You ladies have been causing trouble since the 1950s.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
You ladies have been causing trouble since the 1950s.
I tuned out last night’s debate — my wife watched it, but I put on my headphones and listened to some industrial rock to drown out the drone. I knew I’d be able to get the highlights the next day.
And I did! Apparently Romney was asked about his role in hiring women, and he claimed to have worked hard to bring more women into leadership positions.
ROMNEY: Thank you. An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.
And I — and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are — are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?"
And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women’s groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.
Nice story. Good for him. Except that it isn’t true.
What actually happened was that in 2002 — prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration — a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.
They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.
…
I will write more about this later, but for tonight let me just make a few quick additional points. First of all, according to MassGAP and MWPC, Romney did appoint 14 women out of his first 33 senior-level appointments, which is a reasonably impressive 42 percent. However, as I have reported before, those were almost all to head departments and agencies that he didn’t care about — and in some cases, that he quite specifically wanted to not really do anything. None of the senior positions Romney cared about — budget, business development, etc. — went to women.
Secondly, a UMass-Boston study found that the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006. (It then began rapidly rising when Deval Patrick took office.)
Third, note that in Romney’s story as he tells it, this man who had led and consulted for businesses for 25 years didn’t know any qualified women, or know where to find any qualified women. So what does that say?
The man is great big smilin’ bag of lies, isn’t he?
Check out these stories.
A cosplayer in a sexy outfit refuses to be abused in an interview.
It’s because many people at these cons expect women cosplaying as vixens (or even just wearing particularly flattering costumes) to be open/ welcoming to crude male commentary and lecherous ogling, like our presence comes with subtitles that say “I represent your fantasy thus you may treat me like a fantasy and not a human in a costume”. And maybe that will always be how the majority of people see us. But that does not mean we have to put up with shit that crosses the line, it does not mean we owe them a fantasy, it does not mean we dress up to have guys drooling over us and letting us know that we turn them on. It is not all about your dicks, gentlemen. So I encourage cosplaying women everywhere to be blunt and vocal with their rights, their personal boundaries, and their comfort level at conventions. I actually encourage girls to be brashly shameless about these things, to not be afraid to speak up if you feel uncomfortable and to let the person doing it know that they are crossing the line. Don’t keep quiet because you’re scared of what they might say or think- because if you say nothing they will continue to see what they’re doing as OK.
A Greek atheist stands up against Christian fascists.
I wish I could tell them: I am not a lesbian, but even if I were, what would it matter? I have a husband and a child, but even if I didn’t, what would it matter? I’m not Albanian, but even if I was, what would it matter? I’m not a communist, but even if I was, what would it matter? I don’t believe in God, but what does it matter? Some people have a different opinion about God and Christ and the Virgin Mary — what does it matter? You demand respect for your right to believe in God as you like, why don’t you respect others’ rights to believe in a different way, or not to believe at all?
(via Ophelia)
Both are inspiring!
Some poor young girl, deeply miseducated and misled, wrote into a newspaper with a letter trying to denounce homosexuality with a bad historical and biological argument. She’s only 14, and her brain has already been poisoned by the cranks and liars in her own family…it’s very sad. Here’s the letter — I will say, it’s a very creative argument that would be far more entertaining if it weren’t wrong in every particular.
I’ve transcribed it below. I couldn’t help myself, though, and had to, um, annotate it a bit.
I strongly recommend that you watch this video just before the next Romney/Obama debate. It will strongly color your perspective.
You can also watch it right now if you’d like.
I’ve enjoyed your conversation and wish you well, but…
I’m off to another long day of meetings, but at least I begin inspired by Julia 'badass' Gillard. This is so awesome.
Please. Someone tell Barack Obama to sit down and watch this speech a few dozen times until he realizes that this is the tone he must take in his debates with Romney. Gillard not only addresses endemic misogyny, but rebukes Tony Abbott for the actions of his whole party: “Has he taken any responsibility for the conduct of other members of his party?”
I can sort of understand — I had two boys who were engaged to scouting to various degrees. There’s the camaraderie, the camping, the teamwork, the fun activities, all good and appealing. But then it sinks in that they’re promoting right-wing ideology. No gays allowed. No atheists allowed. The best people are heterosexual church-goers.
Ryan Andresen was a kid who went through the whole routine with enthusiasm, and even got to the point where he’d completed his Eagle Scout project and was going to be given the highest award in the organization. And then they turned him down. Two reasons have been given.
One is that he was openly gay. This is a bleeding wound in scouting — Ryan is just the latest casualty.
The Boy Scouts of America have come under fire for its ban on gay members and leaders, which it reaffirmed in July, leading dozens of Eagle Scouts to return their medals. Last month, tech giant Intel, one of the Scout’s biggest donors, announced that it would no longer donate to the organization, or any organization that didn’t adhere to its anti-discrimination policy. Additionally, both President Obama and Mitt Romney voiced opposition to the Scouts’ gay ban.
There’s no denying that being gay puts you on the outs with the Boy Scouts. But there’s another reason: it turns out that everyone knew long in advance about his sexual orientation, but the final straw was that he’s a goddamned atheist.
“This scout proactively notified his unit leadership and Eagle Scout counselor that he does not agree to scouting’s principle of ‘Duty to God’ and does not meet scouting’s membership standard on sexual orientation,” Deron Smith, a spokesman for the organization said in a statement. “Agreeing to do one’s ‘Duty to God’ is a part of the scout Oath and Law and a requirement of achieving the Eagle Scout rank.
In other words, this was a fellow with enough integrity that he refused to check off one box on his form: he had done all the work, he’d probably put up with a lot of crap on the way (his Eagle Scout project was on bullying), and then, at the last minute, confronted with the choice to lie and conform, or to be honest to himself and others, he chose honesty.
I think he’s a better man for being true.
That ought to be the death knell for the Boy Scouts, when turning down their highest award becomes a point of honor.
The Australian department of health distributed these posters to aboriginals and Torres Strait islanders to improve understanding of their bodies. I’m forced to conclude that either aboriginal peoples in the southern hemisphere are aliens with a remarkably deviant body plan, or the Australian government doesn’t give a damn.
Can you spot all the errors?
Answers:
Heart is reversed
Right kidney is not a pancreas
Ovaries are not kidneys
Stomach is not a respiratory organ
Small intestines are not a pear-shaped organ called the stomach
The poster has been withdrawn. The real mystery is whose understanding of anatomy at the health department is this bad.
You’ve all seen this before: an in-group culture that celebrates itself with joking insults, that denigrates the outgroups with insults which they pretend to be mere manly rough-and-tumble play. It’s the locker room grown up and metastasizing in the board room. Try to picture being one of the targets, being told to lighten up and take persistent racism as just joshin’ around.
“Let me tell you, it’s ok to make jokes about slavery because that’s over.”
Yeah, receiving that felt like a bolt of energy striking the center of my head and slicing my body in two.
“Are you a slave? Is anyone you know a slave? No, so jokes are fine because that’s in the past.”
I almost begin to cite the multitude of ways slavery still exists, from the lingering effects of institutional racism to the real life plantations we commonly know today as prisons, but I reel myself in quickly. This is in essence the trauma SF [San Francisco] has given me, that ran me out: white men always telling which way is up because they feel they are the “authority” when it comes to any and everything, most often when they don’t know shit about shit except how to protect their privilege by telling me my life experience is false.
“Also, you should be grateful that your ancestors went through slavery.”
Oh
“Because that’s a lot worse than anything that’s happening now.”
My
“So you should be grateful that your ancestor went through that to get you here where you are today at this company.”
Goddess, please restrain me from jumping out this chair and kicking him in his giant red neck.
I go back to the image of my split body and imagine a swarm of tiny demons flocking from the halved flesh and descending upon him; flaming eyes and five rows of shark teeth parting open to reveal mouths filled with the trauma of millions of black memories of rapes, lynchings, torture, experiments, castrations, disfigurements, poisonings, false charges, divestment, profiling, appropriation, theft, murders: memories of genocide.
“And I’m from the south, so believe me, I know what racism is like.”
Well of course, thanks for brining it all the way here into this conversation.
“And, well, I know people say you don’t know about something until you walk a mile in their shoes, but I can tell you again there’s no racism here.”
