Update: A victory!  The Daily Beast has switched the picture out to this one:

I've replaced the picture below with the same stock photo that they were using, which was also used by the BBC.  So you can see what caused me to be annoyed.

One of the great fears I have writing about reproductive rights as often as I do for online newspapers and magazines is that one day I'm going to pull up one of my pieces and it will be illustrated with a misleading picture of a hugely pregnant woman.  So far, I've been incredibly lucky on this front.  I write about abortion rights for XX Factor a lot, and I often get to choose my own art, but even when I don't, their editors are smart about picking things like medical imagery or pictures of anti-choice protesters or anything but a picture that implies that women getting abortions had to waddle into the clinic under the weight of their just-about-to-burst bellies.  The Guardian has kicked ass for me as well on this front.  Take, for instance, the art used to illustrate my piece about Rick Perry and his ultrasound law that just got halted by a federal court pending a court date. 

Michelle Goldberg also wrote a piece about Perry and what this case means for his presidential campaign in The Daily Beast.  It's a great piece, and should be read (right after mine!), but whoever chose the art screwed the pooch. 

Ever since Michelle Kinsey Bruns started her awesome Tumblr The Inevitable Preggobelly, which is dedicated to tracking this phenomenon of showing heavily pregnant women to illustrate stories about first trimester abortions, I haven't been able to stop noticing how widespread this problem really is.  With news coverage of the sonogram law, it's gotten really bad, because pretty much all pictures of sonograms in stock art show really big pregnant women.  And the reason, of course, is that sonograms on women in their first trimester are boring.  Which means there's no pictures of the event. There's nothing really to see for the layperson on a first trimester sonogram, and if they're done, it's mostly for the eyes of experts who can make sense of the teeny embryo or fetus onscreen.  We only take pictures of women who are having their babies getting sonograms much later in the pregnancy when there's something of interest to see, because at least those women are having a meaningful experience.  

The problem with showing women that are hugely pregnant to illustrate stories about abortion should be obvious.  That's because it's misleading.  This is how much your average woman getting an abortion is showing when she goes into a clinic:

(Sorry, I wanted more pictures of average-sized women who aren't visibly pregnant where you can see their stomachs, but most of the ones I could find are fat-shaming and inappropriate.)

In other words, the vast majority of women getting abortions aren't showing yet.  And even the ones who are aren't really in the giant-round-belly stage, but more the beginning-to-get-a-gut stage.  Obviously, just showing a random photo of a non-distended stomach won't work either for stories about abortion, since it would mostly be confusing to the audience, though maybe at this point we're so used to seeing bellies used to represent pregnancy that perhaps the audience would get the picture. But, as my experience shows, there's so many more useful ways to deal with the art problem.  That's what's so annoying about this entire issue.  Abortion is a complicated issue!  It involves medical science, leering Republicans, crazy anti-choicers, determined feminists, the court system, you name it. There are pictures of all of these things!  Use those instead. Please, art editors.  Just use your noggins. 

From the entire explosion of discussion over the "dumped because of Magic enthusiasm" post: Maybe there should be some kind of geekiness scale, modeled on the Kinsey scale, where a zero would be someone who is just not geeky at all, and a 6 is a LARP-er.  A lot of discussion that cropped up was about how mentioning geeky hobbies on your online dating profile could give people the impression that you're actually a bigger geek than you are.  The dangers in this are a) that you run off good matches who don't realize that you're not as geeky as you look or b) you attract people who you're just going to disappoint when they find out that your geekiness levels fall below theirs, and you're not going to be a good companion for some of the high level geeking out.  There is clearly a lot of anxiety out there about mismatching in this department, so, you know, just trying to find a simple solution to a complex problem.

The reason I think this could work is that, unlike many traits that work on a scale, there's probably someone out there who is geeky enough to obsessively catalog geek interests, rate the levels of interest and time spent on them, and create a mathematical formula.  Then anyone interested in getting their geek rating could just answer some questions on an internet form, get a score, and put that on their social networks or dating profiles.  

My feeling is, takng a quick overview of my own self, I suspect I'd be a two.  I don't blend too well in highly geeky environments (though I don't startle the horses or anything), and I quite literally never read genre fiction, unless it's something that's gone completely mainstream, like "Harry Potter".  I do like video games, but tend to stick to party games and never play online games at all.  On the other hand, I do have some geeky interests: blogging, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", pop science, internet memes, and I probably get some points for applying a geeky approach to music fandom.  I'm probably more of a nerd than a geek, honestly, but I'm strictly addressing myself to a geek scale, since geekiness causes far more consternation online than nerdiness.  No one has the time of day for debating the experiences bookish folks who enjoy organizing bar trivia teams, I'm afraid.  We'd probably be worried about it, but we're often too busy reading something dense.

So, what do you think?  What would be the measurements?  Where would you rate yourself?  Is this a funny idea or would it just be used for evil?

Like roughly half the internet the other day, I too read Alyssa Bereznak's piece about her date with Jon Finkel, who is apparently a world champion at the game Magic: The Gathering. The piece both made me laugh and made me uncomfortable, for reasons I'll get to in a bit, but what made me just as uncomfortable was some of the reactions to it.  I mean, any story that involves a woman rejecting a man for any reason outside of "he hit me" is going to bring the Nice Guys® out in droves, projecting their own issues with women and their own entitlement onto the situation, claiming that she's shallow and she has some sort of obligatioon not to reject the guy for "shallow" reasons.  Since the "shallow" reason in this case was that he's got a geeky hobby, and an all-encompassing one at that, the Nice Guys® were out in force, making the demonstrably false assumption that because a woman isn't into geeky stuff, that means she's rejecting nice guys in favor of jerks.  Demonstrably false, because it assumes a correlation between niceness and geekiness that doesn't exist.  We internet dweebs especially should have figured that one out after Elevatorgate, when geeky dudes came out in force to be some of the biggest assholes I've ever seen online.  And some were nice and feminist.  That's the point---the correlation between niceness and "extracurricular" interests is non-existent, which is part of the reason dating is in fact hard.  

I'll also add that the Nice Guys® were also making the false assumption that Finkel was suffering some huge humilation by being rejected, again projecting their own issues and fantasies on the situation.  It turns out, as you'll soon find, that Finkel was equally uninterested.  I don't imagine there will be a full-scale freak-out over that on her behalf, however. 

The problem I saw in the reaction in comments on the post and elsewhere was that all the various issues with this post were getting tangled up and people were getting confused about what was okay about this and what was fucked up.  So, for clarity's sake, I'm going to list what are the three entirely separate questions that this post brings up, and weigh in on how they're different issues and shouldn't be confused.  The questions were:

1) Was Bereznak wrong to reject Finkel on the grounds of dweebiness?

2) Was Bereznak wrong to go onto Gizmodo and tell the story, using Finkel's name?

3) Was Finkel wrong to "forget" to mention that he spends most of his free time playing Magic on his OK Cupid profile?

I will add that #3 modifies #2.  I think it's okay to call someone out by name in a public forum and certainly on the gossip vine if that person does something really wrong.  Even men should be subject to social accountability, and unfortunately as anyone who has seen a community embrace a rapist or a wife-beater (often while rejecting the victim) can attest, that doesn't happen nearly enough.  But you should tread softly and use good judgment.  If the bad behavior was only mildly harmful and can easily be corrected, I see no value in shaming a person publicly over it.  I hesitate to bring this up in what is a largely unimportant situation, but I just want to be clear that my opinions on #2 are not absolute rules.  I mostly err on the side of believing discretion is the better part of valor, but there are exceptions.

Anyway, my answers to these questions are:

1) Absolutely not.

2) Yes, and this is the real cruelty.

3) Yes, but.....

I'll admit I was a little surprised to see Rebecca Watson address her response to this mostly to the first question.  I agree with large parts of her post, especially how there's lots of women who wouldn't find the Magic-enthusiasm unattractive at all, but that's all the more reason why I don't think it's appropriate to call some shallow for finding it to be a major league turn-off.  Plenty of fish in the sea and all that.  I'm a big fan of the belief that you can whatever damn dealbreakers you want and people really shouldn't give you hell for it.  Why on earth should anyone clench their teeth and tolerate sex with someone who turns them off to prove they aren't "shallow"?  That some women are geeky and would be down with the Magic playing, and some women are indifferent and wouldn't care as long as you had other things to recommend you doesn't mean that these women are in any way superior to women who are like, "Magic, ew."  That's because the geeks and the indifferent women probably have their own dealbreakers that, if left to the Nice Guys® to judge, would also demonstrate "shallowness".  Some of the women who would be okay with the Magic-playing would, for instance, find it a huge turn-off if a guy was a big sports fan or rushed out to see every single new blockbuster movie, no matter how shitty-looking.  Nothing wrong with that.  Most of us are dating with an eye towards finding a partner, and thus weeding out the annoying and intolerable is a mercy to everyone up front---better now than 15 years from now when you're fighting because he's taking your kids to Magic tournaments. 

I particularly want to quarrel with this:

After all, it’s not easy fighting to destroy the damaging stereotype that women are shallow bitches who not only won’t date nerdy men but also laugh at what dorks they are behind their backs. That stereotype feeds into the Nice Guy syndrome that infects guys who come to the conclusion that all women only want to date stupid jerks.

What makes Nice Guys® wrong is not their assumption that women will reject them for being geeky.  This is one of  many reasons any of us can get rejected!  Sometimes we get rejected for not being geeky.  It's not even that someone will laugh at them for being geeky.  Again, that probably does happen, but then again, people get laughed at for all sorts of reasons.  I can only imagine what kinds of stuff guys I went on one date or another made fun of me for, but I think it's probably just best to learn not to give a shit what they think.  (After all, I wasn't so hot into them, either.)  Making fun of bad dates after the fact is just one of those things, like gossip.  Everyone technically agrees it's a Bad Thing to Do, but everyone does it, because the alternative of high-mindedness about it is just too boring.

The Nice Guy® whine is wrong for two reasons.  One, they often equate irrelevant qualities with niceness.  In this case, that someone plays Magic is being used as evidence that he's somehow nicer or more stable than men who don't.  There's zero evidence of any correlation, and in fact lots of examples of geeky guys who are just assholes that no one should date for their own damn wellbeing.  (Not that I'm weighing in on Finkel's character either way.  There's simply no way to know, because there's no correlation.)  Two, and this is just as important, Nice Guys® believe they are entitled to the women they want because they are "nice".  You saw this a lot in the comments at Gizmodo.  An example:

Yeah, the last thing a single woman needs is a smart single guy who makes a good living playing a "geeky" game.

The assumption underpinning this is that a woman should take the first stable guy who will have her---no matter how unattractive she finds him---and be grateful to have him.  That's what is so irritating about Nice Guys®, who generally do consider things like sexual satisfaction and joy to be important aspects of dating for them, but are unwilling to allow women to have the same desires.  No, in their minds women should feel obligated to date a guy just because he's nice and stable, and a woman who holds out for a man that can make her happy is a shallow bitch.  

It's important to note that Finkel himself did not agree with the Nice Guys®.  He responded to Rebecca's post by pointing out that he was equally uninterested.  In other words, it worked out how it should.  He didn't work himself up into a lather about how she "should" want to be with him and instead was able to calmly assess that it wasn't a match and move on with his life. Nice Guys® should take note.

Where Bereznak really shit the bed is with #2.  There's no reason on god's green earth to name the guy in your post.  Now this post is going to be in Google searches for his name.  I can't for the life of my understand why she thought using his name was appropriate.  It's just as good a story without naming him.  In fact, it's a better story, because the moral of her story---be upfront about pertinent information on your dating profile---comes across as a more universal lesson when you're discussing an anonymous date.  It's easier for any of us to project ourselves into the situation that way.  The only explanation I can come up with for her naming him is that, despite her protestations to the contrary, she was actually impressed at how good Finkel is at Magic, and is in fact bragging that she went on a date with him.  Which is just fine if you're telling the story to your friends, but posting it on the internet is just fucked the fuck up.  

It disturbs me that #1 got way more attention than #2, when #2 was the truly egregious failing here. 

As for #3: I don't think Bereznak is wrong that a guy who doesn't reveal something like a deep interest in Magic and an entire social circle built around Magic on his profile is doing something stupid.  Here's the "but", though.  Rebecca is right to say that you don't have to put everything up front when you're on the dating market.  If you have other interests you explore that are more likely to seem attractive, putting those forward instead of the others is just human nature.  I agree with Rebecca on this.  Still, you have to balance that with truthfulness and an unwillingness to waste someone's time.  If you list a bunch of interests, they really should be important interests to you.  It's not cool to portray yourself as a good companion for concerts and weekends at the museum if in fact you spend most of your time playing Magic with your Magic friends.  There's probably some mathematical formula that can indicate when it's fair to drop an interest off your profile to juice it up a little, and when you spend enough time on it that you have to disclose.  We don't really know if Finkel falls above or below this line, for what it's worth.  Maybe Bereznak is exaggerating how much time he spends on Magic, maybe she isn't. 

Still, the worst that happens when you conceal such a big part of yourself on a dating profile is that you waste a few hours of someone's time.  Not nice, but not the end of the world, and certainly not such a bad thing to do that you deserve to be shamed for it in a public forum.  The person you're often hurting the most is yourself if you find that you are routinely making dates with people who, when they find out more about you, are turned off.  I haven't got experience in putting an online dating profile up, but I do a lot of social networking, and my feeling is the more upfront you are, the less bullshit and time-wasting you generally have to put up with.  My feeling is that if you'd lead with it to find friends, then you should lead with it to find dates.  The one exception, of course, is sexual interests.  But even then, you're probably better off leading with it.  Sure, you'll eliminate people who just aren't into that thing you're big into, but so what?  That just means less dates where you're sitting across from someone wondering how quickly you can break it off without being rude. 

Matt Y. and Atrios both weighed on the concept of "guilty pleasures", basically denouncing the concept by focusing on the notion that one should feel guilty about liking something.  I'm a little less hostile to the phrase, for a couple of reasons.  One is that I think arguments about it veer a little far off into the irritating modern tendency to argue that anything non-quantifiable is so far out of reach that you can't actually render a judgment on it.  This argument gets trotted out a lot by people who have been exposed to someone mocking as crappy something they like, and rather than thinking about it, sucking it up, or leveling an interesting defense of their taste---aka, the grown-up options---they try to derail by claiming that since taste is subjective, it's functionally meaningless and no judgments can be rendered at all.  This is irritating because it's an argument that tends to be offered in bad faith, since the people making it probably do make judgments all the time, just about other people's taste.  But it's also irritating because, as big a fan of empiricism as I am, I think there's limits to it and that doesn't mean that we should simply shut down entire avenues of thought and discourse because you can't "prove" something beyond the shadow of a doubt. What makes discourse about art fun, as long as you follow the rules of being a grown-up about it, is that it's beyond absolute proofs.  And unlike with discourse about god and spirituality, art is real, and so you escape the problem of making it up as you go along. 

The other reason is that the phrase "guilty pleasures" can tell you a lot about how the concept of "good taste" is created, how diverse views are about what constitutes good taste, what the flaws are in those views, and therefore how to improve the concept of "good taste".  While Atrios and Matt both rejected the concept of "guilty pleasures", they both immediately knew what they would consider a guilty pleasure.  I find myself reluctant to abandon a concept that has such immediate meaning to people, instead preferring to analyze what it says about their personal models of good taste.

So, for instance, Matt's examples of guilty pleasures---even as he rejected the concept---were Lily Allen and Katy Perry.  In other words, he went straight for young, cute, female pop singers.  He saw the connection between the two as obvious because they have these things in common.  But it would never occur to me to group those two together, and not just because I like Lily Allen and loathe Katy Perry.  It's because Lily Allen writes her own material, can actually sing with verve and style, has a lot of wit to her lyrics, and because she doesn't seem to feel the need to act in a submissive, unthreatening style to be considered sexy.  Now, I'm not saying Matt is wrong to group one way or that I'm wrong.  I think it's more interesting than that; how we group these artists tells you a lot about the kind of models we're exposed to in defining good taste.  Probably, for one, I just spend a lot more time in virtual spaces where genre-busting is considered vital artistic work, which would make Allen more interesting for being self-directed rather than less interesting for being pop. Also, I have an obsession with bold, brassy female musicians, and that model is in play when regarding pop artists like Allen or Perry (Allen definitely fits it and Perry definitely does not).  But, at the end of the day, I'd probably not group them together just because when you put on a Lily Allen song, there's just more there there. You could replace Perry with someone who looked like her, tweak her voice in the studio, and most people wouldn't notice the difference. 

Atrios's definition of guilty pleasures, on the other hand, was defined along the lines of how challenging something is, which he again denounced as being just unfair to what people out there really need in terms of entertainment.  I agree whole-heartedly with him that there's a lot of people who use "complexity" as a measure of quality.  Ironically, I would say these people are generally lazy people who, at best, want a nice, simple rule to guide what is quality and what isn't so that they don't have to develop their aesthetic muscles.  The most obvious example is people who say things like, "Turn of the TV and pick up a book," even though that could very well mean turning off "Mad Men" and picking up some mindless, poorly written airport novel.  I particularly love the people who wring their hands about TV being "passive", as if sitting there reading a novel isn't also passively absorbing someone else's story-telling.  "But, but, but!" I can hear you say, and you're right.  When you read a book, you're often thinking in depth about themes and character, and it's not passive at all.  TV can be watched this way, too, and often is---thus the idea of the watercooler show.  And books can be read mindlessly by people who get nothing out of them but a way to pass the time.

But one thing I've learned from the concept of "guilty pleasures" is that a lot of people's rules of what constitutes good taste are, sometimes unconsciously, built along class, race, and gender prejudices and often other arguments about good v. bad taste are employed to cover up what's going on there. I think it was interesting, for instance, that Matt picked female artists as his guilty pleasures while denouncing the concept, and suspect that he experiences, as a man, a lot of subtle discouragement against taking women as seriously as men, and he's rebelling against that.  Since I've gotten onto Turntable, I've been exposed to a wide range of the unconscious rules people employ when determining what they think is tasteful and what's not.  Turntable is especially good for this, because people play not just what they like but what they think will reflect well on them in front of others, but also the concept of "guilty pleasures" gets a lot of play because periodically in rooms people will declare that it's time for everyone just to play some their most indulgent crap and everyone gets a chance to show off what their bad taste is, too.  So you learn a lot.  

Certain patterns have come out that I find really fascinating.  For instance, there's an entire subset of people, and they are mostly dudes (in my experience, exclusively dudes, but I haven't dealt with everyone so I'm not going to go on the record with an "all" here), who are belligerent about the notion that the best music in the whole world is sleepy indie rock by earnest white guys (and occasional women) who have never flicked a pelvis in public in their lives, and these guys play this music in any room that's indie-friendly even if everyone else is playing stuff that you could fuck to.  And they're often surprised if people grouse about it. I find this hilarious, but as of yet have no real understanding of this particular dynamic.  On the flip side of it, if someone feels that 80s dance and New Wave music is appropriate for every occasion, there's a 95% chance that person is female.  

But when it comes to the subject of bad taste or guilty pleasures, some times it's remarkable what kind of prejudices you'll unearth.  I got into a room with some folks who were playing all sorts of stuff, and I cheerfully dropped a rap song---I forget which, but it doesn't really matter.  What matters is that for some reason, two of the dudes in the room started to get angry and---in 2011!---started grousing about how much they don't like hip-hop.  Like, as in all hip-hop, though one begrudgingly said he liked Outkast sometimes.  In the chat bubble, he, and I swear you could hear the sniffing, said that he preferred stuff like French house music, you know, like Daft Punk.  And this was the kicker, when those of us on the side of the angels pressed him about this, he called hip-hop "simple".  You could tell that he could tell what we were thinking about him at that moment, and so things got a little weird and everyone went their separate ways, though as soon as he left the room, I think I said something like, "I'll bet the guys in Daft Punk have HUGE hip-hop collections."  

Anyway, this is becoming a long, digressive post, but I think there's some interesting stuff to ponder here.  The classifications of "indulgent" or a "guilty pleasure" or even just "bad taste" are often influenced strongly by certain prejudices.  In some cases, it's just blatant racist or sexist or classist prejudice.  But I've also noticed that some music gets classified as less tasteful because it's music that  provokes one's more "animalistic" desires to dance and party and fuck, instead, I don't know, sit around drinking coffee and thinking deep thoughts.  In other cases, "guilty pleasures" don't have that kind of political weight at all, and instead the category is more like "music you know is silly, childish, soulless or poorly performed but you like anyway because it provokes a pleasant memory".  You know, like Hanson or something.  Eliminating the phrase completely would probably make it harder to understand the various and often conflicting models in play.  

Lisa Belkin was kind enough to respond in comments to my criticism of her NY Times piece lamenting the way that college campus life continues to be run by men, leaving college women to pander and even debase themselves for male approval, so I thought I'd respond here to clarify some more of my thoughts.  I was harsh on Belkin, but as I admitted up front, that's because I have deep, irrational fears of becoming the aging feminist who laments kids these days, and that feeds my reaction when I see pieces like hers.  Like I said in the post, I actually agree that the social inequalities on campus are distressing, and they probably do feed the high rape rate on campus, but even beyond that, it's simply depressing how much control college men have over the social lives of college women.  (She focuses on fraternities, but in my experience, this problem cut across a lot of different social groups in college.)  But I challenged Belkin's portrayal of the problem for two reasons: 1) She uses women wearing skimpy clothes or even dancing in their underwear at parties as the major piece of evidence of the problem and 2) She puts the blame only on the women for submitting, when I think a more sympathetic feminist analysis would be more useful.  I want to add a third, less relevant thing that still bothered me: 3) She portrays this as a new problem, and suggests that college women 20 years ago were better at standing up for themselves and so this happened less.  If that's true, then college life must have changed rapidly from the early 90s to the late 90s, because when I was in college in the late 90s, my biggest frustration with campus social life was how men controlled it, and you had to kiss their asses or you'd lose your social status.  (I am not a good ass-kisser.)  But having had firsthand experience with this problem, I agree with Belkin that it is a problem, and if it's still going on today, I'm very sad for it. 

Anyway, my problem was mainly the focus on the clothes.  I realize that gets pageviews, but the fact that women wear skimpy clothes to get male attention is really a piss-poor example of the underlying problem of women being socially controlled by men.  Like I pointed out in the post and in my response to Belkin in comments, wearing skimpy clothes and getting male attention is a pleasure in and of itself, and fully empowered women who feel no need to put up with men giving them shit use the "show legs, get laid" strategy all the time.  Dressing sexy also has an intrinsic value.  It can make you feel good about yourself and your body.  Now, we can argue about whether or not it makes women feel good because they've been socialized to objectify themselves, but I think that's a separate discussion.  The point is that I think dressing sexy is something that women do want to do a lot, and so it doesn't work as the best example of the social duress that women are under at college. 

Lisa asked me a good question about my assertion that women dress sexy quite often because they simply want to, and it has value beyond keeping a good reputation with the boys that can bring social death to you if they want: " I AM wondering why the women are dancing in their underwear but the men aren't."  Well, I actually have a really good answer to that question, and it goes back to my feminism, which is more about dismantling gender norms and less about a generic woman-empowering thing (though I do believe women will gain power if we dismantle gender norms).  That the boys control the girls' social life doesn't mean the boys are all-powerful and just do whatever the hell they want.  Young men are actually strongly controlled by powerful gender norms and ideas about what masculinity is, and they police each other as much as they police the women.  Since sexual exhibitionism is considered a feminine behavior, it's taboo for young men to do it.  I'd guess a lot of men would get as much pleasure  as women do out of stripping down to their underwear and dancing around for an audience of admirers, but since that behavior would be seen as emasculating, they're not going to do it no matter how much they wish they could. In fact, in situations where men get a non-sexual cover story for being half-naked, such as being at the pool or the beach, you do in fact see men strutting their stuff.  And certainly a lot of men lament how much they don't get the excitement of having someone admire them physically. 

Do some women wear fewer clothes than they want because they feel they have to?  Sure, I've seen situations where that's clearly going on.  But it seems to me that it's just too complex a thing to be used as prime evidence, since many to most women wearing slutty clothes just get off on being stared at.  (And there's nothing wrong with that.)  It's just a bad example of the problem she's trying to describe.

A far more representative example of the problem is how young women are often expected to sit and watch young men play video games.  This was beginning to be a problem when I was in college, and from reading blogs, I've gathered that it still goes on.  This is a perfect example, because it's women being subjected to something truly unpleasant in and of itself (boredom), but they feel they have to do it, because if they started to say, "This sucks, let's do X," they'd get a reputation for being bitchy or pushy.  Starting from that point, you could probably come up with a million examples of how girls are often doing what the boys want to do, but it's not going the other way very often. No need to make it about far more complicated sexual desires.

The other thing I want to address was my last comment, which was my frustration at the way that these articles focus on women's individual choices.  You get the feeling from Belkin's article that she thinks women do things they hate that men demand because those women are weak, and if they just stood up for themselves, that would fix the problem.  I think it's way more complicated than that.  The consequences for not going along with the guys are really bad, especially for young people---you start getting shunned.  Social ostracism is no joke.  I can't blame individual women for putting up with a world of bullshit from dudes, because the alternatives often look even more grim. After college, it gets a lot easier, because your world opens up more and it's much easier to leave one social situation and go find another.  But in college, options are limited, and I think that's why young men are able to exert so much control.  

So what are the solutions?  Beats me.  It's a complex situation.  Individual responses tend to be ineffective and just add more problems to the lives of those who are suffering in the current system.  But a collective response is hard to imagine.  It is true that if college women just went on strike and refused to socialize with men who push them around, men would be forced to be more generous.  But how do you organize that strike?  (Well, I suppose it could be done. Perhaps the women organizing Slutwalks should move on to doing things like creating clubs for video game widows, where instead of watching your boyfriend play video games for hours before you finally get around to sex, you can spend the night laughing it up with your brand new lady friends, and leave him hanging.  A thought.)  But I think any effort needs to focus not on blaming women for being trapped in a shitty situation, but holding men accountable for treating women poorly.  When college men do things like circulate emails that claim women aren't people, instead of saying, "Did women cause this by wearing short skirts?", we could instead say, "These men are being assholes and there should be consequences for their behavior."  I think the latter has become more taboo for some reason, perhaps the fear of being called a man-hater.  But any solution that focuses on women's reaction to oppressive pressures and not men's exerting of oppressive pressures is just so much pissing in the wind.  

This ridiculous op-ed from Iain Murray and David Bier, where they exploited Hurricane Irene to argue that we don't need a National Weather Service, has been making the rounds.  Probably more liberals are reading it to boggle at the sheer mean-spirited idiocy of it than by conservatives who are intrigued by the argument.  Matt Y. dismantles the stupidity of this this line of thinking admirably (though he goes after someone else making exactly the same argument). So read his take on it. 

I just want to point out that for all the puffed-up pseudo-intellectualism of Murray and Bier, they were incapable of doing extremely basic research that took me literally 30 seconds to do for them.  Quote:

There is a very successful private TV channel dedicated to it, 24 hours a day, as well as any number of phone and PC apps. Americans need not be forced to turn over part of their earnings to support weather reporting.

So I went to the Weather Channel's website, clicked the "About Us" page, and read up a little on their service.  

Information from the National Weather Service, such as severe weather alerts and current conditions, is transmitted to custom equipment at each cable location, as are thousands of customized weather forecasts prepared by The Weather Channel meteorologists.

I'm guessing that very successful 24-hour weather channel would be first in line to tell Republicans to fuck off if they actually did try to get rid of the National Weather Service.

I hate giving attention to Ron Paul, who is a familiar type in Texas: equal parts racist old crank that obsesses over conspiracy theories that have their historical roots in anti-Semiticism and vicious misogynist who thinks women's sexual liberation is the worst thing that's ever happened in history.  Unfortunately, Paul has managed to snag the affections of a collection of white men who imagine themselves to be "liberal", because they hear he supports legalizing marijuana, though they hide behind his opposition to the war because even they know that it's fucking disgusting to believe it's more important for dudes to have legal rights to joints than women to have legal rights to abortion.  Paulbots are literally the most annoying people on Earth, because there is literally nothing their hero can do that they won't vociferously defend, sometimes even while claiming not to support his point of view.  After all, they aren't prepared yet to follow their hero's prescribed lifestyle of marrying a church lady and giving up on the hope of interesting sex for the rest of their lives, but they know that keeping their already dim hopes of sex with live, consenting women alive means at least pretending like they are also repulsed by statements like, "order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks," and "the federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS".  Being Paulbots, they actually claim that these prior statements by Paul are fine, because they claim to believe his transparent lie that someone else wrote them for a newsletter and he just happened to sign his name to them without knowing what was in them.  This, even though in many of the offensive statements, he took great pains to make it clear that he was the one writing them.  For instance, in the rant about the "federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS", Paul wrote, "my training as a physician helps me see through this one."  But Paulbots are so dedicated to seeing this Bible-thumping, racist, misogynist piece of shit as their hero that they'll claim with straight faces that somehow all those first person statements in newsletters Ron Paul signed his name to were not written by him.  The man could eat a live kitten on TV, and while it was still squeaking in pain and terror as life seeped out of it and its blood ran down his face, they would say, "CNN is only telling you that's a kitten because they're part of the oligarchy, dude," before taking another puff on the joint. 

So I wasn't surprised to have angry Paulbots defend their hero on Twitter when I posted a link to Ron Paul suggesting that the Galveston hurricane of 1900 was the gold standard in how our country should respond to hurricanes, and that we shouldn't have FEMA coordinating rescue efforts that would prevent horrors like that hurricane, which killed three times as many people as the attacks on 9/11.  (Galveston is in his district, too, so Paul isn't fucking around when he idealizes the drowning deaths of thousands of people.)  Paul helpfully added that drowned bodies are good for our national character, adding, "FEMA creates many of our problems because they sell the insurance because you can't buy it from a private company, which means there's a lot of danger, so we pay people to build on beaches, and then we have to go and rescue them."  Angry Paulbots responded to my disapproval of this by sending things like old articles praising Galveston for being able to recover from a hurricane completely destroying their town.  Of course, this was nonsensical, because as admirable as the rebuilding efforts may have been, they had nothing to do with the point at hand, which is that it's important to have a federal agency to organize and run efforts to prevent people from drowning in the first place.  One Paulbot actually had the nerve to cite Hurricane Katrina as a reason we don't need FEMA.  When I pointed out that FEMA was being run in 2005 exactly as Paul wants---which is to say, not at all---the Paulbot had no response.  

In a sense, Ron Paul is just a sideshow, and his hateful desire to have people drown as some sort of lesson to people who might live on the coast (as if they do that for the hell of it and not because that's where their jobs are, or as if there's really huge parts of the country where there are never any natural dangers---by the way, Paul is breaking his own moral code by living in D.C.) is just another nasty thing he said to appeal to cranks who just enjoy being assholes, no matter how "progressive" they claim to be. But it's also important to pay attention to these narratives, because a lot of them are tried out by fringe sorts like Paul and then mainstreamed in right wing channels.  One of the biggest problems is that when things go right, as they largely did with the response to Irene, the minimal damage perversely gets people to believe that we don't need massive response efforts.  "That wasn't so bad," people think, "so I don't know why we need building codes, infrastructure spending, and coordinated government responses to natural disasters."  You know, even though these are the reasons that it wasn't so bad.  It's a lot like someone who eats right and exercises their whole life, and when they don't develop heart disease, saying, "Man, I guess I wasted all that effort."  

Paul's function in the conservative movement is to pull it to the right.  He comes out and says something outlandish like claiming that we don't need FEMA or that desegregation actually worsened race relations (the insinuation being that white people can only deal with black people if they have formal legal superiority  over them), and that helps make crazy wingnuttery that falls just short that sound more moderate. He runs out and denounces efforts to keep people alive and idealizes a situation where 8,000 people died.  That gives other conservatives space to demand a defunding of FEMA and National Weather Services, because hey, at least they aren't opening praising a situation where thousands drown to death.  Also, by focusing attention on 1900, Paul can distract from people comparing the excellent government response to Irene with the piss-poor government response to Katrina.  

As I noted yesterday, Democrats need to loudly resist this.  Not only denounce Paul's statements, but go the next step and hang him on Republicans in general.  Irene is a great occasion to show how effective government can be if being run by people who believe in government.  It's often hard to show how that works, because as noted before, when things are going well, people tend not to notice them.  But one opportunity is to highlight ignorant statements like Paul's and contrast them with our realities.  

That's a narrative being formed online already, no doubt shaped by the fact that the people who can get online still have electricity, unlike many in the city. Dear fools: You aren't everyone.  You may be, like myself, high and dry and online, but in some parts of the city they're getting people who didn't obey the evacuation order out of their homes.  (I don't blame people for not evacuating, by the way.  Most people in evacuation zones who don't evacuate consider the idea, but have personal issues---health, lack of a place to go---that make it harder for them.  Risk assessment is hard in these situations.)  

Here are the facts: Last night, when I went to bed around 1AM, the storm was actually picking up steam and was still a Category 1 hurricane, and the eye was headed straight for New York City.  It downgraded to a tropical storm, minimizing the damage, and that's a good thing. (Though, don't get cocky. Many parts of the city are out of electricity and many parts are flooded.)  But it was a matter of luck.  There was a strong fucking chance that it could have been much worse. Don't mistake a lucky break for a certain outcome. 

Mayor Bloomberg evacuated to a Cat 1 hurricane.  And until literally a few hours before it hit, Irene was a Cat 1 hurricane heading for New York City.  His response was exactly what it should have been: no more, no less.  People who weren't in immediate danger weren't evacuated unnecesssarily.  But people who were in danger were.  Balancing the need not to displace people unnecessarily with the need to keep people from drowning to death isn't an easy thing to do, and one should err on the side of caution.  With what looked like a 50/50 chance of a Cat 1 hitting the city, Bloomberg evacuated the Cat 1 areas.   It was the correct decision.  That we got lucky doesn't change this.  

I get why assholes enjoy screaming "overreaction".  It makes you feel superior, like somehow you have magical powers and just know better than scientists and experts that Irene was absolutely not going to be any worse than it was.  But your pleasure at feeling like you magically knew before what you know now is toxic.  It feeds the narrative Republicans are trying to shape up, that we don't actually need government to prepare for extreme weather events like hurricanes.  But I would argue Republicans got their chance to try that theory out, and Katrina demonstrated that they are completely fucking wrong. Obviously, Irene wasn't as bad as Katrina.  But the problem with Katrina was that the conservative philosophy was in play---which is to assume the best possible outcome---and the worst happened.  The liberal solution, to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, was in play here, and the result is that the death toll and damage was minimal.  And if the storm had been worse, it would have still been minimal because we were prepared.

Democrats and liberals need to immediately start fighting this toxic narrative.  Irene's minimal damage is evidence that government, when run properly, works.  Republicans are going to point to the low death toll and say that shows we didn't need government.  In fact, the low death toll shows that we do.  Even smaller-than-predicted storms, if mishandled, have unnecessarily high death tolls.  And while there's no such thing as a perfect response to a storm---because that would require having magical powers to know exactly what's going to happen---erring on the side of being overly prepared works.  We need to say this, over and over.  And we need to point out that our crumbling infrastructure will make future events more deadly if we don't fix our problems.  And hell, we need to argue that we need to improve the infrastructure, not just fix it, so that future evacuation efforts go even more smoothly.

CSA Week #11

I wanted to take a picture of the sign, as I've been doing, but some guy at the pick-up location must have been really bored, because the entire time I was there, he was erasing and rewriting parts of the sign.  He did this throughout the entire loading-up process, and I even waited around for a few minutes to see if he would wrap it up, before I realized he was probably never going to wrap it up.  If he's still there, erasing and rewriting, I wouldn't be surprised.

Zucchini

Cucumber

Heirloom tomato

Slicing tomatoes

Eggs

Peaches

Melon

Bell peppers

Jalapeños

Corn

Cherry tomatoes

Lettuce

Eggplant

Basil

Pickles

Feeling a little overwhelmed by the cucumbers---which I like, but tend to forget to eat---I went ahead and made quick refrigerator dill pickles.  I love pickles, so I knew I’d eat those.  In fact, I did eat most of them, but there are still a few on hand, which I bet I'll appreciate if we lose power. 

Dinner #1

I had a ton of cherry tomatoes, so I made pasta with this baked cherry tomato sauce.  I didn’t make my own pasta, but I imagine at some point in my life, this will come up.  As the recipe I linked stated, this was unreasonably good.  I highly recommend trying it yourself while cherry tomatoes are cheap and abundant.  

I took some more cherry tomatoes and served them as a salad with the lettuce.  I made my own salad dressing by blending some sun-dried tomatoes, basil, garlic, and balsamic vinegar in my mini-chopper.

Vegetarian.

Dinner #2

I made eggplant and bean burger recipe, using black beans instead of white beans, and replacing the hummus with cornstarch and an egg.  I served it with regular sandwich bread, but some of the sun-dried tomato dressing, which had firmed into more of a spread, and a Jersey tomato and some lettuce.

I still had some kidney beans and red wine from last week, so I repositioned them as a side dish, by taking some onions and corn, browning that a bit in a frying pan, adding the beans, a little veggie broth and chili powder.  Threw a few cut up cherry tomatoes in, and served it as a side.  Of this new mix, I had some leftovers, so I mixed it all up with some quinoa and used it as a side dish to go with lunches

Peaches and pudding for dessert.

Vegetarian, but Jamelle’s version of the burgers is vegan.  

Melon cocktail

I still had a melon, too, so I googled around and found a few variations on the melon + gin cocktail. So I pureed the melon into a juicy mess with ginger and pepper, added gin and ice, and had it for after-dinner cocktails.

Dinner #3

I had black beans left from the recipe before and lots of peaches, and googled around to see what I could do with them. As I suspected, there were many variations on the black-bean-and-peach combo---a sweet and spicy kind of thing---so I decided to put the black beans with the peaches, an onion, garlic, the bell peppers and the jalapenos into on big concoction that I served over rice.  I seasoned it with oregano, chili powder, and cumin.

Vegan. I forgot to get a picture, so I apologize.  It wasn't that interesting-looking anyway.

**************************

As you all probably know, I'm sitting in Brooklyn in the holding pattern, waiting for the hurricane to hit.  We're relatively unconcered about danger from the storm itself; we're out of the evacuation zones, and the evacuation orders appear to be based on a worst-case scenario, as opposed to the Category 1 or even mere tropical storm we're facing.  I'm worried about people in the area where it's hitting, but barring some miracle where it bounces back into the sea and gains more energy, I'm not too worried about New York.

That said, I'm fully prepared for the possibility of electricity loss.  This will make for an interesting approach to eating, and I'll do my best to document anything that we end up doing.  My feeling is that one can aim for some middle ground between having delicious food all the time because you have a fully functional kitchen and the sad food I'm seeing some people stock up on (energy bars?).  With that in mind, I'm trying to prepare some stuff that could go well with raw vegetables, like crackers and hummus.  I'm also making and freezing batches of beans, so that we can defrost and eat cold, perhaps with some veggies.  This website has some other ideas of food that keeps well that is better than trail mix and energy bars.  Hard-boiled eggs, for instance, are a good idea. 

One problem I see is that people tend to over-refrigerate, and there's a lot of food that doesn't need it, or at least doesn't need it if you're going to eat it within a day or two of purchase. Many vegetables don't need to be refrigerated at all times, and the assumption that they do causes me to wonder how people think our ancestors ever ate vegetables at all. I refrigerate a lot of stuff only because I'm not using it for 3, 4, or 5 days, but some stuff, like tomatoes or onions, shouldn't really be refrigerated at all.  In fact, most uncut fruit could probably fit into that category.  I recommend getting yourself some basics, like crackers or some other form of dried out bread, some stuff that can be stored without refrigeration, and of course, canned or frozen beans or hard-boiled eggs to eat with it.  I'm guessing, as well, that it's better to have stuff that takes time eat, because with all the juice out, you're going to be bored.  

What are your tips for eating reasonably well during a power outage?

Well, that's frustrating.  I had a whole post about TV and feminism and the website just ate it up.  I feel my muse has slipped me.  So, instead of what probably wasn't like an earth-shattering post in the first place, may I offer instead these dance lessons?

Make sure to take what you learn and apply it to any social situation you find yourself in tonight. 

Thanks to Samhita for sharing this with me. Feel free to share any totally useful dance lessons you might come across in comments. 

Kind of amazing that the East Coast will be going through an earthquake (albeit a mild one that didn't really cause any major damage) and a hurricane (this one I'm far more worried about) within less than a week.  The big concern, of course, is for the folks down south that are right in the path of the hurricane.  I'm not overly worried about New York City getting more than a super-bad tropical storm/minor hurricane---which will suck, but you know, not the same.  For instance, no need to evacuate and make hard decisions about what to do with pets.  However, there is a strong chance the city will lose electricity, possibly for days, so we're preparing for that.  

Our thoughts are with our neighbors down south.  We hope your evacuations go smoothly, your property stays safe, and most of all, we hope that those who cannot evacuate for some reason stay safe.  

In the meantime while we wait, there's not much we can do but do our jobs, get prepared, and of course, Panda Party.  For those who don't know, what we're doing every Friday is getting on Turntable.fm in the Panda Party room, where we get ready for the weekend by taking playing music.  (Here's Turntable's FAQ if you want to learn more about the service, which is free.)  Some rooms have a no "no lame-ing" policy, but Panda Party is not one of those rooms---we feel free to lame anything we don't like. But also feel obliged to awesome anything you do like.  Since it's a room that spins off a political blog, I feel everyone in there is good with the concept of democracy.  

Last week, we started doing hourly themes, and that worked out really well, so that's going to be a permanent fixture.  You can go to the Room Info to find out the theme.  The idea is to play songs who have lyrics, titles, or even just band names along those lines, though most people end up going with lyrics or song titles.  For instance, last night I went into a room where a New York theme erupted, and I played "New York" by Le Butcherettes, "New York, I Love You" by LCD Soundsystem, "Take the A Train" by Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, "South Bronx" by Boogie Down Productions, and "Rockaway Beach" by The Ramones.  Most of the time you won't need so many songs, since we change the themes hourly.

So jump on in to Panda Party, the water's fine!

Igor Volsky at Think Progress examines whether or not Rick Perry's comparison of homosexuality to alcoholism will hurt him in the campaign.  I think it probably will---that kind of overt bigotry is becoming less acceptable by the hour lately.  Igor agrees, to an extent, saying that bigotry like this makes you look bad and distracts from economic issues, pointing out that it hurt Ken Buck in his bid for Senate in Colorado.  He adds:

Republican presidential candidates from Michele Bachmann to Mitt Romney continue to make offensive and homophobic remarks in debates and on the campaign trail, despite the public’s growing acceptance of gay people. It’s unlikely that these positions will resonate with a constituency beyond the party’s social conservative base, since, as Paul Thornton notes in today’s Los Angeles Times, “the radical ideas espoused by Bachmann, Perry, Santorum and others are [already] held up not for genuine consideration but for scorn.” “Perry’s and Bachmann’s views aren’t weighed against President Obama’s ‘evolving’ stance on same-sex marriage; rather, they are simply ridiculed. It says as much about our society as it does the candidates.” And if that’s the case, then Buck’s candidacy was the first in what may be a long line of Republican contenders who will pay a political price for their homophobia until they learn to accept and respect the LGBT community.

Here's what I find fascinating about all this: the "homosexuality is like alcoholism" thing actually came about because social conservatives are trying to sound more tolerant of gays.  It's actually an attempt to evade accusations of bigotry.  The old line was basically that gays are molesters and perverts who only do gay stuff because they're bad people.  The narrative is that gays are broken people with a disease, a compulsion---and that they need "help" to overcome it.  But the public saw through that attempt at revisionism as quickly as it was concocted.  

In fact, many conservatives have moved past even that and are trying to argue that they believe that sexual orientation is fixed and gay people deserve rights. They've retreated to arguing that opposition to marriage equality isn't discrimination at all, but somehow "protecting traditional marriage".  Again, their attempts to evade the label of "bigot" by cleaning up bigoted arguments isn't working. Each new move lasts a couple years, and then the public starts to see through the new gambit, as well.

Of course, the rates of progress vary by community.  I think the very far right is still stuck in the "gays are demons who snatch children" mode, the larger Christian right is in the "gays are sick people who need 'help'" phase, the "traditional marriage" coalition is collapsing since it was a last-ditch effort to retain inequality in more liberal areas, and people of moderate to liberal politics have accepted gay people and are moving on. 

Via Caperton at Feministe comes this mind-boggling rant from Peg Aloi claiming that women today are eschewing the "tough gals" model to be weak, frivolous bubbleheads.  Caperton takes this nonsense on, but I'd like to address it myself, because while I somewhat sympathize with a tiny fraction of what Aloi is saying, she's just so incredibly wrong in her assumptions, and it causes her rant to be vicious, depressing, and nonsensical.  Aloi is working off three false assumptions:

1) That "feminism" is about creating "tough" women.  While feminism certainly is about making social space for women Aloi would describe as "tough", in reality feminism is about making women and men equal, just as importantly---pay attention to this part---dismantling toxic gender roles that limit the lives of men, women, and anyone who has a gender identity that doesn't fit into neat little boxes.  A feminism that is obsessed with "tough" women isn't a feminism that's prepared, for instance, to help women to get out of domestic violence situations, since women in those situations don't need a valiant rescue or to stand up to their attackers so much as to be sympathized with and given the tools to escape.  

2) That traditionally coded masculine behaviors and values are automatically superior to traditionally coded feminine behaviors and values. The only argument Aloi has against things like gardening, baking and knitting are these are traditionally considered women's work, and should be shunned for it.  This is actually not a feminist belief, but a sexist one, since it's about reinscribing the gendered nature of certain activities and valuing the masculine over the feminine. 

3) That women having, enjoying, and discussing leisure time activities is un-feminist.  A lot of what makes Aloi mad is her assumption that women are, heaven forbid, having fun. Some of the activities she denounces women for participating in aren't even coded as feminine, but she still hates them because they're leisurely---such as making vintage cocktails.  The pop culture role models she trots out are role models because they seem to have no life of their own outside of duty to family and to work place.  This isn't just not-feminist, but actually sexist.  Already women have far fewer leisure hours in the week than men.  Feminism is actually about demanding that women get to live full lives that include leisure activities.  We're trying to break away from thousands of years of women being treated like workhorses who only get a carrot after everyone else gets everything they want---and really, does everyone else ever have everything they want?

I said I was somewhat sympathetic to Aloi's point, however, and I want to explain: I don't think she's wrong that there's an ongoing backlash against women's gains and that it's resulting in pressure for women to be as unthreatening and powerless as possible.  Some of her examples even fit into this pattern: pole-dancing classes (for most women, though there are a few that are legitimate athletes at it at this point), the explosion in childish things.  There is a disturbing trend of women playing at being overgrown children who are legal to stick penises into, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl taken to the next level, where she dances non-threateningly and without shoes in fields of cotton candy.  But most of what Aloi is talking about isn't that.  I'd even argue that the cupcake trend has more to do with portability than cuteness.  Kristen Wiig's character in "Bridesmaids" was a cupcake expert, and there wasn't even a whiff of childishness about her, so I would argue the two really aren't that wed in the public imagination.*

And that's the problem here.  There's nothing inherently childish about tradtionally feminine activities, and many traditionally feminine activities are a valuable use of your time.  I realize the amount of sacchrine on Etsy can make anyone sick, but don't let the people with bad taste define the concept for you.  Many---most?---of the work coded as feminine in our history was still vital, necessary work, and often it's empowering to learn how to do it.  For instance, I really wish I knew how to sew, which means you could constantly alter the clothes you have or fix up thrift store ones for basically free.  And why the hostility to knowing how to garden and cook?  One of the benefits of feminism is that men feel free to pick up these valuable skills that improve your health and your diet, and I would argue improve creative thinking, while providing often-needed stress relief. ** Plus, baking is often a good, inexpensive way to make unique gifts for parties or friends.  And a lot of women start off with small, safe crafts and end up moving into fixing up furniture or wood-working.  I think it's true that some women retreat into crafts because it's cute and non-threatening, but just as many find that being able to make things with your own hands is empowering.  It can help you get away from the helpless little girl act. 

What's particularly telling is Aloi's hostility to vintage cocktails.  That's not even gender-coded as feminine!  Like working the grill, making cocktails has always been considered a masculine activity that women can do if necessary.  It indicates a generally negative view Aloi takes towards women having leisure activities.  Let's just put it this way: she disses heirloom tomatoes.  Twice. At a certain point, you have to imagine that Aloi's problem is with pleasure itself, not with women being cute and non-threatening.  A heirloom tomato hardly signals, "I'm a submissive little girl, don't fear me, easily startled man!"   I'd actually imagine an easily threatened man would find a heirloom tomato threatening.  Women who know their tomatoes are like women who order the wine without blinking.  It signals an intelligence and willingness to pursue mature pleasures---the sort of thing that easily threatened guys are trying to avoid.  It's not like having a Hello Kitty T-shirt and sticking to workout routines that don't do icky things like make you strong and powerful.

The more I think about it, the angrier I get.  Already women feel a ton of pressure never to kick back and enjoy the finer things in life, but instead to believe there's always a brow or a floor that needs mopping.  One of the toughest things a woman can do is say that she's taking some time for herself instead of just giving and working and giving and working.  

*Maybe "Bridesmaids" is sounding the death knell for the trend of passing off childish MPDGs as something for real women to aspire to be.  There was nary a woman wearing a romper while eating an ice cream cone with what "what, me?" expression on her face.  And men didn't run screaming for the hills, too afraid of women acting like adults to tolerate two whole hours of it. Suck it, Zooey Deschanel.  (Though you probably were sucking something already, chin pointed downwards, and eyes cast upwards as if you're ingratiating yourself with someone three feet taller.)  Kristen Wiig is the new boss in town. 

**That said, I retain the right to make fun of knitting.  I realize it's fun to do it, but unlike with baking or sewing, the final products are something to be endured instead of enjoyed.  Unless you get off on that sort of thing. 

Since Rick Perry seems determined to play the "I'm a Real Texan" card---and a whole lot of the mainstream media is willing to play along---I expect that I'll be spending the next few months, and god forbid year, hopping mad.  Not because I think Perry's an "inauthentic" Texan, but because I dislike the concept of "authentic", which, as I note below, is ironically based more in myth-making than in our complex realities. I mean, Perry is playing the not-a-Real-Texan card against George Bush, who I recall I had to defend a few times (much to my dismay) from liberals in the past  who wanted to take away your Texan card because you were born somewhere else, even if you were raised Texan, identified as a Texan, ran the state, and retired there.  I felt if Bush doesn't get to be a Texan, anyone's card can be yanked on the basis of some arbitrary bullshit.  I take this stuff personally, because I've often felt the not-a-Real-Texan play being used against me, because I don't fit the narrow mold of "ignorant, mean-spirited yahoo" that is heralded by wingnuts, exoticized by the Village, and loathed by decent people who know damn well that there's no honor in willfull ignorance and spiteful reactionary politics.  

On our Bloggingheads discussion, Josh Treviño suggested that it would be impossible to separate attacks on Rick Perry, a Texan, from attacks on Texas and Texas culture.  I strongly disagreed, and feel it's a simple as launching an attack on, say, John McCain without claiming that all Americans are grouchy, pandering assholes.  Rick Perry may claim that he's the only kind of Texan that counts, but I humbly disagree.

With that in mind, I put together a far-from-complete list of famous Texans that are nothing like Rick Perry, and can be printed out and mailed to any media organization that suggests that Rick Perry=all Texans, or that Rick Perry is somehow an "authentic" Texan, like the rest of us don't count.  To avoid confusing the issue, I left off most overtly commercial country-western musicians, unless they are quite obviously not like Rick Perry, and I left off all Republican political figures.  I also left off anyone born in Texas but not raised there, because I wanted this to be a list of people we can be reasonably certain thought of themselves as Texans, especially while they were forming as human beings. The point is to illustrate that there's a lot of ways to be a for-real Texan that don't involve being a conservative yahoo.  Feel free to add more in comments. 

Janis Joplin, singer

Ornette Coleman, innovative jazz musician

Patrick Swayze, actor

Roky Erickson, musician and founder of the original psychedelic rock band, the 13th Floor Elevators

Beyonce Knowles, R&B singer, current unofficial queen of New York, and  her sister Solange Knowles

Molly Ivins, political writer, humorist

Lee Trevino, golfer

Wes Anderson, director

Dewey Redman, jazz musician

Katherine Anne Porter, novelist

Ann Richards, former governor 

Cecile Richards, head of Planned Parenthood

Erykah Badu, R&B singer, disrober around JFK assassination site

Bill Hicks, comedian

Van Cliburn, classical pianist

Buddy Holly, lead of The Crickets

William Butler of The Arcade Fire

St. Vincent, indie rock musician

Annise Parker, mayor of Houston, first gay mayor of a major city

Bill Moyers, journalist

Shelley Duvall, actress

Mike Judge, director of "Office Space", creator of "Beavis and Butthead" and "King of the Hill"

Babe Didrickson, golfer and Olympian

Eva Longoria, actress

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, founders and members of The Mars Volta

The Dixie Chicks, of course

Selena, Tejano superstar murdered in her prime

Barbara Jordan, first Southern black woman elected to the House of Representatives

Renee Zellweger, actress

Steve Earle, musician

Lupe Ontiveros, actress

Richard Linklater, director of "Dazed and Confused", "Before Sunrise" and "School of Rock"

Melinda Gates, philanthropist

Gibby Haynes of The Butthole Surfers

Lance Armstrong, bicyclist

T-Bone Burnett, musician and producer

Lyle Lovett, musician

Phylicia Rashād, actress

Robert Rodriguez, director of "El Mariachi", "Spy Kids", and "Sin City"

Britt Daniel, lead singer of Spoon

Jamie Foxx, actor

The members of ZZ Top

Dennis and Randy Quaid, actors

Sarah Weddington, law professor and the lawyer who argued Roe v. Wade

F. Murray Abraham, actor

Isaiah Washington, actor

Alexis Biedel, actress

Vicki Carr, singer

Scarface, Willie D and Bushwick Bill of the Geto Boys

Gloria Feldt, former head of Planned Parenthood (where would reproductive rights be without Texas women?)

Matthew McConaughey, actor

American politics are dominated by culture war, and one of the most disturbing aspects of the culture war is the quest for authenticity---especially since what is considered most authentic is usually measured in the ugliest possible way.  Take, for instance, Paul Waldman's examination of how Rick Perry plays the "authenticity" card.  Perry's schtick is that he's more Texan-than-thou, and his Texanness is defined very specifically as a brand of hyper-masculinity: the bigger man/Texan is the meaner, stupider, more violent man/Texan.  There's a lot of ironies inside this kind of authenticity-tripping, the biggest being that the measure of what is "authentic" are based in plain old myth-making.  Waldman talks a bit about how the myth of the cowboy is beloved in the U.S. because it appeals to this sense of authenticity, but it is pure myth:

Violence and the culture of honor have always been key themes in cowboy mythology, which is less a construction of history than a production of the American entertainment industry. It was essentially invented by Buffalo Bill Cody, whose wild west show toured the country and the world beginning in 1882.

This is absolutely correct.  Unlike 95% of Americans, I've actually known cowboys in my time, as in "men (and women) who work huge Western cattle ranches" kind of cowboys.  The job always struck me as uniquely boring and people's attachment to it was baffling to me.  You spend a lot of time.....watching cows.  And if you've never watched a cow before, I can assure you, cows are not here to entertain us.  Quite possibly the opposite.  Cows, like Rick Perry, are boring and stupid.  Perry is actually puffing certain aspects of his persona up in order to be considered more "authentic", a contradiction that should cause the concept of authenticity to fold up on itself and die, but unfortunately, in an America that cannot tell fantasy from reality, exaggerating your life in order to seem more authentic is surprisingly effective. 

But outside and within the state of Texas, this idea that Texans are Real Men, and Real Men are stupid, violent assholes has this hold over people, and it pisses me the fuck off. It's bad for the country, bad for men and women, and bad for Texans as a whole, because it erases the truly vibrant culture of the state and replaces it with the image of a whooping redneck with shit for brains.  Take, for instance, this bit of shameful business:

You may have heard the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted and executed for murdering his daughters by setting fire to their house, a crime of which he was almost certainly innocent. As Politico recently reported, when the campaign of Republican senator Kay Baily Hutchinson, who was challenging Perry in a 2010 gubernatorial primary, considered raising the issue, they tested it with focus groups. One voter memorably told them, “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”

Actually, it does not.  It's an act of cowardice, as proved by Hutchinson's eventual fear of bringing it up.  That's always the contradiction at the heart of the manly man business---it's about acting all tough, but preening masculinity is fundamentally an act of cowardice.  It's rooted in insecurity and fear of how others will see you.  When you kill an innocent man because you're too afraid to let him go because you live in fear of people who've decided that masculinity is mutually exclusive from morality, you are a coward.  A quivering-in-your-boots, pissing-on-your-jeans coward.  

But hey, I'll give you this: you're still a Texan.  For some reasons that are obvious and some that are not, I'm not fond of this Real Texan bullshit.  Texas, like any place else, should be defined by the people who actually live there.  Which isn't to say that the state doesn't have  a distinct culture that can be identified, but that can also evolve, as cultures do.  As I noted in the most recent Bloggingheads I was on, there's a lot of iconic Texas culture that isn't politically loaded with these sexist, racist, anti-intellectual, pro-violence cultural markers.  Living in Austin, for instance, you would suffer occasionally from ignorant rednecks pulling the "Austin isn't real Texas" card, to which I'd say, "Yeah, Stevie Ray Vaugh, Willie Nelson, and some of the best barbeque in the country somehow means we're not real Texas".  I'd go further much further even in rejecting the concept of "Real Texas".  Texas is country-western, barbeque, and guns, but Texas is also the eccentric Houston hip-hop scene, the imaginative vegetarian cuisine of Austin, and people swimming in some of the coolest natural spring pools in the country.  Texas is Wille Nelson, but Texas is also Spoon.  Rick Perry is a Texan, but so is George Bush, and, more importantly, so were Ann Richards and Molly Ivins and Barbara Jordan, and so is Jim Hightower.  

I'd genuinely like to see this whole cult of authenticity fall away.  The irony is that when it does is when we can finally take a look at ourselves and see ourselves for what we really are, and we're more complex and interesting than any myth-making about authenticity provides.