[TW for fat hatred and child abuse resulting in death.]
So many coincidental happenings today!
There's the abhorrent childhood obesity exhibit at Disney's Epcot. Because kids are clearly stupid and don't already get the cultural narrative that Fat Is Bad, and require reminding while on a family vacation at Disney World. The dramatic rise in childhood/teen eating disorders is just coincidence.
There's the terrifying news that an FDA panel - swayed in part by none other than Dr. Arya Sharma(!), who has frequently advocated for HAES-like philosophy in the past, has unanimously voted to recommend the weight-loss drug Qnexa for approval. This, despite being rejected in 2010 due to evidence that the component phentermine causes "side effects like elevated heart rate that may lead to severe cardiovascular problems, such as heart attacks and arrhythmias; birth defects; psychiatric problems; kidney stones; decreased bone mineral density and memory impairment." In what's clearly coincidence, cardiovascular problems is what killed some of the people who took Fen-Phen in the '90s! The 'phen' part of Fen-Phen totally doesn't stand for phentermine, or anything. Ahem.
Then there's the news that few people will really connect to the obesity hysteria: the heartbreaking death of a 9-year-old girl, because she had been forced to run for three hours after lying to her grandmother about having eaten candy bars. Not one thing in that article is said about obesity or weight. But really, now. Why would they use intense exercise as punishment for lying about eating candy? It must be coincidence.
Then there's the regular parade of celebrity scrutiny and diet tips and airbrushed models that have become utterly ubiquitous both online and in the meat world. This is obviously just a coincidence, since they're just always there.
Placed side by side to these articles, I found this: 'Am I Ugly' Videos Spark Disturbing YouTube Trend (video starts automatically, but has an accompanying article). Apparently, young women have been taking video of themselves asking if they are ugly, and posting them to YouTube. Predictably, some people are kind, others accuse them of begging for attention, and the trolls have come out in force.
Why would there be a connection between the first four points in this post and this YouTube trend, nevermind the chronic insecurities that the majority of the people in this country struggle with every day?
I dunno. It must just be coincidence.
I used to be pro-life.
[TW for anti-choice narrative and discussion of sexual violence.]
I used to be pro-life. I grew up that way, feeling horror at the mere concept of abortion and only grudgingly allowing that exceptions should be made for people who have been assaulted (I considered the health exception to be the mother selfishly putting her life over that of her child's).
Then, I began to actually process the assault that I endured so many years ago, and part of that processing was reading ALL THE THINGS on the topic of rape. I learned statistics, such as the fact that 60% of assaults go unreported; that when an assault is reported, chances are high that the victim won't be taken seriously/mocked/blamed for the assault; that if the victim is taken seriously by law enforcement, the court process is grueling and frequently is dismissed, or the victim can't testify for any number of reasons, or the jury won't take the victim testimony seriously/mocks/blames the victim for the assault. It is estimated that about 1 in 16 rapes result in the incarceration of the rapist.
One in sixteen. Abhorrent.
Then, there are time constraints. The ludicrous handling of assault cases within the justice system, in tandem with the (continually more prohibitive) legal restrictions on abortion (e.g., cutoff at 20 weeks), means there is rarely - if ever - a conviction to show in time to abort the pregnancy.
On top of that, many victims don't realize that what has just happened to them was rape. Sometimes, years pass before a victim realizes what, exactly, happened. Sometimes, the victim never realizes it at all.
I used to be pro-life. I grew up that way, feeling horror at the mere concept of abortion and only grudgingly allowing that exceptions should be made for people who have been assaulted (I considered the health exception to be the mother selfishly putting her life over that of her child's).
Then, I began to actually process the assault that I endured so many years ago, and part of that processing was reading ALL THE THINGS on the topic of rape. I learned statistics, such as the fact that 60% of assaults go unreported; that when an assault is reported, chances are high that the victim won't be taken seriously/mocked/blamed for the assault; that if the victim is taken seriously by law enforcement, the court process is grueling and frequently is dismissed, or the victim can't testify for any number of reasons, or the jury won't take the victim testimony seriously/mocks/blames the victim for the assault. It is estimated that about 1 in 16 rapes result in the incarceration of the rapist.
One in sixteen. Abhorrent.
Then, there are time constraints. The ludicrous handling of assault cases within the justice system, in tandem with the (continually more prohibitive) legal restrictions on abortion (e.g., cutoff at 20 weeks), means there is rarely - if ever - a conviction to show in time to abort the pregnancy.
On top of that, many victims don't realize that what has just happened to them was rape. Sometimes, years pass before a victim realizes what, exactly, happened. Sometimes, the victim never realizes it at all.
We Cannot Forget
[TW for discussion of sexual violence.]
Every time I listen to Andrea Gibson's "Blue Blanket" (transcript here), I hear something new. Her words are so dense and so powerful that it's impossible to catch everything on even the first ten listens; and yet, some lines are unforgettable from the moment they're first heard. I don't often listen to the poem though, because it touches on such a deep, painful topic - rape.
Tonight, the lines that struck me were "... if even a few of us forgot / what too many women in this world cannot", and the lines that have stuck with me in the years since I first heard them are "she's heard stories of Vietnam vets who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs / she's wondering how many women are walking around this world feeling the tingling of their amputated wings".
Those first two lines are the reason rape culture exists. Too many people have forgotten what too many women cannot. A single drop of empathy, of humanity, into the cocktail of distractions that we daily consume, would begin to dismantle the constructs that work to prevent earth-bound women from flying again.
Survivors of sexual violence have their entire worldview, their day-to-day functioning, changed; twisted into a grim shadow of the beauty that once was. We learn to live with it, but, like the amputee that can still feel the ghost of lost limbs, we still feel the tingling of lost innocence.
And we look up at the people who can still fly, who mock because we have been thrust to the earth by the throat of our trust, and despair that they have forgotten.
I can never forget.
But I am determined, someday, to fly again.
Every time I listen to Andrea Gibson's "Blue Blanket" (transcript here), I hear something new. Her words are so dense and so powerful that it's impossible to catch everything on even the first ten listens; and yet, some lines are unforgettable from the moment they're first heard. I don't often listen to the poem though, because it touches on such a deep, painful topic - rape.
Tonight, the lines that struck me were "... if even a few of us forgot / what too many women in this world cannot", and the lines that have stuck with me in the years since I first heard them are "she's heard stories of Vietnam vets who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs / she's wondering how many women are walking around this world feeling the tingling of their amputated wings".
Those first two lines are the reason rape culture exists. Too many people have forgotten what too many women cannot. A single drop of empathy, of humanity, into the cocktail of distractions that we daily consume, would begin to dismantle the constructs that work to prevent earth-bound women from flying again.
Survivors of sexual violence have their entire worldview, their day-to-day functioning, changed; twisted into a grim shadow of the beauty that once was. We learn to live with it, but, like the amputee that can still feel the ghost of lost limbs, we still feel the tingling of lost innocence.
And we look up at the people who can still fly, who mock because we have been thrust to the earth by the throat of our trust, and despair that they have forgotten.
I can never forget.
But I am determined, someday, to fly again.
lol ur copyright
One of the many gazillion things I do online is help moderate a user-generated art gallery, Storm-Artists.net. I love it there, great community, pretty art, good friends. We do get the occasional art thief, though, and we delete stolen art as soon as it's discovered.
I've gotta say though, I LOVE - really, truly, LOVE - this trend among art thieves to announce that the image they've submitted has been stolen. Phrases like, "Original images from Google. Photomanipulation © me" in all caps, right underneath the image. Because clearly, when something has been stolen, announcing to the world that you stole it makes it all okay! These people are hilarious!
Well, it certainly makes my job easier! Instead of having to dig around the internet to find the original version of the stolen art as proof if the thief pleads innocent and wants a second opinion from another moderator, I can just hit the delete button. Boom, stolen image nuked. Half the time the thief throws a hissy fit: "But I gave proper credit! I didn't steal!"
Yes indeed, you gave credit, but you also totally stole. "Giving credit" just made things way easy for me.
The funniest thing is that these people typically have ginormous galleries bursting with badly Photoshopped collages of their favorite Harry Potter characters, with descriptions along the lines of: "Whipped this up in like less than five minutes...because I obviously didn't do much to it ^^; But the manip is still © me."
The only thing that makes this go from HILARIOUS to SO AWFUL is on massive art websites like deviantART, where these thieves congregate like flies on a cowpie.* Find one of them, you'll find that a single stolen collage is in a dozen fan groups, each group with hundreds of members all submitting the same type of stolen artwork. There are tens of thousands of stolen images.
Which is a rant I'll get into some other time.
For now, I'm laughing, and deleting (on Storm), and reporting (on dA).
ETA: The best example I've ever seen of an art thief's stupidity is an image I just found, in which the stolen background image had a large copyright notice across the center, and the thief even pointed it out in the artist's description area! With no sense of irony whatsoever! LOL!
*Disclaimer: I'm not comparing dA to a cowpie. I'm comparing the festering piles of stolen artwork to a cowpie.
I've gotta say though, I LOVE - really, truly, LOVE - this trend among art thieves to announce that the image they've submitted has been stolen. Phrases like, "Original images from Google. Photomanipulation © me" in all caps, right underneath the image. Because clearly, when something has been stolen, announcing to the world that you stole it makes it all okay! These people are hilarious!
Well, it certainly makes my job easier! Instead of having to dig around the internet to find the original version of the stolen art as proof if the thief pleads innocent and wants a second opinion from another moderator, I can just hit the delete button. Boom, stolen image nuked. Half the time the thief throws a hissy fit: "But I gave proper credit! I didn't steal!"
Yes indeed, you gave credit, but you also totally stole. "Giving credit" just made things way easy for me.
The funniest thing is that these people typically have ginormous galleries bursting with badly Photoshopped collages of their favorite Harry Potter characters, with descriptions along the lines of: "Whipped this up in like less than five minutes...because I obviously didn't do much to it ^^; But the manip is still © me."
The only thing that makes this go from HILARIOUS to SO AWFUL is on massive art websites like deviantART, where these thieves congregate like flies on a cowpie.* Find one of them, you'll find that a single stolen collage is in a dozen fan groups, each group with hundreds of members all submitting the same type of stolen artwork. There are tens of thousands of stolen images.
Which is a rant I'll get into some other time.
For now, I'm laughing, and deleting (on Storm), and reporting (on dA).
ETA: The best example I've ever seen of an art thief's stupidity is an image I just found, in which the stolen background image had a large copyright notice across the center, and the thief even pointed it out in the artist's description area! With no sense of irony whatsoever! LOL!
*Disclaimer: I'm not comparing dA to a cowpie. I'm comparing the festering piles of stolen artwork to a cowpie.
Before That Moment
[TW for ableism.]
My primary job is in apartment management, and last week I was sent to a three-hour training on the Fair Housing Act. One of the most important aspects of the Act is something that rings familiar to most: "It is illegal to discriminate against any person because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin."
The real estate lawyer giving the presentation used a variety of examples to show what was and wasn't against the law; for example, a property that disallows all pets refused to allow a disabled tenant to have a companion animal as recommended by a doctor. That's discrimination based on handicap, and the tenant was awarded thousands of dollars in reparations.
Interestingly, much of the discussion focused on ableism, including mental illness. Schizophrenia was mentioned, as was bipolar disorder. Throughout, the presenter was sensitive and used generally acceptable language when discussing these things.
Then, completely out of the blue, he used the term "crazy" to refer to something entirely unrelated to mental illness.
Before that moment, I knew that "crazy" is an inappropriate word to use, at least in the way most of society uses it: "It's crazy to try the black diamond slope if you've never been skiing before!" "You want to study advanced physics? Are you crazy?"
Something about the disingenuity of his use of the term really struck home for me. He was talking about how very wrong it is to discriminate against the disabled, and then in the same breath used language that encourages marginalization of the same population.
"Disabled people deserve to be treated equally with the able-bodied. You would have to be crazy not to."
Before that moment, I didn't quite get it. And then, it clicked. Instead of token, not-quite-getting-it outrage, I felt genuine outrage, and hurt, and simultaneously amazement at my realization.
I guess my feminism leveled up.
My primary job is in apartment management, and last week I was sent to a three-hour training on the Fair Housing Act. One of the most important aspects of the Act is something that rings familiar to most: "It is illegal to discriminate against any person because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin."
The real estate lawyer giving the presentation used a variety of examples to show what was and wasn't against the law; for example, a property that disallows all pets refused to allow a disabled tenant to have a companion animal as recommended by a doctor. That's discrimination based on handicap, and the tenant was awarded thousands of dollars in reparations.
Interestingly, much of the discussion focused on ableism, including mental illness. Schizophrenia was mentioned, as was bipolar disorder. Throughout, the presenter was sensitive and used generally acceptable language when discussing these things.
Then, completely out of the blue, he used the term "crazy" to refer to something entirely unrelated to mental illness.
Before that moment, I knew that "crazy" is an inappropriate word to use, at least in the way most of society uses it: "It's crazy to try the black diamond slope if you've never been skiing before!" "You want to study advanced physics? Are you crazy?"
Something about the disingenuity of his use of the term really struck home for me. He was talking about how very wrong it is to discriminate against the disabled, and then in the same breath used language that encourages marginalization of the same population.
"Disabled people deserve to be treated equally with the able-bodied. You would have to be crazy not to."
Before that moment, I didn't quite get it. And then, it clicked. Instead of token, not-quite-getting-it outrage, I felt genuine outrage, and hurt, and simultaneously amazement at my realization.
I guess my feminism leveled up.
Raising the Bar
[TW for ableism, sexism, homophobia, Christian supremacy, classism.]
Via Juanita Jean's blog, I found the website of Dr. Stuart Spitzer, a Republican running for Texas State Representative.
Just for kicks and giggles, I read through the page, and the penultimate paragraph is one of the most... um, telling I've yet read about the wrongheadedness of Republican politics [emphasis mine]:
Republicans: "If you're too poor, too disabled, too low-class, too minority, then reaching the bar is not for you." And lets not forget the depiction of these people as virtueless dirt. That is not raising the bar, unless you happen to be standing on your head, then 'raising' to the rest of the world looks a whole lot like 'lowering'.
How about we try raising the bar of human compassion, hm?
Via Juanita Jean's blog, I found the website of Dr. Stuart Spitzer, a Republican running for Texas State Representative.
Just for kicks and giggles, I read through the page, and the penultimate paragraph is one of the most... um, telling I've yet read about the wrongheadedness of Republican politics [emphasis mine]:
"I believe there are two competing ideologies in play. One would debate the role of family, the rights of the unborn, the merits of gambling, and even whether absolute truth exists. This worldview says that if we can’t all get over the bar, we need to lower the bar. I think we need to raise the bar. ... we should not lower the bar just to get everyone over it. I would rather try my whole life for a bar set too high and fail, than walk over a low bar into a pool with the sediment of all, but the virtue of none."
Republicans: "If you're too poor, too disabled, too low-class, too minority, then reaching the bar is not for you." And lets not forget the depiction of these people as virtueless dirt. That is not raising the bar, unless you happen to be standing on your head, then 'raising' to the rest of the world looks a whole lot like 'lowering'.
How about we try raising the bar of human compassion, hm?
Outrageous
[TW for discussion of rape, rape culture and victim blaming.]
A 7th grader with special needs [PDF] in Missouri endured harrassment, multiple assaults and two rapes from a classmate, compounded with the worst sort of victim-blaming and dismissal from the people who should have protected her, before her family was forced to take legal action.
Emphasis mine.
These administrators then made the girl write a note of apology to her rapist and deliver it in person.
She was then expelled for the rest of the school year.
Upon her return the next year, she was raped again by the same boy.
School administrators said they'd "been through this" already, and suspended the girl.
The girl's family then took it to the police, and then the courts. Predictably, the defense denies everything, is calling them liars and gold-diggers, and saying that the girl didn't do enough to protect herself from the "conduct of third parties over whom the District Defendants had neither control nor the right to control." [PDF]
The enormity of my sadness and empathy for the victim and her family is cavernous. The enormity of my disgust and contempt towards the school administrators who allowed the behavior to happen regularly and without punishment for the actual rapist, and instead punished the victim, is equally cavernous.
The greatest of my contempt is reserved for the counselor.
It says no little thing about the influence of rape culture that a counselor, someone specifically trained to be an advocate for victims, would commit such atrocities against a child in her care.
A 7th grader with special needs [PDF] in Missouri endured harrassment, multiple assaults and two rapes from a classmate, compounded with the worst sort of victim-blaming and dismissal from the people who should have protected her, before her family was forced to take legal action.
"After the mother notified the school, the girl described the rape and "multiple sexual assaults" she'd experienced at school that year to [the school principal, counselor and resource officer]. They then told the mother that they thought that her daughter made it all up."
Emphasis mine.
These administrators then made the girl write a note of apology to her rapist and deliver it in person.
She was then expelled for the rest of the school year.
Upon her return the next year, she was raped again by the same boy.
School administrators said they'd "been through this" already, and suspended the girl.
The girl's family then took it to the police, and then the courts. Predictably, the defense denies everything, is calling them liars and gold-diggers, and saying that the girl didn't do enough to protect herself from the "conduct of third parties over whom the District Defendants had neither control nor the right to control." [PDF]
The enormity of my sadness and empathy for the victim and her family is cavernous. The enormity of my disgust and contempt towards the school administrators who allowed the behavior to happen regularly and without punishment for the actual rapist, and instead punished the victim, is equally cavernous.
The greatest of my contempt is reserved for the counselor.
It says no little thing about the influence of rape culture that a counselor, someone specifically trained to be an advocate for victims, would commit such atrocities against a child in her care.
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