Meghan McCain has breasts! Shocking, isn’t it? I hate having to defend her, because I am not a fan, but for crying out loud, people. It’s a fact of nature that most women (and some men) have breasts. If you find that too much for your little pea brain to handle, then maybe you should stop looking at them?
Category: Ladybusiness
Fail
What boggles my mind even more than the fact that this appears to be an image of a multi-stage rocket preparing for separation, is the fact that at least two people–the image creator and someone at Tampax–thought it was a good idea to use it on a tampon package. WTF were they smoking?
The Mind, It Boggles
Via Think Progress and just about everyone else in the blogosphere, Alan Colmes interviewing the always asstastic John Derbyshire. In the interview, Colmes asks Derbyshire about a passage in his new book that lays out a laughable case against allowing women to vote.
DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.
COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?
DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?
COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.
DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].
COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.
DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.
I’d be shocked, but I actually had a raging misogynist neocon tell me the very same thing. Tell me again, why do women vote for conservatives, when those political allies have absolutely no respect for them? Is it a form of Stockholm syndrome?
Suffragettes, 6/2/20
“No self respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her sex.” — Susan B. Anthony
FROM: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Collections
DIGITAL ID: (digital file from original) npcc 01705 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/npcc.01705
CONTROL #: npc2007001704
REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-DIG-npcc-01705 (digital file from original)
RIGHTS INFORMATION: No known restrictions on publication.
Buffy vs. Edward
This is freaking brilliant. It does a pretty good job of underscoring everything that’s wrong with the Twilight storyline. I mean, what girl really needs her very own, personal, control freak stalker?
New Letters to Esther
I did a ton of scanning and transcribing today. The one from Luella is quite long, and once again, she manages to work some prime patriarchy blaming into it. The later letters from Esther’s mother are full of concern, because Esther is apparently suffering from appendicitis. And, a new potential suitor! Mr. Reffe writes to Esther, to ask if he may correspond with her, and in doing so, mentions Esther’s old beau Richard. It’ll be interesting to see if that goes anywhere.
September 22, 1921 from Ruth, Mamma, and Warren
September 23, 1921 from Mamma
September 24, 1921 from Clark
September 26, 1921 from Clark
October 2, 1921 from Mamma
October 2, 1921 from Fred A. Reffe
October 3, 1921 from Clark
October 5, 1921 from Mamma
October 5, 1921 from Mamma
October 7, 1921 from Mamma
October 9, 1921 from Mamma
October 12, 1921 from Luella Glendening
October 14, 1921 from Clark
October 16, 1921 from Mamma
Resurrection Lilies
I planted several of these last year, and all of them came up this spring, but so far, only one has bloomed.
In other news, that staff meeting and the training BS we have to go through? I got to work this morning, and there was an email from our unit supervisor requiring us to read the FAQ (it’s a wiki, actually) on using our computers. We will have to give a short explanation of what we learned from it at our next unit meeting, this Wednesday. My head nearly explodiated!
1. I read the damned wiki when it was first made available.
2. Because I am one of the few people who finished the ridiculous Web 2.0 assignment (the one in which we were supposed to set up a blog and post photos to Flickr), and because I use them every damned day, I long ago subscribed to the RSS feed for the damned wiki. And I actually look when it’s updated, which is kind of pointless, because it’s almost always a stylistic edit, not anything to do with actual content. But I do look!
This means that I’m not going to read the damned wiki, because I already have. Nor am I going to learn anything from it, because I have actually done what we were told to do a goddamn year ago. Apparently, some folks have not acquainted themselves with the damned wiki, though, so there will be the equivalent of a test.
We are not amused.
Also on the list of things that we are unamused about is the coworker whose daughter is pregnant, and who keeps giving everyone in the department hourly updates on how dilated said daughter’s cervix is. I think I can safely say that’s one of those things that’s near the top of the list of Stuff I Do Not Need to Know. I understand she’s excited about her grandbaby being born, and I understand that’s something that’s perfectly appropriate to share between good friends, but we are coworkers, not good friends, and that sort of thing is therefore definitely TMI.
Beyond that, though, is the larger issue of women’s bodies being treated like public property, especially when those bodies are pregnant. Too many people don’t think twice about offering unasked for advice to pregnant women, or sharing their own birth horror stories with them, or invading their personal space to touch their bellies. It seems that my coworker’s sharing of her daughter’s labor progress falls somewhere in there. It’s kind of private and shouldn’t be for public consumption. If people want a progress report, a simple, “Nothing yet,” should suffice.
Women at Work
Nadya Suleman
I’m sick to death of hand-wringing, shaming news reports about Nadya Suleman. I’m sick of hearing about how selfish she is for having a lot of children, when having children, period, is selfish. I’m sick of reading about how irresponsible she is for daring to have kids when she’s poor, as if reproduction were a pastime reserved for the wealthy. I’m tired of comments that she must be using her children to fill some emotional void, when I suspect that most–if not all–parents are guilty of similar motives (otherwise, why on earth would anyone have kids?). I’m sick and tired of it.
And now, there’s an article in the LA Times stating that the hospital where Nadya Suleman gave birth may not release her children to her, because they have concerns about her “living arrangement.” Since when were hospitals in the business of deciding which mothers get to take their kids home, and which do not? Assuming that there is a genuine problem, isn’t that the purview of social workers?
And what is actually wrong with Nadya Suleman’s “living arrangement”? If the article is accurate, her situation isn’t ideal, but the same can be said of a zillion other families in the US. Heck, the Duggars were living in a tiny, cramped house with just about the same number of kids, and I’d be willing to bet that the hospital didn’t threaten to not release their babies. No, what they got was a series of television specials celebrating their fecundity.
Do we really want to start taking away people’s kids for living in cramped homes? For being unemployed? Because their homes are threatened with foreclosure? (In the current US economic climate, that last one is going to hit a lot of people hard.)
Why are we worrying and obsessing about whether or not she has the resources to care for her kids, instead of providing those resources for her? Why is she being threatened with having her children taken away, instead of being offered the help she needs? Because she’s poor, brown, and unemployed, and therefore doesn’t deserve help? Actually, she’s not unemployed. She’s got a more than full-time job, but we would rather denigrate her work rather than compensate her for it.
And before anyone starts waving their hands in the air and crying, “Oh noes! My tax precious dollars!” let me say that I don’t care about “your” tax dollars. They don’t belong to you. We all pay taxes. One of the things that money is supposed to do is help people when they need it, whether that need is temporary or life-long. In a just world, no one would fall through the cracks, and we wouldn’t have litmus tests for who is morally deserving of help and who is not. This, like public roads, firefighters, and schools, is one of the benefits of living in large social groups. If you don’t want your tax dollars going to help people in need, then maybe you should become a hermit and live on a deserted island.
Comments Problem Fixed
Once again, something I did inadvertently changed the setting for whether or not commenters must log in. I don’t want people to have to log in, so it was unintentional! It should be fixed now, though an unfortunate side-effect is that comments are now closed on old posts. I have no idea how to fix that, but in terms of cutting down on spam, it’s just as well.
ETA: And more on those creepy purity balls, courtesy of Jackie. I’m all for fathers being active parents (um, that’s their job), but I think this stuff crosses the line into fetish.
That Joke Isn’t Funny
There’s a discussion in the dog groups (which, of course, has bupkis to do with dogs) in which various parents overreact to boys showing interest in their daughters. Not a word, as far as I can tell, about protecting their young sons from the sexual advances of young women.
I just find the whole “girls are either virgins or sluts but boys are always studs” crap fascinating. And by fascinating, I mean cringe-inducing. Parents want to protect their daughters’ virtue, but boys are meant to fool around. It’s sort of a badge of honor, in fact (wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say no more). When girls do the same, they’re promiscuous, trampy whores. Just think of all the negative terms we have for sexually active women, vs. the sorts of terms we have for sexually active men. Sexually active men are admired and praised, while their female counterparts are shamed and denigrated.
And there’s a subtext that’s kind of skeevy. The whole “protect your daughters so that you can hand them over to their next owner with virtue intact” crap that gets celebrated at father-daughter purity balls (no, I am not making this up) is frankly horrifying. It’s one thing to teach your children–all of them–to be responsible, respectful human beings, but quite another to fetishize girls’ hymens.[1]
Anyway, jokes about buying chastity belts for your daughters or threatening to shoot boys who fool around with them make me cranky.
IBTP, of course.
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[1] It’s not just a matter of quaint, harmless tradition, either. When you have fucknecks like Bill Napoli bloviating about how only virginal, Christian girls are worthy of compassion should they have the misfortune to be raped, hymen fetishization takes on a whole new dimension.
red paper boat 
