thought of the day

if i hear one more person at my school say another sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, or classist statement i'm going to scream until my throat is raw.

i hereby demand you peruse this website

i've been having a shitty week, but this totally made my day. i mean, come on, their ladyfesto starts off with "We Truly Tasteful Ladies Do Hereby Demand"! and yes, obviously it is a parody. i even checked to make sure.

also, am i the only one who really hopes that mccain doesn't show up for the debates tonight? i mean, how fucking funny would that be? he'd just be sitting at home, watching obama give a speech and drinking some 200-year -old scotch. but seriously, what the hell was mccain thinking? "our country is in financial ruin, so instead of telling you what solutions i have and why they're better than my opponent's, i'm going to stay home and think really hard about what i can do to save us."

just picture it: it's an hour and a half into the debate. obama's talking to the panal, when mccain bursts in, damp with sweat, and yells, "STOP THE DEBATE. I HAVE JUST SAVED THE ECONOMY!" now that would be memorable.

"funny"

my friend/facebook wife/fake lover, who we'll call madonna, and i often leave really weird postings on her livejournal. this often includes really weird questions (recent examples include: "if you were a church, what religion would you be? who would go to you?" and "if you were a personal ad, what would you say?"). so today i was cheating and googled "weird questions" and i found a site that seemed incredibly silly ("why doesn't mcdonald's have hot dogs?" seriously?) but i looked at in anyways. and in between "Why does grape flavor smell the way it is when actual grapes don't taste or smell anything like it [sic]" and "If a kid refuses to sleep during nap time, are they guilty of resisting a rest?" was "If a lesbian has sex with other women but never with another man is she still considered a virgin?" uh, yeah, those wacky lesbians. *headdesk*

of course this would happen on the same day that some guy in my english class told me to "go back to the kitchen" when i correctly answered a question that he had missed. oh, my sides. they ache from laughter.

ch-ch-changes

quickie: obviously, i have changed the name of the blog. somewhere in between just wasn't really working for me. i absolutely love the new name, so it's here to stay.

what women want

apparently it's photo day over here at book slut.

please explain to me what female issues on politics and lipstick have in common. oh, i know- absolutely nothing. it seems that newsweek is using the infallible logic of "well, we're doing a piece about women and we have to come up with a catchy cover that represents women...so lipstick, obviously".

anyone who wants to make the argument that we are living in a post-feminist society (god, there is nothing i hate more than that term) should kindly explain to me why in this day and age it is a-okay to put such a sexist image on the cover of a national magazine.

also, i am all for women expressing their views in whatever form possible, but i really do not like women being summed up as this huge solitary group. this applies to many, many articles/media outlets in our society, but let's focus on this one for a minute. what i want politically is completely different from what my mother wants, which is different than from what the mother of the kids i babysit for wants, which is different than from what my boss wants. women are just too diverse to be clumped together like this. now, i realize that of course stats can tell us how people are voting, but i don't really understand how beneficial it can be to state something like, "on a national level, 57% of women support obama" (i'm using that as a made-up example, it is not an actual statistic) but what does this statistic tell us about american women and how they think politically? if we really want to determine how women are voting, wouldn't it be much more useful to know that 68%hispanic women ages 18-45 support obama or 56% of caucasian women ages 45-70 support mccain instead of talking about women as one solitary group? i haven't seen this particular method being used with men, so why is it this way with women? i think this also correlates with women seen as a target audience. we've had mccain and obama both appearing during commercial breaks in lifetime's army wives as an attempt to appeal to women voters. what are we supposed to take from this? that all women watch lifetime, and if we discover that candidate x watches lifetime too then we'll vote for him? i just do not like the way that women voters are being represented in this election, and this magazine cover is like the cherry on top.

racist waffles

you've got to be fucken kidding me. obama waffles? seriously? oh, and i love the muslim caricature. because obviously america has not gotten the message that obama is muslim and muslim people are scary terrorists. this lovely product was produced by a committee called the American Values and Focus on the Family Action. because racism is always a family value. honestly, i can't even bring myself to be surprised about this. what is unbelievable is the committee's excuse for peddling this crap: they claimed they had not realized that the boxes displayed "offensive material" and that it was meant as "political satire". sigh. you know what? if you're going to put out such blatantly racist and hate-spreading crap then you better own up to it, because you are fooling nobody with this "oops my bad" crap.

i want this

this feministing t-shirt sums up my views perfectly. on the back, it says, "sarah palin does not speak for me".

second verse, same as the first

let's state the obvious first: i do not like sarah palin. i vehemently disagree with her policies. however, as a feminist, i am glad to see a woman be elected to a powerful position, even if i do not agree with her stances. i am also impressed that she is able to balance the difficulties of raising five children and handling the demands of this election. and the fact that several of her policies are not women-friendly (such as her anti-choice stance even in the case of rape/incest, the fact that while she was governor of alaska women were charged for rape kits, and cut funding for alaskan shelters for pregnant teens) does not mean that progressives should speak out against the sexism directed towards palin.

i remember the day that palin's nomination was announced. i didn't know anything about her, so i checked a few blogs and news sites to see what was going on. immediately after reading about her policies, i noticed a post on feministing about the newly coined term websites were using for palin- VPILF. this couldn't have been more than a few hours after her nomination was announced. and the parade went on, of course, with merchandise such as sarah palin action figure dolls (i'm not linking to them, google them if you must. jsyk, the two different models are naughty schoolgirl palin and... i don't even know what the other one is, but it looks like stripper spy palin) and commentators remarking that they want her in their bed (yes, some jackass actually said this on television). i have also noticed many remarks that question palin's ability to be a mother. a lot of what kind of a mother fill in the blank? what kind of a mother puts her pregnant daughter under a spotlight? (and on that note, can we please leave that poor girl alone? bristol palin's pregnancy is a private matter and has nothing to do with palin's ability to be vice president) what kind of a mother runs for vice president so soon after having a baby? and a baby with down syndrome at that. and on and on and on. even my own mother is doing this. we were talking about palin and my mother said flat-out, "i don't like her because i think she is a bad mother". when i asked her what that has to do with palin's stances, my mom said, "nothing. but that still doesn't change what i think." true, but why is it part of the conversation in the first place? who are we to judge what kind of a mother she is, and why should we be doing this in the first place?

i would love to say that obama has taken this opportunity to (finally) speak out about the sexism that has followed this election every step of the way. but i can't. instead he said, "Look, she's new, she hasn't been on the scene, she has five kids." come on. if palin's husband had been the vp candidate, would obama be commenting on his five kids? because i think not.

if you are going to say something about palin, it had better be damn relevant to the election. under no circumstances is sexism okay, period.

thought for today

i'm sitting in the student center of my school right now, a place that is most generally populated by underclassmen and avoided by upperclassmen due to its constant noise. it seemed pretty quiet today so i wandered in. as i'm doing some homework and checking some blogs, the kid next to me, a sophomore whose remarkable resemblence to macaulay culkin has earned him the clever nickname of "the macaulay culkin kid" is writing about the catcher in the rye, one of my favorite books. i know that he is writing about the catcher in the rye, because about one minute after i sat down he said loudly, "holden caulfield is such a faggot!" he continued this for 20 minutes until he left, with variations such as this is gay, faggot-ass this, faggot-ass that, and so on. needless to say, this drove me crazy. however, i didn't know what to do. i could have just snapped at him to shut up, but that would have made him angry. i could have explained to him why i took offense, but when i've tried this in the past during conversations with guys my age, they usually just ignore me. and yes, it would be great if he thought about what i said and stopped using homophobic slurs, but the reality is that there are many people who use this kind of language. my question is, what is the best response to this? and not just in this particular instance, i'd like to address the everyday types of prejudice (racism, sexism, classism, etc.) that you know you should combat, but you just can't see the point in it. i'm not sure if i'm articulating this correctly, but if anyone does have a suggestion to this, please comment and let me know.

maverick my ass

like most of the country i've been watching both the democratic and the republican national conventions. as most of you know, mccain gave his speech thursday night. it wasn't much of a surprise to me; i found it dull and generic. mccain's never been much of a orator; he can't seem to find that rhythm one needs. but of course, the more important aspect is what he said. he kept speaking of how he's a fighter, how he has fought and will keep fighting for a "you" he kept mentioning over and over. this you that mccain refers to is not me. i don't know who this you is. and i don't know who mccain is fighting for. in his speech, he said:

"I fight for Americans. I fight for you. I fight for Bill and Sue Nebe from Farmington Hills, Michigan, who lost their real estate investments in the bad housing market. Bill got a temporary job after he was out of work for seven months. Sue works three jobs to help pay the bills.
I fight for Jake and Toni Wimmer of Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Jake works on a loading dock; coaches Little League, and raises money for the mentally and physically disabled. Toni is a schoolteacher, working toward her Master’s Degree. They have two sons, the youngest, Luke, has been diagnosed with autism. Their lives should matter to the people they elect to office. They matter to me.
I fight for the family of Matthew Stanley of Wolfboro, New Hampshire, who died serving our country in Iraq. I wear his bracelet and think of him every day. I intend to honor their sacrifice by making sure the country their son loved so well and never returned to, remains safe from its enemies."

but how? how does mccain fight for these people? was he fighting for sue nebe when he did not vote for and spoke out against the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? was he fighting for luke wimmer when he told america that mercury in vaccines causes autism, a claim that scientific research does not support? was he fighting for matthew stanley's family when he told america that he was fine with the war in iraq going on for a hundred years?

the answer is no. mccain was fighting against these people, not with them. and he is fighting against anyone who believes that america is a country in dire need of true change, not the fake kind mccain is trying to peddle. he is fighting against me and my grandmother and my father's partner of nine years who is still waiting for citizenship and my girlfriends on birth control and my mother who worked as a prosecuter for nearly 20 years and got passed over for promotions countless times for her male coworkers who did not share her near-perfect court record.

mccain wants to fight for this country? great. so do i. right now, the best way to do that is to make sure this man stays the hell out of office.

jeezebug, i wish i could vote.