In Memoriam

Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the Titanic.

Twice Belied

WARNING!  Unsupported statements, rampant generalization, stigmatizing language, and hints of what might just be misandry follow.  If you find this disturbing, try some nice Dave Barry columns.  WARNING!

 I saw this via supergee.  Hello, Quasimodo, you can stop now.

Seriously.  Ow.  Owowow.  The ringing.

And in the great gay marriage debate, I keep coming back to this feeling that in the end this whole clusterfuck national debate on my humanity is really a secret, subconscious referendum on whether women can ever be adults, can ever be unescorted, can ever look like something that wasn't designed for the male gaze, can ever possess their own desire. It is also, it seems for many people, a referendum on whether masculinity can exist without the perpetual female child present to confirm its existence.

 ...

 Prop 8 and its ilk are not referenda on me as a gay person or as a woman, although they are the first overtly and the second covertly.

These votes and discussions and debates and decisions are referenda on what we deem an adult human to be or not be.

It really is that simple.

When I was younger, women were not supposed to go anywhere alone.  The reasons for this were never specified; it was just an unquestioned social requirement.  (Sort of the way dating is never presented as gateway mating ritual, but as something that everyone does and what's wrong with you?)  To a certain extent, this still obtains today.  I hear young women say that they can't get anyone to go [somewhere, to do something] with them, so they're not going.  It makes me want to scream.

(If I did, and then shrieked, "Just go!" I'd get incredulous looks, or, worse, explanations.  That stuff is rammed deep.)

Really, you'd get the impression that single women are scary.  

"Masculinity" is a fairly narrow suite of traits and behaviors ("machismo" being a subset with added stupidity) usually in this society ascribed to men, with some effort made to exclude exceptions (in much the same way that, say, black musicians who play rock and are not Jimi Hendrix have been disappeared or recategorized).  To use the jargon, masculinity is the "unmarked state."  That is, if I have a character Lee, who is described as tall, handsome, dark, tough, strong, deep-voiced, and salty of language, you would not without effort cast a woman there, although Bea Arthur would have been perfect.  

(I love the name Lee, by the way.  It's a name anyone can have.)

"Masculinity" is phobic (that is the word) about "femininity."  Really.  That's the behavior pattern across the ages.  To restrict what women can do, where women can go, what women can wear (you don't for one minute believe "modest dress" has anything to do with $Deity, do you?).  To limit women.  At the same time, to police the boundaries of "manliness."  Because "womanliness" is apparently a thing of terror and a force capable of destroying the planet if not kept controlled.  You know, like the atom.  In this scheme, gay men are traitors and fifth-columnists who want to turn everyone into women (it never occurs to people who believe this sort of thing that that would defeat the purpose).  (Do not get me started on conservative gay men.  Really.)  

"Femininity" is not nearly as phobic about "masculinity."  Just deeply mistrustful, which may be a mistake.  It means that women have accepted the limitations and try to police the "womanliness" boundaries, and every so often territory changes hands.  There's a lot of inertia involved in the gender role thing, or Camille Paglia and Phyllis Schlafly wouldn't exist.

What we call Western Civilization has ameliorated some of this, but not nearly enough.

Let me be realistic here for a second:  Women (and anyone perceived as woman-like) are not much of a threat to men.  "Femininity" is not much of a threat to "masculinity."  "Womanliness" is not a threat to "manliness."  The threat aspect is in reverse.  (Collective action does change things, but many people won't do collective action for anything short of alien invasion.)  Hence the tendency to buddy up that I noted above.

But more women are standing on their own feet.  That means more women are adult humans, at least to themselves.  Maybe we need a Howard Beale moment; maybe we should rear back and yell "I'm an adult human, and I'm not gonna take that anymore!" the next time we have to deal with an infantilizer.

Yeah, right.

(No, I didn't get to the male gaze or the desires question.  That wants research.  But the male gaze thing lessens as one ages.  The male gaze can't see gray hair.)

In Memoriam

Ronald Takaki, historian and professor of ethnic studies.

In 1971 he became the first full-time teacher in Berkeley’s new ethnic studies department, where he taught a highly influential survey course that took a comparative approach in describing racism as experienced by different ethnic groups in the United States.

You Say Po-tay-to...

Via Language Hat:  M. LeBlanc of Bitch Ph.D. dresses down an idiot conservative who is confused by a Spanish surname (hint:  Spanish is pronounced as spelled, which is more than you can say for English, and has rules about where the accent falls, which is more than you can say for English) and whose name, to use the kindest possible construction, is not Smith.

One Woman's Fantasy, as Written by a Man

Anne Kerry Ford singing Kurt Weill's "Pirate Jenny."

Via shelleybear.

Scepter of the Drama Monarch

#2 in an ongoing series, although I can't find #1:  Sound effect of doom.

(I forgot to credit this to John Scalzi's Whateverettes.  Oh, well.)

Less Civilized than Canada, Spain, Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, et al.

Well, yesterday the State Supreme Court of California voted 6-1 to enact bigotry uphold the proposition banning same-sex marriage while leaving the 18,000 existing same-sex marriages valid and ensuring those couples will have to carry official copies of their marriage certificate forever.

Pecunium has a good analysis.

Which was the point of the initiative. It wasn’t about the word, it was about the rights. It was, at its heart, an attempt to keep homosexuals from being afforded the same rights and status as straights. That’s a pretty serious change to the constitution which, according to the court, hasn’t been, “fundamentally repealed.” Ok, I got it. Minor repeals of minority rights are OK, just so long as they aren’t fundamentally repealed. Make a zoning ordinance which prohibits Baptists from having a church within half a mile of a school; not a problem, it’s a minor infringement of their rights, not a fundamental one.

Coincidentally (more or less) I was watching Milk (missed it in theaters, got the DVD).  Yes, there will have to be organization.

[ETA:  NY Times editorial.]

Actually, if the word "mawwidge marriage" is so sacred, perhaps it shouldn't be used by people who don't believe it indissoluble except by death.  Just saying.

Today

Having posted elsewhere my respects to veterans (and today is really for the fallen, isn't it?  I need to go and fix that), I decided to link to pecunium's "Torture is a Moral Issue."

Because, as akirlu noted in comments, the lesser evil is still evil.

It Turns Out

That aside from the Wiscon I'm not attending, the main attraction in Madison, Wisconsin was that Jerry Koosman pleaded guilty to tax evasion.  He might have to do time.

Most baseball players don't end up in jail, and when they do, it tends to be for things like tax evasion--although Denny McLain did time for racketeering and looting a pension fund.  I've always wondered whether, if you factor in reported and unreported domestic violence, baseball players are more law-abiding than football players (but less than hockey players, although I have no data on hockey other than that guy who hit the other guy and the case went to court).

My team is currently You Don't Wanna Know.

Tiz Ev

Live Journal is ten.

That is all.

In Memoriam

Daniel Carasso, popularizer of yogurt.

(These days, I tend toward Brown Cow; several yogurts contain high fructose corn syrup.)

There's Always the Château d'If

1. Via Anglachel, Paul Krugman reminding folks that conservatism is usually wrong.
2. Arthur Silber on why Harry Reid is opposed to closing Guantánamo.
3. Driftglass on the terrorists already incarcerated on American soil.

Forty Years

Apparently the NY Daily Snooze is running a "Where Are They Now" feature. This last week the person in the crosshairs was Ron Swoboda. And I was thinking, didn't he own a bar in Manhattan in the '80s? But that was Rusty Staub.

(Crossposted by hand.)

Not Plagiarism, Just Coincidence

David Horsey makes the point I was trying to make last year, only better.

They may worship a savior who was crucified by the Romans, but 62 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe torture of suspected terrorists is justified.

And While We're On the Subject

"Because I swore an oath, to the Constitution. Not to the resident of the White House. Not to the Army. Not to Congress. To the ideals of the nation."

Pecunium on Certain Politicians, and on a journalist on Republican Kool-aid.

Hear Now the News

Anglachel is back and blogging, and I'm adding The Daily Howler to the Time Insensitive blogroll.

Did I mention that there would be more politics at this address?

(Avedon tipped me to the return of Anglachel, who'd been on hiatus since mid-February.)

" Trout that have been given dancing lessons!"

Jon Carroll talks about food.  (And a cat who can act, but that was yesterday.)

A Fan's Notes

Amanda Tarbet on being a Red Sox fan.  (One of the very few joyous moments in 2004 involved the Red Sox winning the World Championship.)

It's knowing that you are not alone in your frustrations and your joys, that everyone else in the park is drinking the same cheap beer and eating the same hot dogs, because they love the Red Sox, too. It is being one of many fans, not a single, lonely fan. In Boston, it's about thousands of people believing in a single miracle.

I hope that this is true for all fandoms. We love our movies, comics, shows, and sports for what they are, but also for the other great people who make it worth obsessing over. What is the point of owning a bajillion comics if you never have a friend to show them too? And wouldn't it be kind of silly to memorize the script to Monty Python and the Holy Grail if you had to recite it all by yourself?

NB:  I am not a Red Sox fan.

Nota Bene

The Holy Spirit is everywhere.

Briefing on Torture

Avedon Carol on Congressional oversight:  

And the very idea that the administration had any legal right to withhold information on their reasoning is ludicrous on its face - Congress is obliged to review such policy issues, and the executive isn't entitled to keep secrets from them.

And that's the part that really sticks in my craw: the fact that members of Congress, who were fully briefed on the fact that the administration was torturing but refused to tell them what their rationale was, simply accepted that they were obliged to shut up and let it happen. Where the hell did they get that idea?

Charmed snakes, weaving back and forth.

Scott Horton brings the facts:

Those who have taken the time to learn something about the history of the issue know that in the American setting, opposition to torture and insistence on its prohibition as a tool for warfare come from the Republican Party. The first prohibition issued from Abraham Lincoln (General Orders No. 100 from 1863), and it came from the pen of Francis Lieber, a Columbia law professor and leader of the Union League. The idea was propelled forward by figures like Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root, who famously called the push to make this prohibition a part of international law a tribute to Lincoln and one of the principal foreign policy accomplishments of the Republican Party. So if we’re putting a label on the opposition to torture, it surely wouldn’t be marked “Democrat.”

Then he quotes Ronald Reagan, who so opposed torture that he urged ratification of the UN Convention on Torture, back in '88. (The U.S. signed it that year.)

There need to be trials.  Not just exposés.  Not just essays.  Trials.  Actual crimes were committed.  These people committed, aided, abetted, and wrote apologia for crimes.

In Memoriam

One of the last links to the Great Escape, Alex Lees.

Also Dom DeLuise.

Child of Important Announcement

Everyone on my subscription/access list has been moved to the onyxlynx account at Dreamwidth.

We now return to normal boring political stuff and occasional snark and whatever else catches my eye.  Also, elisem, who does not have a dealer's table at Wiscon, is having a sale.

Still No Flames

Maine governor signs same-sex marriage bill.  Planet still here.  obVizzini:  I'm WAITing!

Important Announcement

So.

I have a Dreamwidth account.  I have this account in OpenID.  I hope someday to be able to amalgamate the subscription/access lists, but right now that isn't happening (yes, there's a support ticket on it, but I can't get at it).  (I am not interested in exporting the Blogger content.)

This is just to let anyone who clicks on the openID by mistake know:  My official for-real Dreamwidth account is onyxlynx.  I am still collecting weirdness, wisdom, and the occasional shiny here.  Probably more (ecch) politics now.

And I'm still not joining Live Journal.  Or Facebook.

Love the Overture to North By Northwest

I suppose checking the hockey playoffs is in order...?

ETA:  There's a widget for everything!

We're Wack

It's that fine-honed sense of impending doom that has allowed our species to survive our own stupidity.