So. I spent the last week trying, as an experiment, to only post positive things on social media. I mostly succeeded (drinking + early season one of the new Scooby-Doo = bitching about Velma being a horrible abusive gf to Shaggy), so go me!
There were, of course, loads of things I thought about posting and didn’t, so here they are now!
Awesome comic about Republicans and their rape comments. Funny, but in that way that’s bad for my blood pressure.
Romney’s campaign only cares about lies in attack ads when they’re attacking him. I really shouldn’t be surprised, but they’re being really fucking upfront about it. Fffffff
Three Videos Everyone Should See Before Voting. Most striking quote from the piece (emphasis mine):
Most women (and their spouses), whether personally comfortable with abortion or not, don’t automatically think about whether or not they might end up in jail, arrested while in labor or strapped to a hospital bed to undergo a forced Caesarian when they get pregnant. Laura Pemberton certainly didn’t before it happened to her. And what happened to her could just as easily happen to you or a girl or woman you know as a result of the insidious expansion of the “personhood” for zygote movement.
We Are All Sonali: Go read the whole thing (trigger warnings for torture, rape, death, you name it), but here are some excerpts to give you a taste of why I didn’t post it this week.
Today 27-year-old Sonali Mukherjee will have surgery to help reconstruct her face. It melted nine years ago, leaving a painful mask in its place, after three young men poured acid on her while she slept. This was their response to her fending off their relentless sexual advances as she made her way to school every morning. In India the ubiquitous harassment that women face is called, in a “family-friendly” euphemism, “eve baiting.”
…
The abuse and rape of women is oblivious to social status, education, race, nationality, ethnicity, or anything else. What Sonali asked for when she resisted her harassers every day, and what was denied to her when they attacked her, was the right to be female and in control of her own body. Men wanted to control her and wanted access to her body. Indeed, they felt that this access and control were their birthright. Her culture, the men and women in it, supporting the notion that her body was somehow public property, allowed this to happen. When she did not comply, they punished her severely. They invaded her privacy. They violated her bodily integrity. They ignored her autonomy, and they damaged her body horrifically. They denied her her agency. Does this sound familiar yet?
Tom Smith’s Idiotic Rape Comments Prove That Some Men Still Think They Own Their Wives And Daughters – fantastic, depressing-as-shit look at the horrifying comments Tom Smith (a Republican candidate for Senate) made recently about rape.
Yoga gear from companies that think a 12-14 is XL tells big people that they’re not allowed in. It’s exclusionary, bigoted, and offensive. CURVY YOGA EXISTS, BITCHES. Hell, athletic catalogues in general. So many of them list their XL as being 12-14 or even 14-16. That is the national fucking average, you asshats. I want spiffy workout clothes too! GRR!
Confused About Rape? Occupy the Dictionary – A look at the bullshit people — not just Republicans, mind you! — say about rape, and a fascinating proposition about a possible source and a possible solution. Fabulous, but uncomfortable reading.
The Wire – a beautiful, difficult essay on the right to choose.
Mitt Romney tells 533 lies in 30 weeks, Steve Benen documents them Now, some of them are the same lie repeated — the masochist in me kind of wants to start a WordPress site with a single page for each lie or genre of lie, and link to sources and so on, but at this point that would be a full-time job. I know politicians lie, but these are so obviously bald-faced that it’s pretty astonishing.
