"Spring food" followup

Well, here's how today's lunch turned out (and yes, I'm unemployed, if you were wondering how the HECK I'm posting about homecooking lunch!)

Luckily, since I was able to homecook, I got to venture into recipes that are meant to be eaten right away. Could've been a lot more of a challenge if I'd had to prepare food to refrigerate, take to work, and reheat.

Recipe #1:
After a lot of searching, at first trying to use my baby turnips' greens, I settled on this recipe, of course substituting the white parts at the bottom of garlic greens for an actual clove of garlic. Everything else I had in stock (including parsley. Lucky me! This year my parsley in a pot hasn't all died right away).

Triumph: I did NOT burn the butter or set off the fire alarm with smoke! I paid attention for a full 3 minutes!!!

Turns out my turnip bunch only had 6 turnips at the end of it! Definitely not the amount the recipe had been looking for, and I'd already chopped off all my garlic's ends. I didn't want more garlic breath than the meal merited, so I only cutsmooshed** up 2 white garlic green strips and threw them in after the turnips had been in the pan for about 2 minutes.

(By the way, I had to look up "sweating" to see what it was and how to do it right. It was worth it, though. I used my new knowledge to decide how much of the time I wanted to leave the pot's lid on in recipe #2.)

Review:
Sadly, turnips at any age (baby or ripe) taste bland. They tasted bland in my "root veggie stew" in February and they tasted bland covered in butter, olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and parsley.

Nevertheless, it's nice to know that I have made an edible dish out of a plant that grows here at this time of year.


Recipe #2:
There was a significant bit of butter/oil left in the pan, so I searched for "garlic" and "asparagus" on Google and, luckily, found a sauteed recipe first. Just what I needed, since sauteeing usually means cooking something in a pan with butter and/or oil.

I mixed and matched the original recipe and the modifications in the comments.

• I added more oil to the pan, but no more butter. I'm not sure if I got up to the original 3-tablespoon recommendation of oil/butter.
• I added balsamic vinaigrette to the oil/butter mix.
• I threw in the garlic greens first on my own advice and let them cook ahead of the asparagus a little.
• As far as covering the or not, I was going to go with the recommendation not to cover, but the asparagus just looked so dry that I decided to "sweat" it by covering the pan.
• On my own advice I added pepper and some marjoram while it was cooking (I really wanted powdered sage, since that stuff does frozen veggies wondered, but the only powdered green plant we had was marjoram).

I thought I'd stay well below the recommended 7-10 minutes and hit the 3-4 minute sautee suggested by a commenter, but I think that, in the end, that asparagus was in the pan, either cover off or cover on, for 7-10 minutes.


To prevent overcooking on the small stalks, I ate them. While the rest cooked.

Only one medium-sized stalk came out undercooked. The rest were just right! (I jumped from taste-testing the small ones to taste-testing the fattest one when they all started to look done. How do I know when asparagus looks done? As I said in my post earlier today, I've eaten potentially unhealthy amounts of it lately.)



Review:
I like plain old boiled-for-3-minutes-and-plunged-into-ice-water asparagus just as much as I liked this recipe. Probably more.

A lot of the flavor this dish offered was from the butter, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, garlic, and cheese (lucky me, I'd bought locally made hard cheese at the co-op. I never buy hard cheese!) I can't say all of it was, though, because I just tried practically the same recipe with turnips, and it didn't taste at all the same.

The garlic was better in recipe #2 than recipe #1. It cooked longer and soaked up balsamic vinegar. In fact, I'd say this recipe, while useless for asparagus unless you're looking for something to fill the pan with and looking for a new asparagus trick, is fabulous for the white parts of garlic greens.


I might make it again with the rest of the garlic greens (the green part) if I don't end up using them in that crazy soup I'm thinking about making.


Scrape all the bottom stuff out of the pan and throw it onto the asparagus & garlic. I wouldn't recommend pouring all the remaining olive oil all over your asparagus & garlic (they're oily enough), but definitely scrape up that goop on the bottom. I was almost licking this up (I'm sure the cheese helped, too, of course).


Remaining:

• Baby turnip greens
• Garlic green tops
• Arugula
• Basil (not much)

I hope to use them all without incorporating any non-local perishables.

Wish me luck.



** cutsmoosh: Recipe #1 called for crushed garlic that was "still together" in 1 clove. Since onion-like things don't "smash" as well as garlic cloves, I ran the stem through a dull, serrated knife that never quite made it down to the cutting board. The result was, I presume, flavorfully as close to "smooshing" this thing as I could get. Looked more scalloped.)

Springtime food

I joined a 2nd co-op today, because I'm thinking about investing in it (5%-5.75% returns on a super-duper environmentally conscious investment aren't bad, even though they're not the 8% I thought the loan offered (it turns out that's only for the high rollers loaning the co-op $50K or more)).

Actually, I stopped by because it was on the way home and because I wanted to try the new local yogurt, since the Cultural Revolution crap they've been forced to carry since other local yogurt makers went out of business tastes disgusting (except vanilla and one of the "red berry" flavors but not the other. Nevertheless, I stand by my statement for all other flavors--TERRIBLE!) Unfortunately, the "new local yogurt" is doubly bad for the environment because the cream goes from Minnesota to Delaware before coming back to MN.

On my way in I'd grabbed asparagus thinking, "I hope this isn't unhealthy to eat on a daily basis like eggs and carrots. It's the only easy-to-make-tasty local food available so far."

The rest of the store seduced me, though, after I read the produce board. Apparently I just had to try the basil, and once I looked at that, I noticed that the arugula had a sign next to it claiming, "Best crop ever!"


Come to think of it, I'm realizing that I really overpaid for garlic greens. $2.49 for a bunch? I can get a bunch for $2, list price, at this time of year at the farmer's market, and if I buy other stuff from the same vendor, I can bargain it down to $1 without either one of us batting an eye.


Nevertheless, I might not have bought garlic greens at the market (never have in 2 years of regular shopping there), so I'll just write off the markup as highly effective advertising (that colorful, handwritten produce chalkboard!) by a decent business.

I also brought home baby blanched-colored turnips that had instructions written next to them ("sautee lightly"..."greens also edible"...those did not come w/ directions).


I'm not so overwhelmed by the idea of using up all these greens because I cheated on my locally-grown-and-processed food quest and bought miso and korean noodles while searching for lychee fruit at the asian grocery store nearby. (I was also supposed to reassure myself by buying tapioca spring roll wraps, but I just realized that I forgot to.)

What the heck do garlic, basil, and turnip greens have to do with keeping me sane with a bunch of random greens I don't know how to cook? Here's my reasoning:

• Garlic grens look like scallions. Scallions are in miso soup at restaurants. Miso soup often has tofu in it.
• Miso soup would probably be fine with noodles instead of tofu. Both processed foods made out of plants.
• Pho has noodles in it. Pho is also a tasty soup at restaurants.
• Basil is in pho.
• I like Korean noodles made out of yams/sweet potatoes better than Vietnamese rice or bean noodles.

So no problem to make miso soup with garlic instead of scallions, basil thrown in, and noodles instead of tofu, right? And if I throw some turnip greens in, it'll be just like seaweed, right?

Raspberry & life miracle

Teeny tiny bees are pollinating my black raspberries! (Sweat bees?)

They're in tubs instead of the ground, and there aren't many other flowers (hence many bees) nearby. I'd been trying to pollinate them by hand, but it turns out I just wasn't around at the right time of day to find out that there are bugs working hard on my raspberries.

I think I got religion for a moment out there. I threw my arms back and shouted, "Thank you, Heaven!"

Live Earth activism

So...should people interested in sculpting society to send messages that fair treatment for both genders is the only kind of treatment that will be accepted (that is, "feminists") try to get tens of thousands of letters written to boot Akon from the Live Earth tour?

Or should they not bother?

I do wish this would be taken up in the femisphere. The concert is coming soon, and changes to big events take time on the organizers' end! Great as Jessica's book may or may not be, what I really want to hear about is whether or not various actions are good ideas or bad ideas for activists.

I mean, sure, I'll write my letter...but it won't have an impact alone. Do people think it's appropriate to join me or not in trying to get a caught-on-camera (yes, I know, not accused by the law, but still caught on camera) violent sexual assaulter booted from a progressive issue concert's lineup?

Also, is there anyone else in the lineup who's committed a serious crime against another person and has been demonstrably caught in the act? If so, we should hit both artists at the same time. It's only fair.

Body goals

I was going to list some of my favorite bus stop / airport / office exercises, and while looking for a picture of the kind of tricep dips I was taught I found this photo:

I want to be able to lift like that someday. If I had muscles as strong as she does, I could probably do monkey bars for the first time in my life.

Weightlifting invention

My upper legs have been antsy. No-weight squats took care of my quads but got my hamstrings feeling even antsier. All the body-weight-alone exercises on ExRx for hamstrings & glutes required setups I didn't have in this all-day proofreading meeting (where my coworkers said they didn't mind me exercising).

:-(

But hurrah! I am a woman, born to a cursed life of pants without decent pockets. That means I carry a purse.

Ordinarily, I hate it. But it turns out I can bend over the back of a chair, hook that heavy purse (after all, once you're carrying a purse, why not carry as much as possible?) over one ankle, and do reverse hyper-extensions one leg at a time!
(Stand on the supporting foot's tiptoe if you want to reduce stretching in that leg's calf.)

Hamstrings tired and happy now.


P.S. Turns out I might've been able to do w/o the purse if I'd known about one-legged hamstring bridges at the time. I still think I'm cool.

Prison Conditions At Moveon or Somewhere?

I wish we could get something like Moveon or another major grassroots petitioning organization to lobby states that allow sentencing to "pay-to-get-abuse-free-prison-terms" to stop allowing such sentencing.

(Don't make the companies' existence...just make it illegal for the states to sentence prisoners there.)

Dream on, though, I'm sure. I don't know...how many people does it take to convince the major grassroots orgs. to take up an issue when that issue is small on the news radar?



People of all social classes deserve abuse-free prison terms. Though a petition is not the most effective tool (money is!) for getting rid of the abuse in our prison, it is an effective tool for getting rid of increasing class distinction.

Systemic Racism Example Given At Pandagon

If you have the time to read this post in its entirety, do, because I think it's very clear and helpful.

Biting Beaver Writes About Online Harrassment

Biting Beaver came back from hiatus and wrote an extended metaphor to help readers understand what it feels like to be harrassed in a sexualized and a violent way as a blogger.

She's written about this before, though her attempts to communicate the experience have never given me such an "Aha" moment.

In fact, she was writing about it last year, before it became front-page-dead-tree-Washington-Post news and the subject of mainstream feminist and pro-feminist blogswarms.

But here she is, back again, conveniently (for us readers and "stop threatening bloggers!" activists) appearing before the "stop threatening bloggers!" movement has lost momentum. Lucky us to have such a well-written piece contributed to the cause within a convenient timeframe.

She and Kathy Sierra, as far as I can tell, have very different real-world memories and have had very different real-world lives. Reading about BB's background will make you not at all surprised to see that she, as she put it, "believed the [snapping] dog."

Read both posts to see that both she and Kathy Sierra were reasonable when they believed that:

the words from these violent, misogynist men are ... the words of rapists, molesters and abusers. They are men who have not yet been caught for their crimes, but filth and hatred of the type they spewed with their threats of slitting me up one side and down the other, do not come from the hands of people who are otherwise non-violent.

Perhaps that connection can help you convince friends, family, and other unaligned people who use the internet to come down harder than they ever imagined important on people they see harrassing other internet users violently and/or in sexualized manners. Because maybe, just maybe, since online life is still communication, scorning them everywhere they turn will convince more of them than would otherwise have been convinced that what they're doing both online and in real life is wrong.

It's worth a try--don't you think? Especially after reading these links?

Colin Peterson

I can't find a link, but Colin Peterson, the representative from western MN who's in charge of the US House agricultural committee (and thus in charge of the once-every-5-years Farm Bill this year) just called "free trade" "so-called free trade" on the radio this morning!

Last I heard (at a "ONE" anti-poverty activist/lobbyist training session), Peterson couldn't care less about changing economic status quos.

But that was a month ago. Today he was pissed off that trade agreements trump all other laws (like substances allowed to be used in food manufacture--including...get this...banned chemicals...so we're talking environmental effects, too, not just melamine).

Plus, maybe he'll be open to Farm Bill ideas from ONE that he previously couldn't care less about.

Links to come once I find out more and get back from a meeting.

Man oh man. If we roll back trade-over-all-other-laws, maybe Europe will, too...and they'll be able to avoid importing palm oil from new plantations being built on top of rainforests that're being cut down specifically to supply the EU with the cheapest biodiesel in the world.


YESSS!

The 37th Carnival of Feminists

There are about 10 more submissions in my inbox that I haven't read yet, and I have a Firefox-vs-IE check to do, so come back later tonight for updates. I will also compile a list of links to carnivals of interest to feminists (it's grown!)

Update: I'll take this project on later today. My internet access was out all last night.

The 38th Carnival of Feminists will be at Team Rainbow on May 16.
Happy reading!
-Katie

Activist efforts & results of activism

• Two participants on an A-list blog set up a Paypal account, asked for money, and reached about half the amount of money needed to sustain a Native American women's center on the brink of closure. Meanwhile, the amount of money raised was enough for the shelter to house a runaway woman this weekend instead of just taking her call and talking to her


• Kat Ricker at The Mighty Mix" followed up on Lisa Kuronya, a boxer who challenged gender discrimination in stipends given to high-level amateur boxers for tournaments. She won! Kuronya & other top-level female boxers will get the same quality of travel arranagements at the same personal cost as male boxers.


• Ms. Jared at Sinister Girl on a Walk Against Rape in San Francisco.


• Vox at Vox ex machina made some very good points about the propriety of how politicians are reacting to demands by comfort women and linked to a petition & a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives


• Sylvia at The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum offered advice for living your life in a way that better supports people who feel threatened by sexual violence. The final words of comment #4 are great.


• Blackamazon at Having Read the Fine Print enumerated ways we can pay a heck of a lot more attention to people who are affected by sexism and racism.


• Kristy at kblog and her partner/roomie "Mr. T" aren't happy with movie offerings and presentation:

  "Yes I know that while white males hold plenty of privilege they also may have lots of problems. I'm just sick of watching stories based on their lives, told by them. ... It's easier to fix the white issue, unfortunately there is no section for female movies. Maybe the video store could implement a very small shelf just made up of movies told by female characters.

  
  Since the video store hasn't done that, yet, Kristy decided to make a virtual "dedicated shelf."


• I'd recommend e-mailing at least the librarians at the Bentonville Public Libraries, and perhaps e-mailing the Mayor & City Councilmembers, in detailing why you think it's proper to have a lesbian sex manual that received a raving review and the assessment "For all public libraries" from Library Journal. Why? There's a man who's already gotten the book at least temporarily pulled from the shelves and also wants the library director fired.
  
  
  Personally, I stayed away from the "free speech" and "multiple perspectives" angle, as that doesn't go away with people who think multiple perspectives lead to people committing atrocious, immoral acts against one another. I played to that very fear and wrote about the atrocious, immoral acts teenage boys have been committing--like cell-phone-filmed gang rapes--lately as their exposure to [increasingly violent in the mainstream] porn has been less and less counterbalanced by any exposure to details about consensual, non-hurtful sex.
  
  But feel free to take your own approach.
• It's great that Ms. Nakashima put sexualized threats against internet opinion-holders on the front page of the WaPo, but bloggers weren't willing to take any chances! Take Back the Blog was a blogswarm (that means that everyone blogs about one subject and tells the host page that they did so --ed.) against threats--especially sexualized ones--against people--especially people belonging to non-dominant social groups--who express their opinions online.

People being good

• Ellen Nakashima wrote an article full of strong, certain, non-wishy-washy words about women getting sexualized threats online simply for existing, and it seems the Washington Post published it on the front page! Good. (Thanks to Feminist Law Profs for the tip-off.


• The Daily Kos is starting to direct its liberally-minded attention towards women's issues.
  In the last three weeks, in addition to posts directly related to the Supreme Court's decision, at least 3 feminist user diaries stayed on the "Most Recommended Diaries" list all day (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), at least 2 or 3 well-discussed feminist articles appeared on the front page (1, 2), and several interesting feminist user diaries were featured near the tip-top, most attention-getting spot in "diary rescue" articles on the front page (1, 2).
  Also, Kos himself is taking paternity leave (except for an article or two a week) from the Daily Kos--and in my mind, that's a significant pro-feminist action.
  
  
  I recognize that the site still has a long way to go--Kos did write that horrendous "It's not as if those cowards will actually act on their threats" article, and as Pam Spaulding and Tinfoil Hattie pointed out, Pandagon was the only "major lefty blog" to shine a spotlight on Akon's apparent sexual assault of a woman onstage (and I kind of wonder myself if a user diary on that subject would've made it into the "most recommended diaries" list, even during this increasingly feminist time on the Daily Kos).
  
  Nevertheless, I thought it was worth taking some time to point out positive changes!

People being bad

• Blackamazon at Having Read the Fine Print enumerated the sins of dominant members of society and the sins of members of the media in "Hip-Hop Didn't Do That Shit"


• M. Dot at Model Minority might have written the most concise summary of what has people calling what Akon did on stage to a woman "sexual assault," generally in feminist circles, and "wrong," generally in the general public. (By the way, I like the suggestion in Pandagon's comments to edit his Wikipedia entry. Just please do be analytical in your writing and reasonable about your sources--you wouldn't want to see links to opinion blogs as the only sources for an opinion about birth control, would you? --ed.)


• Fire Fly at She Who Stumbles May Not Fall pointed out in the "Stage" part of The Sex Of Street And Stage that determining the offensiveness of Richard Gere's actions upon Shilpa Shetty by the degree of sexual contact means founding one's argument on the following statement: "Male agency defines and constitutes what is sexual, while women’s agency is a non-issue." Read the post for more well-written points!


• Rev. Sequoyah Kofi-Ade at Intelligentaindigena wrote about the past and present of relationships between non-native-Americans and native Americans in light of the sexual assault study that recently gained publicity. The photo he accompanied it with is heart-wrenching.


• Fuck you, people Minneapolis & St. Paul, MN, USA, for getting your asses out of your chairs to rally in support of only one side in a rape case. Fuck you. (More specifically, the side that the good historical assessments show has a higher probability of being the one not telling the truth. Though I do allow for some temperance of that by ideas like Sailorman's on consent understanding types and on "moral rape" and "criminal rape" (like "kill" versus "murder")--but not enough to completely flip the probability!) (Thanks, Yolanda Carrington.)


• *headsmack* Following gang-rape-glorifying model shoots and then DV-glorifying model shoots, let's publicize racism-glorifying model shoots, everybody!


• Madeleine Begun Kane penned a song parody to criticize the First Lady for arrogantly uttering extremely hurtful words.

Gender essentialism

• Samhita at Feministing posted a video of a boy dancing in a way traditionally reserved for women in American pop culture. Samhita wrote:

  Why can't I dance like that? Clearly, Beyonce is NOT just a role model for little girls.



• Carol Holder at Can't Holder Tongue asked what kinds of highly influential and powerful women we should cross our fingers the hardest to get to see at this moment in time: women whom society entrusts with power because they display "inherently feminine" qualities or women whom society entrusts with power because they display long-valued qualities that society previously didn't believe women were capable of possessing?


• Sticking overall to "femininity" might be a wonderful thing for a person to do--just check out the feminist speculation about Segolene Royal!
  But here's a trait currently belonging to "femininity" that I think "feminine" could do without from now on: body hatred (yes, even the jokes we make to show we're reasonably humble--find another subject to demonstrate humility with, please!). Read more about women's relationships with their bodies in Figure's interview of Dr. Suzie Orbach.


• At Diary of a Goldfish, Goldfish wrote a fabulous "sex and gender" post with references to what biology knows and conjectures about what people should do.


• I'm not sure which I like better about Padma's post at Pass the Roti On the Left Hand Side: hilighting the crazy idea that a menstruating woman is anything but "fit" (on account of her menstruating status, that is) or speculating that some people think of being a good office worker as impossible for anyone who has a reminder of his/her existence as an animal.


• Avtor Lina na at Uncool pointed out a lot of evidence that Western society is not "post-feminist" (or, as she said, "feminized." Don't confuse that with "made more feminine.")


• Sparklematrix guessed that Female Sexual Arousal Disorder is "disease mongering."


• Michelle from Mutant Cat was not too happy about an American abstinence-only educational program's description of men's vs. women's reactions to sexual stimuli.


• Ann Bartow / Dundee at Feminist Law Profs found a series of public service announcements that assumes online sexual exploitation only happens to girls and women.


• Pinko Feminist Hellcat decided that if so many people in her society were going to explain the origins of sexual violence with gender essentialist theories about sexual desire and consent, then she'd better propose a plan to reduce sexual violence based on their theories.


• m. at Sthreeling brought attention to sexism in a mainstream Indian magazine's article art.


• Andrea Tekanji at Shrub wrote a post on game design that I think is best summed up by its first subheading: "If it's not about making 'ugly' avatars, then what is it about?" She also offered companies advice about transitioning.


• Satire video "The World Series of Uno" is a nice example of filming women/girls/men/boys in ways that don't essentialize by gender.


• Veronica at The Red Thread wrote about princess toys and princess gear marketed at girls.
  Editor's note: If you'd like a primer about feminism in children's toys and gear, browse through the archives of Packaging Girlhood and Girl Wonder.


• Note: This post is on racial essentialism, not gender essentialism. --ed. N.K. Jemisin guest blogged at The Angry Black Woman about the lack of racial diversity in science fiction.


• Lisa Fortuner at Newsarama insisted, "Nobody who wants to see real diversity in any medium wants to support censorship," because apparently it's crucial to convince comic book fans that contentions about representation of social groups and contentions about social issues are not discussions they should keep drowning out with worried posts about censorship.
  ("Contentions:" "analyze, criticize, complain, demand, and generally make a pest of myself," according to Lisa! :-) -ed.)

Economics

• John Finney at Growth is Madness (which I believe focuses on both economic and population growth--ed.) drew attention to and commented on Katha Pollitt's feminist post about population growth on Alternet's EnviroHealth.
  Finney liked Pollitt's piece because she seemed to keep "women's issues" and "population growth issues" separate in her analysis even as she pointed out the ways they can both hurt the same people.
  The article itself covers Europe's population growth-encouraging policies (many of which make feminists proud) and questions whether those very policies, by causing population growth, are going to hurt women in the end.


• Jeremy Adam Smith at Daddy Dialectic saw a little bit of gender essentialism and a lot of classism in an article Linda Hirshman wrote (and mentioned him in) about staying at home vs. working outside the home.

Highly reported news

• The Supreme Court & the ban on Dilate & Extract abortions
  • Veronica at The Red Thread described her feelings about saving her life via late-term abortion before, while, and after pregnancy and expressed what she thinks the ruling says the 5 judges think of doctors and of women.
  
  
  • KC at Bligbi related a personal story (that even involves a physician denying birth control to a woman too poor to shop around and get it by any means) as a refutation of bans on Dilate & Extract abortions.
  
  
  • DBB at Disgusted Beyond Belief wrote about his wife's health-related abortion (fortunately, it was legal for him to choose to abort before "or she'll die!" was 100% certain). He attracted some controversial commenters--one in particular tried to explain why he definitely valued the life of his potential kids more than the life of his wife.


• Duke
  • Marcella Chester at abyss2hope wrote about many subjects in "Why I'm Not Eating Crow Over the Duke Case". Highlights:
    
    
    
    1. Legal philosophy that, because an assumption != evidence, assuming that alleged rape victims' claims are truthful does not undermine alleged rapists' "innocent until proven guilty" status in a court of law.
    
    
    2. "Allowing this 'she was just a 'ho' argument to stand unchallenged is the same as giving rapists a list of who can be raped without fear of prosecution."
    
    
    3. Comments on theories that the accusations were a hoax
  
  
  • John Palmer at LongHairedWeirdo mused that perhaps actions of several lacrosse players gave Ms. Magnum an overwhelmingly realistic flashback to a previous sexual assault. He speculated:

    She left behind her handbag, with a good chunk of money in it.
    
    Tell me that she was treated respectfully and in a non-frightening manner, but she bolted without her money, and it just doesn't compute.
    ...
    it seems impossible to believe that she wasn't frightened by something.
    ...
    People who think she was seeking revenge for something said or done to her, remember this: she didn't go out and make those accusations. The police were called because of her condition (seeming to be drunk), and it was only after the officer hassled her a bit (the report I found said he used a hold that would be painful if she didn't move as he directed) that she broke out of her shell and said she'd been raped.
    
    This, to me, does not sound like a person trying to get revenge and making up lies. It sounds exactly like a traumatized person coming out of a daze, and reporting what she believed happened.
    ...
    A flashback can seem real, as if it's happening right now.
    ...
    later that night, she then reported to the police what she remembered, as best as she could.
    
    Let me say that again and emphasize it: as best as she could.
    
    It is not a "lie" or a "false accusation" or "revenge" if, having been traumatized once, she was scared, and had a flashback, and couldn't keep the two events separate in her mind. It is the responsibility of the authorities, the police and the prosecutors, to investigate the accusations. Crime victims often misremember the details of what, exactly happened.
    ...
    I'm not going to excuse DA Nifong for what he did, but I will suggest that his motives - not his actions, but his motives - were better than most people believe.



• Other
  • Cynical at Cynical Anti-Orientalist wrote about Seung-Hui Cho's "in between" status due to the age at which he immigrated to the United States and enumerated some social structures we could tweak to better accomodate people who immigrate at that age.
  
  
  • Ariel Wetzel at Shrub wrote about institutionalized violence (a close topic to "state violence").
  
  
  • Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon wrote an essay that, especially towards its end, lists and conjectures a lot of personal situations that make good examples for mentioning in pro-choice arguments.

Porn, "Sex-Positive," "Anti-Porn," and related topics

• Silver, a commenter on Gizmodo, tried to show her principles about objectification and about violence with her feet by leaving a site and explaining why--unfortunately, people made fun of her on both counts. In response to the former, she got the usual run of "But don't you like objectification? I do!" replies from both men (TheBugMan) and women (Demial). *sigh* I'm trying to decide whether or not I'll refer them to jlg1's Objectified != Idealized and Annalee Newitz's Wired Discovers Feminism, Puts Naked Man On Cover.


• Kactus at Super Babymama asked about sex positivity for the nonsexual being (or the person who's not as sexual as she used to be).


• Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town renamed "sex-positive feminism" "individualist fluffy feminism" and gave reasons she wishes people wouldn't embrace it so often.
  
  
  • Comments 2-4 on Lauredhel's post are interesting, and the opening sentences of Shannon's response to Lauredhel's post at Egotistical Whining seem to do what tigtog begs for feminists to spend more time on in Comment #2 on Lauredhel's post.


• Belledame222 at Fetch Me My Axe wrote her first full essay on porn.


• Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy reponded to a reader question about porn, and I was intrigued by this quote:

  ...anything called "porn"...exists only to enthrobulate the fetishization of culturally-generated (and, frankly, comically hokey) constructs. It is readily apparent to the visitor from the planet Obstreperon that these constructs include arbitrary standards of [long list: read the post--ed.]--and that they have, at their root, everything to do with a paradigm of dominance and nothing to do with actual sex between individuals with equivalent personal sovereignty.

  
  What do you think? Does Twisty's list of inclusions in culturally-generated constructs have anything to do with actual sex between individuals with equivalent persnoal sovereignity? Does her list have everything to do with a paradigm of dominance or only "somewhat of something to do" with it?

Miscellaneous

• The Angry Black Woman surveyed her female readers of color to ask if race or gender had given them more difficulty in life. For TABW, it was gender. For many commenters, it was race.


• Edith Yeung pondered whether the idea that someone can "complete" another person is a good one for people to have.
  
  I would say that whether it can be true for someone or not depends on the person, and that we should encourage people--in a Heinleinian way--to think that 0-10+ other people might "complete" a person! You never know what you'll grow up to be!
  But then she threw me a curveball--what if someone who is a "completer" feels self-completed yet wants to be in a relationship with the person they allegedly complete? As Edith put it: "Can’t you imagine Jerry’s girlfriend responding with 'That's great Jerry, but I complete me. Would you be okay with that?'"


• Andrea Tekanji of Shrub explained why she thinks it's a good idea to call our ideas "feminism" rather than "humanism" or "anti-sexism."


• Academic Pointillism's author wrote an academic-style essay about poor treatment of members of certain social groups and looked into possible membership demographics on Digg.


• Tze Ming Mok at Yellow Peril shared her experiences with online harrassment.


• Pinko Feminist Hellcat was not happy that women are looked upon harshly if they wear either too little or too much to the swimming pool.


• Piny of Feministe cross-posted one sexual assault survivor's account of why she didn't tell, and comments with other readers' accounts of what happened and why they didn't tell started flooding in. It's powerful.


• BetaCandy at The Hathor Legacy's feminism subsection explained why sexual assault is different from other kinds of assault.


• Dora of Shrub posted a series of reflections on her academic readings for a college course called Women and Violence.


• Xyzskybabe reposted a review of Andrea Dworkin's Woman Hating.


• Lauren at Faux Real criticized Linda Hirshman, saying Hirshman preaches to women she constantly disparages.


• Heidi at The Wood Vale Diaries ran calculations on childcare costs in the UK.


• Sandra at Here in Korea lost most of her creative impulse after childhood, but she is thoroughly enjoying watching her daughter display the same zeal she once did.


• If someone you know is a gamer and identifies as a girl or woman, send her Cerise Gaming Magazine For Women. It's new. (Oh, and of course think about getting her a subscription to Shameless and cluing her in to the blogs, where people older than the magazine's target audience seem to congregate and converse in the comments section.)


• ChasingMoksha at hah! warned the blogosphere that a "Stop Violence Against Women" blog sticker is an ad-driven hoax.


• Frank Deford's rant about Title IX on National Public Radio started out like most offensive Title IX rants do, but in the middle he said, "Of course, we can't blame young women for..." and ended with proposals that, while some people might discount them as absurd, feminists have to admit are delightfully free of gendered punishments for people who didn't do anything wrong!


• I almost didn't include this, because by the end of the day the event was referred to a counter-terrorism force. However, I do need to hilight this quote to give fellow Christians the same kind of perspective it gave me:

  You can bet that people won’t be getting dirty looks for wearing crosses or crucifixes, or for having fish symbols on their car, or saying “God bless you” when someone sneezes. Tomorrow, there won’t be any reports of a group of priests being arrested for praying in an airport.

  
  What a difference a majority can (but doesn't have to) make. :-(

Abortion & Congress

Skimming a progressive group blog, I read a post titled: "Why Democrats Need to Stop Relying on the Judiciary: Abortion and the Supreme Court."

I didn't read it, but I presume it suggests taking the fight to the legislature.


I'm against that for the 110th & 111th congresses.


It's hard for me to say it, because abortion decisionmaking was one of the first "this is an area appropriate for a 'small government' policy" beliefs I settled into as a kid/teen.

It's also hard to say it because we're talking about lives here. People will end up wheelchair-bound in nursing homes instead of at home raising their other kids because they were forced to have a C-section late-term abortion (very dangerous) instead of a dialate & extract abortion (not nearly as dangerous).

What's more, it's "those people"--the ones I barely know--the ones outside my class--who won't be able to fly to Timbuktu, Canada and get the procedure done. It's rather unconscionable for me to say, "Let's not focus on those policies for now!" when my judgment might be clouded by ethnocentrism and blindness to other social groups.


Nevertheless, I see two scenarios, both addressing the issue of lives:

1. We spend a whole lot of legislative floor & committee time talking about sex legislation & get just rules passed.
   
   However, the rest of the time goes to "business as usual," which is all sorts of deals for huge businesses and unenvironmental / unjust trade.
   
   10 years later, everything is the same as it was in the 80's and early 90's, and people, not having really seen drastic results from a new world, hold their same views and bring the sex legislation debates right back where they are now.



2. We spend a whole lot of legislative floor & committee time talking about
   • getting rid of (or at least capping at low levels!) agribusiness subsidies,
   • passing laws that say Monsanto can't sue & destroy small organic farmers for accidentally growing genetically modified corn that they didn't want in the first place (it blew into their fields),
   • introducing major green taxes and social cost internalization incentives (maybe we'll finally get electric cars back from the big companies! Or, at the very least, we'll stop having year-round peaches everywhere in the country),
   • reducing the military budget, increasing police, nature maintenance staff & supplies, education, quality-instead-of-shitty psychiatric care, etc. budgets tenfold (or something...at least double!),
   • rolling back super-wealthy-person tax cuts,
   • taking David Smith's advice on affordable housing policy at a federal level,
   • increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit program,
   • and even considering new tax schemes (I haven't made up my mind on "Fair Taxes" yet)
   and get many or all of these just reforms passed.
   
   However, the rest of the time goes to "business as usual," which is all sorts of deals for huge businesses and unenvironmental / unjust trade.
   
   This time, though, the legislation we passed directly limits and goes against "business as usual" and cripples its ability to happen in the future. Plus, we'll be doing something unprecedented, so there won't be nearly as much prejudice against it among the common person, and it the changes will actually have a chance to do something. Imagine Pres. Johnson's "Great Society" reforms without the riots over them not really doing much1 (because this time, the reforms make more sense). This national legislative focus has a much better chance to turn people into progressives and make them demand a different kind of "usual" for "business as usual" than a sex-based national legislative focus.
   
   Heck, once that happens, they might even demand progressive sex legislation.
   
   But I'm utterly convinced that progressive sex legislation isn't going to change people's worlds enough to make them demand progressive economic legislation.

Footnotes:
1 I don't quite agree with that explanation of the riots, but I've heard it said a lot, so it seemed quoteable.

Carnival of Feminists

The 36th Carnival of Feminists is online at Fetch Me My Axe, the blog of a thoughtful, intelligent woman whose posts I always enjoy reading: Belledame222!

The 37th Carnival of Feminists will be here on May 2!

There is no theme yet, but check back for an announcement.




Please use the blog carnival submission form. However, if you're loathe to use it, I will also accept submissions at kitkatscritique _ at _ g m a i l _dot_ com

I look forward to meeting and reading you at blogs I know and blogs I don't.

Tweaking The "Coolest" Of Cultural Influences To Be Less Hurtful

This morning I had the opportunity to talk to a man who--bless his heart--repeatedly pushed the idea that powerful executives behind the hiring of misogynist rappers (whom misogynist non-rappers use as an excuse for putting their misogyny into identical words) are the people we need to focus on, rather than on those misogynist rappers (because that hasn't done all that much good).1

My new hero, Eric Deggans (the man on the radio show I called into) named names at the top of corporations, which I'll list here as soon as a copy of the broadcast goes online. I haven't heard Bill Cosby or Jesse Jackson name corporate names like that.

So, well, if they won't, and if the mass media won't (because, thanks to consolidation, they get their paychecks from the same bosses), let's get a grassroots effort to boot out the hurtful-mouthed musicians in favor of more airplay & album production for non-hurtful-mouthed musicians.

Readers of blogs and traditional media succeeded at it when it came to giving the Imus show the boot (though they may have failed when it came to giving Bernard McGuirk's career the boot)--do feminists and feminist allies have the will to get such an effort going against the advertisers for corporations that hire hurtful-mouthed musicians of popular genres?

(By the way, one advantage to media consolidation is that we can focus on many musical genres and many insulted non-dominant social groups at once--note that I've shifted from "misogynist rappers"2 to "hurtful-mouthed [popular] musicians"3

Oh, and if this does get momentum in the feminist community, and thus the "hurtful" thing most frequently being targeted in the letter-writing & boycotting campaign is misogyny, we do need to make sure that when we target it in non-white music, we let non-white people decide what is hurtful & what isn't.

For example, It wouldn't be fair to get black rappers who say hurtful things about white women kicked off the air because we don't want that kind of hurtful stuff said about women (a non-dominant group) in our culture's most popular/influential music. After all, they might've been saying it because white women are white (a dominant group), and who are white people to decide whether or not the insult was justified?

In the case of fighting misogyny by black rappers, it'd be important to make sure that black women feel hurt by that rapper before taking any action against his bosses and his bosses' advertisers.

I'll wait patiently to see if I can get this into a carnival--hopefully then discussion of the idea will find some momentum. Feel free to comment whenever you find this.5


Footnotes:
1 After all, advertisers don't pay the musicians directly--they pay the corporations, and then the corporations decide who get contracts & who don't. So Bill Cosby, Jesse Jackson...nice try, but not doing as much as you could.

2 Because that's what Don Imus started with, and therefore the musical genre and the insulted non-dominant social group everyone's talking about

3 That is, insulting their own races & other races, etc. as well as women

4 After all, some rappers who get a lot of airplay & albums have been criticized for hurting a lot more groups than women.

And I don't want to imply to music executives that there's something innate about rap & hip hop that cause it to include hurtful stuff. Heaven forbid they use that as an excuse to ditch all non-white music--particularly the harshly critical stuff that nevertheless isn't hurtful to non-dominant social groups!

I do, however, think that "popular" is an important criterion for genres to target because high perceived "coolness" allows such music to influence the slang of and provide "excused" vocabulary for non-[genre]-performing parts of the population.

5 Whoops! Looks like Pam Spaulding beat me to the call, and I'm guilty of some "Somebody oughtta-ing" when, as Hugo Schwyzer puts it, "plenty of things are already being done."

Still, there's a lot of momentum among people of many classes & races right now--people ready to write more letters after feeling a "win" with MSNBC's advertisers--can we somehow tie what people are already doing to widespread letter-writing & boycotting strategies?

News Update (Good News!)

1. A few weeks ago, I wrote how troublesome it was that boys had been raped in prisons and officials got to keep their jobs despite not doing anything about it even though lower departments had worked their asses off to get evidence together. Well, at least one of those officials has resigned and the investigation is now underway.

2. A man who pushes women he chooses as targets for the night to drink, drink, hey, have another drink! and then invites these women who can no longer think, "Hey, maybe a publicly filmed movie isn't likely to be filmed in the crew trailer--I don't think I'll take him up on that," to the crew trailer on the premise that they'll be in the movie and rapes them once they're there is in jail. Not for what he's done to these women, unfortunately, but they stopped Al Capone by getting him on tax fraud.

Liberal Dood

Psssst--U.S. femisphere--the founder of Daily Kos is taking paternity leave for his newborn & toddler.

I know he gets a lot of flack for running a site that underrepresents issues that, if not ignored anymore, could improve life a lot for women in this country, but I thought it's worth complimenting him for setting an example to other men with this act.

Abstinence-Only Education Funding For People Who're Already Abstinent Till Marriage?!

This is terrible!

The biggest chunk of our third-world AIDS prevention money (about 1/3, it seems) goes to abstinence education programs.

Okay, kinda sorta debatably a good thing or a bad thing when it comes to domestic AIDS prevention money.


But in the third world, at least as far as one gender is concerned, 80% of the new AIDS cases already are practicing abstinence till marriage and remaining monogamous within that marriage!

For many women, marriage is a risk factor for AIDS because of their husbands' dangerous behavior. Worldwide, 80 percent of women newly infected with HIV are practicing monogamy within a marriage or a long-term relationship. This shatters the myth that marriage is a natural refuge from AIDS. And it shows that, more than two decades into the epidemic, our fight against AIDS has failed to address the unique circumstances of women—especially women in the developing world.

So here's how the biggest chunk of our AIDS prevention funding is being spent:

"Lady, would you like to not get AIDS?"

"Yes, please!"

"Okay. Don't have sex till you're married, and when you're married, have sex only with your husband."

"But I already do that. And 16 out of my 20 friends who got AIDS last year were doing that, too."

"Impossible. Anyway, do you want to avoid getting AIDS or not?"

"Yes!"

"Then don't have sex till you're married, and when you're married, have sex only with your husband."

"But what about my high chances of that not working? What else can I do?"

"Nothing. Or, well, I'm not allowed to tell you about anything else."

"Are you kidding?"

"Nope."

I think it's very important to write all our Congressmen, perhaps including this little dialogue I just made up just to make sure they can't miss our point and think we're advocating a change because of ideology rather than logic, and ask them to change the allocation of international AIDS funds back to something more condom-oriented and drastically less abstinence-and-monogamy-oriented.

I'm pretty guilty of some harm where the game is closer to zero-sum

*sigh*

Amanda Marcotte's post about the "laziness gets overlooked and you get praised for the few non-lazy things you do" short-term benefits of being a sexist (as a reminder that Mr. Shakes of Shakesville should have said that applying feminist ideas benefits men in the long-term after making some pretty "bleh!" short-term sacrifices) reminds me of myself.

When minor grumbling over the male incontributions [to wedding set-up] threatened, we women were reminded that we "didn’t want" men to help decorate, the implied fucking-it-up-to-get-out-of-work barely implied at all.

That quote about messing things up to gain a reputation that gets you out of doing them reminds me of all the work I've put the poor hard workers in my family through.

I have got to get better about this. I have got to stop being so lazy around people who will ignore my laziness and just praise me for other things.

Surely there's something better on the other side if I do, right? Something like this?

I tried to imagine what it must feel like to be a man in these circumstances and to have women fawning over you for the simple task of not being a giant asshole, and I imagine it’s extremely gratifying. I find it’s hard to really imagine what it’s like to have that much ego-pumping, and on a regular basis, too. Which isn’t to say that all men have it—the feminist men in my life don’t and a lot of men I know besides get embarrassed at being fawned over. But they give up the fawning in order to behave with more justice in their lives. Also, in a very pragmatic way, they work more. Grooms I know here at home that have big weddings don’t have the pleasure of doing absolutely nothing but showing up and expecting to be congratulated for it. They have to work on it, and that takes time and effort, and is another price they pay.

...

[there're] enormous benefits ... My boyfriend knows, for instance, that he’s never going to show up one day and find that I’ve left suddenly, unable to take being treated like a servant anymore. ... a real opportunity for genuine intimacy with a [person] that’s only available to [pairs] where both people are equal.

The last post shares my small reform successes with the rest of the world, hoping they'll be motivational. This post shares my small reform failures with the rest of the world. :-(

Click here for the geeky afterthought.

I think there is an outside privilege system that supports my lazy will, even though it doesn't cause it:

I think there's a certain upper-middle and upper-class and suburban-affluent tendency to ignore kids' laziness as long as they're doing other praiseworthy things like making good grades or keeping a great behavior record in school.

Zero-Sum Games

I took the title from Zuzu at Feministe because I liked it.

Mr. Shakes of Shakesville wrote:

Instead of feeling threatened by or put upon by [various civil rights] movements, instead of feeling they somehow denigrate straight, white men’s lives or their ability to be who they are, men would apply these ideas in an effort to improve their own lives, along with everyone else’s. What we need to do is confer all the rights and privileges that these men have traditionally enjoyed upon everyone else, and then, once we’ve done that, we can start thinking about what new rights, obligations, responsibilities we can confer on everyone, in order to make our society a more egalitarian and fair place to live.

I'm not a man, but I am white and upper-middle-class, and I really like this quote because it makes me feel like I'm on the right path. I got an inkling of what I needed to do when I read Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting In The Cafeteria? and came up with particular implementation ideas through Ishmael, The End Of Poverty, the March 2004 issue of National Geographic, Code Of the Street, and many more sources.

Essentially, I understood particular combatable manifestations of privilege I have that have insulated me from feeling many of the negative effects of being a woman in my culture.

• I'm very white and of at least average conventional attractiveness, so I can pull off an "I'm a nice person!" face at college interviews, disciplinary sessions with teachers, job interviews, etc. very easily.


• I grew up in such a safe environment that pulling an "I'm a nice person!" face was always more likely to benefit me than to make me a target of violence. I got more practice at incorporating it into my subconscious, unaware facial expressions than did people my age in the ghetto.


• My parents made enough money at one job apiece to come home and spend time teaching me to read, do math, solve puzzles, and study for tests from a young age and throughout my childhood and teenage years.


• My conventionally successful parents (and grandparents on one side) passed on their interests in academics over makeup and geeky conversation over making out

Now, after hearing about the rights movements of people who aren't my color or social class or economic class, I better understand what I need to give up to, as Mr. Shakes put it, "confer all the rights and privileges that these [people] have traditionally enjoyed upon everyone else, and then, once we’ve done that, we can start thinking about what new rights, obligations, responsibilities we can confer on everyone."

It's important for me to:


• understand that food is going to take up 3-5x more of my budget (and perhaps my family budget someday) than it did in the family I grew up in. Internalizing previously external costs is the right thing to do.
  That way, someone else's costs to eat can come down to where mine are and we'll live fairly.


• give up huge amounts of free time and conveniences I used to have. After all, I'll have to save money to pay for that fairer food, and one of the more effecient ways to do that (because it also reduces another cost I currently shove onto other people--pollution) is to bike. But biking chips into free time.


• make a tough decision about whether to grab back my privileges--like free time bought by externalizing costs--if/when I have kids and want to be able to educate them as well as I was educated


• buy clothes used so they don't get dumped from Goodwill into Tanzanian markets and ruin 10,000 people's jobs at textile factories


• buy anything with metal in it used--especially if it probably comes from China--because new metal mining imposes huge costs on other people's quality of life


• use a good bit of free time that I would've used to learn to dance or used to earn a few more bucks writing reform-supporting letters to policymakers instead


• make sure, every time I get promoted or complimented at work, that there isn't someone lower-class or a minority or fiftysomething who deserved it more. Speak up if there was.
  (OUCH! Could lose me money that seems pretty darned essential at the time!)


• do much, much more--I could go on and on.

This isn't easy. I guess I want to say to men reading Mr. Shakes & Zuzu that I know how hard it is to adjust to new patterns--this winter I fell back into driving as soon as the weather got cold, even though the roads were clear. And I'm trying to make new habits as a childless youngster with a sturdy economic support system!



So I get it if one day you criticize a buddy for talking about his girlfriend as if he considers her inherently inferior to him and the next day you accept a promotion you suspect your female teammate deserved more.

No, it wasn't right to do that. It's never right to do wrong.

But it is human.

And I can tell you from experience that failures don't have to throw you back into old habits forever.

I can tell you from experience that continuing to hear & read why other people (in the case Shakes & Zuzu are advocating, women) need you to keep doing what you tried your best to do will keep you going if you let it.

(I suppose you could decide to make it get you mad at those other people for being so "needy" instead, but why? What moral good does it do? And, as Mr. Shakes points out, what practical good does it do?)

The internecine warfare that occurs between women and men, people of color and white people, straights and gays, as they all squabble like schoolchildren in an attempt to gain or deny rights, is exactly what those in power want. They promote it, they foment it, they do everything they can to aggravate it, because they know that if we were all ever to get our fucking shit together, and demand that the society we all live in and contribute to should be fair and decent to everyone, then the egregious wealth and power that they enjoy would finally meet its end.

I read theory about what I'm doing wrong in my treatment of other classes and what I could to do counteract the tide of wrongs against them to keep me going. Shakes & Zuzu suggest you read feminist theory, and I suggest that the reason you should is to keep you going.

Click to read one more fabulous quote that just didn't fit in anywhere else

Zuzu wrote:

Another example of [the attitude Mr. Shakes is encouraging men to abandon towards feminism and its tenets] is class anxiety, and the idea that if you get an education, you should be making more money than people who don’t have a degree.

...

A lot of people on New York One, a local cable news channel, demonstrated in man-on-the-street interviews that their resentment about how much the members of the TWU got in comparison with themselves was directed at the blue-collar transit workers, and not at, say, their own white-collar employers [who were the ones in charge of their salaries]. This is the kind of thing that keeps people from collective action, and keeps the people in power pulling the strings.

(all boldface & brackets mine)

Two terrible stories

Ohhhhh, these stories are heartbreaking.

1. A U.S. attorney
   • didn't prosecute men who sexually abused teenagers under their guard and who
   • let his employees say on behalf of his department that the department wasn't prosecuting because the teenagers didn't speak out against the very people guarding them at the time and therefore it couldn't have been sexual abuse & because the teenagers didn't get hurt enough for it to have possibly been sexual abuse
   and nevertheless wasn't fired by people higher up in our federal government.
   
   (The TX Atty. Gen. also refused to prosecute the case, as did the relevant department of the US Dept. of Justice. I don't know if their justifications for not prosecuting were quite as fire-worthy.)



2. Our federal government and various state governments haven't been prosecuting corrupt companies at the level we've come to expect them to. These two articles should've been about state or federal investigations and punitive actions years ago, not just coming out now.
   
   Based on my reading the past few months (and NPR reports on Sarbanes-Oxley repeal efforts), it seems the main reason for the rare and slow uncovering of these horrible business practices is that our federal government (and to a lesser extent certain state governments) has an overall policy of allowing more corruption than previously tolerated--in the belief that it'll be good for the economy overall.
   
   Anyway, that's the most forgiving way of looking at it. Of course, the least forgiving way of looking at it is to believe that the whole economic theory was a deliberate lie meant to convince people throughout the country and the federal government to give these policies a try, but that the developers and top-level proponents of the economic theory actually knew it would never help the United States population as a whole and that it would merely put wealth into the hands of their friends and the hands of people they could relate to by class & lifestyle. Tough call which it really is. Will I ever know?
   
   And, if it turns out that I'll never again be able to count on the government prosecuting this kind of corruption at the level it used to, what can I do to investigate on my own and make sure that my mom, who was going to start putting money into a long-term care policy, will actually be able to make claims on her policy when the time comes? Obviously, "Don't buy Conseco!" is one answer, but beyond that...what do we do?
   
   And after my mom comes me. How do I assure that if I need surgery, my health insurance provider won't suddenly say, "You lied by omitting the fact that you had a toothache in 1993! You had a previously existing condition you didn't tell us about! We're kicking you off and not covering your surgery!" like BCBS did to people in California?

Turned into a spy

Though they buried it on page A17 (perhaps appropriate, since it was an Op-Ed), the Washington Post did a great thing today by publishing an American citizen's account of being served a National Security Letter.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

Dang. I'd resent being made to mislead my clients, people close to me, etc. as a secret informer, too. Wow.

Ask your local newspapers to feature Egypt's big news

Egypt's about to get a government like the worst of the sub-Saharan African dictatorships.

Contested Presidential elections will be virtually impossible, since candidates must come from a licensed party with so much representation in all elected bodies that in practice only the NDP will ever get over the bar.

The opposition, from the MB to Kefaya, has been placed in an impossible position. Participating in the referendum will legitimize the results, particularly since nobody doubts for an instant that the regime will falsify the results if they go badly. The most extreme option, a collective resignation from Parliament, seems to have been taken off the table: even the MB seems to feel that this would be going too far, and that this would only please the government which would be able to replace the troublesome MB deputies with more accomodating deputies. That leaves only boycott, which will not in the end have much impact - as above, even if only 10% turn out and vote, the regime will happily claim 70%.

At the end of the day, there's only one opinion which Mubarak and the NDP really care about: the United States. The Constitutional crisis has not been front page news here, and even where it has been covered, the criticism has been tepid.

Call your local public radio station. Call national public radio stations. Write 60 Minutes. Call your local newspapers either asking their foreign bureau to work on it, since you want to read about it, or asking them to buy an AP or Reuters story on it. Heck, write Jon Stewart and see if he'll skewer Mubarak--maybe he can put a Scottish beret on a picture of him. Just drop a line saying you're curious about the situation and want to hear more.

Can't hurt. Takes 10 minutes. Might help.

Prisoners vs. Gays

Wow! Talk about accurate sizing up of people's probability of harming other people:

Given the number of criminals they're letting into the services these days just to fill recruiting quotas, I'm betting the average troop is a lot more concerned about sharing a foxhole with someone still suffering from a prison sex jones than being in close proximity to your average straight shooting queer.

Garrison Keillor vs. Dan Savage

I never listened to Prairie Home companion in all these years, even since I heard last year that it's going off the air within a year or so.

Until a couple of weeks ago. I've caught bits of it twice now, and I have to say that those descriptions of the cold were hilarious!

I sure wouldn't have had quite as good a weekend without them.

But not everyone who makes my world a better place sometimes makes it a better place all the time.

What a crock of baloney, Garrison Keillor. Even if you were trying to be tongue-in-cheek, did you have to do it so badly that it sounds like you're dead serious?
(And, though Dan Savage has apparently contributed to making my home state area a worse place by generalizing like a good classist that we don't need to bother to care about the cultural education levels of people in red states, these [ironically...culturally educational!] arguments make him someone who, today, is making my world a better place.)

Language & Words Anger

Arrrrgh. I hate stupid people.

I hate it when people misuse English and build entire points out of their misused words--
--points where the causation the speaker describes is logically impossible if the word is heard accurately.

Commenter on Fox News said:
...black folks...[doing] stuff like that's out of control...and it's...because--not all, not all, not all--but most of them lack moral characters. Look what they did in three days: they turned the dome into a ghetto.

I wanted to punch my monitor, because I was thinking, "You moron! Do you know what 'ghetto' means? It means, 'overcrowded place that people aren't allowed to live outside of.' Look it up in an encyclopedia: check out the very first ghetto (in Rome). Moron!"

I mean, for Pete's sake. "Ghetto" doesn't mean "violent hell."

Of course, overcrowding and not being allowed to live elsewhere usually cause violent hells, which is why ghettos are often violent hells.

However, it's not like black people had to come in with preexisting violence to turn the place into a violent hell--and it's certainly not like doing so would turn a place into a "ghetto." After all, again, a place can be a violent hell without being an overcrowded place you don't get to live outside of--that is, without being a "ghetto." No causation there.

Three days to earn the title "ghetto?"

More like the moment it got...hmmm...lemme think...oh! overcrowded!
(with any color of people)

How to escape that dumbass fashion advertisement scenario

Sometimes I really wish there were one central IMPACT-style self defense PHPBB forum where graduates and potential students all got together & gabbed.

There's a dumbass fashion ad that finally got pulled because, surprise, surprise, people were horrified that it looked like a gang rape!

Now that it's existed and we can't undo its existence, it sure would be fun to discuss with other Multiple Unarmed Assailants Class graduates how to get out of the scenario depicted in that ad (1 man to the side of her closed legs, pinning both arms (using one hand to pin each of her wrists to each side of her head); 4 accomplices not yet touching her (but 2 look like they might jump in any moment); and the woman, wearing high heels, seems to be in mid-motion--her butt is off the ground, so she's either not landed on the ground completely or has lifted it, perhaps as part of various motions to see if she can break free). Perhaps links to the discussion and musings of, "Do you really think it might work?" would catch on in Livejournals, the blogosphere, and even discussions over coffee!

We, bloggers and residents of the world, can never criticize or critique the ad enough to nullify its negative effect on people's minds. Doing that takes a positive new creation, too.

What a great way to help turn around the ill effects of that ad. Get viral tip-sharing going among women.

Eating local, part 2: helpful winter words

I have no idea if these will be what grows in your part of the country, but bookmark this post and keep checking back. As I find helpful words to punch into Google Images as you look for meal inspiration for January/February/March produce available in a part of North America where all the easy and common food stops growing, I'll update it:

Foods

• Spanish radish:


• Jerusalem artichoke:
       topinambour / topinambours


• Ginger:
       gingembre


• Celery root:


• Beet:
       betterave / betteraves


• Nut:
       noix


• Cream:
       crème / creme
       ("Cream" might be a type of soup, which almost makes it belong in the 2nd category, or it might be an ingredient in a particularly appetizing dish. Give the search a try even if you don't ever use heavy cream--you might see the dish and realize you can make the same thing with milk or melted cheese.)

References to preparation

• Gratin:
       gratin


• Cold dish; salad:
       salade
       (Warning: "salade" also means lettuce, which you won't find at this time of year, so do pair it with the type of food you're looking for or be prepared to see a lot of mouth-watering recipes you can't make!)

If you find a recipe that online translators and friends just can't help you figure out, leave me a comment and I'll be glad to help.

Eating local

If you're in the north midwestern United States or in Canada (I presume) and you're struggling to eat locally this time of year, it's helpful to know some French.

I don't know what to do with "Spanish radishes" that feel nothing like radishes and "Jerusalem artichokes" that look more like ginger than artichokes. But that's what the Minnesota co-ops are offering from local farms!

I'd all but given up on eating fresh food like a good seasonal shopper any time before late April--last night I hunkered down with greens out of a can, spaghetti out of a box, and tofu out of a box all mixed together. If I can't do local food that has to be prepared before tasting good, well, at least I can do long-shelf-life ingredients that have to be prepared before tasting good. After all, an addiction to 5-minute prep time kept me from preparing as much local food last summer as I would've liked.


But, looking up "jerusalem artichoke" after reading an article that indicated celery root, another one of those co-op mystery items, could be used as a main ingredient (puréed), I stumbled upon a picture labeled "topinambours."


That changed everything! The word in French isn't of the form, "place that isn't here" + "vegetable we do eat here," so the chances of Frenchies considering this vegetable something as normal as we consider cauliflower seemed high!

(I'm also convinced that we're more intrigued by the flavor of lime than they are because we have a distinct word for it--they call it a "green lemon," and I swear they flavor things with an attitude of, "lemon or lime...doesn't matter" more than we do.)

Sure enough, a Google Images search on "topinambours" turned up Jerusalem artichokes cooked in cream, Jerusalem artichokes shredded up & made into cake, Jerusalem artichokes cooked and cooled and covered in mustard dressing as a form of salad...

Just look at those lovely pictures. They're so messy...so obviously homemade with ease!



I mean, there's just something about "[rare vegetable name] salad" that makes people around me think of using [rare vegetable name] as a garnish on a salad of lettuce rather than using it as the only ingredient of substance. Much as we think of "tomato salad" or "carrot salad" as cold dishes consisting of tomatoes or carrots, the French think of "topinambour salad" as a cold dish consisting of Jerusalem artichokes.



I've experienced this, "Wow, it's nice to know the word for the food [or way of preparing food] in two languages" phenomenon before. I'm sure it holds true throughout more languages, but unfortunately, I don't know any besides French. How much more simple could the "weird local vegetables" seem to me if I knew the words for them in Wolof or Tibetan?