Here We Go Again

I am back from the dead, roused from all-consuming ennui by yet another new uniform design from US Soccer. For the first time in US soccer history, the men and women will be wearing the same jerseys, they said. Saints be praised, I said. If the nurse uniforms are history, I'm happy, I said, envisioning both Deuce and Baby Horse sporting some sleek, clean, classy threads.

Then they actually released photos, and my brain went *poof* again.







































The one on top is the women's shirt. Leaving aside, for the moment, the facts that (1) no post-adolescent woman willingly puts herself into wide horizontal stripes because (2) they make her look like an overgrown ten-year-old boy unless (3) she's a giant lesbian who says fuck it, I enjoy looking like a growth hormone-addled barber pole (*waving hand* but not for $149, I don't think), I see a big problem here. Look at the two pictures again and see what's different between them, aside from the marginally visible boobs in the one on top.

When two uniforms are slightly different, we look at the unifying elements for the message of what is official US capital-S Soccer. What do they share? Giant hoops, check. US Soccer crest, check. Sublimated sash, che... wait, what? Yes. Both shirts have a faint diagonal sash running from upper right to lower left (although it looks more like a laundry accident on the home shirts, it's boldly black on the away version). The sash, of course, was introduced to the last iteration of the men's kit to commemorate the 1950 US team that managed to beat England 1-0 in a first-round World Cup match, which was the last US World Cup win until 1994 (and its last qualification until 1990).

Okay, that was a big deal, a ragtag group of scruffy Americans beating the Brits at their own game, although it can't help but also be a tale of nearly a half-century of futility. But whatever. Yay 1950, fair enough. So since both teams are wearing the YAY 1950 sash, they surely must both be wearing something to commemorate the women's team's decades of domination, including two World Cup championships and three Olympic gold medals, right? Perhaps the traditional two stars above the crest, one for each World Cup trophy, just like the Brazilian women wear five stars for their men's side's WC championships?

Ah, no. Checking the pictures very carefully, it appears that they do not. So the official design suite for United States soccer is hoops, a crest, a swoosh, and a sash that's a smudge on one shirt and funereal on the other (black in mourning for the U23 men's failure to make it out of CONCACAF and into the Olympics, perhaps) because we need to remember that the men's team won a game once, in 1950. The women can put stars on their own shirts, but the men don't need to be bothered with them. Because if they had stars, someone might think they were wearing the women's jersey, and that would just be wrong.

Stay awesome, US Soccer.

My Week in the Gender Wars...

... is only three days old so far, and the chucklehead contingent is already batting .667 if you're scoring at home.

Sunday night was the more personally irksome incident, on the soccer field during a co-ed game. One of my male teammates runs pretty hot and tends to respond to overly physical play with verbal attacks. He has a knack for identifying the basest target he can aim for and hitting it right away, whether it's relating details to his opponent about the opponent's mother or, as was the case Sunday, loudly informing his fully transitioned MTF opponent through word and gesture that he still has his penis.

At halftime I told him he needed to knock that shit off. Well, she pushed me, he said. I don't even know if it's a she or a he or what. She's a she, so push her back, I replied, but do not bust on her for being transgendered, and just do not even say that stupid shit to anyone, ever again. After the team captain and her mother for good measure chastised him as well, he went over and apologized to the other player, who amazingly accepted his apology instead of just kicking him in the nuts to check to see if he still had those too.

Monday passed without incident.

Today I'm at the gym lifting weights when two early-20s guys come in. It's not the hugest weight room in the world, and there's no music or anything, you can hear pretty much every conversation that goes on. First guy does some curls and passes the barbell off to the next guy, who reracks it and grabs a lighter one. First guy snorts with laughter. Well, if you're gonna be a vag, I guess you're gonna be a vag! Seriously, fellas? Seriously? I'm old enough to be your mother, I actually have one of those dreaded vagi, and oh, by the way, I'm outlifting both of you. Like, OMG, STFU already.

On Sunday, the crime wasn't the push so much as the perceived affront against nature, manhood, Jesus, Thor, and all of existence represented by a guy trading in his dick for a vagina and becoming a woman. Today it was a guy demonstrating physical weakness and thus, for all practical purposes, simulating a woman, which meant, of course, being reduced to the only really relevant part of a woman in his buddy's mind, which--despite being a very desirable part said buddy undoubtedly likes having wrapped around his dick--is something to be despised, something shameful to be equated with.

In neither case did the poorly behaving guy exhibit any shred of awareness that what he said was much different from lovely weather we're having today. The guys in the gym went on at full volume, despite half the people in there being female. The guy on the team thought it was funny until his teammates let him know in no uncertain terms that it wasn't.

It's hard work being a dour, humorless feminist. And it's only Tuesday.

Boltgirl v. US Soccer, Part Three

The good news: they finally cranked out a new National Team commercial. Unfortunately, since they only put the games on TV once in three or four blue moons, you're not likely to see it. The oh-Christ-here-we-go-again-news: well, just watch for yourself and see if you can find the innocuous two-second sequence that had me throwing stuff at the monitor.

Hint: it just might be the portion of the video accompanying the intonation of "real values..." which just might show a wedding set on a hand manicured with red, white, and blue fingernail polish, which maybe kinda sorta hints that US Soccer believes (or at least thinks their target fanbase believes) that Real Values(TM) for women mean the holy trinity of femininity, patriotism, and heterosexuality.

Commenters on BigSoccer are pretty sure it wasn't intended to mean anything, really, that they used the wedding ring to symbolize loyalty in contrast to that skanky ho Paris Hilton (who gets mentioned over and over and over and...). Uh huh. The Fed haven't evidenced the brightest minds in the business, but do you honestly think they "didn't mean anything" by sticking the ring footage in there? Like, now, in the age of consumer and media research databases that rival anything held by the NIH? I think they knew exactly what message that would send, as surely as they've breathlessly hyped every engagement and wedding among the players, as they still desperately cast about for the next fresh face to sell the team to the country.

Et Tu, Cranium?

We are a rather Cranium-centric household. We play a lot. We have been known to string together all three boards, joined at the corners, for epic all-versions Cranium battles. Even this dour, humorlous feminist has been known to crack a smile while pantomiming "vibrate" without resorting to the obvious. So imagine my consternation when this ad landed in my inbox:

Cranium Bloom: Enforcing Traditional Gender Roles From Day One!

Look closely at the kids on the boxes. Seek & Find at the Zoo? It's a boy. Count & Cook? Shopping? Do you even need to look closely to tell which gender is associated with the last two? Because men never cook. And if they do, they certainly don't shop for the food. Seeking/finding animals? Not for girls. There might be bugs or peril involved, for heaven's sake. Going into the actual Bloom website doesn't tilt the scales much toward the middle. Generic "neighborhood" activities are split between boys and girls, but the other Seek & Find option involving animals (at the park) shows a squirrel being found by... a boy.

I'm disappointed, since Cranium's motto is something along the lines of everyone finding their area to shine in. This is a game that asks you to represent abstract concepts in purple clay, for cryin' out loud. Would it have been too much of a stretch for them to show a little boy wielding a wooden spoon on a box lid? Or maybe it's such an obvious pander that it's satire. Yeah, that must be it.

And I'm Not Even a Hillary Fan

But this shit seriously needs to stop; at this rate I'm not going to have many people left to believe in. Olbermann piled on Monday night in the aftermath of the voice-catch Complete Fucking Female Emotional Breakdown, Whut Whut with a segment helpfully entitled Clinton Cries, Then Attacks Obama. The video, being the actual video from the celebrated emotional moment, continues to fail to show "crying" as it is conventionally understood--say, as when Mitt Romney does it three times in three weeks on the campaign trail--and the "very same sentence" that purports to contain an immediate personal attack on Senator Obama sounds to these tender ears like any other statement any other candidate has made regarding readiness to take over the top job:

Clinton (from video):But some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not. Some of us know what we will do on Day One and some of us really haven't thought that through enough.

Olbermann (in studio, ominously): It gets worse...

Worse than what? Worse than that clip you just played? Uh, gee, Keith. Given how low you just set the "bad" bar, well, not hard to do. In your smoking gun video, Clinton makes very general, non-personal statements that do not reference Obama either directly by name or obliquely as "other Democrats" or "that one guy Chris Matthews worships." There is plenty of stuff in Hillary's record and stated positions to give you reservations. Don't manufacture shit that simply isn't there, and then have the temerity to allegedly back up your bullshit by playing video that doesn't come close to illustrating what you want your viewers to believe it does. You pillory O'Reilly on a near-nightly basis for this kind of dishonesty.

Men think sexism doesn't exist like whites think racism doesn't exist. Olbermann joins Edwards in the ranks of guys I thought I respected who have now seriously pissed me off. Tom Toles of the Washington Post gets it. I'd like to see Obama prove he gets it by telling his supporters both in and out of the media that he'd prefer to win this race on issues of substance, thank you very much, without the help of bigotry of any stripe.

In Which Hillary Can't Win for Losing

Well, goddamn. The huge news yesterday was that Hillary got choked up while talking about drawing strength from the passion she feels for the country and the need to improve it. Not sobbing, blubbering choked up, but damp-eyed, quavering-voiced choked up. Oh noes, people howled, ain't that just like a typical woman to get all emotional? Can't have that in the White House.

That was followed up by this from a subsequent campaign appearance in New Hampshire:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was about to deliver a line that has become a centerpiece of her campaign since her loss in Iowa.

“Everybody in this race is talking about change. But what does that mean?”

“Iron my shirt!” yelled a man, who stood up in the middle of a jammed and stuffy auditorium at a high school in Salem, N.H., and held up a yellow sign with the same text. He repeated it over and over.

You know, iron my shirt, bitch? The sign young guys think is Teh Funny to hold up at feminist rallies? The new alternate to shut up, bitch? That one. So a couple guys hold the sign and chant the chant, Hillary handles it without breaking stride, making a reference to the glass ceiling she's trying to break through here, and... the majority of online commenters are convinced she staged the whole thing.

Yep, her campaign did plant that questioner in Iowa. Bad move. And they've committed other bits of asshattery, of which going to Barack Obama's kindergarter teacher for evidence of early presidential ambition is the most egregious example. And now she's reached the point that many people refuse to cede even a shred of credibility to any display by or against her, no matter how genuine or not-planned it might turn out to be.

Anyone remember Mitt Romney talking a couple weeks ago about being so overcome with emotion on learning that his church had decided black people are humans too that he had to pull his car over since he was blinded by tears? Did he catch any backlash on that for being too quick to dissolve into tears at the slightest provocation? Well, no, he caught hell for exceeding most people's bullshit thresholds with the elements of the story that don't conform to temporal or spatial reality. But not for the emotion itself.

I listened to a John Edwards consultant spin this on Rachel Maddow's show as proof of Hillary's unfitness for the Oval Office, and cringed as my regard for Edwards plunged straight into the tank. Well, if she cracks under the pressure of the campaign, what's she gonna do when something really big happens? Hey, Mudcat, or whatever the fuck your real name is, this wasn't "cracking under pressure." It was a wholly appropriate and in no way excessive display of patriotic emotion. It pisses me off when the front man for a candidate who positions himself--and who I believe really is--a populist falls back on the easy if dishonest meme of female=weak. Maddow was flabbergasted herself. And the dude just would not let it go.

So we would appear to have dual lessons being reinforced here. One is that the old saw your grandparents kept whacking you with when you were a kid, you know, the one that goes it's easier to maintain your reputation than to repair it? Yeah, that's pretty much true. And the other one, that holds that a woman who shows no emotion is a stone-cold bitch, while a woman who shows any emotion is a fragile, irrational creature who shouldn't be entrusted with Really Big Responsibilities? Unfortunately, that one got propped up yet again too.

By the way, it turns out that Hillary didn't stage the Iron My Shirt incident at all. A couple of Boston shock jocks did. Will her quick, on-her-feet, coolly dispassionate dispatching of them buy her back any steely resolve cred with the No Crying In Politics faction? Nope, didn't think so.

Oh HELL No

Somebody left a few advertising postcards in the bathroom at Bookman's. For this:







Yes. It does say Milf. Maternity wear.

I just had to go to the website. Just to see if maybe they don't actually know what MILF means, although the logo strongly suggests they do. Maybe...



















This bold belly baring tank top say’s pregnant or not…I am hot! You will never want to take it off. This staple white tank will last you into post pardum.
Logo: “B2 Bare the Belly”

Or maybe not.

The proud mom of two who started this company claims MILF only means "Mothers In Love with Fashion," but rather disingenuously follows that up with

I hope you love my clothing line and you wear the Milf label with pride. Remember, you are "Always Hot... Pregnant or Not!"

Sincerely,

Stacey Latona
“A woman who personally considers being called a 'Milf' a compliment. You should too!"

Because nothing says pride like tying your self-worth to how you rate on a man's fuckability index, even--especially--if you've given birth or are on your way to the delivery room! Why settle for compliments like "nice" or "smart" or "stylish" when guys can--and should!--just cut to the chase and pronounce you someone they would Like To Fuck?

You can either let the world know you are "S2 Seriously Sexy" or declare yourself a "Knocked Up Knockout"! Can’t decide if you want to "Countdown to Cosmo's" or let your little belly be highlighted with the "My Pod" logo? Go for it and get one of everything. Isn't that what we women do when we can't decide?

Ha ha ha, we women are so darn incapable of making decisions, we better just grab up everything within our field of vision! Why, you'd almost think we didn't have brains! Would you Like To Fuck us now?

Lots of shops have maternity lines now that look like actual clothing rather than tents. I'm all for it. But Jesus Haploid Christ, can we do it because the women involved like the clothes on their own merits, rather than echoing the message that women need to define and maintain themselves in service of male sexual desire at all times?

I feel like vomiting a little, and it ain't morning sickness talking.

In Which the Legal System is Brought to its Knees by a Non-independent Two-celled Organism

Your new blastocyst overlord.

Well, not quite yet, but that's the spectre that's on the verge of being released in Focus on the Family's Colorado.

A proposed amendment to the Colorado Constitution that would give legal rights to fertilized human eggs may be headed for the ballot next year...

The measure, just one paragraph long, would ask voters whether inalienable rights, due process rights and equality of justice rights as defined in the state Constitution should be extended to “any human being from the moment of fertilization.”

The proposal must go through several other steps between now and Election Day 2008, including gathering of enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Really. Fertilized eggs get full legal rights. Full personhood. From the moment of fertilization.

And in his well-appointed lair somewhere in the Hamptons, the Law of Unintended Consequences pours a second glass of Glenfiddich and starts giggling uncontrollably.

Wow. Imagine. This brings abortion to a screeching halt, of course, as it is the underlying motivation for introducing this bit of ridiculousness in the first place. What else might it do? IUD possession will be tantamount to holding a smoking gun. Maybe lawyers will line up to bring suits against women on behalf of ectopic pregnancies (perhaps softeningly retitled "Managua Maternities?") everywhere. And nutter billionaires will no longer need to keep a small lap dog on the premises just to have someone to will their fortunes to in order to spite their ungrateful grown children--they can name any of the thousands of fertilized eggs languishing in a freezer somewhere as full beneficiaries.

Lost, as usual in this particular brand of asshattery, is the role of the woman, the woman whose uterus is the claim of squatter's rights by the now fully enfranchised fertilized egg. There is no mention of the fully formed, several-trillion-celled human being whose bodily autonomy is discounted in favor of the two-celled cluster being venerated by the forced-birth contingent. Woman? What woman? We have a blastocyst to defend here, people!

And lord knows the blastocysts need help. Roughly half of them fail to implant in the uterine wall anyway and are expelled from the woman's body without her having any inkling they ever existed in the first place. It's been remarked to the point of exhaustion that this one-in-two rate of failure to implant makes God the biggest abortionist in the world. The fertilized egg is indeed alive, but it doesn't come anywhere close to fitting the definition of viable. It's a potential-filled rogue, but a rogue nonetheless, floating in the general direction of the cervix, but sometimes implanting in the side of the fallopian tube instead, at which point--if we're going to carry the absurdity of full legal personhood to its conclusion--if left unchecked, it becomes the instigator of a murder-suicide. Even making it into the uterus is no guarantee of making it to the point of viabililty. A hundred years ago, that point was pretty much the moment of birth, providing the mother didn't die halfway through delivery, asphyxiating the infant. In 2007, viability means about seven months' gestation. Is that life? Well, it can breathe with a little help and has a shot at an unencumbered adulthood, so yeah, that's life. An egg that was fertilized an hour ago and has even odds of not surviving the next 72 hours inside the woman's body, and exactly zero odds of surviving outside it? Not so much.

Dale Schowengerdt, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal organization based in Arizona that supported the ballot measure before the Colorado Supreme Court, said the timing of the proposal was “pure coincidence,” to next year’s elections.

“It’s an important debate that people ought to have, and Colorado ought to have, about when does life begin,” Mr. Schowengerdt said.

Ah, that one's easy, Mr. Schowengerdt. It begins when it is politically expedient for you to have it begin. And if you really want "life" defined as "sperm crashes into egg; gains full legal standing as US citizen," well, sir, be really, really careful what you wish for.

In Which Our Suspicions Are Confirmed

I'm sorry, what was I saying about Heather Mitts earlier? Any lingering doubts about exactly how sponsors and broadcast entities calculate her value are put to rest by this:



Why Foudy ever agreed to go along with this is a mystery to me.

Boltgirl v. US Soccer, Part Deux

My e-mail to the US Soccer store, after finding plenty of cutesy pink spaghetti-strap tank tops but no basic red-white-blue non-gender-specific t-shirts:

Hello,

I have a bit of a beef with the fact that the WNT shirts offered by US Soccer are available only in a "women's" cut. The immediate concern is that the shirts don't work for every body type. I'm athletic, naturally broad-shouldered and small-chested, and I lift weights. So even a women's XL doesn't work for my shoulders and back, and the girly design with those little cap sleeves and tapered waist wouldn't appeal to me even if I could fit into it. Why is the Fed not offering normal unisex shirts? I look around at the players on my women's team, and I rarely see any of them wearing women-specific shirts of any kind (and I should point out that 2/3 of them are straight, so it ain't an orientation thing).

The bigger-picture concern is that US Soccer has adopted a gender-segregated marketing plan for the national teams, assuming that no men will support the WNT to the extent of buying a shirt (or aren't secure enough in their gender identities to be caught dead in a Wambach shirt), while it's "okay" for a woman supporter of the MNT to wear a MNT or Donovan shirt. By eliminating the option of that most American form of team support (the holy t-shirt), the Fed is effectively discouraging men and boys from getting deeply invested with the WNT and reinforcing the stereotype that only women should be interested in women's sports. Why do you think the WNT is "the best team you never heard of?" Maybe because they've been marketed to a very narrow demographic (let's admit it--the traditionally feminine segment of the female population) since the Founders retired?

Anyway. My (and most of my teammates') refusal to buy any WNT or WWC gear isn't due to a lack of enthusiasm for my country or my game. It's because I can't comfortably wear anything currently being offered anywhere online. Sell some unisex shirts and I'll buy them, and I'd wager that a lot of the dads of all those feminine little girls US Soccer has decided to focus on would buy them too. I love this team and would gladly buy a Wambach shirt for every day of the week if it came in men's M or L.

Thank you for your time.

I got a response last night:

Thank you for your recent email to the U.S. Soccer Store. We appreciate your feedback and your continued support of the Women's National Team.

We have noted your comments regarding the cut of the WNT t-shirts. We will also pass them on to NIKE. As our official apparel partner, we work closely with them on all the gear we sell. Further, we rely on their recommendations as far as styles, cuts, sizing, colors, etc. when making decisionsas to what will be popular with our fans.

Your feedback is valuable though and we will keep it in mind as we work with NIKE on future products.

Should you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at 312-528-1264.

Best regards,
Mike Gressle

I'm tempted to write to Nike to ask if Abby Wambach (whom they sponsor) can even fit into one of their Wambach shirts; the woman is built, as commenter truth pointed out, like an armoire.

The obvious solution, which I'm betting will be suggested by Nike, is to just buy men's national team gear just like men are expected to do, because we're all on the same team, right? Except that we're not. When I do that, who is credited for the sale? The men's team. And how is TV time and general support allocated? Why, by fan interest. And how is that calculated? By the almighty dollar.

Lest I come off as a shirt-obsessed freakshow (whaaaaat?) who believes that her purchases and hers alone will make a ripple at more than the molecular level, it's the principle here. The roster of the women's team is more diverse than it has been at any point in the past, with a relatively substantial number of players who are (1) non-Anglo, (2) non-straight, and (3) not conventionally feminine (even the straight ones); it's not the Ponytail Posse writ large any more. While the Fed is not keeping the unconventional players under wraps by any means, the bulk of the coverage is limited to online videos that are very occasionally shown on Fox Soccer Channel, which doesn't reach a hell of a lot of American households. When it comes to ESPN-televised game time, we get the usual features on who's recently married or engaged, who had an interesting childhood, and who just had a baby--a marketing plan straight out of 1999.

In that sense, maybe Natasha Kai is a godsend. As much as I dislike her immaturely inconsistent and selfish play on the field (she'll be good when she grows up, assuming she ever grows up), she brings the freak like no WNT player before her, and it will be impossible for the Fed to ignore her and her tattoos and piercings forever. Even if they give the parents of 12-year-old Bible Belt players the vapors. And if the Fed is reluctantly dragged into the 21st century, maybe they'll start acknowledging the fans who are interested in more than just the next pretty smile to grace the TV.

Why Soccer Players Kick Ass

I ran across this story a couple of weeks ago, I think on Feministing, about three players on the de Anza College women's soccer team rescuing a 17-year-old girl who was being gang-raped by baseball players at an off-campus party. I had read that the boys claimed it was consensual (despite the girl being intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness) and that the DA didn't think she had enough evidence to get a conviction, so she declined to prosecute. It all sucked, but that was all I heard until the girlfriend sent me more from sfgate.com:

The three broke in, grabbed the girl and carried her out. They took her to the hospital, notified authorities and volunteered to testify in any court proceedings. What more could you ask?

To keep their mouths shut. To butt out. To mind their own business.

That's the message the soccer players got from the men accused in the case.

"People I didn't even know were coming up to me and saying, 'Stop your lying. Shut your f -- mouth,' " Chief Elk said in an interview last week. "We'd be walking around, and people would actually come up and get in our face."

Maybe the DA is skittish after the Duke lacrosse fiasco, or maybe--since she is a woman with a record of aggressively prosecuting sexual assaults--it's just phenomenally bad luck that in the course of focusing on getting the comatose girl out of the room, the soccer players failed to get a clear look at the face of the guy they pulled off her. But the usual denials and claims by the boys in the room and their attorney (she wanted it, she consented, no crime here) twist in the wind of the facts.

"She had vomit dribbling down her face," Chief Elk has said. "We had to scoop vomit out of her mouth and lift her up."

(Cahners says tests proved that the vomit was not the victim's. But Grolle says "that's even worse,'' meaning that someone else's vomit was in the girl's mouth.)

"She was literally lifeless," Grolle says. "Her eyes were completely shut. On the ride to the hospital, I had to keep my hand under her nose to make sure she was breathing."

This, remember, is the girl who is supposed to have "consented" to sex.

An underage girl is so drunk she's comatose. And somebody pukes in her mouth. And a bunch of guys stand around and watch another one fuck her while she's in this condition. And the subjects of derision and threats are the women who put a stop to it?

Finally

The elusive deltoid.

My first recollection of any kind of body awareness beyond the ow, that hurt of scraped knees was during the 1976 Summer Olympics. I was almost nine years old and hadn't seen gymnastics before--our tiny southern Illinois town must have failed to notice the '72 Games--so I was fascinated by the people flinging themselves through the air and whipping their bodies around bars and rings and pommel horses. Tellingly, I suppose, I didn't think much of the female gymnasts; even though they were actual physically mature women back in those ancient days rather than the perpetually pre-pubescent pixies we have now, the leotards and makeup must have put me off. Yes, I know the women were incredibly fit, limber, and strong, but they still looked like the kind of prim lady my grandmothers had been stubbornly trying to mold me into since I started to walk and discovered I liked jeans and train engineer caps much more than lacy dresses and patent leather Mary Janes.

The strength and power exhibited by the guy gymnasts, though, just fascinated me without any guilt-embossed baggage. Specifically, I was completely taken with their deltoids, especially when they were on the rings, hanging there motionless in that T position. Hey, I played on the rings at the playground all the time and knew how hard that was, even as a 60-pound wisp of a kid. They made it look easy. Right then I decided I must someday get a set of deltoids myself. Which proved to be not easy at all with body fat that actually registers in the double digits. Hmm. So I put it aside for decades.

This morning at the gym, thirty years later, I glanced in the mirror as I toiled away on the elliptical machine, and there the deltoids were, perched on the sides of my shoulders and playing it cool like they had always been there. Six months of concerted effort in the weight room has finally paid off. They'll certainly evaporate in a poof of mesquite pollen the next time I sneeze, but today I am basking in the knowledge that I managed to achieve at least one of my completely meaningless childhood dreams.

Christian Expression via Broken Beer Bottle

Hysteria from fundamentalist Christians over the proposed addition of anti-GLBT bias to the federal hate crimes statutes, originally noted at Pam's House Blend:

Now that the House has approved a bill that includes crimes against homosexuals, bisexuals and transgender individuals in federal hate crimes statutes, pro-family groups are attempting to prevent a similar measure from passing the Senate. Representatives from groups like the Southern Baptist Convention, Concerned Women for America, Vision America, and Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation held a press conference in Washington, DC, to voice their displeasure with what they view as an attack on Christian expression.

"Christian expression" includes assaulting and murdering gay people? What was that verse, again, ah, it's right here somewhere... oh yes. Jesus wept.

The first spectre always trotted out so eagerly is the gay bogeyman who hits on innocent straight guys who are just trying to watch the football game.

Janet Folger of the ministry Faith 2 Action says the hate crimes bill passed by the House is aimed at pastors or anyone else who has the "audacity" to disagree with the homosexual agenda. "Mike is standing at a football bar, or he's standing at a restaurant, watching a game," she posits; "Bruce comes out of the restroom, and he's touching up his makeup. He's a cross-dresser with red-nail polish and a five o'clock shadow. He comes out and hits on Mike. Maybe he puts his arm around him or maybe he brushes or puts his hand through his hair."

The average man would "maybe want to push off such unwelcome advances," Folger observes. However, she warns, "That, if you touch him, is a hate crime."

Again, always, and forever, the fact that this argument continues to be made and eagerly lapped up by the fundie masses speaks volumes more about these people's conceptions of heterosexuality--specifically, about straight male sexuality--than about gay sexuality or hate crimes. If straight men are not allowed to beat gay men to a pulp, the reasoning goes, then gay men will start behaving toward straight men like straight men do toward women. That is, with a sense of entitlement to the straight man as a commodity that exists solely to arouse and fulfill the gay man's pleasure, and the straight man will have no recourse but to stand there and take it just like a woman should.

If any other formulation of male-female dynamics existed in Janet Folger's mind, it might occur to her that uninvited physical contact is inappropriate for anyone to initiate, even if the anyone is male, and that anyone who is the subject of the unwanted bad touch is allowed to rebuff it (although "rebuffing" someone's hand brushing through your hair generally doesn't extend to "bash face in with barstool"). Even when the toucher is male. Her message and mindset are clear. If a woman has the misfortune to be attractive to a man (and especially if she deliberately makes herself attractive), the man can't help but hit on her, and she's gotta take it. If a gay man sees a straight man, he is both automatically attracted to him and powerless to resist the impulse to hit on him. What's worse, the straight man is automatically feminized by being the object of male attraction, and now the government is trying to complete that emasculation by preventing him from killing his would-be suitor--which, of course, is the only possible straight male response to the power-sapping experience of being hit on by a man, regardless of whether it involved physical contact, a verbal proposition, or simply the perception that the gay guy was eyeing him funny.

It's telling that the gay panic defense and the Christians desperate to preserve it invariably focus on the mythical gay male transvestite trying to grab a straight guy's nuts. I have yet to see any handwringing over the drag kings and PE teachers who will come out of the woodwork looking to grope the straight gals or at least rotate their tires should anti-gay hate crimes be officially frowned upon.

Beyond that, of course, the thing that annoys me to no end about this crap is its deliberate dishonesty about the nature of the hate crimes statutes--you'll be fined up if you say homosexuality is wrong, you'll be locked up if you push a guy away who's running his hands through your hair (is that really how gay men say hello to strangers? I hadn't noticed). None of the statutes can be construed as banning people from reasonably defending themselves against unwanted physical intrusions, and none of the proscribed behaviors come anywhere close to First Amendment territory. You're free to spend your days preaching about Leviticus and making straw Bruce after straw Bruce dressed up however you want. However, beating the crap out of a guy, shooting him several times, and dumping his body in a field because he asked if you wanted a blow job is not okay. Understand that distinction? I think Jesus might have.

Measles shot? Check. TB? Check check. HPV? Aaaaaiiiieeee!!!!

Chalk this one in the column of ongoing things I just don't understand. This would be the Gardasil kerfuffle, the consternation raised by Merck's introduction of a vaccine that has tested at near-100% effectiveness in preventing two of the most common strains of cervical-cancer-causing HPV. One in four women carry the virus, which can be identified as causal of nearly 70% of all cervical cancers.

The rational world short version: get the vaccine before becoming sexually active and dramatically decrease your chances of contracting cervical cancer.

The fundamentalist short version: get the vaccine and have carte blanche for a lifetime promiscuous, unprotected sex starting right now.

Actually, that's not really fair to fundamentalists, since they're not the only ones balking at vaccinating preteen girls against a sexually transmitted disease. Some people object to the cost ($400 for the three-shot regimen), others to the addition of another mandatory vaccine to a growing list of requirements for their kids to attend school, others to the sense of a creeping nanny state... and some otherwise rational folks just get the willies when faced with the need to dovetail "sex" and "my daughter" into the same thought. Even the revered Ellen Goodman isn't completely immune:

Nor am I surprised that parents are queasy. It's not easy for any parent to accept that their middle-schooler should get protection from a sexually transmitted disease, even with the risk of cancer.

This queasiness is shared by other people I have talked to, people who, again, are usually more in line with what I consider clear thinking [disclaimer: granted, I'm a generally leftish nutter, but still].

Me: What's the problem with it?
Them: 12-year-olds? They shouldn't even be thinking about sex.
Me: That's exactly the point. You need to administer the vaccine before they're sexually active for it to have the best chance of working.
Them: Yeah, but 12?!?
Me: ...

If HPV were spread as innocuously as mononucleosis or viral meningitis, in morally neutral ways such as getting sneezed on or sharing a can of soda or--brace yourself--kissing someone, as even abstinent teenagers are wont to do, we wouldn't be having this discussion. There might be outrage at the cost, but not at the mere idea of vaccinating children against a virus that can lead to suffering and death when they become adults.

People who don't skip a beat when talking about their dreams for their far-in-the-future grandkids or wonder how much they'll have to pay for their daughters' weddings suddenly get green around the gills when forced to think about the sexual implications of those dreams and plans. Look, here it is. Your sweet little girl, god willing, is going to grow up someday, and will most likely engage in sexual intercourse with at least one person in her lifetime. Even if she completely abstains from sexual contact of any kind until she's in a committed relationship, there is absolutely no guarantee that her eventual partner will be HPV free.

And if you don't want to think about your daughter having consensual sex, should I even bring up the possibility that she will be sexually assaulted at some point? How about the fact that one in three victims is under the age of 12?

Cervical cancer is only one of a myriad of health concerns facing adult women in the US. But the vaccine has given us the chance to scratch one big bogeyman off the list. Uneasiness with the reality of your daughters' sexuality is a sorry excuse for balking at the opportunity to protect them against a completely preventable condition. The next time you dream about your grandkids, dream about them having a healthy mother.

In Which We Find a Shirt That Does Not Quite Capture Our Essence

Not what Boltgirl looks like, supermodel or no.

Supermodels for Christ

NPR's story this morning on how the parties will attempt to court the evangelical vote contained the usual rehash of the need for Democrats to portray themselves as conservative on issues such as abortion and gay marriage, even though that will alienate their base in the Reality Community, and the need for Republicans to continue to march to the right even though most of them--save the unelectable Sam Brownback--have already pissed off the evangelicals in one way or another.

Buried in the middle of this, almost as a non-sequitur, was a snippet from a woman named Tammy Bennett, described as decked from head to toe in silver. I'm not going to bother dissecting Ms. Bennett's call for protecting the sanctity of marriage; that was predictable given the context of the story. My attention was piqued much more by the tiny biographical blurb provided:

Bennett is the founder of Makeover Ministries, which she describes as "inspiring women to look good from the inside out and to be supermodels for Christ. And it's based on Proverbs: 'just as water mirrors your face, so your face mirrors your heart.'"

Supermodels for Christ. Supermodels. For Christ.

Where to begin?

Here is the author information submitted by Ms. Bennett on the web page selling her book, Looking Good from the Inside Out:

It wasn't until I actually went to Hollywood to work as an actress that I discovered the true meaning of beautiful. While I was there I met many people who were beautiful on the outside that knew nothing about inner beauty, and though they were famous they were not very well liked because of their ugly attitudes. God used this time to teach me how to look good from the inside out...

I want girls to know what it took me years to discover; beauty is a choice and it all begins with a relationship with Jesus Christ.
When you apply the principles in this book,
you'll become a "SUPER MODEL."

Perhaps it's the failure to acknowledge the existence of people who have plenty of inner beauty but fall short of conventional definitions of physical beauty. Perhaps it's the implication that if (1) your face mirrors your heart and (2) beauty is a choice then (ergo and sum) women who are not supermodel beautiful have chosen to be bad people. Probably it's the combination of those that gives me pause. Inner beauty--the kind I thought Jesus was interested in, rather than the superficial trappings of the world--isn't good enough. If you do not pursue supermodel perfection rather than being content with the face God gave you, you're not following the Bible.

Odd. The only beauty tip I remember Jesus doling out was the admonishment to ditch the sackcloth and ashes and wash your damn face already.

The messages seem contradictory--one the one hand, Bennett remembers the angst of being a teenage girl and not feeling beautiful enough. But rather than promoting the message that girls are intrinsically valuable as unique individuals and are beautiful on the basis of their characters and actions toward other people, she emphasizes--if the table of contents and sample pages are accurate representations of the book's content--the superficial.

Tammy's Tip: Don't forget to apply moisturizer to your neck. You don't want to have a great-looking face attached to a sagging neck.

The horror.

If you want to write a makeover guide for teenaged girls, write a makeup guide. But please, don't try to pass it off as a ministry for making girls more acceptable by covering up their "imperfections" and homogenizing their appearance to conform to societal standards of beauty--standards which, I might add, are primarily driven by the need to be appealing to men by appearing young and fertile. And don't then try to say that it's all for Jesus because the Cover Girl-approved, cosmetic-slathered face is the perfect representation of a Godly heart and the best way for a young woman to demonstrate spirituality. It's the same tired message (beautiful people are good people; conventionally feminine girls are good girls; if your natural appearance falls outside the acceptable range, you must choose to alter it) repackaged in a shiny Christian wrapper (if beauty is a choice and comes from a relationship with Jesus, only Christians can be truly beautiful).

This and That

Brilliant commenter kevinbgoode over at Pam's House Blend, on civil unions vs. civil marriage:

The whole point is this - any American citizen should be questioning the validity of ANY institution which is so preoccupied with image that it does not produce substance. The very idea that a gay man can fake his way into a "marriage" with a woman and have it considered valid is about nothing more than promoting an image - it does nothing to promote social stability. When people can 'marry" without any reason other than their born gender assignment, what the Right is telling Americans is that the symbol of marriage is more important than any foundation or real commitment - that the contract with the state rises above everything and anything else between two people. And these Democratic candidates which support this crap are as guilty as every wingnut Republican who thinks that some stupid constitutional amendment somehow can ban people from falling in love.

You know, I've been stretching to come up with ways to amuse myself during this weekend's forced trip to Las Vegas (never been, never wanted to go, kid has a soccer tournament there, voila). Perhaps I will put my undergrad anthropology training to work and do a mini ethnography of wedding chapel owners, in an attempt to discern exactly where they think their calling falls on the sacred-profane continuum. Or perhaps I will see how many random men I can coax through the drive-through with me. What's the Vegas single-day record for marriages and annulments? Hell, the repeated paroxysms of sanctified het glory might be enough to push me over the edge into straighthood.

On a related note, however, based on recent events I would be able to find a random woman and fake being the groom at least one time out of four. The "sir" incidents have been occurring at an alarming pace over the past few months, which I find odd because (1) the hair is still long and (2) working out has receded the gut to the point that the boobs should be at least moderately noticeable in comparison. Granted, I have never been the model of femininity, but I don't go out of my way to look like a guy. I'm just built like my dad, who is built like his dad's dad, who was a solid block of Bohemian gentleman farmer.

The sad part of this for me is the intense embarrassment when someone calls me "sir"--sad because the intensely embarrassed party is invariably me. I wish I could simply find the other person's lack of discernment funny, but society's messages about the importance of clear-cut gender identity seem to have taken root deeply enough to provoke shame for not being pretty enough to be recognizable as a woman.

It's gotten to the point that I have found myself pulling my shoulders back and trying to stick the boobs out a little more when I walk into a public bathroom, or yanking off my baseball cap if I'm wearing one and fussing up the hair a bit. Or, worse, if I can hear other women talking in the bathroom I just wait until they leave, or I hide in the stall until I can make an isolated exit. Because even worse than hearing "sir" is seeing the look of shock, confusion, dismay, and--sometimes--fucking fear on a woman's face when she sees me walk into the fucking women's room.

Sigh. I hope they at least think I'm a good-looking guy.

The obvious solution would be a ton of makeup and a wardrobe change, but I won't do makeup, and even in girl clothes the ultimate effect is often linebacker in drag rather than urban femme sophisticate. My friend G tosses on a cap and raggy t-shirt and becomes a boyishly cute but completely recognizable as a woman. I do the same and become, well, apparently a boy. My resentment at having to put on a costume to conform to other people's expectations of what I should look like probably contributes to not pulling it off successfully, but Jesus.

Like a Tick on a Dog

Too much food in too little time. And I swore I wasn't going to inhale food this Christmas. Maybe I should try mainlining it instead; reducing to an injectable liquid would cut down on the caloric hit somewhat, no? No? Crap.

Too Weird for Words: This month's Bitch magazine has a story about girl-centered marketing, with the resigned conclusion that magazines, toy manufacturers, programmers, and webmasters talk about empowerment until they're blue in the face, but end up going with the pink princess on a pony theme damn near without fail. I thank the universe I had a boy just about every time I go through Target and pass the racks of pint-sized sexy clothes and the aisles of pink toys involving makeup, hair, or domestic scenes. I hated that crap when I was a kid, favoring Tonka trucks, Best of the West action figures, cap guns, and my chemistry set.

Yes, as a matter of fact, it did take me until I was 31 to entertain the notion that I wasn't exactly a typical straight gal. Or even an atypical straight gal.

But anyway, and to the point, the sentence that blew me away in this article is right there at the top of page 75:

...the media never really represents the tuba-playing, soccer-playing, science-loving, bird-watching girl because she's just not an easy sell.

Emphasis mine. Jesus Haploid Christ! I don't even know the person who wrote that, but she's managed to encapsulate my entire existence in what, nine words? Nine words! Not that she's totally inside my head or anything, but within the span of a few hours today I did play my bass along to my Christmas with the Canadian Brass CD (I played tuba for a while in high school, but didn't have one on me this morning), rearrange my soccer bag, browse a couple of my favorite ScienceBlogs blogs, and take a break from raking the yard to run inside and grab my Peterson's Western Birds to confirm the presence of a couple of Lesser Goldfinches in the mesquite tree. I mean, fuck!