Health is not just a weight issue, or even primarily so. Health is a race issue, a class issue, and a deliberate choice about the way we decided to build cities. Let’s talk about these things…let’s talk about the way the greens and the fruits at the bodega are still expensive but hardly fresh, let’s talk about how superfund sites just happen to concentrate in poor areas, let’s talk about the highways that paved over livable neighborhoods, and how these places still don’t have green space, made dangerous by a lethal cocktail of poverty and neglect.
And then…
Only then…
Will such “researchers” learn that what they do is worthless self-promotion.
Zuzu opens her stay at Shakesville up with a nice takedown of the continuing calls that Hillary must step aside. Like her, i tend to think that Hillary has the right to stay in, and hell…the earned media isn’t exactly hurting. It would be well and good for both the Democrats to adopt a more positive tone, so that the winner isn’t quite so bloodied up, but they’re not exactly lightweights. As long as McSurgy can’t get a media cycle to save his life, we’re good.
She closes that post with a swipe against McGovern and Eagleton, the former being one of the voices trying to get Hillary out.
She writes this of Eagleton, who was revealed to have had shock therapy for depression. That news helped sink the McGovern ticket.
So not only did Eagleton smear McGovern anonymously during the primary, he then accepted his offer of a VP slot knowing full well he had an explosive and disqualifying secret. Nice, huh?
My emphasis added.
Zuzu?
Fuck you.
It was an explosive secret. But not a disqualifying one.
There is a difference between being unfit for public office and unelectable.
Sometimes, there’s a man….I won’t say hero, because what’s a hero anyways….but sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.
I keep thinking that maybe it’s time to get back to writing, and then i let another week go by. I abide.
The problem i keep having is that I have no idea where to start anymore. It’s all a jumble in my head, of semi-wordless ranting directed at some of the usual suspects. Which, to be honest, makes me feel tired.
So here’s the post that has shaken me from my slumber…
Giving credit for a job done is pretty much what makes academic careers. Whole theories are built around the work of a single scholar (see Frued, Marx, Foucoult, Spivak etc). There are literally thousands of theorists world-wide who would not have jobs if it weren’t for the fact that they became expert translators of a major theorist. Similarly, there are thousands of scholars who would not have jobs if it weren’t for the fact that the translators of major theorists hadn’t done their jobs. Scholars need and are dependent upon each other, even as they fight for their independence and name recognition. Careers literally wouldn’t exist if names and work aren’t cited. For example, if all queer theorists used Judith Butler’s ideas, but didn’t cite her work, she would have long since been shoved out of academia–at the best, she’d be teaching at a community college some where.
Really, what i do best…is I write summaries. I found this talent sometime in my senior year of college, and used it to wing my way through grad school with very few truly original thoughts. I write excellent book reviews, and i don’t mean the kind that just sum up everything that got said. I trace arguments, i offer cogent criticism, and analyze strengths. You know the kind…that show up as lit reviews in academic journals.
And it feels like that’s what I’ve been doing here. Parallel process, only with blogs. It’s more fun…i get to snark much more than I did, and people line up for snark. The highest hitting post I ever did was a merciless kneecapper on Hugo, who for the record deserved it and more. Tenured bloviators are about my favorite target.
Eh. I’m tired. I have so much to write, really…life has been really interesting, difficult and fun lately. The SO and I, working out the dynamics of the relationship, what I’ve learned about gender, depression, vocation, queerness…
I can’t write that stuff when all I’m stuck writing reviews. When i know…there are folks who are writing the truly original material on which I depend….
they quarreled over whether the kosher purity laws were still in effect. Every time, the popularizers — those who wanted to make Christianity more accessible — won. Every time the “purists” grumbled. They are still grumbling now.
That just ain’t true. The popularizers have lost. Major battles. Universalists of every stripe went down, literally, in flames during the reformation. Synchretists have been shoved out, and many of us read aloud a political document every week…the Nicene Creed which memorializes political clout on Christianity and the exclusion of certain doctrinal viewpoints as legitimate. There is such a thing as a heretic, and for the vast majority of Christian history, being such a person has only been a good idea if you have a lot of men in tin suits with sharp pointy sticks, ready to defend your right to be theologically queer.
Back to his argument for the moment. Maybe he means in America, in the last 200 years. He cites the contrast between Warren and some calvinists, like that was the fight. No major contender in American Protestantism is Calvinist. A few say they are. But a real, honest to goodness double predestination damned for the glory of God Calvinist? They kind of went carrier pigeon some time back, at least as far as the prime time goes. Yes, they exist. But that this is the fight Hugo presents is indictative of bad faith. He doesn’t point to a live contraversy…he points to a very, very dead one. America went Arminian before the Civil War. We’re rehashing this now, why? To show just how out of it BFP and company are?
Uh, bullshit.
Secondly, it’s just not even true. The popularizers got set back many times. After years of social gospel preaching, the evangelical world retreated inwards with Darbyism and pre-millenial dispensationalism. (This is the kind of thinking you know today as the Left Behind series). From changing the world to awaiting the end…the momentum of the evangelical protestant world turned on a dime.
And remember Jesus people?
Was Jerry Falwell a popularizer? Just because he used mass media, and was folksy about wanting to enforce a very specific kind of racial/gender politic?
Or how about the women who preached in the First Great Awakening, only to be silenced by the time of the revolution?
This is not to say these movements didn’t have lasting impact. But the story of American Christianities is one of push and pull. The clear line of progress Hugo wants to paint simply isn’t there.
they quarreled over whether the kosher purity laws were still in effect. Every time, the popularizers — those who wanted to make Christianity more accessible — won. Every time the “purists” grumbled. They are still grumbling now.
But you know what else is lurking around in here?
You guessed.
Antisemitism.
I owe it to everyone to be really careful about that charge, so listen carefully to what i do and don’t mean. Hugo isn’t making overtly hateful statements about Jews.
He is trading on a really old idea about Christianity and Judiasm that has contributed greatly to historical antisemitism.
And that’s a problem. He’s making BFP, BA, M, and the folks who are raising objections into rhetorical Jews here, just to point out how wrong they are. Against a bold progressive universal spirit Liberal Feminist/Christian, stands the particular, clannish, nit-picking, WoC/Jew.
Gawd.
This is one of those object lessons where you quickly realize the problem of living in the house…the rhetorical frames, the backgrounded ideas, the assumptions of your worldview…
I’ve been kicking myself to start writing again, and with a subject like this…how could I resist.
BA is right.
my thought is that sexual care fits into self care because it is an admission of yourself and the right to live as that self…
There’s a world beyond the sunset…where the playing out of what we need in private doesn’t always have to refer back to the troubled world outside. But the correct answer is not to stop fucking the mean time. “Ain’t this what you revolutionaries are supposed to be dying for?”
A good fuck has rarely cured the world, but since when did we ask that of everything we do? Recently, i think in commentary on Sudy’s awesome video, some folks talked about how the phrase complicity is usually a good sign that we’re doing some good old fashioned self-examination that has the big raging problem of assuming that collective individual action is what’s required. As you know, opposed to just plain collective, break the damn mold action.
Which is why so much of the continual sex wars bullshit is just that. Power intersects with the sex I have. But as R Mildred aptly points out…
The world and we are dying every day. And practices of self-denial feel like something we can do about it…a tangible, feels good in a feel bad sort of way.
We are a nation on converts and backsliders, dependent on rituals of lapse and redemption.
What BA points to, is the richness of sexual imagination and what it means to actually take it to heart. There is nothing wrong with being the
oral fixated hand on her chocha, big titted bitch in me.
And there’s nothing contradictory about that statement and still being a virgin.
I had a sexual identity long before I had sexual partners. Some parts of that identity have come to expression, others found compromises, some have evolved, some I have hopes for, others I treasure memories of.
The SO and I were at brunch in her hometown, catching up with a friend. Apparently, he asked while i was away from the table…”Does he miss the cock?”
She replied, and incorrectly.
It means nothing. I had and have no plans of leaving her, going outside the relationship, or even directing my imagination in ways that detract from the relationship.
But it means everything. I do miss it. That desire and urge, even if never acted upon, remains with me, helping me to understand who I am in the summation of things.
I am a person who desires, for desire is that which a person does. A pawn, a stand in, a cardboard cutout…a stereotype….could not do so.
They might have a fixation, or a fetish, the animating purpose of such a caricature, But it is in fact, they that are the fetish, the toy of a lazy imagination.
I am, one who desires, who names what I desire in all the contradiction and complexity that I can muster, knowing that it comes down to this.
Who I am is not what I name myself as. There is no end result, only the striving.
Who am I?
The one who names myself.
This is what i need and i wont accept anything else nor
WILL I LET ANYTHING or anyone try and sell me ANY OTHER VERSION OF IT
PEtit imagine what movement full of people thinking like that loosk
He wasn’t supposed to be there. I don’t recall exactly why. If I think about it hard enough, his stop should have been a mile back. The bus was nearing my house, and I was at least slightly concerned.
He wanted our attention so badly. He was a bully, a clown. He was also capable of being very mean. I think he was held back, or at least he was large for his age. I was small.
5th percentile small. Off the charts small. They actually drew my line in the margins when I went to the doctor.
I don’t recall exactly how it began, or why. All I know is that I recall being very scared as he moved around, hoping that I would be safe. He sat down next to me.
…
He sat down next to five of us, boys and girls alike, all in turn. In the third grade, I wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. We were bundled up like snowmen, but the intent was unmistakable. Possessive, hostile, hurtful.
We got off the bus, but he still wanted to play. He called after us. We ran to our parents.
We spent the next day in very serious tones, talking to the adults. I think we all cried.
In many ways, we were lucky. He was already a problem child, we were the good kids. Our parents held clout, and there was no doubt what would happen once we told. All together, we were believed.
We shouldn’t have been lucky. Luck, privilege, should have nothing to do with being believed as a survivor of sexual assault. The right thing to do is not a scarce good to be doled out to the “right” victims, and withheld from the bad. Nobody deserves to be hurt like that, everyone deserves compassionate response after trauma.
I say this mostly because of what I have learned with age. A 3rd grader does not accidentally sit down next to fellow children on a bus and violate them. This is learned behavior. I didn’t see him for years…and while he still struck terror into me every time I saw him, it was accompanied by a growing and sickly sense of compassion.
One that did not forget my pain. One that did not demand anything. But one that told me that whatever he had done to us, had been sown in his life tenfold. I pass his house sometimes, small and rundown. I pray that he has healed. I pray that the evil done in that place might somehow be undone.
Every surgical, dental or medical treatment involves discomfort, risks or costs on the one hand, and expected benefits on the other. For most persons a reasonable approach is to weigh the discomfort/risks/costs against the potential benefits in deciding whether to undergo or approve the treatment.
Two special education students at the controversial Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton were wrongfully delivered dozens of punishing electrical shocks in August based on a prank phone call from a former student posing as a supervisor, a state investigative report has found.
Employees shocked him for aggressive behavior, he says, but also for minor misdeeds, like yelling or cursing. Each shock lasts two seconds. “It hurts like hell,” Rob says. (The school’s staff claim it is no more painful than a bee sting; when I tried the shock, it felt like a horde of wasps attacking me all at once. Two seconds never felt so long.) On several occasions, Rob was tied facedown to a four-point restraint board and shocked over and over again by a person he couldn’t see. The constant threat of being zapped did persuade him to act less aggressively, but at a high cost. “I thought of killing myself a few times,” he says.
School staffers contacted state authorities after they realized they had been tricked on Aug. 26 into delivering 77 shocks to one student and 29 shocks to another, according to Cindy Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Department of Early Education and Care, which drafted the report. Both students were part of a Rotenberg-run group home in Stoughton for males under age 22.
I am sitting at Yale Divinity at the moment…about ready to leave. For the day, for the semester, for the year, for good.
It is high time that I do so. I no longer believe in this school, even enough to love it into change. I spent many words here in criticism, but I’m leaving them behind now. I have a generic hope that others will stay invested in this place, but it’s crystal clear to me that it is not my role to do so. There is little virtue in defending this choice, but I will say just this…
I tried.
The anger you have seen on these pages reflected my willingness to invest myself into the conflict, an urge to be opaque, disruptive, and transformative in the community. But when a community is so riven by parochial concerns, pecking orders, micro-competitive urges and most of all, a leadership dedicated to stasis…
They aren’t all bad. And I’m not entirely innocent. But somewhere along the line, I lost the urge to make this place better. So it’s time for me to leave. Unless I can be invested, there’s no point in presence.
I do not leave angry. Anger would imply a frustrated ambition. I do not leave broken. Brokenness would imply that this place has definitional power.
I leave with wonderful friends, invaluable connections, and a shiny piece of paper.
Sly Civilian, you have a knack for entering a discussion in such a way that—regardless of the validity of your point—you instantly piss everyone off and make them not want to engage with you. I’m not saying you aren’t entitled to your indignation. I’m just saying that it’s not getting you very far.
This is a statement which is of the type often called concern trolling. It presents itself as interested in the reception of your argument, but asks you to gut major portions of it so that it might be better appreciated by those who oppose you.
It’s a funny thing, really.
I don’t know what to make of it. Honestly, i know i’m a bit of an ass. But this stuff goes on day in and day out, and I’m pretty much out of fresh ideas. Bomb throwing seems like a pretty reasonable choice at the moment. And i’ll be joining a legion of kickass folks who have been told that they should stop being so strident, angry, confrontational, and so on.
Most of the time, even on queer stuff, i manage not to get this reaction. What is it about my relationship with disabilities activism that manages to make this sort of thing happen? Does my tone change that much? Is it my audience?
I’m not out to ban the word “crazy.” But this, like other things i’ve pissed and moaned about, conjures up particular images of mental illness to do it’s work. Kucinich doesn’t care if Bush gets “care.” He wants him out of power. And speech like this has an effect. Not on the targets, hardly ever. It’s the spill over, to the point that mental illness and political power are held not to be unrelated terms, but a contradiction.
Remember that study about how “crazy folks like Bush” that didn’t factor in incumbancy bias on a population that is held in restrictive settings and used a tiny little sample size unworthy of the name?
Some of the most common comment at liberal blogs were the expression of surprise that they “let” us vote.
Fuck it.
I’m gonna be angry. I’ll figure out that effective thing later, ’cause right now is my time to burn.
