A response to a friend who thinks I shouldn’t take his Hillary hate personally:
If I supported a candidate who thought that death threats against you were okay, or that had no problem addressing black members of the press as son, or boy- you might understand that it is fucking personal. Misogyny hurts every woman, not just the one it’s directed at. I hate Obama with a fiery fucking passion, but I still stand up to people that make fucking monkey sock puppet Obama dolls cause I know it hurts more than just Obama. It hurts people I care about.
If I told you to get over it when people publish pictures of Michelle Obama being lynched- would you take it personally? What if someone called Obama a dumb n*gger? Would you take it personally? What if thousands of Hillary supporters started trolling blogs run by people of color and saying things like “shine my shoes you fucking jungle monkey” Would you take it personally?
It is fucking personal. The democratic party wants the women to shut up and get back in the voting booth, despite the black eyes and broken ribs we’ve gotten from our party. It is fucking personal.
So you coming back like this, full of the same lines, hurts me.
The problem with Democratic compromises is that they are over things that should never be bargained away, such as privacy, a social safety net, transparent government responsive to the citizenry, and other fundamental principles of liberal democracy.
Compromises are for making choices between acceptable outcomes, but where one may be more to the liking of one party than the other choices. Our rights, such as freedom from unlawful search and seizure, are not on the table.
I paid for my teenage fashion habit (and some of my family’s living expenses) by cleaning timeshares on the weekends and during the summer. Eventually I worked up to cleaning private houses. While my friends spent their days at the beach, I scrubbed toilets. But I had way better shoes than they all did.
When the Kid was still in preschool, I worked as an admin 40 or 50 hours during the week and went back to cleaning houses on the weekend. I have no idea how I got through those years without breaking. I never had time for anything fun that didn’t involve being covered in child detritus and unknown sticky food substances.
For a while, I cleaned my brother’s house every week. That was actually all right.Of course he didn’t know that it took me less time than he thought it did to clean his house,especially when i was cleaning it weekly. But I also did all his laundry for him while I was there, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. I made 75 bucks for 3 hours of work. Not bad.
But today I promised to help out a friend cleaning one of the houses he rents out. I was just to clean the stove and the bathroom fan. It was supposed to be an easy hours worth of work for $20. The bathroom fan took 15 minutes and a screwdriver to clean all the gook off of it. Not a big deal. But my hands still ache from the hours I spent on the stove. I was there for 3 hours. I still only made 20 bucks, I told him that’s what the job would cost and I stuck to it. That is less than minimum wage in WA state. I don’t think the thing had been cleaned since it’s original installation many many years ago.
I am lucky. Cleaning houses is something I do as an extra. It is not my only job skill. So normally I can negotiate my rate and walk away if the pay is too little or the job is too hard. I am also a citizen. So I don’t have the fear of deportation should I complain. Struggling home exhausted on the bus today after working and I thought about all those women who do the same thing I did today everyday. Coming home so tired i can barely see straight, I think about those women with little kids who will have to come home and cook dinner and give baths and read stories still. I, thankfully, have a child old enough that i can ask him to throw something into the oven and who longer needs (or wants) a mom to make sure he washed behind his ears or tuck him in.
Once. long ago when the Kid was still tiny and I worked all those hours both during the week and on the weekend, back when AOL was the online community of non-geeky types, I got into a discussion with someone who condescendingly told me to stuff it about the class warfare stuff. They told me the trick was to work smarter, not harder. Today I’d like to kick that dude in the nutsack. Work this hard should be paid like construction work or any other job where you spend your time breaking your body with hard labor and toxic chemicals. The fact that mostly women do it (and do it for free in their own homes) is why the pays sucks. Though we would never expect a dude who can fix his own plumbing to be content with minimum wage or less.
A few years ago I saw and fell in love with Deepa Mehta’s movie Water. She tells the most beautiful, tragic stories that show in a very clear way just how political the personal is. Water is about widows in 1930’s India, how they are cast off from their families after their husbands die, even if they are jut 8 years old, to live hidden away so as not to bring bad luck on respectable married ladies.
Earth Clip
Last night I watched Earth, about the city of Lahore as India gains it’s independence and loses Pakistan. What little I know of India’s history is from the 1800’s Delhi riots. So I never knew what it was that caused Muslims and Hindus, who had lived together for centuries in peace, to suddenly hate each other with a fiery passion. It is another beautiful, tragic film.
Of course I would be a complete fraud if I didn’t mention that I have a weird adoration for cute Indian boys. And I have dated Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs from the subcontinent (it never works out, they may be the most beautiful boys on the planet, but the boy worship of their cultures makes the cultural divide near impossible to conquer.)But Mehta never fails to put in lots of eye candy in her movies.
Fire Trailer
Next on my list of Mehta films to see is Fire.This movie pissed off people so bad they burnt down theaters. When Water was filming, the location had to be changed at the last minute because protesters burned the set down. It takes some kind of courage for Mehta to keep making these movies. And every ounce of is shows in her films.
I gotta write this quick as it is my standing SYTYCD dinner date night. I may come back later and update if it comes out wrong.
In comments on this post a while back– Wonder, B and I were talking about that squicked out feeling you get when you get when faced with a moral dilemma.
I’ve been getting that squicked out feeling a lot these days. Every time I have to tell a fellow Hillary supporter that using racist or fear mongering tactics to bash Obama is wrong.
It would be some much easier to sit back on my heels and watch the ratfuckers on the right tell the people that Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya who wants to institute Sharia law everywhere. I mean paybacks a bitch and you get whats coming to you after all.
But I think there are plenty of arguments to be made against Obama without resorting to using the same sexist, racist, fearmongering tools that right has used forever and the left has discovered recently as a way to shut the bitches up.
I think Obama is the worst possible thing that could happen to our country right now. Not because he’s black or has a funny name or even because his wife may have been a black separatist in college (seriously- if you weren’t some kind of radical in college- what was wrong with you?), but because he is a megalomaniacal sexist with no experience, bad economic plans, and the backing of a very corrupt Chicago political machine.
So I am sucking it up, ignoring the squicked out feeling, and continuing to tell people who really are on my side that if they don’t have any arguments against Obama that don’t use racism then their arguments are weak.
I’ve been lurking at the Hathor Legacy for quite sometime. Reading their stuff has given me massive insight into those things that bother you about TV and movie characters that you can’t quite explain why.
Today they bring up an oldie but goodie episode of M*A*S*H to show the problems of being a competent woman in a room of equally competent men.
Here we have it: the trifecta of requirements our culture has for women interfacing with men but not for men dealing with women. Hawkeye was actually okay with being shown up by a woman, he just expected her to do it in a womanly fashion: quietly, with consideration for his fragile ego. He refuses to see a problem with this (he loves women, after all),
Go read the whole thing and check out their blog. Besides, it gives you an excuse to watch TV, you’re educating yourself about the patriarchy. Not killing brain cells and wasting time that could otherwise be spent reading.
I think that people (boys) may have the absolute wrong idea about how to go about the random hook up/ one night stand.
Here’s a hint- girl’s like sex. Girl’s like honesty. Girl’s don’t need to be played, coerced or tricked into getting naked. If you have to use trickery to get a girl into bed, you’re not really a Casanova. You’re a junior date rapist.
So how do you go about it without being a candidate for Mr. Biggest Asshole in the World?
1. Be yourself. You don’t need tricks and tips from pick up artists. A sweet, shy geek is way more attractive than a slimy dude with cheesy lines.
2. Be confident. And real confidence is being able to take rejection without turning into a weasel. Someone not responding the way you’d like to your advances does not mean you should keep trying, or should pull out a neg(ative compliment), or become insulting. That just makes you look like a desperate loser. You may not be the guy she wants, but if you don’t act like a douche then she won’t tell everyone she knows that you acted like a douche. And we do talk about that kind of stuff.
3. Be honest about what you want. If you just want a one night stand or a fuck buddy, be upfront about it. There’s no shame in it. And if you are straight up from the beginning then you give her the information to make a rational choice. We all prefer to make our choices with all the information.
4. Sometimes you don’t know if the person you’re with is someone you want to be in a relationship with, or someone you just want to have fun with. This is called DATING. It is not new. You have a responsibility to let the other person know once you’ve figured it out though. Not letting them know makes you a douche and keeps information from them that helps them make a rational choice.
5. You’ll notice that a lot of the point above involve the words information, rational, and choice. We like to think that sex is all about loins and hearts, but the brain is the biggest sexual organ there is. And the brain likes all the information so it can make a rational choice about what it wants. Choice folks. You want someone to choose to be with you, whether that is for a night or a longer.
See- that’s not so hard. Be yourself, be honest, be confident enough to take rejection. Not hard. Really.
And as Pidomon knows, the real way to a girl’s heart is knife skills, feminism and yogurt. 😉
I watched this long series of powerpoints on the gender gap in academia a few weeks ago. I think it goes a long way towards explaining why some young women are denying the massive sexism of the current political campaign, while older, more experienced women are calling it what it is.
In every discipline, science, engineering, law, medicine, and humanities, women start out at an relatively equal place. But in every discipline, over time women fall way behind. Even taking into account parenting (the great claim of asshole economists being that women fall behind cause they would rather make babies than make money)women fall behind.
So perhaps our young Obama supporting sisters really do believe they have a chance at equality. 10 years from now, I bet they feel differently.
Of our final three, Richard had the most experience, the most imagination, and by far the most technical proficiency. He had consistently wowed us during the season, and frankly, this was his competition to lose. So what happened? In short, he choked. My sense is that Richard lacked that last little bit of grit that causes one to hang in there, no matter what. Call it the “Hillary” factor.
He just gets better the more he keeps talking. And now I want to have a thousand little bald chef babies with him.
Take note liberal dudes- if you want our votes (and in our pants) this is the way you do it. By being an actual feminist. Oh and knife skills don’t hurt either.
Being poor and asking for help means allowing people to constantly investigate your life.
You fill out one set of forms to get help with utility bills or when you’re behind on the rent. Another set of forms at a different agency to get food stamps or medicaid. and you have to keep proving that you’re worthy with recertifications every three months. At the same agency there is a different procedure for getting TANF money. You not only have to prove that you’re worthy, but you have to
