Dec

31

A Long December

Filed Under personal and self-promotion, pop culture, random | 5 Comments

By now you all undoubtedly know that I’m a Beatles fanatic. Well, I do listen to other music (sometimes), and this is one of my other favorite bands. I love them. Have for many years. And I have always loved this song from the first moment I heard it. Especially right now, at this time of year.

And yet sometimes, the impossible happens. And a song you have always related to without fail suddenly hits you in a new and more profound way. So looking back at my year, especially the past few months, I relate to it much, much more than I ever have.

I can’t remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving / If you think that I could be forgiven . . . / The smell of hospitals and winter

I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower, makes you talk a little lower, about the things you could not show her.

Yes, it has been a very, very long December. And indeed, maybe this year will be better than the last. We can only hope.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Dec

30

Campbell Soup Catches Teh Gay, Yet Somehow Doesn’t Mind

Filed Under LGBTQ, assholes, bigotry, discrimination, homophobia, marketing, media, pop culture | 17 Comments

Swanson Broth ran an ad in The Advocate, a popular LG(bt) 1 publication that is in some trouble of its own right now.  Quite naturally, seeing the audience, the advertisement (pdf) featured a lesbian couple preparing a holiday meal with their young son.

All seems well, good, and uneventful . . . but that’s because you’re missing how this advertisement promotes The Gay Agenda.  And according to Amplify Your Voice, extreme right-wing and anti-gay organization the American Family Association sent out this email message to their supporters:

Send an email to Campbell Soup Company President Douglas Conant. Tell him you want his company to stop supporting the gay agenda.

In the December, 2008 and January, 2009 issues, Campbell Soup Company bought two, two-page advertisements in the latest issues of the nation’s largest homosexual magazine, “The Advocate.” The ads promote their Swanson line of broth.

In one of the December ads, the Campbell Soup Company highlighted the lives of two lesbians with their son. The others feature New York City chefs. See the ads here.

Campbell Soup Company has openly begun helping homosexual activists push their agenda. Not only did the ads cost Campbell’s a chunk of money, but they also sent a message that homosexual parents constitute a family and are worthy of support. They also gave their approval to the entire homosexual agenda.

Well gee. How dare Campbell send a message that lesbians are people??? And that their family and child are worthy of public acceptance and support. Indeed, how dare they suggest that they are worthy of anything at all. After all, they have Teh Gay.

But thankfully, Campbell Soup is not caving into the hate-mongering:

“We support all types of families, regardless of how they’re defined, [and have done so] for more than 100 years,” Sanzio offers. “We advertise in a variety of different media outlets that appeal to a broad spectrum of society. That’s what we’re doing here, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.”

Wow. There’s not even a small note of apology in there. I’m shocked and extremely pleased by it. No, “we’re sorry if anyone was offended” or “we didn’t intend to take a political stance.” Nothing like that at all. Just plain old standing by their completely inoffensive advertisement.

While we should of course be able to expect such a response to this kind of bigotry, the fact is that we currently can’t. And yet, Campbell is doing what’s right. Either they’ve decided to put principle above sales, or they’ve decided that LGBT people and their allies constitute a bigger and more worthwhile market than homophobes. And whichever the answer is — indeed, assuming with cynicism that it’s the latter — it’s excellent news and a significant step forward.

Amplify suggests that you buy a Campbell product and mail it to the American Family Association, telling them that you support Campbell and will continue buying thier products.  Interesting idea.  But personally, I say email Campbell directly, and tell them that you support their decision and support of LGBT families. Over all, I’d count on it having a larger impact.

  1. It’s my understanding that while The Advocate bills itself as an LGBT publication, they focus mainly on the L and G. ↩

Dec

29

Help For Hate Crime Victim

Filed Under LGBTQ, action alert, activism, homophobia, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 3 Comments

Last week, I blogged about a lesbian woman who was gang-raped in a hate crime due to her having a rainbow sticker on the back of her car. Thanks to Pizza Diavola in the comments, I now have information on a way that you can help the woman who was the victim of this horrific crime.

Planetransgender, along with Fight The Hate H8, Join The Impact and Dallas Transgender Advocates and Allies have set up a way for you to send cards and donations:

Event: Help A Sister Out
“Benefit for Hate Rape Victim”
What: Fundraiser
Host: Civil Rights Front
Start Time: Tuesday, December 22 at 5:00pm
End Time: Thursday, December 31 at 5:00pm
Where: From Your Heart

On December 13th, a twenty-eight-year-old California woman was brutally raped by four men because she is a lesbian and had a RAINBOW STICKER on her car.

The woman will need months to recover physically and years and years to recover psychologically. She needs our emotional and financial support.

If you would like to send a card, please mail it to:

Richmond Police Department
Attn: Sgt. Brian Dickerson
1701 Regatta Blvd.
Richmond, CA 94804

If you can send a financial contribution (even a few dollars) to help her pay her medical bills and other costs associated with her recovery, please mail a check payable to Community Violence Solutions to:

Community Violence Solutions
2101 Van Ness Ave.,
San Pablo, CA 94806
Attn: Mrs. Joanne Douglas

In the memo section of the check please write: Richmond Jane Doe

To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:
Help A Sister Out Facebook page

Not all of us are able to send a donation, but I hope that those of us who can will. All of us can at least send a card or quick note of well-wishes.  At a time like this, community and solidarity are extremely important.  Let’s show Jane that we are behind her in any way we can.

Dec

27

Yoko Ono: A Feminist Analysis (Part Two: Don’t Let Me Down)

Filed Under Gratuitous Beatles Blogging, feminism, misogyny, patriarchy, pop culture, race and racism, sexism | 61 Comments

Introduction: Oh Yoko!
Part One: The Ballad of John and Yoko

Popular myth tells us that Yoko Ono didn’t only break up the Beatles, which has been the focus of my other posts so far; she also fucked up John Lennon really bad. John, they’d have you believe, was the brilliant best friend of fellow-genius Paul McCartney, until she came along and broke up his marriage — a double home-wrecker! — got him addicted to drugs so that she could fill his mind with all of her crazy radical feminist and other political ideas, rip the band apart and ruthlessly control John, thereby stealing all of his money. “Muahahaha,” one can imagine this Evil Yoko laughing, rubbing her greedy palms together.

This stereotype of Yoko didn’t materialize out of thin air.  There was already a prototype in the words for the vilification of Yoko Ono, and that prototype is known as the “Dragon Lady.” The dragon lady is a stereotype of East Asian women as being calculating, conniving and all around evil.  We also have to remember that in 1960s U.S. and England, there was still great, open racism towards Japanese people left over from WWII, and the Vietnam War was also stirring animosity towards East Asians who white people couldn’t be bothered to tell apart.  And it’s just plain foolish to discount this when looking at the way that Yoko has been characterized and caricatured.

That caricature was and is a lie.  As I’ve covered, the band was already falling apart. John and Paul, for better or for worse, could no longer be called best friends. Before the White Album and Yoko’s presence rolled around, they were all but entirely done writing together.  Though John and Paul only grew farther apart because of the Yoko dispute, they were hardly pals, and mostly business partners.

But in spite of or perhaps because John was much closer to Yoko than to Paul or the other Beatles, we’re supposed to believe that she is the one who somehow fucked him over. The Beatles, they wanted to help their friend. They were concerned about his drug use. They were worried about how much time they were spending together. It didn’t sit right with them that Yoko would help John relate his feelings to others — even though the Beatles were perfectly fine creating their girlfriends’ and wives’ opinions for them. It seemed dangerous that she had such a hand in his business affairs.

But in fact — and though it is sometimes very sad — Yoko is one of the few people who didn’t fuck John over.

Read more

Dec

24

So This Is Christmas

Filed Under Gratuitous Beatles Blogging, fun, random | 7 Comments

The one and only Christmas song I like, Happy Xmas (War Is Over).

(This version of the video unfortunately cuts of Yoko’s part of the intro and the very end of the fadeout, but was otherwise by far the video with the best overall sound quality. SORRY, I miss Yoko too.)

I hope you all have a happy and safe holiday.

Dec

23

Woman Gang Raped in Homophobic Hate Crime

Filed Under LGBTQ, bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 12 Comments

Trigger Warning

Having just yesterday discussed the ways in which many depictions of rape uphold the violent act as an appropriate punishment for women who behave outside of patriarchal expectations, I couldn’t not post this story (h/t).

A woman in the San Francisco Bay area was jumped by four men, taunted for being a lesbian, repeatedly raped and left naked outside an abandoned apartment building, authorities said Monday.

Detectives say the 28-year-old victim was attacked Dec. 13 after she got out of her car, which bore a rainbow gay pride sticker. The men, who ranged from their late teens to their 30s, made comments indicating they knew her sexual orientation, said Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan.

“It just pushes it beyond fathomable,” he said. “The level of trauma — physical and emotional — this victim has suffered is extreme.”

Authorities are characterizing the attack as a hate crime but declined to reveal why they think the woman was singled out because of her sexual orientation. Gagan would say only that the victim lived openly with a female partner and had a rainbow flag sticker on her car.

I imagine that few would openly condone this attack and say that because the woman is a lesbian, she deserved to be raped. But clearly enough people do feel that way, enough for the crime to have been committed. This violence was enacted as an act of hate not just against an individual — which is far more than enough — but specifically against an entire community for the purpose of instilling fear (which is what makes it a hate crime).  It was committed against this victim because she is a lesbian, and therefore didn’t live up to our society’s bogus standards of womanhood which involve being perpetually sexually available to men.  And rape was the weapon of choice because it is seen as an appropriate way of punishing women.

How funny is Rapeman, now?

The story adds:

Gay rights advocates note that hate crimes based on sexual orientation have increased nationwide as of late. There were 1,415 such crimes in 2006 and 1,460 in 2007, both times making up about 16 percent of the total, according to the FBI.

Avy Skolnik, a coordinator with the New York-based National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, noted that gay, lesbian and transgender crime victims may be more reluctant than heterosexual victims to contact police.

“Assailants target LGBT people of all gender identities with sexual assault,” he said. “Such targeting is one of the most cruel, dehumanizing and violent forms of hate violence that our communities experience.”

Skolnik said the group plans to analyze hate crime data to see whether fluctuations may be related to the gay marriage bans that appeared on ballots this year in California, Arizona and Florida.

“Anytime there is an anti-LGBT initiative, we tend to see spikes both in the numbers and the severity of attacks,” he said. “People feel this extra entitlement to act out their prejudice.”

I bet that those who promote anti-LGBT initiatives are among the vast majority of people unlikely to openly condone this crime.  (Just more likely to argue that hate crimes don’t deserve “special” recognition.) But their behavior and actions create the social climate in which it can occur.  And it needs to end.

Dec

22

The Myths Encompassed by The Rapeman

Filed Under media, misogyny, patriarchy, pop culture, rape and sexual assault, slut-shaming, violence against women and girls | 24 Comments

Trigger Warning

Via Feministing comes this video about The Rapeman, a comic that ran throughout the 80s and 90s.

I don’t know what program the obviously Australian voice over is from, but the existence of Rapeman has been corroborated. According to the video, Rapeman is a schoolteacher by day, raping superhero by night. He rapes women who have “wronged” men or broken up with boyfriends (same thing, right?). The comic allegedly remains popular today, and the clip is from one of the movies made about the “hero.” The icing on the cake is that the women in the comic are apparently ‘not portrayed as victims,” and tend to fall in love with Rapeman.

I’m aware that this is likely to be considered old news, and the comic is now apparently defunct, but I think it’s still highly worth examining.  There’s a lot to unpack here, and this really is rape culture at it’s most overt. Of course, many will claim that it’s supposed to be a “joke” (the person who posted the video filed it under “comedy”) or all in good fun. I don’t know what kind of good fun rape could be, even a fictional rape, for anyone but the rapist and those who condone rape.

Read more

Dec

20

Yoko Ono: A Feminist Analysis (Part One: The Ballad of John and Yoko)

Filed Under Gratuitous Beatles Blogging, feminism, misogyny, pop culture, sexism | 53 Comments

Introduction: Oh Yoko!

Ah, the Beatles. Perhaps the most brilliant musicians to ever live. Innovators. Loved by millions. Smart, charming, lovable goofballs. Endlessly fascinating personalities. And yet, not always the nicest guys. No, they were not only all capable of being assholes (though some more than others), they also tended to fall into that group we like to refer to as “men who swear that they’re progressive, except for when it comes to women.” And John Lennon was certainly no exception. In fact, I’d say that he and Paul McCartney were nose to nose in the race for worst offender. That is, until John met Yoko Ono.

Until then, all of the Beatles were often raging misogynists.  I discussed this briefly towards the end of my introduction of this series, in their treatment of their wives and girlfriends.  Women were sex objects and property.  Take a look at some of their catalog: No Reply, You Won’t See Me, You Like Me Too Much, and the most notorious of all, Run For Your Life.  Stalkerific!  And this is the stuff they felt appropriate to say publicly.  All four of the guys came back from Hamburg with the same STD, and their manager Brian Epstein had to hide it so that John’s new wife wouldn’t divorce him on those grounds.  Ringo openly cheated on then-girlfriend Maureen and told her that if she didn’t like it, he’d find another girlfriend who would.  John and George were both serial and prolific adulterers.  Paul also could not keep his pants on to save his life, and the biggest problem in his relationship with Jane Asher was his resentment towards her wanting to maintain her acting career rather than sit home and behave dutifully like a Good Beatle Wife.

Most shocking and inexcusable, and usually obscured in Lennon bios, John was abusive.  When talking about the song Getting Better, he confessed in All We Are Saying, his last major interview: “I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically — any woman.  I was a hitter.  I couldn’t express myself and I hit.  I fought men and I hit women . . . I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.  I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.”

With the exception of his mother Julia and his Aunt Mimi who raised him, I’d be surprised to learn that John had ever really respected a woman in his life prior to meeting Yoko. And even then, he idolized his mother more than saw her as a person, and his aunt never really appreciated his work him, therefore earning some resentment. Yoko was different. According to Bob Spitz in his book The Beatles, when John met Yoko he was fascinated by her personality, her art and her wit — and was very confused by it. Yoko was perhaps the first woman outside of his family who he truly saw as a human being before seeing her as someone to potentially fuck. Having never experienced such a thing, it supposedly took him weeks to realize, to his surprise, that in addition to being intellectually captivated by Yoko, he was also sexually attracted to her.  The concept of feeling both at the same time was completely novel.

Why was Yoko different from every other woman in John’s life?  Was it the fact that he recognized Yoko has his soul mate, and saw her as someone remarkably similar to himself — and therefore an intellectual equal? Was it Yoko’s feminism and refusal to put up with the shit that he dumped on his wife Cynthia? Was it John’s unresolved feelings about his mother and wanting a strong, assertive woman in his life? Was he simply ready to finally grow up and be happy, and Yoko was just the right person at the right time? I don’t have the answer to that. But I do know that the Beatles were unhappy about it.

Read more

Dec

19

Anti-Choice DHHS Rule Finalized

Filed Under Republicans, abortion, action alert, anti-choice extremism, assholes, misogyny, patriarchy, politics, pregnancy, religious fanaticism, reproductive justice, sexism, social conservatives, women’s health | 5 Comments

At Feministe (where I originally intended on posting this until that jerk Jill beat me to it with a really good post), I’ve been relentlessly updating you on the proposed DHHS rule that aims to limit the availability of abortion and contraception by protecting anti-choice employees of Title X funded institutions from “discrimination” based on their refusal to participate in basic and proper medical care.  Well, it’s now my sad duty to inform you that the rule is finalized.

RH Reality Check has a good run-down.

The administration made almost no substantive changes to the regulation following the period of public comment, says Adam Sonfield, senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute. “The 200,000 comments in opposition to the rule they dismiss,” says Sonfield. “They pretend to respond directly to them, but they actually don’t.”  The only major substantive change the administration made to the rule is to expand the definition of the workforce the rule applies to — for instance, it now includes contractors.

An early, leaked draft version of the regulation specifically suggested that providers who consider hormonal birth control to be an abortifacient should not have to prescribe it or refer patients for its prescription.  The regulation relied on arcane, non-medical definitions of pregnancy to suggest that the belief that pregnancy begins at fertilization is valid and that, a hormonal contraceptive, which anti-choicers claim block implantation of a fertilized egg, is tantamount to abortion.  The second, released draft, now published, does not conflate contraception with abortion, but in its broad scope nonetheless provides protections for providers who would like to do just that.  “The regulation confirms what we feared,” says Marilyn Keefe of the National Partnership for Women & Families. “HHS refused to allay any of the concerns raised in earlier iterations.  Contraception clearly remains a target.”

Great, eh?  In other words, the regulation is precisely what we feared; it’s ideological, non-medical bullshit that puts the religious and moral objections of doctors, nurses, receptionists, maintenance workers, etc. above the vital health care needs of women.

Congress has the ability to introduce a motion to disprove, which if passed in both houses and signed by the President would make the rule invalid.  Analysts believe it’s unlikely for obvious reasons (even though the period in which to introduce the motion extends into the 111th Congress), including the fact that everyone would have to go on record with their position on a controversial issue.

Planned Parenthood has a petition you can sign asking the Obama Administration to overturn the rule once it takes office. We have every reason to believe, so far, that they will, and RH Reality Check outlines their options.  But the fact is that if the rule is implemented at all, many women will become pregnant in the meantime and will pay a sore price.

One of the rule’s more disturbing provisions is the announcement that Title X family planning funding will now be open to grantees who refuse to counsel women on the availability of abortion.  Title X has always required that when a woman tests positive for pregnancy, she must be counseled on all of her options, including abortion, and given referrals based on what her expressed interest.  The regulations state that Title X funding will be granted “non-discriminatorily” to applicants, including those who refuse to provide counseling and referral for abortion.

In other words, women with limited access will have information withheld from them — often, since we tend to believe that our doctors are telling us the truth, without even knowing it.

Merry Christmas, Bush says to the anti-choice crowd. Clearly, he does in fact have only goodwill towards (rich, white, straight . . .) men.

Dec

18

Men’s Magazine Desires World Without Meaningful Consent

Filed Under marketing, media, misogyny, objectification, patriarchy, pop culture, rape and sexual assault, sex and sexuality, sexism, violence against women and girls | 32 Comments

This image, of a scantily clad woman attached to a video game controller with the caption “Keep on dreaming of a better world,” was posted without comment at Sociological Images.

First of all, it seems pretty obvious to me what the man targeted in this ad (by a men’s magazine) is supposed to use the controller for, and I don’t think it’s making the woman in question do the Chicken Dance for a giggle. The question I keep coming back to is whether this is supposed to be a “real” woman who has somehow been modified and turned into an all submissive sex toy (read: rape victim), or if it’s supposed to be a highly realistic fembot that looks like a real woman for a man’s sexually assaulting pleasure.

Clearly, the former is the worse option, but I’m not sure how much better I would feel about the latter still being upheld as a part of a “better world.”

Of course, I realize that this image is supposed to be lighthearted.  It’s a “joke.”  But that doesn’t make it funny.

I think that images and “jokes” like this really do point out the deeply destructive and misogynistic rape culture we live under, when “sex” is so regularly portrayed in this way.  Few, I imagine, would consider this image to be promoting rape.  But personally, it’s all I can see.  After all, if the woman was willing and truly consenting, a remote control would not be necessary for her to perform the desired acts.  The idea of a completely sexually controlled woman, however tongue-in-cheek, is still promoting as a false-ideal a woman who cannot say no.  And a woman who quite literally cannot say no due to control from outside forces is in fact a woman who cannot give a meaningful yes.

Funny, my idea of a “better world” is one where women are sexually empowered and respected, not enslaved.

cross-posted at Yes Means Yes

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