I’d be worried if I were you.

Actually, I have some good news. Isn’t it fun to find out stuff is changing for the better?

“I think the president’s statement today is probably the most significant advancing of our cause since the bill-signing,” Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley told me during a meeting in Baltimore, two hours after President Obama announced his public support for same-sex marriage. A poll out just this morning quantifies how significant. If the vote to uphold Maryland’s marriage-equality law were held today, it would pass with 57 percent of the vote. Even more compelling, 55 percent of African Americans said same-sex marriages should have the same rights as other marriages.

That sound you hear is millions of “traditional marriage” enforcers tearing their hair out.

 

Ugly bitches can still kick your ass.

Right. I went to the Women in Secularism Conference, and it was awesome, then I went back to work on Monday and found that my co-workers decided to punish me for taking Friday off. I’m reading “punishment” into the pile of work that I found on my desk on Monday, and anything that takes more than 5 minutes online at a stretch has to wait for the evenings at home.

One of the things that happened at the conference was that Jen McCreight mentioned during a panel discussion that she had been warned via email, by several separate, mutually unaware women, to steer clear of certain male speakers who often appeared at atheist conventions. These are men who are rather prominent in the secular community and have a history of harassing women at conventions, so Jen was warned not to be alone in a room with them. This was just a small part of a panel which was one of several presentations over the weekend, but, as tends to happen whenever someone brings up sexual harassment within a community, it has lit up the Internet.

Stephanie Zvan on social pressures and incentives.

Jen McCreight weighs in on the coming shitstorm.

Stephanie Zvan on policies.

JT Eberhard offers advice on flirting without harassing.

Greta Christina responds to the idea of women playing hard to get.

Greta Christina calls out some idiot who played the Ugly Card like it’s a new invention.

And finally, this shit happened, which has prompted Jen to suggest a new Internet law.

Proof women can be sexist assholes too! I really feel like we should have a law for this, like Godwin’s law. “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a woman’s appearance being mentioned grows larger.” The type of remark can vary. I’ve been called both pretty and ugly as insults (hurrrr, or pretty ugly!). Women just can’t win.

When a woman complains of sexual harassment/abuse, her appearance will be made an issue in either (or both!) of two ways. 1. She’s too pretty, so the guy who mistreated her just couldn’t help it, and what does she expect, anyway, looking the way she does? Or, 2. She’s too ugly, so it couldn’t possibly have happened and she’s just lying to get attention.

Sometimes both of these tactics will be used on the same woman in the same incident. Or, sometimes it doesn’t start with a discussion of sexist behavior, per se, but there’s an argument going on, and when a woman has the gall to express a less-than-popular opinion, some people find it easier to tell her she’s ugly than to respond to her argument. The implication isn’t really that being ugly means she’s wrong so much as that being ugly means she can’t have an opinion.

Alternatively, a discussion could begin with a woman posting something interesting, and instead of engaging with her point, some dudes show up and talk about how much they’d like to bang her. (And when she’s having none of that bullshit, they turn around and call her an ugly bitch.)

This happens a lot in Internet arguments. This is why Greta has a tag of #mencallmethings. It doesn’t actually matter how the woman in question looks. She could look like a toadstool, or she could rival the Greek goddesses, or anything in between. Somehow, her appearance will be used to silence her.

So, I’m with Jen. I think there should be an official Internet Law similar to Godwin’s. If, every time some idiot brought out the “Well, you’re ugly, durr durr durr” card rather than actually responding on ideas, we responded with, “Hah! I call Blag Hag’s Law, and you lose!” eventually the idiots would start thinking twice about saying shit like that.

(Finally, I’d like to point something out to women like Abbie Smith and Scented Nectar, who keep turning up on the wrong side of these encounters: the longer the debate goes on, the more women are willing to speak up, and the more men listen to us and stand on our side. The more that happens, the more the anti-feminist side selects for increasingly obnoxious and repugnant men. I know, you want to be the ladies who show the menfolk how cool you are, you want to win the dudes’ approval by showing them you’re not with those hairy feminazis, but that position only becomes more maladaptive every time we go through this debate. I will paraphrase Amanda Marcotte: guys like that don’t go down. The benefits of standing up to the Evil Feminist Machine aren’t so beneficial anymore.)

 

Concerned Women for America hate women in America. Hate ‘em.

Ever notice how pretty much every advocacy organization in this country which includes the word “family” in its name is focused on misogyny, homophobia and racism? If we see it in the plural form, then it might be okay, such as “healthy families” or “women and families,” but in singular, it’s nearly always bad news. Groups like Family Research Council are full of terrible proposals for women and children, and they keep repeating this word “family” to make horribleness sound nice.

The House GOP just passed a reauthorization of VAWA with all the good new stuff taken out.

In past years, VAWA enjoyed bipartisan support and garnered little controversy. This time around, however, top Religious Right groups have rallied against the bill due to the protections it would extend to immigrant, Native American, and LGBT victims of domestic abuse. These groups, including the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, and the Southern Baptist Convention’sEthics and Religious Liberty Commission, made noise on Capitol Hill and are most directly responsible for the events that will unfold in the House today.

And…what do these people have to say? Concerned Women for America took the lead in writing to Senators:

We, the undersigned, representing millions of Americans nationwide, are writing today to oppose the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). This nice-sounding bill is deceitful because it destroys the family by obscuring real violence in order to promote the feminist agenda. […]

There is no denying the very real problem of violence against women and children. However, the programs promoted in VAWA are harmful for families. VAWA often encourages the demise of the family as a means to eliminate violence.

Further, this legislation continues to use overly broad definitions of domestic violence. These broad definitions actually squander the resources for victims of actual violence by failing to properly prioritize and assess victims. Victims who can show physical evidence of abuse should be our primary focus.

They use “family” to mean that it’s better for children to grow up watching Daddy beat Mommy to a pulp (and possibly put her in an early grave) than to help Mommy take the kids and get away from Daddy. Such situations often also involve violence on children, but I suppose it would be so much worse for children to grow up without their fathers:

In 1998, Johnson was arrested by the Perrysburg Police, again on domestic violence charges. According to the police report, Johnson provided a “very similar” account of the incident to that his wife Ofelia and 14-year-old son gave police. Both wife and son reported that Johnson had Ofelia Felix-Johnson in a wrist lock, and when the son attempted to stop Johnson from hurting his mother, Johnson put the son in a head lock such that he was “unable to breathe and was choking up food,” according to the police report. After the son broke free, the police report continues, Johnson “put his right hand around [the boy's] throat and pushed [him] against the wall with his back to the wall and choked [the boy] for about 5 seconds.”

Timothy Johnson is one of the people who signed the letter opposing the Senate’s version of VAWA. Yes, I’m sure a convicted wife-batterer and child-batterer would know all about the demise of families.

In a sane world, a phrase like “family values” would bring up a commitment to caring for your kids, loving your partner, being there for your siblings and taking care of your elderly parents and grandparents. In public policy discussions, “family values” should refer to policies that empower people to build and maintain healthy family relations, but there is no room for battering in a healthy family. Part of caring for your kids is not beating up their other parent. Part of caring for your kids is also raising them in an environment in which you, and they, are not subjected to violence.

To say it “destroys the family” to empower battered women to leave their abusers assumes that a family no longer exists if the husband and father is no longer in it. It assumes that upholding a man’s relationship to his wife and children—even if the relationship is a toxic one—is more important than allowing women and children to live without battering. If that’s what “family” means, then, fuck it: I’m promoting the Feminist Agenda. Concerned Women for America can go concern themselves right off a short pier.

 

Virginia Del. Robert G. Marshall calls the kettle black

Thorne-Begland was the only one of more than three dozen judicial nominees — including 10 others from the Richmond region — who was not elected to a judgeship following a marathon legislative session dominated by review of amendments to the two-year state budget proposed by Gov. Bob McDonnell.

And how, you may wonder, is Mr. Thorne-Begland uniquely unqualified among nominees for a judgeship in Virginia?

A number of conservative House Republicans with military backgrounds questioned Thorne-Begland’s decision to speak publicly about his sexual orientation while he was in the military and subject to its code of conduct.

“For me it’s not not about fear and bigotry and ignorance and so forth,” said  Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Prince William. ”It is very definitely about duty.”

In an email blast to supporters late last week, the Christian conservative Family Foundation questioned Thorne-Begland’s fitness for the bench given his support for gay marriage, which is not legal in Virginia. Thorne-Begland and his partner, Michael, live together and are raising twins.

Marshall, too had charged that Thorne-Begland pursued an “aggressive activist homosexual agenda.”

“Duty” here is code for “don’t make us uncomfortable.”

We can’t have a new judge who spoke out against DADT at the expense of his military career and who now raises twins openly with his partner. If you’re gay and pursuing a legal/judicial career in Virginia, you’d best stay in the closet.

But his nomination came under fire late last week, as the Family Foundation and Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, stoked fears that the 45-year-old attorney would allow his sexual orientation to influence his judicial decisions.

If you’re queer, and you might make judicial decisions that make life suck less for queer people, then according to Del. Marshall you are allowing your sexual orientation to influence your judicial decisions, and to him that is unacceptable. However, Del. Marshall doesn’t seem to consider that some might accuse him of allowing his bigotry to influence his legislative decisions, and in ways that would do a lot more damage than any “aggressive activist homosexual agenda.” Amanda Marcotte has more of his nonsense:

“Marriage is between one man and one woman, and the the applicant has represented himself in public in a relationship that we don’t recognize in Virginia,” Marshall said in an interview with WRIC, the ABC affiliate in Richmond.

Of course he’s just making shit up as he goes along. We don’t see him applying this “relationship propriety test” to people who are against marriage equality. I think he’s freaking out over the fact that support for civil marriage equality is shooting up like a rocket all over the country, and Tracy Thorne-Begland is a handy target for his anxiety.

*shhhhh!* Grown-ups are talking!

Oh, the self-obliviousness is overpowering:

While it’s great to listen to your kids’ ideas, there’s also a time when dads simply need to be dads. In this case, it would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage. Or that – as great as her friends may be – we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.
In this situation, it was the other way around. I guess we can be glad that Malia and Sasha aren’t younger, or perhaps today’s press conference might have been about appointing Dora the Explorer as Attorney General because of her success in stopping Swiper the Fox.

Sometimes dads should lead their family in the right ways of thinking. In this case, it would’ve been nice if the President would’ve been an actual leader and helped shape their thoughts instead of merely reflecting what many teenagers think after one too many episodes of Glee.

Bristol Palin, you are the very last person whose opinion is of any use to us on well-adjusted families or the roles of fathers. Oh, and your grammar is lousy. Please learn the third conditional before you use “would have” in another sentence, will you?

Seriously, though, Pres. Obama has forgotten more about how to be a good parent than you have ever learned. Your comfort zone is not a good place to be.

The Caucasian Race allowed Jodie Brunstetter to happen.

The latest argument against marriage equality: “Because white people need to breed more.”

Pam’s House Blend points us to Yes Weekly, which shows us…this:

MICHAEL:

“I had my back to her like this. She said, ‘The reason my husband my husband wrote Amendment 1 was because the Caucasian race is diminishing and we need to uh, reproduce.”

UNIDENTIFIED POLL WORKER: “(Mrs. Brunsetter said) … the Caucasian race is diminishing. ?The reason that’s a problem is that it was white people that founded this country.”

Meanwhile Mrs. Brunstetter is all like, “Sure, I said that, but if I said ‘Caucasian,’ it wasn’t about race! Why won’t you people leave me alone, with your gotcha questions and your ‘facts’!”

This may seem incoherent, as reading this exchange has cost me a couple dozen IQ points.

So…like…North Carolina needs a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality, because by barring same-sex couples from marriage, they’ll be able to force white people to have more kids, relative to people of color?

But…what? On what planet does that even begin to make sense?

Pastor Sean Harris is a horrible person who hates humanity.

Sometimes, they just let it all out for everyone to see:

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? “You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male.”

The rules for girls are a bit more flexible, and yet somehow, even more fucked up:

And when your daughter starts acting too butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”

How do I put this?

This man hates people. He hates boys, he hates girls, he hates LGBTs, he hates straight people who don’t perfectly tow the gender line.

How do I come to that conclusion?

Because Pastor Harris’s diatribe is not affecting only gay people, or only children who belong to sexual minorities. If it did affect only those groups of people, that shouldn’t make it more acceptable, but to the extent that his congregants follow his advice, he is not encouraging abuse of JUST those kids who are growing up gay. He is encouraging abuse of ALL children. He is telling parents to berate, control and assault their children as soon as they deviate from gender norms, and you know what? We all do that. We all fail to meet our gender’s standards in some ways, because gender norms are socially constructed, subject to change, and arbitrary. All children will here and there do something that doesn’t exactly follow the rules of the gender marked on their birth certificate.

And here’s Pastor Sean Harris, instructing the parents in his congregation to beat their kids into behaving like socially approved, heterosexist boys and girls. He hates gay and lesbian children, he hates straight children, and he hates the adults they will grow up to be. Shame on him for parading his hatred from his pulpit, and shame on all those people who sit in those pews, laugh and nod along with his sermons, and pay his salary. They are all part of the problem.

(And it needs to be said: these same people almost inevitably believe that gay and lesbian couples are unfit to raise children. The irony is terrifying. Kill it, Mommies! Kill it with fire!)

Injustice has been served.

According to Colorlines, CeCe McDonald has pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter. While this charge is far less appalling than murder, and a 41-month prison sentence is less damaging than 80 years, it is, nonetheless, wrong. They attacked first, and she acted in self-defense. She has been prosecuted for having refused to take their abuse sitting down. This is a great way to send a message to trans people, especially black trans women: “We do not want you here.” It is an act of erasure, far less gradual and subtle than most.

ALL THE BABIES

Heh heh.

While the “every sperm is sacred” amendment is clever, I would like to propose something that can actually be enforced, and which would give the legislators in question a chance to put their love of children into practice. It would be an answer to this question here:

Between the years of 1907 and 2008, only 77 women have been elected to the Oklahoma state legislature, and currently less than 20 is serving out of a total 149. But who better to pass laws about women’s bodies than a group of men who will never have to worry about the consequences of their religious zealotry?

Who says they won’t have to worry about the consequences of their religious zealotry?

The next time a state legislature is frothing up one of these “defeat the scourge of women who are not perennially pregnant” bills, let’s attach an amendment that creates the following conditions:

1. The state will allow for Safe Haven dropoffs of infants up to 30 days. The state will similarly provide special shelters for homeless pregnant women and girls.

2. The state will release to the public the home addresses of all the state lawmakers who voted Yes on the bill.

3. All of those lawmakers’ homes will be considered Safe Haven zones for unwanted newborns AND special shelters for pregnant women and girls facing parental rejection, domestic violence and extreme poverty. Those homes will be held legally responsible for the safe placement of all newborns left at their doors and for the provision of shelter, food, clothing, medical care and protection from violent partners for all pregnant females seeking assistance.

You think babies are so awesome that women should be legally forced to gestate and birth indefinitely? They’ll be coming (both the women and the babies) to your doorstep. Have plenty of beds ready.

 

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman hates illegal immigrants, especially pregnant women.

Gov. Heineman really does not want any “anchor babies” in his state:

Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman vetoed a proposal to restore Medicaid-funded prenatal care for illegal immigrants on Friday, but the initiative could still survive if the state legislature rejects his move next week.

And, what is his reasoning?

Heineman, who is anti-abortion, also said he had “grave concerns” that some funding could go to abortion provider Planned Parenthood and that Nebraska could become a sanctuary for illegal immigrants because no bordering states offered similar coverage.

Let’s go over that again: he’s vetoing Medicaid coverage for prenatal care for undocumented women, because Planned Parenthood provides prenatal care.

He doesn’t like abortion, but he also doesn’t want undocumented women having babies in his state, and he is afraid that if he does not join neighboring states in a race to the bottom, then additional money will end up with Planned Parenthood because they care about pregnant women and their eagerly awaited babies far more than Dave Heineman does.