Current Events

Todd Akins triggers some good writing, at least

You’ve heard about Todd Akins, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri, right? The guy who actually said:

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Obviously there’s been a big reaction to that douchebaggery all over the internet, and dude has since tried to walk back his comments, so I don’t need to go into that noise.

Here’s some cool writing that has come out of this “discussion” about rape, though.

Eve Ensler: Dear Mr. Akin, I Want You to Imagine…

Jessica Valenti: The Seven Stages of Feminist Grief (Todd Akin edition)

Mallory Ortberg at The Awl: Other Things Missouri Representative Todd Akin Believes To Be True About The Uterus, Besides Its Ability To “Shut Down” A Legitimate Rape

Anne Gerhart, Washington Post: Rep. Akin’s comments just the latest attempt to define rape — and women

Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon.com: A guide to “legitimate” rape — This is a nice spelling out of what rape laws around the country are for the uninformed.

Continue ReadingTodd Akins triggers some good writing, at least

DoubleXplainer: What is a vagina?

Double X Science: DoubleXplainer: What is a vagina?.

What is a vagina?

First, let’s just practice saying the word. Vagina. Vuh-ji-nuh. VAGINA!

OK. Why are we practicing this? So that we can avoid suffering from the fluttery sensibilities of one Rep. Mike Callton of Michigan who, upon hearing colleague Rep. Lisa Brown use the word vagina during a speech on the Michigan House floor, commented:

What she said was offensive. It was so offensive, I don’t even want to say it in front of women. I would not say that in mixed company.

So here we have a fellow who is so squeamish about female anatomy that he won’t even use the appropriate terminology for that anatomy in front of the people who have the body part. So beflustered are his tender feelings about the word vagina that he and the Republican leadership of the Michigan house of representatives refused to allow Rep. Brown speak again when discussing a bill about retirement of school employees. I assume they were concerned that somehow, she’d drag in the dreaded V-word again while talking about pensions.

All for the transgression of saying the word “vagina.” Vagina.

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Park 16 Apartment Fire

This evening, fire broke out in the “Park 16” apartments being build at 16th and Broadway Avenue in Indianapolis, a few blocks from our house. We ran up the street to take photos, and were able to get remarkably close.

The Park 16 Apartment complex (formerly called Caravelle Commons) was controversial, which I wrote about when they were planning it – the subsidized housing that had been at that location was poorly managed for many years. When the state and federal government allocated money to tear down the old housing and build shiny new apartments, there were lots of neighbors (including me) who were concerned about the density and size of the replacement buildings, which were much larger than the surrounding area. There were also, unfortunately, several Tea Baggers amongst our neighbors who were very vocal in opposing the project because the residents were black and of lower income. It would not surprise me in the slightest if they found this to be arson.

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Indiana Governor’s Race: Dumb vs. Dumber

I was incredulous yesterday when the John Gregg, the Democratic candidate for Indiana Governor actually went on record as being against same-sex marriage, because – how dumb can you be? That position is clearly on the wrong side of history, is clearly not a Democratic position, and will lose you your base in Indiana. It won’t gain you any Republicans. If you’re trying to hedge your bets, just don’t say anything rather than saying something so stupid.

I immediately went to Gregg’s site and told him off for not being a good Democrat or a good progressive, and told him that while he still had my vote, he wouldn’t get any financial support from me, nor would I support him online or in my social networks.

Today, Gregg decided to double-down on the stupid. I got this email in my inbox:

Dear Steph,

Fact: Congressman Mike Pence has lived in Arlington, Virginia for over a decade.

If you ask me, that’s over a decade too long, if he wants to be Governor of Indiana. That’s over a decade that he hasn’t been living in Indiana, and over a decade that he hasn’t been talking with real Hoosiers.

Watch our latest video, “Out of State, Out of Touch,” and see how Congressman Pence has been gone for too long!
Watch the video!

Want Washington-style fighting and divisiveness in Indiana? That’s what we’ll get with Congressman Pence, because it’s all he knows. John, on the other hand, is still connected to his Southwest Indiana roots, raising his sons in Sandborn. John believes in working across the aisle to get things done, and focusing on what’s important: jobs and education.

Watch our latest video, “Out of State, Out of Touch,” and see how Congressman Pence has been gone for too long!

The Washington way vs. the Hoosier way? I think it’s a clear choice — and I’ll bet you do too.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Pearcey
Campaign Manager
Gregg for Governor

Richard Mourdock just won the Republican primary, apparently on the platform of “Lugar has been in Washington too long” and Gregg is somehow thinking that same platform will work for him against Mike Pence.

But the reality is that Lugar didn’t lose on the “been in Washington too long” issue. He lost because he’s too centrist, and the Republican party has been moving steadily to the right. The “Out of State out of touch” thing with Lugar was just and excuse for people to ditch a guy who’s worked his ass off for the state of Indiana for a couple decades, which is frankly pretty damned crazy. Lugar was a serious force in Washington, and Indiana lost a lot of clout by voting him out.

But as a whole Indiana is NOT as far right as the Republican Party is. Indiana did vote for Obama, after all and I don’t think that was a fluke. Playing on the same themes that the Republican’s are playing to try to appeal to the center is not going to help Gregg in the slightest, and he’s a fool to think so.

I’d almost not vote for John Gregg at all, except that he’s running against Mike Pence. And Mike Pence is the biggest pinhead in Indiana. You have to get up really early in the day to be stupider than Mike Pence. So who do you vote for in a race between Dumb (Gregg) and Dumber (Pence)?

I guess I’d vote Dumb. But this is one of those times when it really sucks to be a Hoosier.

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Thoughts on Azzarello’s Wonder Woman

From Vanessa Gabriel: Thoughts on Azzarello’s Wonder Woman |.

In the last three issues of Azzarello’s Wonder Woman, I find myself less than inspired. What started off strong is now bringing diminished returns in the form of Diana’s intellect, or lack thereof. Diana is repeatedly being tricked or lied to in some monumental way, and she’s falling for it.
…
I know there are various methods in fiction writing that make the protagonist interesting. One of them is creating conflict and struggle in order to build the character back up, and to give the audience something to root for. But Azzarello’s “deconstruction” of Diana’s personality is irritating the living shit out of me. Diana of Themyscira as a dumbass has got my goat far worse than the vilification of the Amazons. Apparently being one of Zeus’ bastards throws Athena’s wisdom out the door. Perhaps it’s a punishment from Hera.

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On Wonder Woman #8, Fanboy Flakkers & The Sanctity Of Myth

On Wonder Woman #8, Fanboy Flakkers & The Sanctity Of Myth (Part 1 of 2) by “Too Busy Thinking About My Comics”.

It seems that Azzarello has been granted free reign by the flakkers to reinterpret anything at all except for those aspects which serve to perpetuate misogyny. The supposed vileness of Queen Hippolyta and her brutally emasculating sex-killers ought to be forever respected, it seems, but everything else is apparently up for grabs. And so, there’s been not a murmur of discontent – let alone any spittle-flecked raging – about the innovative if hyper-real rendition of the Greek underworld and its ruler in this month’s Chasing Shadows. It’s something which really does leave the suspicion that all that rage and indignation about the sanctity of those old myths, about the necessary rightness of portraying the Amazons as despicable man-murderers, was nothing more than a desperate attempt to shout down anyone who might have pointed out how unpleasantly sexist, and indeed profoundly stupid, Wonder Woman #7 was.

Or: it was never about the sexist myths of times gone by and everything about the sexist myths of 2012.

A very interesting read. Part 2 of this analysis is here.

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Female Superheroes – No, It’s Not Equal

Kelly Thompson takes a really close look at female superheroes and body type portrayals, and the vast difference between male and female superheroes in an article called No, It’s Not Equal on Comic Book Resources.

When I look at the way characters are rendered in superhero comics for more academic purposes, I look at four primary categories: Body Type, Clothing, Beauty, and Posing….

Both men and women are given crazy nearly unattainable idealized bodies in comics, we can all agree on this. But that is where the equality ends. Men are generally portrayed with idealized ATHLETE body types. While women are generally portrayed with idealized PORN STAR and SUPERMODEL body types. Which would make sense if the women were not actually superheroes. But they are, and so making them porn stars and supermodels doesn’t make a lot of sense. If women, like men, were rendered like gymnasts, swimmers, runners, boxers, tennis pros, and body builders, you’d see far fewer objections, because that would make things quite balanced. An idealized athletic form that few of us can achieve but many of us would admire or like to have, is imminently reasonable for a superhero form, but that’s not what we get, instead we get idealized (and wholly unrealistic) supermodel and live voyeur porn star types.

It’s funny that in comics, the term “brokeback” means something quite different than the gay cowboy movie. It’s a description of the pose that many female superheroes are drawn in, where they twist in a way that is physically impossible in real life to show both their breasts and ass in the image.

Continue ReadingFemale Superheroes – No, It’s Not Equal