Sophianotloren

I wrote the original version of this story (which, by the by, was based on a dream) around 1990, but like “Spring Forward” it was lost due to computer and filing problems during my “year of disaster”.  I’ve been thinking about rewriting it for some time now, but I was finally inspired to do so by a certain column published early last month; after you read the tale, you’ll probably be able to guess which one.

All right, Doreen, you win; I’ll tell you the truth about how it all happened.  But don’t forget, I already said you wouldn’t believe it, and I still don’t think you really will because I only half believe it myself.   And if you start arguing with me and telling me I must be wrong, or it couldn’t have happened that way, or maybe I need a long vacation, I’m going to hang up on you and forever deny I said any of it.  Deal?

It all started last September when I went on that camping trip with one of my clients, remember?  He owns a big sporting goods store, and he’d been practically begging me to go on a camping date with him for years; at first I held him off by saying that wasn’t really my style, but that excuse wouldn’t hold water any more after he got to know me.  Anyway, he bribed me with a week-long booking and a whole new wardrobe of cute hiking wear, and eventually I caved in under the condition that if I really hated it we’d come out of the backwoods and rent a cabin for the rest of the week.

Well, at first it actually turned out to be kind of nice.  A sleeping bag isn’t exactly the ideal place to work, but I’ve done it in worse places and it was only for half an hour a night; the rest of the time we were hiking and fishing and all that sort of thing.  The time went quickly and pleasantly, and in fact it was on track for being one of my nicest professional dates ever until the sasquatch showed up.  Yes, Doreen, I said “sasquatch”, as in Bigfoot.  What?  I don’t care what your damned husband says, that thing was no goddamned hoax!  Hey, are you going to shut up and listen or am I going to hang up?  All right then.

As I was saying before I was so freaking rudely interrupted, I know damned well it was no dude in a suit because he picked me up with one arm and slung me over his shoulder, so I got to see him plenty close enough.  And the smell made me want to vomit.  Yes, I’m serious; what a stupid question!  If I was going to make something up it would be a helluva lot more believable than this.  Anyway, it’s a good thing my date wasn’t too far away because he leaped to my rescue, shouting to get the sasquatch’s attention and then shooting him with bear spray.  He dropped me like a kid throwing down his book bag and headed off in a rush, making this awful howling noise.  I was pretty badly bruised and shaken up from being dropped seven feet onto hard ground, but other than that I was OK; it was all over before I even had time to get scared.

Obviously, that was the end of the trip; I said I was all right and maybe we could just relocate our campsite to someplace less remote, but he wouldn’t hear of it and brought me back to town immediately.  Nothing was broken and in a week or so I wasn’t even sore any more, and if it wasn’t for the fact that someone else had seen it all I might’ve put it down to bad drugs or whatever; it was just so surreal that by the time a couple of months had gone by it seemed more like something I had seen in a movie than something which had really happened to me.

And then I started getting the presents.

At first it was only once or twice a week, then later every day.  They were always left sometime during the night at my back door:  nuts, wild honey, game, all sorts of things.  Some of the offerings were things that could’ve been found in the woods, while others clearly originated in town.  Or more specifically, on the edge of town;  both the nursery and the farmer’s market from which several of the gifts seemed to have come were, like my house, within sight of the edge of the forest.  What’s that?  Yeah, it was definitely creepy, but I learned long ago never to call the cops unless you’re dying, and probably not even then.  And I didn’t really get scared until the first time it snowed…and I saw a trail of eighteen-inch-long bare footprints leading up to my door and returning to the woods.

Though this had been going on for months now, seeing that was just too much; that was when I called you and made up that dumb story about getting my house fumigated so I could stay at your place a couple of nights.  Oh yeah?  Well, you didn’t seem to find it suspicious at the time.  Anyhow, when I went back there was nothing at the door but a piece of scrap cardboard with four letters crudely printed on it: S – O – R – Y.

I suddenly felt weak, and would probably have passed out right there had I not quickly sat down on the stoop.  The only conclusion I could come to was that a sasquatch had fallen in love with me at first sight and attempted to carry me off, but after being foiled at that decided to woo me with presents instead.  Go ahead and laugh, I know how ridiculous that sounds; the place I had first met him was over a hundred miles from here, so how in the world could he have followed me, and how could he have figured out where I lived?  How had he avoided being seen for months in a far more populous area than the one where he normally lived?  Why had the gifts gradually shifted from apparently-random offerings to things I genuinely like?  And how the hell had an ape-like monster learned to write?

There were no more presents after that for a long time, and eventually my curiosity about the creature overpowered my fear; I began to wish he’d come back, reasoning that if he could write even a little we could learn to communicate, and I could solve the mystery.  But all through the winter I saw nothing of him, and by April I figured he had gone back wherever he came from…and then one morning there was a metal strongbox on my stoop.  The lock had been smashed open, and inside I found over forty thousand dollars…yet it had been left outside as casually as those first offerings of acorns and dead fish had been.  Well, of course I kept it, wouldn’t you have?  The bills weren’t marked, the strongbox looked pretty shabby and there was nothing in the news about a stolen box full of cash; maybe he ran into drug dealers or something.  The important thing was that he was still in the area, and had clearly learned that money is something I value.

And then it hit me: if he kept bringing me money, trouble would surely follow.  A merchant might ignore a missing sack of potatoes, but people don’t leave cash lying around…somebody was bound to get hurt, and sooner rather than later.  I had long since decided he must be able to read my mind; how else could he have tracked me, fine-tuned his gifts and learned about human culture?  Oh, get real, Doreen!  You’re telling me that a lovesick Bigfoot with ESP is really that much more absurd than a lovesick Bigfoot without?  All right then.

So anyway, I knew I had to nip this in the bud before he turned into a full-fledged criminal; that night I set up a picnic table in the backyard, put a bunch of different foods on it, made myself a pot of coffee and sat down in a lawn chair to wait for him.  How do you get that?  You didn’t see him; none of my doors could’ve stopped him if he had really wanted to get inside, and he hadn’t ever tried, so obviously being alone outside was no more dangerous than being alone inside, which I had been the majority of nights since this started.

I didn’t have to wait long; about 1 AM he came out of the woods, stopped just inside the range of the floodlights and sat down on my lawn.  The smell which had been so pronounced at our first meeting was gone, and his long, shaggy hair was both clean and – don’t laugh – brushed.  I asked him if he could understand me, and he nodded, so I explained that while I appreciated his gifts, it wasn’t right for him to take things that didn’t belong to him.  I guess the concept of private property was a new one to him, but he’s really very bright so he grasped it that very first night.  Well, of course I did; after he went through all that trouble to meet me it was the least I could do.

Hang on a second, Doreen, a car just pulled into my driveway…it’s you?  Wow, I really wasn’t expecting you to come over today.  Ummm…no, I guess it’s OK, I was just training my new driver, Hank, so you might as well come in and meet him.  I’d better warn you, though, he’s really huge and kind of scary, but he’s really just a big teddy bear.  And he’s a lot smarter than he looks.

I never met her, her brand of paganism was not my own.  But I admired her belief in the human ability to love and bond outside the narrow lines of dominant paradigms.  Morning Glory Zell has died and the world is a poorer, darker place for her loss.

I am now at the age where almost weekly, I hear of a death among acquaintances or age-mates.  And this year, as I told a dear friend recently, is the year when I suddenly felt old.  A fragility in myself seems marked in every line of my face and makes itself felt in every motion.

I’ve never feared death, but I dislike pain and loss.  I dislike disarray in my wake.  Every farewell to those distant or close reminds me “Hurry, hurry….accomplish the goal NOW.”

Tagged: death

In the old days, the Rude Pundit would have just titled this "Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt (Part 120,749)" and been done with it. But since the title of these here posts appear on people's home pages on their work computers, well, perhaps a bit of decorum is called for. "Cunt" is still "The Word That Dare Not Be Spoken or Seen Unless You're from Great Britain or Ireland, Where Everyone Calls Everyone Else 'Cunt' and No One Cares." For what it's worth, the following people are total cunts: Cliven Bundy, Donald Sterling, the entire prime time line-up of Fox "news," and Ted Cruz. That is not a complete list.

But Ann Coulter is a cunt because in her latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "rabbit hole of razor blades"), she says something so easily disproven that it took the Rude Pundit about one second to do so. She stays obsessed with the way that death penalty opponents are making a legitimate big deal about the bad execution of Clayton Lockett. As the Rude Pundit pointed out last week, she seems to use the description of Lockett's terrible crimes as foreplay for a savage self-pleasuring. Then she goes off on how perhaps "liberals" (quotation marks since Coulter's fantasy liberals have as much to do with real liberals as Mickey Mouse has to do with real rodents) would be cool if prisoners on death row were executed by the same methods used for abortion.

Oh, ho, she's challenging us there, saying, "Maybe they -- and MSNBC's similarly high-minded Rachel Maddow -- should comfort themselves by thinking of Lockett's execution as a very, very, very late-term abortion. You know, the kind that liberal darling Wendy Davis filibustered for 11 hours to keep legal."

Then she asks, "Would the Times ever give as detailed a description of an abortion as it does for the execution of a remorseless killer?"

And that took about one second to answer in about ten different ways.

Here's the New York Times in 1995, describing so-called "partial-birth abortion": "[A] fetus at 20 weeks of gestation or more is partly delivered, feet first, and then to make it easier for the fetus to pass through the birth canal, the skull is collapsed." Talking about a bill banning the practice, the article says that it doesn't define "the specifics of inserting scissors into the neck to create a hole through which the brains can be suctioned out to collapse the skull."

Not graphic enough? Then check out this 2000 article by Linda Greenhouse on the debate over dilation and evacuation (D&E) and dilation and extraction (D&X) methods of late-term abortion: "In a D & E, the fetus is dismembered before being removed. By contrast, the 'intact D & X' collapses the fetal skull, minimizing possible damage to the woman's uterus and cervix." Oh, sorry. Does that one not work because it cares too much about the health of the woman?

How about we go Gosnell? In the Times' much-maligned-by-the-right coverage of the trial of killer Kermit Gosnell last year, his crime was described as "the murder of a baby born alive in a botched abortion, who prosecutors said would have survived if the doctor had not 'snipped' its neck with scissors."

What makes this notable cuntistry for Coulter is that she asks her question rhetorically, with the same dismissive rage with which she always writes, attitude that is a beard for ignorance. She pretends to be an expert. She pretends to have knowledge. Lots of people hear her and parrot what she says, and thus, once again, a lie becomes the truth no matter how many facts you throw in its path. (Oh, and, obviously, despite the best efforts of some of us, Coulter ain't going away).

There's this attitude towards pro-choice supporters and towards women who have decided to get abortions that we just don't understand what's happening. Missouri's legislature just passed a 72-hour waiting period on abortions. That means an adult woman, making a perfectly legal decision on her pregnancy and her body, has to go home or, if the clinic isn't in her hometown, go to another person's house or a motel, and wait three fucking days because...why? Because she hasn't thought about it? How patronizing can our legislatures get?

But the right wants us to focus on the gory details. For the vast majority of women ending pregnancies in clinics, they're not using third trimester or even late second trimester methods. They are using methods that don't have scissors or forceps or anything. After family planning counselor Emily Letts filmed her abortion, which showed Letts from the waist up and, yes, her smile during the procedure, conservatives were blowing up with rage. Christine Sisto at the National Review said that Letts didn't show us an "abortion." Some don't believe she actually had the procedure.

Sorry, anti-abortion activists, but unless what you wanted to see was a small metal tube inserted in Letts's vagina, most abortion procedures are clean and easy and safe. They don't involve dismembered body parts. They don't involve induced delivery. Most abortion is as simple as a quick procedure or a pill, with perhaps some residual bleeding after.

There's a sick desire from anti-abortion forces to make something grotesque out of something that isn't. It's to add to make women feel shame and stigmatizing them. They so desire to force women back to the era of abortion in the shadows.

Oh, by the way, the New York Times also described those procedures, too.

I can appreciate as much as the next person how awesome it would be to see more safer sex in porn. I think it’s really hot to see condoms, dental dams, and gloves. I often prefer to use gloves myself, on and off set, because black gloves covered in lube is pretty fucking sexy.

I don’t think it’s hot to force them on porn stars, any more than I think it’s hot to take away people’s agency in any institutionalized fashion. And I really bristle at the government enforcing health and safety policies on set when society’s done such a piss poor job creating any support structure for porn performers – a legal form of employment, yet we can be fired, have our children taken away, lose housing, lose our bank accounts, for having been in this profession with nary a word from them.

Weird how that doesn’t make me want to invite the government into my porn sets to make sure we’re “safe”.

The legalese of the bill, mightily pushed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, can be read here. I’m going to give you some reasons why I oppose it (main issues highlighted), and I’ll link at the bottom to the best articles on the topic.

You do know that AB 1576 will mean the death of indie porn/queer porn/feminist porn in California. No more real life camming couples. No more TroubleFilms. No more Pink and White (they’re already working out moving plans to Las Vegas, just in case). No more Clips4Sale. No more independently produced porn by and with people of colour, like Feelmore Entertainment, Soft Serve, or Pulpcore. Because if we shoot content, WE CAN GO TO JAIL.

Yeah, that’s right. For shooting content of people having sex without spending $200+ on industry tests to sell, we could be arrested. This bill works to incriminate, not just producers, but performers themselves. Small adult businesses would be unable to afford to get started, never mind be sustainable and pay performers. Many companies would just leave California, granted, but independent businesses (often offering the only non-exploitative content that’s open to people marginalized in porn- queer people, fat people, people of colour, people with disabilities) would be unlikely to survive the transition.

Does this sound like “performer safety” to you? I mean, I get it, AHF wants to help stop the spread of STIs (keep in mind, herpes and HPV are on the list, even though clinics will resist testing you for them in the first place). But our bodies are OUR business. It’s in the best interest of porn performers to keep themselves healthy because we need a healthy body to work *at all*. and porn is certainly not the only industry where potential health consequences are present- Syd Blakovich points out that MMA and wrestling are not held by these standards, yet fluid exchange is possible. Are those performers tested for blood borne illness? Nope.

This isn’t about fluid exchange, or STIs. It’s about enforcing cultural morals and prejudices.

And condoms break. A LOT.

As for the concern about needing to hold onto performer medical records along with their 2257s indefinitely? Yes, I think this leaves a massive issue when it comes to privacy.  We have witnessed with shocking regularity how eager the public is to out and subsequently harass adult performers (Belle Knox, Porn WikiLeaks) and creating a database with even more intimate information that every producer and distributer has access to will lead to disaster. Have we so recently forgotten the AIM data leak? And frankly I imagine Porn WikiLeaks got their information (phone numbers, addresses, etc) from distributer 2257 records, which often includes a contract linking a performer’s legal name with their work name, a form of ID often with an address, and contact information (as they lacked any medical records in their “profiles”). Are we going to further risk the lives and livelihoods of porn performers by making a database that anyone claiming to be a producer or distributer can access? That seems absurd.

Plus, it’s possible to achieve what the AHF is seeking to achieve without a bill like this, as Pink and White points out:

Performer-safe porn is achievable. Our company sexual health policy forCrashPadSeries.com and other productions includes professional conduct, sobriety, communication, and informed decision-making. Education is key for sustainable sexual health. We provide resources such as information about subsidizing industry standard tests, sliding scale clinics who are respectful to marginalized patients, and which Sexually Transmitted Illnesses (STI’s) are known to be transmittable by specific sexual acts. We encourage participants to have a clear industry standard test within 14 days of the shoot date and provide safer sex barriers*. Because many couples we hire are in committed, long-term relationships, and with respect to their educated choices, performers have the right to waive tests and/or barrier use at their own risk. Additionally, we allow them to have sex in the ways they prefer, including lower risk sex acts such as mutual masturbation and stimulation over clothing, should they so choose. We also pay performers equally regardless of sex act, minimizing the influence of performing higher risk (and often higher paid) sexual acts. This policy was formed collaboratively by porn performers, sex educators, and medical professionals.

I agree with them on one thing: I would like to figure out a system where performers didn’t have to pay out of pocket for their talent STI panels when required to provide them by an employer. I actually agree that at the very least subsidizing the test would be an incredible change- having to pay $200+ for the test and processing can put performers in a tricky situation, where they can be additionally manipulated into doing more than they want to, as they start filming at a deficit. I can imagine having to subsidize testing would also mean that marginalized performers would have an even harder time getting work than they do now- would the adult industry bother to hire plus size performers, or performers of colour, if they had to pay extra for each new face?

Do I think there should be health and safety laws in place when it comes to porn? Yes, actually, I do. But I think the people creating the bill *need* to be current porn performers, not just in mainstream porn but in indie porn. We need to be invited to the table to say what WE want and need to feel safe at work. This bill will homogenize the porn industry further, increasing the various issues it ALREADY has and wiping out the diversity that’s changing the industry to embrace queer porn and feminist porn more and more each year. You can bet that’ll all end in a heartbeat… especially if these industries move to Nevada, who is not particularly friendly to *any* sex.

Maybe this is when we unionize, in order to demonstrate that we CAN in fact govern our affairs, not AHF, not porn producers, but performers ourselves. After all, it’s our lives, and livelihoods, on the line. We deserve a voice.

And I welcome AHF to fight for our legal right to not be fired from other employment or discriminated against for having been in porn. That’d actually be useful and reduce the likelihood of someone turning to risky porn for survival.

Here’s things you can do.

Further Reading:

AB 1576: The Price of Cum in California

5 Things The State Of California Can Do For Sex Workers That Aren’t AB1576

Keep Queer Porn Legal in California! An open letter from Pink & White Productions.

Surprise! Hall Amends AB 1576 AGAIN!

AB 1576: The Issues

What the Aids Healthcare Foundation has to say 

 

“The Lord thy God is a jealous God.”  Remember that, folks?  (I could have done “J” is for Jealous?) Yes, I know, I have often decried pagan blogs that endlessly go on and on and on about the pre-pagan Christian/Jewish/what-ever life before.  For about the first 15 years of my own pagan ‘out’ life, I generally ignored my former religious affiliations.  I did not feel I needed to “recover” from my Catholicism, for instance.  I considered every religious experiment a mere stepping-stone on my way to where-the-fuck-ever I wind up.

Sure, I’d point and laugh or foam at the mouth a bit at the more asinine fundamentally assish sorts, but that was socio-political more than any spiritually based thing.  So, why now am I giving you a good-old-bad-old monotheist quote to jump off my “J” is for Jezebel post?

Because recent socio-political things in America suggest that religious rights in America are going to the dogs — just like poor Jezebel.  Jezebel was not a Jewish princess, she was Phoenician.  But, poor girl, she was married off to Ahab — the king of Israel, not the whale-hunter.  And it seems to me, as I recall, that first off, Jezebel just didn’t want to give up the deities of her childhood.  A little tolerance, already?  But no, Yahweh being that “jealous god” — that couldn’t happen.  So yes, Jezebel got her Princess up, so to speak, and treated others as she doubtless felt she was BEING treated.  She got the blame for giving (by murder — rather like Solomon got a wife?)  her Hebrew husband a vineyard he demanded — odd, that Ahab didn’t get the blame, no?  But no, women make the convenient scapegoats.

It went badly, of course, to act queenly without kissing Yahweh’s ass.  They fed her corpse to the dogs, and because; queen-like, she got gussied up and put on her make-up as they came for her, they called her names. Because she faced her death with dignity and defiance, her name was forever associated with whores and other “fallen” and “painted” women.  Fallen, eh?  You mean, women who might self-determine or something other than being properly property-like?  So, yeah, Jezebel is my favorite Biblical villainess; kind of like Malificent is my favorite Disney villainess.

I keep Jezebel in the forefront of my mind as I see the prerogatives of the dominant patriarchal religions being reaffirmed everywhere I look.  A Jezebel, to my mind, is not a fallen woman — but one who refused the fake pedestal of property to insist on rights she was BORN holding.  Rights that should include her being able to not be called promiscuous, for instance, for pursuit of her own sexual needs and desires.  Rights to worship OR NOT, as she desires.  Rights to not be passed off hand to hand like a stray kitten.  Rights to be more than a brood mare for some man’s progeny?

There seems an awful lot of interest in reducing women to something less than fully human — to walking incubators, to dressed-up dolls, to obedient care-takers with no needs of their own.  The fact that religion in America is playing such a large part in this appalls me.  Since a State Supreme Court Justice recently said the First Amendment “only protects Christians”,  my son asked me this week, “What religion would you use for cover if America does continue down the theocratic road it seems intent upon?”  He said he would return, at need, to a Catholic Jesuit parish ever busy with liberation theology.  It was the place where my children learned the phrase, “No justice, no peace; Know justice, know peace!”

Me?  I think they can take me to the stake, thanks.   When even a Jesuit Pope can’t stop treating women as children,   I’m too old to play those games.   I’ll paint my eyes and go down fighting.  Just call me Jezebel.

Tagged: freedom of religion, freedom-from-religion, misgogyny, pagan blog project, religion, theocrats

Here's wildfires outside San Diego. They're going on right now, destroying homes, scorching land. That is a fact. It is happening.


Three dozen fires were or are burning. It's so bad that some nutzoids are saying that the fires were started as "an act of Muslim terrorism." We live in a country where it's easier for some people to believe terrorists committed coordinated arson than that climate change is occurring. Gov. Jerry Brown pointed out that the last three years have been the driest ever for California. The fires are being fanned by Santa Ana winds, which simply aren't seen in May. There used to be a fire season. Not anymore. It's always fire season.

Here's flooding that's drowning Serbia and Bosnia, with Croatia also possibly being hit. Eighteen cities, including the Serbian capital of Belgrade, have had states of emergency declared.


This is the worst flooding in Serbia's history. Today, the whole country will be declared an emergency area. It is the "worst rainfall" in Bosnia since records started being kept in 1894.

Here's a map of Antarctica. The light blue parts are the massive ice sheets that are in the process of melting and collapsing. It will take a couple of centuries, but it will happen, and it will raise sea levels enough to make large parts of currently inhabited land into oceans. Those oceans, by the way, will suffer severe desalination because the glaciers are made of fresh water.


Let's not even talk about what's happening to Greenland.

Every day, we see weather events that have never been seen before. You'd think the cumulative effect would be to think something has shifted. But remember: According to many politicians on the right, people who block any effort to slow things down, climate change is a myth. Besides, humans can do nothing because the climate is always changing, they say. And then they tell us about how an invisible sky wizard will take care of the planet because he's totally real.

If every day, miracles were occurring that lacked any rational explanation. If water was turned to wine and the dead were rising and angels were guarding people, the Rude Pundit would say, "Well, you know what? There's a god. I've been horribly wrong." Climate change deniers will stand on the burnt earth, overlooking the floods rushing towards them, and demand that we frack and drill more.

I keep my priorities in life in a couple ways.  (1) I observe with gratitude the things going RIGHT in my life every day, and (2) I analyze what is going wrong to find my own part in the screw-up so I can fix it.  But of course, many things are beyond our individual control, though possibly not beyond our collective control.

Climate change is the roller-coaster we are all going to ride for the rest of our lives.  Denying it will not protect anyone from the effects.  When I read the stories, the denial, the snarky anger of better, brighter, more energetic bloggers than myself — what often springs to mind is a sense of the desperation and misery for the PEOPLE involved in said disasters.

So, as the weekend comes to us, anyone with some spare energy — or spare cash — for that matter, magically or monetarily, fire at will to help those whose “car” has been swept off the tracks as the government fiddles.  Like that itsy bitsy spider up there?  There may be no waterspout left for it to return to….help where and if you can, please.

And of course?  Act in real physical action, as well!

Tagged: disaster, ecology, magic

Operation American Spring falls flat: ‘This is very disappointing,’ Texan says.

Operation American Spring, billed as a Friday morning multi-million patriot march on Washington, D.C., to oust leadership from the nation’s capital — from President Obama to House Speaker John Boeher — has proven woefully below expectations.

“It’s a very dismal turnout,” said Jackie Milton, 61, a Jacksboro, Texas, resident and the head of Texans for Operation American Spring, to The Washington Times. He said hopes were high when he arrived in Alexandria, Va., a day or so ago and found motels and hotels were sold out for 30 miles around.

But weather’s dampened turnout a bit, he said.

“We were getting over two inches of rain in hour in parts of Virginia this morning,” Mr. Milton said. “Now it’s a nice sunny day. But this is a very poor turnout. It ain’t no millions. And it ain’t looking like there’s going to be millions. Hundreds is more like it.”

Operation American Spring was billed as far back as six months ago as a rally call for patriotic Americans to force leaders in Washington, D.C., to return to a more limited and constitutional style of governance — and to oust those leaders who weren’t listening. Among the group’s targets: Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, vice president Joe Biden and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

...

I didn’t link to Freedom to Marry, Freedom to Dissent: Why We Must Have Both when it came out because I have mixed feelings about it. The statement, signed by about fifty prominent supporters of marriage equality, calls for the use of persuasion rather than going after people’s jobs. I passionately agree with the central point of the statement, but I still have some quibbles. Why is it only when billionaire Brandon Eich suffers that this list of notables signed a petition? I understand that things that happen to famous people get, by definition, more attention, but let’s face it: nothing is going to shut Brandon Eich up if he wants to speak. The real threat to freedom of speech is when people who aren’t billionaire celebrities are targeted, and it would have been nice if the statement had acknowledged any case other than Eich’s.

I’m also bothered that the statement doesn’t acknowledge people who have been fired for favoring same-sex marriage. This is a bit unfair of me to criticize, because the statement drafters made the right choice – talking about ordinary people who are fired every year for being gay, or for just favoring gay rights, would have made the “Freedom to Dissent” statement seem like an attack on those who oppose SSM, rather than an elevated statement of principle. But even though it was the right thing for this statement, it still contributes to the general rule that threats to the free speech of right-wing views are widely castigated (by both the left and the right) as bullying and a threat to free speech, while those who fire people for being gay or for supporting marriage equality – which happens much more frequently – are given a pass by both sides, and barely even reported on.

I’d love to see some of the nation’s most prominent opponents of same-sex marriage – Robert George, Ryan Anderson, Maggie Gallagher, and so on – join together to write a similar statement defending the free speech of those who have lost jobs due to favoring marriage equality, or whose employers force them to sign statements opposing marriage equality. It could simply reword the “Freedom to Dissent” statement, like so:

As a viewpoint, advocacy of gay marriage is not a punishable offense. We strongly believe that support of same-sex marriage is wrong, but the consequence of holding a wrong opinion should not be the loss of a job.

But I don’t expect they ever will, nor will they ever be pressured to. This double-standard is bad for a culture of free speech; to have real freedom of speech, everyone, including people employed by right-wingers, should feel free to publicly say their political views without fear of being fired.¹

Ryan Anderson and Robert George, two leading opponents of marriage equality, responded to the “Freedom To Dissent” statement:

In April, more than 50 scholars and leaders, all self-identified same-sex marriage supporters, called their allies to higher moral ground. Prompted by the bullying of Brendan Eich and his resignation as CEO of Mozilla for his 2008 donation to California’s Proposition 8 campaign, they wrote to decry the “deeply illiberal impulse” to “punish rather than to criticize or to persuade” political dissenters. Because “opposition to gay marriage” can be “expressed respectfully,” they urged, it should not be “a punishable offense.” No one should lose a job for “holding a wrong opinion.” Trying to purge the workplace or the public square of dissent is, as they see it, political “oppress[ion].”

As supporters of marriage as the union of husband and wife, we applaud the signatories’ support for a free society. In any healthy civic order, citizens will be able to disagree with each other even about important matters without intimidation and recrimination. The right to dissent will be honored and those who express dissent will be respected not bullied into submission or silence. We thank the signatories of “Freedom to Marry, Freedom to Dissent” for their defense of civility.

That’s nice, but I have to ask: When have Anderson and George ever used their powerful status and platform to call on their own allies to stop “trying to purge the workplace” of “dissent”? There have been plenty of opportunities, but as far as I can tell, neither Anderson nor George has ever publicly defended a person fired for being pro-gay, pro-gay-marriage, or gay.²

Robert George himself was quick to call for a boycott – what he would call “bullying” if it was coming from gay rights proponents – because he was infuriated by Eich’s boilerplate I-respect-all-people-including-gays statement.³

See also:

William Saletan points out that if you read George and Anderson’s piece carefully, what they call for is not merely a culture in which we can disagree on politics without losing our jobs, but for a general right for businesses to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Balkinization: Cold Respect, Gay Rights, and Religious Toleration

1. I can think of exceptions to this generalization, mainly when someone’s speech significantly impacts their ability to do their job.
2. Indeed, years ago, Robert George was the nation’s leading defender of the government’s legal right to throw people in prison for having gay sex. It’s hard to see how that viewpoint combines with any substantive support of freedom.
3. You can read George’s full call for a boycott on his Facebook page, or here in screencap form.

I’m torn between being deliriously happy and being afraid to be deliriously happy because I’m scared the floor is going to drop out.

Apparently, they mean that if young women at a prom are being oggled by a gaggle of middle-aged perverts, you blame the young women and kick them out. In conclusion, try avoid sending your kids to public school because they may not be instilled with proper moral values.

Heh.

Ayn Rand, Rand Paul and Paul Ryan walk into a bar. The bartender serves them tainted alcohol because there are no regulations. They die.

— Miss O'Kistic (@missokistic) May 14, 2014

“I — look, I don’t even have a particularly vested interest in vampire mythology, but I feel like we have to agree as a race that certain vampiric characteristics are immutable lest we devolve into total vampire relativism. It’s a slippery slope! Vampires that go to church and walk on holy ground? I don’t want to wake up in ten years and have to see a movie about werewolves who are for all intents and purposes Cylons, or whatever. You cannot be both a vampire and a regular churchgoer. I must draw the line, and I draw it here.”

- Things That Actually Happened In Vampire Academy (via timoni)

My usual response over turmoil at major media outlets is to make fun of the media spending a day on its favorite theme: talking about itself. And I really don’t care about rich people losing their jobs. But this is quite notable and significant so I will make an exception:

As with any such upheaval, there’s a history behind it. Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. “She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect. Sulzberger is known to believe that the Times, as a financially beleaguered newspaper, needed to retreat on some of its generous pay and pension benefits; Abramson had also been at the Times for far fewer years than Keller, having spent much of her career at the Wall Street Journal, accounting for some of the pension disparity. (I was also told by another friend of hers that the pay gap with Keller has since been closed.) But, to women at an institution that was once sued by its female employees for discriminatory practices, the question brings up ugly memories. Whether Abramson was right or wrong, both sides were left unhappy. A third associate told me, “She found out that a former deputy managing editor”—a man—“made more money than she did” while she was managing editor. “She had a lawyer make polite inquiries about the pay and pension disparities, which set them off.”

[SL] See also:

Update: a source tells Auletta @JillAbramson learned that, as managing editor, she'd earned less than a (male) deputy http://t.co/uCgvt4gwzf

— Amy Davidson (@tnyCloseRead) May 14, 2014

How many current phone numbers can you recite from memory?

The question comes from a discussion Krissy and I were having about how few current phone numbers either of us know, because in this day and age, one’s cell phone, with its contact list, takes care of everything for you. This is opposed to, say, twenty years ago, when one actually probably had a substantial number of phone numbers memorized, for friends and family and co-workers.

Twenty years ago, I probably know two or three dozen phone numbers off the top of my head. Today, I know exactly six: My landline number, my cell phone number, my wife and daughter’s cell phone numbers, my wife’s work number and my mother-in-law’s phone number. Everything else is handled by my cell phone contact list. I’d like to think I’m using those reclaimed neurons for important things, but I suspect they’re being used to store information about Harry Potter characters or something.

So: Off the top of my head, I know six current phone numbers. Do you know fewer? Or more?

So I am teaching a short 4-week summer session course on Cold War Film. It only meets 10 times (4-hour sessions) so while the official course title is Recent America through Film, I’m concentrating on the Cold War since it’s not really possible to do a broader topic justice. And just because it says Recent America doesn’t mean I’m going to let something as silly as a course title stop me from showing foreign films as well. Plus we can’t understand the U.S. in the Cold War without understanding other nations as well.

I mention this because I am making them get a Netfilx account as part of their course “readings” and keep a film notebook on films they watch outside of class. What films would you show? We can think broadly here–either films that are really Cold War-themed in an obvious way or some film(s) from the era that aren’t political but some up an era.

The films I presently planning on using in class, subject to some change include parts of the Animated Soviet Propaganda set (paired with bad Cold War US propaganda from the Chamber of Commerce), Atomic Cafe, Salt of the Earth, The Day the Earth Stood Still, I Am Cuba, The Battle of Algiers, Punishment Park, Red Dawn, and Goodbye Lenin (I think). I could also skip a post-Cold War film and go with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which has certain advantages.

So what should I put on the list of possible films for them to watch outside of class? I have lots of ideas, but I am sure I am forgetting things.

[source]

OMG XD

Join us on #GiveOUTDay May 15th, 2014! Spread the word!

In 1994 my partner Robert and I (I’m author and sexologist Carol Queen, PhD) were visiting our friend Betty Dodson, sometimes known as “the Mother of Masturbation,” in her NY home. Why didn’t she bring her fabulous Bodysex workshop to the Bay Area? we asked. There wasn’t an appropriate venue there, she said. And then she said the words that begin the story of The Center for Sex & Culture: “You kids should start a place.”

Betty was right! Between us, we had connections in many sexuality-related communities. We both have doctorates in sexology; I worked at the legendary Good Vibrations and wrote for Spectatormagazine, which had evolved from the old Berkeley Barb; I wrote stories and essays for zines and anthologies too, and was working on my first book, Exhibitionism for the Shy; we traveled around the US teaching, speaking, and meeting people from many sexual worlds, and were ourselves comfortable participants in many of these; and we’d both been directors at SF Sex Info. Together, we could relate and identify with much of the range of sexuality.

It took over 5 years of talking up the idea, but at last an angel donor helped us get over the fence: We corresponded with the IRS, got our non-profit status, and began looking for a space. Interns and donated materials came our way even before we had a room to house them. When we did get a place, we invited every sexually interested person over 18 to be part of it: as member, performer, teacher, patron, life-long learner. Academics and journalists began to visit to use our library and inspect our collections. Librarians descended on us, helping us to organize the many books and journals we’d amassed. (We believe we now have the largest publicly-accessibly sex library in the country — maybe the world!)

We host sex ed classes, and also cultural events. I deeply feel that, in the absence of good sex ed in the US, many of us learn about sex and develop our attitudes about sexuality via culture, and we want to participate fully in that discussion. We also support culture-making: through writing classes for sex workers; our award-winning Erotic Reading Circle; burlesque and dance classes; and our annual Nude Aid artmaking day. We also support community-based organizations, from BDSM/leather, to sex worker support groups, to the unique safer sex strategies of the SF Jacks. Our collections include Buzz Bense’s HIV/AIDS poster collection (these hang in our gallery from November 2013 through January 2014), materials from Pat Califia and Larry Townsend, a full run ofOn Our Backs magazine, Scarlot Harlot’s searchable database of sex worker interviews, and so much more.

We are all-volunteer, a labor of love and community for everyone involved. The next wave of core staff — a new librarian, a gallerist, archivists, and each year’s group of interns — came to us because of the cultural impacts of our collections; they have made them increasingly organized and accessible, and are helping to turn CSC into a venue for erotic artists who have few other places to exhibit their work.

Our first publication was SAFE SEX BANG, a catalog of Buzz Bense’s aforementioned safer sex posters, in early 2014. We dream of publishing more books, thus helping more non-Bay Area people join the conversation. We also want to broadcast many of our events online, so we are even more a global community sex center than a local one. In the meantime, we hope you will visit us when you come to San Francisco! And thank you so very much for reading about our history and supporting us. EVERY donation helps us keep our doors open and take care of the materials our community has entrusted to us.

Here’s more information about a recent CSC story, collected by our friends at Horizons Foundation. Please read and share this article about what The Center means to two of our very favorite comrades and community members, Ingrid and Alexandria:https://www.facebook.com/centersexculture/posts/10154059497755276

Wishing you pleasure and all the sex information you need!

–Carol, Robert, Dina, Marlene, Dorian, Ian, Anissa, Gina, Ingrid, Alexandria, & the rest of your friends at the Center for Sex & Culture

Each generation should be wiser than the last.

vastderp:

sptrashcan:

scloutier:

2econdp2iioniic:

violentdeke:

desprecious:

sassykittykicksaves:

1st zam broke and leaked oil all over the ice

I saw this without the caption and thought it was blood.

ＴＨＥＲＥ ＷＩＬＬ ＢＥ ＢＬＯＯＤ

Here we see the aftermath of a wild zamboni devouring its prey, a penalized hockey player, and the subsequent trailing back to its lair after a successful hunt.

The crowd looks on in a strange mixture of horror and relief. The zamboni will be satisfied for days. They are safe for now.

Ian, our DnD characters must eventually face a zamboni. Just so you know. …They’re even harder to track than a herd of gazebos.

Very well.

If you insist.

HOLY SHIT

via Kurt White

131-di:

miss-all-mad-here:

allons-ytobakerstreet:

presidentobarna:

leaf-jelly:

131-di:

illogicalhumanoid:

brickiestsurgeon:

131-di:

the contrabass saxophone is such an absurd instrument

talk dirty to me

Have ya’ll seen the double contrabass flute before???

reblogging my own post because what in the fuck

i give you the contrabass tuba. Why is it real. I dont know.

Know what’s even better?

HYPERBASS FLUTE

every time I reblog this it gets better

And then the Subcontrabass Recorder!

A reminder guy who has never met a problem that guns and bombs couldn’t solve was a major party’s candidate for president. It’s also a useful reminder that “international law means whatever my vague moral intuitions think it must mean” isn’t a bad argument confined to the left.

It sounds like a Shel Silverstein poem, but The Drinkable Book is an educational text about safe water that doubles as a water filter.

Each page is impregnated with silver nanoparticles (which gives the paper its distinctive orange colouring). The nanoparticles don’t quite work like a traditional filter. Rather than providing a barrier, they actually kill the bacteria as they pass through the paper. As the water runs through, the bacteria absorb the silver ions, which kill the bacteria. The paper kills over 99.9 percent of harmful bacteria, which puts the resulting water on a par with tap water in the US. It has proven effective at destroying bacteria that cause diseases such as cholera, E.coli and typhoid.

Related Posts:

• On the Rocks
• Science Saturday
• Jeffrey Rotter and the Politics of Paranoia

Since 1998, when the Batman Franchise imploded under the weight of total camp and silliness, Marvel stepped up and 35 films based on Marvel Comics have been released.

The Amazing Spiderman 2, in a very poor showing, only held the Top Box-Office spot for 1 week before being knocked off by the juvenile movie Neighbors starring Seth Rogen and Zach Effron.

However, this is mostly because, The Amazing Spiderman 2 was awful. Modeled on the classic Death of Gwen Stacy storyline, the film simply failed. Besides the terrible special effects and the obligatory scenes of New Yorkers standing around gawking at explosions while NYPD vehicles exist only to be blown up, far too much film time was wasted on Electro's Origin, which followed the standard OSHA-violating industrial accident imparts super-powers to the victim who in reality would be dead.

The worst scene being the torture of Electro by the male Doctor Kafka, who wears make-up and listens to classical music while conducting experiments as an obvious cliched caricature of Doctor Josef Mengle. This character is made worse once it's understood that the inspiration for "Doctor Ashley Kafka" is an actual person.

One of the brilliant things The Dark Knight (2008) did was not show a villain creation scene for the Joker. Besides happening off screen, this also allowed Heath Ledger to taunt the audience and his on-screen victims multiple times with the 'Do ya wanna know how I got these scars?' line.


For instance, Ben Affleck's Daredevil (2003) committed the mortal sin, literally, of Daredevil letting a villain die. Daredevil, as the ultra-catholic, never kills and doesn't even let the scummiest of the scum die if he can prevent it.

The two Hulk movies (2003 and 2008) failed because the Hulk is an unworkable character for a stand-alone film. He's far too powerful, having literally carried a mountain range on his back in The Secret Wars. And the films end up with Hulk smashing a bunch of things and fighting a Hulk-esque enemy.

Iron Man 2 (2010) was an film which drew many detractors but, for the wrong reasons. I movie was fairly decent but was disappointed the film executives decided to give Robert Downey "palladium-poisoning", cured by Tony Stark's discovery/invention of a new element, as opposed to staying true to the source material and making Tony a drunk. The disease of Alcoholism, apparently being too heavy a topic for a film ostensibly marketed towards children.

The writers for the second Fantastic Four film (2007) apparently never read the Silver Surfer. While the decision to change Galactus from a big guy into an celestial monstrosity was fine, the Silver Surfer, that goofy footed philosopher has one line, "To Me, My Board"which must be included as the character swayed by the promise he sees in humanity turns on Galactus and fights for Earth.

Any film which doesn't include that line shows a lack of basic understanding of the character. Let alone the deeper Hegelian arc the writers undertook culminating in Issue 64 from 1992.

"On approaching the other it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as another being; secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for this primitive consciousness does not regard the other as essentially real but sees its own self in the other." - G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

The Dark Surfer and the Silver Surfer engage in the struggle unto death, as they attempt to get the other to acknowledge their superiority.

I’m in New York training psychologists this week, and as I always do here, I visited a neighborhood with a professional guide.

On previous trips I’ve toured Harlem, Wall Street, Brooklyn Heights, Midtown, Upper Park Avenue, and several other neighborhoods. This year we went to Williamsburg, home to the most insular and religious community of Hasidic Jews in North America.

The group is called the Satmars, who came to this country from Eastern Europe after WWII. They dress meticulously like the nobility of 18th century Lithuania/Poland. Even in summer, the men wear long sleeve white shirts, black vests, long black coats, and black fur hats (along with thick religious underwear). Women cannot show their arms, legs, or collarbones, so they wear long dresses over thick flesh-colored stockings. Upon marriage they shave their heads and wear wigs, and often wear hats.

They speak Yiddish, a language brought to American from Eastern Europe in late 19th century. Working on Friday night or Saturday is strictly forbidden (and “working” includes driving, phoning, cooking, and turning electricity on or off). 100% of their children go to private religious schools. Every family is strictly kosher. Except for work, the internet is forbidden, and all internet usage (including passwords) must be logged with the head rabbi (I saw two different memos directing this. There are almost no smartphones here.

Marriage and all other social relations are strictly regulated; community matchmakers are used, and betrothal by age 17 is not uncommon. Childbearing begins immediately upon marriage. The average family has some ten children.

Formal learning is considered far more important for males than for females, and so many girls do not graduate high school. Math, science, logic, and languages are not stressed, as they are considered less important than homemaking and Jewish law. Few women have cellphones or computer access; they rarely own property, have limited right to divorce, and rarely leave the neighborhood (the main exceptions are well-organized shopping trips to a few select stores and visiting relatives or neighbors in the hospital). Satmar families don’t go out to eat very much, so food shopping and cooking are a full-time female occupation.

Which brings us to the women, the women who have no eyes.

I admit that I am not welcome in the Satmar neighborhood. As a tourist, I dressed modestly—long pants in 85-degree heat, with a broad-brimmed hat. I brought no camera, no notebook, no food or water. And I certainly didn’t come on a Saturday. If I had, I would have been encouraged (in Yiddish, with much gesticulation) to leave. And if I had insisted on my right to walk New York’s public streets, particularly if dressed as almost an ordinary American might on a hot day, I would have been forcefully encouraged to leave by the local neighborhood association.

So my guide and I quietly and respectfully spent 90 minutes walking Keap Street, Bedford Avenue, South 4th Street, and the rest of Old Williamsburg. I passed men talking on old internet-free flip-phones, and women pushing strollers. I passed groups of girls (all the boys were in school, studying Torah). I walked by bakeries and schools and wig shops.

The men either looked at me or ignored me. The women, however, had no eyes at all.

You know how you walk down the street, see a stranger come toward you, and you either nod, smile, or (more often) look away? Even the looking away is an acknowledgement of the other’s existence.

The Satmar women did none of these. As we approached and then passed each other, they all had the identical, studied look: chin tilted about 5 degrees down from horizontal, just enough so they didn’t have to see my face or body. Moreover, their eyes were completely unfocussed, a dead stare you’d expect from someone deeply autistic, profoundly depressed, or in total shock. Even when a pair of them were talking to each other normally as I approached (often with two strollers and 3 or 4 other young kids in tow), when we had to momentarily negotiate our en passant, their eyes died and I ceased to exist.

(And it’s not just because I’m a man. They relate to non-Satmar women the same way.)

For the first few blocks I was respectful, and even lowered my eyes once or twice. Then I smiled at a few. Of course, there was no change in their expressionless expression. Then I started to smile when I passed groups of girls, starting with adolescents: same dead eyes. Schoolgirls: same dead eyes. Six-year-olds: a few looked back at me, although always without smiling (a rather creepy experience). And almost immediately an older sister would intrude to fuss over the kid or pull her away. Finally I smiled at a few babies in strollers at red lights. When the babies laughed or smiled, they were quickly wheeled away or covered. They’re only a few years from learning to deaden their eyes.

The afternoon tour was fascinating in many ways—I even saw a crowd gathered (actually, two crowds, men on one side of the street, women on the other) watching a rabbi praying loudly over a coffin. According to a nearby Hispanic cop, a 12-year-old girl had died the night before.

But my enduring image of Williamsburg, the very last person I encountered before crossing Broadway and leaving the neighborhood, was an eight-year-old girl. She and two friends (cousins?) were standing on a street corner handing out yellow fliers. They were in Yiddish, and I obviously wasn’t going to participate in whatever they were announcing, but I was curious. And I thought I might actually have a momentary interaction with this young person.

So as I approached, I smiled warmly, and held out my hand, gesturing for a flier. And I didn’t get dead eyes. Instead, I got the most disdainful, disgusted, derisive look I have ever gotten from a human being. She was eight, and she’d already learned to look down on me.

Soon enough, she’ll learn to express this disgust with dead eyes. Meanwhile, I guess she forgot that I’m created in the image of her god, too.