RNC puts out an Obama card "game" on their website that is racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and the list goes on.
Via Feministe, "Lateisha Green's Killer Dwight DeLee Convicted of Manslaughter as a Hate Crime." Thank. Fucking. Goddess. But Cara breaks down the transphobia endemic in the trial.
Dana takes on the supposed decrease in importance on marriage and procreation among young people.
Learn something new at Queers United with their "Gay of the Day," feature. Word of today, "Homo hop." Love. It. Glad someone is talking about it.
Hate Crimes Bill (aka Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act) passes the Senate. This is exciting news.
New America Media is hosting community meetings in 5 different cities this week about the issues facing immigrant women kicked off by the report they released about what immigrant women face.
Congrats to Ann and Kai Wright for receiving the Maggie Award from Planned Parenthood for Kai's awesome piece on HIV Apartheid in the US.
Have a great weekend folks!
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I will never understand what it is about marriage and reproduction that are supposed to be that which upholds society. If I don't get married or have children, I am not contributing and am in fact actively deconstructing society? How? There are myriad other ways to contribute!
I'm confused about the RNC website. Just from reading that article, it's unclear whether or not they specifically chose those items to pop up (unlikely) or whether they have a program that just links to random items on Amazon. If the latter is the case, it's a whole new situation, one of poor planning rather than malicious intent.
Yeah I think it may be directed/context advertising servers.
Much like the bullshit adverts that this site keeps featuring and apologizing for. But it's the RNC website so let's just assume the worst. (semi-sarcasm)
huh, apparently the GOP has already taken their "game" down.
According to the Advocate, the Senate didn't pass the Hate Crimes Bill on its own, they added it as an ammendment to the Defense Department appropriations bill. Obama has threatened to veto that bill (over F-22 funding). So the fate of the hate crimes bill is still up in the air.
Amen to that Tapped article. Right now I'm really feeling the importance of those words. I'm not having kids until I'm good and ready because I don't want my kids to have to worry about whether their parent(s) (me) will be able to pay their way through college. I might be going out on a limb here, but I think that having children without knowing you can provide for them is abusive. It's emotionally scarring when they have to get the reduced lunch at school when all their friends pay full price, and it causes a lot of anxiety when a student wants to go to college, but they know their parents weren't mature or affluent enough to start saving when they were kids, so they have to take out loans (the situation I'm in). People wait out of love, not selfishness. Right now, I'm wishing MY parents would have waited to have me. Dead serious.
while I agree that its irresponsible to purposefully have kids when you know you can't provide for them, its important to keep in mind that having children isn't always a decision that women make freely.
also, my parents weren't able to afford to help me with college either, but that hardly amounts to abuse. do college educated people have an economic advantage? yes, but most people get by just fine without college degrees.
its classist to suggest that someone shouldn't have children, based on whether or not they're able to pay for a college education.
Also, in an ideal world, colleges would be much more accessible to lower income families. The problem is not (in this case) non-college-educated people having children; the problem is the system that shuts children of poorer families out of college.
In an ideal world, there would be higher wages for non college educated workers - why should the 30% of the labor force that has jobs that require a degree be privileged above the 70% who's jobs don't require a degree?
Because they are more skilled.
Do you really believe that a cashier should be paid the same as someone who has spent years in a trade school?
Do you really think that everyone who doesn't have a college degree is working behind a cash register? That would be very ignorant of you, if you did.
I didn't see Qwerty saying that everyone who doesn't have a college degree works behind a cash register.
Her or his point stands in any case: in our current culture, the primary purpose of a college education is to increase marketable skills in order to secure more future income. That isn't intended as a moral value judgment on people without a college degree.
Actually, Qwerty's point seemed to be that the so-called "unskilled" do deserve less than those who are "skilled." Qwerty did make a value judgment -- you can tell, because s/he used the word "should." In Qwerty's defense, however, it might be a little ambiguous, as "should," can be used both to mean an obligation or what is probable or expected.
As I said, I don't think this was intended to be a moral value judgment. No one is saying that being skilled makes someone more deserving of dignity, respect or overall value as a person than someone with less skill or less marketable skill - only that it seems reasonable to expect that more skill will normally result in higher compensation, and that that is okay.
The point is certainly arguable though.
I meant that they deserve less pay, nothing else.
Well, that's a pretty awful thing to say - it reeks of Reaganomics!
I believe that everybody should have a decent standard of living - nobody should be too rich or too poor.
So no, there should not be a huge gap in incomes between "skilled" and "unskilled" people.
Just because I went to trade school does NOT mean that I deserve a better standard of living than a cashier and just because you went to college does NOT mean that you deserve to have a better standard of living than me.
What I said above isnt exactly controversial, or even conservative.
All people deserve to have their basic needs met, that is a given, and im sure everyone here agrees.
But lets say a rich man, in his opulence, wants a 50" HD TV set. Should it be mandated that everyone in America has such things?
Its not a matter of "deserving" a higher standard of living, just simply having the purchasing power to do so.
for fields requiring specialized knowledge (engineering, medicine, law, etc) it makes perfect sense to me that these professions would be higher paying. its simple supply and demand, and I don't see any feasible way of avoiding this.
I think instead, the focus should be on making sure that other 70% are valued. are their material needs being met? do they have good health insurance? do they have access to higher education should they chose to pursue it?
also, the focus should be on making sure that competition for higher paying jobs is fair. do people have equal access to education? is anyone being discriminated against in employment based on arbitrary criteria? etc
Sorry, but I'm still opposed to economic inequality - and being "valued" doesn't cut the mustard! Why should lawyers make more money than carpenters? Or doctors make more money than midwives?
For that matter, why should the most useless, socially parasitic and outright destructive folks in society - hedge fund managers (the scumbags who broke the economy) - make the most money of all?
Wouldn't the world be a better place if we were all at the same standard of living - a world with no billionaires and no beggars, no plutocrats and no paupers?
Isn't a world like that worth fighting for?
I sure as hell think so!
"Sorry, but I'm still opposed to economic inequality - and being "valued" doesn't cut the mustard! Why should lawyers make more money than carpenters? Or doctors make more money than midwives?"
Because their profession requires more training and expertise. In Oregon, I could become a direct entry midwife with 4 years of college. If I want to be an obstetrician, I need 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and 3 to 7 years of residency training. The training isn't just longer, its more vigorous. organic chemistry, biology, biology, etc.
not to mention, malpractice insurance for obstetricians cost anywhere from 20,000 to 200,000 per year.
far fewer people would bother with the amount of schooling required to become doctors, if they could be payed just as much to enter a profession that only required a 4 year college degree.
market forces don't go away just because we don't like it when someone makes more money than we do.
"For that matter, why should the most useless, socially parasitic and outright destructive folks in society - hedge fund managers (the scumbags who broke the economy) - make the most money of all?"
I'm with you here. No one should be rewarded for abusing the system, or taking advantage of other people.
"Wouldn't the world be a better place if we were all at the same standard of living - a world with no billionaires and no beggars, no plutocrats and no paupers?"
sure, its nice in theory
"Isn't a world like that worth fighting for?"
"I sure as hell think so!"
I'm all in favor of making sure that everyone has a good standard of living, and making sure that people who earn more money do so because they worked for it - not because they were privileged or because they took advantage of other people.
very true.
just because you can "afford" kids at during pregnancy/birth/elementary school doesnt mean you can "afford" them later. shit happens. people lose their jobs, they get divorced, they get sick and money becomes tight - they might even *the horror!* have to get social aid.
imho, most parents give themselves guilt enough about money issues without outsiders making gross assumptions about their income-to-family size ratio.
Cis privilege can play out in very subtle ways. For example, the Obama card game story is something I want to read about, but as a trans woman I don't want to end up at John Avarosis' blog when I do.
FYI - John Avarosis has said exceedingly transphobic things in suggesting that trans people be excluded from ENDA in 2007. That might be acceptable to some people, but to me it is not. It is frustrating that the experiences and history of trans women is so marginalized in feminist discourse that this sort of thing doesn't even blip on the radar.
I would hope Feministing wouldn't use as sources people who have said racist things, ableist things, antisemitic things, or derisive words towards any oppressed minority, beyond making a story about their racist, ableist, antisemitic, or otherwise problematic behaviour. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, and neither is John Avarosis.
I get what you're saying about the erasure of Avarosis' transphobia (and I thank you for bringing it to my attention, as otherwise I wouldn't have known), but the Obama card game is an unrelated issue, right? Feministing regularly links to articles from MSM sources that are not ideologically consistent with feminism. I don't think that there is a problem with that. Broken clock is right twice a day and all of that.
True, and it is pretty difficult to source things, but I think there is a difference between using CBS News or the New York Times as a source and an individual with a blog. Everyone knows CBS News or the New York Times are commercial news entities, that places them in a different sphere, I think, culturally. John Avarosis is an individual, and by sourcing him, especially on such an important story, it suggests that his voice should be regarded as prominent (and, by extension, the things he says). I don't imagine he could have been the only site reporting this.
In any case, my point was just that privilege makes us all invisible to things, and it ends up alienating the people who are affected by the thing we're privileged by while we never even realize something went by.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for your reply.
No worries, I think it is helpful to point these subtle ways things play out, and in non-confrontational ways. I definitely don't feel like a link to the blog of someone who has said transphobic things is itself transphobic, but it does highlight how privilege manifests itself.
Does anyone have any definitive data on whether or not the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act was amended to exclude gender and gender identity? The link provided in the OP doesn't mention G.I. but I don't want to jump to any conclusions.
I'm pretty sure the RNC game was a rip-off of a game MoveOn.org put out last year, challenging contestants to try to spend the $3 trillion the Iraq War was projected to cost. There you could invent your own products (birth control for all of North America, a college education for every kid in New York, etc.) and I spent a week emailing the site's management that someone had featured "Africans" as a product for sale with the tagline, "Who wants a slave?"
That article on "homo hop" I found interesting. I think it's a person's right to come out the closet or not but there are two legendary lesbian hip hop artists everybody knows about in addition to the very talented openly bi artist Michelle ndegeOchello. But you know I guess you have to live your life for yourself...