Ok, I may use profanity every once in a while but I usually do not get really angry.
I should have known better than click on that link that Lambert posted (I won’t reproduce it here). And I definitely should have known better than read the comments.
It started with the usual stuff that makes Lambert’s title so right on target: If you don’t support Obama, go f– yourself or any variation of that theme, traitors, etc.
And then I read this and I thought I was going to lose it. Like my title says, I’m still trembling with rage:
“At the end of WWII, all the French whores who serviced the Germans were rounded up. Their heads were shaved, and they were tarred and feathered.
At the end of a war, the victorious side settles its debts. If you helped, you get a reward. If you did not help, you are in serious trouble.
Posted by dataguy”
“I like the shaven head and tar and feathering idea for Clintonistas!!
Posted by Mandy”
And then happily moving on the claiming an absence of misogyny.
Maybe it’s because I’m French and my grandparents were members of the resistance and AGAINST the head shaving disgrace. Most of the shaving was done by former collaborators who suddenly had turned resistant zealots when they felt the way the wind was blowing. But I guess ignorance of history is no problem.
I never thought I’d say this: I hate these people.
Charles: feel free to delete if you don’t think it’s appropriate.
“The Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood (SCMC), a government body, has drawn up a national action plan to end the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in Yemen.
As a first step, the plan - the first of its kind in Yemen - aims to reduce FGM/C prevalence by 30 percent by 2012.
The plan has yet to be presented to Cabinet for approval, but was discussed at a workshop on 24 June, with the 65 participants representing UN agencies, the government, donors and civil society.
According to a new, unpublished, study on FGM/C presented at the workshop, FGM/C is practised in five of Yemen’s 21 governorates, with prevalence rates of 97.3 percent in al-Hudeidah Governorate; 97.3 percent in Hadhramaut; 96.5 percent in al-Mahrah; 82.2 percent in Aden; and 45.5 percent in Sanaa.”
An hour ago, the din of the dyke march could be heard roaring through the Castro. It’s a nice tradition so I braved the wilds and the crowds to check out it. Normally, I barricade myself in the house with a few select guests for an evening of our own more modest frivolity. But venture out I did, dragged down by an insistent partner and more adventurous friends over my protestations of a roast in the oven and soufflés to start. The soufflés can wait, they said. I question whether any self-respecting gay man could ever utter such horror.
And yet glad I am that I was dragged down to see the dyke march, the official kickoff of San Francisco’s Gay Pride Celebration. I am a sentimental old fool because it did move me to tears to see many lesbian couples march under “Just Married” banners. There are no words. Human joy is immeasurable.
Now the din I hear is the crowd below on Castro and Market that is left to linger and progressively drink themselves silly. That make take some time or perhaps their definition of silly and mine are far different. I live up the hill and north of Market Street, so technically this is Corona Heights not the Castro or Eureka Valley as the neighborhood was formerly known but few know that and even less care. Being up the hill offers a measure of safety from the drunken hordes. Drunks can’t climb hills too well I have found. Still some will crawl themselves up the hill in search of their cars where they’ll sleep it off.
Pride always brings reflections on my own journey. I did not take kindly to being gay. Whose sick joke was this? And yet the idea of dating girls was an anathema. Happily, I had my books and my athletic prowess to keep my mind off sexual urges that I neither wanted nor could really control to the level that I wanted to control them. In college, I did date more for show than anything else though in truth I also did date for necessity, attending a Viennese Ball alone is not exactly much fun and a Strauss waltz and polka were things I loved that unfortunately required a female partner. So date, I did. I should send those poor women condolences cards now. What was I thinking?
In college, I also met Dr. Ned Spofford, my classics professor and my academic advisor. Ned is the guy up on the left. Ned’s tale is quite the tale. It’s a PBS documentary actually, The Great Pink Scare. I love Ned to death, through my time at Stanford, we had dinner every Thursday night. Long after he ceased to be my academic advisor, he remains my mentor, my guide to civil liberties enjoyed by Western men and a reminder that everything we see now humanity has seen before and will see again. He introduced me to the beauty of fine glass, Japanese silk prints, Herotudus and Alberta Hunter. I still go down to Palo Alto now and then to see Ned but on Pride he is much on my mind. What happened to Ned should not have happened in the Western World.
On Labor Day weekend in 1960, Massachusetts state police troopers swept through the small, idyllic town of Northampton and hauled 15 men off to jail. Three of them were professors at Northampton’s elite Smith College.
THE GREAT PINK SCARE tells the story of the devastating persecution that followed, when the three Smith professors were charged with possessing and dispersing obscene literature, tried in Northampton District Court, and eventually convicted as felons.
“Police Break Up Major Homosexual Smut Ring!” screamed newspaper headlines, first in Boston, then across the country and even internationally.
On the surface, it was the routing out of pornographers, but in reality, it was a McCarthy-like witch-hunt against homosexuals.
The alleged ringleader, Professor Newton Arvin, was considered America’s finest literary critic. The other two accused were Smith junior faculty members Joel Dorius and Ned Spofford. All three lost their jobs.
Louise Arbour, outgoing UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, give an interview to Le Monde as she takes stock of the current state of human rights around the world.
Every time human rights are mentioned in conversation or even academic meetings, the objection always comes up that human rights are a Western creation that the United States and European countries are ramming down people’s throats all over the world. It is nonsense, of course (to everyone who knows the history of the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and it is reverse patronizing (as if only Western people could have come up with the idea of human rights).
But now, emerging countries, groups and powers such as China, Russia or the Muslim world claim a right to a different version of human rights (unsurprisingly, one that is much more restrictive, in terms of, well… rights). So how do we preserve the universality of these rights?
According to Louise Arbour, there are different lines of fracture in this debate. Developing countries, including China, tend to favor social and economic rights more than civil and political rights whereas the United States has done the opposite. This is a line of fracture inherited from the Cold War.
But the main line of fracture now has to do with the rise of religious groups, especially fundamentalist groups who declare these rights secular and therefore inapplicable to them. These groups claim that they should be adjusted.
Yup, this is a story out of Romania and it is truly horrifying:
“The government has ruled that a pregnant 11-year-old who was raped by a relative can have an abortion in Romania. Twenty Christian Orthodox church groups have threatened to press charges if the government allows the girl, who is 21 weeks pregnant, to have an abortion in the country, where abortions are illegal beyond 14 weeks of pregnancy unless the woman’s life is endangered. But Theodora Bertzi, a Labor Ministry official and a member of the committee that ruled on the case, said the government had to respect the rights of the child, who told doctors that she had been raped by her 19-year-old uncle. He has disappeared. The position of the church groups was in contrast to the official stand of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which said the decision should be left to the family.”
Considering, this abortion (if it does take place) is the least bad possible outcome for the girl. This case illustrates how abortion can actually be a social good. This girl should not have been raped, victim of incest and ended up pregnant. There was only one way to partially correct this: let her have an abortion. Forcing her to go through the pregnancy and to become a mother against her will would only be one more form of victimization.
As for these religious groups? Why don’t they go after the man who raped her? Why don’t they campaign against child rape and incest? Because it seems to me they’ve got too much time on their hands. It is nice to see that the Church decided to butt out of that one, although it should be noted that it stated that decision should be up to the family, not the girl. Return to Main
Kevin Hayden of American Street withdraws his endorsement of Obama over FISA:
“So I endorsed Obama because of his foreign policy sense. Now, as Avedon notes: “Obama doesn’t understand that the 4th Amendment is national security, and he’s prepared to throw it out for some illusory Republican-defined “toughness” because he hasn’t got the guts to actually be tough in defense of our country.”
I’m made more secure by the liberties in the Bill of Rights. I don’t believe the terrorist threat comes close to what the USSR provided and we made it through the Cold War even while continually fighting to retain and regain our rights against the encroachments of Nixon. It remains utter bullshit that the telecoms require this immunity with our representatives sanctioning their illegality.
Sure, Obama’s better than McCain. I will still have to consider voting for him. But I won’t attach my name and expend any effort on his behalf. I consider not voting to also be a viable option. I’ve never considered it important to be on the winning side, politically. I don’t seek a ‘pure’ candidate that I’ll save my vote for. But Obama has compromised on a key point for me: defending the Constitutional rights of all.
I may influence few, but I’ll be doing the right thing. It’s going to be nothing more than a lesser of two evils year. Which means a yawner.
Wake me when it’s over.”
Let’s see what happens to the so-called progressive blogosphere as Obama repeatedly sells out as he has starting doing in earnest this week, for fear of being called liberal or progressive.
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts on reports - most of the time by IRIN - on the deplorable conditions under which women and girls live in many parts of the world. However, the articles have been piling up in my Newsreader, so, it’s time for one. So here we go:
First stop, Liberia with the always painful topic of fistula.
“Of 600 rape victims recently interviewed by a Liberian non-governmental organisation, 90 percent of the women were found to be suffering from fistulas – a vaginal tear which results in loss of bladder control and social stigmatisation.
Aid workers say the statistic, provided by the Women of Liberia Peace Network (WOLPNET) from surveys conducted in April 2008, shows the horrifying prevalence of rape and of a phenomenon which Liberian medical officials say they are ill-equipped to respond to.”
There are two types of fistulas that are prevalent in parts of Africa:
Obstetric fistula, which is a vaginal tear resulting from prolonged obstructed labor. This form of fistulas is responsible for the appalling numbers of maternal death (deaths while in labor) in this area because of the increased risk of vaginal bleeding right after childbirth. And since a lot of women give birth at home, attended by a midwife, if they are lucky, they just bleed to death. Liberia has a particularly high rate of such deaths and this rate has been going up since the end of the war in 2003 as a result of the poor state of the health care system. With only 300 midwives when the country needs around 1,400, it is not surprising:
Maternal mortality has gone up by about 71 percent with 994 women dying for every 100,000 who give birth, compared to 580 out of every 100,000 women in the previous survey.”
The situation is so bad that the Liberian government has put in place different programs to recruit health workers and re-train the existing ones to include more obstetrics and gynecology in their skills as well as get health workers and midwives to emphasize family planning with their patients.
The other type of fistula is “traumatic gynaecologic fistula that is a vaginal injury resulting from violent sexual assault or when objects are forcibly inserted into the vagina.” (Just typing that makes my skin crawl)
I never though I’d write a title like that! Via Le Monde, Bülent Ersoy, 56, is a Turkish transsexual singer. She is immensely popular across the entire country, especially among the working class. She is now risking 18 months in prison for her call to pacifism on television, on behalf of Turkish mothers.
She did so in the midst of a wave of patriotism, last February, as Turkish troops launched an assault against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan. Taking everyone by surprise, as she was hosting the Turkish version of American Idol (I guess crappy television programs are the stormtroopers of cultural globalization), she declared “I am not a mother and I will never be” but that if she had had sons, she would have refused to send them “to their graves.” She continued, in front of the live audience, “Our children continue to be sent there, there are only tears, blood and funerals and we continue to propagate the same cliches [the nationalist and vengeful slogans]. Why can’t we find a solution?”
The very next day, a prosecutor in Istanbul filed charges against her for “inciting the hatred against the armed forces” as well as demeaning military service. Such charges carry a maximum of three years in prison.
This has to be understood in the context of Turkey. Turkey is a democracy but the military is a very strong institution that has long dominated political life. It plays a central role in maintaining national unity through mandatory conscription for all men. As the proverb says, “every Turk is born a soldier.” Conscientious objection also carries a prison term. However, in recent years, there have been calls against military propaganda and the military establishment.
This is not the first time that Bülent Ersoy gets in trouble with the authorities. Until 1988, she was banned from public performances by the military regime because of her “social deviance.” Apart from her singing, she has made headlines for her marriages and divorces with much (much) younger men.
“A school in north-east Thailand has introduced toilets for transvestites after a survey showed that more than 200 students saw themselves as transgender, a director said today.
Sitisak Sumontha said he believed the 2,600-student Kampang school, in north-eastern Thailand, was the first secondary to introduce unisex toilets.
“These students want to be able to go to the restroom in peace without fear of being watched, laughed at or groped,” he added.
The toilets are designated by a sign depicting a human figure split in half - part man in blue and part woman in red.
“I’m so happy about this,” student Vichai Sangsakul told Thailand’s PBS news channel. “It looks bad going to female restrooms. What would other people think?”
Transgenders are often seen on TV soap operas in Thailand and are common in the capital, Bangkok, although rural areas are more conservative.
The country also holds transgender beauty pageants and the deputy education minister, Boonlue Prasertsopar, said the ministry planned to count the number of transgender university students.
“If there are a lot of them in a university and it’s a problem, we may have to consider building toilets and dormitories for them,” he added.”
Imagine if a school principal here in the United States suggested anything equivalent. Oh boy, the parents would be up in arms, right-wing groups would swarm to the place to declare the end of the Western civilization and O’Reilly would have a whole segment on it.
In reality, this costs nothing and hurts no one. And even though I’m an old-fashioned progressive (redistribution first, identity issues later), I don’t see any problem with this. Anthropological research has long shown that gender identity is a pretty fluid business and not everybody see themselves as in the neat “male” and “female” boxes that societies construct for us (and with the social sanctions for those who don’t fit). So, any initiative that reduces the level of stigma some categories of people may endure is a good thing.
And, obviously, Thailand is ahead of us in terms of acceptance of transgenderism.
Via Der Spiegel (who has done an incredible job in bringing this issue to light repeatedly):
“Ahmad O. stabbed his sister more than 20 times because the 16-year-old girl didn’t live her life according to his values. Women’s rights advocate Seyran Ates is now calling for German society to intensify its efforts to stop honor killings. “A girl isn’t a whore if she goes out,” she says.
Morsal O. was 16, a young girl with joie de vivre. She laughed a lot and she was a go-getter. She was a good student, had ambition and a lot ahead of her in life. But she was murdered on Friday, May 9. Her 23-year-old brother Ahmad, with the help of a cousin, lured her to a parking lot near a subway station in the German port city of Hamburg under a false pretense and stabbed her 20 times with a knife.
If Morsal had known she would be coming face to face with her brother, she probably wouldn’t have gone that evening. The two hadn’t been on talking terms for quite some time, and Ahmed had threatened his sister repeatedly. Just before her murder, Morsal had sought refuge from her family, who moved to Germany from Afghanistan 13 years ago, at a number of city social facilities, most recently living for more than a year in a youth safe house. But she never succeeded in entirely breaking off contact with her family.”
But the family thinks that the brother killed her out of love. I guess for some patriarchal communities, love = entitlement to harassment, threats, assault and ultimately murder, and Ahmad had done all of them against his sister. And because Morsal was resistant to her parents’ authority (unusual, for a teenager, I know!), it was her brother’s job to monitor her closely and he outsourced the job to his extended family.
