Do You Have Any Idea...

A couple nights ago, I had gone over to the house of my dear friends to celebrate my engagement and was coming home late. I was almost home, standing at the corner waiting for the light to change, when a man approached me.

Guy: Excuse me?
Me: Yes? What?
Guy: What's your name again?
Me: I didn't tell you my name.
Guy: Oh, well, hi. What's your name? [holds out hand]
Me: Look, I don't want to tell you my name, and I don't want to talk.
Guy: Why not?
Me: It's late. [looks at phone] It's 12:30 am. I don't want to talk to you.
Guy: But I'm just being friendly. [holds out hand again] What's your name?
Me: Do you have any idea what it's like to be walking around as a woman in this city, late at night? It's scary. It's late and I want to get home and I don't want to talk to you.
Guy: [stares at me]

[stares some more]
[backs away]
[retracts his hand]

Guy: I can respect that.
Me: Thank you. Have a good night. [light changes, I cross the street and go home]

It was really bizarre—I could really see him actually considering, what is it like to be a woman walking around late at night in the city, trying to get home? Answer: it's scary, and it scary enough that you don't want to talk to anyone you don't know, no matter who they are or what they're about.

Via Bitch, PhD

Death Panels?

So I hate Sarah Palin.
She's nuts. She's a pathological liar (which I've written about before, albeit briefly). But she's really gone off the deep end on this death panel nonsense. First off, I get really tired of hearing people frame healthcare socialization (not that I foresee that being an option in the end) as a "lack of choice." I don't have choice now. My parents even WITH insurance have no choice of doctors, or surgeons, or anything. They have their one covered provider network, which is small (rural living at its finest), and that's all.

But worse, much worse, is this malarkey that she's pushing. And then defending, repeatedly, as if it has any merit.

It's a potshot, a clear attempt to destroy any chance of real reform, and for what purpose? What the hell is the point of making it impossible for ANYTHING productive to be done?

I'm cranky. And I've already had more coffee than I needed and a run today, so I'm stuck being cranky for the time being. Pah. I think I'm done blogging for today because I'm ceasing to make sense.

Damon Weaver Gets His Interview

UK To Request Photo Editing Disclaimers

The British Parliament is recommending, as part of their list of ways to improve the situation of the United Kingdom's women, that advertisements that have been photoshopped included a disclaimer and a description of what has been done to the photo. Not to end photoshopping, necessarily, so people like the editor of Kelly Clarkson's SELF cover can keep doing their inspirational artistic work. I say good on you, MPs.

""What we would like is a disclaimer,'' Jo Swinson, a member of Parliament who worked on the report, told me this week. "Not necessarily a standard disclaimer, but a sentence basically saying what has been done to the photograph. Has the waist been nipped in? Have the thighs been slimmed down? We'd like to ban Photoshopping all together in adverts aimed at children, because they're particularly vulnerable.''"

An altered Madonna, and other celebrities - The Boston Globe

Purge: Rehab Diaries

New Author Speaks Up For The "Not Otherwise Specified" - Eating Disorders - Jezebel:

Nicole Johns doesn't look like she has an eating disorder, and for a long time that was a problem. She was diagnosed as having EDNOS, or an Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.

"'You can have an eating disorder at any weight, you can be overweight, underweight, average weight. It doesn't matter. It's not all about the weight.' — Nicole Johns, author of a book on her experiences with ED"

I almost cried when I read this quote. It's so frustrating for me to know that when I went weeks without eating in high school nobody even cared--and many of those that noticed the weight loss were HAPPY because I was "finally paying attention to my weight." There's only one person to whom I've even admitted that it was anything other than a stomach bug.

Another Little Tidbit

Found at On Being a No-Name Blogger Using Her Real Name � Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose:

"You, dear male reader, are totally not one of those men. I know this, and I appreciate it. I really do. But here’s where all this victimy girl shit concerns you:

**every time you don’t tell your buddies it’s not okay to talk shit about women, even if it’s kinda funny;
**every time you roll your eyes and think “PMS!” instead of listening to why a woman’s upset;
**every time you call Ann Coulter a tranny cunt instead of a halfwit demagogue;
**every time you say any woman–Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Phyllis Schlafly, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, any of us–”deserves whatever she gets” for being so detestable, instead of acknowledging there are things that no human being deserves and only women get;
**every time you joke about how you’ll never let your daughter out of the house or anywhere near a man, ’cause ha ha, that’ll solve everything;
**every time you say, “I don’t understand why thousands of women are insisting this is some kind of woman thing”;
**every time you tell a woman you love she’s being crazy/hysterical/irrational, when you know deep down you haven’t heard a word she’s said in the past 15 minutes, and all you’re really thinking about is how seeing her yell and/or cry is incredibly unsettling to you, and you just want that shit to stop;
**every time you dismiss a woman as “playing the victim,” even if you’re right about that particular woman…

You are missing an opportunity to help stop the bad guys.


You’re missing an opportunity to stop the real misogynists, the fucking sickos, the ones who really, truly hate women just for being women. The ones whose ranks you do not belong to and never would. The ones who might hurt women you love in the future, or might have already."

And later:

But please listen, and please trust me on this one: you have probably, at some point in your life, engaged in that kind of talk with a man who really, truly hates women–to the extent of having beaten and/or raped at least one. And you probably didn’t know which one he was.
And that guy? Thought you were on his side.

I've found a few of these today. They're powerful. Go. Go read them.

Public Baffled By Health Care Arguments : NPR

Public Baffled By Health Care Arguments : NPR

Alright, so I have a problem with the healthcare debates. My issue, in general, is that nobody's talking about healthcare reform. They're talking about health INSURANCE reform. They're trying to extend insurance coverage, not availability of care.

Let me tell you that I could afford monthly insurance premiums so that I could, at least, see a doctor without having to go to the ER. I could. But I don't, because those low-cost premiums would cover NOTHING, and I couldn't afford the medical bills. So yes, I might be able to get in and get a prescription, which is more than I can say in my currently uninsured state, but I would have to declare bankruptcy for anything more than a routine physical. I had a problem in my internal girly bits last year, which involved bloodwork and some other things, and even WITH the great insurance I still had through my dad, I had to pay over $400 for the extra work. And that wasn't even a serious problem, just one of those things where you need to rule things out.

Nobody's talking about making problems like that go away. They're talking about INSURANCE. I had insurance, and I still didn't go to the hospital when I (probably) broke my ankle because I wouldn't be able to afford the deductible.

What we need to be talking about is reforming the healthCARE system, not the health INSURANCE system. And we're not, not really.

A Video

shared via Bitch Ph.D.

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.

Primer on the Ideas for New Healthcare

Quick details on single-payer, public option, and the other ideas floating around the healthcare reform table.

Healthcare for dunces | Salon News

How 'Bout That Economy?

When will the recovery begin? Never | Salon: "The X marks a brand new track -- a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't 'recover' because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin. More on this to come."

I have some tentative hopes that this economic disaster will have the power to, eventually, bring about some real change in the overall outlook of society. We might just realize that trickle-down economics don't work, that social programs are not of the devil, and that the celebrity worship we've been engaging in, with the accompanying consumerism and overspending to mimic lavish lifestyles beyond our means, was simply foolish.

I am afraid of what this shift will entail, but hope to see the outcome before it's too late to appreciate it.