Dumfounded Dreamer

fuckyeahfeminists:

sebhar:

ok4rj:

So you made a rape joke and now people are, like, really, really mad at you.  I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt; maybe you were at a party and the booze made your common sense slip away from you or maybe you were making what you viewed as a flippantly humorous remark on Facebook.  Either way, you probably didn’t mean any harm, right?  So what’s the big deal?

Okay, let me break it down for you in the gentlest way I know how.  (Lorde, give me strength!)

“I obviously think rape is wrong!   It was only a joke!  Cut me some slack, I’m one of the good guys.”

Most people don’t go around literally thinking, “Rape’s okay by me!”  I think I can muster enough faith in humanity to stand by that claim.  The problem is, even though most people don’t think rape is okay, so many people are still raped.  There’s obviously got to be some kind of disconnect happening here, most likely having to do with what people think consent looks like (if they’ve considered it at all).  When it comes down to it, I have no idea if rapists intend to rape, but in the end, the result is the same regardless of intention.
To clarify, I am in no way saying making a rape joke is the equivalent to raping someone.  I’m saying, as I’ve said before, I have no way of measuring your intentions; I can only observe the impacts of your actions.  Whether you meant to hurt someone or not, you did.  And you need to take a moment to grapple with that before you try to defend yourself.  If you’re really the good person that you claim to be, you will take that into consideration before you proceed.  If you want to be one of the good guys, show me, don’t tell me.

“Stop trying to censor me!”

This person is likely not trying to violate your First Amendment rights in any way, shape, or form.  More often than not, they are probably trying to inform you that you are doing something harmful so that you won’t do it again.  This is actually good because A) you won’t hurt any more people and B) you won’t look like a jerk in the future.  If they do get angry or frustrated with you, it’s probably because they’ve had to have this conversation with so many people over and over again; it can be quite exhausting and take an emotional toll on someone, especially if they’re survivors.

But if you really want further explanation, here it is: the First Amendment gives you the right to say pretty much whatever you want (with limitations that don’t necessarily apply to this particular situation).  The First Amendment also gives your peers the right to tell you to shut up, to shout over you, and to blow a kazoo in your face, if they like.   Now, if they try to arrest you and make a political prisoner out of you, that’s a clear violation of your rights and probably about a dozen other Federal laws, but I imagine it is likely that whoever you are arguing with does not have that kind of power.

“Language only has the power we give it!”

Yes, language is constructed.  We get that.  But meaning-making (and unmaking) is much more complicated than simply disregarding the power that decades and sometimes centuries of use have given to certain words.  Also, you also might come off as slightly pretentious for assuming that your (likely contrived and unoriginal, sorry) rape joke is somehow contributing to dissolving the power behind the word.  I’m not saying that to be mean! I’m just saying that you’re gonna look foolish, not just to the feminist that you’re likely arguing with, but also to semioticians.

“You’re just a humorless feminist!”

C’mon, dude, I was trying to be nice!  Here’s the deal: I love a good joke.  Follow me on Twitter; I’m pretty hilarious, if I do say so myself.  I use humor to cope with all kinds of things in the world that I think are fucked up; I would probably lose my mind if I didn’t crack jokes constantly.   Humor can not only be self-healing, but it can also be used to commiserate, uplift, and show solidarity.  It can be used to show pain, and it can even be used as a weapon against those who seek to oppress people.

But humor loses all potential for redemption when it is used in a way that makes marginalized, victimized people feel unsafe, unwanted, and invisible.  That is how I feel when you make a rape joke.  You made the worst, most heart-breaking, most disempowering trauma I have ever been through, and you made it into a joke.  You made my suffering into a punch line.  I hope that was not your intention, but those are the impacts of your words that you could have just as easily kept to yourself.

So what would I like you to do now?  I’d really appreciate an apology.  I’d really like for you to do your best not to do it again.  And if you’re a really brave person, I hope you speak up the next time one of your friends makes a rape joke.

This post was partially inspired by Judie’s awesome piece It’s Okay That You Said Something Racist and by a lot of the ongoing conversations many of us at OK4RJ have about rape culture.  If someone has had similar interactions with me online or in “real” life, don’t feel targeted.  I (sadly) have this conversation all the time.

I’m Sandra.  I’m a rape survivor.  I would really like you to stop making rape jokes.

I’m Hannah. I’m a rape survivor. I would really like you to stop making rape jokes. 

^ I’m with those people.

Rape jokes are NEVER okay.  My favorite quote from the Daily Beast Article:

“There’s a distinction between making a joke to cope or to point out the absurdity of a situation and what Tosh did, consciously or not, which was to use humor to humiliate a woman who stood up for something she believed in.” 

newsweek:

Hey, Ladies! Check out the Crucial Benefits of Obamacare.

Yesterday’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act was a “supreme win for women,” as our story by Jessica Arons, the director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress, helpfully explains.

Here’s the deal:

• As of 2014, “gender rating”—where insurers can charge women higher premiums than men—becomes illegal in all new individual and small group plans.

• Currently only 12 percent of plans sold in the individual market offer maternity coverage. Once the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented, about 8.7 million women will have guaranteed access to maternity and newborn care in all new individual and small group plans.

• It’s common in today’s market for insurers to refuse to cover women because of gender-based “preexisting conditions.” These conditions can include issues such as having had breast cancer or a Caesarean section or having been a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault. This practice, too, will be outlawed under Obamacare in 2014.

• Under Obamacare, insurers are now required to cover critical preventive services such as mammograms, Pap smears, and well-baby care without cost sharing.

• In addition, starting this August, more services specifically for women will be added to the list of preventive care that must be covered at no additional cost. That list includes contraception, gestational diabetes screening, breastfeeding counseling and equipment, annual well-woman care (in other words, a visit to the OB-GYN), and screening and counseling for domestic violence and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV and the human papillomavirus.

• Other benefits for women include the ability to see their OB-GYN without a referral, guaranteed breaks and a private space for nursing moms to pump breast milk while at work, and home visiting programs for at-risk new mothers.

Pretty wild, right?  There’s more.

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This is so awesome. Thank you, SCOTUS. 

Support my friend by reblogging and following Team Interrobang. Happy Saturday!

teaminterrobang:

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1. Must reblog this post by the contest end date: 2/10/2012. Likes do not count. You do not have to follow this blog (but that’s always…

This is atrocious. Santorum opposing welfare for black people, equating gay marriage with loving your mother in law, and more! Read up!

_______________________________________________

1. Opposing birth control
Quote: ”One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country…. Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” (Speaking withCaffeinatedThoughts.com, Oct. 18, 2011)

Reaction: This is “pretty basic: Rick Santorum is coming for your contraception,” says Irin Carmon at Salon. “Any and all of it.” Threatening to “send the condom police into America’s bedrooms” is pretty bad politics: More than 99 percent of sexually active women have used some form of birth control, and “helping people get access to birth control is actually a popular issue,” supported by 82 percent of Americans. But a national contraception ban is “clearly the world Santorum wants.”

2. Keeping moms at home
Quote: ”In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don’t both need to. … What happened in America so that mothers and fathers who leave their children in the care of someone else — or worse yet, home alone after school between three and six in the afternoon — find themselves more affirmed by society? Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism.” (Santorum’s 2005 book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good)

Reaction: Santorum is actually right, says Bonnie Alba at Renew America. Degrading “the stay-at-home wife and mother while idolizing women who chose careers” is “certainly part and parcel of the feminist ideology which has twisted our society into a pretzel of me-ism.”

3. Re-spinning the Crusades
Quote: ”The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American Left who hates Christendom. … What I’m talking about is onward American soldiers. What we’re talking about are core American values.” (South Carolina campaign stop, Feb. 22, 2011)

Reaction: ”If you were worried there wouldn’t be a 2012 candidate touting the pro-Crusades platform, then today is your lucky day!” says Jillian Rayfield at Talking Points Memo. The religiously sanctioned European military campaigns were aimed at recapturing Jerusalem, and “along the way the Roman Catholic forces massacred thousands of Jews, among others.” I know the Crusades predated the U.S. by a few centuries, but how exactly does this military campaign reflect “core American values”?

4. Rejecting the very idea of “Palestinians”
Quote: ”All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they’re not Palestinians. There is no ‘Palestinian.’ This is Israeli land.” (Campaign stop in Iowa, Nov. 18, 2011)

Reaction: ”The striking thing about his comments is that they represent an even more conservative position than that taken by the Israeli government,” says Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post. Israel’s anti-Palestinian position itself isn’t “accepted by much of the world, but it seems that the very least a potential U.S. president could do is accept the definitions used by the Israeli government.”

5. Reminding America that some view Mormonism as “a dangerous cult”
Quote: ”Would the potential attraction to Mormonism by simply having a Mormon in the White House threaten traditional Christianity by leading more Americans to a church that some Christians believe misleadingly calls itself Christian, is an active missionary church, and a dangerous cult?” (Santorum’s Philadelphia Inquirer column, Dec. 20, 2007)

Reaction: Santorum was responding to Mitt Romney’s famous speech reassuring evangelical Christians that he shares their values, and to be fair, “Santorum’s ultimate verdict on Romney was more or less positive,” says Dan Froomkin at The Huffington Post. But he draws plenty of “distinctions between Mormonism and Christianity that others have avoided lest they seem overly inflammatory.”

6. Dissing welfare programs that “make black people’s lives better”
Quote: ”I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” (Campaign stop in Iowa, Jan. 2, 2012)

Reaction: ”This is the sort of subtle racism” that should, but won’t, harm Santorum among Republicans, says Steve Benen at Washington Monthly. Why did he single out black people when talking about cutting government aid?

7. Bringing race into Obama’s abortion views
Quote: ”The question is — and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well if that person — human life is not a person, then — I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, ‘We’re going to decide who are people and who are not people.’” (CNS News interview, Jan. 19, 2011)

Reaction: Equating fetuses to slaves got Santorum some pretty bad press,says David Weigel at Slate. But critics don’t “appreciate how mainstream Santorum’s point is among pro-life activists” who commonly “consider their work a continuation of other movements that protected human life and elevated the status of people whom the law doesn’t consider ‘human.’ In the 19th century, it was African-Americans; in the 21st century, it’s children in the womb.”

8. Equating gay marriage to loving your mother-in-law
Quote: ”Is anyone saying same-sex couples can’t love each other? I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too?” (Santorum’s Philadelphia Inquirer column, May 22, 2008)

Reaction: Did noted “homophobe” Santorum just admit to a “weird sexual relationship with his mother-in-law” and brother? says Michael J.W. Stickings at The Reaction. He may be atop the Republican heap, “but make no mistake about it, Santorum’s still a bigot and a moron.”

9. Comparing homosexuality to “man-on-dog” sex
Quote: ”If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. … That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.” (AP interview, April 7, 2003)

Reaction: ”Rick Santorum has expended a great deal of thought and energy to finding new words to disparage gay marriage,” says Daryl Lang at Breaking Copy. And even if you agree with Santorum, “would you really want a president who is this obsessed” with gay sex?

mohandasgandhi:

The median average net worth of a member of the House Tea Party Caucus was $1.8 million in 2010. (Financial disclosure forms require lawmakers to value their assets and liabilities only in ranges, so it’s impossible to know exactly how wealthy a particular elected official is. However, it’s possible to calculate an average net worth for each member of Congress.)

That’s significantly higher than the comparable number for the median House member: $755,000. It’s also more than 130 percent above the $774,280 average net worth of the median, non-Tea Party Caucus House Republican.  

Furthermore, the caucus, a group of 60 House members founded by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), includes 33 millionaires and six members worth more than $20 million, according to the Center’s research. That means a member of the group is more likely to be a millionaire than the average Republican who isn’t in the caucus.

(Continue reading…)

Let’s break down the averages:

• Recall: U.S. median income: $26,364
• Median net worth for members of Congress: $775,000
• Democratic non-Progressive House members: $618,500
• Progressive House members: $639,500
• Non-Tea Party House Republicans: $774,280
• Tea Party House Republicans: $1,800,000

These are the guys who claim they are sticking up for the little guys ad nauseum.

I have 3 words for you: Tax. The. Rich.