Miscellaneous

2020: On Pandemics, Genocide, and the Election

Posted on October 26, 2020
How does one even begin a blogpost during the cursed year of 2020 after a four month absence in which we are still in the midst of a pandemic and are mere days away from a presidential election wherein the incumbent has simply, genocidally given up on that pandemic? Do people even blog anymore? How does a person even dip the ol' toe back into it when so much has occurred between June 2020 and now?Let me start how I've been trying to stay centered during everything:Reading - I've been reading about one book per week, almost entirely in the genres of science fiction, memoir, and fiction (no non-fiction or political tomes for me, right now)...

America: The Broken, 2020 Edition

Posted on October 04, 2020
Who could have predicted, except for hundreds and thousands of commentators, many of them women and/or POC.Here's me, writing 3 years ago, at Shakesville, for instance:"Donald Trump is the inevitable Republican politician for a rotten-to-the-core Republican Party that has condoned the use of any means necessary to win...

Femslash ___Day: VillanEve

Posted on April 28, 2020
What day is it? What time is it? What along decade it's been, huh?I recently realized, only half-jokingly, that I measure time now by when it's time to watch Killing Eve again, and then I realized it's been fully 10 million years since we've had a Femslash Friday in Fannie's Room...

Kyrie

Posted on April 06, 2020
Many years ago in college I read Ellen Bryant Voigt's book of poems, Kyrie, which is set during the influenza pandemic of 1918. I've thought of it on and off since then, particularly during the swine flu pandemic of 2009 and, of course, now during the COVID-19 pandemic...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Thoughts on Social Isolation and 2020

Posted on March 15, 2020
Whew!The past month or so has been a lot, yeah?  It appears that Joe Biden is on track to the Democratic nominee for president. And, fine. Whatever. He wasn't my top choice at all, but the COVID-19 pandemic, and Trump's massive failures around managing it, is one of many issues that highlights the urgency of defeating Trump in 2020...

William H. Harrison's Ball

Posted on February 18, 2020
In my ongoing quest to read a biography or memoir of every US president, I have finally arrived at William Henry Harrison, whose tenure lasted just 31 days before he became the first president to die in office.As with previous presidential biographies, the Harrison biography I read, Gail Collins' slender William Henry Harrison, serves as a reminder that, as much as early era of our nation is romanticized in some circles, the early political system was not super democratic...

On White Daddy and Electability, Again

Posted on February 10, 2020
When you think about it, a white male Democrat hasn't won a US presidential election since Bill Clinton did in 1996, a quarter century ago.At the same time, polling data from the past year or so consistently have white men - specifically Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders - as performing better against Trump in 2020 general election matchups than do the candidates who are women and/or people of color...

Thoughts on Atwood's The Testaments

Posted on February 04, 2020
One of the books I've read so far this new decade is Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments.It was interesting to revisit this universe, and its characters, 10 years after I initially read The Handmaid's Tale (and wrote about it here, at this very web-log), and I understand (or think I do) why Atwood herself would want to publish a sequel in this particular political moment, 34 years after she published the original...

Quote of the Day: "We Knew This Already"

Posted on January 23, 2020
Even as the outcome seems a foregone conclusion and I haven't been talking about it much, I've been following the Trump impeachment proceedings.Daliah Lithwick, at Slate, captures the zeitgeist of what it means to live in a nation with two major political parties, only one of which is remotely interested in democracy, truth, fairness, and justice, and a mainstream media ecosystem that repeatedly offers "false balance" when so many of Trump's misdeeds have been done openly, in plain sight:"Seeking, over and over, evidence of that which has already been proved sets the bar higher than it need be...

"From this moment forward, as in days past"

Posted on January 22, 2020
I've read five books so far this (new) decade and I've been pretty pleased with them all.These include:Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Atul Gawande)The Great Believers (Rebecca Makkai)A Wild and Precious Life: A Memoir (Edie Windsor)The Testaments (Margaret Atwood)Blowout (Rachel Maddow)...

Clinton on Sanders: It's the Culture Around Him

Posted on January 21, 2020
Zero fucks Hillary Clinton is the best Hillary Clinton.In an interview with Hollywood Reporter about the upcoming series about her, here she is on Bernie Sanders:"I will say, however, that [the problem is] not only him, it's the culture around him. It's his leadership team...

US Attacks Iran

Posted on January 03, 2020
Almost two year ago to the day, I wrote:"If Trump remains in office for a full term, I think it is very likely that he will manufacture a war or crisis in order to bump up his approval ratings and pressure Congress to stop investigating his ties to Russia...

Donald Trump: Impeached

Posted on December 19, 2019
Yesterday, in a historic vote, the US House of Representatives approved two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, becoming the third president in US history to be impeached.No one is above the law, Mr...

Semi-Review/Deep Thought: The Miseducation of Cameron Post

Posted on December 16, 2019
I recently read The Miseducation of Cameron Post (and then proceeded to watch the movie adaptation, as well), about a lesbian teen sent to "conversion therapy" in the 1990s for being gay. Think of it as a more realistic, less campy, but still at times darkly-comedic version of But I'm a Cheerleader...

On the Death of Internet Feminism Being Greatly Exaggerated

Posted on December 13, 2019
I have to admit that one aspect of the post-2016 feminist backlash that I did not anticipate is women writing clusters of articles declaring Internet feminism to be dead. But alas, here we are (she typed, from her 12-year-old feminist Blogger blog).The most recent example of this trend is a piece posted at Jezebel (yes, really) bizarrely-entitled, "How the Internet Killed Feminism," which neither proves that feminism is dead nor that it was "the Internet" that killed it...

The Queerest Night on Television

Posted on December 10, 2019
Is now Sunday.With Batwoman and Supergirl airing on the CW, and now The L Word: Generation Q and Work in Progress airing on Showtime, queer women have quite the selection of TV shows featuring Strong Female Characters all on one day (although, yes, with the reality of how many people watch TV, on demand any day, any time we want via Hulu or wherever you enjoy your pop culture streams)...

Melissa Benoist Shares Experiences With Intimate Partner Violence

Posted on December 02, 2019
In an Instagram video she posted last week, Supergirl star Melissa Benoist shared that she experienced intimate partner violence in a previous relationship.The full video is currently up on YouTube here, and in it she details how a previous romantic partner emotionally and physically abused her...

Social Media Disinformation Today and Beyond

Posted on November 25, 2019
I recently read a series of articles about Russia's ongoing disinformation campaign against the United States that I think do a good job of articulating how this threat is much larger than the 2016 election.In the first, a Rolling Stone article, by Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren, the authors suggest that professional trolls don't actually troll...

Woman: Feminists Care Too Much About Misogyny

Posted on November 06, 2019
I won't link to it but on Monday, The New Republic ran a horrendo anti-feminist piece (entitled "Moving Beyond Misogyny," if you want to look it up) in which a leftist woman critiqued "liberal feminists" for focusing too much on misogyny and not giving progressive men rape passes...

The Electoral College: Watch Shit Get Real If It Happens To Bernie!

Posted on November 05, 2019
Yesterday on Twitter, I spent a fraction of the day being intrigued by a particular pro-Bernie perspective.A history grad student wrote, "I think it?s tremendously underrated just how many young Americans will simply reject wholesale the legitimacy of the U...

Quote of the Day - Lithwick On Not Getting Over Kavanaugh

Posted on October 31, 2019
Dahlia Lithwick's piece in Slate about her refusal to get over Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the US Supreme Court is very, very good and worth reading in its entirety, first and foremost in my opinion because she is the rare mainstream journalist today who refuses to both normalize or be entertained by the Trump regime's atrocities...

Supercorps Friday and Kara's Big Coming Out Moment

Posted on October 25, 2019
Just two heterosexual gals having a completely heterosexual conversation about their 100% heterosexual friendship: I know I'm really gay, but in all seriousness, I find it nearly impossible to view Kara coming out to Lena as Supergirl as anything other than Kara professing her longstanding love for Lena...

CNN LGBTQ Townhall

Posted on October 11, 2019
I didn't catch all of last night's CNN LGBTQ Townhall, but I wanted to post about it nonetheless.First, I want to note that the forum itself was meaningful. It was only in 2008 that, following 8 years of the Bush Administration stoking anti-LGBTQ bigotry for Republican political gain, that frontrunner Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did not publicly support marriage equality because that political position was not (or was not seen as) political viable for a presidential candidate to hold...

On Cougar 2020

Posted on October 04, 2019
One of the weirder aspects, and there are many, to the made-up "sex scandal" that a known compulsive liar and fraudster who shall remain nameless is alleging against presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is the fact that literally the only people who would be so offended by a grown woman engaging in consensual sex with a strapping young Marine are people who would never vote for Warren, or any woman, or any Democrat anyway...

Batwoman and the Case of the Toxic Male Nerddom

Posted on October 01, 2019
Whew, that Batwoman trailer. The city is hers now. #Batwoman is coming Sundays this fall to The CW! pic.twitter.com/r9qa9TCPRA? Batwoman (@CWBatwoman) May 16, 2019 Of course, the misogynists are melting down about it, especially that "when it fits a woman" line...

Bi Visibility Day

Posted on September 24, 2019
Was yesterday, technically, and now I have to share with you an end product of missing Lost Girl (and bi main character Bo Dennis) and subsequently going down another YouTube fan vid rabbit-hole.

Creating Gender

Posted on April 01, 2011
"Based on our understanding of Biblical teachings, we affirm the following: 1. Both Adam and Eve were created in God's image, equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood. 2. Distinctions in masculine and feminine roles are ordained by God as part of the created order, and should find an echo in every human heart...

Competing Anti-Feminist Narratives

Posted on March 31, 2011
I found one of my recent Google Alerts for feminism so hilarious, I had to take a screen shot:But which narrative is going to win?!Really, judging by the frequency with which both propositions are put forth, I think many anti-feminists see no logical flaws in simultaneously declaring both arguments winners.

30 Rock: Getting It Right

Posted on March 31, 2011
Over at AfterEllen, Trish Bendix asks why 30 Rock "gets a pass on its lesbian jokes." (She speculates that it's because (a) lesbians lurve Tina Fey, and (b) "The show doesn?t discriminate when it comes to storyline fodder."). As a connoisseur of both lesbians and 30 Rock, I too have an opinion about that...

Espenson: On Comedy

Posted on March 29, 2011
This is why former Buffy, Firefly, Angel, and Battlestar Galactica, et al, writer Jane Espenson should be the supreme czar of all media. Writing at her blog, she notes: "...[O]n almost every show in my career, I?ve found myself in a political argument at some point with someone to the right of me...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.