Today is the Trans Day of Remembrance. I don’t have much to say, but I thought we should acknowledge the ongoing persecution and murder of trans people, particularly trans women of color. And, being in the US, I want to…
Open Thread with Memories of Leonard Cohen
Recently deceased poet/musician Leonard Cohen features for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over the next few weeks.
* with a few netiquette exceptions e.g. election-specific stuff belongs on the dedicated Open Election Thread , thank you kindly
Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday [November 2016]
As we’re experiencing a post-election influx of old blogfriends, let’s resurrect an old tradition. Promote yourself. (Or somebody else.)
N.B. remember your netiquette.
No Reconciliation. No Empathy. No Understanding.
I know it’s been over a year since I’ve been around. But, what the hell, I wrote this, I figured, I’d post it here. Just in case anybody wants to read it. I’ve been seeing a lot of calls for…
Election Night 2016 open thread
It’s almost over, y’all. It’s. Almost. Over.
Class, Economics, Feminism, GLBTQ, Immigration, Law, Politics, Racism, Religion, Reproductive Rights, Sexual Assault, Terrorism, War
The guilt that comes with having no sympathy
A lot of attention has been paid to the mystery of why, God, why, and how, and why again, any marginally intelligent person could support. How has a man who is completely unsuited, in character, temperament, knowledge base, intellect, and home training, to be the president of the United States make it as far as he’s made it? The obvious answer is that there are a lot more bigoted, closed-minded, hateful, ignorant people in the electorate than we’d originally thought possible. But we, as a society, don’t generally like to think of people that way — for all the whining about “PC culture,” we give a lot of passes to be people who absolutely don’t deserve them — and so we’ve sought out other options.
That’s where we’ve gotten “>so many articles profiling the “real” Trump base — salt-of-the-earth, working-class white voters who are stumbling into a new world of multiculturalism, who are suffering from economic woes, and who just want some support for their very real problems. And yet, for all of that, I haven’t been able to escape the feeling that they need to cry themselves a river and canoe on home.
Halloween fun: A compendium of people who still, in 2016, insist on wearing racist costumes
[Content note for… racism. Pretty much any kind.]
You could be Deadpool. You could go with a classic witch or cat or Spider-Man or the dude from Scream. You could be Glenn from The Walking Dead. (Skip the yellowface; the dripping blood and gore is the most part anyway.) Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are topical this year. You could go as Wednesday Addams going as a serial killer — they look just like everyone else.
But dammit, you wanted to be Kanye West, and it’s a free country, and nobody’s going to stop you from covering yourself with brown makeup and exercising your right to show the Internet that you’re a racist idiot.
Locker Room Watchlist: These are the GOP gym rats to avoid
Since the release of a video featuring Donald Trump unwittingly speaking into a hot mic about how great it is that his celebrity allows him to nonconsensually grab women’s genitals without consequence, Trump has thrice dismissed the celebration of sexual assault as “locker room banter” or “locker room talk.” Pro athletes across the U.S. have united to say that, in fact, such banter is not acceptable in any of the locker rooms they frequent. (You can take that with as many grains of salt as you choose.) But it raises the question: If that banter isn’t happening in the locker rooms of the Dodgers or the Falcons or the Clippers, in which locker rooms is it taking place?
Trump was preparing to make a move, and Arianne Zucker had no idea
There is still one more chilling but less-discussed aspect of the Trump video. Yes, his language is vulgar, and yes, his casual discussion of sexual assault is horrifying. But two reporters, in separate pieces, point out that there’s something even more disturbing about the video: the way they talked about actress Arianne Zucker, Trump’s costar-to-be, as she waited, unsuspecting, at the end of their bus trip.
Today in rape culture: The Trump video isn’t about the saucy language
[Content note for sexual assault]
On Friday, the Washington Post published a heretofore unseen video from 2005 in which Donald Trump, in the Access Hollywood bus on the way to a cameo on “Days of Our Lives,” gives us a good look at how much he really respects women. Talking with Billy Bush, into a mic that he didn’t know was hot (Donald, are you sure that a malfunctioning microphone isn’t the best thing for you at this point?), he makes it clear that no, women aren’t more than objects to be evaluated, disparaged, and abused at his whim.