From the comments file, a link to Stop Street Harassment, an anti-street harassment website with “a lot of resources, interviews with anti-street harassment activists, some “soundbytes” from [Kearl's] research, and a companion blog where people can share their stories.” Check it out!

Congratulations to M! Best to you always, cher.

Congratulations to the same-sex couples all over California who are getting married starting this week! In my own wonderful city, the county clerk’s office is staying open late today so that Mayor Newsom can marry “Lesbian rights pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, together for more than half a century” (SF Chronicle, 2008/06/16)today after the technical close of business on June 16, and therefore as soon as possible according to the May 15th ruling by the State Supreme Court. That kind of enthusiasm for equality and for affirming love is heartwarming. Other counties’ hours are listed here in the SF Chron.

SF Chronicle, Wyatt Buchanan, 2008/06/16 “Same-sex marriage plans around the Bay Area”
SF Chronicle, Rachel Gordon, 2008/06/16 “Lesbian pioneer activists see wish fulfilled”

I’ve started blogging at the Hillary 1000! Description of the blog and its purpose is here, its post-primary expansion of focus is here, and my introductory post is here. In the interests of keeping things organized, I’ll be cross-posting most of my stuff from there over here.

Cross-posted:

Check out Kate Harding’s post at Shakesville: In Case You Were Wondering! She discusses the OMG MCCAIN / OMG ROE stick (aka using the specter of a potential President McCain and his awful policies, specifically his positions on reproductive rights, as a scare tactic to browbeat women into voting for Obama. “OMG ROE” is the shorter version of OMG MCCAIN) and the general scare tactics used by the DNC / mainstream media / Obama campaign / Blogger Boyz / casual acquaintances / well-intentioned people / etc. with female voters. Basically, the Democrats have taken women for granted as a voting bloc for far too long, and while they’ve been the lesser of two shitty options, that doesn’t make them good. And women deserve better, and it is our Constitutional Amendment-granted right to demand better, as citizens with the vote.

Listen up, pundits, party, and bullying bloggers: It is not women’s job to “come home” to the party. It is the party’s job to make us fucking feel welcome in our own “home.” It is Obama’s job to earn our votes. Taking us for granted is shitty, and threatening us with the loss of our bodily autonomy is about a zillion times shittier. STOP IT. You are not helping. You are driving voters away.

The statement “It is Obama’s job to earn our votes” is particularly on point, because I think it’s something that goes over most peoples’ heads. Ever since the Reagan Revolution, the Republicans have been successfully destroying public trust in the government as an entity that serves society and does good things for it. They’ve made it a talking point that the government is a necessary evil that must be suffered and should be minimized (even as they bloat the military for wars of aggression). If that’s true, then it’s no longer the duty of candidates to compete for the voters’ votes and earn them through proposing policies to better their lives; it’s the duty of voters to apathetically determine which of the jerks running is going to screw them over the least, and vote for that person.

We need to challenge that kind of thinking. The president is responsible for addressing and resolving the many problems facing the country and voters are responsible for holding the president accountable for that. The presidency shouldn’t be a job where candidates merely have to meet the bar of “not going to make things worse,” it ought to be a job where the employers–you and me, ordinary citizens–hold candidates to the highest possible standards and then demand more. It’s the only way we’ll get our concerns addressed. And that’s why I’m not voting for Obama: he has not earned my vote on any of the issues I consider important (the economy, health care, foreign policy, the environment, womens’ rights, Iraq, GLBTQ rights). These thoughts pertain to candidates at all levels of government, by the way.

Two approaches to addressing the AIDS epidemic in Africa:

Reprinted at Alternet, from Marcy Bloom’s article “What is a Woman Worth? The Feminization of AIDS” in On The Issues Magazine:

Many forms of violence against African women contribute to, and worsen, the devastation of women and girls from the HIV/AIDS virus. Women and girls are often ill informed about sexual and reproductive matters and are more likely than men and boys to be uneducated and illiterate. Physiologically, women are two to four times more likely than men to become infected with HIV, but they lack social power to insist on safer sex or to reject sexual advances.

Gender-based violence and harmful traditional practices are some of the major risks for contracting the HIV virus. These include sexual violence, marital rape, domestic violence, early child marriage of young girls to older men, forced marriage, wife inheritance, widow cleansing, polygamy, and female genital mutilation.

Poverty forces many women into subsistence sex work or transactional relationships that preclude negotiating condom use. For economic reasons, women are often unable to leave a relationship, even if they know that their partner has been infected or exposed to HIV. In many African countries, women are designated as minors, lack their own earning power, are unable to obtain credit and cannot own or inherit property.

The oppressive economic dependency of women on men is a core aspect of gender relations in this region. This critical issue must be taken on with real solutions and basic societal changes by governments, AIDS programs, non-profit groups, and, most importantly, the women themselves.

Thoraya Obaid, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said in 2006: “Women and girls are vulnerable to AIDS not because of their individual behavior, but because of the discrimination and violence they face, the unequal power relations. Even being married is a risk factor for women … Female HIV infections are on the rise in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, as well as in Africa. And AIDS is the leading cause of death for 25-34-year-old African-American women in the United States … only by addressing the needs and human rights of women and ensuring their full participation will we change the course of this disease.”

From presidential candidate and presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama at the COMPASSION forum (link to Kate’s post at Shakesville, full transcript here):

My view is, is that we should use whatever the best approaches are, the scientifically sound approaches are, to reduce this devastating disease all across the world.

And part of that, I think, should be a strong education component and I think abstinence education is important. I also think that contraception is important; I also think that treatment is important; I also think that we have to do more to make antiviral drugs available to people who are in extreme poverty.

So I don’t want to pluck out one facet of it. Now, that doesn’t mean that non-for-profit groups can’t focus on one thing while the government focuses on other things. I think we want to have a comprehensive approach.

I do think that — and I’ve said this when I was in Kenya — that there is a behavioral element to AIDS that has to be addressed. And if there is — if there’s promiscuity and we are pretending that that’s not an issue in spreading AIDS, then we’re missing part of the answer.

But I also think that — keep in mind, women are far more likely to be infected now between the ages of 18 and 25 than are men. And that’s why focusing, for example, on the status of women, empowering women, giving them microbicides, or other strategies that would allow them to protect themselves when they sometimes in certain situations may not be able to protect themselves from having unprotected sex [i.e. rape], all those things are going to be just as important, as well. (emphases mine)

That whooshing sound is either the wake left from Obama’s rush to pander to the social conservative “family values” crowd or the sound of the information clue by four zooming past his ears. Compare and contrast the pieces in bold text.

I’ve discussed my problems with these particular statements of Obama’s before (near the bottom of this post), but the Bloom article brought them to mind again.

Marcy Bloom, “What is a Woman Worth? The Feminization of AIDS” 2008/06/09 (link to Alternet, originally published in On The Issues Magazine

Breaking news! According to Tara Parker-Pope’s article in the Health & Wellness section of yesterday’s NYT, same-sex marriage is good because same-sex married couples have a lot to teach those poor, helpless heterosexual married couples who need help muddling along. Also, sexism hurts heterosexual marriages.

1. The way sexism plays out in relationship dynamics (e.g. division of labor) can negatively affect many heterosexual relationships! ZOMG manifestations of sexism, such as sexist gender roles, can even result in arguments and unhappiness! Treating your partner as your equal and approaching your partner as an individual rather than uncritically falling into behavior patterns mired in tired, unequal gender roles can result in an egalitarian relationship. And that might be good!

Notably, same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. In heterosexual couples, women did far more of the housework; men were more likely to have the financial responsibility; and men were more likely to initiate sex, while women were more likely to refuse it or to start a conversation about problems in the relationship. With same-sex couples, of course, none of these dichotomies were possible, and the partners tended to share the burdens far more equally.

While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll.

“Heterosexual married women live with a lot of anger about having to do the tasks not only in the house but in the relationship,” said Esther D. Rothblum, a professor of women’s studies at San Diego State University. “That’s very different than what same-sex couples and heterosexual men live with.” (emphases mine)

2. GLBTQ people are just like normal straight people, OMG. Also, patterns of differences in behavior (i.e. the acting out of gender stereotypes) are probably not rooted in biological sex, after all. They might even be mutable! Problems within marriages might actually be related to the people in question rather than predetermined “gender differences” set in stone. And that means that sexist behaviors are not just the way things are and the way things should and always will be, but artificial constructs intended to privilege men over women–artificial constructs that can be successfully resisted and broken.

One of the most common stereotypes in heterosexual marriages is the “demand-withdraw” interaction, in which the woman tends to be unhappy and to make demands for change, while the man reacts by withdrawing from the conflict. But some surprising new research shows that same-sex couples also exhibit the pattern, contradicting the notion that the behavior is rooted in gender, according to an abstract presented at the 2006 meeting of the Association for Psychological Science by Sarah R. Holley, a psychology researcher at Berkeley.Dr. Levenson says this is good news for all couples.

“Like everybody else, I thought this was male behavior and female behavior, but it’s not,” he said. “That means there is a lot more hope that you can do something about it.”

3. Uh. Ya think?

The stereotype for same-sex relationships is that they do not last. But that may be due, in large part, to the lack of legal and social recognition given to same-sex couples. Studies of dissolution rates vary widely.

Relationships that are often treated as illegitimate, fake approximations of the real thing (heterosexual marriages) are stereotyped as short-lived and therefore illegitimate, fake approximations of the real thing. And that leads to them being treated as illegitimate, fake approximations of the real thing. Hmm. I’d try to parse the logic there, but I’m afraid it’s quite circular.

4. A variation on It’s All About Teh Menz: It’s All About Teh Heterosexualz.

A growing body of evidence shows that same-sex couples have a great deal to teach everyone else about marriage and relationships. Most studies show surprisingly few differences between committed gay couples and committed straight couples, but the differences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of conflicts that can endanger heterosexual relationships.

To be fair, the It’s All About Teh Heterosexualz slant is more Parker-Pope’s slant than the researchers’. One of the professors quoted in the article, who may or may not be involved in the research, says,

“When I look at what’s happening in California, I think there’s a lot to be learned to explore how human beings relate to one another,” said Sondra E. Solomon, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Vermont. “How people care for each other, how they share responsibility, power and authority — those are the key issues in relationships.”

The statement “A growing body of evidence shows that same-sex couples have a great deal to teach everyone else about marriage and relationships,” is particularly bad in that implies that

• “Everyone else,” i.e. so-called normal people, are the heterosexual people. The phrasing reinforces the idea that same-sex couples are not quite the same as heterosexual couples, which would be fine if it were a basic acknowledgment of fact (differences in the sex makeup of the couples) rather than a way to paint same-sex couples as abnormal and weird.
  
  
• It is the job of same-sex couples to educate heterosexual couples. This is not unlike the idea that it’s solely the responsibility of feminist women to educate teh poor, helpless, ignorant menz about feminism. Actually, it’s not the responsibility of same-sex couples to “teach [heterosexual couples] about marriage and relationships,” it’s the responsibility of each couple to do their own damned thinking if they want to have healthy marriages and relationships. We are not in kindergarten anymore, folks. You can do your own damned thinking and shouldn’t expect to be spoon fed.

  Solomon’s phrasing also indicates that there is a wealth of information available in terms of “how human beings relate to one another,” but with “to be learned,” she puts the responsibility for learning and education on the people who want to learn (i.e. within the context of the article, heterosexual married couples) rather than on the same-sex married couples. Her statement also makes it clear that for her, the value of the information is that it’s more information (more data and a wider pool of research subjects are good) that pertains to all relationships. Her statement doesn’t imply that the possibility for researching same-sex marriages is valuable because it is useful for heterosexual marriages.

It all goes back to the eternally recurring themes:

1. We’d all be better off if people took the time and effort to treat each other as unique, individual people, rather than relying on stereotypes of any stripe to guide their behavior.
   
   
2. Sexism hurts everyone. In this case, sexist behaviors can cause conflicts and stresses within heterosexual marriages, which negatively affects both of the spouses.
   
   
3. Do your own damned thinking. It’s not the feminist womens’ job to educate men. Men are perfectly capable of educating themselves. It’s not the same-sex married couples’ job to educate heterosexual married couples. Heterosexual married couples are perfectly capable of educating themselves. Grow up, take responsibility for your own behavior and thinking, and use your brain without expecting to be spoon fed and led by the hand.

Hat tip to SYW for the article link.

ETA: The graphic for the article is of two men in tuxedos. For an article on same-sex marriage, which includes marriages between two women as well as marriages between two men, would it be so difficult to use a graphic of two women or to use a graphic that has two women and two men? Men of any sexual orientation are not the norm. They are about half of the human species. So stop presenting them as the image of all people, the default, the standard.

NY Times, Tara Parker-Pope, “Gay Unions Shed Light on Gender in Marriage,” 2008/06/10.

Something more lighthearted: spam, photos, and a note.

Note: If you left a comment within the last 2 days and it isn’t showing up, that’s because I accidentally deleted everything in the mod queue this morning when I was trying to get rid of the Car Insurance!!!! and VyAgra!!!!! spam. Sorry about that, and if you want to repost, I’ll try not to dump the whole filter this time.

Spam:

Dear Car Insurance Spam,

I do not need car insurance. While I might have once been a good candidate for extra car insurance, given that I’m a terrible driver (there’s a formerly giant bush by the side of a freeway in the suburbs that still hasn’t grown back), I no longer own a car and am fortunate enough to live in a city with public transit. One of my resolutions for 2008 was to go the entire year without driving a car. So please stop clogging the mod queue.

Thanks,
Pizza Diavola

Photos below the cut. LG Chocolate cameraphone, as usual.

Puck is a Seascape strawberry plant. I’d been wanting to grow plants on the fire escape balcony for a while, and finally did so in April. Petulant’s Question of the Day, Rana’s post “Thoreau’s Laundry”, and katecontinued’s post “P:106 Planting and Planning” all inspired me to get to the farmers market and pick up some plants.

OMGSHOEZ! I got these adorable brown not-quite-wedges a few weeks ago. They’re comfortable and cute and I like the cut outs in the heels.

*OMGSHOEZ is from Shakesville.

Via Amandaw, discussion of the it’s-already-started vilification of Michelle Obama. Discussions by Tami at Racialicious “Michelle Obama: Ain’t She a Woman?”. Recently, a dailyKos post on the Republicans’ Southern Strategy included this graphic:

Sexism is always wrong. Racism is always wrong. And the curious blend of bigotry and oppression that exists at the intersection of the two is wrong. Any form of systemic oppression is wrong and furthermore, it’s not a handy dandy tool for anyone to use to make a point. It is completely unacceptable to use a violent image of a woman being strung up, burned, and branded as property to make a point about the Republicans’ political strategy. Yes, the Southern Strategy was racist. Yes, it was vile. But trafficking in the same kind of imagery and language that they used, whether you use it to mock them or not, perpetuates the notion that such rhetoric is acceptable if you’re on the right side. It is not. It is never right and never acceptable and furthermore, using women as expendable tools to make a point has a long and not so glorious history. Women are not commodities. Women are not things, are not casual illustrative examples. This graphic trivializes the violence that women of color, women, and people of color, constantly suffer by employing it for shock value.

Amandaw’s post “Check This Out” discusses the demonization of Hillary Rodham Clinton and predicts what will happen–what has already started–with Michelle Obama.

Here’s an exercise. Imagine every racist and sexist cliche you can think of. Bring the worst invective to mind, the things that would automatically make someone A Racist(tm) if they expressed it today.

Then think of a way to disguise that invective, to strip it of any direct reference to race or gender. Rationalize.

Then commit that thought to memory.

Because you’re going to hear all those rationalizations in the coming years.

I guarantee it.

Tami’s post at Racialicious, “Michelle Obama: Ain’t She a Woman?” discusses the silence of the mainstream (predominantly white) feminist blogosphere on the nasty racism and sexism against Michelle Obama that’s seeping up through the MSM sewers and also discusses the image above.

The mainstream feminist blogosphere has been largely silent on an issue that is spreading through the black blogosphere like wildfire. This image… [the graphic above]

…which was initially posted last week on the progressive site Daily Kos and has now spread through the rightosphere, has struck many black women as blatantly offensive. To be fair, the image initially accompanied a post about the modern Southern Strategy and how it is being used against Barack Obama. The social criticism of racism by the author, a poster called One Citizen, was good, but the inflammatory image injected into the discussion a disturbing aspect of woman in peril sexuality. Here you have Michelle Obama, bound, submissive and strangely sexualized in a backless, clinging red dress intersected with themes of racial violence. Black female bloggers raised a ruckus, but many of our allies have been noticeably silent, and if possible, the groups that have been most vocal about sexism against Hillary Clinton have been worse than silent on this and other incidents of sexism aimed at the presumptive Democratic nominee’s wife.

Say it with me, folks: sexism is always wrong. Racism is always wrong. No matter who the target is. Speak out and speak loudly.

Dear Financial Times,

While your recent headline is a description of Senator McCain’s speech, and therefore might not be representative of your views on his speech and candidacy, it remains misleading:

By headlining your article with “McCain puts faith in sober experience,” you lend credibility to the idea that McCain has experience and that it’s worth something. I’ll grant you that he’s held state office since 1983 and does have experience working in the House and Senate, but to imply that his experience is “sober” and that it’s something that he, or you, or any voter should put “faith” in is highly misleading, primarily because his performance in the past few years consists of rejecting his former principles and stances.

For instance, in February the Senate voted 51-45 to ban waterboarding and torture by the CIA. McCain, despite previously opposing torture, voted against the ban. There are some principles and experience, right there–the experience of caving into the Republican party and abandoning not only personal principles, but the principles of humanity as well as the Geneva Convention and international law, all in one vote. From the NYT,

Senate Republicans generally opposed the bill, but several of them also did not want to cast a vote that could be construed as supporting torture, and so were relying on President Bush to make good on a threat to veto legislation limiting C.I.A. interrogation techniques….

The prohibition of harsh interrogation techniques is part of a wider intelligence authorization bill and would restrict all American interrogators to techniques allowed in the Army Field Manual, which bars the use of physical force.

The House approved the bill in December by a vote of 222 to 199, mostly along party lines. Wednesday’s vote in the Senate was also along party lines. All the “no” votes were cast by Republicans, except for those of Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska. Five Republicans and Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, voted “yes.”

But the White House has long said Mr. Bush will veto the bill, saying it “would prevent the president from taking the lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack in wartime.”

…

Mr. McCain, a former prisoner of war, has consistently voiced opposition to waterboarding and other methods that critics say is a form torture. But the Republicans, confident of a White House veto, did not mount the challenge. Mr. McCain voted “no” on Wednesday afternoon. (emphasis mine)

In another instance of betraying past principles, McCain once advocated for lobbyist reform. From the Washington Post,

Appearing as a witness on the opening day of a Senate hearing on lobbying reform, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was one of several senators to denounce earmarking, a practice he called “disgraceful.” He outlined one of several proposals to tighten rules and require greater disclosure of lobbying activities. But he told the committee, “We’re not going to fix this system until we fix the earmarks.”

Nowadays, however, he is receiving money from 507 bundlers and 70 lobbyist bundlers. Among their number are representatives of large financial institutions (e.g. JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, UBS, Blackstone, Granite Capital, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns [heh], Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, NYSE Group, Goldman Sachs), health care firms (e.g. Vanguard Health Systems, Blue Cross Blue Shield, AMN Healthcare), energy firms (e.g. Mosbacher Energy, TXU), and assorted large corporations (e.g. Disney, Sony BMG Music, Starwood Hotels, Anheuser-Busch, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, Visa, MGM, FedEx). He’s not just taking cash from lobbyists, however; he’s also staffed his campaign with them. From Washington Post,

But when McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, co-founded a lobbying firm whose clients have included Verizon and SBC Telecommunications. His chief political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., is chairman of one of Washington’s lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways.

Senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Mark McKinnon work for firms that have lobbied for Land O’ Lakes, UST Public Affairs, Dell and Fannie Mae.

More recently, McCain’s campaign declared that warrantless wiretapping by the executive branch is A-OK, no court oversight required. This position might come as a shock, considering that he had previously said,

“There are some areas where the statutes don’t apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is.”

From the NYT, his position these days is,

A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.

Mr. McCain believes that “neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin wrote.

In other words, McCain is saying that four more years of the Imperial Executive and unfettered power above the law are what he believes in. Corporations have no need to obey the law and respect the privacy of the little people, individual citizens, and neither does the executive branch.

McCain has repeatedly turned his back on his principles and abandoned the policies he once advocated in order to pander to the Republican party and its supporters, corporate and otherwise. He’s demonstrated experience in casting integrity and convictions aside for the sake of political expediency–and not for the sake of the public good, but for his ambitions. That is not the kind of experience that anyone with an interest in fixing the corruption and devastation wrought by the Bush administration should put faith in, sober or otherwise. So I’d like to suggest some alternate headlines for the article, which more accurately reflect the nature of McCain’s candidacy and are more in keeping with the content of the article:

* McCain Favors Extending Bush’s Aggressive, Imperialist Foreign Policy

While Mr Obama favours engagement with US foes and wants to end the war in Iraq, Mr McCain would seek to increase pressure on Iran, North Korea and Cuba and keep US troops in Iraq indefinitely.

* McCain Remains In Denial About Iraq. Possibly Contemplates Another Marketplace Stroll with Armed Troops and Helicopters As Escorts.

Mr McCain set out his case against the Illinois senator in Tuesday’s speech, portraying him as dangerously inexperienced on foreign policy and dangerously liberal on domestic policy.”He is an impressive man who makes a great first impression,” the Arizona senator conceded, before going on to explain why Americans would reject him once they got to know him better.

“Americans ought to be concerned about the judgment of a presidential candidate who says he’s ready to talk, in person and without conditions, with tyrants from Havana to Pyongyang, but hasn’t travelled to Iraq to meet with General [David] Petraeus, and see for himself the progress he threatens to reverse,” Mr McCain said, highlighting the two main foreign policy differences with his rival.

* McCain Puts Blind Faith In U.S. Efforts In Iraq

Mr McCain accuses his opponent of an ideological commitment to “surrender” in Iraq, ignoring evidence that US forces are making progress since last year’s troop surge.

Headlines are important because they’re the visuals that people first see and remember; they’re the first words people read in an article and therefore shape how they perceive the content of the article; and they’re nifty tag lines or summaries that people remember. Knowing that, I find the FT headline “McCain puts faith in sober experience” troubling. It presents a misleading image of McCain as a sober, rational person rather than the hot-tempered jerk he is–the article cited there was also published by the FT, back in April–and presents his experience as something worth a damn. He has all the wrong kinds of experience, in pandering, in working with lobbyists, in abandoning principles, in supporting the abrogation of the separation of powers (and therefore the Constitution and the limits it places on the executive branch), in serving the interests of corporations rather than the people, in ignoring the rule of law, and in voting for evil legislation.

————————————-

Financial Times, Andrew Ward, “McCain puts faith in sober experience,” 2008/06/05
NY Times, David Herszenhorn, “Senate Passes Interrogation Ban,” 2008/02/13
Washington Post, William Branigin, “McCain Calls to Reform Pork Barrel Politics,” 2006/01/25
Public Citizen
Washington Post, Michael D. Shear and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, “The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists,” 2008/02/21
NY Times, Charlie Savage, “Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps,” 2008/06/06

A photo post, to celebrate having working wireless and to provide some filler material for my brain tonight. Taken with the camera on an LG Chocolate phone. Images below the cut.

Monday, June 2

I had copies of my apartment keys made for a friend (should’ve done it a lot sooner, but oh, well, it didn’t occur to me), and found a cute, tacky tourist kitsch SF keychain to put them on while I was getting lightbulbs at Walgreens (they stock an amazing amount of touristy SF junk). The best part of it is that the round thing in the center spins: on one side is a cable car and on the other, the GG bridge!

Friday, May 31

OMG SHOEZ! I got an awesome, full length black dress from BCBG last June and for various reasons, never got around to wearing it (my friend AP told me it’d suitable for the company holiday party. Shortly before the holiday party, I pulled it out of the closet, tried it on, and thought, “It’s a lot lower cut than I remember it being,” and emailed some friends asking if it was appropriate for a work function. Unanimous response: NO. So it went back into the closet.). I hadn’t even had it hemmed yet, because I didn’t have shoes to wear with it. However, on Memorial Day, AP and I had our yearly “AP’s frustration at the meager contents of PD’s closet boils over and she makes good on her threats to take me shopping” outing and I got these fabulous shoes from Charles David. And now I’m going to take the dress to be hemmed so I can wear it and my OMG SHOEZ! to Das Rheingold when the summer opera season starts up. I also got a pair of fabulous brown heels, which are sort of wedges and sort of not.

Thursday, May 29

The Whiffenpoofs of 2008 were singing at the University Club. The Whiffs are the senior mens’ a cappella group and they were stopping by SF as part of their post-graduation world tour. They sing quite nicely, and yet, there was one song about a drunken, homeless, single mother dragging her kids to Yale because that’s where their daddy was, and then being seduced (by a couple drinks) by a Harvard man and abandoning the Yale man’s tent on the 50 yard line (at the Yale Bowl, the football stadium) for the Harvard man’s treehouse. It got a lot of laughs, of course. Sexism is funny! Tired stereotypes and rape are funny! I was standing there, listening and thinking, “Is there no place free of misogyny?”

Sunday, May 25

Three views of the Marina from upper Fillmore. I couldn’t decide which one I liked best.

Saturday, May 24

The 24th was quite nice: one of my friends came over for dinner and then we went to SFS for a night of Brahms. Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) conducted the symphony in Brahms’ Geistliches Lied, Four Songs for Women’s Chorus, and Ein Deutsches Requiem. SFS Chorus sang, along with Laura Claycomb (soprano) and Matthias Goerne (baritone). We missed the songs, but Ein Deutsches Requiem was amazing! I’d been listening to the Berliner Phil recording from 2007, and it was so much better live. The SFS timpanist was fabulous and I loved the crashing, triumphant “mit Freuden, mit Freuden” in the first movement. The second and last movements were also great.

But I digress. I made tagliatell’ alla bolgonese for dinner, with fresh pasta and the bolognese from scratch. The picture is of the soffritto, the minced garlic, onion, carrots, celery, thyme, and sage, in the stock pot with olive oil. I like using my chef’s knife and slicing things up–I love the feel of my knife sliding cleanly through things–and I hate running across pieces of onions in sauces and risotti, so everything’s minced quite finely. My friend asked, “What’s this orange thing?” when we were eating dinner, and when I said that it was a carrot, responded, “What! I’ve never seen anything minced so finely outside of a restaurant.”

And for dessert, a cherry clafoutis made with Chelan and Brook cheeries. Some extra noodles are visible up top.

I changed ideas for dinner a few times: first, I wanted to make roasted pork belly (and did a dry run for myself, and it’s a good thing I didn’t go with that because it turned out merely okay) and granita di caffe, then I wanted to make shrimp etouffee and a pine nut torta, and in the end, wound up doing neither. The clafoutis was inspired by the fabulous cherries that are now in season and running across Muffintop’s recipe. The tagliatell’ alla bolognese was the result of thinking hard about making shrimp etouffee, deciding that I probably couldn’t stomach handling whole shrimp (and I needed whole shrimp to use the shells for stock), and going back to fresh pasta and bolognese as something reliably good but sufficiently out of the ordinary as to be worthwhile for a nice, pre-symphony dinner and worth making. It was the first time in a couple months that I was excited about cooking, about making new things and finding new recipes. Between work, work crises, work, and personal crises, I was tired for a long time. Things have since stabilized, although they are by no means resolved. The excitement I felt about cooking was a good sign, an indicator that I was pulling out of the fog. We’ll see if progress continues apace–I have an emotional breakdown scheduled for later in the month, but I might be too busy to have time for it until mid-July.

I haven’t posted in a long while because I’ve been busy with a number of things in offline life lately, and haven’t had the mental energy for writing. And yeah. I can’t think of anything to say about Clinton, Obama, the campaigns, and politics other than (a) things that are not fit to print; (b) I want her to take it to a floor fight in Denver. I still believe that she is by far the better candidate and I still have serious problems with Obama’s (lack of) policies, positions, and rhetoric.

Be that as it may, I’d just like to direct everyone who’s calling me a “McCain operative”, everyone who’s calling for Clinton supporters to shut up and fall in line for the sake of party unity, everyone accusing me of causing a McCain victory if I don’t vote for Obama in the general election, and everyone else who has some asshat comment about the campaigns, I’d like to direct you to this post, Remember the GOP, which I wrote back in March. Read it before you start yelling about (a) VOTE FOR OBAMA OR MCCAIN! MCCAIN! ROE V WADE! SUPREME COURT! MCCCAAAAAIIIIIN!; (b) YOU HAVE TO VOTE FOR OBAMA TO BE AGAINST MCCAIN!!!!!!!!!!!

I’d also like to direct you to these fabulous Shakesville posts, which reveal the logic problems behind (a) and why, exactly, this queer, Korean, feminist woman might have trouble voting for Obama or supporting the Democratic party.

PortlyDyke, Oh, the Powerfulness of Me!! (2008/02/23):

Frankly, I’m sick of hearing principled progressive voters accused of being a threat to the certainty of a Democratic win in ‘08 — because they have the temerity to expect Dem candidates to actually demonstrate that they value equal rights for people of color and women — to demonstrate it by refusing to stoop to sexist and racist manipulation tactics in their campaigns.

So, I won’t blame the voters — I will place the blame precisely where it belongs:

On. The. Candidates.

Melissa McEwan, My Vote. Mine. (2008/02/27):

there are contributors and commenters who, by virtue of our sex or the color of our skin, have not been guaranteed the right to vote since this nation’s inception. Some of us have mothers and grandmothers who were born without the legal right to vote. Some of us have parents or grandparents who stood on a line in the south facing cops and dogs and firehoses to fight for full enfranchisement. Some of us have friends or relatives who were disenfranchised during the last election. And maybe that (unfinished) history makes it a wee bit harder for some of us to cast a vote for someone who trades on sexism or racism.

Melissa McEwan, Feminism 101: “Calling Out Fellow Progressives for Sexism Prevents Unity on the Left” (2008/02/28 ):

The reasoning behind the “perfectly logical” calculation above—and the related compulsion to cajole alignment with that strategy and/or silence feminist criticism—is predicated on a couple of commonly-held (and oft-cited) assumptions:

1. Voting for/Supporting the more liberal of two mainstream party candidates is always and necessarily the most consistent with feminist principles.

2. Voting for/Supporting the more democratic of two mainstream party candidates is axiomatically the most feminist choice.

3. Feminism is an “issue” or a “cause” akin to other political issues or causes like protecting social security or fair elections.

4. The best possible America for a straight, white, able-bodied, wealthy man is the best possible America for everyone.

5. More rights for “everyone” means more rights for women.

All of these are wrong—or, at minimum, not always correct. Let’s take them one at a time.

FYI: This post is neither the time nor place to comment (a) “Sexism? What sexism?” or variants thereof; (b) “party unity!”; (c) “So why won’t you vote for Obama?” How about you trust that I’m an intelligent, rational actor who has spent a great deal of time following politics and the 2008 presidential campaigns in particular, and has made an intelligent, reasoned decision regarding my social principles, my politics, my ideals, and the way I want to use my vote. I’ll grant you that respect; do the same for me. I won’t be engaging with any comments that fall into the a-c categories, other than to point and mock.