Alas, a Blog | Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat, plus whatever else we feel like talking about.

Smile and nod

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Nisi Shawl

smile-and-nod

Some people have said they liked my introduction yesterday. Good! Stay with me now. You love me when I’m angry.

Or anyway, you should. Especially if you’re white, because the fact that I let you know I am angry, well, that’s me being nice to you. It’s a sign of trust on my part, a measure of the strength of our relationship. If I didn’t like you, if I didn’t feel comfortable letting you know I was angry, I would treat you the way I did the woman on the bus this morning.

The white woman on the bus this morning.

She liked my hair. I wore my hair down this morning, so I looked much like I do in my avatar on this site, minus the doll, the scarf, and the waterfall. The white woman on the bus said, “I like your hair,” and I was prepared to leave it at that. I told her thanks and went back to the book I had to turn in a review on.

That wasn’t enough for her. After a minute she continued on. “I wish my hair was curly like yours. It’s curly, but not that curly. When I was younger,” she gave an embarrassed giggle, “I tried to have an Afro.”

“You’d have to be born black for that to work,” I told her, becoming engrossed in my book again. I didn’t look back up until she got off. Then I rolled my eyes at the black man who had been sitting across the aisle from us. I couldn’t see his whole expression because he had dark glasses covering up his eyes, but I saw his smile.

See, this woman had curly hair. Her hair was curly. It was short, brown, and curling all over her head.

My hair isn’t curly. And don’t you be calling it curly. It was kinky when I had to straighten it to make it look like a white woman’s, and it’s kinky now.

Okay, maybe “kinky” is no longer le mot juste. I talked about this some with Nalo Hopkinson a couple of years ago. Since kinky has come to belong in a brand new bag, maybe it’s time to create a new word to describe the kind of hair I and my two sisters have, and my Daddy, cousins, uncles, aunts, et al. “Crinky” was the neologism Nalo and I settled on. Sort of a combination of kinky and crinkly. Or maybe we could call our hair “nhappy.” Nappy and happy.

In order to get into the collaborative, playful space where such terms arise, though, I would have had to expose this woman to my anger. Expose my anger to her. I just wasn’t up for that.

I have read a bit of pornography. (No, that’s not a non sequitur. Come on, stay with me. Still.) I saypornography rather than erotica because it often includes words made entirely of vowels.

The most unforgettable pornographic text I’ve ever read is appended to the end of a novel called Whirlpool. Whirlpool is an anonymously written novel, and the fragment following it is without either title or author. At one point in the fragment’s episodic paragraphs the heroine’s fifteen-year-old sidekick is asked by a debauched older man in a silken kimono if she’s a virgin: “‘If you like,’ she replied coldly. ‘I’ve been cornholed.’”

That statement is the essence of smile and nod.

And now a word from our sponsor…

Your ad could be here, right now.

Posted in Syndicated feeds | 11 Comments

Freedom of speech isn't freedom from criticism. And it's not freedom from consequences.

Posted on June 9, 2009 by Ampersand

On another thread, Amy wrote:

If you don’t like freedom of speach then TURN THE STATION! Oh my god! I do not agree with most of Rob or Arnie’s mentality but I do agree that they have the freedom to say what they feel. And if you are a true listener of the show, you know that they would never advocate child abuse. It’s absurd and I’m extremely frustrated that everyone having an issue with this is so stupid to just change the channel if what they say upsets you so much. It’s YOUR choice to listen to what you want to on the radio. No one is forcing you to listen to them. All these posts have so much disdain for them. If you hate them so much, why are you listening. Its people like you who make our men fighting this devastating war we’ve been in for years, feel like they are doing it for nothing. Our freedom of speach is one of the many things they are fighting for. I have many gay and lesbian friends and I feel that transgenders are born the way they are and support them 100% in their choices – but this vigilanty actions towards two radio dj’s who most of the time make jokes on air – it’s ridiculous. And they have made fun of things that I stand for or represent – but I don’t take it personally – I just change that channel.

Amy, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from criticism, and it doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.

* * *

There are times I have doubts about boycotts because of something someone said. It seems wrong to boycott (for example) a brand of pencil because you’ve heard that the pencil manufacturer is anti-gun-control. Because even if only governments can censor, there’s still a threat to free speech created if people are frightened of losing their jobs if they say something unpopular.

But I don’t feel that way about radio DJs. It is their job to be popular. There are some jobs you can’t do if your opinions make you so repulsive that listeners and sponsors revolt, and DJ happens to be one of those jobs. If Rob and Arnie can’t take being judged for their words, and being judged by how valuable they are to their sponsors — then they really, really chose the wrong industry to work in.

* * *

Free speech has consequences. I think you believe Rob and Arnie’s speech only has consequences because people are kicking up a fuss, instead of turning the dial. But I think you’re mistaken about that.

Amy, imagine for a moment that you’re a 13 year old kid who doesn’t fit into the gender roles assigned to you (either because you’re trans, or because you don’t fit in in some other way). Imagine the self-hatred you’ve learned from society around you, and think of how hard that is to overcome — as if being 13 isn’t hard enough on most of us already. Then imagine hearing this on the radio:

They are freaks. They are abnormal. Not because they’re girls trapped in boys bodies but because they have a mental disorder that needs to be somehow gotten out of them. […] You know, my favorite part about hearing these stories about the kids in high school, who the entire high school caters around, lets the boy wear the dress. I look forward to when they go out into society and society beats them down.

Can you imagine how devastating that could be? Sure, it would be only one more straw on an already heavily burdened back — but it would be a big, vicious straw. It’s the kind of straw that, combined with hundreds of other straws, sometimes leads kids to take their own lives.

What would have happened if no one had kicked up a fuss — if everyone had shrugged and said “that’s just good old Rob and Arnie, their regular listeners know they didn’t mean any harm?”

Well, they still would have done harm. They would have done harm to every kid, trans or cis, ((“Cis” means “not trans.”)) whose own self-contempt would have been made more implacable by hearing Rob and Arnie’s contempt; and they would have done harm through every person who heard their jokes and got the message that trans people are “freaks” who deserve disdain.

There are always, always consequences.

There was never, ever an option for Rob and Arnie to tell these vicious “jokes” without consequences.

Someone would have suffered the consequences.

The only question was, who.

If no one had objected, if no one had spoken up and said “that’s stupid, horrible, vicious bullshit, and Rob and Arnie should be ashamed, and KRXQ should be ashamed, and anyone who sponsors this show should be ashamed,” then the consequences would have been borne mainly by trans people, and also by some non-trans kids who nonetheless suffer gender-related bullying and self-hatred. It would have been another brick in the wall; just another thing pushing our society to be marginally more brutal, and marginally more contemptuous, towards people who don’t fit into the standard gender/sex roles.

Instead, some people did speak up. And as a result of that…

Well, now a portion — not all, but part — of the consequences have been diverted, so they are now suffered by Rob and Arnie, rather than solely by the kids they’ve displayed so much “joking” contempt for. Is that such a bad thing? Seems very fair to me.

And maybe Rob and Arnie will make the apology good, and maybe some trans kid will hear them say that expressing contempt for trans kids is wrong in every way. And maybe that’ll do some good. And I suspect they’ll be doing some fundraising or donations to organizations that help trans kids, and if so, maybe that’ll do some good.

Or maybe some trans kids will hear about this, and know that people got angry on their behalf, and hear that even major corporations like AT&T and Carl’s Jr found the open expression of trans-hating “jokes” so repulsive that they yanked their advertising. Maybe some kids will, as a result of this, feel like a few of those straws have been lifted from their backs. And that’ll do some good.

And maybe future radio DJs will remember, before they make similar “jokes,” that jokes which express contempt towards the oppressed and the marginalized always, always carry consequences, even if those consequences are usually suffered by people who aren’t famous and who don’t have their own radio shows. Maybe they’ll remember that their “jokes” can do harm, and they’ll decide to tell a joke about how much the airlines suck instead of picking on trans kids.

Would that be so awful?

And yes, maybe deep inside, they’ll still be thinking that it would be hilarious to “joke” about society beating trans kids down, and how swell that would be. And maybe the only thing keeping them from making that “joke” on the air will be that they’re frightened that maybe, this time, they will suffer some of the consequences themselves. Maybe they’ll bite their tongues and just tell those “jokes” in a bar among friends, instead of on the air to tens of thousands of listeners.

Would that be so awful?

I don’t think it would be.

What would be awful would be a society in which freedom of speech never had consequences; in which people who disagreed with Rob and Arnie’s “jokes” didn’t speak up; in which the message would be communicated that it’s acceptable to talk about trans kids as if they’re less valuable than dirt and no one objected. That would be awful. And I’m very glad that didn’t happen. You should be, too.

UPDATE: For more on consequences, please read this post at Bunny’s Hutch. (Thanks, Elusis.)

Posted in Free speech, censorship, copyright law, etc., Transsexual and Transgender related issues | 25 Comments

New Jersey Man Beaten By Cops For "Wandering" While Black

Posted on June 9, 2009 by Ampersand

From WPIX:

PASSAIC, N.J. (WPIX) – A police officer in New Jersey, captured on surveillance tape viciously beating a mentally ill man, has been reassigned while an investigation into the incident is underway.

Passaic cop Joseph J. Rios III, a seven-year veteran of the force, has not been charged in the May 29 attack but instead has been assigned to desk duty. […]

Holloway, who has filed an Internal Affairs report, claims he was taking his routine walk when he was suddenly approached by Rios and another officer in a police cruiser. Holloway said he was zipping up his sweatshirt, as requested by the female officer, when Rios launched the attack. Holloway said Rios jumped out of his cruiser and threw him against a car hood for no reason.

Holloway, who reportedly suffers from schizophrenia, was arrested after the incident and charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and wandering with the intent to purchase drugs.

This video from WPIX includes footage of protesters, including an interview with a protester who claims that she was also beaten by Officer Rios a year ago.

Although the assaulted man — like nearly all of the protesters — was Black, none of the news reports I’ve seen have pointed out that these assaults have a racist and sexist aspect. But although all kinds of people are assaulted by cops, the victims in these stories seem to be disproportionately brown-skinned men (both African-American and Latino).

Here’s the footage from the security camera. It really looks like the only thing that stopped the beating from going on much longer was the arrival of more cops.

It’s extraordinary that a surveillance camera happened to be aimed at just the right spot. Without that, everyone would dismiss Holloway as a liar (after all, he’s both black and mentally disabled, plus he now has an arrest record — so that’s three strikes), and this story would never have made the news. How many of the people of color who are arrested for things like “resisting arrest” are innocent victims of police assault, who just didn’t have the luck to have a video camera capture the incident?

I also wondered, was he targeted because he is disabled? From the footage, it doesn’t seem so; there’s nothing to indicate that the cop who beat him knew he was disabled. But maybe he was targeted for his disability, and I’m just not knowledgeable enough to spot it. I certainly can’t dismiss the possibility.

(Via Radley Balko).

Posted in Disabled Rights & Issues, Prisons and Justice and Police, Race, racism and related issues | 14 Comments

From the mailbag: If Libertarians Were Housepets

Posted on June 9, 2009 by Ampersand

That’s an old cartoon, but I like it, and so I’ll take any excuse to post it. Such as this email I received from “Mark”:

Just caught your “If Housepets were Libertarians” cartoon

Boy are you confused about what Libertarians are. It’s not about selfishness, it’s about not being FORCED into charity. What’s more damaging however is the impression you form in the minds of those who take your little drawing at face value. Read a book would you; how about “Atlas Shrugged” or “Wealth and Poverty” or “ Freedom to Choose”. If you are going to dabble in political thought don’t let yourself be pigeonholed as a complete neophyte.

I’m really tickled by the idea that if you haven’t read a book by obscure 1970s anti-feminist George Gilder, then you’re a complete neophyte.

I don’t interpret “If Libertarians Were Housepets” as saying that libertarians are selfish (that’s more the theme of this cartoon). Rather, it’s saying that Libertarians have dangerously little understanding of how society actually works. As Mark Thoma writes:

Where I part with many libertarians – perhaps due to my background – is in the idea that government is almost always at odds with liberty. In my case, government played a key role in providing me with opportunity – education is one example, without tuition of $100 per semester at a state school, I probably would not have gone to college – but the opportunities government provided me go beyond education (and also see the examples given in the article for women and minorities).

Bruce Bartlett argues: ((I’ve cut out a sentence in which Bartlett says that blacks no longer have less freedom than whites, generally. One look at who goes to prison in the US is enough to refute that claim.))

Many government interventions expand freedom. A good example would be the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was opposed by libertarians like Barry Goldwater as an unconstitutional infringement on states’ rights. Yet it was obvious that African Americans were suffering tremendously at the hands of state and local governments. If the federal government didn’t step in to redress these crimes, who else would? […]

One could also argue that the women’s movement led to a tremendous increase in freedom. Libertarians may concede the point, but conservatives almost universally view the women’s movement with deep hostility. They think women are freest when fulfilling their roles as wife and mother. Anything that conflicts with those responsibilities is bad as far as most conservatives are concerned.

But although Libertarians may concede the point, Bartlett points out, in the end they still vote Republican, because they’re entirely focused on economics, and on government as the enemy of liberty. This is problematic because libertarians tend to have an extremely narrow conception of what liberty is: not paying taxes.

The Cato Institute publishes an annual survey of economic freedom throughout the world, but produces no surveys of what countries have the most political or social freedom or those that have the most libertarian foreign policy.

Furthermore, economic freedom tends to be determined primarily by those measures for which quantifiable data are available. Since it is very easy to look up the top marginal income tax rate or taxes as a share of GDP, these measures tend to have overwhelming influence on the ratings. As a result, countries like Denmark, which are very free every way except in terms of taxes, end up being penalized. Conversely, authoritarian states like Singapore don’t suffer for it because they have low taxes.

Although not all libertarians are well-off white men, nearly every libertarian I’ve met had at least two of those three traits. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think that if you’re economically comfortable, white, and male, it’s much easier to imagine that government is the biggest threat to liberty in the world, and to minimize or dismiss how other factors — such as racism, sexism, and the concentration of wealth and poverty — also constrain liberty. For George Gilder — a white man with more money than he could ever spend — perhaps the biggest threat to his freedom is taxation. But most of us aren’t George Gilder.

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Economics and the like, Libertarianism | 136 Comments

Rob of "Rob, Arnie and Dawn": "We have simply failed on almost every level"

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Ampersand

Last week several blogs, including Alas, posted about the vicious, bigoted on-air attack on trans kids by some DJs at KRXQ. The blogging was part of a wave of revulsion, which included nine advertisers — really huge advertisers, like AT&T — either pulling their ads from KRXQ, or deciding not to renew their advertising when the current ad contract runs out.

Now it appears that the DJs are preparing to apologize and make amends. The KRXQ homepage currently contains a statement from Rob Williams, of the “Rob, Arnie and Dawn” show, which says:

As a show, as people, as broadcasters, we have simply failed on almost every level.

We presented our opinions on a very sensitive subject in a hateful, childish and crude fashion; and then, given the opportunity to retract those remarks, we defended them.

According to the statement, the show is on hiatus until Thursday’s episode:

We have reached out to various groups and asked for a chance to make this right; to respond, with their participation, to the education that our audience has provided us. That opportunity has been graciously granted this Thursday morning, June 11th. At 7:30 a.m.

The word apology appears no where in this letter for a reason. We already hid from doing the right thing once and we’re not going to make that mistake again. Apologizing in a written, posted statement is a form of cowardice. We will say what needs to be said this Thursday.

This is certainly promising (I’ve posted the full statement below the fold). I hope they really have been reaching out to trans advocacy groups to discuss making amends — hopefully they’re planning more than just a one-off public apology (although the public apology is important too). I know in the past the RAD show has done fundraising for children’s causes; maybe they can start doing fundraising for groups that help trans kids.

We’ll see on Thursday, I guess. Curtsy to The Queer Youth Mental Health Blog.
Continue reading →

Posted in Transsexual and Transgender related issues | 41 Comments

My goodness

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Nisi Shawl

my-goodness

Tempest said introduce myself. Maybe you already know me. Or maybe you think you do? Or maybe not.

I write, and I’ve been writing for decades. I’m really, really old. Always have been, ever since I was born.

My earliest memories are of outrage–

I’m in a crib, and I don’t want to be, so I learn how to pull out the bars. It gets easier after the first one, to the consternation of my parents.

My Uncle Marv is saying something stupid about other black people. I wish I knew how to talk, so I could tell him he’s wrong.

I’m making up my bed with my babysitter and the sheet is not cooperating. I bite the sheet, and try to tear it, and end up pulling out one of my baby teeth. Red blood stains the white, but I haven’t made any holes in it.

And this is when my outrage starts to change, when I begin to cook my anger, to season it and control its temperature. My babysitter says, “Do you think that sheet cares what you’ve done to it? All you’ve done is hurt yourself.” She’s right. Anger alone accomplishes next to nothing. To change the world, anger needs art.

Cooking is an art, and the process of cooking is a metaphor for art. By art I mean focus, practice, technique, intention. Insight. Perspective. Deliberation, determination, and delight in what one can do. And the self-assurance to trust one’s tastes, one’s preferences, to make choices and stand by them and believe that they are right because they are right, that’s what they are. They’re your choices, and they’re right. With this self-assurance, or soon after it has been achieved, comes the longing to share these choices with others, and out of this longing it is possible to develop the ability to do exactly that. And then the world can become different.

So those are some things I know about myself and my goodness: what I’ve done, what I want to do.

I’ll post here again soon about something else.

And now a word from our sponsor…

Your ad could be here, right now.

Posted in Syndicated feeds | 4 Comments

Having Some Guests Over

Posted on June 8, 2009 by the angry black woman

having-some-guests-over

Remember last year when I opened up the blog to several guest bloggers for Black History Month? That was so awesome. I enjoyed having new voices on the blog and the great conversations and thoughts they inspired. From that exercise we gained a new permanent guest, Karnythia, and it whet my appetite for more. So I’ve decided to do the guest thing more often and bring in a few more permanent fixtures around these parts.

As you know, I love literature and particularly science fiction and fantasy literature (as do Karnythia and Nojojojo), so many of the special guests are going to hail from that area of the world. We’re also going to seek out bloggers from outside the U.S. to provide a different view of the topics we discuss around here.

We’re also giving two new bloggers the chance to become permanent guests here. In the next two weeks they’ll introduce themselves and start their own posts.

Our first new guest will be Tiptree Award-winning author Nisi Shawl, who will introduce herself later today. Her short story collection, Filter House, recently won the james Tiptree Jr. award, something I’ll talk at length about tomorrow. Nisi is a sharp lady, an amazing writer, and one of the most intersting people I’ve ever met. I hope you’ll enjoy her posts.

And now a word from our sponsor…

Your ad could be here, right now.

Posted in Syndicated feeds | Comments Off

Kid Blogging: Graduation from Nursery School

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Ampersand

I didn’t realize that they had graduations. Or gowns. Shows what I know. Anyhow, Sydney graduated from nursery school this past Friday. Next up: Kindergarten!

Another photo (also featuring our very messy upstairs hallway!) under the fold. Continue reading →

Posted in Baby & kid blogging | 2 Comments

Mockery Fail

Posted on June 7, 2009 by Jeff Fecke

So you may remember the Young Cons, two young kids from the mean streets of Hanover, New Hampshire, rappin’ about how hard it is to be a privileged, white male conservative at an Ivy League school. They’re keepin’ it real, yo. I mean, just watch:

Yes, truly they are awesome in their wingnuttery. And there are all sorts of ways one can go after them — mocking their inability to actually, you know, rap being high on the list. Or you can make like Playboy, and engage in a bit of douchebaggery:

All too often it seems like the only quality entertainment in this country is the product of liberal homosexuals. Any hope that conservative homosexuals might have something to contribute to the creative community disappears with the video Young Cons, in which a male couple from Dartmouth spit rhymes describing their political ideology.

These two Dartmouth frosh, Josh Riddle and David Rufful, gained some online notoriety when right-wing blog Powerline prominently touted their video last week. Of course it should come as no surprise that Powerline neglects to mention that the pair are gay, but the Young Con Anthem contains some surprises of its own. Why, for example, would a homosexual who does not loathe himself rap something like this?

Price is Right – Loser Horn

You see, here’s the thing: it’s not hilarious to call these guys gay. Why? Because being gay is not an insulting thing. By making purported homosexuality a tool of mockery, Playboy isn’t tarring the Young Cons with an insult — they’re insulting homosexuals, by arguing that homosexuality itself is worthy of mockery. It’s juvenile, eighth-grade-level stupidity, and it’s despicable.

I know, I know, it’s Playboy, we shouldn’t pay much attention to them. But once again, it’s a reminder that there are an awful lot of “liberals” who think anti-gay slurs are funny. They aren’t. Period.

(Via — of all people — The Blogger Formerly Known as Hindrocket)

Posted in Whatever | Comments Off