Komen changes course

I don’t think it will help, but after the Susan G. Komen foundation cut funding to Planned Parenthood, they’ve now backed down and said they’ll continue existing grants. After the wingnuts were exposed in the Komen leadership, though, I can’t honestly say that I trust them anymore, and I’d be looking for better recipients of my donations (like the BCRF)…and after this reversal, I imagine the fundies who have been slapping each other on the back and congratulating themselves on their influence won’t be so happy, either.

This has been a very bad week for Komen. I would hope that there is some substantial turnover in management, because this has been a case of rank mismanagement of the foundation’s reputation.

Word.

I’m a fan of Yo, Is This Racist? even if the answer is almost always “YES”. This particular Q&A seemed particularly appropriate.

Anonymous asked: Is it racist that my science teacher sucks balls?

Yo, science education in the US is a fucking political mess of a tragedy, but it’s worth sticking around and at least trying to learn how to apply evidence and logic, because bastardizations of science are basically the favorite tool of the modern racist.

(Wait, is my choice of a common black american slang term for the title of this post racist? Dammit, it is, isn’t it?)

Posin’

The latest edition of Randy Milholland’s Super Stupor mocks the ridiculous poses comic book artists contort their heroines into — you know the ones I’m talking about, the strange postures in which they simultanously thrust their breasts upwards and forwards, while thrusting their buttocks backwards and upwards, with their impossibly slender waists slung spinelessly between them (he also summarizes Liefeld Syndrome, a very scary disease).

But I questioned his accuracy. Panel 8 is freakishly bizarre; no one could possibly actually draw a woman in that pose, could they? And then, coincidentally, I was also sent a link to The 5 Most Ridiculously Sexist Superhero Costumes, and there, in the very first illustration for the article, is a super-heroine doing precisely the same weird spinal twist to face the reader and swivel her ass to face him, too, with one one leg splayed wildly in the air.

I’m sorry, Mr Milholland. I will never doubt you again. I guess there’s a reason I haven’t read any mainstream comics in 30 years, too.

(Jhonen Vasquez also has a marvelous send-up of the balloon-breasted, soda-straw waisted comic book stereotype, but I cannot show it here because it is totally obscene. Oh, all right, if you insist, I found a poor copy here.)

Turnabout is fair play, unless you’re a Republican

I’m glad someone is finding clever ways to point out the hypocrisy of Republican efforts to invade the privacy of women.

To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.

What? No lecture about their manly responsibilities, no waiting period, no efforts to redirect these men looking for Viagra towards ineffective treatments? This is hardly fair. But it is a good first step.

Unfortunately, that first step ended in a Republican pratfall.

The Republican-controlled senate narrowly rejected the amendment Monday by a vote of 21 to 19, but passed the mandatory ultrasound bill in a voice vote. A similar bill in Texas, which physicians say has caused a "bureaucratic nightmare," is currently being challenged in court.

Darn. Did no one think to mention to the Republicans that this bill would support the life-styles of a multitude of cardiologists and proctologists? It’s also morally right: every artificial erection should be complemented by an anal injection.

An essential lesson in Minnesota geography

I need you to look at the map below. The most important thing you must learn from it is that Morris, Minnesota is in the blue dot on the western side of the state, in Stevens County.

Do you see that hideous red blob on the eastern side of the state? That’s the Anoka-Hennepin School District. It’s in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis.

I point this out with some urgency so that it is completely clear to everyone that we have nothing to do with those assholes. I try not to even visit the place; I recommend you avoid it, too. At least it’s easy to skip it; the airport and the Mall of America are all on the south side of the city, so really, you have no need to ever even pass through there. There’s no excuse at all, unless maybe you were visiting Greg Laden, who lives around there.

Why am I so eager to separate myself from that area, and why am I urging you to shun it? Because it seems every state needs a sphincter where the unpleasant inhabitants must congregate, and Anoka-Hennepin is it for us (well, and a few other places: states aren’t restricted by metazoan anatomy, and can have many sphincters). This is one of the areas that elected Michele Bachmann; it’s been in the news lately because it is the center of a wave of teen suicides, where bullying is common and gay kids are often the target.

You’d think parents in that area would be worried about an epidemic of suicides. They are. Led by the Parents Action League and The Minnesota Patriarchy Council, some have decided to do something about it, they’ve assembled a list of actions to take.

They propose further discriminating against and stigmatizing homosexuality.

And whereas school officials would be liable for violating parental rights by subjecting a child to homosexual and related conduct indoctrination…

And whereas legal liability exists for the tort of negligence if it is proved that homosexual activists and organizations were granted access to students under responsibility and that students suffered physical or mental harm…

1. A new division within the student support services and a special section on the District 11 website devoted to student of faith, moral conviction, ex-homosexuals and ex-transgenders…

3. That District 11 administrators and staff work closely with pro-family and ex-homosexual and ex-transgender organizations to provide ongoing training to school counselors, school nurses, social workers, school psychologists, prevention specialists, student learning advocates and a number of secondary principals and principals….

4. Provide professional development opportunities in which philosophical, pedogogical, and political assumptions of GLBT advocacy are critically examined.

7. Provide the history of gay-related immune deficiencies and acquired immune deficiencies and the medical consequences of homosexual acts.

They want to blame gay kids for potential harm, demand more Christianity in the curriculum and endorsement of gay conversion techniques, and want to relabel Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to something that more clearly and more inaccurately pins the cause on homosexuality, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID — man, it’s been ages since I’ve seen anyone use that term).

This is their solution: to justify and encourage more hate.

By the way, in case you were wondering, Marcus Bachmann has two gay conversion clinics, one in the southern suburbs of Minneapolis, and the other in the eastern. Minneapolis is just surrounded with a ring of these enclaves of smug, small-minded Republican scumbags. I suggest that we call them the Sphincter Suburbs, both for their ring-shaped geography and for the psychological properties of their inhabitants.

Incremental progress

Minnesota has a “defense of marriage” act on the books, which prohibits gay marriage. Several gay families have challenged the law; their case was dismissed last year. However, it went before the Minnesota Court of Appeals today, and they have ruled favorably: the case was unfairly dismissed, and has now been tossed back to the lower courts.

Minnesota has not overturned the ban on gay marriage yet, but has won the right to challenge the law in court. It’s a step forward, at least. If you want to help out, Marry Me Minnesota is looking for donations.

Creepy as hell

I think it will give me nightmares: it’s a video put out by the Patriarchy Counsel to promote abstinence with Purity Bear. It stars a vaguely insipid looking teenager who’s invited into the house after a date by an attractive young woman, and then…a teddy bear rises over his shoulder to warn him in a flat, affectless voice to go home. And then it cuts to some time later, the girl is in a bridal dress, and the same dopey guy is talking about how he’s glad to have waited.

I saw the bear and heard the voice and thought immediately of Frank, the demon bunny in Donnie Darko. This is not a creature to take sex advice from, was my thought. A jet engine should have fallen out of the sky in the first part to crush geeky guy, and save the poor girl from an awful fate.

Schroedinger’s Black Man

You know that the must-read post for this week (and it’s only Tuesday!) is Crommunist’s Shuffling feet: a black man’s view on Schroedinger’s Rapist. Who would have thought a black person might resent getting used to excuse sexism?

(By the way, I heard a rumor that Ian will be at the Imagine No Religion conference in May — another reason for you to attend. There will be sensible Canadians there!)

A fabulous strategy for annoying fundagelicals and conservatives

I remember discovering Laci Green on YouTube several years ago — she was a great advocate for unabashed atheism. She still is, but she’s discovered a very effective way to piss off the Christians: by speaking frankly and truthfully about sex. Here’s her latest example, which just cheerfully explains the clitoris…and managed to throw a few prudes into censorious hysterics.

(via Camels With Hammers.)

Her prospects for a future in art journalism may have just dimmed

Here is an exercise in pain: read this review of a concert performance:

As the concert progressed, I began to realize a certain "prettiness" in the performance, a lack of force, drive and even drama. I don’t think this is simply a cultural phenomenon (as in misunderstanding the Messiah’s content, message, meaning, etc…). I think it is a physio/cerebral problem. I’ve seen it happen in art and design, and even in science – a friend of mine was a Korean PhD student. At some level, I think Asians demonstrate some ability (i.e. memorization, or fast, scale-like exercises). But there seems to be an inability to create a synthesized beauty, which is what much of art (and order in Science) is about.

She didn’t care for the performance, so she leapt to the assumption that it was a “physio/cerebral problem” in all those Asians.

And she’s not done! She tallies up the precise numbers of Asians in various orchestra positions, and notes that there sure are a lot of them. It couldn’t be that they earned those positions by hard work, could it?

Not only are Asians dispersed around the orchestra, they are also given lead positions in certain sections. But they are notably absent in the brass and percussion sections. Although that could just be a matter of time, these instruments (brass and percussion) might actually be too physically demanding for them.

Because Asians are all little tiny people, I guess.

The author got a lot of pushback on her post, and wrote a response. Here, cringe some more.

Putting a majority (or a large number) of Asians in a western orchestra will invariably make it more Asian. Musicians like Mary Lee, who allow this to happen, have at some point to concede the inferiority of this type orchestra compared to that with a majority of whites, and either close off their eyes to this reality (as does Mary Lee), or perform grudgingly until better situations hopefully present themselves.