of swine flu in its herd or Mexican employees. The world’s biggest pig meat producer, Virginia-based Smithfield, said it is co-operating with the Mexican authorities’ attempts to locate the possible source of the outbreak and will submit samples from its herds at its Granjas Carroll subsidiary to the University of Mexico for tests.

…

Smithfield, which is led by pork baron Joseph W Luter III, has previously been fined for environmental damage in the US. In October 2000 the supreme court upheld a $12.6m (£8.6m) fine levied by the US environmental protection agency which found that the company had violated its pollution permits in the Pagan River in Virginia which runs towards Chesapeake Bay. The company faced accusations that faecal and other bodily waste from slaughtered pigs had been dumped directly into the river since the 1970s .

The outbreak of respiratory illness in the area of the Granjas Carroll plant was first detected at the beginning of this month by Veratect, a company based in Washington state which monitors the spread of disease and pandemics around the world for corporate clients.

If this is confirmed, what will the Repundits call it then? “Colonialism Cough”? “Greedy Gringo Fever”?

I’m trying to create a list of “Alas” comment-writers whose comments have been caught by our spam trap multiple times. If this has happened to you more than just once or twice, please leave a comment on this post. (And I’m now checking the spam trap a few times a day, so even if it gets considered spam I’ll see the comment eventually.)

Thanks in advance for your help.

I’ve been continuing to follow the casting controversy re “The Last Airbender” film by M. Night Shyamalan. The two main organizations of fans that arose to fight it, Aang Ain’t White and it’s sistercomm Racebending, have been working hard to try and get the word out about the casting and why it’s a problem, though they’ve run into a lot of brick walls. Some “The Last Airbender” (TLA) online communities won’t let them discuss the issue, dismissing their concerns as (wait for it… oh, whatever, you’ve heard this before) race wank. They’ve gotten no response at all from the film’s producers, beyond a vague insistence that TLA will be more diverse than the TV show was, somehow.

It took a professional advocacy group, the Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), to actually get a clear response:

The Director’s vision for this film is one of world, influenced and inspired by the Asian undertones of the series, and that is both diverse and inclusive in the make up of the four nations represented in the film’s cinematic world.

Early casting includes an Indian actor, born in Mumbai and raised in the UK and the US; a Persian actor born in Tehran and raised in the UK, Switzerland and the US; a Maori actor born and raised in New Zealand; a Korean-American actor, born and raised in Chicago; an American actress of Italian, French and Mexican heritage; among several others of varied nationalities from around the world.

The four nations represented in the film reflect not one community, but the world’s citizens. These societies will be cast from a diversity of all races and cultures.
In particular, the Earth Kingdom will be cast with Asian, East Asian and
Africans.

Emphasis mine. Now, to provide a little context for people who aren’t fans of the show and don’t realize what’s happening here:

• There are no black people in the original cartoon. I’m OK with that, actually. As a fantasy and science fiction fan and writer, I get bombarded with all-white secondary worlds all the time*. It’s kind of refreshing to see an all-PoC one, even if those P aren’t my particular C. (Plus, opens the door for all-black fantasy worlds in the future.)
• All the PoC actors mentioned above? Are going to play villains, bit parts, or extras. The three “heroic” leads are still white.
• In the cartoon, the three heroes (represented by white actors) come together from two “good” nations to fight against an evil nation (represented by the Indian actor mentioned in the letter) which is oppressing and eventually tries to “ethnic cleanse” a fourth nation (which will be represented by “Asian, East Asian, and Africans”). So with this casting, we have two nations of heroic white people fighting genocidal brown people to save other poor downtrodden brown people. And black people. Can’t forget us when you’re casting victims.

So in the name of diversity, the film’s producers are ignoring the diversity that was in the original cartoon — characters who evoked cultures as wildly disparate as the Inuit, Mayans, Indians, Koreans, Chinese, Pacific Islanders, Arabs, Japanese, Tibetan, Ainu, and probably a dozen more. They’re replacing it with “Diversity: American Style”, in which all those ethnicities get lumped together into “one community” and stripped of agency, a few black and multiracial people get sprinkled on for flavor, and white people get the best parts and the most screentime.

I cannot begin to explain how revolted I am that black people are being used to justify this shit. Fortunately, MANAA explains it for me, in their response:

After dealing with Hollywood studios for the past 17 years, we are more than familiar with the justifications used to cast white actors instead of actors of color. Other film productions have previously used the same pretexts, touting diversity through the casting of supporting roles–but only after first discriminating in casting the lead roles.
…
MANAA is a strong supporter of studios’ efforts to increase diversity, but it is absurd to use that as an excuse to make a project more white and to say the original concept wasn’t diverse enough when the cultures of the four Asian nations clearly were.

Emphasis mine again. Because that’s the thing: there weren’t any white people in the original series, either. And clearly the producers were not OK with this, despite the many, many all-white fantasy worlds that already exist. So all their “diversity” bullshit is really just a cover for their primary goal, which was to shoehorn white people into this world. But the creepiness of this goal would’ve been far too obvious if they’d only inserted white folks, so they tossed in some other races too.

There’s no conscientious commitment to diversity in this. This is diversity done as an afterthought, an excuse, something to point out and shout, “What in the world can that be?” as a distraction. Then while our backs are turned, boot PoC from primary, non-stereotypical roles into their traditional place at the back of the bus.

I want black actors to get a paycheck as much as anyone, but I don’t like seeing my people used in such a transparent ploy to hurt other PoC. That shit doesn’t help any of us.

* And I have no problem with them, either! See? I like White People Movies!

So, after a strange series of events that included Jesse Jackson kissing me on the forehead (twice!) and being in a press conference (airing this evening on Chicago stations) I’m apparently handling the viral marketing for Reduce The Rate. I’ll be pestering you all to plaster info all over creation about this movement to:

* Reduce the interest rate on all student loans to 1%.
If banks can borrow at 1% or less, then so should our students.
* Extend the grace period before loan repayment begins from 6 months to 18 months for students who graduate.
In these tough economic times, it takes a college graduate an average of 6 months to 1 year to find a job. The rules should reflect this reality.
* End the penalties assessed to schools for student loan defaults.
Schools should not be held accountable for students who don’t pay back their loans.
* Increase Pell Grants to cover the average yearly cost of a public
4 year institution instead of the amounts in the current stimulus package–$5,350 starting July 1 and $5,550 in 2010-2011

Also, if you’re in Chicago you should come out to the Town Hall meeting at Operation Push Headquarters at 6 pm this Friday. I’ll be there and you can meet all sorts of nifty folks.