Links & Larks

Yep, good news. I'm not going to break my new rule the same week I make it. Go me! (Links list might be slightly longer than usual -- I've been saving them up for a while.)

Caudoviral gave us a great shout-out last week, because he is awesome. Go read his blog about biology and sciences, which is full of cool and interestingly explained articles and things you didn't know about medicine. (Full disclosure: yeah, we're friends; no, I wouldn't say his blog is awesome if it weren't.) (Caudoviral)

In less-awesome news, the U.S. House of Representatives recently voted to cut all funding to Planned Parenthood. I’m sorry; did I miss the memo? Do we want everyone to drop out of college all full of babies because the pill costs $70/month at Wal-Mart and no one can get it for $20/month at PP anymore? Is that how we’re going to fix the economy? Really, John Boehner? This page has a link to a petition where you can tell the Senate to cut this crap out immediately, plus a bunch of fun ideas for protest signs. (Bitch Magazine)

Keeping up with the Prop 8 debate? A review has been set. On the one hand I am absolutely opposed to Prop 8 in every respect and I wish they would get this matter of basic human rights settled already; on the other hand I’m kind of finding the legal ins and outs really interesting. (Yeah, I read Supreme Court decisions for fun when I was in high school.) (There’s a more recent update – about the Court’s unwillingness to speed up the schedule – here.) (SCOTUSblog)

Speaking of marriage, feminists caused your divorce! Did you know? Bitch has something to say about that. (Bitch Magazine)

It’s preaching to the choir, I know, but this post is an insightful and eloquent report of the way the conscience clause can be horribly misued and in fact lead to the deaths of women with no benefit to the fetus. I have a lot I want to say about that when I can find the time to put it into words (I am actually much more conflicted about it than I thought I was); meantime read Thomas’s clear and straightforward view. (Yes Means Yes)

On a similar topic, two reporters (or a reporter and an intern, rather) at Slog did some interesting investigative journalism, going to crisis pregnancy centers in the area. Their findings were interesting -- much of the information given about abortion was (surprise!) inaccurate. (Slog)

Elsewhere on Slog: whether you saw the Oscars or not, I think you should read Lindy West’s recap of the ceremony. (Actually I think you should read everything Lindy West writes, because she is awesome. And besides being funny and feminist and interesting, she gets a million bonus points for this.) (Slog)

Speaking of movie stars giving each other awards, someone made a word map analyzing word frequency in the Oscar acceptance speeches. Did it seem to anyone else as if the ladies were all “Oh, I can’t believe you’re giving this to ME” and the dudes were all “Yep, I’m awesome and I own it”? Maybe it’s my feminism, ruining everything and wrecking your marriage. (OverthinkingIt)

While we’re Overthinking things, I kinda wish I’d written this awesome post comparing Clueless and Mean Girls to each other... and to  political revolutions and their effects. (OverthinkingIt)

This article on the sexiness of ladies who read is about 80% charming, but I think it says a lot about me that my reaction to the first half was “Don’t buy her a coffee and hit on her, she’s trying to read. She’s busy!” (The Monica Bird, and thanks, caudoviral!)

And just for fun, go read this Married to the Sea comic. I should analyze why I like it, I suppose, lest I like it for the wrong reasons, but that would kill the frog.

In Other Book News

I haven't posted this week on account of being pretty horribly ill and not having a lot of coherent thought to share. But as kind of an addendum to Wordwrestler's post about the NY Times Book Review, I thought I'd toss this out there, for our international readers and anyone who hasn't caught this yet.

So, the Bitch Magazine debacle.  Sequence went something like this. Bitch makes list of 100 Awesome Feminist YA Books. Cool! I read it, and I think it has the same issues most "best x number of books in given genre" lists have; it leaves off some of my favorites, includes a few that are like, the hell?, and a few that were like, you've got the author right but for heaven's sake don't start with that one. And there are a million I haven't read, so I should maybe get on that, but probably won't any time soon. Whatever, I have those kind of issues with every book list I read -- doesn't everybody? We don't agree, that's why it's fun to make lists. So anyway. People start commenting. And two or three of the books get called out for being triggering to rape survivors.

Now, you're Bitch. What do you do? As a reader, you know that everyone's opinions about books are different, you can't possibly please everyone, and taking books off a YA list for being "too disturbing" smacks of condescension and nasty censorship. As a feminist, you want to honor rape survivors and not say that triggering people is awesome. As an editor, that's a hundred book list, and I'm betting each individual editor has not read all 100, and there may be some in there that are based on reader suggestions, which no one has read. Dilemma.

What Bitch does is remove three books from the list. And the shit, she flies. Scott Westerfeld and Maureen Johnson, two well-known YA writers on the list send in respectful, grammatical, fuck you letters. Westerfeld asks that his book be removed, as he doesn't wish to be associated with the list anymore. (Personally I wasn't terribly enamored with his book, but that's neither here nor there.) Bitch gets called out by writers. And readers. I looked on some of my favorite feminist websites and couldn't find much supporting either side; mostly they're busy protesting HR3 (which I wrote to my Congresswoman about, and if you're a US citizen, you should too, because it's basically codified misogyny, thank you SO much, GOP). But anyway.

So there's another wrinkle up for debate. Who do you listen to in a case like this?

More About What I Said I Didn't Want to Talk About

The one part of the Assange affair that I keep coming back to is the idea that what he is accused of is sort of "bizarrely rape" because "Swedish laws are so strict and weird."

"That wouldn't be rape anywhere else," argue (some of) his supporters. "Not in America or the U.K. or Australia. The Swedes are just messed up about sex."

To clarify: I'm talking about the allegations that Assange's accuser said she didn't want to have sex unless a condom was used, and that he then penetrated her without one; and that he penetrated her while she was asleep.

It is true that Sweden has more specific laws on this topic than other countries do. That doesn't mean they're wrong, however.

I've been thinking about this, and it all came up again because of the Naomi Wolf/Jaclyn Friedman debate, which I haven't had a chance to read all the way through (I'm sort of putting it off, to tell you the truth).

And then Thomas, over at Yes Means Yes, said it way better.

Sex being okay under certain conditions and not under other conditions -- that's normal. That's acceptable. That's why you can decide to break up with someone -- they used to be meeting conditions that they are now no longer meeting! So you can choose to stop sleeping with them! Until/unless they meet those conditions again! (Or you can decide that you never will, because they never will.)

All human interaction, really, is about setting conditions. Sometimes, you are very close with someone, or have a long history, or close ties, and your conditions are minimal, and basic. (You still have them, though, yes, you do. Even if they're just, I will interact with this person as long as they are not violently stabbing me while I do it.) Other times, you have specific relationships that are formed for specific periods, specific reasons, and with specific goals and specific sacrifices in mind. And when someone else isn't meeting those goals, or making those sacrifices, and forces you to do things that were not in your criteria -- that's a boundary violation. That's unacceptable. And when they violate specifically stated boundaries around sex -- that's rape.

Anyway. That is what I have to say about that.

In future-blogging news, I finally found the outlines for some essays I want to write about entertainment, and what I think about it, and how other people, who do it for a living, could do it better. So I believe that January will be my Entertainment Month, as in, I will try to write four semi-serious, sort-of-thought-out essays in a row on media and entertainment. So stay tuned for that. Over the next couple of weeks my blogging may be sporadic, as I have holiday commitments.

May your own holidays be cheery and bright and less stressful than you hope.

So There's This Kerfluffle? In the Internets? Maybe You've Heard About It.

I don't want to talk about the mess surrounding Julian Assange and the rape charges against him. I never met the man. I never read Wikileaks. I have no idea, really, what kind of person he is or what he does in his spare time, though I've heard enough to where if I ever met him I would make sure not to be alone with him.

I'm still examining my own beliefs about who has the "right" to do what -- though obviously, obviously everyone has the human right to not be raped --, and what I think about his alleged actions, and his accusers' alleged actions, and his defenders' alleged actions. I don't actually have the information I need to begin to understand what "really" happened. (I don't know of a place I could really get this information, either; everyone seems to be calling everyone else a liar.) I know that even being as neutral as I am -- I don't think true neutrality is possible -- is a choice, and that a lot of people on both sides see this choice of neutrality as a betrayal. I think my line wouldn't please anyone; my line doesn't please me and it will probably move. It is a betrayal, maybe; civil rights and human rights shouldn't be negotiated and compromised and there isn't a lot of space for neutrality on them. 

I'm not going to rattle on and make my very confused feelings about this into a whole post. I think that would be a betrayal. This isn't about me. But I'm also not ignoring it.

There seem to be so many reasons why this case is a Bad Example, and we should be fighting over a Good Example, if we want to fight rape culture. (In a lot of ways, the Roman Polanski case was a Good Example; it certainly seems far less ambiguous.) Maybe, though, a bad example is the best kind of example. I know it's pointed out a lot of my own prejudices to me.

I do want to point you somewhere, to people with more bravery and more conviction than I have right now. Some very, very, brave women are taking a stand on Twitter, and making this case an example, and using its publicity to fight rape culture. You should read about what they're doing here, but please, count this as a trigger warning. The link goes to the first blog post explaining the protest; a lot has happened since then that you can read about on the same blog. The protest has been going on for four days now. The latest posts and updates are especially powerful, and therefore get an especially strong trigger warning.

There are a bunch of ways to get involved in that protest, whether you're on Twitter or not; some of them -- and some supporting arguments for the protest -- are here, and there's a trigger warning on that too.

I don't know what Assange did or did not do. I can't imagine anyone accusing him for fun. I know that rape culture is more pervasive than I can describe, and that any ideas I have about Assange will be colored by it. I'm trying to figure out what that coloring is doing to me.

What's it doing to you?