Sophianotloren

It’s a Monday night, and five young medical students huddle in the far corner of an exam room while I pull on latex gloves. “Come closer,” I say, and I step next to Julie, the woman lying on her back on the exam table. The students shuffle toward us, like a single entity with multiple arms and legs and peering eyes. For some of them, this will be the first time they’ve ever seen, in person, a live woman’s naked body. For all of them, it will be the first time they perform a breast exam or palpate a uterus or slide a speculum into a vagina in an attempt to see the shining ring of a cervix tucked inside.

“I’m going to do a breast exam now, Julie,” I say. I am turned toward her, looking at her eyes, but I raise my voice so all the students can hear me. “Can you raise your right arm above your head?” She says sure and raises her arm, resting it on the exam table. “We need to slide your gown over your arm so I can examine your breast—do you want help?” She says no thanks and does it herself, and I turn to the students. “Each time you touch a patient, you need to let her know beforehand. No surprises. It’s her body, and she’s granting you the privilege to be in her physical space.”

I turn back to Julie. “I’m going to touch you now, is that okay?” When she says yes, I place my hands on either side of her right breast and begin pressing my fingers in tiny circles, moving clockwise around her breast. I explain how she can do this part at home for herself, once a month, and describe the quadrants of her breast as I make my way closer to the areola. I describe the size and texture of the nodules I am checking for—what cancer would feel like. “Hard, like an eraser nub,” I say. After checking her nipple for fluid and then spending extra time in the upper outer quadrant of her breast, I check her armpit, and then I ask if I can examine the other breast. She says yes, and I reach across her body. The students have gathered around the table and are now leaning in to watch me repeat each motion on her left breast. I ask Julie to sit up and drop her gown from her shoulders so I can look at her breasts while she’s seated upright, and the students move to give us space. “I’m looking for any unevenness in skin texture, any differences from right to left,” I say, and I ask her to lean forward. I watch how her breasts swing. “I’m looking for dimpling, any catching as the tissue moves.”

I’ve said these lines to Julie dozens of times. She knows what’s coming next—the stirrups, the internal exam, and the real excitement, the speculum. She and I and a team of women meet on Monday nights in the basement of a cancer treatment center with dozens of medical students to teach them how to give gynecological exams. Our task, the role of the “patient” at least, has at times been performed by prostitutes and by anesthetized housewives. Even mannequins have been used as “patients.” We’re called Gynecological Teaching Assistants. None of us are doctors or nurses, but we’ve all been trained in how to give a thorough gynecological exam. Our director is an attending physician, and she bounces from room to room, unable to spend much time with any one group of students. It’s Julie and I and the other GTAs who do the real work of teaching these kids how to treat a woman on the exam table. We are alive, awake, and very aware that they will learn from us tonight the privilege and responsibility of providing good medical care to women.

After I’ve completed Julie’s breast and pelvic exam, supervised two medical students examining her, and then been examined three times myself, I clean up and dress for home. I will ride my bike the two miles to home, sore from the multiple internal exams and speculum insertions. My car, an old Toyota with more than 200,000 miles on the odometer, sits at home for use only when I absolutely need it. I cobble together money from tips I make as a waitress during the day, and then, once a week, I work for three hours at $30.00 an hour as a GTA. I add this to the child support my ex pays every month and try to make wise choices about buying food and paying the electric bill and the mortgage.

It was a shock when my husband left. I’d been a stay-at-home mom for five years, taking care of our two young boys and only working odd jobs if they were compatible with staying at home with the kids. Being alone and poor is a struggle, a different kind of struggle than being married and poor. Ours was a difficult marriage, full of threats and various kinds of abuse, but it was what I’d thought was the only option when I left home with him at sixteen. When I realized I was pregnant a few years later, I didn’t want an abortion—I wanted to be a mom, a good one. Though we were poor college students at the time, my husband and I agreed we didn’t want our child in daycare, so I stayed home with the baby and later his little brother, thinking all the while I was doing my part, my best, to be a good mother and a good enough wife.

Poverty and single motherhood have given me an odd kind of liberation. If I hadn’t been so poor after the divorce, I’d never have considered being a gynecological teaching assistant. If I’d still been married to my ex, though, I’d never have considered doing this work. He threatened me throughout our marriage—if I ever had sex with someone else, he’d kill me. No questions asked. He suspected me of flirting with men, always questioning my intentions, so the only significant contact I had with men for more than ten years was with him and, occasionally, my brothers. Now, once a week, I was lying in a hospital gown on an exam table in front of a group of young students, some male, some female, and I was teaching them how to respect a woman’s body. It wasn’t sex, but in my ex’s eyes, it would have been.

Some Mondays, Julie takes the first turn as the “patient,” and I am the “doctor.” Other times, we switch. If one of us is bleeding with menstrual flow, the other sometimes agrees to a few extra exams to lighten her burden. More often, though, we just keep it even, no matter if there is blood or bloating or discomfort. These medical students might have to examine a rape victim someday, or a woman presenting with STD symptoms while she’s on her period. It’s important, to Julie and me and the other GTAs, that the students learn to approach the female body with respect and compassion at the peak of health as well as at the depths of illness or suffering, which is when a woman would be at her most vulnerable and would need all of the empathy these young doctors-to-be could give.

Going first as the “doctor” is easier. Because I’m performing a role the students associate with authority—a position they are hoping to someday step into themselves—the medical students look to me with respect. They see me as the teacher, and they understand that I’m evaluating them. What is more difficult is to be the “patient” first. I’m on my back, the first to be exposed and poked and prodded in front of a room full of young, gangly onlookers. If I am the patient first, it helps that I know and trust Julie. If she is the doctor, she establishes the tone of professionalism and respect the students will follow when they perform their subsequent practice exams. When I am the patient, the students have trouble recognizing that I am also their teacher, that from my supine position, I am also evaluating their technique and bedside manner.

When I ride my bike home after work tonight, a new guy I’m dating is waiting on my porch. Darren is rugged and handsome, a former college football player. We’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks. He knows I’ve just come back from working at the hospital and teases me. “Sore tonight?” he says. I laugh. I enjoy his company, sitting with him in the swing on my front porch. The evening is warm and we exchange stories about our day. What I don’t know yet is that he has herpes, and that I’ve been exposed to it the handful of times we’ve had unprotected sex. Nor do I know yet that his wife still lives with him. I think they are divorced already, or at least separated. A mutual friend will hint to me a few weeks after this night that I’m in deeper than I realize, that this guy isn’t quite who I think he is. But for tonight, I enjoy the easy freedom with Darren. I joke with him about the pimply medical student with curly blond hair, the one who looked like he would faint when he touched the inside of my leg and said, “I’m touching you now.”

“Yes,” I’d said, “you are.” And we’d both laughed, the medical student and I, and now Darren and I are laughing, too. My ex would never have laughed. He’d have choked me or called me a whore. He’d have tried to make me feel ashamed for being willing to let men see my most private body parts.

When a doctor examines a woman, it is a moment of acute vulnerability. And it lasts until she is sitting up and fully clothed. It lasts until she gathers herself and leaves, stepping back into the “normal” world and her place within it.

For many more years after this night, I will stumble through men, learning as I go how to say no and how to say yes. Ben, the tall, thin lover who lives in a tree house and studies physics in his free time, he will spend lazy afternoons exploring my body and letting me explore his, helping me discover that my nipples are hard-wired and that I can have hands-free orgasms. Tony, the dark-headed young athlete, will help me tease out the subtle differences between inserting tongue and finger and penis into various orifices. With each lover, I will understand something more about my body, about theirs, and what I like and what I don’t.

On the next Monday evening in the exam room and for many Mondays to follow, I will work with my partner, Julie, to teach waves of students how to approach a woman when she is on her back, ready for a gynecological exam. I will also get to practice saying, “Yes, it’s okay to touch me there.” Or “No, I can undress myself.” Or “No, that hurts.”

“I’m touching you now,” each of them will say.

And I will say, “Yes, you are.”

***

Rumpus original art by Alexandra Lakin.

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The lack of people of color in children’s book is stifling, but what’s even scarier is a generational staying of the trend. Kathleen Horning examines this stagnancy for the School Library Journal:

If we want to see change, if we want to see more diversity in literature, we have to buy the books. Buy them for our schools, for our libraries, for our families, for our friends. We must be the agents of change. Otherwise, we are all participants in the “cultural lobotomy.”

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I am on the run. I have had a lot of ventures. I will tell you a truth of my ventures.

One day I saw a farm that had no fence. I saw sheep and long neck sheep and goats and geese. In a corner of the farm was a tin tub up side down on a flat form, and a front eyes sat on the tub and watched.

The front eyes was like the man but not like the man. I went to him and asked why all the sheep and long neck sheep and goats and geese were there in the field.

They chose to make me their ruler, he said. I take care of them and do what is right. You are a big, strong bull. I will make you my side bull and you can rule them with me!

I asked, What is rule?

The front eyes said, Watch. So I stood to a side of the flat form.

After some time a goose came up and said, I do not get enough food. I think you should take some of the food from the sheep and the goats and give it to us geese and the long neck sheep. They are strong and we are not strong.

The front eyes said to the goose, You know, you are right! Then the goose left.

Later a goat came up and said, I do not get enough food. You should take some from the long necks and give it to us goats and sheep. They are swift and we are slow.

The front eyes said to the goat, You know, you are right! Then the goat left.

I said to the front eyes, That is rule? You said this and also not this!

The front eyes said to me, You know, you are right!

Then I left the farm that had no fence. I do not want to rule.

The truth about rule © 2007-2014 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

It has been almost a month since I stopped writing essays over at Herlander Walking, my former political rantage blog.  Do I miss it?  Sometimes, yes; but largely, I find I have more energy for things that matter closer in around my own day to day life without expending time and energy raving wildly for a “choir” of like-minded sorts.   I know I am not changing minds that NEED changing…I don’t have a long enough time frame for that.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t be snide, snarky and pointy-booted right HERE.  Especially when the Bible Belt sorts are hoisted on their own petards of ignorance and hypocrisy.  Like when they rave about family values, fetus-adoration and the like, and yet send CHILDREN to harvest the tobacco they cannot legally even purchase.  Wow, how very Third World!  Imagine, I guess there in GOP-Baptist-ville, child labor laws must be as “quaint” as the Geneva Conventions were to Bush & Co.?  I obviously just never realized that the full quote from Gentle Jesus must have been, “Let the little children come unto me and harvest my damned tobacco fields so I can make some bucks!” 

This isn’t the original intent of laws allowing children to participate in agricultural labor — the “family farm” that saw those laws created is a thing of the past. No wonder they are anti-abortion: they need more slave laborers to “work in the fields of the Lord Mammon.”

And then, of course, the crazy over guns continues — apparently we don’t need to legislate gun control because “99% of the mass shooters are Democrats” – which, btw, even if it were true (and it is BULLSHIT) would be nonsense.  I mean, does that mean we only need to worry about terrorists if they are Islamic — it is perfectly fine if a Southern Baptist decides to blow people to hell?  Oh, wait…the same party kind of DOES think that, eh?

And nothing like Kansas schadenfreud for breakfast on a Monday!  He has “family valued” (Koch family values) Kansas into trouble, and his constituents are noticing….oh, wait, Rightwing-tard schadenfreud IS better — kind of like bubbly pop-rock candy!

Tagged: child abuse, family-values-my-ass, greed, guns, hypocrisy, labor laws, religious folly, snark

by Natalie Boero

“If you let her keep getting fatter, they are going to take her away from you.” Stunned, I turned to the woman who said this to me. I struggled to find words to respond as she pushed past me, out of the restaurant, and into a waiting car. Having just finished a late meal after our children’s choir concert, I did not expect to find myself explaining to my daughter what this woman had meant when she suggested that my daughter could be “taken away” from me because she is fat (though not remarkably so) and perhaps more to the woman’s point, because I am remarkably fat.

My immediate response to this harassment was to check my own maternal hurt and rage in order to calm my daughter’s fears about being “taken” from her mothers. Yet in the days and weeks that followed, I went back and analyzed what had happened as I do most things, as a feminist sociologist.

I am no stranger personally or professionally to fat shaming, body harassment, size discrimination, whatever you may call it, yet having these things so blatantly and cruelly directed at my daughter was a new experience. The woman who said these words felt entitled to publicly evaluate me as a mother, scare my child, and implicitly question both of our health and worth- all from simply looking at us. It was no accident that I was targeted as the mother of a larger little girl. Feminist and fat studies scholars have long observed that weight discrimination is gendered and I myself have written about how targeting mothers as the “cause” of their children’s fatness is a new wrinkle on the ages old sexist tradition of “mother blame”, or blaming women as mothers for any number of social problems. I also came to see this woman’s assumption of the rightness of her thoughts and the wrongness of my and my daughter’s bodies and, by extension, personalities and behaviors as a concrete example of many of the phenomena I wrote about in my book, Killer Fat: Media, Medicine, and Morals in the American “Obesity Epidemic”.

In Killer Fat I use the tools of sociological research and analysis to look at how our society came to view “obesity” as an “epidemic” and what the real world consequences of this designation are. The book is broken into two parts. In the first part I explore how obesity became an epidemic. I am not concerned with how, if, or why people have gotten fatter in recent decades (there seem to be plenty of people writing about those things!). I am interested in how something like fatness- not a contagious illness- came to be talked about in the language we typically use to describe diseases that spread through contagion and kill quickly. Looking at the claims of public health officials, medical practitioners, special interest groups, and the media I show how, over time, it has come to be taken for granted that obesity is an epidemic spreading most rapidly among children, the poor, and minorities. I look at how we arrived at now taken-for-granted raced, classed, and gendered assumptions about weight and health that assume that measures like the body mass index (BMI) are useful measures of health and how these assumptions preclude framings of the relationship between weight and health other than that of fat = death.

How these truisms about fatness and fat people play out in people’s every day lives is the focus of the second half of the book in which I look at people’s- particularly women’s- experiences of dieting and surgical weight-loss. More than anything, the people I spoke with were motivated to pursue weight loss not out of concern for their health, but for a desire to “fit in” and be “normal”. This was overwhelmingly true of my female interviewees who had all grown up with their weight being at the center of their socialization as girls and women. They were all too familiar with experiences like the one I had with my daughter. For many, the stigma and discrimination they faced- particularly as fat women- were enough to push them to “choose” dangerous and irreversible surgeries.

It became clear to me that for all our talk of an “epidemic”, panic over obesity is not really about health. The “obesity epidemic” is a way to place the burden of public health on individuals at a time when inequality in the US is growing rapidly. Moreover, an uncritical focus on obesity is a way to distract us from more structural determinants of health like race, class, ethnicity, and gender, again putting the focus of social problems onto individuals and marginalized populations. The ironclad association of fatness with ill health keeps us from taking seriously alternative framings of weight and health like those advocated by the “Health at Every Size” or HAES ™ movement. The widespread acceptance of approaches like HAES ™ that move the focus off of weight and on to social, physical, environmental, and emotional health for everyone may not be profitable for the diet industry, but they will serve our bodies and communities well, and, they might just curtail the public harassment of little girls and their mothers.

Natalie Boero is associate professor of sociology at San Jose State University. Her book, Killer Fat: Media, Medicine and Morals in the American “Obesity Epidemic”, is reviewed in the April 2014 issue of Gender & Society. To read the review click here.

Filed under: Body & Embodiment, Culture, Family, Health/Medical

The Democratic Senator with the lowest WAR argues that awful judicial nominee Michael Boggs has an important supporter:

Maybe Michael P. Boggs still has a chance to become a federal judge in Georgia.

A senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday that John Lewis, the Georgia Democratic congressman and civil rights leader, thought a deal between the White House and Georgia’s GOP senators to fill a variety of federal judgeships provided for “a good ticket.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” if she would vote against Boggs or seek to block his ascension to the federal bench.

“Well, not at this stage,” Feinstein said, before expanding on her answer.

“I want to meet with him. I want to talk with him. I wanted to go through the committee hearing first. I did do that. I think the questions are very apparent. I know he has some very strong support, even in the African-American community in the state of Georgia. I have spoken to John Lewis about him in the House. And I have great respect for John Lewis, who felt that this was a good ticket,” Feinstein said. “I have got to do my own due diligence. And when I’m ready, I’ll vote.”

Well, I happen to have John Lewis right here, and:

I have fought long and hard and even put my life on the line for the cause of equal rights and social justice. My commitment to these ideals has never changed, and my record is solid and unwavering. I take a back-seat to no one and have been at the forefront for decades in defense of the right to marry, a women’s right to choose, and the imperative of non-violence as a means of dissent. I have worked tirelessly to rid Georgia, the South, and this nation from the stain of racial discrimination in any form, including the display of Confederate emblems in the Georgia state flag. I am not about to change that position now.

I have tried to refrain from making public statements out of respect for my colleagues and the Senate process. I believe it is important to allow each candidate to be evaluated according to his or her own merits and to allow the Senate judicial nomination process to take its course. This willingness to permit due process is all that I have indicated in any conversation I may have had with my colleagues. I did not at any time indicate my support for the Boggs nomination or say that he had the backing of the African American community in Georgia.

Based on the evidence revealed during this hearing, I do not support the confirmation of Michael Boggs to the federal bench. His record is in direct opposition to everything I have stood for during my career, and his misrepresentation of that record to the committee is even more troubling. The testimony suggests Boggs may allow his personal political leanings to influence his impartiality on the bench. I do not have a vote in the Senate, but if I did I would vote against the confirmation of Michael Boggs.

So Feinstein is going to come out against Boggs now, right? Why are you laughing?

[via]

deanismypatronass:

cocolooo:

deanismypatronass:

cocolooo:

i love high contrast photos of fruit floating threateningly in the night

I don’t believe such a thing exists

I was mistaken

I love that second one.  It’s like the hall of the floating bananas that will swarm and kill you if you go near them, or explode.  It’s like a video game, you have to watch the pattern of them floating and sneak past them using timing.

One of my (many) pet peeves is people who think there is some sort of female dominant hive mind. Now, I’m sure they don’t literally believe we are the Borg, but I’ve seen far too many people asking what dominant women like as if we’re a monolith.

Asking “do dominant women like x?” makes no more sense than asking “do brunettes like x?” or “do 31 year olds like x?” If you wouldn’t expect brunettes or 31 year olds to like the same things, why would you expect dominant women to? Sure, being dominant means I  have a little more in common with another dominant woman than I do with any other random brunette, but it’s still quite a small part of my life. Like everyone else I have a job, a social life (well, when work isn’t trying to eat my entire life), and hobbies that have nothing to do with how I like to get off. I have more in common with fellow gamers, programmers, or introverts than I do with any given female dom.

If you think ‘do dominant women like x?” is a  meaningful question, either you think I am nothing more than my interest in kink, or you think dominant women are interchangeable drones in a Borg-like collective. Shockingly enough, I don’t like being reduced to my kinks or stripped of my individuality. As little as dominant women have in common, there is one thing we tend to agree on: we hate not being treated like people.

What I really don’t understand is why it matters what random dominant women you’re not in a relationship with want. If there’s a particular woman you get along with and would like to know better, treat her like a goddamn person and ask her what she wants. If there’s not, what good is knowing what a bunch of other women like when you do meet the right dom for you? ‘But 8 out 10 doms like it!’ is going to sway absolutely no one if she isn’t interested in whichever kink you’re trying to convince her to try. Even if 8 out of 10 doms really do like x, being able to do that isn’t going to convince someone you’re right for her.

My guess is that the men who ask if dominant women like x just want to be reassured that one day they’ll find a partner who shares their kinks. That’s a totally reasonable thing to want, but come on guys, you can ask for that without treating me like a faceless drone. And honestly, phrasing that request as “does any else like x?” is just irritating. It’s the internet, there is literally always someone else who likes x. Asking that question on a forum just makes you look like you’re too stupid or lazy to google it.

It’s also possible these guys want to know what dominant women like so they can be good subs. Unfortunately, treating us like we’re interchangeable is a terrible way to be a good sub, as well as being incredibly disrespectful. If you can’t treat us like people, no amount of back massages or pedicures are going to convince us to give you the time of day.

If you insist on treating us like a hive mind, don’t be surprised if that hive is mysteriously united in their total lack of interest in you.

bevsi:

nerd girl x hot cheerleader doodles that got a lil out of hand

This is the best.

It is two weeks before my fortieth birthday, and until last week my main thought was: bring it on.

Last week two things happened. We hired four more people, and then we looked meticulously at every city, reran the numbers multiple times, and discovered that our burn rate had spread to uncontained conflagration. The revelation was grossly belated. Our money would be gone in two months time.

In the past twelve months, the startup I co-founded has grown from three to 213 employees. My co-founder, Philippa, lives in Manhattan, so I run the office here in California, managing the people whom I have hired and grown close to, and she runs the company, closely involved, but from afar. Our assumption was that Joe, our CFO, was running the numbers. He was not. I could blame him—a friend of our investors who was forced upon us to manage their money—and I do. But I also know I willingly let the bliss of ignorance and buzz of small fame blind me.

We have spent the last five days playing God, negotiating and determining the worth of everyone who works for us. This morning I will lay off ten of my employees. The next twenty are already identified.

By order of our investors I will call it a restructuring, a reorganization around an exciting new opportunity with a partner whose well-known name I will pimp as promise of future prosperity. The partnership is possible. But this is a layoff. And it is smaller than it should be. Philippa and I have argued we should cut thirty people now, pivot focus, and control the fire. But we’re told we can’t send that sort of message to the market. The numbers matter, but never as much as the image of ourselves we intend for others to see.

*

Somewhere, fortieth birthdays are cause for black napkins that say “Over the Hill”, for mourning the death of your childbearing years, and settling into mid-life stagnation. Not here. In Silicon Valley, the fortieth birthday is license to go big and go celebrate just how young and productive you still are. Take the ladies to spa at Solage Calistoga, or VRBO a place in Cabo for couples debauchery. Your company just got acquired, or you secured your Series A, and/or you’ve trained for an Ironman, raised millions running the school auction, and are pregnant with your fourth child. At the very least, you’ve completed a successful home remodel and recently adopted a puppy. There’s nothing old or tired about you. As far as you’re concerned, you’re just getting started.

I don’t measure up to all the local standards (only two kids, house falling apart even without a pet, and I don’t bike or run except away from the PTA), and, without an exit or a big company salary, I have the kind of birthday budget that buys a prom-themed party bus with a dance pole rather than a hosted luxury weekend. But I’m more of a party bus gal anyway, and I measure my standards according to how my sons might see me. And so, two months ago, from inside my office on a Tuesday afternoon, I booked the party bus. I remember the day.

At breakfast, my family had sat at the blonde wood table where we ate all of our meals. “Are you the boss, Mommy?” nine-year-old Wilson asked, serious and slurping at the milk dripping down his chin. I’d been half-heartedly complaining to my husband, Noah, who also runs a startup company, about my investor, Samir. “Like, in charge who makes the decisions?” Wilson said through his mouthful of LIFE.

“She is,” Noah said, always supportive of me, though that was never wholeheartedly true.

“Philippa and I,” I said, “yes.” And then I said, “pretty much” because there was Samir, who oversaw everything we did with the inescapable and demoralizing authority of having funded it.

“But Philippa lives in New York,” Wilson said. “So you’re the boss, Mommy.”

I let this declaration stand. Why not? My son was proud of me.

Seven-year-old Ben, always inclusive and jolly, said, “Daddy has a company too,” and Noah nodded. The boys beamed, and drank their juice.

*

They do not know that most startups fail. They only know that we do what their town is famous for, and this makes us famous, in their eyes, too. They are sure their mommy can do anything; to them I am smart and strong. This is success. It is also temporary.

*

It is 5:15 AM and frigid for a California November. Outside it’s thirty-nine degrees, and inside it’s warmed to sixty-four. I’ve been up since 4:00 AM fielding work emails, floating inside the sense that I have found myself in some foreign dystopia. I drink hot water, and sit with my back against the wall on top of the heating vent in my kitchen, clenching my core muscles and waiting for the minutes to pass until I leave for swim practice. I stare at the document our HR consultant gave us yesterday.

Affected employees will experience a wide range of emotions. You need to be prepared to respond effectively. No matter what the reactions, do not take them personally.

I think about Cheryl, a spunky, single mom who swears endearingly, belly laughs, and carries a thick Craftsman pocketknife in her bra or skirt back pocket. She calls the knife an accessory: once a Menlo Park police officer and now a startup marketer, it is no longer legal for her to carry a gun. Cheryl is not unstable and I am not afraid of her possible ire. Her armed presence reassures us all on those late nights under the flickering fluorescent tubes, after she has made her homemade chai, and we have ordered fried sandwiches, finished beers and polished the deck, and we go trooping out into the blackened garage to find our cars. Cheryl can also run SCRUM. I am not worried for her. But I will miss her. In fact, I already do.

Today is the last day I can cancel the bus, I think. The idea of having a celebration for myself has begun to seem unsound.

*

Last night, Wilson seemed to smell my shame. He asked why I wouldn’t run a football pattern with him before we settled down in his bed to read.

“Sorry buddy,” I said. “I’m distracted. Sad.”

“What for?” he asked, and I told him why. “Just don’t do it,” he said. “You’re the boss, Mommy. Right?”

If I ever had been, I am not now. I feel responsible, and also like a hired goon.

*

I table the potential bus cancellation to revisit later, and consider how much I would like to climb back into bed with Ben, who always receives me with raw gratitude and delight. Curling around him and breathing in his groggy breath, I would be instantly warm and safe—revered. But I need to swim and it’s time to go, so I push myself up and stretch out my shoulders, reminding my body that it wants the sweet burn of endorphins, especially right now.

Just get out the door, I think. 

Get in the pool.

The swimming has always sustained me. But today I am apprehensive.

*

The swim is good and hard and I am indeed more exhausted and calm as I drive to the San Mateo Marriot to collect Philippa, who has come for the initial execution. Today I will fire the people I hired, and she will wait for me to finish. Then we will stand together, as partners, in front of the ones who remain, and partially feign excitement over the “next phase” of our company. She gets in my car and as always, I am glad to see her.

“How you doing?” she says in her chipper English accent.

“Eh,” I say, conserving articulation and alluding to gloom.

“Right,” she says, acknowledging our anguish, but in her optimistic way. We are emotionally worn out and nervous, but she is not from here. I don’t think she adequately foresees the fallout.

I maneuver the few blocks to the office, slump back into my seat, turn off the engine and raise my eyebrows at her. The planning for this has been heady and charged. But now I feel kind of weak, as if I am six and developing a fever. I want somebody to put me back to bed. I wish that we could flee.

“Who suspects it?” she asks.

“No one,” I say. No one does. Today will be the end of the blind march toward success, of the trajectory toward bigger, better, and more, more, more.

Our business is starting to shut down. This morning will be the last time we will ever spend in our office without knowing that everyone is simultaneously working for us, and job-hunting. The panic doesn’t take long to spread, and it is rarely unjustified.

*

I use my hot pink and orange customized badge to buzz us through, and Philippa and I slip into our nearly brand new office, large enough to have two break rooms stocked with Chardonnay, abandoned condiments, and large tubs of Costco pretzels. We fall into the lobby, past the never-been-staffed receptionist desk and the cluster of low-slung gunmetal couches that form a semicircle in the entryway. The adjacent wall holds hanging racks populated with copies of stories from tech trade magazines. The photos of us have been mercifully flattering. Past the press, we enter the still, overheated air of our own little valley of plastic.

I think: In this place I have been who I wanted to be.

The 8 AM sun streams in and illuminates flying colonies of dust motes, hovering most heavily above the Operations team’s domain. They are pretty, and a kind of delight. I have become office-proud because, unlike our previous dark, shared space in a dentistry complex near the train station, we are now three floors above the Hillsborough landscape of green, and the entire western wall is gleaming glass. The fifty yards of seats and partitions look expectant, the way I have come to anticipate they always will in the early mornings when I arrive: generally first, and always alone. But not today.

I think: What will they look like tomorrow?

Philippa and I greet the HR consultant and hide her in a clandestine conference room, and then Philippa says, “good luck” and “I’m sorry” to me. She means it, and I know this. I nod and give her the go ahead to grab a cubicle. I retreat into my newly inhabited corner office, as if putting distance between us will make any difference, alter our calculated attack against whom we have chosen. But we are both rattled and upset, and I need a silent screen to stare at until I have to speak. I sit heavily in my cushioned swivel chair and review the schedule, and also what I’m meant to say. Cheryl is at 8:45, Peter at 9. Thereafter others follow fifteen minutes apart until finally, at 11, I tell John to leave the building. The script is clear, and I am reminded to stick to it.

“After careful evaluation, I regret to inform you that your position is being eliminated. Your last day of employment with us will be today.”

Will anyone ever fire my sons? Unquestionably, someone will hurt them. Please let it not be me.

I try speaking the words aloud but my voice cracks and I go silent at the word “eliminated”. I have more saliva than usual: it pools like a moat around my tongue. Through my glass partition I scan the room for Cheryl, will her not to show, and decide to save saying my lines for the real performance. A dress rehearsal would land the final straw inviting utter disingenuousness. I read through the document.

“This is not a layoff. We’ve decided to shift our business model and restructure our workforce. The decision is final.”

Layoffs are done to save money, to tourniquet the bleed of ignorant over-hiring and spendthrift leaders. Nearly every “lean” startup performs them. Fifty percent of the people I know have been laid off at one time or another, just as others—and some of the same—have been divorced. People survived such mundane tragedies, even thrived in their wake, and yet somehow I assumed that I could not, my husband could not, my children could not. I would not make-do well after having a job or husband that left me. I imagined I would wake up at one in the morning, enjoy a few seconds of calm, and then be struck with the memory that I had become a failure, a cast-off, an anonymous anomaly.

What else are you, once you have been eliminated?

Most Common Reactions
1. Anger
2. Denial
3. Shock
4. Constructive/Realistic

I can’t help but assume that anger and denial, maybe shock, will be the prevalent reactions today. I assess that I can handle those. I am angry too, and not only at myself.

As I wait for Cheryl to arrive, my fingertips get nervy. I can’t type. My hands seem stupid, two numbed appendages, and I hold them under the desk, squeezing them between my legs. I want to reply to the email that just came in, subject line: Final Confirmation, Bay City Buses Transportation. Suddenly it’s obvious: this is no time to be planning a party.

*

A month ago, on Halloween, I came to work with permanent pink streaks in my long blonde hair and a rhinestone skull thrust through the closed-up hole on the top of my left ear. John, our timid web design guy with a superhero obsession, was dressed as Captain America. Cheryl, like seven other women, was a cat. Stephen the engineer had rented a full body gorilla suit, and my VP of marketing, Zoe, a perky blonde triathlete who insisted on cycling to any of her son’s lacrosse games that took place within a thirty-mile radius, was decked out in Goth makeup and black nail polish. The company costume contest was planned for 3 p.m.

At 10 a.m. that day I attended our usual Wednesday morning investor meeting in the large frigid conference room. Philippa was on mute, Joe postured across the way wearing his vacuous wholesale smirk, and Samir reclined next to me with his shirt stretched across his bocce ball potbelly, his bare feet propped on the table to the side of his laptop. His feet were brown, his toes uncalloused, and their particular shade and smoothness served to highlight the horn yellow color of his longish, moon rind nails. I studied them as we did what had become the usual dance, a box step around launch schedules and the latest scheme to organically acquire more email subscribers. We sold daily deals, and I believed we hawked them with the highest intent. The press called us “GroupMom,” and we publicly proclaimed ourselves “Groupon meets Avon.” My noble ambition was to help local businesses and empower local moms, and indeed we seemed to have raised a modest but loyal family of employees and clients. It wasn’t enough: we needed more customers. But my purpose had been served.

At 1 p.m., I met with product management and faked assurance over the next release, then sat in the pit of cubicles recently desegregated to prevent engineer supremacy meetings. I wanted to hear things. The North Bay deal, some sort of Halloween-themed wine tasting, was selling like hotcakes, and our VP of Sales, Ginny-from-Texas-who-drove-a-pink-Hummer, was electrified. It was a silly thing. The product we sold would not, by and large, benefit anyone. But as I watched the sales numbers climb—watched the figures reappear larger with every click of the cul-de-sac-shaped refresh arrow at the top my screen—my sense of accomplishment and self-reassurance rose with them.

At 3 p.m. Cheryl won the costume contest, catapulted to victory with a subpar outfit because she was loved and this was what mattered. I handed her the cauldron of candy and sped off at 4 to relieve the sitter.

*

Cheryl arrives, tall and dark, fresh-faced and strong. She bounces into the light gray pool of carpet and chin-high partitions, ergonomically adjusted screens, and scattered oscillating space heaters. She powers up her computer with a smile and says good morning to Lisa, a manager who was put through notification training last night, and so knows that Cheryl is about to be let go. She also knows, as do I, that thirty-year-old Cheryl has just put in an offer on her first house with her new husband. We both know that Cheryl is good and hard working, and we are already jealous of her next employer. We know her cats’ names, ask after their illnesses, and buy her Vitamin C packets, nail polish, and cookies we know she will like. There are twenty of us, and we all do these things for each other, make small offerings to camaraderie and the collective familial feeling of toiling toward a common goal. We spend all day together. Or we did.

Lisa’s “morning” back to Cheryl, though mute to me, looks as if it is uncharacteristically curt and somber. Behind my wraparound desk I put my head between my knees, interlace my fingers, then throw them over my head to stretch my shoulders. I hold my breath for five long seconds and then I blow it out, and in, out and in.

I get up and advance toward Cheryl, intrigued to find that I feel like I’m floating, naked and numb, the way I always seemed to rise above the dentist office chair when the sweet nectar of nitrous oxide was pumped inside my nostrils. Somehow, I reach her.

“Cheryl, can we talk real quick?” I say, aware that the come-on is pathetic and clichéd. I am a fool even my children would recognize. “So talk,” Wilson might say. But this is new to me—I don’t know how to be clever when I am hurting someone with whom I have grown protective and familiar.

Cheryl glances up, smiles, and then visibly fights not to recoil at my discomfort. The morning flush vanishes from her cheeks and the bottom drops out of my stomach. I turn and indicate that I want her to follow me down the hall, and then we walk, single file, away.

The twenty-yard trip takes an eternity, and when we finally buzz through the door and round the bend to the conference room, Cheryl registers the unfamiliar HR consultant who stands to receive her, and her pretty shoulders slump and fold in toward her chest. “Just don’t do it,” I hear Wilson say. “You’re the boss, Mom. Right?”

Suddenly I am desperate to protect him. And Cheryl. But of course, I cannot.

The object of this in person meeting is to convey as concisely and as humanely possible the pertinent information regarding the elimination of position(s) and how if affects the individual(s).

“Come in,” says Michelle. “Have a seat.” She tells Cheryl her name. Michelle is here to make sure I say the right things to Cheryl, to keep the company out of legal trouble, and also to go over Cheryl’s severance package with her as soon as I leave the room. Michelle will clean up the mess I am about to make—or try to.

“Hi.” Cheryl offers her hand and lets it be shook. There is no need to give her name. It is clear to us both that Michelle already knows it, as well as Cheryl’s address, birth date, social security number, and salary, which will cease in two weeks’ time.

We sit down. I take a deep breath, and almost cough on my own spit. “So, Cheryl,“ I manage. “We’re going to be focusing on some upcoming partnerships and we have to restructure our team here at corporate.” I sound like the anal-retentive yard duty, glasses perched on my nose, afraid of being hit by the big red first grade dodge ball, screaming at the children to stop horsing around. Why is my voice so high?

Slow down, I tell myself, wondering if maybe I won’t have to say any more. I am sure this is the point in the conversation, or delivery, that I would know I was losing my job.

Please let me off the hook, I think.

Say you get it. Say you’ll be fine.

Cheryl says nothing, so I continue. I tell her the “restructuring” affects people here at corporate and also in other locations. I tell her it is effective immediately.

The discomfort of the silence that follows is extravagant and deep. There should be questions, and anger. Maybe accusations. I wait for them, and then when she does not produce any, I fling them at myself. How did I let this happen? I think. Somehow I have been negligent and weak. But I am surprised to see her eyes begin to tear; surprised that she still says nothing. She waits for me to tell her more.

Stick to the script.

“This is not personal or reflective of the quality of the work you have done. We simply have to run this as the lean start up it is and react quickly to give the company the best shot at success.”

But, silently, Cheryl begins to cry. Anger. Shock. Denial. Acceptance. They did not warn me about the Sadness.

I open my mouth in a small dry O and look sideways in my seat at Michelle. She is smiling placidly. This is procedure for her—she does this shit all week, all year. How can she?

I decide to screw the script. I place both hands on the conference room table and look up. “Cheryl,” I say. “I’m sorry. We have to cut your position. It has nothing to do with your performance, with your work.” I am unsure how to say it best and so I say, “I’ll miss you. We all will.”

“I’ll miss you too,” she says quickly through controlled sobs. And then she says: “I understand.”

I’m not sure that I do. Michelle still as looks placid as a mannequin. She nods slightly at me, reminding me to deliver the critical closer. I restrain myself from giving her the finger.

“Today has to be your last day,” I say stiffly to Cheryl, feeling irrelevant and overbearing. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Cheryl says. “I just loved it here. It was like…family.”

What’s this? I think, and sit up a good deal more straight. With a pang of regret, I feel giddy validation, and then the blunting blot of irritation and shame. My face feels as though it is violently blushing. I know that empathy, not relief, is the humanely appropriate emotion. Where does my anguish escape to? There is no outrunning it: I am immediately pleased—in a deep and unavoidable way—that it is painful for her to leave me.

To her, I am smart and strong.

Instead of leaving the room, I sit with Cheryl while she cries. One by one, I tell the rest of them.

When it is over, I cry a little too. But the tears feel forced. And I do not cancel the party bus.

***

Rumpus original art by Estevan Guzman.

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And now, for those of you who haven’t read the news anywhere else, the results of the 2013 Nebula Awards Ceremony, which were awarded last night in San Jose. Congratulations to all the winners!

Novel

Winner: Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Nominees:
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (Marian Wood)
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman (Morrow; Headline Review)
Fire with Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
Hild, Nicola Griffith (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Red: First Light, Linda Nagata (Mythic Island)
A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer)
The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker (Harper)

Novella

Winner: ‘‘The Weight of the Sunrise,’’ Vylar Kaftan (Asimov’s 2/13)
Nominees:
‘‘Wakulla Springs,’’ Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages (Tor.com 10/2/13)
‘‘Annabel Lee,’’ Nancy Kress (New Under the Sun)
‘‘Burning Girls,’’ Veronica Schanoes (Tor.com 6/19/13)
‘‘Trial of the Century,’’ Lawrence M. Schoen (www.lawrencemschoen.com; World Jumping)
Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean)

Novelette

Winner: ‘‘The Waiting Stars,’’ Aliette de Bodard (The Other Half of the Sky)
Nominees:
‘‘Paranormal Romance,’’ Christopher Barzak (Lightspeed 6/13)
‘‘They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass,’’ Alaya Dawn Johnson (Asimov’s 1/13)
‘‘Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters,’’ Henry Lien (Asimov’s 12/13)
‘‘The Litigation Master and the Monkey King,’’ Ken Liu (Lightspeed 8/13)
‘‘In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind,’’ Sarah Pinsker (Strange Horizons 7/1 – 7/8/13)

Short Story

Winner: ‘‘If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,’’ Rachel Swirsky (Apex 3/13)
Nominees:
‘‘The Sounds of Old Earth,’’ Matthew Kressel (Lightspeed 1/13)
‘‘Selkie Stories Are for Losers,’’ Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons 1/7/13)
‘‘Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer,’’ Kenneth Schneyer (Clockwork Phoenix 4)
‘‘Alive, Alive Oh,’’ Sylvia Spruck Wrigley (Lightspeed 6/13)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

Winner: Gravity
Nominees:
Doctor Who: ‘‘The Day of the Doctor’’
Europa Report
Her
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Pacific Rim

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book

Winner: Sister Mine, Nalo Hopkinson (Grand Central)
Nominees:
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo)
When We Wake, Karen Healey (Allen & Unwin; Little, Brown)
The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
Hero, Alethea Kontis (Harcourt)
September Girls, Bennett Madison (Harper Teen)
A Corner of White, Jaclyn Moriarty (Levine)

Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service to SFWA Award: Michael Armstrong

2013 Damon Knight Grand Master Award: Samuel R. Delany  

The 2013 Nebula Awards were presented May 17, 2014 at the  SFWA’s 49th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend in San Jose, CA.

This brand new mind control collar!  Regular price $239.99, but it’s free (and mandatory) with your feminism subscription!  Don’t worry about paying back the cost, you’ll be more than happy to after you try it out!

(seriously though, why do you need to get anything out of it?  Feminism and other movements are about the empowerment of marginalized people, you should support them because you believe in this not because you’re hoping to get some sort of prize out of it.)

I’m glad so many other people share my view!  Because of how dang popular it is, I always like duck my head when people talk about it because they act like it’s this amazing brilliant thing.  I’ve even seen people arguing that it’s feminist (or more feminist than other fantasy fiction) because the magic part of society is ruled by women, and nobody seems to consider the rape to be rape. :\  This is the first time I’ve written about my issues with it publicly, because somebody really cool and important to me gave me the confidence to. :3

I bet there’s some sort of evil overlord meet up/support group where a bunch of them are like “your name is the Dark One? MINE TOO!”

When history uncovered speaks of some ancient myths….it can seem you are being told a story!  Somehow, I missed these legends — had never heard of the Hellhound.

It is one thing to have storms reveal a petrified forest, but to say they found the bones of the storied “hellhound”?  I wonder if we are all being hoaxed!

Hey, don’t blame Gwynn ap Nudd, or Arawn, ok?  HIS dogs were not legendarily black, lol, but white!  Me, I’m having trouble imagining a dog SEVEN feet tall…but an estimate of 200 lbs seems light to me for such stature.  We had a Pyrenees who was only 32″ tall and he weighed 150 lbs and was not fat.

** Edit: apparently the 7 feet measure would be in the “rampant” position — standing on hind legs.  Our Pyr was THAT big, so I guess it isn’t too big a stretch.  But if the ‘olde English’ thought this dog a demon?  Why bury it at all? Why not burn it, destroy it as other spooky things across medieval Europe were treated?

And then….maybe Godzilla wasn’t Japanese at all? :-) (I have to make these jokes; I had children who once had bedrooms resembling miniature Jurassic Parks, ok?)

Tagged: archeology, mythology

UPDATE: We do have a new campaign set up here! We’ve heard from people at this fundraising site AND their payment processor and gotten their blessing, so it obviously CAN be done.

“Cofounder and CEO of Crowdtilt here. Happy to help and pitch in. Jamesb @Crowdtilt.com is my email in case anything comes up. Cannot imagine the amt of stress and uncertainty you guys are going through, glad we can help remove one concern (credit card processing and fundraising).” 

We love you CrowdTilt! Send them love on Twitter and on Facebook!

WePay has responded (summary: two porn studios offered perks on their own, and she was removed for that) and now wants to help restart her campaign! They’ve reached out to her to discuss it. How kind of them. Too bad she couldn’t respond because she was in the ER.

I wrote earlier about Eden Alexander’s fundraiser, in which she was trying to raise funds to get the medical care she desperately needs while also paying rent. After having a reaction to a prescription drug, and misdiagnosed care, by the time she created a fundraiser she was in pretty dire need and asked a few friends for help creating and orchestrating the campaign, including me.

She used GiveForward, a service that friend Eric Cash recommended as it had been instrumental in raising funds for his wife, Hollie Stephens, an adult performer who died of breast cancer at 30 in 2012. They also helped performer Cameron Bay raise funds for HIV treatment without any issues, as well they should. Cause that’s what we do when shit hits the fan – we fundraise to help, especially since adult performers are often shunned by charities.

And hell, while it’s disgusting, payment processor WePay initially funded a revenge porn site, leaving it up until publicly shamed for it, so surely they weren’t going to take some sort of moral high ground? Right?

Here’s the text of the fundraising page, taken from Google Cache:

 As you can see, it doesn’t mention anything about Eden’s work. There were no perks offered, no dirty pictures. Just a woman in trouble, unable to work due to sudden, undiagnosed and dehabilitating illness and a sudden change of circumstances at home.

Let’s take a look at WePay’s Terms of Service, shall we? I’ve written about it (and Paypal) before.  Here’s the bit they decided Eden was on the wrong side of:

According to the message WePay sent to Eden, this is the area she violated. Not by raising money FOR porn, but by being a cam girl at all.

What WePay (and therefore GiveForward) is effectively saying is that because Eden is a cam girl by profession, raising money for medical funds is suspicious and banned. Because we all know sex workers can’t be trusted, and we’ll probably blow our money on porn rather than self care, and we all have robot bodies that never get ill, right?

However, and here’s where I’m really, really fucking angry, here’s some other areas they ban.

Oh yeah, WePay? Like “revealing the evils of the homosexual agenda“? How about going to other countries to spread imperialist Christianity among communities of colour? AWESOME SO GLAD YOU FUND THAT


Yeah cool so you’re totally not helping fund “love donations” for psychic readings. Cause science has totally explained that.

But you’ll totally help people go to fat camp, or get post-weight loss surgeries. Even if it’s someone raising money for their partner because he’s decided she’s too fat.

If they seriously ban everyone who has ever worked retail from using WePay, I’ll eat my hat. Not for selling the products through WePay, but ever selling licensed products ever.

That’s the problem, see. I get that they’re trying to cover their asses, but it’s not consistent, and it’s not logical. So if covering their asses is the goal, they’re doing a terrible job. Instead, it comes off as moralistic judgment calls that make sure sex workers are trapped, unable to get help for their rent, medical care, or other needs outside of the adult industry they work in. Basically, WePay was an idea spawned to fund a bachelor party… but if a hired stripper needs to raise money for medical care, she’s shit out of luck.

And the fact is? There’s not another option for us to go to. We’re wanting to raise money for Eden so that she doesn’t have to cam while horribly sick. We can’t use PayPal or WePay, and most alternate payment processors have vague terms of what constitutes “adult services” or “pornographic”. Because Eden is a cam girl, I guess she doesn’t deserve fundraising. And thus we see where the anti-porn arguments ultimately fuck us over – because society makes damn sure that once a sex worker, always a sex worker.

Eden was hospitalized this morning and is now being cared for, but she is still in crisis, chronic pain, and struggling. And it’s notable to me that other sex workers were the core of her support network. The fact is, being a sex worker often means more resources are cut off for you. Services meant to help you instead turn out to be frauds. You can lose your job, your home, your children, your privacy, because you were a sex worker. I am hard pressed to think of a sex worker who isn’t dealing with a sense of instability and anxiety about being found out and losing everything. Even the most privileged among us are still at great risk. We’re all drowning, and yet we’re often the only ones willing to take care of each other… a floatation raft of exhausted people, paddling as best they can, knowing the ocean is vast and getting colder every minute, but there’s no rescue boat coming. And knowing all the while that our profession demands that we smile and pretend everything is great, because otherwise the sharks (the media, anti-porn feminists, religious nutcases) will devour us all.

I also feel the need to say that we need to make sure to take care of each other when we *aren’t* in crisis. Isolation makes minor setbacks into severe desperation. Too often I’ve found myself overwhelmed when struggling with suicidal feelings, but radio silence when I start to get a handle on it. I know that I, too, focus more on people when they’re in their lowest points, and forget to follow up when they’ve got their head above water. Creating systems of sustainable care are vital for our community to survive. We don’t have to live our lives paddling water.

In this particular case, there was no pornographic content, no perks, no lingering on the adult industry, yet it was shut down anyway. Other people have had their payments pulled out from under them for being in the legal adult industry, including me with PayPal. It shouldn’t matter, though, whether you mention being a porn performer or not, whether you’re a legal sex worker or not. You should be able to ask for help if you need it, rather than needing to take on more dangerous sex work or endanger yourself to survive because you can’t raise money any other way. That is some fucked up bullshit and we need to speak out against it, to really fight this. It’s discrimination against marginalized people and we need to do something about it.

There’s a massive flurry of activity on Twitter about this right now. I recommend sending tweets to @WePay and @billclerico, the cofounder and CEO of the company. Molly Crabapple, Patton Oswalt, Neil Gaiman, and Wil Wheaton have tweeted about this among others. Twitter not your thing? You can email them at legal@wepay.com, call them at 1-855-GO-WEPAY (their offices are closed this weekend, so start Monday) or write to them/protest in person:

WePay, Inc.
380 Portage Ave
Palo Alto, CA, 94306

There’s a lot of eyes on this situation, and it’s not going to be great PR for the payment processor. It’ll also be excellent PR for the company who steps up and offers to process the donations that people are eager to offer.

This is a good time to step forward and be that payment processor, by the way.

Other coverage:

Stand Up for Sex Workers: Eden Alexander, WePay, and Whorephobia by Laurie Penny / @PennyRed

Porn Star (Re)tweets About Porn, Gets Her Medical Fundraiser Suspended by Fruzsina Eördögh for VICE

The Scarlet RT: How WePay Denies Service to Sex Workers and Surveils Everyone by Melissa Gira Grant

Eden Alexander, Crowd Funding, and Discrimination Against Sex Workers by Stephen Elliot at the Rumpus

WePay Withholds Funds from Ailing Sex Worker by E.J. Dickenson for Daily Dot

Crowdfunding Campaign Ends in Disaster for Porn Star by Tucker Bankshot for Fleshbot 

WePay Blames “The Rules” For Withholding Medical Funds from Sex Worker by Nitasha Tiku for ValleyWag 

Crowdfunding Site Cancels Fundraiser For Ailing Sex Worker by Andrew Dalton for SFist

Who Makes Your Money: WePay and Eden Alexander by Bubbles for Tits and Sass

WePay’s Disastrous Decision: Seeing Sex Workers as Risks, Not Human Beings by PJ Rey for The Society Pages 

Porn actress battles crowdfunding processor over fundraiser for her medical bills by TBogg at The Raw Story

WePay Withholds Funds From Sick Woman Due To Offer Of Porn For Donations by Josh Constine for Techcrunch

WePay Cancels Crowdfunding for Adult Performer’s Medical Treatment by Isha Aran for Jezebel

 

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Obama’s Rheeist agenda on education again rears its privatizing head:

One of the nation’s leaders of the privatization movement, Ted Mitchell, has been confirmed by the. u.S. Senate as Undersecretary of Education, the second most powerful job in the U.S. Department of Education.

Mitchell most recently was CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, which collects millions from philanthropies and venture funds and invests the money in creating charter chains and for-profit ventures.

Among his many other accomplishments, Mitchell served as chairman of the State Board of Education for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegegger, a time of unprecedented expansion of charter schools and deep budget cuts for both K-12 piblic schools and public higher education.

Once again, Obama’s education agenda is nothing short of terrible. It’s one of the few issues where those who say that there are no differences between Republicans and Democrats are more correct than not.

Lee Fang had more on Mitchell back when he was nominated in December:

His ethics disclosure form shows that he was paid $735,300 for his role at NewSchools, which is organized as a non-profit. In recent years, he has served or is currently serving as a director to New Leaders, Khan Academy, California Education Partners, Teach Channel, ConnectED, Hameetman Foundation, the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, Silicon Schools, Children Now, Bellwether Partners, Pivot Learning Partners, EnCorps Teacher Training Program, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and the Green DOT Public Schools.

In addition, Mitchell serves as an adviser to Salmon River Capital, a venture capital firm that specializes in education companies. Mitchell sits on the board of Parchment, an academic transcript start-up that is among Salmon River Capital’s portfolio.

Salmon River Capital helped create one of the biggest names in for-profit secondary education, Capella University. “As a foundational investor and director, [Salmon River Capital’s] Josh Lewis made invaluable contributions to Capella’s success. From leading our landmark financing in 2000, when Capella was a $10 million business operating in a difficult environment, through a successful 2006 IPO and beyond, he proved a great partner who kept every commitment he made,” reads a statement from Steve Shank, founder of Capella.

The Minnesota-based Capella heavily recruits veterans and has received $53.1 million from the GI Bill in the past four years. The Minnesota attorney general is currently investigating several unnamed for-profit colleges in her state.

Obama has promoted Rheeism and profit-generating education from the start of his presidency through Arne Duncan’s unusual power for a Secretary of Education and personal closeness between the two. We see it again and again. If Michelle Rhee wasn’t so controversial and tainted at this point, I’d hardly be surprised to see Obama nominate her if Duncan ever stepped down.

Bruce Schneier:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/the_limitations.html

[ sometimes when ] we were sure of our [ covertly gained information ], we couldn't act because that would reveal "sources and methods." This is probably the most frustrating explanation. Imagine we are able to eavesdrop on al-Assad's most private conversations with his generals and aides, and are absolutely sure of his plans. If we act on them, we reveal that we are eavesdropping. As a result, he's likely to change how he communicates, costing us our ability to eavesdrop. It might sound perverse, but often the fact that we are able to successfully spy on someone is a bigger secret than the information we learn from that spying.

This dynamic was vitally important during World War II. During the war, the British were able to break the German Enigma encryption machine and eavesdrop on German military communications. But while the Allies knew a lot, they would only act on information they learned when there was another plausible way they could have learned it. They even occasionally manufactured plausible explanations. It was just too risky to tip the Germans off that their encryption machines' code had been broken.

The World War II bit isn't news to anyone who reads history (or, for that matter, Neal Stephenson novels).

I had an insight just now.

We know that the NSA collects all sorts of information on American citizens. We know that the FBI and the CIA have full access to this information. We know that the
DEA also has full access to that data. And we know that when the
DEA busts someone using information gleaned by the electronic panopticon of our internal spy organization, they take pains to hide the source of the information via the subterfuge of parallel construction.

The insight is this: our government is now dealing with the citizenry the same way that the British dealt with the Nazis: treating them as an external existential threat, spying on them, and taking pains to obfuscate the source of the information that they use to target their attacks.

Yeah, Godwin's law, whatever, whatever. My point is NOT that the NSA is the same as the Nazi party (in fact, my argument has the NSA on the opposite side). My point is that the government now treats ordinary civilians as worthy of the same sort of tactics that they once used against the Nazis.

This isn't really shocking, given that I think that the government has long been at war with the populace…but it's still a somewhat stark distillation of the trend.

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AddictionMyth is excited to announce the inauguration of the Red Face Club¹.  This is the club that you join when you feel your cheeks reddening and burning because one day you let your mouth get ahead of your brain and then just when your brain catches up you suddenly realize that google has already indexed and archived your words for all eternity, and curse the fact that you live in America which really should be more like Europe.

We would like to announce the inaugural member of the Red Face Club, Senior Attorney at Law Dale Berkly of the NIH, who sent the following letter alleging allegations of naughtiness over here at AddictionMyth.  We encourage Dr Berkley to submit a selfie, as we will soon be holding contests for the reddest faces!

Letter to Addiction Myth 5-12-2014

[AddictionMyth replied through his attorney that the posts were indeed written in a drunken stupor as suspected, and while not admitting guilt, is now furiously attempting to identify the specific character defects that triggered the cravings that precipitated the debacle.  Unfortunately, there are many.  He welcomes suggestions for Higher Powers with expertise in ‘ignorance’ and/or ‘arrogance’.  He looks forward to making amends for his alleged² sins, though he’s not asking anyone to die for them just yet.]

In other news, the ‘cray-cray’ conspiracy theories of Addiction Myth have been fully vindicated by experts in all fields.   The following quotes are just a small sample of the praise received:

Imsos Marti, professor of Psychobiopharmakinetics at the Harvard Center for Applied Metacognition said, “AddictionMyth’s withering satire of biologist Aaron White is an indictment of the field of Addiction Science.  Addiction Science is tantamount to witchcraft.  Can we still dunk witches?”

Professor Anita Huggs of the UCLA Center for Advanced Loving Kindness said, “Addicts are every bit as stupid as AddictionMyth portrays.  I work with them daily and they are indeed complete dolts.  Sometimes you just want to say, ‘Why do you do so much drugs?  You are a complete dolt!’  But we can’t because that’s unethical, and anyway intelligence is stubbornly fixed at birth.  We are currently focusing on boosting the natural hormones that increase one’s sense of well-being.  It’s like giving them a permanent hug without actually having to touch them.  It’s like a chemical Thundershirt for people, if you will.  Why do drugs when you feel loved?  That’s my theory.  And it’s working great for my dog, so far at least.”

Dave Eggers, best selling author and satirist, wrote: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

Clancy Martin, UMKC Professor of Philosophy and Ethics says: “These days, everyone has their own theory of what addiction is.  We’re starting to discover the fundamental relativism of all moral and scientific judgments.  AddictionMyth’s theory is as good as any, even though he never experienced true raging alcoholism like I did (and which nearly killed me!).  So what if the theory is riddled with lies and self-contradiction and implicates the government in a mass homicide and ultimately may destroy modern civilization?  At least it’s not blatantly Christian.  Hypocrisy: get used to it.  That’s what I always say.”

¹ Capacity in the Red Face Club is strictly limited to 6,000,000,000.  Don’t miss your chance!  Join now!

² My lawyer made me add this.

From: Dale Berkley, Attorney at Law, NIH
Subject: Cease and Desist (retraction)

Dear AddictionMyth,

This whole satire thing has become tiresome.  So I would like to be completely serious for a moment.  I hereby retract my “Cease and Desist” letter regarding your satirical posts on our NIH Scientists.  It was blatantly unconstitutional and a chilling infringement on your First Amendment rights.  I blush just to think about it.  You would think I’d know better, as a Senior Attorney at a prestigious government institution.  But here’s the problem.  You see, I am an alcoholic.  There I said it.  It started with just two drinks at night, and I thought everything was fine.  But the thing is, the drinks started as regular sized cups, and before I knew it, it was 2 full bottles of gin.  Every night.  But in my own mind I was justifying it as “Just 2 drinks”.

I’ve spoken with Koob and White, and they explained it to me.  This is the normal progression of alcoholism.  It’s a very insidious disease and it gets out of hand quickly.  Like most people, I didn’t realize I was in trouble until it was too late.  They also explained that it can happen to anyone, including a prestigious lawyer like myself, and I have nothing to be ashamed of.  I learned that it’s a physical abnormality in the brain, and not because I was just feeling increasingly sexually frustrated, as I had naively assumed.  Also, we may have a genetic predisposition that is activated by childhood drinking.  Well I can remember my father letting me taste his beer when I was a teenager.  White said that could have been the trigger.

Most alcoholics will go out and have sex with fat chicks or smash bar chairs over others’ heads.  Basically they do things they shouldn’t do and wouldn’t want to do when sober.   Well, to be honest those things have little interest for me.  But the booze brings out the mischief in me.    And that’s why I did it.  I directed the letter to you because I was trying to satirize your absurd theory that the government turns its citizens into zombies and then tries to silence anyone who points it out.  I certainly didn’t think everyone would be so dense and so easily deceived and misled by my little joke.  I mean the letter was transparently stupid!  I guess I’m just not that great at satire when I’m drunk.  Also, to be honest I was blacked out the whole time I wrote and emailed the letter, and had absolutely no recollection of it until Koob reminded me that I called him in the middle of the night asking if I should send it.  Of course, he told me not to, but I did anyway.  First I laughed when he told me (someone saw it on popehat), but I started piecing together my memories of the night, and I saw he wasn’t laughing.  Then I realized: OOPS!

Well if that doesn’t demonstrate the true power of the cunning and baffling disease known as alcoholism, then I don’t know what does.  Aaron is actually going to use my experience as an example of a blackout in his next paper.  It turns out that alcohol is surprisingly specific in the cognitive functions that it impairs, as shown by our own research and the research that we fund.

Fortunately Obamacare now includes alcoholism treatment as an “Essential Benefit” so I am covered (unless our waiver request is granted).  Plus, since I work at the NIH, I can get cutting edge treatment.  Koob and White created a giant gerbil wheel for me to run in daily.  They say it works great for the rats in reducing their compulsion to drink.  And I also will be participating in play therapy with tin cans and garbage, which is expected to be incredibly effective based on extrapolation from animal studies.  Also the therapy works great for meth and coke, in case I should ever get mixed up with those as well, and get addicted, and do something stupid.  Again.  Turns out my brain is wired in such a way that makes me particularly susceptible to this pattern of behavior.

And of course, I am focusing on bolstering my spiritual life, because I understand that that will also help protect me from my own deadly urges, against which I must remain eternally vigilant.  As White explained, stopping was the easy part, but bad habits are hard to break.  Now comes the hard part – not picking up again.  Because if I do, it could easily turn into two bottles a night.  Again.  Without even realizing it.  Or even worse: realizing it but being completely unable to stop myself; powerless to my own cravings.  Can you imagine!  But I’m not worried about that, because now I know that every day is a blessing full of awe, and I meditate on that thought daily.  I take it one day at a time.

Also I need to create a support network for when I think I might be getting into trouble, so if you can send me your number that would be great.  (Yes of course I already have it, but I thought it might be a little spooky if I just cold-called you.)

Despite all that, I’ve also learned that relapses are normal and expected.  So please don’t be disappointed if and when I send you another nasty letter alleging something else like cyberstalking our personnel (which I did not allude to in the first sentence of this letter, even if it may seem like it to the unsophisticated layman).  Or even myself, for that matter (but please feel free to call any time!).  Many of us are regular AA attendees where we learned that one is expected to relapse at least 7 times, which has also been corroborated in animal experiments performed right here at NIAAA.  So you can safely ignore threatening letters from the government at this point.  Remember, we are not zombies, even if we act like it sometimes. It’s just our disease acting up.

As my Higher Power Thomas McLellan, former senior drug official in the Obama administration explains, “Let’s face it: People with addictions do bad things.  Nora’s work has shown that they’re bad because the brain structures and functions that are specifically targeted by abuse screw up motivation, reward and learning.”

Again, I would like to apologize for my ridiculous behavior.  Can we just acknowledge each other’s work as lame attempts at satire and call it even?  I would also like to make amends: we’ve decided to name our next treatment for alcoholism after you.  We call it the AddictionMyth pill, and it turns out to be more effective than any other treatment we’ve discovered here (granted, not saying much).  Though for some reason you always have to explain it: “We are now giving you the AddictionMyth pill, which we have to call it as our amends to some idiot ass who insists your drinking is just cover for your mischief.”  I found out it’s actually just made out of sugar.  Don’t tell anyone.  :-)

P.S.  When Barack heard about the letter, he flipped his lid!  Turns out he’s an expert in the Constitution.  He made me write, “I will not infringe on our citizens’ Freedom of Speech” 100 times!

P.P.S.  I have been demoted to “Junior Attorney at Law” for one week starting today, a reprimand I sheepishly accept.  Please note: my office cannot be responsible for incorrectly addressed correspondence.

P.P.P.S.  We are not medicalizing demon possession.  But I respect your right to say that, and even ridicule us for it if that’s what you really believe.

One of the just-so stories told by people who emphasize the importance of Game-Changing the Overton Window on Steroids is the estate tax — allegedly, Republicans made a popular tax unpopular by branding it the “death tax.” The problem is that there’s no evidence to support the claim:

What about the estate tax? It seems like a case where framing effects are unusually likely. In the early 2000s, opponents started labeling this tax on inherited wealth the “death tax.” They claimed it was unjust double taxation because the money had (they claimed) already been taxed when it was income. Some people came up with even cleverer slogans like “no taxation without respiration.” Supporters never seemed as good at disseminating pro-estate tax frames.

But even on this issue, the evidence suggests framing wasn’t very important. The 2002 American National Election Study included an experiment where people were randomly assigned to be asked about the “death tax” or the “estate tax” and found no significant difference in opinions. It was broadly unpopular with both wordings. Question wording experiments in polls by a variety of other organizations found similar null results.

When Larry Bartels looked at the history of estate tax (see chapter 7), he found no evidence it was popular at any time since its adoption in 1916. Republicans have tried to repeal it whenever they had unified control of government, and in each instance they felt they had popular sentiment behind them. This started in the mid-1920s, when President Calvin Coolidge urged repeal. At that time, the estate tax was cut, and members of Congress perceived strong public pressure for complete repeal. Repeal was averted, not because the votes weren’t there in Congress, but only because the House Ways and Means Committee chairman took it out of the bill in conference committee. After that, it was safe from repeal for many decades because from 1932 to 2001, Republicans only held unified government control for a small two year window in 1953-5, when they held a slim 1-vote majority in the Senate and a 10-seat majority in the House. When Republicans took the House in 1994, many in the party immediately pushed for repeal. And when they achieved unified control in 2001, they passed it.

And this is true of conservative policy successes in general. Reagan didn’t make upper-class tax cuts more popular; he (and George W. Bush) were just smart enough to understand that since federal elections aren’t referenda on individual policies it doesn’t necessarily matter. Framing can sometimes matter at the margins but people tend to vastly overstate its importance.

The latest and among the more annoying nutritionist fads–the gluten-free diet–is taking a bit of a hit this week, as folks are beginning to look at a study published last August in Gastroenterology demonstrating that eliminating gluten produced no demonstrable effects in a test subjects who rotated between several highly-structured diets over the course of 7-8 weeks.

37 subjects took part, all with self-reported gluten sensitivity who were confirmed to not have celiac’s disease. They were first fed a diet low in FODMAPs for two weeks, then were given one of three diets for a week with either 16 grams per day of added gluten (high-gluten), 2 grams of gluten and 14 grams of whey protein isolate (low-gluten), or 16 grams of whey protein isolate (placebo). Each subject shuffled through every single diet so that they could serve as their own controls, and none ever knew what specific diet he or she was eating. After the main experiment, a second was conducted to ensure that the whey protein placebo was suitable. In this one, 22 of the original subjects shuffled through three different diets — 16 grams of added gluten, 16 grams of added whey protein isolate, or the baseline diet — for three days each.

The authors found that everyone reported improved gastrointestinal symptoms during the two-week low-gluten diet–a baseline diet they seem to have been aware of (at least as I read the abstract)–but then experienced worsening symptoms to identical degrees when they switched to the three rotating diets, one of which was the same as the baseline.

This study–a follow-up to a 2011 paper by the same authors that suggested that “gluten sensitivity” might possibly be a thing–provides the best available evidence that in all likelihood, absent a diagnosis of CD, your gluten-eschewing friends and family may be exhibiting nothing more than nocebo effects, voluntarily eating shitty food in the name of warding off the flatulence, lethargy, and ennui that are, alas, merely the individualized symptoms of a civilization teetering on the brink of an unfathomably nightmarish death.

Obviously, there is a small portion of the population–about one percent–for whom gluten consumption is indeed dangerous. Celiac disease is horrific but symptomatically protean, so it can be easily confused with other medical problems; though it’s relatively easy to diagnose with a blood test, biopsy, and change in diet, individuals with CD endure an average of 11 years between initial symptoms and diagnosis. Those folks should stay the fuck away from gluten, and people exhibiting symptoms of CD ought to see a fucking doctor before adopting trendy and possibly unnecessary dietary restrictions. Everyone else should just shut up and eat your fucking pasta already, or there will be no goddamn dessert for you.

What’s funny about all this, I suppose, is that the gluten-free craze–while luring millions of suckers into a diet of crumbly food–has in the very least made food options more tolerable for the one percent of folks who actually need to avoid gluten. So there’s that, at least.

It’s SO hot in the South Bay right now. I mean, I’ve always thought of it as my personal hell, but DAMN. And it’s only going to get worse!! Putting on makeup in the heat is like a maddening experiment in futility, because the sweat makes the makeup stick in weird ways and drip off in others, while having a fan on your face means you’re fighting powder shadows spewing all over your face.

It took me an hour just to do my makeup. As a lazy femme, this is far too long. 

Anyway to make it up to myself I tried out some of my fandom inspired Shiro eyeshadows today, and I love them. They’ve got fantastic colour, work well with being layered to create a stronger look, and so, so sparkly! I had gotten the samplers of the Game of Thrones collection and the Hunger Games collection a while back, so decided to combine the two.

The two eyeshadows I wore today were Women’s Weapons, styled after Cercei from GoT, and Remake, after Cinna from the Hunger Games. I apologize that I didn’t get swatches (I always forget to do that!) so what you’re seeing is the full look with some eyeliner on top, but these shadows are super pretty.

First I laid down a foundation of Remake, a pretty and bright gold colour with a hint of bronze. I didn’t see the purple flecks it’s reported to have, but that didn’t really matter to me. It’s a gorgeous colour and I liked that it’s got some boldness without being overpowering. I’ve been into wearing golds/silvers on my lid and then a highlight colour and this is perfect for that. I gave it a pretty light hand, but imagine it’d make an amazing eyeliner if you wet the brush.

As my highlight colour I used Women’s Weapons, a dark, rich red with some golden shimmer. It’s lipsafe, and the first time I saw it was as a lipgloss (Shiro makes custom lipglosses from their lipsafe eyeshadows!) It took two layers to get it as dark as I liked, but was really pretty on (and the fact you have to layer it to get it dark means that it’s easier to make it blend softly).

These two shadows played well together and the sample baggies I got offer plenty of product to play around with while you decide what you like. I have a lot of colours in both sets and I’ll probably feature them again really soon, especially some of the brighter colours.

Shiro Cosmetics is run by two women out in Portland, OR, and it’s vegan as well as cruelty-free, which always a plus. I definitely recommend these eyeshadows, though since they’re powdered and not pressed, it may take some adjusting to figure out how to best apply them. I found tapping my brush on the edge of the baggie left me with plenty of product without having to do too much cleanup. Give them a try!

Lucy Liu in the Iron Woman film trilogy

The hero you call Iron Man does not exist. I am Iron Woman.

So Lucy Liu and Gwyneth Paltrow? O:

Sold. >_>

The art of Harry Whittier Frees, 1914:

Cats firing a cannon. Can’t beat that.

And never let it be said that cats taking over the internet is some kind of surprise or cultural phenomena of the era. Cute cats take over everything always.

The only way I can explain Timothy Egan’s column yesterday is that he was pitching two or three different columns about the commencement speech issue that all the pundits are talking about this week, but they were all rejected and so he had to combine them all. Alas, none of the arguments is persuasive on its own either.

Egan starts out by citing a couple of unrepresentative examples of commencement speeches, by David Foster Wallace and Steve Jobs. Now, admittedly, if either of these gentlemen were to deliver a commencement address this year it would be compelling indeed, but otherwise I’m not sure how it’s relevant. But you can see where this is going:

This year, there’s the remarkable life story of the African-American scholar who grew up in the segregated South and rose to become secretary of state. Didn’t hear that one? Nobody did. Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to give the 248th anniversary commencement address at Rutgers University this coming Sunday. She canceled after a small knot of protesters pressured the university. It’s no contest who showed more class.

Leaving aside the fact that it’s enormously unlikely that any public figure like Rice would give a speech of the slightest interest, there’s a rather obvious problem here. What’s potentially objectionable about Rice isn’t her life story, but…I’ll let Egan explain:

Near as I can tell, the forces of intolerance objected to her role in the Iraq war. O.K. And by shutting her down, the point is … what? That extremism, whether in the climate-denial echo chamber of Republican Party elites or in the fragile zone of college faculty lounges, is the worst enemy of free speech.

[...]

The foreign policy that Rice guided for George W. Bush — two wars on the credit card, making torture a word associated with the United States — was clearly a debacle. Contemporary assessments were not kind, and history will be brutal.

So, Rice played a major role in a war fought on false pretenses that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and 2 trillion dept-financed dollars. Her administration also arbitrarily tortured people. No major figure involved with this has faced the slightest punishment. And not only am I supposed to be upset that she decided not to give a commencement address for a large pile of money after some protest, but I’m supposed to believe that people who protested are comparable to climate troofers? Are you shitting me?

His other two examples, Robert Birgeneau and Christine Lagarde, are better as applied to this narrow point. I don’t particularly care who gives commencement addresses and don’t think there’s any real free speech issue involved. But like Isaac Chotiner, I’m inclined to think that focusing on targets like Birgeneau and especially Lagarde does tend to dilute the impact of protests against, say, war criminals and their enablers.

But rather than making this point, Egan wanders back into non-sequitur land:

But if every speaker has to pass a test for benign mediocrity and politically correct sensitivity, commencement stages will be home to nothing but milquetoasts. You want torture? Try listening to the Stanford speech of 2009, when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy gave an interminable address on the intricacies of international law, under a broiling sun, with almost no mention of the graduates.

Give me a brisk, strong, witty defense of something I disagree with over a tired replay of platitudes. It matters little if the speaker is a convict or a seminarian, a statesman or a comedian.

Look, with very rare exceptions, if you want good speeches, avoid commencement addresses. Kennedy’s speech is very much the rule, not the exception. But more to the point, what possible basis could Egan have for thinking that the likes of Legarde or Birgeneau would deliver an interesting speech? The head of the I.M.F. is going to deliver a brisk, strong, witty speech on a controversial topic? Sure, and the Astros are going to win 120 games this year.

Neither of these points make any sense and the whole is even less than the sum of the weak parts. Protesting Condoleezza Rice being paid $35 grand plus an honorary degree isn’t “bigotry” and it’s not like climate denialism. And nor will it make commencement speeches worse (something that would be nearly impossible anyway.) One transparently silly contrarian provocation plus one non-sequitur does not equal a decent argument.

…phillsy in comments is excellent on this:

But the commencement speakers almost certainly aren’t going to get up there and do that, because, well, it’s a commencement speech. Choosing a commencemnt speaker isn’t about choosing someone with a controversial view so they can offer an intellectual defense of it, it’s about choosing someone to be honored for their accomplishments. The content of the speech isn’t the statement, the person giving it is, and it’s a statement being made by the university administration.

Making objections that the target chosen protest is fine–I don’t see what Legarde herself has done that would merit protesting her–but these purely process-based based objections are ridiculous. They’re another instance of the Charles G. Koch theory of free speech, which says that free speech is the rich and well-connected saying whatever they want, whenever they want, and the rest of us get to sit and listen respectfully.

It's for the same reason Libertarians hate the American Middle Class because Libertarianism is a philosophical Rube Goldberg machine created to rationalize Plutocracy and defend Unearned Privilege.

Years ago when Teachers were only able to provide supplemental income to the family (with the exception of the all-male University Professors) there were afforded respect and looked upon as a bedrock institution helping craft American Exceptionalism. But, then Teachers' income increased, granting women economic security while they exerted political pressure through Unionization, while they also began to infiltrate Upper Levels of Academia encroaching upon White Male Privilege.

Teachers became part of the America Middle Class which the 1% hates more than anything else in the world.

The American Middle Class is much too mercurial for the Plutocracy, they don't bow down and worship the Moneyed Masters the way whipped conservatives and libertarians dogs do. The American Middle Class votes for nasty socialist schemes like Old Age insurance and health care for the poor, indigent and sick. These concepts are anathema to the Plutocracy and their Right-Wing slaves.

The Plutocracy began to decry Teachers because they were not molding American minds to be good wage slaves deferential to Power and Privilege. Thus, the Koch Brothers and other One Percenters created the Libertarian Party to train their little libertarian guard dogs, who would dutifully convince others that allowing the Rich to do whatever they want was the right way and would ensure that they themselves were the just upon the cusp of becoming the Masters of the World as long as they stayed in line.
Left-leaning libertarians, apparently exist, but libertarians are overwhelmingly young, white, males who more closely identify with the Tea Party or Republicans.



The Donald Sterling Fiasco revealed how much Libertarians see a Plutocrat losing his Privilege as an attack on them.

DissidentRight said... 

The pollution problem has been discussed ad nauseam, and it only becomes a problem when 1) businessmen are prevented from using the "pollution" as an input to some other industrial process and 2) when there's un-owned property upon which to dump it. Solution: 1) deregulate markets (people always find novel uses for industrial leftovers) and 2) assign ownership to everything. Pollution, as usual, is a problem that cannot exist without the State. 

May 3, 2014 at 1:24 PM

Libertarians are just another breed of Reactionary Guard Dogs for White Male Power and Privilege. And the saddest thing is, libertarians can not envision a day when they will be treated the same way the Plutocracy treats Women and Minorities.

tastefullyoffensive:

Zelda and Frankenstein commiserate. [depressedalien]

tubofgoodthings:

flukeoffate:

Everything is better when you pretend Anon hate is coming from Muppets.

that’s genius