There are other blog posts that I have promised to make. I’m still working on them. In the meantime, here’s a cool blog whose owner has has good links and great blog posts: Feminist Texican

Blogeando: Latinos Are Blogging, Are you Engaging Them?

Lean in close to your screen. I have something to tell you. Latinos use computers. It’s true. Know what else? There are more Latino bloggers than general market bloggers. I didn’t believe it either, but this week has seen a spate of industry reports saying exactly that and more.
Depending on the source, there is anywhere from 5.4 percent to 7.5 percent more Hispanic bloggers than whites in the U.S. The gap is due to the “liberating” effects of new technology, the skill set that online adroitness offers working-class Latinos and stay-at-home moms, and the longstanding cultural value on collectivism over individualism.
Not only are the numbers higher, but blogueros’ communities and commenters are more active and vocal than their general market counterparts. Latinos’ drive to blog is less about grandstanding and more about conversation. (Perez Hilton notwithstanding.)
In a handful of days, a trio of reports confirmed what Hispanic PR professionals have been buzzing about for years. Latinos are online and engaged more than nearly every other group (Asian-Americans are the leaders). AOL and Cheskin released their fascinating and beautifully designed Hispanic Cyberstudy on January 26, a day after BlogWorldExpo rolled out their list of power “blogueros”provided by the founder of LatISM (Latinos in Social Media). Florida State University’s Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication gave us a sneak peek at their forthcoming report about Latinos online.MORe

Intent: It’s fucking Magic!

Today, someone said a slur. It actually doesn’t matter what slur it was, because you see, he didn’t intend to hurt anyone and therefore it couldn’t possibly be a slur. Much like how intent magically protects the actions of all privileged fuckjobs, intent means that anything you say, no matter how many groups it hurts, what awful views it enables, no matter what systemic bigotries it props up through the usage of language that enforces social concepts that crush a marginalized group, it mystically negates all of that.

So if you out a trans woman? Your uncanny intent wraps around her and protects her from murder, harassment, degendering and objectification by the people you just outed her to! If you say something ableist, you’re not actually contributing to the system that demeans PWD because your intent will gird your words with alchemical shields, made of eldritch power themselves, that prevent the words from creating and furthering social associations between disability and being bad, wrong, broken or unwanted! I know? Isn’t it grand? I love magic!MORE

On gender, rape, and media narratives TRIGGER WARNING for RAPE aND ISSUES SURROUNDING IT BELOW THE CUT.

I remember Michael Mineo vividly. I wish I didn’t, but I don’t think I can ever forget that moment, as I sat alone in my apartment watching the evening news, when his humiliated face flashed upon the television screen. He had just been raped by NYPD officers and was being “interviewed” as he sobbed in his hospital bed.

My blood ran cold at that moment as I watched in sick shock. Did they really just flash a sexual assault victim’s name and face all over the news while he was in a hospital gown, crying in bed and trying to bury his face in his hand?

Yeah, they did.MORE

Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Latino Farmers Discrimination Case

The Supreme Court has refused to hear the Garcia v. Vilsack case, a lawsuit field by Mexican American farmers decades ago charging discrimination in lending and other benefit programs. The suit has lagged, neglected by government representatives, which have used legal technicalities to bar settlement.

Here’s the single, most important issue about this case: No one denies that the discrimination happened.

Yet year after year, the case keeps resurfacing without resolution. MORE

Two-Minute Movie Reviews

This did, then, leave me with this question: what would a non-stereotypical, non-sexist mainstream romantic comedy even look like?MORE

The Next Seven Generations: Reclaiming Healthy Sexuality for Native Youth

I founded the Native Youth Sexual Health Network three years ago. Being involved in sexual and reproductive health and justice affirms that we are now taking back what has been so harshly exploited, and letting it out on our own terms. I believe it is all of our responsibilities to put it out there as it once was: strong, sexy, powerful, and unapologetic.

…

Utilizing cultural competency in this work means using what we already have in our culture to empower our youth to lead healthy, strong lives. “SEX” has become such a dirty word in our communities, when, in fact, it is the foundation of all humanity and is related to every social issue on some level. The time has come to bring it back to the basics and strengthen our identities from the ground up. As I have listened to my grandmothers explain to me, sex used to be sacred and even upheld as an enjoyable part of our life as First Nations people.

Colonization, Christianization, and genocidal oppression have drastically severed the ties to traditional knowledge that would enable us to make informed choices about our sexual health and relationships. The fact is that many of our communities are reluctant to go anywhere near the topic of sexual health because it is viewed as “dirty,” “wrong,” or a “Whiteman’s thing.” We carry a long history of being sexually exploited from the early Pocahontas and Squaw days right up to the modern oversexualization of “easy” Native women that permeates so much of the media.MORE

The Continuing Conquest of Native America

I remember being horrified a few years back when Wal-Mart decided to open a store near Teotihuacan less than two miles from the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon. Wal-Mart had already begun to rule the earth back then and was poised to destroy what little bit of culture in the United States remained. Mexico was next on the list. Unlike countries such as Germany that could resist some of Wal-Mart’s power (e.g. only letting Wal-Mart in with a unionized workforce), Mexico is a poor country with a corrupt government. How could Mexicans protect their cultural values and history? Surely, building a chain virtually on the site of the pyramids would be so ridiculous that not even the corrupt or easily corruptible officials charged with approving such a project could get away with such desecration. Of course, I was wrong. Wal-Mart won approval for the site and was even allowed to level an area that contained a small temple. That temple is now the Wal-Mart parking lot. MORE

And now a word from our sponsor...

Your ad could be here, right now.

What struck me most about Kimmelman’s article, though, was not what he had to say about the similarities between what Tehran was trying to do last month and what Moscow did during the Cold War, but rather what he had to say about the differences:

The difference now isn’t just that the Tehran orchestra playing a pathetic Peace and Friendship Symphony is such a far cry from Emil Gilels playing Beethoven’s Emperor concerto. More fundamentally, it’s that a tour by an anointed symphony orchestra from the other side barely registers in the Western political consciousness. In an Internet age when everyone’s supposedly savvy to crude propaganda, the presumption seems to be that the Iranian tour doesn’t even rise to the threshold of newsworthiness.

But this presumption is a result of what the American musicologist Richard Taruskin calls a common fallacy. The fallacy, he has written, consists in turning “a blind eye on the morally or politically dubious aspects of serious music,” as if “the only legitimate object of praise or censure in art” is whether it’s good or not.

“Art is not blameless,” Mr. Taruskin writes. “Art can inflict harm.”

We take the blame-worthiness of art for granted when it comes to popular culture, criticizing Avatar, for example, for being yet one more movie about a white guy who saves a nature-loving people of color or the writers of a show like Battle Star Galactica for how they write rape into the show’s narrative; but it is good to be reminded that no art, not even classical music, is without political significance, that it too can be used as propaganda, to reinforce, or to subvert, the status quo.

In the conclusion to his review, Kimmelman quotes an Iranian businessman living in Geneva. This man was angry because he kept “seeing Ahmadinejad’s face in the music.” He said, however, that his heart “goes out to the musicians. They’re victims like the rest of us.”

Cross-posted on It’s All Connected

1. Interestingly, the piece has two different titles: “A Swiss Concert For an Audience Back in Tehran” is the print version; the online version reads, “The Sour Notes of Iran’s Art Diplomacy.”
2. And some of them are likely to be executed as well, as the government in Iran gears up to intimidate the opposition further in the days before February 11th, the anniversary of the founding of the Islamic Republic.

(Click on the image to see a bigger version).

But what if the 100-member Senate were designed to mirror the overall U.S. population — and were based on statistics rather than state lines?

Imagine a chamber in which senators were elected by different income brackets — with two senators representing the poorest 2 percent of the electorate, two senators representing the richest 2 percent and so on.

Based on Census Bureau data, five senators would represent Americans earning between $100,000 and $1 million individually per year, with a single senator working on behalf of the millionaires (technically, it would be two-tenths of a senator). Eight senators would represent Americans with no income. Sixteen would represent Americans who make less than $10,000 a year, an amount well below the federal poverty line for families. The bulk of the senators would work on behalf of the middle class, with 34 representing Americans making $30,000 to $80,000 per year.

Imagine trying to convince someone — Michael Bloomberg, perhaps? — to be the lonely senator representing the richest percentile. And what if the senators were apportioned according to jobs figures? This year, the unemployed would have gained two seats. Think of the deals that would be made to attract that bloc!

Or how about if senators represented particular demographic groups, based on gender and race? White women would elect the biggest group of senators — 37 of them, though only 38 women have ever served in the Senate, with 17 currently in office. White men would have 36 seats. Black women, Hispanic women and Hispanic men would have six each; black men five; and Asian women and men two each. Women voters would control a steady and permanent majority — making, say, discriminatory health-care measures such as the Stupak Amendment and the horrible dearth of child-care options for working mothers seem untenable.

So in total, there would be 51 female Senators in this made-up world, compared to 38 who have ever been in the Senate in reality, or the 17 current female senators.

One thing that Lowrey didn’t bring up: religious representation. There would be fewer Jews in the Senate, alas — 2 (rounding up) rather than the current 13. About 50 senators would be Protestant, and 25 would be Catholic. 1 would be Muslim. About 15 Senators wouldn’t identify with any organized religion at all; I’m not sure how many of those would be openly atheist, or openly agnostic. (Source).

What redeems my faith in the system is the fact that every so often, a politician comes along who actually exceeds my expectations, who comports themself the way we expect a politician to — without fear of losing, with more of a focus on the people they represent than the next election. The late, great Sen. Paul Wellstone, DFL-Minn., was one of those politicians. He ran a spirited campaign and talked a good show, but once elected he backed up his words with actions. He walked the talk.

And now, the man who holds his seat in the Senate is doing the same thing.

On Tuesday, Sen. Al Franken, DFL-Minn., served as the keynote speaker for the NARAL Pro-Choice America Roe v. Wade anniversary luncheon. And his remarks to the group were outstanding. Franken gave a full-throated, unapologetic defense of the right of women to choose their own reproductive destinies — and did so with both humor and grace. I haven’t found a video of the event yet — if I do, I’ll post it — but the transcript is exactly what pro-choice Democrats want to hear from our public officials. Here’s a selection:

Shortly after I (finally) became a Senator, I was appointed to the Judiciary Committee.

At first I thought: Well, this is weird. I’m not a lawyer. How am I going to ask the right questions?

But I did some research and discovered most Americans aren’t lawyers. It’s true.

And so to me, the right questions aren’t the ones a lawyer would necessarily ask. They’re questions the American people would ask.

And that’s what I did in my first hearing. It just happened that my first hearing was a high profile one: the Judiciary Committee was considering the nomination for Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.
[...]

Let me set it up a bit. The day before, one of my Republican colleagues had been - I guess the right word is “hectoring” - Judge Sotomayor, repeatedly asking her whether the word “abortion” appeared anywhere in the Constitution.

Of course, it doesn’t. But whether it does or not is beside the point. So she answered by speaking to the question behind the question. But finally after being asked for the third time, Judge Sotomayor replied, “No. The word ‘abortion’ is not in the Constitution.”

Which my colleague treated as an “Aha!” moment.

So the next day, I felt compelled to follow up.

I brought up her exchange with my colleague from the previous day, and then asked, “Do the words ‘birth control’ appear anywhere in the Constitution?”

“No, they don’t,” Judge Sotomayor replied quite correctly.

“How about the word ‘privacy?’ Does that appear anywhere in the Constitution?”

She said. “No, the word ‘privacy’ isn’t in the Constitution either.”

I think you can see where I was going. And so could everyone in the hearing room.

You know, there are a lot of words that express bedrock constitutional principles – words like federalism, checks and balances, and separation of powers – that never appear in the Constitution. That doesn’t mean that the Constitution didn’t set up a federalist system, enumerating certain express powers to the federal government and reserving certain powers for the states. And it doesn’t mean that the Constitution didn’t set up a system of “checks and balances” by creating the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, granting each certain powers, creating what is well known as a “separation of powers.”

And even though the word “privacy” does not appear in the Constitution, the Court has long recognized a protection for privacy.

And that is why I followed my questions about the words “birth control” and “privacy” to ask whether Judge Sotomayor agreed that the Court had held that the Constitution created not just a right to privacy, but that it was also established precedent that women had a right to choose to have an abortion.

She said, yes, that was established precedent. That it was settled law. And she agreed that the job of a Supreme Court justice was not to make new law from the bench.

You know, it’s funny. Whenever a Republican runs for the Senate or for president and is asked, “What do you look for in a prospective Justice for the Supreme Court?” Republicans always answer, “I want a judge that doesn’t make law from the bench.”

[...]

In the last year alone….

We saw Representative Bart Stupak use the health care bill as a bludgeon, restricting women’s health choices in a bill that was meant to expand them.

We watched with frustration as the Supreme Court overturned a century’s worth of precedents to further their conservative activist agenda.

We are watching as the Senate continues to block Dawn Johnsen’s confirmation to a critical role at the Department of Justice because of her pro-choice views.

And we saw Dr. Tiller murdered at church… AT HIS CHURCH…. murdered for the choice he provided for women.

I want to thank Dr. Sella for being here today, and I want to join you in honoring his memory.

And that’s why the work you do at NARAL is indispensible. Because the forces on the other side are persistent, single-minded, and even violent.

A woman’s right to choose is never fully won. It must be won anew every day, every year, every Congress, and every generation.

Even though most Americans support abortion rights, even though most Americans understand that no woman ever plans an unwanted pregnancy, that no woman ever thinks she’ll have to make such a painful and personal choice, those who would deny that choice press on, undeterred.

In a lot of ways that fight is going to be incremental. In 2007 – after Justice O’Connor’s departure, we saw the Roberts Court reject the longstanding precedent that an exception for a woman’s health must be a component of any law that restricts abortion rights.

Even when the woman’s health includes her reproductive health. That’s what Dr. Tiller did so often in his work. Perform abortions on fetuses that would not be viable outside the womb in order to protect a woman’s ability to bear children in the future. Ironically, what could be more pro-life?

[...]

Now, let me say that there are millions of people in this country who have a sincere objection to abortion, and much of that is based on strongly held religious conviction. And I respect that. In America, we respect each other’s religious beliefs. But we are not governed by them.

It’s called the “separation of church and state,” a phrase which, like “separation of powers,” does not appear in the Constitution, but which is created just as clearly in the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

So to those people whose religious conviction leads them to a moral opposition to abortion, I say that’s your right, that’s your choice. Don’t have an abortion. But also, do everything you can to work together with us to diminish the reasons we have abortions.

Support comprehensive sex education and access to affordable family planning services. Support funding for maternal child health programs, WIC, and affordable child care so new mothers have security and the resources they need to raise a healthy child.

Oh yeah, and support comprehensive affordable health care for all.

[...]

I want to leave you today with a story. It’s one that should sound familiar to the millions of women across this country who understand in a very personal way the importance of protecting women’s reproductive rights.

The story is about a Minnesotan named Kim. Kim was a 19-year-old single mother. She was struggling to make ends meet, working full time as a receptionist. Her daughter had health insurance through the state, but she did not. Her boyfriend, her daughter’s father, was extremely abusive.

She was getting the pill through Planned Parenthood at a reduced rate, but after her car broke down, she couldn’t afford that either.

One day her boyfriend demanded that they have sex, but refused to use a condom. He threatened her. She was too afraid to say no. And she ended up pregnant.

She said, “Abortion was absolutely the right choice for me at that time… Had I stayed in that relationship and brought another child into the mix, I would have continued the cycle of abuse and poverty.”

“Making the decision to stop the cycle [allowed me] to concentrate on my daughter and ensure that she will have the financial and emotional stability to go to college and live a successful, happy life. Women need options, women need choices.”

I am here to ask you to keep up the fight, for Kim, and for every woman who has learned – and will learn – that women need options and choices.

Thank you for the work you’ve done – and are continuing to do — to stand up for women’s rights.

I’m proud to stand with you.

I know that’s a long excerpt, but it is as eloquent a defense of the right to choice as any I’ve seen. And it comes during a three-decade run in which Democrats have been almost embarrassed to support a woman’s right to choose, in which we’ve run away from support for abortion rights, even as we paid lip service to them.

Franken’s speech is something we need to hear out of more Democrats. Abortion rights are fundamental rights, because women — as humans — have a fundamental right to control their bodies. It’s nice to hear my junior senator say so.

So much fail, so little time. Is it the way Fiorina suggests that good fiscal conservatives are mindless sheep? The way she attacks Campbell for deficits while simultaneously attacking him for supporting tax hikes that might have ameliorated them? No, truly the best part of the ad is the Demon Sheep Itself:

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Incidentally, the title of this post comes courtesy of Cake:

Which brings me to something I should have mentioned; I now have a collaborator on Hereville. Mr. Jake Richmond, my friend and housemate and excellent cartoonist, illustrator and game designer, is coloring Hereville. Thanks, Jake!

Anyway, here’s a preview page:

You can see a larger image of the page here.

For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors.

This isn’t true. As the Democrat’s health care reform bill — which was projected to lower the deficit — showed, it is quite possible to propose significant new domestic initiatives even within the limitations of a deficit. The big limitation is political, not fiscal.

Click to see it bigger.

Some thoughts:

• The show went down hill a lot in the last three episodes I think (after a run of truly fantastic episodes). Possibly it was a mistake to try and take the show that far into the story. Epitaph 2 was, in the end, a more powerful ending to the future than what we got, I think if they had tried to tell less of a story it would have been more effective.
• I take back anything mean I’ve ever said about Eliza Dushku - she was great all the way through these end episodes.
• The portrayal of Keith Harding rather marred the finale and the ideas about people’s relationship with food it portrayed was really depressing. It must suck so much to believe that your appetite is all consuming and you must control it at all times, because being fat would be horrendous.
• Sierra & Victor 4 eva.
• The second to last episode was really incoherent - I can’t even work up the will power to get offended at the worst bits (mostly stuff involving Paul Ballard), because it made no sense.
• I thought it was neat that Mag was into girls - but it would have been even neater if Zone hadn’t talked about it so much (although I liked the point that they were making that these people had fought together and knew so little about each other).
• The Attic was good, but sub-Restless, and had even skeevier politics around race.
• When Paul died we burst into applause - but why the hell won’t they let him stay dead.
• How did Topher become my favourite character?

I really enjoyed Dollhouse, but don’t think that the last few episodes celebrated what I loved most about it.

To them, I dedicate this. (Originally posted on my own blog, http://magistrate.dreamwidth.org/.)

Hey, college- and grad-school-age friends of mine, which, to be honest, could cover everyone I know who’s reading this blog. (Except, perhaps, for those of you who have already obtained your graduate degrees, but one never knows. You might be looking for more.) I want to pose a simple exercise to you:

Let’s say that you were scoping out colleges to apply to. Could be for an undergraduate degree, could be for a writing workshop, a Masters program, a PhD program, a few one-off classes in a summer session, whatever. You’re shopping around, you’re thinking of campus visits, you’re calling up admissions offices and asking for pamphlets. It’s a good time. Here’s the exercise.

I want you to take out a piece of paper, or boot up a copy of TextEdit or NotePad, of just toss some thoughts around in the back of your mind, and answer this: what are the things you look at in deciding where to go?

How about things like cost? Availability of scholarships and student aid is a big thing, availability of student jobs. In-state vs. out-of-state tuition is a deciding factor for a lot of people, I know.

Location? Will it be close enough to visit family? Will it be close enough that they’ll expect you home every weekend?

The programs, obviously, should be a major factor. What’s the learning environment like? Do they have an engaged faculty in the stuff you want to learn? A complete department, or a few professors teaching classes on it here and there? How does one school’s program stack up against the others’?

Hmm. The campus itself should be a concern. Is it walkable? Bikeable? Does it feel like you’re going to be living in a bustling downtown, or a manicured garden?

And the city. Are the local politics conservative or liberal? Is it a metropolis or a hamlet? Is there an arts scene? Shopping? Public transportation?

All of the above sounds fairly reasonable, right?

What else do you think about?

Take some time.

…

…

…

How’s this: when you’re looking through schools and programs, do you stop to think, If I go down here, am I going to be in danger because of the color of my skin? Do you wonder if you’ll have to worry about getting profiled or pulled over if you drive somewhere? Do you think, if I get into something and the cops are called, are they going to be biased against me?

Do you wonder if you’re going to have to fight a constant battle against people’s preconceptions of you – your intelligence, your citizenship, your economic status, your language skills?

Do you wonder if you’ll be othered or tokenized, if your race will become a big issue because diversity on campus is low, or if you’ll face an expectation to associate with people of your own race or be considered a race traitor? Do you worry that you’ll become someone’s “black friend” or “Latino friend” or “Asian friend” or any other “attribute friend”?

Do you wonder what percentage of your time is going to be spent educating others about your race, your racial history, or the nation of your perceived origin? Do you wonder which of your actions will be taken as reflecting your race as a whole? Do you wonder if people will expect certain things from you, culturally, interest-wise, background-wise, because of your race?

Do you worry that you’ll be forced to mis-represent your race – say, as “black” when you are in fact biracial – when filling out official forms, because no accurate category exists for you?

Do you wonder if exchange programs have provisions for your safety, if you were to go out of the country? If, say, you wanted to study in Moscow, where race crimes sextupled in early 2008, would the program have people who would know how best to protect you? Or would you be allowed to go?

Are these concerns for you?

If these thoughts haven’t crossed your mind when looking at those programs, if you’ve never had (at the bare minimum) a list of options in your life cut apart by these concerns, then you experience a kind of privilege I have never had. And if you think I’m blowing this out of proportion, that I’m being overcautious in worrying about these things, let me tell you a few stories.

My father got into a minor car accident once, and when the police arrived on the scene, they determined that he was at fault. This was either a rear-ending or a sideswiping of his car, mind you. He decided to contest the matter and took it to court; on walking in, his first day, he discovered that the court had assigned him a Spanish translator, despite the fact that he didn’t speak Spanish (our surname is recognizable as a Yoruba – that is, Nigerian – name, and resembles a Spanish/Latino surname not at all), and despite the fact that he was a professor of English at the University of Nebraska.

Once, when I was riding in a friend’s car, she was pulled over for something like a broken taillight. At one point she got out of the car to talk to the officer who had pulled her over, and when she got back in, she told me that the officer had asked her if I spoke English. This happened in Iowa City, which is for the most part a very friendly, liberal town. Bear in mind that when this happened, I was studying at the University – an institution of about 30,000 students in a town of about 67,000 altogether. Bear also in mind that I was born and raised in Nebraska, and English is in fact the only language I fluently speak.

I had a good friend in high school, a fellow member of the Speech & Debate team, who mentioned one day after 9/11 that he’d been accosted in a store by a man who had told him, “We don’t want your kind here.” He was an Indian Hindu, which didn’t seem to matter; he’d been othered because he was nonwhite, lumped into a group he had no relation to, and harassed. In his case it was only verbal, but that’s not always true.

Racism is not over, folks. It’s become a bit quieter, but it’s still virulent. The three stories above all happened to me and people I personally knew, in Lincoln and Iowa City, which are known for being friendly places. That’s not even scratching the surface of places where it does get loud, where it does get violent, where it’s systematized, where it’s routine.

Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as white privilege. And male privilege, and cisgender privilege, and able-bodied privilege, and heterosexual privilege, and educational privilege, and economic privilege, and national privilege, and thin privilege, and a hell of a lot of other kinds. And if you never have to think about them, that probably means you have them. And you can say that you never have to think about them. But don’t you dare try to tell me they don’t exist.

The first is My new job, and the second is Another post about parental notification. They’re important, frightening, infuriating. They are better than my writing about them. Stop reading this post, and go read those posts. If you need more convincing, here are summaries and discussions of Jacobs’s posts, which will hopefully inspire you to actually click through, which you need to do.

Jacobs has a new job, helping female minors who — for whatever reason — can’t tell their parents that they need an abortion get a judicial bypass so they can negotiate notification laws.

This is a subject that’s not just of activist interest to Harriet Jacobs:

After I ran away, I developed an intense interest in medical rights and access. If I got pregnant, as a teenage runaway not in the system, could I get an abortion? It wasn’t an academi subject, and every time I read a newspaper article about a new restrictive law for minors, I got physically ill. I searched out information on DIY abortions, along with DIY dentistry and medical interventions, all things I wasn’t sure I could get if I needed them. I came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t be able to perform an abortion by myself, much like I couldn’t perform dentistry for myself, but if it came down to it, I was pretty sure I could figure out how to fuck up bad enough to go to the emergency room but not bad enough to kill myself. That would be enough to force the hand of doctors, insurance agents, and the law, and I could get the care I needed with hopefully few remaining injuries. I just want to emphasize: I had nights where I forced myself through methodical daydreams about how I would pull teeth out of my own head with pliers, because I felt I had to be mentally prepared to injure myself enough to acquire medical attention without my father’s permission. I had nights where I reviewed where I could most quickly acquire the tools to create a failed abortion, if I had to get up out of bed and run to do it right that minute; I knew, somewhere in me, that not having sex with Flint wasn’t an option if I also wanted food and a bed to sleep in once I turned 18, so I had to be prepared for the consequences of that. So I hope you can understand why I am 100% against restrictions on minors acquiring medical care without parental notification or consent; this is not an academic or moral or legal or ethical issue for me. This is a body memory of where the closest places to buy knitting needles are, and how late those places are open, and who I could potentially con five dollars out of, and what excuse I could give them.

What kind of girls does Jacobs work with?

yeah, these girls are caught in a nasty political intersection of harassment, laws, exploitation, lack of resources, sexism, racism, ageism, classism – but they’re also teenagers. And teenagers are fucking obnoxious. Teenagers show up late. Teenagers get lost. Teenagers wander off when you’re talking to them because they want to get some candy. Teenagers drag their feet and call you a loser when you tell them you’re an hour late because of them and could you just hurry. Teenagers won’t hang up their phone when you’re trying to get them to sign a Very! Important! document. Teenagers interrupt the judge and roll their eyes…

Sometimes teenagers are awesome. We had a girl the other day who was just completely on top of her shit… She was also white and apparently middle-class — had a cell phone, designer clothes, fake tan, was obviously involved in sports or some other kind of fitness (the space and equipment to get fit isn’t free, especially in the winter), and drove a car, meaning she both has access to a car and access to somebody who taught her how to drive, two things that aren’t easy to acquire when you’re underprivileged. From some things she said, she had obviously researched the laws and knew her rights, likely meaning she had access to a computer and the internet, the knowledge to use them, and some degree of privacy. She was comfortable dealing with professional adults asking her very personal questions, comfortable to the degree where I heard raucous laughter coming from the interview room as they yukked it up. That girl had a lot of privilege, and it came through for her when she needed it…

When speaking with the privileged girl, I was struck by how confident, outgoing, and funny she was. I thought to myself, I can see why somebody wanted to be with you. I can see why somebody wanted to have sex with you. And then I think about the girls who are curled up in the corner, who look or are twelve, who do not respond, who do not make eye contact, who are quiet and frightened, and I think, who in the world wanted to have sex with you? I’m not trying to say that these girls don’t have wonderful qualities, that they are ugly or unlovable. What I am saying is, who is looking at a twelve-year-old who is frightened of her own shadow and saying, that’s who I want to stick my dick in?

Statistically, I know who is thinking this, and it’s older men. Predators. The younger the girl is, the more likely that it’s a family member thinking this. And, legally and morally, it’s rapists.

Unfortunately, the rape exception that would provide these underage girls with access to abortions without either notification or judicial bypass — well, it doesn’t work. It was designed not to work.

a girl can’t just say she was raped and get a free bypass. She has to report her rape to the police. And since the police are going to tell your parents anyway, well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

This isn’t the only nasty surprise buried in these supposedly family-friendly notification laws. The whole code has been set up nebulously so that it is poorly defined, making it difficult or impossible to navigate at some points. Jacobs documents the process that a girl seeking judicial bypass might go through, noting places where she was surprised by how legislative or legal constraints place create sometimes immovable barriers. For instance:

Just because a service is required by law doesn’t mean there is anybody available to provide it… Lots of judges refuse to process judicial bypasses. It’s not a requirement; judges are not forced to take every case presented. Many judges have no idea how to process a judicial bypass — they’ve never been trained.

Or:

The law does not clearly state how to establish maternity or paternity. However, the law does clearly state rather extensive punishments for the clinic or doctor who performs an abortion without having established maternity or paternity of the minor. Thus, clinics may enact excessive bureaucratic measures to ensure beyond any legal doubt that a minor’s parents are actually a minor’s legal parents. So, you can (and do) have the situation where a girl’s mother and father come to the clinic with her, but do not have IDs, social security cards, or birth certificates, so the clinic sends the girl to the courthouse, since she is legally unable to notify her parents, who are standing next to her.

Or:

She can appeal the judge’s decision, though, right? Yes, technically. She has the right to a public defender. But, again, the right to a service does not guarantee access to a service. In my state, public defenders refuse to take these cases anymore. Initially, they stopped taking them because they were never really required; most judges give the girls the bypass, unless they feel there’s coercion going on. But once they had stopped taking them, they ran out of defenders who were trained to take bypass cases. Additionally, taking these cases looks bad for them. You’d think a public defender — who may also, in their lifetime, defend people who have committed abhorrent crimes — would not be so concerned with public perception, but when was the last time a building that provided rehabilitative services to sex offenders bombed, or had their therapists shot in church?

So, a girl has the right to a public defender, but if there are no public defenders available, she has no access to her rights.

It all comes infuriatingly down to this single, inescapable conclusion:

If the new law does not explicitly identify standards and procedures, and if it does not explicitly identify service providers, and if those service providers do not actually exist in your community, you now have a pretty good idea of the intentions of the lawmakers. Passing a law that is undefined and inaccessible is passing a law you don’t want to see enforced. When lawmakers passed this notification law, they didn’t want girls to actually be able to acquire bypasses. They didn’t even care if girls notified their parents. If they had cared about these things, the law would have actually addressed what “notification” means, what “parents” mean, and who provides bypasses. It did not address these things, because these were not the things lawmakers actually wanted to see happen. The lawmakers purposefully made a law where it is impossible to ensure compliance, but is entirely possible to be punished for non-compliance. They made it this way because they did not want to see compliance. They wanted to see a full stop…

You can argue that the lawmakers had some kind of noble intentions in mind — I will not buy it, but you can argue that. But you cannot argue that once the law has been in effect and created an inability to comply, and yet remained unchanged. If this was a law about notifying parents, it would have addressed how to notify parents. If this was a law about how to seek a bypass, it would have addressed how to seek a bypass. Since it didn’t address either of those things, this is obviously a law about something else. You only get one guess about what that something else is.

Go read Harriet Jacobs’s post about her new job, and her second post about parental notification.

So this whole thing with Chris Matthews “forgetting that Obama is black” falls into that same range of racism as “Pretty for a black girl” and the “You’re not like those other black people” claptrap often espoused by the “I’m not racist, but…” crowd. They’re coded as compliments, but the subtext is still an ugly one that frames racism as being the fault of the oppressed. After all, if we’d all just be a credit to our race then our problems would go away right? Right. Oh wait, no that’s completely wrong.

Let me give you a quick history lesson on American race relations and what can happen when black people in this country are just going about their business. We can start with Rosewood, Florida. Now let’s move on to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and of course the riots that broke out right here in Chicago. What’s that? Oh, you think the early 20th century is ancient history? Okay. Let’s talk about a Baptist church in Selma, Alabama. Still too far in the past? Okay. Let’s come forward to cases like Lenard Clark’s or Abner Louima’s. Or this one on New Year’s Day 2010.

This incidents are as much a part of America’s racial history as the “I have a Dream” speech, traffic lights (invented by Garret A. Morgan, peanut butter, open heart surgery (successfully pioneered by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams), and all the other positive moments like the election of President Obama. I’ve heard people that claim to be colorblind (or post-racial) insist that the future hinges on seeing people without including race. Of course their future seems very…pale with some of the same people complaining about the continuing existence of institutions like the NAACP, HBCU’s, and other organizations that predate the Civil Right’s Movement.

I’ll buy that part of the problem is the failure of our educational system to teach history comprehensively, but that’s not the only reason for these attitudes. America’s efforts to “transcend” race are still about America’s efforts to forget the past entirely and of course to ignore anything happening right now that might require confronting reality. Racism isn’t going to go away as long as we try to pretend that ignoring race is a solution. The idea that race is something for POC to overcome is the equivalent of buying racism a new costume to replace the old hood.

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It turns out that, based on her own words, Pam Tebow’s life was never in jeopardy at all during her pregnancy.

The reporting comes from Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check:

During a bible study class, Pam Tebow related that “during that pregnancy, a Philippine doctor suggested that she abort the fetus because the strong medications she was being treated with for amoebic dysentery, which she had contacted early in the pregnancy, could cause serious disabilities to the fetus.”

Suggested that she abort the pregnancy? Or laid out the various risks that were possible, leaving her to her own judgment and choices? Made a definitive judgment that the fetus would unquestionably be harmed? Or described the risks of the medication necessary to treat the dysentery, including possible risks to the fetus? All of these are very different scenarios than the ones earlier suggested.

[...]

This indeed changes the whole narrative, and makes even more suspicious the trotting out of Pam Tebow as an anti-choice spokesperson.

First, as someone who herself had to be on strong medication during both of the pregnancies with my now 10- and 13-year old children, and indeed whose own health was at serious risk, the issue of “risks that could cause” problems is very different than receiving a definitive diagnosis either that something is proved to be wrong or that this pregnancy might or will kill you.

This is quite a different story than “My doctor told me that my pregnancy would kill me, but I ignored him and now America’s been blessed with a quarterback.” And quite a bit less powerful. And ultimately, the story still boils down to Pam Tebow having a choice — a choice she and Focus on the Family would deny others.

Ultimately, if you have to lie to convince others of your beliefs, it’s your beliefs that need to be examined. Pam Tebow has now been caught in at least two lies. I think that tells us in no uncertain terms just how weak her case is — and how much credence needs be given to it.

Howard Zinn wrote an essay The Optimism of Uncertainty. He argued that history should give us hope, not because it guaranteed that the powerless would win (it really doesn’t), but because it showed extraordinary, unpredictable change is possible. The Civil Rights Movement, particularly SNCC, is an example of the unpredictability of hope. On the 1st of February 1960, Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain, sat down at the counter of their local Woolworth’s and refused to be served. Nobody could have predicted what would grow out of that action.

There have been so many attempts to hide the history of collective resistance, including the reduction of the the freedom movement SNCC was part of to someone sitting down on a bus and someone else giving a great speech. Howard Zinn wrote history like it mattered, because he wanted to cultivate the hope that history brings.

I have a post up at Ecstatic Days explaining my methodology for creating a reading list, and a few other points about what went into creating my list of nominees and recommendations.

Here are the nominees and recommendations themselves.

My short story nominations
“Bridesicle” by Will McIntosh, Asimov’s Science Fiction
“Remembrance is Something Like a House” by Will Ludwigsen, Interfictions 2
“The Mermaids Singing Each to Each” by Cat Rambo, Clarkesworld
“The Godfall’s Chemsong” by Jeremiah Tolbert, Interzone
“Non-Zero Probabilities” by N. K. Jemisin, Clarkesworld

Highly Recommended Stories
“Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts” by Benjamin Francisco, Realms of Fantasy*
“Nine Sundays in a Row” by Kris Dikeman, Strange Horizons**
“Reading by Numbers” by Aidan Doyle, Fantasy Magazine
“Spar” by Kij Johnson, Clarkesworld
“Marsh Gods” by Ann Leckie, Strange Horizons**
“Superhero Girl” by Jessica Lee, Fantasy Magazine**

Recommended Stories
“Turning the Apples” by Tina Connolly, Strange Horizons
“The Score” by Alaya Dawn Johnson, Interfictions 2
“A Song to Greet the Sun” by Alaya Dawn Johnson, Fantasy Magazine
“Endangered Camp” by Ann Leckie, Clockwork Phoenix 2
“…That Has Such People In It” by Jennifer Pelland, Apex Digest
“Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut” by Cat Rambo, Strange Horizons
“Water Museum” by Nisi Shawl, Filter House
“The Moon Over Tokyo through Leaves in the Fall” by Jerome Stueart, Fantasy Magazine
“Light on the Water” by Genevieve Valentine, Fantasy Magazine
“Bespoke” by Genevieve Valentine, Strange Horizons
“The Olverung” by Steven Woodworth, Realms of Fantasy**

Tiptree Nominated Stories
I also nominated three of these stories for the Tiptree — “The Mermaids Singing Each to Each” by Cat Rambo (Clarkesworld), “Godfall’s Chemsong” by Jeremiah Tolbert (Interzone), and “A Song to Greet the Sun” by Alaya Dawn Johnson (Fantasy Magazine)

—
*This story would have been one of my five nominees except for the conflict of interest created by its appearance on PodCastle during my tenure as editor.
**These stories also appeared in PodCastle during my tenure as editor.

–

“The Mathematics of Faith” by Jonathan Wood, Beneath Ceaseless Skies — deleted from a previous version of this list because it is a novelette.

Now, there are many directions one could go with this news. One could note that the United Church of Christ was not allowed to run an ad during the Super Bowl because one of its arguments — that homosexuals are human — was “too controversial.” One could note that anti-Bush ads were routinely rejected as “too political.” One could note the fact that the founder of Focus on the Family, James Dobson, has advocated that men shower with young boys to show off their penises. (I am not making this up.)

But the direction I choose to go is different. You see, while Pam Tebow may have been advised by doctors to seek an abortion, she’s leaving a very big background piece unstated: abortion is illegal in the Philippines.

“Well,” you say, “this is different. I mean, her life was in jeopardy, so obviously, that was legal.” Au contraire. The Philippine criminal code makes no exception for life or health of the mother. Had Pam Tebow had an abortion, she could have been jailed, as could her physician and anyone else who assisted her.

Now, that doesn’t mean Pam Tebow is lying. There are about 470,000 abortions performed annually in the Philippines, and about 80,000 women hospitalized for complications of abortion. 12 percent of all maternal deaths in 2000 were due to unsafe abortons, of course, because abortion is illegal — but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. As anyone with a rudimentary understanding of abortion policy knows, outlawing abortion doesn’t stop abortion. It just makes it much less safe.

But this is an important part of the story that Pam and Tim Tebow are ignoring. Because the organization they’re supporting — Focus on the Family — is virulently anti-abortion, and supports making it illegal. But by Pam Tebow’s own admission, outlawing abortion didn’t stop her Filipino physician from recommending it. She had a choice — but one that was more dangerous than it had to be, one that could have had legal repercussions for her and her family.

Understand, I don’t begrudge Pam Tebow if she would have made that choice freely. The whole point of pro-choice is that it places the ultimate decision to continue or abort a pregnancy with the woman who is pregnant. Pam Tebow was willing to risk her life to bring her son into the world. That was her choice.

But doubtless, there are Filipinas who even today are in the same grave position Pam Tebow was in, who would like to make their own informed choice, but who are not American and lack the connections and relative wealth Tebow had. Some may choose to carry to term. Some may choose an abortion. But all of them deserve to make that choice based on the dictates of their own consciences, without fear of jail or death.

Ultimately, Pam and Tim Tebow want to limit the right of women to decide what happens in their own bodies. And to do so, they’re willing to fudge the truth about the circumstances surrounding her own choice — one that was not completely free, one that was not completely safe, one that she could not make based solely on her own conscience. She wants to argue that she had a choice when, frankly, she did not. I do believe the Bible has something to say about bearing false witness. But that, I suppose, isn’t important when you’ve got an anti-choice message to share.

It depends on what the meaning of “freeze” is. Indeed, under certain conditions, this could be a great idea.

Before you try me for heresy, read this bit of reporting by Jonathan Chait:

Within the administration, White House budget director Peter Orszag appears to have settled on another solution. Last month, Orszag raised eyebrows when word leaked that he’d asked most cabinet agencies to prepare two budgets: one that freezes spending, the other that cuts it by 5 percent. Many congressional liberals were livid, and, according to multiple sources, Larry Summers’s National Economic Council reacted negatively to the emphasis on the deficit. (“The economic team has a healthy debate about most major issues,” says an administration official. “Getting people back to work is central to addressing the deficit. Similarly, putting the country back on a fiscally sustainable path is vital to confidence in the economy.”) The concern among wonks outside the administration is that clamping down on domestic discretionary spending without touching entitlements would take money out of the economy in the short term while doing nothing to close the long-term deficit.

These same liberals and wonks rejoiced when Obama backed job creation. But there is a logic to Orszag’s gambit, which runs roughly as follows: It’s almost certain that Congress will pass, and the president will sign, a jobs bill early next year, probably in the neighborhood of $100 billion to $200 billion. Given that, and given the difficulty of doing anything about the long-term deficit next year, the administration needs some signal to U.S. bondholders that it takes the deficit seriously. Just not so seriously that it undercuts the extra stimulus.

My guess is that this is the plan — announce, with great fanfare, a “spending freeze” that covers basic departmental budgets and not much else. A freeze that doesn’t come within a furlong of covering the cost of a jobs bill. It’s brilliant politics — you get all the benefits of posing as deficit hawks without any of the actual deep spending cuts (including, it can not be stressed enough, defense) and/or tax increases that a real attack on the deficit would require. Actually, since this is how deficit hawks really behave (when’s the last time Joe Lieberman suggested actually cutting defense? Or Evan Bayh floated a tax hike?), you simply become deficit hawks. And as we all know, deficit hawkishness is A Very Good Thing In Official Washington. Obama’s bound to get great press out of this.

What’s more, eventually, cuts are going to be necessary, as will tax increases. Not now — actually taking on the deficit in the midst of a deep recession would be catastrophic. That said, at some point, some day, we will have to take the deficit on. And that will require dealing with the budget like responsible adults, not Americans. A relatively small, symbolic cut this year to offset a jobs bill and a health care expansion isn’t a bad idea, politically and policywise.

But that’s the key — the Obama Administration can and should find ways to reach out to the center. But they also have to find a way to energize the left. Failing to pass a health care bill would be catastrophic; it guarantees a GOP takeover of at least the House come fall. Passing a health care bill, a jobs bill, and a repeal of DADT while simultaneously limiting other spending growth? That’s a trade that liberals can and should be willing to make.

Of course, if there’s no quid pro quo — if this is a spending freeze just for the sake of freezing spending, and if no jobs bill or health care bill is forthcoming — then it should be rejected out of hand. There’s making a play for the middle, and then there’s rank stupidity. I’m going to bet that the Obama Administration isn’t stupid. But we’ll see.

One of the interesting things about that fresh start was that it was just that — a complete reboot of humanity, jettisoning any technology more advanced than agriculture. Of course, that was partially because BSG was set roughly 140,000 BP, and you can’t have us only inventing electronics in the 20th Century if we were using them 140 millennia ago.

Now, I never found the idea that humans might trade technology for a new start as ridiculous as some people — after all, if technology came a hair’s-breadth from destroying you, you may want to emulate the Amish as well. Especially if you could do it in Africa, with a pretty yellow sun overhead and plenty of food to eat that wasn’t derived from algae.

But there are other reasons that the survivors of the Fall of the Twelve Colonies might want to give up technology. After all, while the Colonies were portrayed as earthlike in their existence, they weren’t Earth. These were peoples with a different history than ours, who had seen technology literally rise up against them and destroy everything they held dear.

That history begins with Caprica.

The new prequel, set 58 years Before the Fall, is the story of two grieving fathers — Daniel Graystone and Joseph Adams — both of whom lost their daughters in a terrorist bombing of an elevated train. (Adams lost his wife as well.) Zoe Graystone was a brilliant, temperamental 16-year-old with a fervent, heretical belief in monotheism — and a boyfriend whose fervor led to the bombing. Tamara Adams and her mother, Shannon, are innocent bystanders.

Adams is a defense attorney from Tauron, a member of a persecuted minority. He’s Capricanized his name — he was born Yosef Adama, but such a name makes him seem more ethnic. He does business with the Tauron mafia, who like many minorities chose a life of crime over toiling as second-class citizens. He does so reluctantly — he has a conscience, and he doesn’t like the violence associated with the mob. But he works with them because they helped him go to college, because his brother is a part of them, and because honestly, it’s easier than the alternative.

Graystone, on the other hand, is a multibillionaire, the Caprican equivalent of Bill Gates, only he’s played by Eric Stoltz, so he’s both more attractive and creepier. He’s working on a defense project — a military robot, one that can be used for defense. It’s not going that well, though — a rival from Tauron has developed a new processor that could doom his project. But he’s not as concerned about that as he is about data left behind by his daughter, including a link to a virtual night club full of unspeakable virtual perversions — including bland ones like orgies and drugs, and more sadistic ones like torture, murder and human sacrifice — all set to bumping techno music. (This is not farfetched. As Graystone’s guide, Zoe’s friend Lacy, notes, the first use for the virtual imagers Graystone himself invented was pornographic — and porn was one of the first serious industries to tap the internet. All of this has happened before….)

But nothing in this virtual club is more odd than Zoe Graystone’s avatar.

That’s because Zoe’s avatar is not just an avatar. It’s Zoe, more or less — a copy made by Zoe before her death, one that includes her memories, her personality, her likes and dislikes, her faults and strengths. The copy is made from many sources, including her school records, medical records, television viewing habits — things that could be used to make a good simulacrum of any human.

And thanks to his daughter’s genius Daniel Graystone finds the chance to do the unthinkable — to raise his daughter from the grave.

Daniel finds an unlikely ally in Joseph, who he meets at an information session for family members of victims of the bombing. He uses Joseph’s connections to steal the Tauron technology that could make his daughter live in the real world — albeit in a body that is made of metal. And he promises Joseph the same — a resurrection of his daughter, and his wife.

Joseph ultimately balks when Daniel shows him the proto-avatar of his daughter — she’s afraid, confused, and certain that something is terribly wrong. Joseph agrees, believing that there’s something Frankensteinian in what Daniel is doing. And yet Daniel is trying to do what any heartbroken, desperate parent would do if they could do it without punishment — bring back his daughter. To let her live the life she was supposed to live, before it was senselessly snuffed out.

Is such a thing Right? I don’t know. I do know that I would rather rip my right arm off than even think about my daughter coming to harm. That I can’t bring myself to write the comparative sentence between myself and Adama or Graystone because the mere thought is too painful for me to bring into enough clarity to express it in English. Suffice to say that I would gleefully make a deal with Satan himself if it guaranteed my daughter’s safety through a long and happy life. Eternal damnation would be a small price to pay. Simply messing with the laws of the Gods and Nature? That’s kid stuff.

That doesn’t mean that there will be no price for violating those laws. Just that in that pit of grief and despair, I can imagine being able to justify almost anything, grasping at any straw, praying to any false idol.

This tension — between Upholding That Which is Right and Saving Those We Love — is the driving force behind Caprica. We know, of course, how it will end — with the nuclear bombardment of the Twelve Colonies, with the flight of Galactica and the fleet, with the eventual colonization of Earth (Mark Two). But how we get there — a path that, like BSG, is not straight or clear, not good or evil, but rather a road paved with good intentions — that appears to be a fascinating journey. And one that I’m looking forward to.