So this morning I felt very pleased with myself. For the first time in ages, every single unpublished A-list story is out and circulating (the A-list is everything I haven’t decided is unsellable).
I knew that couldn’t last. But it was still frustrating that by 5 p.m., “Kernel of Truth” and “Tale Spinners” had both come back. Though I give full credit to Nightmare and Defenestration for a prompt turnaround of only a few days.
Monthly Archives: October 2012
Undead sexist cliches: Women’s rights are good, unless women try to fight for them.
As you may know, under the Lily Ledbetter Act women who discover after a decade or even two decades that they’ve been paid less than men for the same job (passed predominantly by Dems, opposed by Repubs, signed by Obama) can sue. This fixes the problem that if the statute of limitations expires before women learn they’re getting ripped off, the Supreme Court previously ruled they can’t sue (the LL Act creates an exception).
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio assures us that he and all Republicans support equal pay for equal work, but they don’t want women suing over it: “this legislation is in many respects nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers collect their fees and file lawsuits, which may have nothing to do whatsoever to increasing pay equity in the workplace.”
And, of course, while it’s fine for government to adopt policies that let for-profit prison companies and defense contractors make millions, it wouldn’t do to let trial lawyers collect from companies that have done wrong. And it’s not like suing companies and costing them money could possibly give them an incentive to change their policies (that was sarcasm). Besides, Mitt Romney has already assured us that once we have full employment we’ll get equal pay for women.
Fear of being sued is, however, a familiar right-wing flashpoint when it comes to women’s rights. Consider pundit John Derbyshire’s comments last year, after Herman Cain was accused of sexual harassment: “Is there anyone who thinks sexual harassment is a real thing? Is there anyone who doesn’t know it’s all a lawyers’ ramp, like ‘racial discrimination’? You pay a girl a compliment nowadays, she runs off and gets lawyered up. Is this any way to live?”
Women demanding equal rights doesn’t scare people. Women who can sue over them? That’s terrifying. Playboy columnist Asa Baber, Rush Limbaugh and John Stossel have all written about how monstrous the idea of legal penalties for sex harassment is (how are they supposed to pick up chicks if they have to worry about that shit?). It’s the equivalent of rape apologists: Yes, pay discrimination and sexual harassment are bad (I suspect Derbyshire’s stated views are what a lot of what the apologists thinkin private) but actually doing anything about them? That way lies madness!
In another undead sexist matters:
•I have a new And column out, on conservatives’ dubious claims nature supports their sexist views. Here’s an article on how “slut shaming” helps enforce male dominance. More links to discussions of patriarchy on Slacktivist, including this on banning abortion.
•Another right-wing cliche is that women should just look at how much worse off women are in the Third World and be grateful America gives them such glorious rights. Therefore, Sandra Fluke sucks!
Apparently the fact so many on the right want to take those hard-won women’s freedoms away isn’t something we should discuss either.
•Paul Ryan insists that the Republican war on women is just a media myth. Because restricting access to abortion or contraception and opposing the right to sue companies who stiff women on pay doesn’t affect real women like stay-at-home moms at all (no offense to stay-at-home moms intended. That’s a fine choice, but I object to Republicans treating it like the only respectable option).
Filed under Politics, Undead sexist cliches
Books
THE MONSTER MAKER and Other Science Fiction Classics suffers from the perennial anthology problem that I have a lot of what’s in here already, such as Color Out of Space. Of the remaining material in this collection of Victorian/early-20th century works, a lot of it is pretty un-classic, though there are also good stories such as George Allen England’s “The Thing From Outside,” a pre-Lovecraft Lovecraftian story; humorous SF story from Conan Doyle (“The Los Amigos Fiasco”) and an interesting take on immortality, Mary Shelly’s “Mortal Immortal” (who discovers potentially living forever doesn’t make him worry any less about dying)
ULEMET AND THE JAGUAR GOD by Lyndon Perry (whom I know online) is an ebook novelet in which a disfigured young woman faces slavers and wild animals after fleeing her village, only to wind up playing the Aztec ball game for her freedom and hoping for aid from the Jaguar God. It’s always nice to see a Mesoamerican fantasy that doesn’t focus solely on Evil High Priests and Human Sacrifice; I liked this one, though it really feels like it should run longer. If you’re interested you can find it here
ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING by Jasper Fforde is the most recent book in his Thursday Next series, though the protagonist is not the real investigator/adventurer Thursday but the star of the novels about her that have played a role in past books. When the real Thursday disappears, her fictional counterpart steps in to help and finds herself embroiled in both in-book and “real” world conspiracies. The metafictional jokes come close to burying this, but it does have some good touches such as fic-Thursday’s bafflement at real-world randomness (“What’s the point of running into someone if they don’t play a role in the story later?”). Fun enough, but not the best of the bunch.
WHY THE VIETCONG FOUGHT: A Study of Motivation and Control in a Modern Army in Combat by William Darryl Henderson concludes that claims North Vietnamese forces were motivated by fanatical die-hard dedication to the communist cause get it wrong (and that most soldiers didn’t grasp communism beyond the simple slogan level). Instead, Henderson argues, what kept the PLA and the Vietcong going when things got rough were such familiar elements as closely bonded small units headed by trustworthy experienced cadres (a cadre beinga combination brotherly sergeant and political officer), national myths (assuring soldiers they were part of Vietnam’s long history of fighting against Foreign Oppression) and more distinctive features such as discipline via criticism sessions and constant surveillance via the cadres. As a result, even when the troops showed the same skepticism about goals and missions as our own soldiers, they continued to function effectively as a fighting force instead of disintegrating. The final bit of research for my Vietnam War story Peace With Honor.
Filed under Reading
A movie and some TV
Outside of Atlas Shrugged, which I’ve already discussed, my only film of the past week was ZELIG (1983), Woody Allen’s mockumentary about the eponymous human chameleon (played by Allen) whose teenage insecurities (“Everyone else had read Moby Dick—I pretended I had so I could fit in.”) manifest in adulthood as the power to fit with everyone around him: He’s an aristocrat around the rich, an Irish servant below stairs, a psychiatrist when committed for care (Mia Farrow plays the female shrink who treats him) and at one point a Nazi. All of this is done in a dead-one documentary style, presenting Zelig as the kind of once-famous figure PBS’ American Experience likes to spotlight. Watching this made me aware how much fantasy and SF Allen has done over the years, such as Sleeper, this film and Purple Rose of Cairo and Alice down the road. “I split with Freud over the concept of penis envy—he believed it only applied to women.”
While short on movies this week (partly because one of my Netflix rentals died midway through), I have, however, been following along with at least a little of the current TV season. You already know what I think about Revolution, so here’s capsule reviews of some others:
•Arrow: A very grim, Batmanish version of Green Arrow, but so far I’m enjoying it.
•Elementary: I like this, but it’s not up to the BBC’s Sherlock. In fact, it doesn’t really feel Holmesian at all: Emphasizing his mental problems and drug addiction makes him come off as much a version of USA’s Monk (a crazy detective assisted by his medical companion).
*666 Park Avenue: I think this is actually holding me less than Revolution. It seems very heavily influenced by Rosemary’s Baby, and one character’s death in the last episode seemed completely arbitrary and unrelated to any of the main plots. (it could just as easily have been done in Tales From the Darkside).
Dinesh D’Souza takes the heat
You may D’Souza as the former Reagan administration member who directed 2016: Obama’s America. He’s a prominent conservative who believes Obama is “anti-colonial” While this would seem to make Obama an heir to the founding fathers, D’Souza means it as a Bad Thing—because Obama’s anti-colonialism is rooted in Kenya, colonized by the British, so it’s a euphemism for “he hates white people.” D’Souza has also written that if we could just get conservative Islam to understand that Real Americans hate women dressing sexy, sexy TV and movies, women’s sexual freedom, gay marriage, etc., then they’d understand we’re very much alike.
And it seems he’s also having an affair with blogger Odie Joseph, despite being married. A fairly blatant affair in which they shared a room at an evangelical conference; when people raised questions, D’Souza insisted that absolutely nothing happened (but he was, however, engaged to Joseph while still married to his wife).
Understandably, conservative evangelicals are upset. Slacktivist observes that they are not, however, terribly bothered by D’Souza’s racist writings about Obama and even earlier (my apologies to those conservative evangelicals who are indeed put out by it).
His fiancee, meanwhile, has joined the chorus of conservatives who think women should not have the vote. The arguments against suffrage back when women were fighting for their rights made sense! And now that they have the vote, liberal women are ruining America thanks to weak men who refuse to bring them to heel!
As Wonkette notes, there’s a remarkable hypocrisy in condemning feminists for ruining the two-parent family while participating in an affair. Though as I’ve mentioned in the past, it’s easy to make too much of hypocrisy. Joseph’s views in the link above would be just as repulsive if she were chaste as a nun.
In other matters:
•Here’s an argument that women prefer the kind of president they’d want as a boyfriend. Same old, same old.
•Echidne of the Snakes discussses Romney’s binders full of women.
•A look at how local prosecutors and cops helped the Boy Scouts cover up pedophiles in the organization.
•A while back, I linked to Glenn Greenwald’s article claiming that the Libya attack on our embassy–blamed on outrage over an anti-Islamic movie—was actually a planned terrorist attack (but blaming it on the video deflected attention from our counter-terrorism policies). Subsequent reporting concluded that while the attackers were indeed terrorists, they were responding to the video. FAIR looks at the debate and sides with the latter assessment.
Of course, the media have been wrong before … but for the moment, I guess I’ll go with it.
•The CEO of Citigroup walks away from his post with $260 million in compensation. Never mind that the company’s stock has dropped 90 percent since he took over the company.
Filed under Politics, Undead sexist cliches
Mitt Romney, friend to women’s rights. Ha-ha, just fooling
Here we have Romney assuring us he supports access to contraception, but not any laws requiring insurers or employers to cover it.
Then we have his assurance that he boosted women’s presence in the Massachusetts government by putting together a big binder of potential female candidates (which is not true—under Romney women’s presence shrank). Beyond that? Well, all government can do is make the economy so good that companies are scrounging for workers. Amanda Marcotte replies by pointing out that even when the economy was booming, pay discrimination existed. Plus, of course, our government doesn’t like full employment, precisely because it raises the risk of workers other than CEOs getting pay increases (inflation!). I’ve heard many times that the Fed and other bodies look on really low unemployment as a problem, not a sign of success.
Here’s a more general discussion of women’s issues in the debate. Unsurprisingly some conservatives think that Obama considering women’s issues is just pandering, because it’s not like losing Roe vs. Wade would encourage states to pass even more anti-abortion legislation or anything, and the real issue over contraception is religious freedom for employers so there!
As I’ve noted before, however, the right-wing isn’t just opposed to abortion, they hate birth control (more on the topic from me here). I have no trouble believing Mitt will eliminate it if the right presses it enough, or come up with the kind of insane regulations that have made abortion so much harder to get.
I also believe it’s a strain to say providing employees with insurance (or covering part of the cost) means you’re “subsidizing” birth control. As the employee is also paying for it (or in the case of Sandra Fluke and her fellow students, Georgetown University mandates they buy it), why is the employer’s religious freedom paramount? Should the employee be told she has to abide by her boss’s faith? And hell, what about economic freedom—women should be confident that they’re paying for a policy that provides the coverage they need.
Plus of course, I don’t see any of these institutions squealing about paying single men for Viagra which they obviously shouldn’t need, being, you know, single. Or checking they’re not just using it as a party drug for better erections. But of course, men’s slutty behavior is Totally Different, right?
Filed under economics, Politics, Undead sexist cliches
I have no mouth and I must link
Slacktivist catches one prominent Southern Baptist displeased that Christianity Today profiles of prominent Christian women “regards high-achieving women excelling in their respective fields as something to be celebrated.” Slate looks at one particular female bete noir, a female evangelical who doesn’t make the cut for some conservatives.
•Salon suggests blaming Ayn Rand for football-team owners trying to crush the referees. I think that’s debatable—irrational ego-before-profits decisions certainly predate Atlas Shrugged—but read and decide for yourself. Roy Edroso meanwhile catches the right explaining it’s all the referees’ fault.
•A dubious argument from Ann Althouse that borrowing Native American imagery can’t have racist overtones.
•A growing number of Americans would be disappointed if their child married someone from the opposite political party.
•One study finds 96 percent of Americans have benefited from government support, coming in such diverse forms as food stamps, tax breaks for mortgage interest, the GI Bill and more.
•Lawyers, Guns and Money on the First Amendment.
•Ted Koppel embraces the myth that both sides are equally extreme and intolerant.
•Wild Hunt looks at ongoing Christian propaganda paganism is Satanist and leads to demonic possession.
•Echidne looks at how stereotypes of parenting (and which sex is in charge of the children) play into portrayals of stepmothers. One study, for instance, found stepmothers generally do a poor job stepping in as prime caregiver, but doesn’t suggest birth fathers have any obligation.
•A Fox News commentator asserts that Bush brought peace to the Mideast for 10 years, but Obama’s too weak to do the same. This combines both an outright lie (the Middle East has not been at peace since 2002) with the stereotype of wimpy Democrats.
There’s also the usual denunciations of Islam as “a socio-political system… If something comes along and says it is a religion but it has to control all aspects of government, if something controls all aspects of government it simply is not a religion.” So presumably since many Christians believe in a government run on Christian principles, the same logic applies?
•You may have heard this story: A Reddit user condemns a Sikh woman for her facial hair, then apologizes. Proof there is hope for some people.
•After celebrating Romney for kicking Obama’s butt in the debate, right-bloggers are shocked, shocked and appalled that Biden wasn’t polite to Ryan! When they play this card, remember: The only time they think conversation should be civil is when they take flak. And as one alicublog commenter observed recently, civility should take a back place to calling someone out on their lies.
I’m also amused by David Brooks who asserts that Biden lost in the eyes of Young America because he’s a throwback to an earlier, hard-knuckle school of politics and Ryan’s from the more civilized current style. Pundits normally celebrate the older era as gloriously bipartisan in contrast to today’s bitter divisions … but of course, that’s when they’re complaining Democrats don’t move far enough right.
Filed under Politics
The ubermenschen
There’s a scene in the Atlas Shrugged film where Dagny’s brother walks into a convenience store and he’s treated like a movie star.
Hullabaloo has often discussed how much outrage among the CEOs about the Occupy movement and the criticism they get is—well, they’re being criticized. They’re not treated like living legends. People actually criticize them for screwing up. What, just because one of them bought 7.5 million barrels of oil on his company’s account while drunk (“”Mr Perkins poses an extreme risk to the market when drunk” is a masterpiece of British dryness)? Because a banker can stab a cabbie in an argument over a fare and walk (as Digby points out, the cabbie may have been wrong, but it’s unlikely a poor man would have gotten off so easily)? Because even when their companies tank or they lose $20 billion, the worst that happens is the CEO is shooting for bonuses only equal to 35 percent of revenue? Or they gut workers’ pensions and leave the taxpayer to pick up the bag?
In short, that they’re not supermen, just average managers. And frequently incompetent and crooked ones. So yeah, I say disrespect away!
In a similar vein, a Christian blogger suggests absolute unrestricted property rights are not a Biblical fundamental.
And in an unrelated but depressingly typical statement, the president of the Central Mississippi Tea Party thinks women are “too emotional to vote” and we “might have been better off if we were still just men voting.” For my take on the right-wing dream of disenfranchised women, see here.
Filed under economics, Politics, Undead sexist cliches
