- The Massachusetts High Court has ruled against “separate but equal.” The Massachusetts constitution requires same-sex marriage; civil unions aren’t good enough. (I’m both frightened of the potential backlash and nonetheless pleased with the ruling.) Via MarriageMovement.org.
- On MarriageMovement.org, Elizabeth Marquardt is worried that an exhibit of preserved human corpses is a sign of a “a serious devaluing of life.”
First of all, it’s unclear why a fascination with biology and even death requires a devaluation of life; it seems plausible that the fascination with biology and death is driven by a high regard for life’s value.
Second, even if there is “devaluation of life” here, it’s doesn’t indicate anything new about current society. In the nineteenth century, traveling corpses were a common feature of carnivals; the corpses of executed criminals were particularly popular. (One such corpse kept on being exhibited – passed on from carnival to circus to funhouse – until the late 1970s. By that time, the origins of the corpse had been forgotten, and the folks exhibiting it thought it was a realistic-looking dummy. The truth was discovered while the corpse was being used as a prop on The Six Million Dollar Man tv show.)
- Elizabeth also linked to news about the German cannibalism case: the eater was sentenced to eight years – much less than the life sentence the prosecution had hoped for.
- Two useful reference pages from The Center for American Progress. The first, “In Their Own Words,” provides many Bush administration quotes regarding Iraq’s “threat to the United States.” The second is a useful timeline of Iraq WMD intelligence.
- Mark Barton’s response to Eve on same-sex marriage is quite good, for folks who have been following the debate closely.
- Talking Points Memo sums up the Bush AWOL issue in a nutshell. It’s nice to see the press finally reporting on Bush’s abandonment of duty, after ignoring it for so long.
- Wal-Mart is being sued for locking immigrant workers in their stores. “The suit claims some workers were forced to work seven-day, 70-hour weeks for $1,500 a month. The amended claim follows a report in The New York Times that contained the separate allegation that janitors were being locked in.”
The defense is particularly pathetic: “Murray acknowledged that doors were kept locked, but insisted that a manager with a key was always present.” Even if this statement is true, given the size of an average Wal-Mart, it would be easy for a locked-in employee to burn to death if there was a fire and the employee didn’t happen to be near whatever exit the manager fled through.
- “Mirth of a Nation” is a pretty interesting (although not especially funny) article by a dude who used to write jokes for Clinton. There’s some interesting character points about Clinton; according to the writer, it took Clinton a long time to realize the value of self-deprecating humor.
- Happy news – a judge has overturned Virginia’s “partial birth” abortion ban, finding it unconstitutional because it makes no provision for protecting the woman’s health.
- This Katha Pollit piece, making fun of the press’ (now past) fixation on Dr. Dean’s wife Dr. Steinberg, is smart and funny.
- An interesting post on Pedantry argues for the economic logic of a wealth tax.
- More on the New York Times Magazine article on sexual slavery (see my previous post here): Times editor Gerald Marzorati responds to the criticism, and is (I think) fairly persuasive. On the other hand, Jack Shafer’s newest criticism – including as it does ridiculous overstatements (“Landesman’s notion that every third block in the country harbors a sex-slave brothel…”) and some truly desperate attacks on the article’s sources (of the “she’s a feminist, so shouldn’t we suspect she’s lying?” variety) – has passed beyond credibility. Only those with an emotional or political stake in denying that sexual slavery is a serious problem could take Mr. Shafer’s latest seriously.
- A bit of good news: “In the eight major award categories — Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress — 11 women working as either director or screenwriter have films tied to nominations. This total is greater than the total for the last three years combined…”
- Pandagon is right; this piece by William Saletan in Slate is a great summary of where the primary stands.
- This has got to be a first: I thought an article in Frontpage Magazine was good. Also interesting to see a conservative more-or-less admitting that a side effect of our “liberation” of Iraq may be that Iraqi women will have less liberty than ever. Via Nathan Newman.
- MaxSpeak dissects the Bush budget and finds it (surprise surprise) full of fibs of omission. Once again, via Nathan Newman.
- Check out these photos of – as Amity of Nature is Profligate puts it – “spectacular slug sex.”
@Dianne: I guess the silver lining with Italy is that it shows that even when fascists can capture the executive…
The defense is particularly pathetic: “Murray acknowledged that doors were kept locked, but insisted that a manager with a key was always present.”
Yikes. Has nobody at Wal-Mart ever heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company?
Other items I’ve seen on this Wal-Mart topic have described a situation in which only the ordinary exits were locked. Fire exits were usable as per usual, but not available for general use because opening them would set off the fire alarm. I have not seen this lawsuit in particular, though, so its facts may differ.
I think it’s also important to note that Wal-mart considers immigrant janitors as sub-human. So it’s perfectly reasonable to lock them up in a small space. I mean seriously, how evil are they?
Oh and thanks for the plug. All should head to my site now and vote on the Raznor Awesome List.
Regarding the Katha Pollit piece,
“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”
I found the piece to be a hetero/marriage-supremacist treatise that made me sick. There may have been funny jokes in it, and Katha Pollit may be a smart woman (that last was to avert rebuttals that I just don’t have a sense of humor and should just laugh along with the rest of the gang and not be so uptight, ever hear that one before?), but the article is a literary hate crime to those who choose not to be married, find themselves in the simply adorable position of finding it illegal for them to be married, and/or aren’t heterosexual.
I am so sick and tired of the heterosexual dominance of discourse on any subject regarding marriage. “We do it all the time, so it must be good!” Feh.
Ananna, can you give a specific example of what you were talking about? Pollit’s politics are hardly marraige-supremacist. I think it’s possible that you mistook something Pollit said sarcastically for her real opinion.
Hey, Amp, wanna buy Elizabeth Marquardt a ticket to the Mutter Museum? Maybe throw in an extra one for a guest, preferably a live one? ;)
Amp, the backlash in Massachusetts has already started. Right wing activists have already flooded the State House with demands that Mass. legislators amend the state Constitution to forbid gay marriage. Gay marriage supporters are meeting with legislators today and will be calling over the next two weeks. I’m unable to make it to the State House today.
I don’t think Dr. Judy is weird at all. She’s leading a normal, modern, middle-class-professional life. She has been married forever. She has two children. She likes camping and bike riding and picnics. She volunteers.
I guess this is as good as an example as I am going to be able to find, but it is more of the tenure of the piece, that marriage is normal, that “turning it around” would mean focusing on the husband of a woman president. Then the invisibility lesbian/gay marriage/unions, which is something that, given Vermont’s civil unions wouldn’t be off topic, since she’s bringing up other examples of marriage.
Maybe I’m more sensitive to this than anyone else. Okay, not maybe. It is glaring in my eyes when feminists ignore the interconnectedness of oppression, which is something that has been a characteristic of Feminism for generations, since the days when the suffragettes traded votes with racists, such that they would vote to keep Black americans from voting in exchange for a vote for white women’s suffrage.
Feminism has to grow out of that mold. So many have tried, I have been to countless weekend awareness workshops where the idea was brought to white Feminists, usually without much trouble, but only to have it disappear the minute the workshop ended and it was back to business as usual. It’s like talking to a freaking brick wall, sometimes. The rare white woman that gets it, had it before they walked in the door. No minds were changed. And these articles get written, there is no sign of awareness. Maybe Pollit hasn’t been to any of these workshops, maybe she isn’t aware that a minority of women want — nay, demand — that Feminism change to include all women.
Sojourner Truth made her famous speech so long ago, and yet so very little has changed. No, I’m wrong there, a great deal has changed — the number of people who are shut out of Feminism by being kept invisible.
Oops…
Remember when I just said, “the number of people who are shut out of Feminism by being kept invisible”?
I meant to add at the end,
The number keeps getting higher.
I dunno Ananna, it seems that Pollitt was asserting that Steinberg was “normal” WRT mainstream ideas of normal–and since she’s Dean’s wife, and the focus of the article is the obsession we have with first ladies, I think it was appropriate.
People have trashed Steinberg for not trailing after her husband on the campaign trail like an adoring puppy; the general thought is that she should do this *because* she’s his *wife*. Marriage would have far more of an appeal for me if society jettisoned this bullshit baggage. And that was her point, not that marriage is normal, but that wives have unfair expectations placed upon them.
Also, Pollitt was, up until recently, living with her lover. The recently broke up, but they never married.
You can certainly find Pollitt’s ideas on gay marriage, civil unions, and marriage in general in the Nation’s archives online. I don’t think it’s fair to indict Pollitt or feminism for a lack of inclusion based on one column.
Ananna, you should familiarize yourself with Pollitt’s work before dismissing her out-of-hand. Here’s a list of Pollitt’s articles online: http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/bio.mhtml?id=22 (You can also read collections of her essays in Subject to Debate and Reasonable Creatures.)
Here’s just one example of where she supports the right to gay marriage. From that article:
Speaking just for myself, I don’t like marriage. I prefer the old-fashioned ideal of monogamous free love, not that it worked out particularly well in my case. As a social mechanism, moreover, marriage seems to me a deeply unfair way of distributing social goods like health insurance and retirement checks, things everyone needs.
Also from that article:
Still, as long as marriage is here, how can it be right to deny it to those who want it?
So she thinks women (and men) should be able to choose whether or not to get married.
Seems like a pretty inclusive version of feminism to me.
I’m sorry, but after reviewing as much of Ms. Pollit’s writing as I could, I have to stick with my original assessment, which was rather hyperbolic I admit, but the essence I still feel.
Even Ms. Pollit is wont to admit that she sometimes writes articles that she later disagrees with. This may be one of those articles and it may not be. I do agree with several of her articles, but several I don’t. I guess that’s what makes Feminism so viable, we get to have different takes on it and still call ourselves Feminists and be correct about that assessment. There is no Feminist dogma, as many would try to pin on us.
I will, on the basis of all of your valued opinions, consider her an ally, though not one I will trust easily. It’s too bad that was the first article I had read by her. Serendipity can be a terrible thing sometimes.
Ananna, why is Pollitt required to acknowledge that not everyone wishes to get married, not everyone is allowed to get married, in an article where the marriage of the two people in question is not being disputed? Instead, the expected roles are what’s subject to debate.
I was discussing marriage earlier tonight, and I mostly presumed that it was between a man and a woman because
1) that was the kind that the person who began the discussion was talking about;
2) that is the current legal regime; and
3) much of what I said is equally applicable to unions between two people of the same sex, and it is easier to refer to two nameless people as “he and she” (which is what I do in writing almost any hypothetical scenario).
But in a nation where over 90% of the population gets married at some point in their lives — and hopefully the legalization of same-sex marriage will allow gays and lesbians to be part of that percentage, if they wish — to include “not everyone wants to get married and that’s a perfectly valid choice” in every discussion of marriage seems like what is now dubbed Nit Picklering.
Ananna, are you saying that Pollitt doesn’t support gay marriage and that she does think that everyone should get married? If so, I’m interested in hearing your reasoning. If it’s not, then what exactly is your argument with Pollitt?
Pollitt’s my hero (along with Molly Ivins); I want to defend her against misinterpretation. Which isn’t to say that you can’t ever disagree with her, just that I think in this case you’re disagreeing with a position she has never, and would never, support.
Ananna, I was going to reply, but PG pretty much summed it up for me.
And Hestia, I love Pollitt too. I don’t always agree with her, but she’s a good read–I love her wit and wisdom.
Regarding the Landesman flap: if you want a real story about the exploitation of women, try this one.
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