For a Friend

"Afghan girls gesture while taking religious lessons at a Koranic school in a mosque in the old city of Herat on August 17, 2009. Afghanistan's showcase presidential election is facing a crisis of credibility with just days to go, as analysts warn that voters fearing threats to their safety could simply decide to stay away. Concerns about low turnout, vote buying, ballot stuffing, over-registration and backroom deals have added to threats of Taliban violence to potentially undermine the legitimacy of the election, set for August 20. AFP PHOTO/BEHROUZ MEHRI


Caption via Reading Rainbow - Afghanistan - Jezebel

[Herat, Afghanistan; August 17. Image via Getty]

(Photo credit should read BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images"

Damon Weaver Gets His Interview

Cultural (mis)Appropriation

Burqa Tourism at its Finest: How to Become an Expert on Muslim Women in Just One Week | Muslimah Media Watch


Scathing analysis of the current trend in British media (and law enforcement) to "understand the plight of Muslim women in the UK" by donning burqa/niqab for a short time with, of course, no other attempt and understanding anything other than the attire. Worth a read.

Khuda Ke Liye

So S sent me this clip the other day. I've been trying to write about it since then, but I can't even decide which topic to pull from it.

Check the tags, I guess, to see what the options were. It's about half of the tags I even have.

Also, the wikipedia and imdb pages about the movie. I'd like to see the whole thing, to be honest, because this little section hit me so hard.

"demarriage" and French PACS

This post is two steps removed from its original source, since it's a guest post on a blog that's not mine. It's written by Barry from Baslow's Electric OmniumGatherum, cross-posted at Women's Glib. The whole post is worth a read, for the anecdotal aspect, but the part that really caught my attention was the reference to the French PACS, short for pacte civil de solidarité.

"[it] is a form of civil union between two adults (same-sex or opposite-sex) for organising their joint life. It brings rights and responsibilities, but less so than marriage. From a legal standpoint, a PACS is a “contract” drawn up between the two individuals, which is stamped and registered by the clerk of the court. In some areas, couples signing a PACS have the option of undergoing a formal ceremony at the City Hall identical to that of civil marriage. Individuals who have registered a PACS are still considered “single” with regard to family status for some purposes, while they are increasingly considered in the same way as married couples are for other purposes."

Barry notes correctly that PACS are not regarded in the same way as marriage in France, in that family status of PACS signatories is still considered single, and PACS signatories without marriage licenses (namely same-sex couples) cannot adopt. But it's certainly something, in that a lot of the legal crap regarding healthcare and estate dispute that same-sex couples deal with here can be avoided in France if there is a PACS involved.

I'm in agreement with Barry that I would REALLY like a way to recognize the legal aspects of a marriage-type union without the religious and pseudo-moralistic connotations. For those who wish to ascribe religious significance to their union, why not, but not every marriage has anything religious about it. Not to mention the fact that the pseudo-religious regulations about marriage in the US are definitely Christianized in ways that, constitutionally, have no business in legislation.

Privilege, Language, and Dialogue in Identity

In recent posts at Feministe, Womanist Musings, Women's Glib, and a few other spots, the discussion of labels has been heated and torn apart. It's a difficult issue for me, because it's one of those things where staging a dialogue isn't acceptable, but there are so many viewpoints on it that it's hard to handle. My own comments were as privileged as the original post, and I took all the criticisms therein as if they were directed at me.

I'm new to this, frankly, and I have a hard time handling it. Not the feminism, but the intersectionality of equity movements and how they work against each other. The roots of my feminism are academic, and so are inherently based around a privileged class and a privileged viewpoint. I am accustomed to discussing things round-table style, under the assumption that a discussion between people is the fairest way to hash this stuff out. So when I began asking and was quickly privilege-checked for expecting others to educate me, it was painful in a way that I haven't totally recovered from--a sure sign of the privilege associated with the issue.

The heart of the matter, I suppose, is that you can't check your privilege at the door. It isn't a jacket; it's more like your scent. It will follow you around the party wherever you go, and while some may think it's a lovely scent, others may find it downright appalling. That's the point. If you're being smart about it, you don't bathe in acrid fragrances before you leave the house. You realize that what you were born with may be offensive enough, and maybe you try to minimize it by showering regularly.

And when someone tells you that you stink, by God, go take a bath. Don't argue that you've got the most wonderful perfumes on and they should realize the care you put into your preparations for the evening.

So here it is, on the table: I'm white, female, cis, abled (I have a visible skin condition that occasionally affects the way people interact with me but doesn't debilitate me on most days), queer, young, middle-class. I am pretty high-tier on privilege ladder.

Sometimes I get it wrong. I don't ask you to excuse this. In fact, I'd much rather be called out on it. If you can bear to be nice, great. If not, I'll take that, too.

A few thoughtful posts on the matter (I'll add more as I come across them; this post may end up permalinked):

Kittywampus: What Intersectionality is and Isn't
Echidne of the Snakes: Culture and Privilege
What Tami Said: Nobody knows the troubles of a black womanist blogger in the white femisphere
Womanist Musings: Can a White Woman Be a Womanist?
Womanist Musings: The Name of This Blog Is
Womanist Musings: Womanism/Feminism Feminism/Womanism
Global Comment: Clean Up Feminism, Then We'll Talk

A lot of those are womanist discussions, which is both positive and negative, because while feminism has been exclusive of women of color, womanism has itself had a tendency to primarily include black women. Neither is truly inclusive of trans issues, among other things. In either case, there is a lot at stake and a great many balls in play on this court. Privilege, again, has determined who is playing and who is in the stands.

Believing

From Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose:

"Seriously, that’s like, um, kind of the whole freaking plot of the Bible, over and over and over and over and over again. The guardians of order say, with some plausible reason, “These are the conditions necessary for God to find favor with people!” And then God says, “Aww, nice try, mates, and I can totally see how you got there… but turns out I’m not so simple. ‘Scuse me a sec… Hey, you outcasts over there! Come join the party!”"

Really, this entire article is an intensely accurate description of why I haven't been able to give up my faith, despite its bastardization at the hands of some (a great many, sadly) unnamed parties.