Last week I voted for Clinton. Which I did, honestly, because both she and Obama are decent candidates on many issues I care about, enough that they were essentially even in my mind. And she's female.

And someone turned her likeness into a nutcracker figurine. You know, her thighs crack nuts.
And people who don't like her often do so for the bumbling, inarticulate reason that "she's a cunt".
And every damned person in the country likes to call her by her first name and all the dudes by their last ones.
And because I live in the state of Virginia, and have never even voted in a county where a woman's name was on the ballot.
And because, when talking about her leadership ability, someone invariably brings up that she either does or does not "stand by her man" as they believe she should or shouldn't.
And because Shakesville can list 62 citations of sexist talk about Clinton in the last six months.

I understand not wanting a specific woman to be president because she has political views with which you disagree. But "BECAUSE SHE'S A CUNT"? Seriously? That's just stupid. I worry, given the overt and depressing sexism that people and the media are directing and targeting at Clinton that Obama, when he wins the Democrats' nomination, will face just the same thing - but less overt, cause I just don't see even conservative pundits getting by calling him a "porch monkey" the way they do with calling her a "she devil". Is this country backwards enough that we still can't really handle the concept of a woman (or a black man) in charge?

Some dude called my decision "sexist". Emotional, it may be. But sexism isn't just making choices based on gender, idiot: it's systematic. There are 86 women in the US Congress (out of the 425 total, in case that number isn't at the front of your mind). And 62 ways Clinton is a fulcrum for this country's sexism. Damn straight in an even-to-me contest, I'll pick the candidate who gets excoriated for looking like me.

And she has a fucking last name, okay?

Here's an explanation of how the privilege exercise works in a classroom - which is where it was intended to be used. And more from the source. I'm intrigued by the statement that ... the people on one end of the room had to work harder to be here today than the people at the other end of the room. It's followed later in the exercise by a statement that having privilege "doesn't mean you worked less hard". So, uh. Which is it? *

The exercise seems to be, as crafting_change (and others, but especially her) noted, coming from a pretty weird place on social vs. economic class. If you follow the source link & look at their "social class awareness quiz", you'll see questions that gain you "blue points" such as:
What are Kona and Blue Mountain?
a. Resorts
b. Hotels
c. Islands
d. Coffee

And countering, "red point", questions:
What is 10W40?
a. An Unemployment form
b. A kind of oil
c. A criminal background check
d. A truck

Dude, that quiz needs a "how do you feel" debrief afterwards. Words like "unemployment" and "criminal" do not even APPEAR on the blue point list. If the questions are peppered with social-knowledge kinds of things like WWF and Vivaldi, and with an obvious bent that WWF = poverty, criminality, etc., Vivaldi = wealth, consumption, etc. AND each has a particular set of educational biases. Ah. I'm not making fantastic sense here, but I am now bothered by this exercise. I think it sets out to point out background differences in a way that is already pretty classist.

* Which is part of the point of a meaningful class discussion - neither statement is exactly true.

PS. Y'all are fantastic at teaching me about the world and your perspectives.

Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

Y'all, I learned something awe-striking this week. Richmond? Does not have to have homeless people.

About 1500 people don't have permanent housing in the area each day. Only about 4000-5000 people are homeless each year. A MILLION people live in Richmond and its counties (though a lot of our homeless neighbors are in the city proper - but still, 5000 out of maybe 200,000). And some of those people are kids, right? So Richmond needs like, what? 4000 decent-paying jobs and apartments that cost less than ridiculous Fan rents? We should do that.

Thursday I volunteered at this homeless connection thing with Homeward, and I've been waiting to write about it till I could even talk about it without being flooded with emotion. The event brought together a bunch of services for folk who don't have permanent homes (this includes a fair number of people who are staying in long term shelters and transitional housing), and volunteers walked each person through whatever services they asked for. Jobs. Healthcare. Photo ID - that was a popular one. Haircuts. I about lost it when my last client, who is my age, needed a place to stay for the night [Done. 2 minutes.]. The folk I worked with were fantastic, gracious people. Yeah, a couple of them were unmotivated, maybe a little whiny (as homeless people tend to be stereotyped) - but you know what? So are some of y'all (and me, sometimes). We make poor decisions. Some people make a lot of them. Some people get caught in bizarrely bad circumstances. That? Is what community is supposed to protect and rescue you from: poor decisions & shitty circumstances.

Anyhow. It was an intense experience, and it spurred me to find out how to take more systemic action. You should do the same.

San Diego Mayor. Thanks, trinityva. And other people.

I know that legislative change is important, but it's the individual people processing change that really gets me.

It must be true, because the internets told me. This quiz was greatly entertaining. Enjoy.

In case you didn't catch it on NPR this morning, on CNN, or on any other major national news source, here's the Post article on how racist and mean Prince William County is.

My intrepid reporter friend told me last week that they were considering the Great Stupidity, and now it's official. Thanks, NOVA, for making Virginia appear to be populated with greedy racist asshats. Nice job.

I'm just reposting stuff that Paul posts from now on. Cause, if I missed Fat Hate Bingo, what kind of fattivist am I?

No kind at all, I tell ya.

There are equivalent Anti-Feminist Bingo (and a subset just for comics), variants about racism and white liberals... "gay bingo", on the other hand, is a search string that nets a variety of drag-based activity. Point being, if you haven't heard of $ARGUMENT Bingo, it's a way of getting someone who's spouting the same tired arguments to leave you alone until they've at least read some of the common refutations of said tired arguments.

I've never actually used one, cause I like tired arguments, but my favorite is Fat Hate Bingo's "500 lbs!" - a number so often cited as meaning someone must be unhealthy, and being unhealthy means everyone else has a moral duty to shame you.

This started as a comment on fatshionista, but I want to expand upon it.

PETA's talking trash at Michael Moore, and of course they're calling him a Fatty McFatterson. It's just PETA. That's what they do. And I mean, really? Michael Moore, of all people, ought to be able to take a little of what he dishes out (not the fat, just the fundamental disregard for the perspectives of others - I generally agree with him but still sometimes want to smack him).

The current state of PETA depresses the hell out of me, because some of their points are valid, we should be ashamed of the meat & dairy industry (whatever we might feel about using animals for food), we often don't treat pets with care and respect - our relationship to animals in general is out of whack. They used to have such a powerful message. PETA & ALF were the groups that really drew attention to the sheer cruelty of animal experiments (only 20 years ago, sheesh). When it was still considered (in my lifetime) totally swell to flat-out fuck with animals in order to get things like a model of chemical depression, PETA - using what would become their usual just-this-side-of-legal and overexaggerated tactics - managed to get most people angry about that.

I think, after being so successful at making fur (well, to an extent) & animal testing widely accepted as wrong, that they're grasping at straws for something else to make an issue of. They tried freaking people out about pets - they'll call you if you post an ad in the paper offering kittens or puppies, and there was a period where they picked up strays and killed them [FOR REAL; PETA is based in my hometown] - and lo, that didn't work. Though I will say, it's the same ideas as PETA holds about domesticating animals that have me currently squished on like 1/4 of my bed because one of the cats curled up in the middle while I was up - and hey, who am I to push her around just cause she's smaller & doesn't have a job?

Taking on the meat and dairy industries legislatively hasn't worked either, so they're trying to find a way to make vegetarianism popular - and they figure capitalizing on the Obesity Crisis is as good a way as any. PETA would prefer to offend people, because that garners attention - fat vegetarians aren't going to start eating meat, and maybe some people will be shamed into vegetarianism. I suspect it'll mostly turn out like my mom's meatless diet, though; once she didn't lose weight, she went right on back to the meat. Vegetarianism! The new Adkins Diet!

But more importantly, I'm sad for the people of PETA that they're turning into, or possibly have always been, asshats. If you "save" animals or reform the meat/dairy industry with such disdain for your fellow humans, what does that do to your psyche? Is it a requirement of radical, world-shifting activism that you lose touch with the world-as-it-is?

I thought I wouldn't listen to news this morning because - oh, I don't know. Something just seems wrong with that plan.

But NPR was on for a bit, and they're doing an interesting series about Islam and the US, and talking to Muslims about scholarly analysis and religion, saying that most world political issues have too much to do with duality and fundamentalism in many ways. Leave it to NPR to do something cool like that. No one actually mentioned the words "America" and "jingoism", but they were totally there on the inside.

I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise, but at Liberty University, it's worse to have an abortion than be racist.

Thanks for making Virginians sounds like idiots, guys. Nice job.

What makes me titter, though, is that if you look up liberty university it actually says:

Founded in 1971, LU is an independent, fundamentalist Baptist university located in Lynchburg, Virginia. [emphasis mine, of course]

I've never heard anyone actually refer to themselves as fundamentalist before. Not that it's actually an insult, but it's taken on this connotation that people tend to, ya know, shy away from.

When I went to the votey place this morning, the woman who asked me what ballot I wanted told me I was dressed like a Republican (well, after I told her I was voting Republican today).

Is there a "republican" way to dress? And if so, what is it? I'm flummoxed.

I felt surprisingly bad for the Democrat guy whose ballot I did not ask for, but I felt a little less bad when I checked in on the VA Dems' website this morning to see... duh duh duh! more about that stupid "Healthy Virginians" plan. Cause no party is immune to thinking that the thing to do to make people healthy is fight The Fat. The Fat is EVIL.

I've stopped blogging much or doing political lj'ing much lately, because the whole 2-party thing is really really really depressing me. Is it me, or just the fundamental wrongness? Hard to tell.

But you know the state of political debate is in a bad way when the Daily Show makes you want to cry.

That said. There is a billboard I drove past the other day that has a weird-angled picture of a cute fat boy eating a burger, with the caption "feeding kids meat is child abuse". Seriously.

Yes, of course it's PETA. And it's almost pointless to protest because of that - they're trying to be assholes and extremists. But I can't believe people who see real child abuse and neglect haven't gone and torn the thing down by now.

I'm dreading the impending media rehashing of the school shooting in Minnesota.

( I'll tell you why (long and ranting, from blog) )

Seriously. They can pass a bill in a matter of hours to interfere with decisions COURTS HAVE ALREADY MADE, but they can't get their shit together to straighten out healthcare or prescription drug issues?

Yeah, I'm feeling really good about the legislative branch today.

Blasted snow. It's been snowing all morning, and I wish it would stop the fuck up already or make a firm commitment to a real Snow Day. Either way. This middle ground of snow falling and falling and falling without me getting to nestle in my house is no good. Grump.

Also, it's March tomorrow, and I have a lot of very cute little spring things I'd like to be able to wear.

( Which reminds me [since some of the recently acquired very cute little spring things were made in China] of sweatshops and the debt the US owes China. )

There is a tiny part of me that thinks "real" Republicanism would be okay. That is, if folk who bill themselves as "conservative" were actually about conserving government spending and not servants of a fundamentalist social agenda, I might at least trust those folk a bit more than "liberals" who are only pro-gay or pro-woman or pro-child with certain limitations.

This part of me was feeling particularly frisky listening to Christine Todd Whitman talk about her book this morning. In actuality, I think the sort of thinking that says the world's current issues could be resolved if government just backed off of everything except defense is overly idealistic. But it still made me wonder...

Poll #426030
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Would you vote for a Republican if the candidate were a strong supporter of a liberal social agenda (by which I mean a supporter of civil rights of all sorts, of equal opportunity, of reproductive freedom, but not of liberal/socialist-leaning economics)?

Following on the recent spate of "Egads! Virginia is the devil!" legislative news, missmeridian has started a useful community for watchdogging the state's political maneuvers: watchdog_va.

Y'all liberal Virginians should join. Who knows what will happen next? Oh, wait - you will... if you're paying attention.

The Well Time Period is doing my VA Legislature homework for me this session. I love how the internet just drops these little things in my lap these days.

The latest? A bill making it a felony to give a minor birth control if you think the sex they're using it for is a statutory violation.

But. We have duty-to-report laws in place already for doctors and such who encounter kids having sex with much older people. The birth control prohibition seems to counter the intent of those laws - to protect the freaking kid, including protecting them from an unwanted pregnancy and the eeevils of teen parenting and abortion the Republican delegates are so gosh-darned worried about. What is with that?

If you'd like to know, why not call or write District 13 Delegate Robert Marshall? He did write the thing, after all, and I'd like to know why. Bonus points if you're in his district! Much as you may like to, try not to title your email "HB 1807: are you stupid or what?".

I get the feeling the VA Legislature - or at least its conservative gay marriage and reproductive rights quashing majority - is going to rue the day Del. Cosgrove blamed the blogging community for his sloppy bill-writing.

By the way, Marshall? Is also on board with the whole homophobic Marriage Amendment thing. So feel free to mention that when you write him, too!

[Cross-posted to watchdog_va, which ya'll Virginians and concerned friends should join, even if it's not done yet.]

I've been getting emails about the Akaka Bill lately that made me realize I really don't understand the legal relationship between Native peoples and the US government. Can anyone recommend reliable sources on the subject?