I Am For Those Things

The State of Maine is near and dear to my heart. My mother’s family is from there, and I have spent more time there than in any state except the state of my birth and the one I live in now (with New Hampshire a close second. I have a tremendous affection for Northern New England).

Marriage equality is also near and dear to my heart. Not because marriage is a panacea for anything or even the most important right, but because the glaring inequality is a continuing and blatant symbol of exclusion and second-class citizenship. We do not extend civil rights to some of our people because it would offend the religious and social mores of the majority: that may be the way the Puritans did things in their theocratic monocultures* but it is not the system we codified in the Bill of Rights, where the First Amendment has an establishment clause that prohibits the state from taking a side in religious disputes and a free exercise clause that provides that my mother’s Unitarian church should be able to marry who it believes it should without the fear or favor of the State.**

All of Northern New England is there.*** They have marriage equality by legislation. Bigots in Maine are trying to reverse it at the polls. The excellent polling-and-quantitative-poli-sci blog Fivethirtyeight (were we not all glued to it last year about this time? Nate hasn’t quit) is
all over the story.

Nate, who is firmly on the pro-equality side of this, got an email to marriage equality opponents, and he summarized the talking points like this:

Why the Charges are Civil (and Why That Doesn’t Mean She’s a Lying Golddigger)

A lot has already been made about why the victim in the Roethlisberger case has pressed civil charges but not criminal ones. Bloggers and commenters across the web have begun suggesting this undermines her credibility and makes it more likely that she’s a “lying golddigger.” (I won’t be sending these folks traffic by linking to them.)

In reality, there are TONS of reasons a rape victim may file civil charges but not criminal ones. For one, the burden of proof is easier in a civil case. In a criminal one, even DNA evidence may not be enough to prove the accused did it “beyond a resonable doubt” if he’s claiming the sex was consensual. But in a civil case, the evidence need only prove that it’s more likely than not that the accused did the crime.

But burden of proof is only one reason among many. I asked the fantastic Jessie Mindlin and Lydia Watts of the Victim Rights Law Center (and my fellow CounterQuo founding members) about this issue, and they said that burden of proof is far from the most common reason victims choose civil suits over criminal ones.

While we don’t know this particular woman’s reasons, here are 10 good reasons Mindlin & Watts see all the time:

I-O-WA!!

Marriage Equality

With Vermont and New Hampshire working though the legislature, I have been focused on whether Delaware River- to -North Pole was possible in the near term — NJ, NY, all the New England states and Canada, with Mass and CT already in the bag. And there’s the Prop H8 appeal in the West Coast. It’s not that I ignore the midwest, but on this issue I didn’t expect to see progress there. I’m so, so glad to have been wrong.

That is all.

h/t Jill.

The Capacity for Violence

We all have the capacity for violence. Rape, and promoting rape, is not limited to cis straight men, to white men, to men of color, to men you don’t know, to men at all, to cis people, to straight people, to people who aren’t survivors, to people who aren’t your close friends, to people who don’t speak out against rape, to people who don’t volunteer on rape-crisis hotlines (that really sucked, by the way), or even to people who don’t write forwards to anti-rape anthologies, or who haven’t written songs against date rape and dedicated them to Sarah Palin.

Those last two categories are pretty specific, huh?

In case you’re wondering, I’m talking about this (trigger warning):

If it’s hard to see, here’s a basic rundown: a Katy Perry lookalike comes onstage to lip sync “I Kissed a Girl.” A few people make brief passes at her, then Margaret Cho, wearing a purple strap-on, and Amanda Palmer come up from opposite sides of the stage and trap “Perry” between them. Cho takes “Perry’s” hand, puts it on her strap-on, and *holds it there* while Perry looks anxious and uncomfortable and tries to remove her hand. Then Palmer touches her belly, “Perry” momentarily looks more uncomfortable, and then suddenly “gives in” and starts acting enthusiastic, making out with Palmer and pushing her butt back towards Cho. (You can see her facial expressions better in this video if it’s hard to see clearly.)

Just in case it wasn’t clear that this was a revenge fantasy rather than just a “oh she really wanted it it’s ok” fantasy (still rape promotion, but still)–A curtain goes up, and when it comes down, Cho is dressed as a minister/pastor/whatever, and “Perry” and Palmer are in wedding dresses… and “Perry” is bound hand and foot, with duct tape over her mouth. She tries to hobble away, and Palmer stops her, making an expression of overdone, false-looking bliss with a sinister undertone. (This part is somewhat more easily visible here) A “Fuck Prop 8″ banner goes up and the crowd cheers.

There’s really not a lot more to say. I understand being angry about “I Kissed a Girl”–I’m none too pleased about it myself. (Not knowing my name, fine, I can work with that, but I’m your “experimental game”? … Excuse me?) The song is exploitative/exoticizing/fetishizing/objectifying whatever other words you want to use. Basically it’s gross, keep your hands off my sexuality. But resorting to dramatizing sexual violence as a revenge strategy? (Hell, revenge at all?) Not cool. And it’s not as though Cho could ever objectify or fetishize anyone. Nor Amanda Palmer.

At Women & Children First, one of two Chicago stops of the YMY! tour, there was a comment exhorting [straight/bi] men to stand up and say they’re not rapists, because otherwise all the women would assume they were. But standing up and speaking out doesn’t make you an ally/not a rapist. Not raping people makes you not a rapist. If you don’t think of yourself as a potential perpetrator of violence and consider carefully how to exist in the world as nonviolently as you can, you will perpetrate it. Violence, including but in no way limited to sexual violence, is the norm in this society, not the exception–though often it’s not quite as blatant as Cho and Palmer just put on display for us, or quite as clearly intentional.

X-posted to Taking Up Too Much Space

And the YMY Oscar goes to…

Tilda Swinton, for the following quote in her tribute to Marisa Tomei’s performance in The Wrestler: “…a stripper need never take off her dignity with her clothes.”

I also award YMY Oscars to Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black & Milk star Sean Penn, who were so moving and passionate in their real Oscar speeches, defending lgbt humanity and equality and shaming those who oppose it. Here’s Black:

…if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he would want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches or by the government or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value, and that no matter what anyone tells you God does love you and that very soon I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours.

And Penn:

I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marraige to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way in their support.

And, finally, a YMY Oscar to Tina Fey, just because.

Who would you give a YMY Oscar to?

Prop 8 Was A Matter Of Ideology, Not Race

I wish this were to state the obvious. Sadly, this is not obvious to everyone. But it has now been confirmed in a study by Freedom To Marry.

The study is linked from the release, and I have not read the whole thing, but the basic conclusion was that the explanatory factors were party affiliation, ideological self-identification, church attendance, and age. The much-talked about high rate of black voters in support of Prop 8 washes out when controlling for these factors, mainly church attendance:

The study found that when religious attendance was factored out, however, there was no significant difference between African Americans and other groups.

In fact, says the release:

people of all races and ethnicities who worship at least once a week overwhelmingly supported Proposition 8, with support among white, Asian and Latino frequent churchgoers actually being greater than among African Americans.

(Emphasis supplied.)

At a minimum, one ought to conclude that this is more about the Christian community standing in the way of equality. But I think this is even more narrow than that — while I am not a believer, I know some religious folks who are firmly for full equality. So I say this is about the triumph of social conservatism within Christianity. That is a problem that probably can only be fixed from within.

h/t Harper Jean Tobin at Polymorphous Perversity.

Imagine A Marriage Between Two People

To us, that sounds obvious. But this thought experiment might prove enlightening to Dennis Prager, whose ideas about gender are so essentialist, and whose thinking about sexuality is so backward, that he cannot really be conceiving of marriage as between two equals, each with their own needs and desires.

Kris Kringle & emergency contraception

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) is likely well-intentioned in advising women to stock up on the emergency birth control pill, so as not to get caught out over the holidays. Alas, the advert is, in my opinion, misguided and distracts from the BPAS’ offer of the pill for free, along with a supply of condoms.

Elsewhere I’ve written about the backlash that immediately launched into “why are women so skanky” and the hysterical and moralistic emergency-contraception-as-birth-control tropes. Still no one’s been able to answer the question of where men fit into hot, responsible sexy times.

I’m just going to forgo all the innuendo about packages, deliveries, and stocking stuffers…

I Have Seen The Enemy, And It Is … Ruben Diaz

Anyone who has read my work here or at Feministe knows I care a lot about marriage equality. California broke my heart, but I still have a vision of equal marriage rights from the Delaware River to the North Pole*

A bigot is standing in the way of that vision. Not just any bigot. A powerful bigot. This bigot:

For a primer on bigot Ruben Diaz, read this. He hates gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transpeople and everything they stand for and everything their allies hope to achieve. And because he’s essentially the kingmaker in the newly-but-barely Democratic New York State Senate, according to the NY Times, he was single-handedly able to engineer the blockage of a Senate marriage equality bill that would have probably passed, that already passed the Assembly, and that Governor Paterson (I’m a big fan) would sign.

There’s no reasoning with Ruben. He has to be eliminated from his blocking position, by (1) a primary challenger (he’s faces a few); (2) a general election challenger; or (3) a pro-equality Dem majority strong enough to sideline him. I don’t know how much I can do about that. But I can sure make sure that folks who care about this issue know who stands in the way.

*We have Canada, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Vermont, New York, and New Jersey at least may be achievable in the really near term. That would leave only three New England states — Maine, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. (I know New England like no other part of the country, so I have my own views, but folks familiar with the legislative or judicial inside-baseball feel free to enlighten us.)

TDOR, 2008

Last night, November 20th, was the Boston gathering to witness the tenth national Transgender Day of Remembrance, an event started, sadly and with much outrage, when Rita Hester was brutally murdered.  Since then, TDOR has grown from a small candlelit vigil and march through Rita’s neighborhood, to an international event, taking place in cities and towns across the world.  I wish that there was no TDOR, because I wish there was no more violence perpetrated upon us because of hatred for who we are in our bodies.

Each year, we gather and read of the list of our trans siblings lost to violence that same year, a painful and poignant list compiled by dedicated activists who are determined that this violence be witnessed.  The list is often detailed and difficult in its recounting of the nature of the murders.  Last night, as I knelt weeping on cold concrete, I was struck by how many of us were slaughtered in a sexual context or were sexual victimized as part of the assault.  And by just how many of our lost siblings who suffered these terrible murders were women, female identified, female presenting.  And how many of our siblings, lost to these murderous assaults were so victimized because they were condemned as having crossed the boundaries of what their assailants deemed permissible for a perceived woman to do.

I am just barely articulate.  I am still cold and grieving, but I do know, for certain, that until we as a people are willing to confront all that makes coercion and violence an acceptable form of relating to women, these sorts of acts will continue to be perpetrated against anyone whose gender identity and presentation challenges or subverts the cis-gendered, heteronormative, masculinist paradigm.