By Consolidated.

This pretty much speaks to how I’ve been feeling this week, especially in light of the pending Democratic party implosion. Can’t we all just get along?

Previous editions filed under “tgif”.

(Crossposted.)

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Tagged: friday veggie vlogging friday activist vlogging youtube music animals animal rights animal welfare racism sexism homophobia misogyny consolidated the unity of oppression

Ugh. Fresh out of bed, and my bitch ass is already blaming the patriarchy. IBTP, natch.

Last night, while catching up on all my blog reading, I noticed this post at Shakesville, about whether “chick flick” Sex and the City will be a box office hit despite the fact that it has - ewz! - vaginas.

Melissa notes:

Secondly: Women = approximately 52% of the population. Gay men = approximately 10% of the male population. How, exactly, does that add up to a smaller potential audience than “testosterone-driven” dudely films for the straight menz?

(Oh, right. Because women will go see dick flicks, but no self-respecting straight dude would go see a ZOMG CHICK FLICK!!!11!eleventy-one!!! Except for the promise of a blowjob, of course.)

Emphasis mine.

Fast forward to this morning. My radio alarm goes off, and I awake to sounds of “Dick Dale” (quite fittingly, as he is in fact a dick, and about as smart as Dale of chipmunk fame, to boot) - the morning dj on the local KC “alterna-station” - repeating the emphasis, almost verbatim. For reals.

“…men, if your wives or girlfriends are dragging you to see this movie - or any chick flick really - then shouldn’t you really get something in return?…”

That’s all I caught, because I could literally take but five seconds of his drivel before I thought my head might implode with the sheer misogyny of it all.

So, let’s see, Phil Schlafly: if a woman wants such a seemingly basic courtesy as occasionally choosing the movie she and her mate go see, she’s gotta give up some bodily integrity to get it? (Because trading sex for something, be it dinner, a movie, or rent money, isn’t exactly enthusiastic consent. Sex traded isn’t sex freely given. Your dickery equals coercion, no matter how passive-aggressive.)

What of married women, who have already traded eternal consent for their husbands’ seed and paychecks? It’s not like they have anything to offer, since they can’t be raped and all. Maybe they have to spend a few hours massaging their menses gnarly feet after the show? Oh, wait, married women are supposed to do that too. My bads.

Have I got ya there “Dick”?

Well, let me ask you something, douchenozzle. What the fuck do I get when I go see “cock movies” with my husband? What’s he going to trade me for a night out at Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Oh, but wait. Let me guess. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a REAL movie, so I should stfu and just be happy that he thought to take me instead of his penis-wielding buddies. Hell, I should be grateful that the patriarchy even allows women in to see REAL movies in the first place - otherwise we’d all have to suffer the “chick flicks” with no reprieve in sight.

*Snort*

How about we wimmins don’t turn all Amazon on you, decide that you pricks are more trouble than you’re fucking worth, and in exchange you act like decent human fucking beings? It’s a crazy mofo idea, I know, but it might just work.

Oh, and stop using the term “chick flick”. It’s insulting, degrading and infantilizing.

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Tagged: sex and the city movies chick flicks sexism misogyny pop culture bitches is crazy ibtp

So true, says this HGTV junkie:

When she says these things it calls to mind those reality TV shows whose central myth of transformation centers on the home. “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” “Trading Spaces,” “Flip This House” and so on. These programs are the new pornography of the landed middle class, and they are, in their own way, as cruel as the old pornography. Just as the libidinal 13-year-old will someday discover that not all naked women look like Playboy centerfolds, so too, the first-time homeowner will have to learn that refurbishing your den, even on national TV, does nothing to heal the cracks in your foundation.

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Tagged: my first place home improvement home ownership hgtv

Your Mom wasn’t a Stepford. She fought for the right to vote, for equal pay, against gender and racial discrimination. She drank from a well that gave us all strength.

Well fuck you very much, Keiffe & Sons Ford of Mojave, California.

Via American Humane: Tips for Reporting Internet Animal Abuse

Make Your Own O’Reilly Tantrum Remix!

Chicago City Council Repeals Foie Gras Ban; Political subterfuge reverses popular humane law approved in 2006

Go, Oprah! Go Vegan!

And a few reflections on Memorial Day:

Mourning and Mobilization @ SuperWeed

A Memorial Day memory… @ AngryBlackBitch

He Loved Horses @ ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

That’s all I’ve got for now. If y’all will excuse me, I’ve got to haul some gravel while the weather’s still somewhat bearable.

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Tagged: link love

You know, I wasn’t going to bother posting my review of Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary here; the book is an anthology of thirty essays, and I find it exceedingly difficult to review an anthology in 3,000 words or less. The “3,000 words or less” guideline is Amazon’s; I usually write my reviews for that site, since it’s actually a really effective way of advertising my blog. But lately they’ve turned into quite the pearl-clutchers. First they rejected my review of Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad because I was too mean to the book’s warmongering neocon author (and, even though I’ve rewritten it several times to their specifications, they have yet to post the fucking thing); then when I tried to submit my review of Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary, the misogynists edited out the word ‘breasts’. No, for real. “Breasts” is a naughty word, dontchaknow!

And, mind you, it’s not as though I was even attempting to use the word as a slur. Nor was it unrelated to the review: one of the essays in the book is titled “The Road to Cleavagegate: What Do We Want Female Power to Look Like?” By, erm, Robin Givhan. Yeah, that Robin Givhan. So the word “breasts”? Totally appropriate. But any mention of dirty lady bits is off-limits to Amazon. Sigh.

As I mentioned in a comment to my own review (let’s see how long it takes them to delete it),

In all their infinite wisdom (or should I say ‘pearl-clutching reactionism’?), the Amazon censors saw fit to edit out the word ‘breasts’. In a review of a book written by women, about a woman (and yes, her body parts), the word ‘breasts’ is apparently taboo, a naughty word. As a woman with breasts, I find it highly offensive that Amazon considers my anatomy to be a slur, even when the word isn’t used in such a manner. And to encounter such sexism in relation to a book about sexism? Ironic, that.

So here’s the review, unedited and followed by my comments. I think I’m pretty much done trying to write to their Puritanical standards. Maybe I’ll just start posting any future reviews here and we can play a nice game of “What will send the prudes at Amazon to their fainting couches next?”

I’d also like to point out that Library Thing never edits my reviews.

(More below the fold…)

Since Memorial Day is this weekend, for this week’s lineup, I’m posting a few classic anti-war songs: I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag by Country Joe McDonald; War by Edwin Starr; and Anarchy in the UK by the Sex Pistols (Is this the m.p.l.a / Or is this the u.d.a / Or is this the i.r.a / I thought it was the u.k or just / Another country).

While you’re out there soaking up the sun and Boca Burgers, remember:

On Memorial Day we’ll hear about men who gave their lives for their country, but many lives were not given, they were taken, and taken stupidly and carelessly. And there has been great public piety about those men and their “sacrifice” on the part of politicians who blithely sacrificed them.

Enjoy your three-day weekend.

Wur n Piece lolz after teh jump:

(More below the fold…)

‘Cause it takes a real maverick to condemn genocide:

After enduring criticism for weeks months [seriously, LA Times, where the fuck have y'all been!?], John McCain broke Thursday with two controversial televangelists whose endorsements he once trumpeted in a bid to win support from religious conservatives.

At a late-afternoon rally in Stockton, McCain said he rejected the endorsement of John Hagee after learning of a recording in which the San Antonio pastor portrayed Adolf Hitler as being sent by God to force Jews “to come back to the land of Israel.”

McCain said he had not been aware of the comments — which were made in a sermon in the late 1990s and turned up recently on the Internet — when Hagee endorsed him in February.

In context (because it only gets better in context), Hagee’s Holocaust-hearting sermon goes something like this:

Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: “‘And they the hunters should hunt them,’ that will be the Jews. ‘From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.’ If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can’t see that.”

He goes on: “Theodore Hertzel is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said ‘I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.’ So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the holocaust.

“Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says — Jeremiah writing — ‘They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,’ meaning there’s no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don’t let your heart be offended. I didn’t write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.”

(More below the fold…)

You just gotta love this:

Just days after the California Supreme Court overturned the ban on gay marriage, Ellen DeGeneres invited John McCain to appear on her talk show and — rather amazingly — he agreed. At one point during the interview, which airs Thursday, DeGeneres said: “Let’s talk about the big elephant in the room.” She, of course, is that big elephant; DeGeneres recently made headlines by announcing her plan to wed longtime girlfriend Portia de Rossi, and McCain is anti-gay marriage. McCain responded: “I just believe in the unique status of marriage between a man and a woman and I know that we have a respectful disagreement on that issue.”

Shorter John McCain: We have a respectful disagreement as to whether your kind is fully human and deserving of basic rights.

Even shorter John McCain: Ewww! Butt sex and she-males!

It’s like the President of Gambia saying, “Hey you queers, no hard feelings, we just have a respectful disagreement as to whether you should be allowed to remain in the country without fear of losing yer fucking heads!!!1!!!1″

There’s nothing respectful about it. In fact, it’s fundamentally disrespectful, bigoted and prejudiced. John McCain is a homophobe who’s perfectly content in denying the GLBT population their Constitutional rights just because he thinks they’re icky. And attitudes such as Yahya Jammeh’s are the inevitable result of such open, unchallenged bigotry.

Ain’t nothing “mavericky” about that.

Good on Ellen, though!

(More below the fold…)

The 2007 Femmostroppo Awards are up!

Oh, yays! TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES is coming back for a second season! Don’t fuck this up, Fox.

ZOMG! Oprah is going vegan! Errr, wait. Oprah is going vegan?

Headline of the day: “Psycho Christians and the media; Why the press gives McCain a pass for consorting with batshit holy men, but condemns Obama to talk-show hell for the same sin.”

What’s so bad about “sweetie,” anyway? I was *this close* to writing my own post on the topic (working title: “Don’t call me sweetie, sugartits.”), but Rebecca Traister nailed it, so go read her instead. While you’re at it, this too, via.

In addition to causing cervical cancer in women, researchers have found that HPV may also lead to oral cancers in men. PZ wonders, “Shall [the religious right] encourage this vaccination to protect their precious boy-children, or will it be sufficient to scream against the sin of heterosexual oral sex from the pulpit? And can they even bear to talk about such ‘bizarre’ sexual practices in church?” Tough call.

In Myanmar, where at least 134,000 people dead or missing, and 2.5 million survivors are in need of aid, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is expected to meet with head of state Senior General Than Shwe during his trip there this week. The goal? “To convince the country to accept a full-scale cyclone relief operation.”

Wiki has a helpful entry on Cyclone Nargis, including a section on relief organizations working in the area. If you’d like to make a donation, start there.

Meanwhile, the death toll in China is at 40,000, with 250,000 people injured and 5 million homeless. CN Reviews has a list of 24+ ways to give here.

And, shockingly (not - that was sarcasm, people), misogyny flourishes in the wake of a natural disaster:

A Chinese magazine has been shut down for printing pictures of scantily clad women posing in rubble for a special report on the country’s devastating earthquake, officials said on Wednesday.

The New Travel Weekly, a small lifestyle magazine, ran photos of sultry models in their underwear amid the debris in an issue that hit the stands on Monday - the first of three days of national mourning.

Way to keep it classy, New Travel Weekly.

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Tagged: link love

Just thought I’d share this nifty little tool from Congress.org. Their “megavote” newsletter will email you a list of recent legislative votes, and tell you how your Congressheeple voted. You also get a list of upcoming votes, so it’s helpful for keeping track of legislation.

Know of a similar resource? Give it to me in the comments.

Oh, and seen on the congress.org homepage while searching for the megavote link: I’m not racist, but here’s a taco joke!

Hey, I have a soapbox alert: why don’t we petition the government to deport that douchenozzle and fill his citizenship slot with an immigrant?

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Tagged: congress.org link love