America: The Broken, 2020 Edition

Who could have predicted, except for hundreds and thousands of commentators, many of them women and/or POC.

Here's me, writing 3 years ago, at Shakesville, for instance:

"Donald Trump is the inevitable Republican politician for a rotten-to-the-core Republican Party that has condoned the use of any means necessary to win. To enact their regressive, cruel agenda, they have enabled a man to become President who is not only temperamentally-unsuited and unqualified for the office he holds, but whose very presence there is a daily, stark reminder of their contempt for both democracy and the people of this nation.

America: we are broken."

The George B. Bush years were bad. Very bad. The Trump years are exponentially worse.

If you'd have asked me the day after the 2016 election if in a few years it would feel like we would be living through some of the worst moments of the 1930s, 40s, and 60s, but also with Twitter, Facebook, a pandemic, and a fascist president who was brought to us by the reality TV-ification of US politics, I'd say, "Yep, Sure. Sounds about right."

Every time I think we've hit rock bottom, things somehow get worse.

And, if anything, the COVID pandemic should be telling everyone in the US, even the most privileged, how drastically our lives can change, pretty much overnight, and not in a good way. I think many white people mean well when they post the memes about their #whiteprivilege and how "safe" they are relative to Black people, and that is true to an extent, but white people also would do well to stop acting like they/we are entirely objective observers of history, rather than people who can also be killed, uprooted, and oppressed by the Trump regime. Especially now.

I wish I could find it now, but when I was perusing the Twitter recently, someone noted that one of the condescending errors of the post-2016-election "safety pin" thing, where white people would wear safety pins to surreptitiously signal to people of color that they/we are "allies," was the simple-minded assumption that we would be entirely untouched, ourselves, by the horrors of the Trump regime. 

I also understand that people need hope, and I refuse to give up hope. Still.

But, a lot of people seem to think that the current protests around the country mean we're on the cusp of the leftist, socialist, utopian revolution, rather than on the cusp of a violent, authoritarian dictatorship fully backed by one of our two major political parties, roughly half of US voters, about 2/3rds branches of the US government, and a federal military force commanded by the political right.

The 2016 election was, perhaps even more than 2000, the most pivotal election of most of our lifetimes, and what's done is done.

The US government has never acted with the consent of the majority of those within its borders. The majority of voters, by millions, can and did reject a man like Trump and that still, still was not enough to keep him from power. 

The protests we are seeing from city to city in response to the police killing of George Floyd are, first and foremost the result of police violence inflicted upon Black people, and more generally seem to be a release valve for the unrest that results from the reality that the United States was designed to be an unjust, oppressive state that privileges the rights, safety, and well-being of a subset of citizens, and that this fact has been self-evident to millions of oppressed people throughout the history of this nation despite mass efforts to gaslight us into thinking otherwise.

Many people now seem to be making catastrophic miscalculations about the current state of affairs, miscalculations akin to the wishful thinking that Comey or Mueller or Fauci or whoever-the-fuck-white-male-savior would somehow swoop in and save us from the madman.

Please stay safe friends and longtime readers, however you can. I know that's not super useful advice, but the only advice I can muster now is that the time for thinking about politics in soundbite is over so try not to let the memes be your guide.

Oh, and happy fuckin' pride month.

Melissa Benoist Shares Experiences With Intimate Partner Violence

In an Instagram video she posted last week, Supergirl star Melissa Benoist shared that she experienced intimate partner violence in a previous relationship.

The full video is currently up on YouTube here, and in it she details how a previous romantic partner emotionally and physically abused her. Benoist did not name the previous partner, although some in the media have attempted to fill in the blanks based on the timing of some of the incidents she refers to. Out of respect for the fact that Benoist didn't name him, I won't speculate here.

Instead, I'll offer my story.

When I was 18, in one of my earliest relationships, my partner was emotionally abusive, including regularly belittling me, isolating me from my friends and family, cheating on me, and making us keep our relationship a secret (always complicated and "easy" for abusers to justify in queer relationships). Even after I broke up with this person, they continued to stalk me and break into my email account to keep track of what I was doing, who I was communicating with, and who I was hanging out with.

I didn't have many tools at the time to recognize much of this behavior as abusive, let alone to effectively counter it. After years of work, including therapy, martial arts and self-defense training, and feminist education and analysis, I am in a very different place now.

My past experiences with abuse also inform why I have little to no tolerance for abusive Internet behavior, especially those who, for instance, stalk and harass me through my Twitter account even after I've blocked them.

The fact is, especially after more than 10 years engaging with folks on the Internet, I almost immediately know how to recognize abusers and their abusive patterns, and the best course of action for me is to simply refuse to engage with them because what they desire more than anything is to keep their target trapped in an abusive cycle on their terms, not yours.

This is not to say that Internet abuse is the same as physical violence. In fact, I don't think it's useful to compare or rank which types of abuse are "worse" than others. To put it simply, and to paraphrase Tig Notaro in One Mississippi, "they're all bad."

I'll just offer that I'm sorry Benoist experienced intimate partner violence. I have long admired her acting on Supergirl, but even aside from that, no person should have to endure abuse in an intimate, or any other, relationship. And, I hope she is getting any help and support she needs to deal with the trauma from her experiences.

Republican Administration Seeking Federal Regulation of Speech on Social Media Sites

Via Politico:

"The White House is circulating drafts of a proposed executive order that would address allegations of anti-conservative bias by social media companies, according to a White House official and two other people familiar with the matter — a month after President Donald Trump pledged to explore 'all regulatory and legislative solutions' on the issue."
...

'If the internet is going to be presented as this egalitarian platform and most of Twitter is liberal cesspools of venom, then at least the president wants some fairness in the system,' the White House official said."

Part of the "justification" here is that many conservatives are aggrieved that non-governmental entities don't grant them wanton freedom to spread hateful lies, violent rhetoric, and conspiracy theories.

Social media sites' banning of righwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, for instance, is an oft-cited example of "bias" against "the conservative viewpoint," which is one of the biggest indictments of 21st-century conservatism in the US.

What's also neat here is that so many formal and informal checks on the Executive Branch are sort of just accepting that Trump can do whatever he wants, especially regarding "culture war issues," by merely issuing an Executive Order.

There's also this relevant tidbit:

"Trump said Monday that he wants the government to work with social media 'to develop tools that can detect mass shooters before they strike,' and the White House has invited internet and technology companies for a discussion on violent online extremism with senior administration officials Friday."

If you actually believe the goal of such "tools" would be to prevent rightwing-inspired domestic terrorism, rather than to persecute the people Trump identifies as his political enemies, I have a large wall to sell you that will be paid for by Mexico.

Gen X as the "Reailty Terrorism" Generation

What a sad state of affairs it is that I was off the grid for most of the weekend and when I logged onto the Internet Sunday night and saw references to more mass shootings, I automatically knew that people couldn't have still been talking about the previous weekend's shooting in Gilroy, California.  That one, after all, was "too long ago" to "still" be in the news a week later.

We simply have so many shootings that each one lasts a news cycle or so as they follow a predictable pattern of breathless reporting > anger > fear > sorrow > cries of the citizenry for our legislators to do something, anything to help keep us safe > admonitions to stop politicizing this political issue > thoughts and prayers > and then repeat the next day when yet another man murders people.

Personally, I try not to get too bogged down in generational narratives, particularly the ones that pit generations against each other, but I hope you'll bear with me today as I speculate. Cynicism is supposedly a defining characteristic of Gen X, but in retrospect, I wonder if what has largely been described as cynicism is actually a shocked, numb horror of coming of age just as terrorism and sociopathy were rapidly normalized by both Internet culture and news-as-politicotainment media culture.

The infamous OJ Simpson Bronco chase of 1994, which I remember seeing nonstop coverage of during high school, seemed to help usher in an era of 24/7 "watch the drama as it happens" news that is at once horrific and dehumanizing precisely because it is implicitly presented as entertaining. As a teenager, I remember the hokey slogans ("the Juice is loose") and the trivialities that the media focused on ("Marcia Clark is ridiculous! Her hair!") that seemed to take center stage, much moreso than the grim reality that someone had committed murder. 

Reality TV was not yet a major trend until circa 1992, with MTV's The Real World, and prior to the reality TV fad, I would argue that TV had a more clear separation between news and entertainment. Yes, the news had a point of view, often told from the perspective of white men who were granted auras of objectivity and authority, but what was particularly dehumanizing about the OJ case was that it was like the media companies had found this new way of presenting murder as existing for our collective entertainment consumption. (In 2006, OJ Simpson had a one-episode prank-based reality TV show called Juiced, which was in the "too offensive but entertaining to look away" category that is a pretty good summary of the mainstream media's attitude toward covering/enabling Donald Trump's political rise).

The Columbine school massacre occurred in 1999, which is largely seen as a birth of a new era of young (often white) angst-driven male violence, and the coverage told us that the incident was both incredibly scary and entertaining. There are, of course, very different narratives around, and state responses to, violence perpetrated by Black people. And, since Columbine, the federal government's lack of effective response to white-male-initiated domestic terrorism can only rightly be seen as a continuation of the United States of America's historical, state-sanctioned approval of white male rage, entitlement, and violence.

Contrast the state's casual indifference to homegrown, white male domestic terrorism, for instance, with its over-reaction to international terrorism. After brown men engaged in terrorism against innocent civilians in 2001, the federal government quickly banded together, started a whole entire war, and passed sweeping legislation in response. Coupled with, and perhaps "justifying," this state-sanctioned aggression and erosion of liberties was the fact that we saw the planes crashing into the Twin Towers over and over and over and over again on TV and online and in newspapers. 

We now take our shoes off in airport security lines. We ration our shampoos and "liquids" into TSA-approved amounts. We're urged to "say something" if/when we "see something." These are all things that are done now because that's what's done in America.

We are still reckoning with these issues and traumas in ways large, small, known, and unfathomable, and that's before I've even factored in the rise of Internet culture, social media, and the cottage industry of white male pundits who perform "political news, but as irony/jokes."

Donald Trump stoked the embers of 9/11 as he ran in 2016 on a message of keeping the country safe from immigrants, terrorists, and/or people of color even as he himself was engaging in stochastic terrorism against his political opponent Hillary Clinton. He continues this course of action, often online and often against women of color who publicly stand up to him, with the help of Twitter who tacitly approves of his behavior through its indifference and inaction.

Of note, Trump hasn't promised to keep anyone safe from the white men in this country who commit political violence, and if he had promised to do so, he'd be failing miserably.

When white men go on shooting sprees after leaving rambling, bigoted Internet screeds, we're told to get over it quikcly, that it's not political violence, and/or that their online behavior and bigotries are irrelevant to their acts of aggression. Many commentators still think that what happens online "isn't real life," even though what happens online often has consequences offline. Sometimes, those consequences are "just" harming another user's mental health or ruining their day, but sometimes - in a nation with relatively easy access to guns - it's a mass shooting spree. That's not to say online culture/radicalization, bigotry, or reality politicotainment are the one cause of mass shootings, just that when easy access to guns are added to the picture they maybe all combine to make the killing that much easier.

The fear many of us have upon attending fairs, concerts, religious services, festivals, or doing basically anything at all in the public sphere is just the price we pay for "living in a free country." The same asinine talking points from people committed to the violent status quo that we heard after Columbine are still being uttered today: lone wolf, video games, bullying, the sadness/angst of white boys.

What is discussed less frequently, and this is a special note to people still operating under the delusion that "the young people will save us," are the ways Internet culture helps radicalize people, especially young white men, given that the US is steeped in a brew of racist misogyny, white male supremacy, techbro libertarianism that constantly engages in both-sidesism, and dehumanizing murder-is-entertaining politicotainment.

Online interactions and the normalization of Reality Terrorism have likely led a lot of people into viewing their interactions with people online as "not real" in a way that is profoundly dehumanizing (as I tweeted yesterday, oh the irony). Social media platforms like Twitter reward the toxic pile-ons and endless quote-tweet "dunks" that, once a target has been identified, end up being profoundly dehumanizing once the competition starts for the best "slam."

It's not only white men who dehumanize others on the Internet. In fact, social justice lingo and half-understood concepts are often weaponized on social media in ways that are extremely abusive. But, it is disproportionately white men who go on terroristic murderous rampages in the US and there are, I think, cultural reasons for that.

As commentators left, right, and center scream at each other about gun violence, hypocrisy, which "side" is worse, First Amendment rights, and the Second Amendment as though we're still living in the media and cultural landscape of the 1960s, I note that most of them will actively ignore (or mock) anything progressive feminists say about the links between mass violence, misogyny, rape culture, and Internet culture. (It's the same story with rape and sexual misconduct. Many on the left and right only care about the issue insofar as they can use it against political opponents, rather than for the simple reason that it's wrong and dehumanizing).

In December 2017, I wrote about the content moderation labor we do that has become a built-in aspect of using social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook given the reality that some users use these platforms in ways far darker than the creators originally imagined. This moderation labor - blocking, muting, reporting - is just what we do now because sociopathy is normalized online and Internet culture designates you a fascist if you want platforms to be different and better.

And, oftentimes taking actions like blocking and muting other users leaves the harassing, extremist, and/or hateful content still "out there," unaddressed, for others users to see and be radicalized by. It puts the targets of such content in a difficult position of knowing that harmful content is still there, able to seen by others and acted upon for the rest of the Internet's life.

I liken it to an experience I had some years ago having been invited to participate in a conversation with men at an anti-feminist site. The site owners invited me to participate in a conversation about feminism wherein they would host two separate blogposts about my commentary: one that I could ostensibly participate in and that they would moderate for (by their standards) hostility, and a separate post where they would post my article and anti-feminists could say whatever they wanted about me and my opinions.

From my correspondence with them, I was supposed to be very grateful for this extreme generosity, but their setup overlooked the detail that, even if I didn't go visit their hostility-is-okay blogpost, I still knew that they would be hosting a forum for anti-feminists to engage in hostility toward me and that such commentary would exist on their site in perpetuity without being addressed by feminists (because most feminists didn't comment at their site).

A current rule of Internet culture really seems to be that users should just "ignore" online hostility and sociopathy targeting us because thinking of more complicated structural solutions isn't worth the "loss of free speech" or is too hard. Unfortunately, the old advice of just ignoring online bullies doesn't seem to be working out so well for us, as a society, as it seems that approach just normalizes aggression and bystander apathy.

Back in my December 2017 post about content moderation, I wrote:

"I think it's reasonable to say that most Internet users are actually exposed to traumatic content somewhat regularly. We've also largely accepted exposure to this content as 'normal,' without having begun to really grapple with the effects of it as a society.

In a popular piece at Medium, James Bridle wrote recently of frightening videos posted on YouTube to scare children, ultimately saying:

'What concerns me is that this is just one aspect of a kind of infrastructural violence being done to all of us, all of the time, and we’re still struggling to find a way to even talk about it, to describe its mechanisms and its actions and its effects.'

Bridle concludes that 'responsibility is impossible to assign.'
...
I think often about the voices we've lost over the years, and there have been many, because of the toxic cultures that thrive on platforms where the performance of content moderation labor falls on us, as users and writers.These harms are not something people in my generation (Gen X, if you're curious) really grew up learning how to deal with, or that, in my experience, many mental health professionals are even equipped to understand. I think many people have simply adapted to living with at least a low-grade state of anxiety about what they might encounter today on the Internet, particularly if they do a large portion of work on the Internet as part of their jobs."

Are we, Generation X, the Reality Terrorism Generation?

Perhaps. And perhaps we will soon be the last generation that remembers life before extremely online life. I'm not sure what the implications are of that beyond, in our own small ways, trying to advance norms that are not centered around the sociopathic norms that currently dominate Internet and politicotainment culture.

A Reminder: (Mis)Information Spreads Fast

Melissa Jeltsen at Huffington Post has written a piece about the prosecution of Noor Salman, the widow of Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen. In it, she notes, "Every mass tragedy begets a frantic search for answers, for a common understanding of what happened, for a narrative, and the 2016 Pulse massacre was no different."

This happens very, very fast on Twitter, in particular.

People first learn of an event, then they immediately begin crafting a narrative based on initial news reports that are not always accurate, and then the narratives start going viral. Information and misinformation spreads much more quickly than investigations occur offline. Narratives get even more complicated when the situation involves victims and perpetrators who are all members of different marginalized groups.

I'm thinking most recently of the tragedy of the Hart family, all of whom are believed to be dead after their car was found crashed off the Pacific Coast Highway, and in which the Twitter consensus seems to be that two women hatched a Thelma & Louise conspiracy to murder their family, even though - as just one of several other possible explanations - one of them could also be a victim of spousal abuse and/or murder.

Jeltsen continues, regarding the Pulse shooting:

"A Muslim woman who by her family’s account was beaten by Mateen, Salman might have been a sympathetic figure in a different context. But I think now of Bob Kunst’s sign. A longtime human rights activist, Kunst was protesting outside the federal courthouse, just two miles from the nightclub where the tragedy occurred, as Salman’s trial began. 'FRY’ HER,' his sign read, 'TILL SHE HAS NO ‘PULSE.'  It didn’t seem to occur to many people that Noor Salman might have been a victim of Mateen, too.

Salman’s trial cast doubt on everything we thought we knew about Mateen. There was no evidence he was a closeted gay man, no evidence that he was ever on Grindr. He looked at porn involving older women, but investigators who scoured Mateen’s electronic devices couldn’t find any internet history related to homosexuality. (There were daily, obsessive searches about ISIS, however.) Mateen had extramarital affairs with women, two of whom testified during the trial about his duplicitous ways.

Mateen may very well have been homophobic. He supported ISIS, after all, and his father, an FBI informant currently under criminal investigation, told NBC that his son once got angry after seeing two men kissing. But whatever his personal feelings, the overwhelming evidence suggests his attack was not motivated by it.

As far as investigators could tell, Mateen had never been to Pulse before, whether as a patron or to case the nightclub. Even prosecutors acknowledged in their closing statement that Pulse was not his original target; it was the Disney Springs shopping and entertainment complex. They presented evidence demonstrating that Mateen chose Pulse randomly less than an hour before the attack. It is not clear he even knew it was a gay bar. A security guard recalled Mateen asking where all the women were, apparently in earnest, in the minutes before he began his slaughter."

I want to be clear that I see queer people's terror (including my own) in response to the Pulse shooting as entirely legitimate. All narratives aside, the facts at hand in the immediate aftermath were that Mateen did indeed slaughter people at a gay bar, and living in a society that constantly tells you that you are less than for being queer, this type of tragedy is horrifying and seems very obviously targeted at you.

Yet, Jeltsen documents the swift carelessness with which mainstream media outlets began linking Salman to the crime (Sample New York Post headline: "She could have saved them all"). Here, how might have implicit and explicit biases against Muslims informed the widely-believed narrative that Mateen and his wife were co-conspirators in a targeted hate crime against gays?

How many people have been misinformed about a myriad of facts in the two years since the tragedy occurred? How many people will ever have their perceptions or knowledge of this tragedy corrected?

Conservatives Respond to Gun Violence Activism

If you're active on Facebook and Twitter, you might be seeing some posts about a campaign called "Walk Up Not Out."

Here's some background, via an article about it:

"Walk Up Not Out proponents say students should try harder to reach out with friendliness and compassion to their more solitary peers. By moving out of their comfort zones and helping their peers feel more welcome, the theory goes, students could potentially head off angry impulses or an outbreak of violence."

This article further notes that the campaign is being promoted by conservatives and others against gun control, which corresponds with my experience.

Let me tell you.

As a national movement against gun violence takes shape, the following responses have been f-a-s-c-i-n-a-t-i-n-g to watch:

(a) I've seen a correlation between people who support Trump and people who support Walk Up Not Out.

While I support an authentic anti-bullying program, I believe folks have lost moral authority on the matter of bullying if they've supported a predatory, serial social media bully for president and have largely reveled in "libtard snowflake tears" since the 2016 election.

Yet, even for those Walk-Uppers who aren't themselves bullies, the entire premise of the campaign itself is both a false dichotomy and a gross victim blaming. We can advocate for love and respect in our schools while also advocating for peaceful protests and gun control.

(b) Some anti-gun-control folks seem to loathe the kids leading the March for Our Lives movement. But also, so do many anti-choicers (and there seems to be a lot of overlap within these categories).

Rod Dreher, for instance, the anti-choice conservative Christian who regularly rages against the scourge of "transgenders" and political correctness in society, calls David Hogg "a disgusting little creep" whose harsh rhetoric supposedly ruined Dreher's chance of ever supporting the March for Our Lives movement.

In a later post, Dreher mocks Hogg for not having a completely-detailed policy proposal on the table.

As a reminder, it as been approximately six weeks since a shooter killed 17 of Hogg's classmates. in light of that, he might be experiencing a fair amount of PTSD. I, for one, don't expect high schoolers, let alone those who have just experienced a major traumatic event, to have comprehensive policy proposals developed with respect to school shootings.

What I do find compelling, however, is the position, "I don't want to be murdered while going to school." That, I believe, is a pretty solid starting point for the conversation, particularly given that most previous attempts to even broach the conversation are met with "pleas" to "not politicize" the various shootings that have occurred in US history. It is the job of adults to work with youth to seriously address this issue. The youth are neither going to be our big saviors nor should they be 100% dismissed just because they're kids.

Unfortunately, we've been treated to a plethora of articles from the right, bleeding into the mainstream, wherein kids are absolutely loathed for, supposedly, being hyper-politically-correct snowflakes. It's hard not to view these grotesque attacks on the March for Our Lives youth as an extension of this larger attack on youth and, more generally, treating people with respect.

Students Lead Historic March Against Gun Violence

Two of the largest single-day protests in US history have occurred during Donald Trump's tenure. Today, over at Shakesville, I wrote about one of them - this past weekend's March for Our Lives, which was a massive student-led mobilization against gun violence.

Check it out!

Enough! National School Walkout Held Today

Earlier today, I attended a rally in support of the students participating in the National School Walkout. This protest is being held in schools across the US today, on the one month anniversary of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Florida.

Via the Women's March website:

"Women’s March Youth Empower is calling for a National School Walkout to protest Congress’ refusal to take action on the gun violence epidemic plaguing our schools and neighborhoods. Our elected officials must do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to this violence. Students and allies are organizing a National School Walkout to demand Congress pass legislation to keep us safe from gun violence at our schools, on our streets and in our homes and places of worship. We view this work as part of an ongoing and decades-long movement for gun violence prevention, in honor of all victims of gun violence ㅡ from James Brady to Trayvon Martin to the 17 people killed in Parkland."

Student organizers and the nonprofit organization Everytown For Gun Safety are also planning a march for later this month, on March 24th, in Washington, DC and across the US, called the March For Our Lives.

For many years, it's been hard for me not to feel helpless about gun violence in the United States. I want to feel hopeful, particularly in light of the recent waves of activism, but feeling hopeful sometimes just feels naive because so often, nothing ever changes with respect to gun violence.

Still, I choose to show up, if only to stand in solidarity with those who are in mourning, those who are fearful, those who are angry, and those who have more hope than I do.

Trump the Unqualified Autocrat

Susan Glasser at Politico has written a terrifying summary of Trump's first year of, to put it mildly, lacking foreign diplomacy skills.

To give you an idea, here Glasser is referencing a September 2017 dinner among Trump and leaders of four Latin American countries (emphasis added):

"After the photo op was over and the cameras had left the room, Trump dominated the long table. His vice president, Mike Pence, was to his right; Pence had just spent nearly a week on a conciliatory, well-received tour of the region, the first by a high-ranking administration official since Trump’s inauguration. To Trump’s left was his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. 'Rex tells me you don’t want me to use the military option in Venezuela,' the president told the gathered Latin American leaders, according to an account offered by an attendee soon after the dinner. 'Is that right? Are you sure?' Everyone said they were sure. But they were rattled. War with Venezuela, as absurd as that seemed, was clearly still on Trump’s mind.

 By the time the dinner was over, the leaders were in shock, and not just over the idle talk of armed conflict. No matter how prepared they were, eight months into an American presidency like no other, this was somehow not what they expected. A former senior U.S. official with whom I spoke was briefed by ministers from three of the four countries that attended the dinner. 'Without fail, they just had wide eyes about the entire engagement,' the former official told me. Even if few took his martial bluster about Venezuela seriously, Trump struck them as uninformed about their issues and dangerously unpredictable, asking them to expend political capital on behalf of a U.S. that no longer seemed a reliable partner. 'The word they all used was: ‘This guy is insane.’”"

The portrait painted here is that Trump is, at best, an incompetent front man (as some of his Republican "reassurers" suggest) while more level-headed folks actually run the show and, at worst, he's an incompetent autocrat who can't actually be controlled.

I think it's the latter.

Trump has given no indication that he has even a rudimentary understanding of the US political system or that he is aware of, let alone would respect, checks and balances. I doubt he could even pass a citizenship test. Per former State Department employees, he also rejects expertise in the arena of foreign diplomacy, per Glasser's account, and instead demands that policy be set by his own ignorant "instinct" and/or according to what Presidents Obama and Bush had previously done (in which case he does the opposite).

All of this is likely how he ran his businesses: petty, abusive, unqualified, self-obsessed, imbued with toxic masculinity.

We are in trouble. We may not (at least obviously) see the effects of this dangerous incompetence immediately, but one day, we will. And, his Republican Party, which controls Congress yet heartlessly and recklessly fails to take meaningful action to oppose or remove him, has full complicity.

Who could have predicted that Trump would see the "nuclear button" as an extension of his white dick? (Everyone. Literally everyone. Except, I guess, The New York Times which is super impressed by his Twitter usage).

"President Trump has brought a reality-show accessibility to a once-aloof presidency, invigorating voters who felt alienated by the establishment." - @nytimes tweet, 2 days ago. pic.twitter.com/PbDbXErfba

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) January 3, 2018

Don't forget, folks: All of this, or a woman! 

Antifa, Communists, and Dopey Moral Equations

This week, The Washington Post published an opinion piece by Republican, and former George W. Bush speechwriter, Marc Thiessen arguing that antifa are:

"...no different from neo-Nazis. Neo-Nazis are the violent advocates of a murderous ideology that killed 25 million people last century. Antifa members are the violent advocates of a murderous ideology that, according to “The Black Book of Communism,” killed between 85 million and 100 million people last century. Both practice violence and preach hate. They are morally indistinguishable. There is no difference between those who beat innocent people in the name of the ideology that gave us Hitler and Himmler and those who beat innocent people in the name of the ideology that gave us Stalin and Dzerzhinsky."

A few main points I want to make here.

While I've certain had annoying run-ins with Internet far leftist poseurs and still encounter some naive fetishization of violent communist revolution, I can still think of several important differences between antifa and Neo-Nazis in the US right now, a big one of which is that many Neo-Nazis see the current US president as the "god emperor" for their abhorrent views and he actively courts them. That is to say, Neo-Nazis have the establishment power of the state behind their violence and worldview. Antifa do not. From there, and for those concerned about "civility," I think we can reasonably conclude which of these "sides" poses more of a danger to our collective morals and safety.

Two, Theissen engges in a lot of dopey equivocation. Let's follow the odd chain of logic as he demands that those across the political spectrum denounce violence on the many sides of these political skirmishes between people who are Neo-Nazis and people are not Neo-Nazis. Specifically, he states that those on "the left" have a duty to call out the violence of antifa and then wonders why more "leading Democrats" haven't done so. His logic seems to be:

• Antifa are advocates of communism
• Communism is a leftist movement
• Democrats are the left
• Therefore, Democrats are responsible for "calling out" antifa

Again, the oddness here is that while Neo-Nazis wear Trump costumes and MAGA hats at rallies and explicitly view him as their leader, many antifa reject establishment politics altogether, including Democrat politicians. In my experience there are very few, if any, Nancy Pelosi antifa cosplayers or those who, say, view Chuck Schumer as their stand-in in the government. And, in my experience, not a small portion of antifa would find it insulting to be equated with "the Dems" or have a major political party speak for them.

That is to say, antifa are not to the Democratic Party what Neo-Nazis are to the Republican Party. It would be a strategic mistake for the Democrats to condemn antifa. Republicans protect "their" extremists, or those who are perceived as Republican extremists. Democrats, too, often internalize Republican criticism, apologize for it, and based their behavior not on what their base wants, but on what jackass white male Republicans say Democrats should say and do.

In other, but related, news, I've also been observing that some of those on the far left who are finding themselves being morally equated with Neo-Nazis also spent the past two years equating Hillary Clinton with Donald Trump.

It's almost like there might be a larger life lesson in that.

A Serious Post About the Memes of Production

Okay, I'll play.

I want to dedicate this post to a brocialist member of the Tone Police, "Your Woke Toddler," who toddled into my Twitter mentions yesterday to scold me for integrating pop culture references into political posts because such integration doesn't comport with his enlightened notions of proper political purity and serious discourse.

It is wrong of me, he instructed, to build a "geek brand" off of "real-world problems," which sounds to me like a cool leftist way to try to trivialize my (ad-free! non-revenue!) writing and shame me at the same time. Although, he has a point when you think about it. Can a person, let alone a woman, even cite geeky things and express serious political thoughts at the same time? PROBABLY NOT.

Behold, an observation: We are apparently to believe that re-tweeting dank leftist and anti-Hillary memes under the handle "Your Woke Toddler" is a Very Serious Contribution to the Political Discourse. (Why, it's almost as though frivolity in political discourse is not my scold's real complaint, but maybe, just maybe, something else! Is this a consistent complaint Toddler makes of all he encounters? PROBABLY NOT!)

Behold, another observation: We are to believe that one should never include a Game of Thrones reference in any post about politics because Game of Thrones has no message about politics from which we can or should draw analogies to current political realities. Apparently, that's just, like, the rules of leftism.

Nevermind that pop culture, art, geekdom, and science fiction are used by many people to cope with, draw comparisons to, and/or critique political oppression, and have long been used this way.  Literally who doesn't do this? Consider, for instance, the many women for whom The Handmaid's Tale serves as a precautionary tale about the dangers of the state controlling reproductive autonomy.  Better not mention that! Best to instead follow an Internet rando's rule on citing fiction in political work, or else you're just another unserious shillary corporatist neo-liberal imperialist!

And let me tell you! This little non-commercial, non-corporate independent geeky outfit I run here at Fannie's Room makes me millions of dollars! Millions! That's why when I'm not indulging pop culture cravings, my other favorite pastime is to dive into my vault of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck and do the backstroke.

I admit. I do this, even though there is suffering in the world.

But, and gather closely because I'm going to let you in on a little secret, I do sometimes hear that faint whisper from 22-year-old me: "If..... if only I could seize control of the means of production." I would then make all the femslash. No wait, sorry. At such times, I wonder, "Could I too one day be a white person on social media who fetishizes violent communist revolution?" Was I a total sell-out this whole time for not spending months attacking Hillary Clinton, when I could have instead been tweeting the whitest, most violence-glorifying shit ever about Fidel Castro after he died?? But the Goldman Sachs speeeeeeeeeeches!

Dear readers, it's clear I've been put in my place.

Tyrion Lannister tells us that we should know what we are, and wear it like a shield, so it can never be used against us. And readers, I say to you, I have been smacked down from my high horse. I'm now the opposite of an uppity, shallow liberal feminist. I'm downity. Debbie Downity. I shall cope with political travesty only in serious ways, ways which are dictated to me by brocialist strangers on Twitter. I have seen the light of the wagging finger and I want nothing more than to please it (for, a bird landed on it, and I was mesmerized!).

From henceforth on it's nothing but academic analyses of Das Kapital, comrades! Down with shallow pop culture blogging!*

But first, this.

A last bit of "white feminist"** shit for brocialists to ridicule via that well-worn veneer of post-feminist enlightenment that masks their seething misogyny. I give you my version of the popular "Me in 2016" meme!

Me at the beginning of 2016:

Me at the end of 2016:

Me at the beginning of 2017:

But, in spite of brocialist dipshits, I do believe we mustn't forget the real enemy. To paraphrase Jessica Jones, Trump is the kind of person who gives people a bad name. But then again, so are lots of people.

As the walking-Deplorable-Comment-Section prepares to take office, I continue to contemplate resistance while steeling myself for the cruelty he has emboldened. As this cruelty is inflicted offline and on, I think about different strategies for addressing cyberbullies and will likely be experimenting with them in the coming year. As you can see. The mean people are winning because they count on nice people's civility and exploit it. When you do fight back, they see it as an unfair attack. When deplorables are blocked or banned, they think it makes them strong and us weak.

They're wrong.

I will defend myself, but unlike them I don't actively seek out people to harass. That's not because I have any great respect for them as Internet Deplorables, but because I respect the principle of presumptive civility more. You treat me well, I treat you well. You fuck with me, I defend myself and fight back. What I won't do is allow strangers to dictate to me how I can and cannot cope with this political reality, what tone of voice I use, or what sources I cite to articulate my points.

On that note, I am over the non-pragmatic left, many of whom effectively acted as propagandists for foreign operatives even if they didn't know it and won't now own that complicity. I have always been over the right, who have shown their hypocritical true colors as is typical. These political rifts didn't happen overnight in November, they've existed for a long time and were effectively exploited. I find myself searching for political allies, even in unlikely places, while I also search for that middle ground between pragmatism and idealism, self-defense and aggression. Perhaps there is no middle ground and we encompass them all.

A lesson from comic books is that these are the conditions that create anti-heroes. So says Jessica:

"They say everyone's born a hero. But if you let it, life will push you over the line until you're the villain. Problem is, you don't always know that you've crossed that line.

This is a dark moment in US history. I suspect posterity will be appalled at Trump and his fans - the obsession with "Hillary's emails" while they ignore Russian interference in the election, the misogynistic "lock her up" fantasies, the racist backlash against President Obama, the pussy-grabbing. I mean, where do you even stop the list?

In a dark way, the light that history will shine on the Trump depravity gives me hope. And also, there is always honor in defending ourselves if only because it communicates that we are worth defending.

So, on that note, how is everybody else doing?


*J/k, your regularly-scheduled fan-video Fridays will not be going away.
**White feminism is a thing that should be critiqued, but contrary to some leftist interpretations doesn't actually mean, "White feminists who aren't socialists are all shallow bitches who do nothing but worship Lena Dunham all day."

Election 2016 Fallout Part 9: On Resistance

Hi readers! I'm delighted to let you know that I have joined Shakesville as a new contributor.

(ps - I'll continue to write here in Fannie's Room, so don't worry the Xena posts aren't going anywhere!!)

Shakesville has been such an important resource both to my development as a progressive feminist over the years and during this past election. I'm so grateful to Melissa (and the contributor community) for welcoming me.

For my first post there, I am starting with the final installment of my Election 2016 Fallout pieces. This one is on the topic of resistance. You can read the whole thing at Shakesville, but here's a snippet:

On resistance

In my eyes, the quest to defeat Trump and what he stands for has already begun. Inherent in this struggle is survival. As some in the media ask us to collectively fixate on the navels of angry white people, especially men, I think back to those early Trump rallies when the press would show security escorting anti-Trump protestors out. Trump would encourage violence against them and you could see it on the screen, his supporters cackling with glee in the background.  "I'd really like to punch that guy," Trump would boast, while thousands of white faces laughed at their hateful avatar.

The part of me concerned with self-preservation tells me that these people laughed because Trump was acting out their violent fantasies, particularly against the politically correct, over whom Trump's win has become a symbolic victory.

I do not expect that people entertained by Trump's calls to violence will now be nicer to us with Trump in charge. No. They knew exactly what Trump is. It was part of his appeal. "We know what we're getting," they'd say. "He tells it like it is. That's why we love him." And so, on that basis, here is what I believe, via Liel Leibovitz:

"You should treat people like adults, which means respecting them enough to demand that they understand the consequences of their actions. Explaining away or excusing the actions of others isn’t your job. Vienna in the first decades of the 20th century was a city inflamed with a desire to better understand the motives, hidden or otherwise, that move people to action. Freud and Kafka, Elias Canetti and Karl Kraus, Stefan Zweig and Franz Werfel—these were the eminences who crowded the same cafés Siegfried and his musician friends most likely frequented. But while these beautiful minds struggled to understand the world around them, the world around them was consumed by simpler and more vicious appetites. Don’t waste any time, then, trying to understand: Then as now, many were amused by the demagogue and moved by his vile vision. Some have perfectly reasonable explanations for their decisions, while others have little to go on but incoherent rage. It doesn’t matter. Voters are all adults, and all have made their choices, and it is now you who must brace for impact. Whether you choose to forgive those, friends and strangers alike, who cast their votes so deplorably is a matter of personal choice, and none but the most imperious among us would advocate a categorical rejection of millions based on their electoral actions, no matter how irresponsible and dim. So while you make these personal calculations, remember that what matters now isn’t analysis: It’s survival."

Keep reading here.

On Small Town White Rage

 [content note: violence, misogyny, racism]

Oh my GAWWWWWWWWWWD

(I literally just screamed this out loud)
 
Is there any ego more fragile than that of a white male bigot with unexamined privilege?

Via The Washington Post:

"When Frank Linkmeyer unveils his Aurora Farmers Fair parade float each year, his creation is never short on shock value.

This year, amid a controversy-filled presidential contest, Linkmeyer didn't disappoint.

He opted for a morbid execution scene showing Hillary Clinton strapped into an electric chair, flanked by the Grim Reaper, a pastor and a familiar-looking executioner: Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump."

 Oh.

So, what's up with so many men feeling comfortable about expressing their violent fantasies about Hillary Clinton? You know, I grew up in a small town similar to the one in this article and the palpable rage many small-town men have (although certainly not limited to small-towns) toward uppity women is something that quite strongly informed my feminist sensibilities.

Whether they're whining about not being able to have racist mascots, being bitter about the fact that the local high school has girls sports now, or acting shocked and condescending when women engage them in debate on social media (but it's a man talking! don't you know he's automatically right?), many such men take it as a fundamental fact of life that they actually are superior, intellectually and physically, to all women and all people of color.

And, that assumption really isn't questioned in their daily lives because they encounter so little pushback on it.  I imagine that, for many men with this mentality, the prospect of our first female President is.... quite a blow to their supremacist ego, in a way that it was when President Obama was elected.

Nonetheless, during the primaries, we saw both the far left and the far right sort of fetishize "ordinary Americans" and "regular people," who were largely coded as white working class people, in contrast to "the establishment," "elites," and "low-information voters" (coded as, primarily, women of color).  When I read accounts like this parade, it's clear that the far (I guess what I think of as the "socialist"/Sanders/Stein) left has offered no workable plan for mobilizing a diverse working class in which racial and gender hostilities are a very real, visceral thing that women and people of color have to contend with. 

(And the far right.... doesn't even pretend to try. Trump argle bargles his way to, mostly, stoking rage and violent fantasies among his white working class supporters).

A common critique rendered of socialism, of course, is that it centers class with the expectation that members of the working class can/should somehow, magically mobilize together in spite of differing identities and lived experiences. Although, beyond telling us that various other bigotries are a construct of capitalism, it offers us little in the way of why, tangibly, "we" should find it appealing to mobilize with violent misogynistic fantasists other than .... that we're all part of a shitty system.

Is that shared bond enough? 

I don't think so.

When people took issue with the parade guy's float, here's what the dude who made it said:

"'It’s all in fun. Laughter is the best medicine in life and this country needs more laughter — and the people that are offended by it, I’m sorry. Don't come to the parade next time.'"

Some city officials expressed disappointment with the float. But then there's this guy, also part of the small-town America establishment (which is very much also its own bigoted thing):

"But at least one local official — at-large city councilman Patrick Schwing — said Aurora has nothing to apologize for and blamed the controversy on 'a lot of whining and crying.'

He said people 'can't walk down the street' anymore without offending someone. Schwing also dismissed the idea that the float might send the wrong message to children and minorities, before raising his voice and declaring: 'I'm not a racist!'

'Nobody hates blacks, and yet Obama is telling us we hate blacks because we're white, and it's bulls---,' he said.

'I don't see how there's any thing racist involved with the float,' he added. 'I didn't even see the the little black thing at the front that people are bitching about until afterwards. Nobody even noticed it.'"

A lot has been written this election seen about white working class angst.  Working class people have legitimate grievances, indeed, but many working class whites believe that their grievances are race-based. That is, that they are oppressed by being called racist. My intent here is not to claim that all white working class people are racist and sexist (I know many who are not). But, when the far left ignores what they call "identity politics" in favor of only class-based analyses, they doom their own movement and they fail to give white people adequate tools for having deeper, more nuanced understandings of race and white privilege.

These are some of the very real reasons many women and people of color, even working class ones, are hesitant to join a broader working class movement.  I hate to harp on Jill Stein because, irrelevant. But when Jill Stein constantly attacks Hillary Clinton on Twitter as being an establishment shill, she's attacking the person many of us see as one of the few politicians who understands these reasons.

Bigots Gonna Bigot

Thought I'd check in to see if regular purveyor of anti-LGBT animus National Organization for [Heterosexual] Marriage (NOM) had anything to say about the largest mass shooting in US history, in which the killer targeted NOM's regular targets- LGBT individuals.

At its blog, NOM did not acknowledge the shooting.

As of today, it has posted 5 articles promoting its March For Marriage, which seeks to protest marriage equality in the US.

Inauspiciously, less than a week prior to the shooting, on June 7, 2016, it promoted an article at The Federalist, written by Rachel Lu, in which both NOM and The Federalist highlighted the following quote, implicitly approving of it:

"Within my lifetime, the LGBT movement will die."

How nice for Rachel and NOM that on June 12th, 2016 a piece of their apparent fantasy was fulfilled.

My cynical point here is not meant to be a "gotcha."  It's a plea, rather. Here, perhaps it would be best to quote from Rachel Lu's piece again, the context of which is to bemoan political correctness and the acceptance of transgender individuals:

"Ideas have consequences, and gender ideologues are only beginning to grapple with the fruits of theirs."

Yes, and when, if ever, will anti-LGBTs grapple with the fruits of theirs?

The Extreme Self-Centeredness of the Anti-LGBT

My title doesn't reference a clinical diagnosis, but rather a sort of cultural narcissism that would seem unbelievable perhaps to anyone not familiar with the LGBT "culture wars" in the US.

I'm referring today to anti-LGBT Christian Rod Dreher turning the worst terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11, one in which LGBT people primarily of color were specifically targeted, all about.... you guessed it... the oppression of anti-LGBT Christians. His concern seems to be that Christianity-motivated hate speech and laws against LGBT equality will no longer be as tolerated in the US after this attack. Thusly, does he rally his brave, oppressed Christian soldiers:

"Now we will see the price individual Christians are willing to pay to remain faithful. Now we will see how many Christians have the inner strength to obey Jesus’s command: 'But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you, and persecute you.'

When I talk about the need for the Benedict Option, this is part of what I mean: the need for orthodox Christians to come together in thick communities to keep our faith, to help each other through things like what’s to come, and to remind one another that no matter what, we cannot return hatred for hatred. That is forbidden to us."

He Godwin-labels his post "Orlando: The Reichstag Fire," suggesting that the Orlando attack will be the precipitating event that turns the US into Nazi Germany, with anti-LGBT Christians being the equivalent of Jews under Nazi Germany.

This absurd, histrionic view, of course, is the very belief that enables homophobe oppressors to mistakenly believe they are victimized underdogs which is what, cyclically, many anti-LGBTs use to justify their oppression of LGBTs.

What else can you say, really to such a despicable, self-centered view. Except maybe, Rod Dreher, how dare you? How fucking dare you co-opt this tragedy to further your own anti-LGBT agenda. You are part of the problem.

A homophobe living in a homophobic society just killed 49 people at a gay club and Rod Dreher takes a moment to navel-gaze about the harmful impact the shooting could have on religious bigots.

Like I said in my original post about the incident:

"[M]ost of all, what those who utter [anti-LGBT] rhetoric know with 100% certainty is that any harm LGBT people experience is 100% not their fault.

Well, I see you, bigots. I've seen you for years. You don't fool me and you don't fool many other people.

To the LGBT community: I stand with you. In fear, anger, pride, courage, and determination, we grieve and we vow to carry on."

Not in spite of people like Dreher, but because of them.

I'm With You

#LoveIsLove pic.twitter.com/8hmwUaqHht

— One More Lesbian (@onemorelesbian) June 12, 2016

My deepest sympathies for the victims of this past weekend's shooting in Orlando, as well as for their friends and their families - chosen and biological - during this difficult time.

I've been going to Pride Parades for about 15 years now.  At every single one, the possibility of a mass shooting occurring has crossed my mind.  This is not because shootings at LGBT events are common, but because I've often felt so hated that violence always seems like a possibility whenever the public knows groups of LGBT people might be congregating together.

In some ways, gay bars and clubs have been sanctuaries for many within the LGBT community. They're where I've met friends when I've moved to new cities. They're where many of us have felt safe to be with romantic partners in a society where, in many places, we still can't or don't openly even hold hands with each other. When traveling, my partner and I often make a point to take at least one trip to a local gay bar just to get in touch with "our people."

I started this blog in 2007, when an anti-LGBT element within the blogosphere was particularly ramped-up about California's anti-equality Proposition 8.  A network of rightwing bloggers calling themselves the "Digital Network Army," dedicated their blog presences to vilifying LGBT people and trying to get anti-LGBT laws passed.

I began directly countering these bloggers, both here and at their blogs. Within a couple months, I received my first rape threat and, later, encouragement to commit suicide.

Many of these bigot blogs have since petered out, likely as people realized marriage equality has no bearing on their lives. But, the attacks on LGBT people and our rights have not stopped, even with our marriage equality victory.

Hatred of LGBT people is still a very real thing.

It will always be a real thing as long as people believe they are under attack for having to live in a society that treats LGBT people decently and equally.

When mainstream politicians and Presidential candidates like Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee attend a forum held by an anti-gay pastor who believes gays should be put death, we are threatened.

When the Human Rights Campaign is currently tracking about 200 anti-LGBT bills in the US, including a wave of anti-trans bathroom bills and bills designed to give Christians special rights to discriminate against us, we are threatened.

When religious men with relatively large platforms like Rod Dreher rage against the "berserk" "cultural left" that supports "transgenders," effectively giving cover to their readership to do the same, we are threatened.

I don't know what more to say, really.

We live in a society where many of the same people who are full of "thoughts and prayers" for victims of violence, will the very next day express their disgust at trigger warnings, safe spaces, and any other "politically correct" mechanism vulnerable people try to assert to keep themselves safe.

We've been saying for decades that anti-LGBT rhetoric is hurtful and can cause real-world hate crimes and violence. Psychological groups insist that homosexuality is not a disorder, and so many people continue to insist otherwise. They want to deny us children, or take away our children. They know literally nothing about gender identity, but they defame transgender people as "crazy" or "selfish."

But, most of all, what those who utter such rhetoric know with 100% certainty is that any harm LGBT people experience is 100% not their fault.

Well, I see you, bigots.  I've seen you for years. You don't fool me and you don't fool many other people.

To the LGBT community: I stand with you. In fear, anger, pride, courage, and determination, we grieve and we vow to carry on.

Sanders, Stop the Mob or Get Out

[Content note: Misogynist references, harassment, violence]

Oh damn, now here is a satisfying read.  I hope Kurt Eichenwald has some good security. Via his recent article at Newsweek:

"Violence. Death threats. Vile, misogynistic names screamed at women. Rage. Hatred. Menacing, anonymous phone calls to homes and offices. Public officials whisked offstage by security agents frightened of the growing mob. None of this has any place in a political campaign. And the candidate who has been tolerating this obscene behavior among his supporters is showing himself to be unfit for office. 

So, Senator Sanders, either get control of what is becoming your increasingly unhinged cult or get out of the race. Whatever respect sane liberals had for you is rapidly dwindling, and the damage being inflicted on your reputation may be unfixable. If you can’t even manage the vicious thugs who act in your name, you can’t be trusted to run a convenience store, much less the country."   

The writing has been on the wall, as many feminists have been saying for months now, about the Sanders' movement's anti-feminist, sexist leanings: his staff of all-male, highest-paid advisors, the way he shoved Jane away from him at the podium (he's the rock star!), the single-minded emphasis on economic issues above all other issues, the Vatican PR stunt, calling his highly-qualified female opponent "unqualified," a surrogate implying Clinton is a "corporate Democratic whore."

And, of course, the notorious BernieBros, that precious online (and increasingly in-person) mob of overly-aggressive Bernie supporters.

The progressive/radical left's ongoing woman problem is a key reason I don't organize or associate with the movement even though I agree with them on many issues (see also, movement atheism).  Let's just say I had a big a-ha moment circa 2006 when I used to participate in leftist forums. During one memorable week of my life, I objected to leftist bros calling Hillary Clinton a "corporate whore" only to be mansplained to (ha, before that term existed) that since I can't read people's minds HOW DARE I imply that anyone was sexist, and besides there's MORE IMPORTANT issues to worry about! Ignore lady issues for socialism, comrade, and then we can maybe talk about those lesser issues after the revolution happens!  

Well, to paraphrase Flavia, my revolution will be intersectional or it will be bullshit. And, I'm not too keen on violent overthrow, either, by the way, so good luck with implementing a non-violent revolution given the reality that many Americans don't want a revolution in the first place, as evidenced by our heretofore peaceful voting process in which Bernie Sanders is losing. Oh, but details, right?  It's as though in Bernie-land, once people are sufficiently enlightened beyond their/our false consciousness we'll "feel the Bern" too. Somehow.

Sorry, but no. That's not typically how these things work out.

Nor is it a coincidence that it seems to be female Democratic leaders who are targeted with the most vile, aggressive threats. You know, in the same year that the first woman in history has a real shot of winning. It's like people are wearing some warped version of beer goggles, except instead of making people look hot, they make Bernie look like a saint and any female Democratic Party leader look like a corrupt she-devil.

Sadly, Sanders' weak sauce response thus far to his supporters' aggressive behavior has had some victim-blaming tones: If Democrats would welcome more of "the people" into the process, people wouldn't be so angry. (Or, my absolute favorite response from a spokesperson on Rachel Maddow this week: his Nevada supporters were just hungry! Ha! I mean, I get being hangry, but never once have I had the hungry impulse to tell a political opponent they should be publicly executed. But I'm a shill-bot, so I'm sure my non-violent temperament just means I'm not "passionate" enough about my candidate).

And nevermind, I guess, the millions of "the people" who have voted for Clinton.  The implication from Team Sanders continues to be that Clinton is not legitimately winning, but rather, the "Democratic Establishment" has rigged the primary for her. (If you're keeping track at home: It's a failure that Hillary hasn't blown out Bernie, but also she's only winning because she's cheating? Huh. Put that one in the "women can't fucking win" files, I guess.)

And here's where I have to be serious.

If Sanders were a more skilled, thoughtful politician and leader, he would firmly state that his movement ("not me, us," remember?) should not engage misogynistic slurs, intimidation, and threats of violence in his name and that, while we must continue to fight corporate corruption, we cannot and should not sell out our other progressive values in doing so.  If he's unwilling to use his platform to make that sort of statement, he should step down.  Because as of now, I see his actions and words thus far as indicating a lack of suitable temperament and leadership for the office of the Presidency.

And, when he does eventually lose the Primary, I guess we can only hope now he doesn't make that huge of a mess when he wipes his ass on the drapes on the way out.

Saletan to Clinton: Stop Shouting

Perhaps you've heard about Hillary Clinton's recent remark, alluding to a previous remark made by Bernie Sanders in which he suggested that Clinton was "shouting" about gun reform. She responded:

“You know, I’ve been told to stop, and I quote, ‘shouting’ about gun violence. Well, first of all, I’m not shouting. It’s just [that] when women talk, some people think we’re shouting.”

To me, it's a reasonable response that speaks to many women's experiences, including my own, of offering an argument in a civil tone only to have it implied that my tone or state of mind was unreasonable, hysterical, shrill, angry, or otherwise too loud compared to my reasonable male opponent's.

I further believe that a man can say something sexist or that has sexist connotations without intending to and even if his policy positions regarding women's rights are otherwise in line with my own. Supporting women's rights does not make it impossible for a person to say or think sexist things. That should be elementary. But of course, it's not.

That's why William Saletan's reactionary piece in Slate completely misses the mark. He writes:

"Hillary Clinton has found a new wedge issue against Sen. Bernie Sanders. The topic is gun control, but the angle is gender. Clinton is framing Sanders as a sexist who accuses women of shouting when they try to speak up. It’s a lie. She’s manipulating women and abusing feminist anger for her own advantage.

It’s great that we’re more aware of bigotry than we used to be. But we should also beware false claims of bigotry: the race card, the sex card, the homophobia card."  

He then goes on to claim that Sanders' "record as a feminist" is just as good as Clinton's and that Clinton is just "smearing" him for her own advantage.

Yikes.

Saletan's is not a reasonable response. It's so reactionary, this reflexive, patronizing defense of Sanders, that it is the sort of thing that pushes me further into Clinton's corner, mostly because it evidences some serious male discomfort about a statement that was so .... tepid.  Clinton alluded to something Problematic that a man said without even using the dreaded words "sexist" or "misogynistic" and whoa boy Saletan reacts as though she's inflicted a human rights violation of the first order on Sanders by calling it out.

So too does Saletan deign to define reality - both with respect to Hillary Clinton's unknown state of mind ("It's a lie," he claims, because he somehow.... just.... knows... because um?) and with respect to what does and doesn't constitute authentic sexism, racism, and homophobia (which he's an expert on... because um?).

Yet, for all of Saletan's warning about "cards" that women, gays, and minorities "play" in order to, as he alleges, "smear" their opponents, the biggest move of all is when people like him throw down their Gaslight Card and proclaim, As the speaker of Objective Truth here, I define what's really racist, sexist, and homophobic, and what you just experienced isn't it. 

Because that's another important pattern too, isn't it?

Men can build careers on calling themselves courageous tellers of politically-incorrect "truths."  When they say things that are sexist, racist, or homophobic, they say they're just "telling it like it is." When women call out these things, they're seen as just playing games. Dishonoring the honorable reputations of good men. Fabricating stories for personal gain.

So, it is something big, for a prominent woman to use her authority and platform to speak a truth about Speaking While Female that many women know all too well.

I bet that Hillary Clinton, in her many years of speaking publicly while female, knows that many people react in predictable, unfortunate, and gendered ways when it is a woman speaking.  That Clinton will call this out, name it, and also deign to define reality in this way, I suspect is the real threat here, even to purportedly liberal and progressive men - certainly to conservatives and anti-feminists.

Finally, I will just note with cynicism that this particular conversation was originally about gun violence. This type of violence is predominately committed by men but that gendered aspect is rarely acknowledged in the mainstream. Men who kill are framed as lone wolves, "crazy," and so forth, and so their male-ness and their (often) misogyny and sexism is not widely acknowledged.  I wonder why that is.

The answer to that question is, perhaps, the saddest politically incorrect truth of all.

(Stop shouting).

What a world.

Whites Riot on North Side of Chicago (Again)

It's that time of year again!

Pub crawls related to the city's St. Patrick's Day Parade this past weekend led to 17 arrests, battery on a police officer, multiple assaults, 40 ambulance calls, a possible sexual assault, and approximately 20 people transported to area hospitals.

As can be seen from photos and transcripts at the above-cited link, this mob action was primarily carried out by masses of young white heterosexuals, with much of the aggression dominated by young white men.

Surprisingly (not surprisingly) there were no reports of police officers killing, choking, or otherwise assaulting these violent individuals, despite the clear threats these individuals were posing to the community and public safety.

Nonetheless, now is the time to re-examine the white heterosexual family unit.

In what ways are white parents modeling this privileged, aggressive behavior?  How are white parents, particularly fathers, contributing to this mayhem? We mustn't let them continue to fail their children.

Quote of the Day

From Melissa at Shakesville:

"How can men possibly be expected to participate in a space where the deity, his sacrificial son, that son's twelve BFFs, the author of every single book of their holy text, the pope, every cardinal, every archbishop, every bishop, every priest, every deacon are all men, but women are allowed to say things and wash dishes? No wonder men are running for the hills."

This observation was in response to the former highest-ranking US cardinal blaming the "feminization" of the Catholic Church on sexually confusing male priests, causing priests to sexually abuse children, and running men out of church:

"While he directs most of his ire at 'radical feminists,' he also appears rankled by ordinary women doing ordinary Church activities. To him, that act alone constitutes the dangerous feminization of the Church that has alienated, disenchanted and made men sexually confused. 

'Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women,' Burke continued. 'The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been influenced by women and become so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved. Men are often reluctant to become active in the Church. The feminized environment and the lack of the Church's effort to engage men has led many men to simply opt out.'"

His is a common whine - that once women are allowed, even in small incremental ways, into the Boys Only Treehouse, it's no longer a super-duper special place by virtue of its total exclusion of girls and women. Thus does inequality (not even equality!) for women become framed as "oppression of men," which results in an entire fucking men's rights movement.