Gender, Narcissism, and Masturbation

My friends love to bait me.

Jenn burst into my room last weekend and said, "Have you read anything by Norman Mailer?"

When I admitted I hadn't, Jenn broke out Mailer's "Thoughts on Writing" collection The Spooky Art, and proceeded to read aloud key passages she'd bookmarked just for me.

She then photocopied and highlighted these passages.

Oh, yea. It's that good.

Let me share:

"When your prime character is a man, the key choice is not how bright he is, because however smart, he can't be more intelligent than you are. That's easy. You dumb him down to taste or bring him up to your level.

This way, all of your characters can be male and God-like, like you.

"The real question is, How tough is he?"

Truly, one of life's great questions.

"Do you have the inner sanction to create a man who's braver and tougher than yourself? The answer is yes. Contra Hemingway - yes! You can do that by exercising your critical imagination. It must not be about wish fulfillment! You are entitled to guess how you might act if you were that much more of a hero."

Only write about characters just like you. Only, tougher. Tougher! You in a trenchcoat! You being the writer, of course. A MAN.

No, no, we're not talking about women - look:

"I don't know how to pose the question for an author who's female. Can she, for example, write about a woman who is more sensitive than herself?"

Cause fuck knows she can't write about a woman tougher than she is! Why the hell would she want to do that! But wait, it gets better --

"Probably not."

Probably not! Women have no imagination!

"She could write about a woman who uses her sensitivity and sensibility more than herself, because she can then key on all the frustrated times in her existence when the sensitivity and sensibility she possessed were not appropriate to a harsh occasion."

Did he just contradict himself? I don't know. I was busy being sensitive. That is, using my sensitivity to make myself more sensible, or a character more sensible, a female one, or something like that.

"Following question: Can a woman write about another woman more passionate than herself? Probably."

Women=sex. Women=understanding of passion. Good, good, Norman. Look, he'll throw us a bone! After all, he must have talked to thousands upon thousands of women writers to come up with this hypothesis! I bet he's not just talking out his ass. After all, he's a Famous Writer!

"Or a woman who's colder than herself? Without doubt."

All women are cold, evil bitches at heart, so they can write about cold characters. But she can't write about anybody more sensitive than she is. And she'll never want to write about anybody tougher than she is, because that would be too much like what men are allowed to write.

"If you believe in fiction, if you believe in the power of the novelist, then all subjects are possible. Of course, certain choices present more obstructions than others. It would be harder, as an example, for a male novelist to learn about the small irritations of a woman's day than to imagine what her sex would be like. A novelistic element in sex, after all, is the feeling of nearness to the Other. It's one of the most compelling reasons for sex precisely because such sentiments live almost entirely outside formal sacraments and private codes. It may be indeed why pious people so often feel driven to break their own deepest sexual prohibitions. It's because the experience of meeting the Other is incomparable."

What if you're a lesbian?

Oh, I forgot. Lesbians don't have sex. But you know, honestly, if I wanted to have sex with "the Other" I'd fuck a outside the species. C'mon, can we move past the "women are amazing, lithe, crystalline figurines who don't shit" and acknowledge that one of the great things about sex is coming together with somebody else? You know, a person. Not a plastic doll?

"Which is why I say it's easier - if you are going to write about the opposite gender - to limn them sexually than attempt to get into the nitty gritty of their daily life."

It appears that Norman subscribes to the Heinleinian school of female character creation.

"Another word on gender."

Oh, please, go on.

"Women certainly have every right to create men at war, but I think it might be recognized that it's likely to be less comfortable for them. War, after all, is essentially a male invention."

Women have never had to fight for anything. They never encouraged men to fight. They didn't pass out white feathers to civilian men in WWI, attempting to shame them into going to war. Women have never supported wars. Have never seen the necessity for war. Women don't have anything to do with war at all. Women are all naturally pacifists and don't get caught up patriotic fevor at all.

"How often have women show the same inventiveness and hellishness that men have in war?"

Slooooooooooooooow SCREAM.

"How can they approach that near-psychotic mix of proportion and disproportion which is at the heart of mortal combat?"

Maybe when they were giving birth, you know, during those days when 1 in 4 women died giving birth to a kid. You know, the life/death battle. Women have never seen none of that shit.

"On the other hand, if we ask whether men and women can write equally about bravery, I would say yes."

Oh, thank god. But wait!!

"How are we to define bravery, after all? Take a woman who is awfully timid - let's say she was terrorized through her childhood. She has an all-too-acute awareness of how bad things can come upon you suddenly. When she's an old lady and every bone in her body is aching, it may be an act of courage for her to cross a busy street all by herself. She doesn't know if she can make it across before the lights change, yet she has to do it. For her own honor, if you will. And she does it. That may be more brave, given the relative situation, than the bold act of a soldier who's been trained to be courageous, who is bonded to the soldiers he is with, who lives with the idea that there's no disgrace in life worse than not being up to the military occasion."

I would say something along the lines of, "I don't think this man has ever spoken to a woman in his life," but he was apparently married for years and years. Maybe they didn't talk. Something tells me that if he asked twenty women what the bravest thing they'd ever done was (and talked to lower-class women), it wouldn't be, "Crossing the street."

"So a woman can certainly write about brave soldiers, even though she's not the least bit brave, not at that level. Of course, she has to have an immense talent."

Of course. Women aren't naturally good writers. There are those select few that get put up on pedestals as model examples of just how rare it is that women are actually talented.

"I've often thought that Joyce Carol Oates, who is a very talented woman, will often, on the basis of a small bit of experience, write a six-hundred page novel. I think she's an arch example of someone who does almost all of it through talent."

The rest is dumb luck.

"She's willing to dare terrible humiliation. The irony is that she is rarely attacked."

She is, after all, a woman, and Famous Writers Like Me enjoy patting her on the head. She is no threat to us.

"I expect she arouses a fundamental if somewhat bemused respect in many a mean spirit."

Bemused respect. Bemused. Joyce, you're so damn funny when you write six hundred pages of text that has periods and everything!

And here are some of his thoughts on the writing of DH Lawrence:

"Indeed, which case-hardened guerrilla of Women's Liberation might not shed a private tear at the following passage (of DH Lawrence's):

`And if you're in Scotland and I'm in the Midlands, and I can't put my arms around you, and wrap my legs round you, yet I've got something of you. My soul softly flap in the little pentecost flame with you, like the peace of fucking. We fucked a flame into being. Even the flowers are fucked into being between the sun and the earth. But it's a delicate thing, and takes patience and the long pause.

So I love chastity now, because it is the peace the comes of fucking. I love being chaste now. I love it as snowdrops love the snow. I love this chastity, which is the pause of peace of our fucking, between us now like a snowdrop of forked white fire. And when the real spring comes, when the drawing together comes, then we can fuck the little flame brilliant and yellow...'

Yes, which stout partisan of the Liberation would read such words and not go soft for the memory of some bitter bridge of love she had burned behind. Lawrence was dangerous."

Dude, if I was getting laid like that, I wouldn't have burned the bridge. But you know, I long for the days when women like me were called, "case-hardened guerrilla(s) of Women's Liberation." I want to be a case-hardened guerilla of women's liberation! Bring it on, Lawrence, you dangerous bastard! Think of all the guerilla fucking we would do. Beautiful.

And now, the really weird part. What, you thought it didn't get weirder. Oh, my chiklits! Now Norman talks about his favorite vice: Masturbation!

PK: Do you think you're something of a puritan when it comes to masturbation?

Norman: I think masturbation is bad.

That about sums it up. Next question?

PK: In relation to heterosexual fulfillment?

Norman: In relation to everything - orgasm, heterosexuality, to style, to stance, to being able to fight the good fight. I think masturbation turns people askew. It sets up a bad and often enduring tension. Anybody who spends his adolescence masturbating generally enter his young manhood with no sense of being a man.

The fuck?

PK: Is it possible you have a totalitarian attitude toward masturbation?

Norman: I'm saying it's a miserable activity.

...for me. I get really confused. All those parts, all the same. It's like being gay. And I'm not gay.

PK: Well, were' getting right back to absolutes. You know - to some, masturbation can be a think of beauty.

Norman: To what end? Who is going to benefit from it? Masturbation is bombing oneself.

Like a blitzkrieg of the self. Like invading Poland. If you're Polish.

PK: I think there's a basic flaw in your argument. Why are you assuming that masturbation is violence unto oneself? Why is it not pleasure unto oneself? And I'm not defending masturbation - well, I'm defending masturbation, yes, as a substitute if and when -

Norman: All right, look. When you make love, whatever is good in you or bad in your goes out into someone else.

Women absorb it, like sponges. They're great like that.

"I mean this literally."

Seriously.

"I'm not interested in the biochemistry of it nor in how the psychic waves are passed back and forth."

As psychic waves are wont to do.

"All I know is that when one makes love, one changes a woman slightly and a woman changes you slightly - "

Unless it's gay sex, which doesn't count. I'm not gay. Have I mentioned that yet in this interview? Not gay.

PK: Certain circumstances can change one for the worse.

Norman: But at least you have gone through a process which is part of life.

Unless it's gay.

"One can be better for the experience, or worse. But one has experience to absorb, to think about, one has literally to digest the new spirit that has entered the flesh."

Just make sure she swallows.

"The body has been galvanized for an experience of flesh, a declaration of the flesh. If one has the courage to think about every aspect of the act - I don't mean think mechanically about it - "

Cause then you might learn something.

"but if one is able to brood over the act, to dwell on it, then one is changed by the act."

There's nothing hotter than a guy pausing midthrust, staring out over your head, brow furrowed, while he contemplates Norman Mailer. Norman thinks it's pretty hot, too.

"Because in the act of restoring one's harmony, one has to encounter all of the reasons one was jangled. So finally, one has to experience which was nourishing. Nourishing because one is able to feel one's way into more difficult or more precious insights as a result of it. One's able to live a tougher, more heroic life if one can digest and absorb the experience."

He's back on the "tough, heroic" thing again. Sex is incredibly heroic, for men, but only if they think a lot about it. Otherwise, it's like masturbation.

No, I don't understand it either.

"But if one masturbates -"

Yep, we're back on this one again.

"all that happens is, everything that's beautiful and good in one goes up the hand, goes into the air, is lost."

Lost, like the survivors of a plane crash, fighting polar bears, learning how to walk, forming budding romances and hiding Terrible Secrets while learning French... oh, I'm sorry, wrong rant.

"Now, what the hell is there to absorb?"

Your own semen? Isn't that gay?

"One hasn't tested oneself."

Sex with women is a battle. That sounds healthy.

"You see, in a way, the heterosexual act lay questions to rest and makes one able to build upon a few answers. Whereas if one masturbates, the ability to contemplate one's experience is disturbed. Fantasies of power take over and disturb all sleep. If one has, for example, the image of a beautiful, sexy babe in masturbation, one still doesn't know whether one can make lover to her in the flesh. All you know is that you can have her in your brain. Well, a lot of good that is."

Women exist to be made love to. You must prove your manliness by conquering hot babes and fucking them while pausing, on occasion, to contemplate the act of absorption and the brilliance of Norman Mailer. You can't just settle for fantasizing about that hot babe who thinks you're a freak and wouldn't touch you with a ten foot pole, you've got to go out there and go after her - with a pitchfork, if need be - to prove that your manly organ can go in its rightful place.

"But if one has fought the good fight -"

More fighting, again. Sex is war, after all. Not that women would know anything about war.

"or the evil fight and ended with the beautiful, sexy dame, then whether the experience is good or bad, your life is changed by it."

Hers probably will be, too. She might get herpes from you. Or get pregnant and kicked out of school. But we're really not interested in her. It's about the battle. I mean, you fought the good fight, you're a man. Just think, you could have stayed home masturbating and not forced yourself and your attentions on anyone at all! What kind of a man would you have been, then? Huh? Huh?

"The ultimate direction of masturbation always has to be insanity --"

Ah. The 50s.

"the ultimate direction, mind you, not the immediate likelihood."

Well, that's good to know. Masturbation today - insanity tomorrow.

"I was asked whether these remarks apply to women --"

Oh, sweet Jesus.

"and realized that I did not know the answer."

Having never spoken to a woman in my life.

"It strikes me that masturbation, for a variety of reasons, does not affect the female psyche directly."

Only indirectly? Like second-hand smoke?

"A male friend of mine remarked, "Since you've been married all your adult life, you don't know the true extent of the problem."

I feel so incredibly sorry for this man's wives. He doesn't know the difference between sex and masturbation. So every time he wants to get off, it's "Roll over, honey."

The difference between sex and masturbation is that with sex, you're with another person, it's about coming together with another person. Masturbation is, yes, about you, about pleasure, about getting off and going to bed.

And yes, there's a difference. And there are all sorts of men who've been banged on the head with the "if you want to get off, it's better to have sex than masturbate." Well, yea, it's good to have sex if what you're looking for is being with that person, cause you know, there's two of you involved. Way too many men approach sex like masturbation, and believe they're the only ones there.

It's no surprise that he's been married six times.

This guy needs to fucking relax....

And there's your introduction to Norman Mailer!!

Yet another Old White Male Writer who should really be included more in the Canon, as he speaks so well for all men - and especially their women! - with a deep, penetrating understanding of the core humanity in each of us.

Have I Mentioned Lately How Much I Love My MA School?

I love my MA school! I love all the cute newbies and their dinky weights! I love that the new guys come in and assume they can do everything with thirty pound weights and then have to stop halfway through and move to fifteen! I love it! They're adorable!

That's right, my chiklits, add 500 calories to your diet, and you, too, Might Just Feel Better and write a blog post full of exclamation marks! Stop it with the self-hate talk! Eat more apples! Feel better! Kick more ass!

I despise the dieting industry. They can eat shit and die.

Starve yourself so you look like an Olsen Twin! Everyone knows that eating less is good for you! Why should we give you calorie counts for *active* women! Women don't go out and kick ass! Women stay home and hate themselves for having hips!

No, no, eat less, so you'll have less energy, so you'll miss workouts, so you'll feel depressed, so you'll get a prescription for Prozac, so you'll have no sex drive, so your SO thinks you don't find them attractive any more, so you buy all of Dr. Phil's books, so you can only afford to binge eat at fast food places, so you can hire a lawyer to sue McDonald's and CNN can write a "news" story about it!

This is America!

Those dirty fuckers can kiss my ass.

I feel great! The world is beautiful! I've gotten in jogging days and MA school days, and I feel great! I am bouncing off the walls. The only reason I'm not out running is because if I don't get at least 8 hours of sleep, I crash and burn. Bad. Must sleep.

But the world is great! I love everyone! I'm going to go jogging tomorrow, and go to class on Saturday! And it will be great!

Why should we give out calorie counts for active women!! Women don't want to be active! They sit at home and starve, just like good little girls!

Fucktards.

Good night, chiklits!

Writing Today

See you after MA class, perhaps.



"Well-behaved women seldom make history."
-Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Things I Hate About My Flatmate

I'm so, so lucky that I have a good roommate.

Drunk Dialing Meets Drunk Blog Posting! This is Excellent!

Oh, sweet fuck. It just occurred to me, listening to some other sites with audio posts:

I can combine the best of Drunk Dialing with Drunk Blog Posting.

Oh, the shenanigans!!!

This entire media form was made just for me! Post your slurred, drunken rants to your blog at four am on Valentine's Day!

Yay!!!

Before You Go Banging On Your Drum, Step Back a Minute. It's All About Context

On September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of the Vietnam war. Under the heading "US encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83% turnout despite Vietcong terror", the paper reported that the Americans had been "surprised and heartened" by the size of the turnout "despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting". A successful election, it went on, "has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam". The echoes of this weekend's propaganda about Iraq's elections are so close as to be uncanny.

Why the fuck don't we fucking teach people history in schools? Fucking shit, we'd avoid so many repeat propaganda fuck-ups.

Read the rest.

Coolest. Thing. Ever.

No shit. It's too bad I'm not more of a talker, but you know, a couple times a month I could see myself calling... myself, to bitch.

And you could all share in the fun!

Just think: long, bitchy rants from me, in my voice! With the proper intonation for "fucktard"!

So great.

The Latest on Battlestar Galactica

This Could Quite Possible Be the Best Show Ever.

But, it's not.

Cause the Scifi channel keeps fucking it up.

The premise is this: humanity is being systematically wiped out by "Cylons" - robots who come in several designs, some of them human. As most of their planets have been blown to bits, that last 50,000 humans in the galaxy (so far as they know), have formed a fleet of ships and are trying to outrun the Cylons while looking for a mythical "Earth" that they can settle down on.

There are things I love about this show. I love the end of the world stuff: the few against the Dark Forces of Evil. I love that in the episode "33" everybody's exhausted and looks like shit and they film all the interior shots with handhelds. I love that people are bitchy and confused and nobody knows what the hell's going on. I love that when the fighter pilots go out to Do Battle, they pass by a picture of a guy watching one of their cities bombed-out by Cylons - a reminder about what you're fighting for. I love the deck they've got that's a memorial to all the dead, all the pictures, the little momentos. I like that they, did, in fact, make an attempt to have a female character who outranks a male character have an affair with him...

... They fuck it up, but their heart was in it.

This is a show about genocide on a mass scale, and lots of very different people trying to work together, and a Faceless Evil to combat. Fucking Classic, right?

The Sci-fi channel toted the gender ratio on this show as being a big deal. It's a quasi-remake of the original Battlestar Galactica, and one of the show's favorite characters - the philandering, cigar smoking star fighter, Starbuck - is now being played by a woman.

There are, however, only four main female characters. Which, you know, considering there's only five or six male main characters, shouldn't seem so bad.

But.

But half of the female main characters are robots.

Seriously.

I shit you not.

Half the female characters in this show aren't supposed to be real women.

Fuckers.

I bet they think they're being "progressive."

Read any Golden-Age SF, much?

Worse, the one with the most screen time - the Evil Blond in the Red Dress - doesn't really do anything but make-out with the scientist guy. There's lots of Hot Blonde Cylon Skin for the 14-year-old boys in the audience, but not much substance. Just lots of scenes where she's breathily expositing nonesense about belief and redemption. In fact, the entire subplot of an entire episode consisted of the Cylon making out with the scientist.

Somebody over at Sci-fi doing a little wish fulfillment, much?

For the most part, the gender ratio on-camera is about 1/3 to 1/4 female, not 1/2, though if you're not paying attention, you may think it's half, because we're so not used to seeing women characters on screen.

They appear to have the best of intentions with doing this, but they keep fucking it up.

Some of the actors appear to be confused about What it All Means, too. There are weird scenes where you get these women deferring to the guys around them in weird ways - or sometimes they do, sometimes they don't - sometimes they seem confused during their scenes about whether they're attacking or defending, seeking approval or telling the guy to fuck off.

Starbuck starts to bitch out her commanding officer, who's also supposed to be her best friend (way too much "but shouldn't we play up the sexual tension between them" stuff for them to be best friends, but I digress), and she gets a little hysterical with it. Granted, they're all supposed to be frazzled at this point, but you know what - he didn't get hysterical. Boomer does the same thing when, in another episode, she blasts out a freak-out confession to her boyfriend (who she outranks), and he immediately goes into male-protector mode, and she goes into female freak-out mode and begs for him to "fix" everything.

This, after insisting that these were strong, smart women. And sure, even strong, smart women have freakouts - but you know what, you don't go hysterical in front of a commanding officer, and you can figure out how to "fix" something on your own without coercing the boyfriend who you outrank to cover everything up for you. These women are supposed to be smarter than that.

The hottest person in the whole damn show is definately Starbuck. She's fucking hot: not just in a "looks" way (because if you're too pretty you get points deducted, in my book - I need a little character in the face, not a plastic doll), but the way she talks, the way she walks, the way she holds herself. She's awesome. She's the only one who's got any real spit and fire to her - only she seems to switch from "butch" mode to "now I must be a seductive girl" mode rather too often for my personal taste.

Can't she just be ass-kicking Starbuck and have people like her anyway? Does she really need to wear a low-cut tank top (way lower cut that any body else's in the room) while she's kicking everybody's ass at poker? Does she even need to bother to pretend to defer to the scientist guy? Why doesn't she just find him amusing? Katee Sackhoff needs to take a couple of classes in the Joanna Russ school of feminism.... That would be so cool.

And you know there's this war going on: the director's saying, "These are tough women, but they haven't lost touch with their femininity! More femininity!" Which, somehow, actually means (to this director at least), "Show us that you really need male approval!"

Finally, the male characters defend the female characters a lot from verbal attacks by superior officers. You know, it's a fucking military setting. Getting chewed out by your superior is par for the fucking course. Get over it, you pansies. Again, this wouldn't be an issue if 1) the verbal attacks in question were without merit (in fact, they felt perfectly within limits to me, totally justified, and real) 2) if men were defending other men or women defending other women from such "attacks" in the same way.

Instead, you're sort of seeing this supposedly military-run ship tiptoeing around the women aboard it.

And it's really, deeply, stupid. Because you couldn't function effectively that way, if 1/3 of your crew got "special" treatment by virtue of having breasts. It would piss off everybody - male and female. And before you start arguing about women in the military now, let me remind you that this is supposed to be, like, 3000 years in the future. I'd certainly hope thoughts about what women could be and do and equal relationships between the sexes had improved somewhat by then.

But then, I'm a bit of an optimist SF/F writer, huh.

There's also this weird tension between the Battlestar commander (a man) and the President (a woman). He'll usually just make decisions without her input, like when to jump the fleet, who to attack, when to attack, what's best for everyone, but when it comes to, say, deciding whether or not to leave a lot of people behind, or kill dangerous people, she has to make the decision, even if those people are seen as a military threat.

I love the actress they've got playing the President, and I think she rocks the house, but you know, it's weird. The writers' decisions about when something becomes "her" decision, and when it's "his" seem decided merely based on how suspenseful it'll be. If you want suspense, you have him ask her what she's decided. If you want to move the plot, he just decides on his own.

Really random.

And for all my pissed off bitching, I do keep hoping it'll get better. I keep hoping that Starbuck will really come into her own, that maybe the cardboard too-pretty guy they've got opposite her will somehow develop an actual character, that just because Boomer is a robot doesn't mean she'll be an Evil Robot, that the fucking Cylon in the Red Dress gets blown up for spare parts really soon, that the twitchy scientist guy gets pushed out an airlock, that the President clearly states, "Here's when it's mine. Here's when it's yours," and that at some point, there's an actual likeable guy character who isn't 1) too-pretty and devoid of personality 2) a robot.

Which is like the same thing, I guess.

It's Bullshit, But it Pleases Me

I have no trust in these studies, because there are so many other factors at work, but reading this stuff always pleases me:

Not only red wine but also white wine, beer and hard liquor appear to protect against mental decline in older women, two new studies have found.

I'm going to live forever!

Good Stuff From Amanda

The Republicans have simply stolen the standard way Hollywood sells movies, which is bring in the men and the women will follow. The idea in selling movies is this: Stuff your movies full of good-looking women and violence, market directly to young men and they will drag their girlfriends to see it. And the girlfriends will go, because women are used to male authority in their lives.

The Republicans do the same thing. The Shrub is packaged up for maximum effect on a male audience. His rotating gallery of superhero costumes should be the first clue, as should the very existence of Ann Coulter, with her mini-skirts and her willingness to say nasty things about other women any chance she gets. The Stepford wife of a First Lady should really cause alarm bells to go off. The Republican party has been conveying a straightfoward, coherent message to the men of this country for a long time now, and that message is that they understand that men need to be Men and that the Democrats, in conjunction with the feminists, are trying to emasculate the men of this country. And that gets projected onto the nation as a whole--I would go so far as to say that 9/11 is perceived by many conservative voters as the result of our nation's "emasculation", that we became womanly and vulnerable and as such were violated.

I'm particularly pleased with the Laura Bush/Stepford equation. That one finally clicked. Wow. Read the rest.

My Secret Boyfriend Talks About Drugs, Alcohol, and Terrorism

Amusing thoughts from the other side of the pond.

Understanding the Religious Right

A 2002 Time-CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations, or in the motel turn on some of the 250 Christian TV stations, and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth, when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

via Echidne

Aren't There Any Bad Girl Poets?

Bad Guys and poetry:

In response to the question, “Can a bad man be a good poet?” there are only two things to be said: “Yes” and “obviously.” In part, that's because the poetry world sets the bar fairly low for “badness” — when we say a poet was a “bad man,” we don't mean that he was a shotgun-toting, baby-kicking monster; we mean that he was unpleasant, disturbed, or a jerk. And considering that poetry’s history is thick with unpleasant, disturbed jerks, the question would seem to answer itself.

He does, in fact, get around to talking about Anne Sexton for about two lines, but only to insist that it's impossible for a reader to "see themselves" in Sexton's poems, so it's different, somehow, to be shocked by her... I'm wondering if he means "a reader" to be "a male reader like me." Huh.

via Julian

Why is it Supposed to be So Much Worse When Women Do It?

Torture is torture. I'm so incredibly irritated that the "big freakout" about the abuse being dealt out to Iraqi prisoners isn't that it's happening, but that some of it's being dealt out by women.

No fucking shit. Women are people too. Women can do awful, mean, terrible things. And yea, it was probably men who told them to do it in some cases, but you know what, a lot of the time, they probably felt that what they were doing was "patriotic."

Women are Americans, too. Women were pissed off about 9/11, too. They felt they were serving their fucking country by interrogating people and treating them inhumanely, by working off religious taboos, by playing with sex. They were doing shitty things that their fellow male soldiers were doing, too. That's what you do. That's war. That's torture. Anybody who thought this isn't what they fucking voted for is wrong.

No, people shouldn't torture other people. It's fucking rude, whether you're male or female. Don't preach at me like women are supposed to be all "superior," and that it's perfectly fine for men to sodomize prisoners, but a woman rubbing her tits against some guy is oh-so-much-more-scandalous.

It's shitty no matter who's doing it. Stop freaking out based on the sex of the perpetrator, and talk about it for what it is: a bunch of Americans feeling that they were doing the right thing, being given orders by an administration who finds the Geneva Convention's anti-torture articles incredibly quaint.

It is a Fantastic Night For Piss and Vinegar, My Starry Chiklits!

So, I'm just about to cry right now, which I'll explain at the end of the post. I knew I should have waited until after I wrote this piss and vinegar post before I opened this box.

I was fucking pissed off today. Fucking, fucking pissed off. Fucking internet psychos drive me fucking nuts. I was also harrassed on the train platform last week, after six months of fending off fucking train psychos. I was exhausted, run down, and wasn't holding myself in my butch I'll-fucking-kick-your-ass-you-psycho mode, and he came up past me and dragged his hand against me and said something leering-like, and I yelled a big "fuck you" after him and turned to face him - I fucking wanted to fight all 300 fucking pounds of him - but he kept moving, and honestly, it's better that way, cause I quite like the shape of my face. But he fucking touched me, that fucking fucker!

So I've been pissed off. Pissed off femi-nazi pissed off. And you know, every once in a while, going back to your MA class when you're really fucking pissed off is really fucking good.

I grabbed one of the heavier weighted bags, the one that's 200 lbs and Sifu Kat likes to keep for "the big guys" and I beat the fucking shit out of that bag. We rotated out boxing and kicking rounds with squats on the balance balls, and the squats are getting easier, which is cool.

If all I have to do once in a while, is take some time off and eat properly to have ass-kicking workouts like these, I need to get my shit together and do that more often. I was bouncing off the goddamn walls. I should have stayed for the second class.

Instead, I went home and put the same five Everclear songs on repeat and went jogging. Yea. Ok, it was only a couple miles, but I went jogging. I went jogging not cause I *had* to, cause you know, I'd already fucking exercised, I went because I wanted to, and yes, I nearly fell on my ass like three times and did some fancy sliding routines around the stoplights, but I went, and it was great, and I burned off all the pissed off fucking energy I've been building up.

And it occurred to me that what I've been doing with all that freak-out, angsty energy is turn it into negative, loopy self-hate talk, bitching to myself about what I'm supposed to be doing, what I'm supposed to be eating, what size I'm supposed to be, the way people are supposed to look at me, and I was letting it eat me up. I was so mentally exhausted at the end of the day, after spending dull hours at work with little more to do than beat myself up about what I *wasn't* doing that I was too tired to do more than slump home and get to bed.

Stupid.

And there was one more thing I wouldn't owe up to, a big one, the biggest freak-out of all, and I pressed it back and shrugged it off and pressed it back. And tonight I stepped off the bus and headed to MA class, and thought back - what's been so different about *this* month? Why is it *this* month that I'm so unsettled? What's freaking me out? What's bugging me? Start with the first of January. Hell, start with New Year's Eve!

Oh.

Oh, well, there's that. Shit. Shit. Shit. Owe the fuck up to it. C'mon. Yea, there's that. Goddammit, son of a bitch, I fucking know better, I'm so fucking stupid, goddammit.

Cut that shit out. Get your fucking shit together. What the fuck are you thinking?

I'm an all or nothing person. I'm down for four days, down for the count, and then I get pissed off, and bang through the morning weights, the MA class, and I go jogging.

They're having a big "welcome back" workout session/party tomorrow at the MA school, so I'm going into class tomorrow, too, cause it sounds cool. We've got a bunch of new students, and it's fun to watch them. I suppose I'm not yet one of the amazons or anything, but my arm muscles are looking way cooler.

I was lying in bed last night, thinking too much, as I'm bound to do, and prepping, again, for the dating odyssey. If you want to know why I'm getting pissed off more than usual, and why I'm talking about guys more than usual, it's because I need 6-8 months to prep myself for actually sitting down and going on dates, which I'm planning to do this summer, and let me tell you, that takes all the fucking courage I have, and it means long nights of running through scenerios, of figuring out what's a make or break deal, of viewing me and the poor boy as two warriors sitting down to table and sizing each other up, me inevitably going:

"OK, so, what are you going to cost me, emotionally?"

And him going, "Huh?"

And I was thinking last night, running through another rehearsal, how I'd handle X or Z sort of guy, how I'd handle it if he pushed me a certain way, if he used threats of violence or coercion, "poor me, you selfish bitch," to get what he wanted, and there was that moment, that moment when I opened my eyes and said out loud, "I'm stronger than you. "

"I have been through the shit. I know exactly how far you can push. I know exactly how much I'll push back. I have a one-up on you. I know myself. I know exactly what I'm capable of. I know exactly what I've done, and what I will do. I'm stronger than you."

It was like I was a stand-in for Jennifer Connelly, staring down David Bowie, going, "You have no power over me," and everything broke apart.

And it was the first time I realized I could do it. I could sit at the table. I could pull up a chair. I could be me.

I am incredibly strong. I have done incredible things. I am fucking amazing.

When I got home, I found a package waiting in front of my door, which I did not open until after my run, because I had a feeling it would take away some of my piss and vinegar.

Jeff Vandermeer, cool writer extraordinare (I've gushed oodles of times about his Dradin, In Love here), wrote to me when I said I was taking time off, and said he was sending over a galley copy of his new book, Shriek, and some "goodies."

You know, the galley copy would have been enough to leave me hopping around my apartment. I can't even list everything else he sent me, but it includes a copy of Secret Life, which I was supposed to fucking buy three months ago, and his non-fiction collection, and a friendly plastic squid (long story), and.. and... it's just fucking amazing. It's the best present I've ever gotten, and he signed all of the books he sent that are his, and they are fucking beautiful, and I want to wander around the apartment just carrying them, it's so damned wonderful.

And you know, it's so funny, with these blogs, with public writing, with just bitching into space, because most of the time, you just feel like you're talking to yourself, and it doesn't mean a damn thing to anybody, and nobody but you could give a shit, and then the good people - not the fucking psychos, but the good people, and there are a lot of you - e-mail you and think about you, and you worry about them, and you think for just this one starry, pretty moment, "Wow, not everybody in the world is a fucktard."

And, of course, you get up in the morning and start over again, but you know, right then, right now, it's like people and life are the best things... well, the best things in the whole world. Seeings as they, you know, make it what it is.

I just love everybody tonight.

Well, maybe not the psychos. But the rest of you all are damn fucking cool.

Why Is it That I Attract Psychos?

I seem to attract a certain type of psycho, like moth to flame.

It goes something like this: boys crawling toward me, prostrate, talking about how they're not worthy of my glorious time and attention. They scream and cry and reach for me and go, "Strong, smart woman! Fix me! Nurture me! Tell me what to do! FIX ME! LOVE ME! I worship you! WHAT? You don't LIKE me? You can't FIX me? I HATE you! I'm going to FUCKING KILL YOU!!"

I so know this script.

Do they believe that I have some sort of Life Secret that they don't?

Do they believe I will act as some sort of big-hipped earth mother and pet away their woes (far, far, too many men with an interest in me are looking for absent mothers)?

Do they believe they can latch onto me and steal some of my spit and fire and hoard it for themselves?

Do they believe I'm a "fixer"?

Here's the deal, boys: I don't fix people. If you open up a conversation by trying to rip something out of me to bolster your own ego, your own fragile sense of self at the expense of mine, it's not gonna go well. Been there, done that. I don't take boys under my wing and baby them and raise them like fledgling chicks. I don't believe you attach yourself to somebody and then figure out all of the things you're going to "fix" about them. You've got the strength to get your shit together, or you don't. And you work at it every damn day. And you don't use people as crutches. You don't steal other people's souls cause you don't have one. Period. The end. You're a fucking adult. Figure out your damn life. Don't try and steal mine.

I am not a self-help guru. I don't know any more about life than you do.

So please, all you wonderful boys and borderline psychos out there, don't grovel toward me like I'm the Female Jesus Christ. I know exactly what tomorrow's flip side will be. Do not lay hold and scream, "FIX ME!" because the blood and guts on the floor when you're done aren't going to be mine.

Get your own shit together.

Feminism isn't a fucking dating service.

Writing Today

Been a while since I did any of that, huh? I'm pretty backlogged, and I miss writing. I miss my people.

If I go two or three months without writing anything substantial, I get a little weird... and I've been weird the last couple weeks.

Oddly, writing fantasy novels helps keeps me level. I think I've just been doing it for so long that I can't imagine life without it.

Blame it All on my Buddy Julian, for Sending the Link

Check out, "The Drugs Song."

It's one of those "useless bullshit" mornings here in Chicago...

Random Surrealism Generator

For your workday pleasure.





via mumpsimus

Ha. Ha. Those Pesky Girls

Fascinating article.

A couple of things: yea, at some point, encouraging people to have one kid and having a premium on having boys, you're eventually going to get into trouble. I was wondering when they'd have to start addressing it:

There is such a glut of boys here - roughly 134 are born for every 100 girls - that the imbalance has forced an unlikely response from the Chinese government. To persuade more families to have girls, it has decided in some cases to pay families that already have daughters.

And, check out this bit at the end of the quoted text, especially, for something very familiar:

On a recent afternoon here in southeastern China, hundreds of students in the dirt courtyard of Lanxi Middle School held a parade rehearsal. The school goes through 12th grade, and about 60 percent of students in the higher grades are male. The marchers, mostly boys, waved flags and kicked dust in the air beside a billboard promoting the latest propaganda campaign: Respect Girls...

Mr. Hu said the exhibition room was supposed to build the self-esteem of girls, though it also seemed intended to impress visiting officials. Still, he said that young women were now eligible for college scholarships and that the number of recent female graduates attending college jumped to 271 in 2004 from 149 in 2003.

Lin Lingling, 18, a plucky senior who has hopes for college, is one of the stars of the program. "They say boys are good at logical things, so when they enter into high school, they say some of them are a lot better," said Ms. Lin, a top student. "But we are the same."

I'm concerned that "encouraging" people to have girls means not only stuff like the above, which is... cool, though worrisome because they feel they need to do it (and they're right), but also by giving families money for having girls. This feels a lot like equating women with property, how many cows are you worth?

Ah, memories, party in South Africa, guy turning to me, "How many cows do you think you're worth?"

Oh, man. Joking or not. Oh, man.

More on Pirates

Straight from boingboing:

The Business Software Alliance has put up some materials on why software piracy is bad. The reason they cite to stop piracy is that it keeps the software industry from getting bigger. My cow-orker Seth has revised their copy with several counterexamples to show what a strange proposition this is:

Original:

Some have attempted to paint copyright piracy as a victimless crime, arguing that "if I make a copy of a computer program, you still get to keep your copy, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.

Reducing piracy offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the piracy rate, the larger the IT sector and the greater the benefits.

Some of Seth's revisions:

Some have attempted to paint printing as a victimless crime, arguing that "if I print a book, you can buy it from me, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case. "Reducing printing offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the printing rate, the larger the scribes and bards sector, and the greater the benefits."

Some have attempted to paint conjugal sexual intimacy as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you and I have intimate relations, we both derive pleasure and a sense of togetherness, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case. "Reducing sex among committed partners offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the intimacy rate among committed partners, the larger the prostitution sector, and the greater the benefits."

Some have attempted to paint ham radio as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you operate an amateur radio station, you and I can communicate across long distances, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case. "Reducing the prevalence of amateur radio operators offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of amateur radio communication, the larger the long distance telephone services sector, and the greater the benefits."

Some have attempted to paint tooth-brushing as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you brush your teeth regularly, you improve your dental hygiene, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case. "Reducing tooth-brushing offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of tooth-brushing, the larger the dental prosthetic, dental filling, and dental surgical equipment sectors, and the greater the benefits."

Those Were Damn Good Martinis

Drunken blog posts are like drunken e-mails, only with a far, far bigger audience. You sort of crawl out of bed the next morning and go, "I just posted that to 500 people. Damn."

No more drunken blog posts. Really. I mean it this time.

Anyway, lots to do today. In the mean time, movie trailers. Orlando Bloom appears to be all grown up, and is looking damn prettier than I've ever seen him (I'm assuming this one's gonna be about one of the Crusades that the Christians actually "won"), and, of course, I'll have to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Because the candy's gotta come from somewhere.

Drunk, Amid Lovers

At which point, the protagonist thinks: he does not have to be perfect. Just date. Pretend. It does not have to be real. Make something up. Just live in Chicago. Here. Now. Next to me. That's all.

And the protagonist grabs another black russian, and switches out the contacts for glasses, and goes to watch Carnivale.

The SO, who is originally from Wichita, KS, says: "Don't you ever fear that you'll get sucked back into your small town?

Me: Yes. Every damn day. Every time I go back. Every day.

Another drink, another day.

He does not have to be perfect.

In Which the Protagonist Buys a Case of Beer, And All is Right With the World

Going out to dinner with Jenn and the SO tonight. Watching more of Carnivale. Dude, Nick Stahl can be kinda hot, in a broody, guy-next-door kind of way. I'd totally take him home, especially if I caught him reading something equally hot.

But I digress.

Doing a quick read-through of Margaret Atwood's Good Bones. Quirky.

Man, I feel a lot better. I should resolve to spend more of my weekends angst-free.

Smokers?

I start to worry, as my workplace and government become increasingly more involved in my life choices.

Four workers in the United States have lost their jobs after refusing to take a test to see if they were smokers.

They were employees of Michigan-based healthcare firm Weyco, which introduced a policy banning its staff from smoking - even away from the workplace.

But wait! There's more:

According to Reuters news agency, Mr Weyers wants to turn his attention next to overweight workers.

"We have to work on eating habits and getting people to exercise. But if you're obese, you're (legally) protected," he said

Yea. Legally protected. Gosh. That must really suck, not being able to fire somebody for being fat... legally.

Once More Around the Mulberry Bush

Today is grocery shopping day, and with that in mind, and the fact that this has been such a tough couple of months for me, regarding just about everything, I'm going back to the basics.

In fact, after some time off, a lot of sleeping, and being honest with myself, it's pretty easy to see what I was doing: I was undereating on the weekdays, when I did most of my workouts, and overeating on the weekends.

I remember reading a CNN article that *didn't* give the "recommended" calorie count for an "active" woman, only a sedentary or moderately active woman, though it gave the calorie count for an active guy at something like 3000 calories.

For those looking for an "active" woman calorie count, guess what? It's about 2500-2800 calories for somebody looking to be at the weight I'd like to be at, exercising as much as I'd like to be exercising (five days a week of either jogging or MA class, plus morning weights. Thank Hers Magazine for these numbers).

I was putting in about 1700.

And beating myself up about it because it didn't seem to be getting me any rapid results in the weight-dropping department, though my strength and stamina are, of course, increasing. I'd been listening to a lot of bullshit about how little you have to eat to lose weight, about what "normal" women should be eating, and I was thinking 1700 actually really sounded like a lot. Well, yea, it would be: if I was 5'2 with the bone structure of a bird, and not working out. I could lose a shitload of weight if I was really doing this for a number on a scale: watch all that water weight and muscle loss get flushed down the toilet!

I knew I was at subsistence level because when I skipped a protein bar (like the day when I realized I'd brought a crappy one and didn't eat it), I get the shakes and my body starts pushing back into binge-mode. What it also meant was that when I got the chance to eat my Thai food, or let myself have a pasta meal on weekends, I'd overeat then to compensate. So I'd somehow managed to get myself onto a different sort of binge-track, even if they weren't what I'd call "real" binges, and they were "good" foods: I was still overcompensating.

In fact, the time when I was in the best shape, when I was in Alaska, I didn't much concern myself with food at all. I curbed binges, but I ate what and when I was hungry. I lived mainly on eggs, brown rice, and vegetables, the summer before Clarion, and exercised every day, went on long bikerides, spent about half an hour to an hour a the gym, and did my usual weights routine. But I don't remember being nearly as food-obsessed as I've been these last few months.

And in the last two months, I've been watching my energy level for workouts plummet. This has to do with a lot of things, but I'd bet that a crappy diet didn't help much, either.

Going back through blog posts and looking at all the times I've tried to cut out *more* food, or alter it, I see those as being really stressful times, the times when I was the most upset about some manufactured size not fitting, or anticipating that I was going to start dating and remain unloved because my hips and shoulders were the same width.

What it's come down to is owing up to the fact that getting angry at food has been about punishing myself, about not liking myself very much. It's about not being respectful.

I'm deeply sick of protein bars, and tired of talking about food. What I find fascinating is that correlation: the times when I'm the most unhappy, the most depressed, the times when I'm the most angry at myself - those are the times when I've cut at the food, when I've seen it as a problem.

I am incredibly pissed off at the American diet industry, and you'll see that in a lot of my posts. Mostly, I'm pissed off at it because of this: because the reason I treat myself like shit is because I'm told I'm shit for not "eating properly," for being "not hungry," for not obsessing about food. And then when I freak out and try and eat properly, stay hungry, and obsess about food without huge weight loss kickbacks (cause my body's eating just enough to hover at famine-don't-drop-any-of-this-mode), I feel like I'm doing something wrong, get pissed at myself, and engage in unhealthy counter-productive freakout behavior.

And I've also gotten to the point that I'm obsessing about all this stuff so much that honestly, I feel that I've become less interesting.

There are far more important things I should be spending my time on.

Like learning French.

Speaking of which, Jenn's given me a self-study French book that I can work on at work. A few of my writing buddies and I still hold out hope of going in on a little French country house for a couple weeks and writing like maniacs while lounging around the pool and enjoying big French meals and good French wine.

And spending my useless work-time learning something worthwhile would be a nice change. Spending six or seven hours a day reading blogs and news articles and playing Antz will drive anyone crazy.

Throw food-obsession onto that, and you're looking at a freakout.

Roundup of Iraqi Blogs Covering the Election

Jeff Jarvis has a roundup of Iraqi blogs covering the election.

Catch Up

Spent pretty much all of yesterday in bed, getting up periodically to eat, check e-mail, soak in the tub, and watch the rest of Battlestar Galactica, which I will rant about later (half the female characters are still robots, Starbuck is the hottest character of them all, I'm sick to death of boringly pretty boy heroes who all look alike, why the fuck is there a useless "subplot" for the 14-year-old-boys that involves a woman robot in a red dress making out with the scientist guy for 1/3 of an entire fucking episode, the entire point of which seems to be "look how hot we are making out"?).

Slept in again today. Wasn't until this morning that I could honestly say I felt a lot better.

I rolled out of bed just after nine and took a good, long, look at my room and the rest of the apartment and realized how long I'd let stuff slide. Jenn's been in and out, and messes don't bother her, so most of the cleaning is my task, and it was the first thing I let go. About the only thing I'd managed to do with any frequency was take out the garbage. But the plants were dying from not being watered, ants had invaded in search of all the crap on the kitchen floor, I was fairly certain something was getting ready to grow in the sink, and I hadn't cleaned the bathroom - aside from a wipe-down last week when the SO came by - for three weeks. And there was a substantial pile of books and magazines spewed all over the floor next to my bed.

So I cleaned the whole damn place, watered the plants, put the basil out on the outside porch to get some much-needed sun, vacuumed all of the throw rugs, re-ordered all of the books overflowing from my bookshelf (most had to go out in the "library" area in the dining room and living room, respectively. We're at something like 1500 books in the house now), bleached, scrubbed, and windexed the kitchen and bathroom, dragged the gas stove out from its nook so I could clean out from under it (this is where the ants hide), washed all of my bedding and made the bed, toted out the trash from the overflowing can in my bedroom (paper trash gets less "eek" points on my internal monitor than the kitchen trash), and put away all of the DVDs in the living room scattered around on top of the entertainment center. I've started converting a bookshelf into a DVD shelf, as the entertainment center gets filled up. Jenn's copy of Buffy Season 7 has returned from the SO's, and I hadn't yet made a space for my copy of the Extended Return of the King. And, much to my geeky delight, I found a set of The Ewok Adventure and The Battle for Endor today at Borders. Excellent.

Finished reading One L, and tried to continue reading Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon, an epic fantasy saga. Unfortunately, all I'm thinking while I'm reading it is, "When the fuck is George R.R. Martin gonna finish book four? This stuff is crap." In fact, it's not that bad, but epic fantasy for me isn't just about the battles and the bravery, it's about connecting with the characters. I give a fantasy saga more time than other books, cause they have to have some time to draw you in. 50 pages is about right. With this one, I'm 100 pages in, and there's no character I find terribly interesting or likable enough to trudge through the rest of the book with, let alone a series. George, where are you??

Yesterday, while pushing through my book pile, I picked up and finally started reading the first book of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which I'd bought a couple weeks ago, but hadn't had a chance to start. If I was wondering where George got all of his epic plots from, I will wonder no more. It's good stuff.

I also got a shipment of perfume from Paris today, which I ordered sometime early this week (fantastic fucking shipping). I had picked up a bottle of it when I was in Paris years ago, and finally ran out last year. It's so fucking expensive, and seemed so incredibly extravagent an expense (I mean, c'mon "I just ordered perfume from Paris" bah), that I put it off and put it off and put it off. Now I've got it, and I'm embarrassed to say how much it pleases me.

I also ordered a handmade pair of sterling silver earrings, also an extravagent expense, from a guy named Mark Ehrmann. I had dearly loved the pair I bought years ago in Alaska, but I'd lost them in Cape Town or somewhere on a research trip, and again, couldn't justify buying a new pair until now.

My rationale? What did I buy myself for my birthday?... Music to write novels to, and a copy of LSAT sample tests.

Yea.

I've also been reminded, once again, how much I love my house. I love living here. I love the hardwood floors. I love the huge kitchen that's so great for cooking in. I love that I'm growing herbs on the back porch. I love the built-in hardwood cabinet that we use as a liquor cabinet. I love that the majority of the furniture is actually composed of bookshelves. I love that I've reserved an entire space next to the elliptical machine for a punching bag, once I can afford it. I love my cozy room. I love that the video store is across the street, Borders and Starbucks are a block away, excellent Thai food places populate the entire block, there's an Asian grocery store across the street, and upper-scale restaurants are just a quick 6-8 block walk away onto Clark.

I love my house. I love this life. I even sometimes love the mostly-useless job that pays for all this. I am very lucky. I know that.

On Being a Woman in "Liberated" Iraq

Maybe we should stop listening to the old rich white guys about "women's liberation" and start talking to the women. They might have something to say about it.

Read it all here:

I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting Sunday's elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless?

In reality, these elections are, for Iraq's women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and US-led military assaults of the 20-odd months since Saddam's fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women's empowerment.

Having for years enjoyed greater rights than other women in the Middle East, women in Iraq are now losing even their basic freedoms. The right to choose their clothes, the right to love or marry whom they want. Of course women suffered under Saddam. I fled his cruel regime. I personally witnessed much brutality, but the subjugation of women was never a goal of the Baath party. What we are seeing now is deeply worrying: a reviled occupation and an openly reactionary Islamic armed insurrection combining to take Iraq into a new dark age.

Every day, leaflets are distributed across the country warning women against going out unveiled, wearing make-up, or mixing with men. Many female university students have given up their studies to protect themselves against the Islamists.

Read the rest.

Today Was the First Day I Considered a United States Without the Right to Legal Abortion

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush told abortion foes on Monday he shared their support for "a culture of life" and claimed progress in passing legislation to protect the vulnerable.

"We need most of all to change hearts and that is what we're doing," Bush said as anti-abortion activists marked the 32nd anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion with a day of rallies, protests and other activities.

I finally decided to start thinking about it. I've been fobbing it of and fobbing it off for a long time now. I didn't think he'd outlaw partial-birth abortion, either. I don't seriously think he can get away with overturning Roe.

But I considered what I would do if that happened.

I've discussed before the great fertility of the women in my family. My fertility has always been a big issue for me, and I've negotiated all of my sexual encounters knowing just how great my risk of pregnancy was. I've never slipped up. I've never had to get an abortion. I never engaged in unsafe sex - not once.

But that doesn't mean that there won't be a future "oops" pregnancy. And no, I wouldn't hesitate to get an abortion if I got pregnant, say, in the middle of law school.

And today I seriously considered it: what happens if Roe's overturned?

Well, I'd spend a day or two sobbing in my bedroom, probably, out of sheer anger and frustration. All that hard work trying to get the world to see me as a person and not the incubater of some guy's sperm - all that work trying to change people's ideas about what children really are: they are created of a woman's body, a woman's breath. Yes, a man contributes half the potential child's DNA, but at the end of the day, the stuff that goes into the creation of heart and lungs and fingers and toes comes out of my body, is nourished by what I eat, how well I sleep.

So what would happen if I got pregnant without wanting to, without choosing to?

Well, likely, I'd take a trip to Canada. I'm one of those lucky people who could afford to take off to Toronto for the weekend if I had to. I could afford to stay in a hotel, afford to pay for the procedure. In fact, Canada would likely have a nice little business providing reproductive health services to American women hopping over the border.

I would be OK. I'm intelligent, I'm well-off.

But Roe V. Wade is about a bigger issue than just the abortion part. It's not about protecting life or fetal rights or any of that bullshit (again, if this was about life, we'd be putting all that energy into childcare services).

Overturning Roe V. Wade, making abortion illegal, is about controlling women. Always has been. Always will be. You won't convince me otherwise, not with all of your arguments about sacred egg meeting sacred sperm: a couple of DNA strands slathered in proteins that have about as much self-awareness as a can of coke.

So when I hear Bush & co. make these broad statements about "life" about "championing life" what I'm actually hearing is an old rich white guy telling me who has control over my body - his sperm. His agency. I will be forced to labor against my will producing a child of my body for nine months. Anyone who has given birth, whose wife has given birth, will be the first to tell you why it's called "labor." Making babies doesn't come easy, doesn't come without cost.

And that cost is not my biological burden to bear against my will. It is not something to be forced upon me by men, by women, by the President of the United States.

So though I will travel to Canada, fly over the heads of poorer women who cannot afford the luxury and instead submit themselves to risky and dubious back-street procedures in their god-given, natural right to control their own fertility, I will come back to a country whose laws still view me as vessel, as no better than an empty jug in want of filling.

That is what the laws will say I am. That is what all this talk of life, and packing courts with judges, means to me.

It means I go back to being a dumb body, a thing, a sperm receptacle, a baby vessel, and NOTHING else.

And soon after I will begin reading even more "studies" about how I can't do SCIENCE because ovaries get in the way of learning, and SCIENCE is bad for babies. I will be told I cannot drive a car, because I don't have the spatial reasoning skills. And if you're not careful, if you're not careful, if you begin to view us as things instead of people, if we become a means to an end instead of an end, an asset, in and of oursevles, then you begin trading women for cattle. Men begin hiding us from view like their best possessions. Men begin encouraging us to go back to finding our strength and identities in men, no matter if that man is weaker, stupider, more spineless than we.

Movie heroines will easily slide back to telling their beaus, "You'll have to think for the both of us!" and they'll mean it.

These gains, these little steps that women have taken toward being considered "real" people, are not very old. There have certainly been other times and places where women were treated as people, but none in our recent cultural memory, the Judeo-Christian one that most of the US comes from, and given any excuse, given fear, we'll slide back very easily to equating women with possessions, because it seems so much simpler, so much easier, so logical, so reasoned.

Life. Yes. We're protecting life. We're protecting the 50s ideal that never existed, the one we all pretended was truth, and was nothing so much as a bald-faced lie that everyone told themselves they wanted to live, they should live.

I want a life where I'm treated like in intelligent, informed, responsible person. I want a life where people look at me and see not a vessel, not untapped fertility, but just a person, just this, me. Not my womb. Not my ovaries.

It is never "one" thing. It will not stop at the outlawing of abortion, just like he didn't stop with outlawing Dilation & Extraction. It will not stop.

It will not stop.

This is why this issue terrifies women. Until you have grown up knowing that old men like these have the ultimate control over your body and what you do with it, over your labor, over how you choose to spend your body's breath and blood, you won't know this terror, this uncertaintly, this screaming, terrified anger at the co-option of all that you are for use by the state.

The closest male equivalent I can think of is the draft: being forced to fight a war you did not vote for, for a cause you did not want, at a time in your life when all the world's possibilities are spread before you. And there is no honor in it. There is no medal. Because you will be told that your purpose in life is just this: to live or die for the state. That is your biological burden, and if you survive this war, you will be forced to take home with you a burden far greater than merely serving the state: you'll be given a child that is yours, whose future, whose mental and physical health, whose deeds, will be forever your responsibility.

And there is no conscientious objector clause. There's no medical leave. There's no reprieve if you're mentally ill.

If a man has sex with you, and you become pregnant, you're consigned to the will of that man and his laws.

Your life is no longer yours.

That's the battle women fight. That's why it's such a brutal battle, and that's why we get so violently passionate about the abortion debate. Because what we're talking about is the co-option of our bodies, our lives, for the state. We're talking about giving up our rights, our bodies, to the will of men and their wants and desires.

And we're fucking tired.

We're not going to be non-people again in the eyes of the law. We're not going to be second-class, second-best, by virtue of birth.

Never again.

Clarion East Auction for the SF/F Fans: Go Buy Something Cool

Stolen from Matt Cheney:

Clarion East, one of the oldest and most prestigious SF-writing workshops, lost their university funding last year, and so they are holding an auction, where you can bid on remarkable items from people like Michael Bishop, Cory Doctorow, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Jeff VanderMeer, Kate Wilhelm, and Connie Willis, among others. The auction only lasts until tomorrow, January 29, at 11.59pm EST.

Write Your Own BtVS Episode

Here's a handy Buffy episode template for Season 3: something every young, aspiring slash fic writer should keep in their toolbox.

Cold Opener:
Buffy is on patrol. She kicks vampire butt, etc., then stumbles across a person[s] killed in a gruesome and emblematic manner.
BUFFY: Ew.
*cut to opening credits*

Scene: The Library
BUFFY: ...and why did this idiosyncratic killer have to strike while Figure From My Past is in town?
GILES: Mmm. Describe the bodies again, especially the crucial little detail that sets these deaths apart from the last eight million deaths this year? *takes off glasses, cleans them, puts them back on*
BUFFY: *describes*
XANDER: I know! Let's do some research, for a change!
GILES: *glares*
BUFFY: Whatever, I've got class.
CORDY, passing by the library door: My, I'm shallow!

Scene: Cemetary
BUFFY: *kicks vampire ass*
GILES: Hey, over here! Someone got whacked in the same easily-identifiable manner!

Scene: Library
GILES: I think I may have found something. *reads from a dusty old tome* Let me translate: "...and lo, a fusty English man will read from these pages and..." *blinks* Heeeey, I'm NOT fusty!
BUFFY: Skip ahead a bit.
GILES: Yes, here we are. The MacGuffin of Qwerty'uiop! Ancient folk legend refers to an object of incredible power...
BUFFY: What does it do?
GILES: *reads a bit* Freshens breath, whitens teeth, improves fine-motor control...
BUFFY: What does that have to do with the murders?
GILES: Beats me. I must have been high when I highlighted that passage.
XANDER: *cracks wise*
WILLOW: *says something endearingly loopy*
CORDY: HELLO, I'm still shallow!
BUFFY: Yeah, whatever. Laters, everyone, I'm meeting Figure From My Past for coffee.

Episode 27: In Which the Protagonist Considers Throwing in the Towel and Taking Up Underwater Basketweaving

[Brutal Women note: This was originally posted on 1/7/05: I am re-date stamping it for 1/27/05 to keep the comments current, as it's received some interest.]

Brendan's found a couple of good articles. The one I want to tackle is this one about why feminists are afraid of fat: i.e. feminists want to be pretty, too. The "I want to be loved and still be a real person" conundrum.

There's simply an irreconcilable contradiction between feminism and femininity, two largely incompatible strategies women have adopted over the years to try to level the playing field with men.

The reason they're incompatible is simple. Femininity is a system that tries to secure advantages for women, primarily by enhancing their sexual attractiveness to men. It also shores up masculinity through displays of feminine helplessness or deference. But femininity depends on a sense of female inadequacy to perpetuate itself. Completely successful femininity can never be entirely attained, which is precisely why women engage in so much laboring, agonizing, and self-loathing, because whatever you do, there's always that straggly inch-long chin hair or pot belly or just the inexorable march of time.

Feminism, on the other hand, is dedicated to abolishing the myth of female inadequacy. It strives to smash beauty norms, it demands female equality in all spheres, it rejects sexual market value as the measure of female worth. Or that was the plan. Yet for all feminism's social achievements, what it never managed to accomplish was the eradication of the heterosexual beauty culture, meaning the time-consuming and expensive potions and procedures—the pedicures, highlights, wax jobs on sensitive areas, "aesthetic surgery," and so on. For some reason, the majority of women simply would not give up the pursuit of beautification, even those armed with feminist theory. (And even those clearly destined to fail.)

What I find fascinating about this idea about the conflict between "femininity" and "feminism" is the internal conflict: In order to be loved, I must look and act this way. This is called "being feminine." It may not be who I am, I may loathe most of it or like some of it, but in order to be loved, this is how I have to be.

Because for all the talk about female vanity, and how the only reason women go out to buy shoes and lipstick and the reasons women starve themselves and angst about their looks, what we're talking about beyond basic vanity is just this:

Good women, the sort of women who are loved, are the women who look and act this way.

That's the message you get banged on the head with everyday in your MSN advice columns, and stupid studies about how men want to fuck their mothers, so women should strive to be little and less successful than the men they adore.

And, no, it's not just about love from men, though male approval is a huge deal: women are the first ones to punish the fat women who don't play by the rules, the people who don't go hungry, the ones who won't wear shitty shoes and pretend to be stupid on a date.

By the time you're three or four years old, you know what sorts of actions and poses will get you good attention. You know what the ideal is gonna be. And even though it's total bullshit, all you hear, over and over again in the news media is how being smart and strong and wearing pants and knowing how to spit means that no one will ever love you. Guys might sleep with you, but they can't show you off to their friends, cause you don't look like the sort of girl they know they're "suppposed" to bring home. Women might exchange a few words and say how neat your life is, but unless you surround yourself with women just like you, you're going to find all their talk about makeup, boob jobs, and manicures deeply, deeply boring.

When you're told as a little girl that in order to be loved, you need to be pretty (and docile, and quiet) and then you're shown pictures of girls and women who don't look like you, you're going to try and look like those girls. Human beings are social creatures. They like to be around other people. Touch, friendship, love, all that good stuff: that's what makes you human. The ones who lose that stuff, or are born with some sort of screw missing in the sociability department are usually the monsters, the freakshow killers who view people as things.

The struggle for those women who want to be themselves - and whose selves are the smart, strong, successful types - is a heartwrenching, soul crunching battle between wanting to be a person worthy of being loved and wanting to be yourself. Because you'll get banged over the head every damn day that being yourself isn't enough. You're not lovable first thing in the morning. Wearing jeans and being smart and speaking loudly isn't lovable. If you do those things, you're a feminist man-hater, and no one will love you.

And you know, it's funny: I read this article right after I came home from my Denver trip, where I was ruminating on all this corporate stuff pushed my way, musing about how long I could reasonably wait before asking that I pull a salary in equal measure to the work I'm about to do, and I was sitting between these two petite, straight-haired women with lean shoulders and make-uped-into-flawlessness skin, and I thought:

This is it. I'll never get laid again.

I'm tall, broad-shouldered, wide-hipped, brunette (curly hair), weigh as much as the average guy, have breasts that no one will ever write home about, have three degrees, done some world traveling, written novels, write violently feminist stories, maintain a feminist blog, and now I have an important-sounding job that's going to take me around the country in suit jackets with briefcase and laptop and cell phone and corporate card. All they have to do is start paying me 60K+, and I'll be priced out of the running.

Why?

Because women exist so that men can feel better about themselves? Cause men are so insecure that they can't stand the idea of hitting on or being rejected by a woman with three degrees? Cause the idea of being romantically involved with somebody who's your equal is really scary?

That's what the media likes to say, doesn't it? Those are the articles feminist blogs and Bitch magazine are always pissing on.

But those aren't the relationships I surround myself with, and those aren't the sorts of people I have in my life. The buddies I have are in pretty egalitarian relationships, actually, whether hetero or same-sex. The friends I have like me just this way, and I like them just like they are, which would be why we're friends.

And yet, I can't really talk, can I, because I haven't dated in a couple years (and, to be fair to myself, haven't tried: my brush off of Yellow being a good example). So I'm pretty much it: I'm that scary, alone, butch-like femi-nazi that your friends and mothers always warned you you'd end up like if you didn't marry the first guy you had sex with.

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, I thought that in order to be the "right" kind of girl, I had to dress more fem, speak softly, and defer to my boyfriend in all of his infinite wisdom, forgetting that he, too, was Just A Kid. I'd spent so long feeling ugly and out of place that when I hit high school theatre (I dropped weight, lost my braces and glasses, between eighth and ninth grade) and suddenly all these guys asked me out, it was like somebody dumped a big pile of something in front of me, but I didn't know if it was good or bad, I just knew that I was finally doing something right in the girl department. I picked the best suitor of the bunch, broke up with him once, had him call me crying on the phone, so stayed with him cause I thought people would think I was weird if I didn't have a boyfriend.

The longer I dated him, the more worried I got about how people would look at me if we ever broke up. No guy had expressed interest since I started dating, so I had nobody to hop to to maintain my girl status if we parted.

He cheated on me.

We broke up for three days, and got back together again: because he cried a lot, and I didn't have a boyfriend.

And then he started telling me how I was supposed to be, how I should look, so that he wouldn't cheat on me again.

Seriously.

I was convinced he cheated on me not just because he was a horny kid and had the opportunity, but because I was some sort of failed woman that no one would ever love.

So, you know, I tried. I tried to wear skirts and dresses and speak softly and defer to him and pretend he was oh-so-much-more worldly than I.

To sum up: I lost myself.

Weight was my one rebellion, the one indication that there was something deeply, deeply wrong, and I put on something like 60 or 70 pounds in a year and half.

We moved in together, things got increasingly bad, blah blah, you've all read this stuff from just about every other woman in the world who's got a domestic abuse story. Death threats, restraining orders, blah blah.

To sum up: it sucked ass.

So, etc., I left, etc. my parents went on suicide watch, and I was convinced that it was all over, this was it: I'd totally failed at being a woman. I couldn't even stay with a guy who everybody said was so incredibly in love with me that I was a selfish bitch to want to leave him. I was cold, frigid, blah blah (again, insert cliche story here). And all I could think was, "Oh, no, if I break up with him, no one else will ever love me. I'll be alone for a long, long, time."

That was pretty much the worst thing that could happen to me, I thought. I'd leave him, and no one would ever love me again.

And you know what: I stared that one in the face, and I made the decision.

Because there's scarier, more terrible shit that can happen to you than not being fem enough to be "loved" by some loser.

When you break, you pretty much have to make a decision: kill yourself and get it over with, or be better.

I chose to be better.

And, "being better" for me, meant being myself. That's me. The person I always thought was me, the one who wanted to torch all of her skirts and jump off bridges and go motorcycle riding and move to Alaska.

Yea. That one.

The feminist one.

And you know what: she's a fuck of a lot better than the person I thought I was supposed to be.

So. Listen up.

Feminist vs. femininity:

No, they aren't either/or. But something else is:

Being who you want to be, and being who you think everyone else thinks you should be.

We (and I include myself in here, every day's a goddamn battle) spend so much time wrapped up in these bullshit articles, these bullshit "studies," these bullshit thoughts about what fucking incompetent, insercure, and infantile people men are, that we're not stopping and stepping back and looking at the real people we've surrounded ourselves with.

If you're with the people from the bullshit articles, find other people. If you're an insecure guy, figure it the fuck out: you don't have to make more money than me, have more degrees than me, be stronger than me. You need a good fucking heart and a passion for being alive - the rest is fucking details.

And women: if he doesn't figure that shit out, IT IS NOT WORTH COMPROMISING YOURSELF SO YOU'LL LOOK LIKE AN MTV GIRL. Dump him. Get your shit together. Figure out what you can do on your own. Surround yourself with good friends. Question your sexuality: if you're lucky, you'll find that maybe you're not into guys as much as you thought you were (I still sometimes wish I'd wake up one morning and "turn into a lesbian." Can anyone recommend a starter kit?). And even though those relationships won't be any easier than any other relationship, at least you'll have a lot more to talk about.

As for me, yea, sure, these articles piss me off. They make me question myself. But you know what, after that intital, "Oh, fuck it, I'm throwing in the towel" feeling, I rememeber where I've been, who I could be, and remember why the hell I'm here and how I got to this point, and you know what?

Every damn thing is worth it. The jeans. The no-makeup. The boxing classes.

Cause you know what? I secretly like the way I look. I've always liked my breast size, I have the birthing hips that populated the West, if I have to go butch and scary and intimidating, I can do it. I like my red shoes. I like my square-heeled boots. I like being smart. I like reading books. I like being able to figure shit out. I like the fact that Blaine asks me, "Is this smart person lingo?" I like this person I made, and I gotta tell you, I'm getting really fucking sick and tired of a bunch of wackos blaring at me that I have to hate myself because I turn down dates and don't obsess about a boob job.

Fuckers.

Exhaustion

I've been feeling for the last week or so that I'm fighting an uphill battle, and rapidly losing ground.

I've had a number of freakouts lately (food binge twinges, exercise shrug-offs, early-to-bed "low" days, and two very, very uncommon twinges of claustraphobia - weirder still because they came within a couple weeks of each other), which should be irregular. I've been having crappy dreams, and have been pushing myself into bed earlier and earlier, only to wake up the next morning, look in the mirror, and realize that the face staring back at me was still incredibly exhausted.

This month, I turned 25, got a raise and promotion, spent two weeks in and out of Denver, briefed myself on an entirely new telecommunications project in order to learn the basics of an entirely new technology, fell mad-crazy for another impossible person in order to muse away my hours, struggled to alter my diet and exercise regimen (again) and implemented a second off-day weight routine, decided to study for the LSATs with the possibility of applying for Law School on the horizon, and got my first 1000-hit day on this blog.

I told work I was taking some PTO and my floating holiday, and I'd see them Monday. Slunk home again tonight without going to class. Bumped into Jenn as she was on her way out, let her know I was taking a vacation and planned to sleep for four days.

"You know," she said. "I think that's a really good idea. You've looked... really tired lately."

"Thanks for saying that. It's like, no matter how much I sleep, I wake up and I still think I look tired."

"It's weird, it's like these last few days, it just feels like something's gone out of you."

I'm tapped out.

I've been running really hard this month, took too many plane rides, freaked out too much about exercise, pushed myself to think about a thousand things all at once, got pissed off because I wasn't spending enough time on my novels, spent an incredibly ridiculous amount of time angsting about people in general, and have only managed to get to sleep every night by taking a Tylenol PM.

I'm incredibly, incredibly tired.

Don't expect blogging miracles this weekend.

Names and Faces

Because I love putting faces to names in the blog world.



Me and my mom, Christmas `04.



My sister and her son, Christmas `04



Me and my maternal grandmother, when I was about 14. I like this one, as the family resemblence is uncanny ;)

Don't You Just Hate That?

Man, I hate writing up posts I don't have the guts to make public. Oh well. Another one for the draft stack. These things are piling up...

Back to Women and Desire

The other day, Jenn told me that a friend of hers said I might be interested in this story:

Apparently, this woman, a grad student, was prescribed Zoloft and not told at the time that it was known to cause decreased sexual desire in women.

In fact, when men are prescribed Zoloft and Prozac now, they're automatically given a prescription for Viagra as well.

But women, apparently, have to ask.

I told Jenn that if I'd ever been on one of these drugs, it would have taken me less than a month to figure this out, and I'd be pounding down my doctor's door.

But I digress.

So I was interested when I found this little Op-Ed piece confirming the fact that Zoloft and Prozac diminish sexual desire. In this case, the woman in question, once again, had to be proactive and bring up the subject with her doctor, who apparently hadn't thought to mention this little fact to her, either.

Cause women, you know, don't really ever think about sex.

The "happy ending" to this little piece is that apparently the doctor found a great drug for her to take in combination with her Zoloft to increase desire.

Great. Good on you.

But it might have been nice, you know, before hand, if women were told all of the side-effects, no?

Wonkette's Liveblogging of the Presidential News Conference

Ah. Wonkette:

10:02 Bush starts reading before he gets behind podium. Clearly would rather be elsewhere. Rather be being interviewed by Dan Rather.

10:03 Iraqi freedom will require "commitment of generations," i.e., "We will be drafting your grandchildren."

10:04 "There has been enormous sacrifice by some of our citizens." No one i know, of course, but my staff has informed me that is the case.

10:05 Oooo, nice tie on David Gregory.

10:05 Terrorists: no positive agenda. Kind of like democrats

10:07 "The fact that they're voting in itself is successful." That "whoosh" you hear? The sound of the bar lowering. Next: "The fact that ballots are printed."

10:09 Terry Moran knows his Saudi penal code. Question on crushing of dissent by American ally! Does the president see a contradiction? Clearly, Terry Moran is an enemy of freedom.

10:10 Yet, president thrown. Allowing a followup.

10:12 Really liking Gregory's shirt. Pink? Peach? And checked! Very secure in his masculinity.

10:15 How many people have to die before "the world is safer without Saddam...." starts to sound hollow?

11:16 "When americans see Iraqis standing up and fighting," they're be relieved alright. Relieved because then we can leave.

10:17 Ah. The Japan comparison. Not sure that's super relevant or comforting. First, we were there seven years. Second: we dropped TWO NUCLEAR WEAPONS on them. Of course they were willing to cooperate. They were glowing.

10:18 Huh. Not mentioning private accounts in re: Soc. Sec. But whatever. It's all "dictated by math." Does that mean we have to invade math?

10:20 "Third rail of politics means you touch it and you die." Ah. see I thought it was a euphamsism for large penis.

Check out the rest.

I Can't Believe They Say These Things: Oh. Wait.

From Pandagon:

----------------

Black People Gonna Die Watch: Day 1

The BPGD Watch is a new feature of Pandagon, featuring the best of Bush administration nonchalantness about the shorter life expectancies of black Americans, particularly black men. In addition to Bush's skillful huggery and head-rubbery of darker-skinned Americans, he's shown a remarkable propensity to accept the shorter lifespans of African-Americans in much the same way you'd accept that all the copies of Elf are rented out at Blockbuster.

Black people die sooner. Hey - shit happens! Today's installment:

Mr. Bush also encouraged the leaders to support his plan to add personal investment accounts to Social Security, which White House officials say could benefit blacks because they have a shorter average life span than whites and end up putting more money into the retirement system than they take out.

African-American men "have had a shorter life span than other sectors of America," Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, told reporters. "And this will enable them to build a nest egg of their own and be able to pass that nest egg on to their survivors."

------------

Wow, what a great way to push through your SS plan with black voters! In fact, Bush, you better just continue to make sure black men die sooner! What a great plan! I'm sorry, does this remind you of Mbeki and his policy toward AIDS: if they're dead, we don't have to worry about providing them with jobs?

Why, yes! Yes, it does!