What Smart Women Wear

In Iran they wear black chadors and scarves in ninety degree (F) weather. This is because the alternative cooler summer outfits cost a little too much in fines, prison and even flogging. The current Iranian conservative government (which wasn't actually elected) has ordered a crackdown on women who alter the required Islamic garb by wearing lighter-colored and/or shorter chadors. These corrupt the social morale (where is the social morale located, by the way?). Never mind that being shrouded in black in boiling heat corrupts the woman inside the outfit.

On Bees

Bees have taken residence in the wall above my porch door. They sting everybody who uses the door except for me. I've told them not to sting other creatures who live in the house, but it seems they are not paying attention. So now I have to deliver them an ultimatum: they have twenty-four hours to mend their ways. After that, apocalypse.

This is not that different from other human politics, sadly. Many of our quarrels and wars have their roots in problems of communication. How do you talk to the bees? To the Republican wingnuts? To terrorists? Or if you are a bee, how do you defend your right to live in the siding of someone's house? Sometimes it seems as if we are all separate species with no idea of how to share something: a thought, some pollen, food.

Some of us have a lot more power than others. I have the upper hand with the bees, and I have also planted the flowers that lured them here in the first place. This makes me twice responsible, at least in my bleeding-heart world: I promised them something better and now I threaten them with death.

At least none of this was based on conscious planning. Can the Bush administration say the same about Iraq? Or are we more similar than I'd like to think, just two bumbling fools in a world where every hole in the siding is someone's home?

I'm going out now to have a serious conversation with the bees, but I doubt that it will do much good.

The Cost of Liberty (Reposted)

Thanks for Dave for locating this erased post. I copied the comments thread as well, so everything is now beautiful!



Halla is a prostitute in Iraq. Before the war she was happily married, with two sons and a job in her mother's beauty salon. Now she is a widow with two sons and several younger brothers to feed, and the $5 per month she could earn at the beauty salon is not enough.
So she has become a prostitute. The money is good, and she can feed her whole family. But there are disadvantages to this job:

But as the U.S. occupation draws to an end, and more conservative Islamic clerics gain power, the fate of prostitutes like Halla is uncertain. In recent months, attacks on people and establishments accused of promoting vices have escalated. Masked gunmen have shot at liquor vendors, according to Iraqi police officials. Religious leaders have run renters of racy videotapes out of town. And anonymous vigilantes have kidnapped, beaten and killed prostitutes in several major cities. Women's rights groups, including the Organization of Women's Freedom, have decried the killings, saying the women are in need of help, not punishment.
Maybe there is an order to kill all the prostitutes," Halla would recall thinking that day. "If the Islamic parties arrive to power maybe even the Americans can't stop them." As she made her way through the rubble, Halla wondered what it would be like to have a real job, of being a receptionist at a hotel, a laundry woman or maybe opening a boutique for used clothes. She was 23 years old, healthy and a hard worker. There was a chance she could start anew. Wasn't there?

The rubble Halla is described as walking through is the rubble that remained after the extremists destroyed the windows of her mother's beauty parlor as a warning to her.

Read the whole thing. It's well worth the time.

Krugman

Paul Krugman is a rare type of economist: he actually knows something outside the narrow "let's pretend that all people have equal incomes and only care about how much beer they get tomorrow" models of neoclassical economics. He even reads novels and stuff, I bet.

Krugman summarizes the economic situation in Iraq in his latest column:

Up to a point, the numbers in the Brookings Institution's invaluable Iraq Index tell the tale. Figures on the electricity supply and oil production show a pattern of fitful recovery and frequent reversals; figures on insurgent attacks and civilian casualties show a security situation that got progressively worse, not better; public opinion polls show an occupation that squandered the initial good will.
What the figures don't describe is the toxic mix of ideological obsession and cronyism that lie behind that dismal performance.
The insurgency took root during the occupation's first few months, when the Coalition Provisional Authority seemed oddly disengaged from the problems of postwar anarchy. But what was Paul Bremer III, the head of the C.P.A., focused on? According to a Washington Post reporter who shared a flight with him last June, "Bremer discussed the need to privatize government-run factories with such fervor that his voice cut through the din of the cargo hold."
Plans for privatization were eventually put on hold. But as he prepared to leave Iraq, Mr. Bremer listed reduced tax rates, reduced tariffs and the liberalization of foreign-investment laws as among his major accomplishments. Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time — but we've given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics.

And not only have we given Iraq the curse of an unproven economic theory (we did the same to Russia a decade ago and you can see the consequences for yourself in the new Russian maffia and in the old people who are now starving on their fixed pensions) but we have done this with a workforce whose main claim to competence is fervent Republicanism. Never mind if the person has no experience or training; what matters is a stint at the Heritage Foundation:

If the occupiers often seemed oblivious to reality, one reason was that many jobs at the C.P.A. went to people whose qualifications seemed to lie mainly in their personal and political connections — people like Simone Ledeen, whose father, Michael Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative, told a forum that "the level of casualties is secondary" because "we are a warlike people" and "we love war."
Still, given Mr. Bremer's economic focus, you might at least have expected his top aide for private-sector development to be an expert on privatization and liberalization in such countries as Russia or Argentina. But the job initially went to Thomas Foley, a Connecticut businessman and Republican fund-raiser with no obviously relevant expertise. In March, Michael Fleischer, a New Jersey businessman, took over. Yes, he's Ari Fleischer's brother. Mr. Fleischer told The Chicago Tribune that part of his job was educating Iraqi businessmen: "The only paradigm they know is cronyism. We are teaching them that there is an alternative system with built-in checks and built-in review."

More generally, I wonder about the wisdom of focusing so much on the 'free markets' paradigm in a country where so many people are living off what we'd call welfare checks from the country's oil revenues. One can't just skip from one extreme to the other, all the time dodging bullets and scimitars, and one can't have any kind of functioning markets without a functioning infrastructure (roads, bridges, electricty, water), and infrastructure requires government expenditures.

It's also not fun to watch an ahistoric theory being forced upon people who have a very specific history, religion and culture; none of which seems to support the basic assumptions of the theory. I can well imagine a handful of rich Iraqis gaining the fruits of all this theorizing while the rest of the country dodges forgotten land mines and tries not to starve.

Free Iraq?

Of course I wish them luck, and luck is what they need. That the handover came two days before the planned date may be due to some terrorist plot to be foiled, but it is equally likely that this change was made so as to maximize the benefits of the event to the Bush administration. Consider that the Supreme Court gave Bush at least a partial slap on the fingers today. It would be nice to have something else that the media can talk about while pretending not to have time for the Supreme Court decisions. Jeez but I've become cynical in the last four years...

So what is the new free Iraq going to look like? Several possibilities come to mind: a country torn apart by civil war, a country which will put Taliban to shame in its eagerness to enforce extremism, a little U.S. lackey country and so on. The most recent suggestion comes from the new Iraq administration, and that is a country under martial law. Maybe a martial law is needed to give the Iraqis some peace and time to recover, both emotionally and physically, from the operation of having been liberated. But a country under a martial law is not a free country, and let's not pretend that it is.

President Bush likes the idea of a martial law:

"Iraqis know what we know, that the best way to defend yourself is to go on the offensive," he said, speaking at a news conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

Remember that when you interpret Bush's words in the future. He also likes the new leaders of Iraq. I wonder why:

"They're gutsy, courageous and, as they say in Texas, they're stand-up guys," he said. "They'll lead. They'll lead their people to a better day."

It would be lovely if all that was needed in a leader was gutsiness and courage and being a stand-up guy, so lovely. But brains and some empathy would be nice, too. Maybe I'm just too picky for this world.

The Supremes Say

A very important day for democracy and the rule of law, I'd say. The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that there indeed are limits to what this administration can do to the detainees, whether American citizens or not:

In two crucial decisions today on the scope of presidential wartime powers, the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's claim that it can hold suspected terrorists or "enemy combatants" on American soil without giving them a day in court.
The court said detainees, whether American citizens or not, retain their rights, at least to a legal hearing, even if they are held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Guantanamo Bay is under U.S. control and thus appropriately within the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, the high court ruled.
The president's constitutional powers, even when supported by Congress in wartime, do not include the authority to close the doors to an independent review of the legality of locking people up, the justices said.
"We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in Hamdi et al v. Rumsfeld.

The two cases that were decided today are Hamdi et al. vs. Rumsfeld and Rasul et al. vs. Bush (don't you just love those terms?). The Hamdi case concerns the rights of American citizens and the Rasul case those of foreigners who have been detained as enemy combatants and are now held in a location under U.S. control. In both cases the Court argued that the detainees must have at least the right to some kind of legal hearing. As expected, Scalia, Rehnquist and Thomas dissented on the decision concerning foreigners' rights to a legal hearing.

These decisions are wonderful, and made me skip and jump from joy. Which is really quite sad, as their contents are what any sane person would expect from a democratic country with an evolved legal system and values. So far have we strayed from such an ideal, I guess, that I fully expected something less from the Supremes. I'm glad I was proved wrong, for once.

I made a Mistake...

And this one I can't hide. I deleted the post about prostitution in Iraq by accident, and I never copied it anywhere. It was mainly just a link to the story in Washington Post, so not that much was lost, but when the post went the comments went with it. I do apologize for that and will try to do better in the future.

Fahrenheit 9/11

I'm going out now to see it. The fuss here in the Snakepit Inc., all of us looking for something that would make me look like your average run-of-the-mill recanting wingnut (I want to use this outing for a good purpose)! We've decided on a very prim look with a flowery dress and white pumps and a handbag, but the look is beginning to unravel at the edges. Some hair coming out of the bun, some smeared lipstick, perhaps, and some very strong-smelling cough drops. And lots of tissues; I plan to weep buckets. Which of course I would do anyway.

More seriously, I'm going to post more once I get back, but if you want to you can use the comments to tell what you thought of the movie if you have seen it or even if you haven't.


-------------
I have seen it now. The theater was sold out, as theaters have been all over the country this weekend, and the audience gave the film a spontaneous applause at the end, as also seems to happen all over the country.

My impressions about Fahrenheit 9/11 are a little bit like my impressions about life: good and bad, all jumbled up in complicated ways. The whole movie looked to me like fireworks, the way the storyline ran around and suddenly erupted into a major joke or something painfully poignant. In fact, there were many storylines: the legitimacy of the administration, the bin Laden connections of the Bush family, the 9/11 massacres and how the president coped with this emergency, oil and its relationship to warfare and the utter inanity of the needless blood-shedding and destruction of lives in so many different ways in Iraq. At times I felt like watching a speeded-up rerun of my own recent memories about the politics of this country, but then something new would be added to the story, something that would make me go "ooh" and "aah" like when I watch fireworks. Yet the underlying plot is really about class in the United States, and its inadmissibility as a concept in public debates. Even Moore sneaks it in without calling it what it is: that the rules for the poor are different than the rules for the rich, that the poor are fighting the wars that the rich got us into.

This is of course one of Moore's major themes, and he deserves kudos for persisting on it. I believe that the public debate in the U.S. would be immeasurable richer and more meaningful if we did take class more seriously. And in his movie he shows us how class interlinks with patriotism, with serving ones country and even with who will die and when.

And of course I cried when watching the movie. It was hard not to, while listening to a woman telling how she heard about her son's death, or while seeing the damage that war does to little children. But I laughed, too, at the silly one-liners and the funny juxtapositions of politicians words against each other. And on the use of spit as a hair spray...

There has been a lot of debate about the meaning of Fahrenheit 9/11, especially whether it really is a documentary, or perhaps just sarcasm or propaganda; whether it is 'fair and balanced'. I don't think that a documentary can ever be objectively neutral, and no really good film would avoid trying to affect the emotions of the viewer. Whether Moore intends his movie to be seen as sarcasm is not clear, but considering that it opens with a 'dream scene', I think that he would agree with me in seeing our whole lives as a kind of sarcastic dream by someone else. All he is really doing with this movie is showing us the other sides: of politics, of politicians, of war, of suffering, of wealth.

So, yes, I'd recommend going to see this film. Still, it didn't affect me as strongly as I expected, given the prior accolades I had read. The most probable reason (other my cold and callous character) is that I have spent the last year reading blogs and other sources of news on the internet, and very little in the information of the movie was new to me. Still, to show something by using living pictures, sound and every single emotional device that filmmakers govern is different than reading about it in a newspaper or blog. It's a more direct way to the brain and heart of the audience, and as we desperately need the American public to hear both sides of the story, and as this side of the story has so long been neglected and misrepresented as "America-hating", I believe that Moore's movie is an important one to see by as many people as possible. And no, it's not an anti-military movie; if anything, it is an ode to the common soldier.

Babble, babble

I can't find anything interesting to say today. Is this the beginning of the end? Or the end of the beginning? Wiser bloggers may know.
My migraine is over, and as usual it left me on a very pleasant endorphin high for a day or so, when I went around hugging the car mechanics and the bakers and now have all sorts of related difficulties.

I feel an incredible amount of guilt about not blogging on the Iraq situation daily. It's a dreadful mess as anyone who reads blogs knows, and it's not going to look much prettier for a long time. People die all the time there as anyone who reads blogs knows also, and the United States is not exactly managing anything very well. To write about it all seems so futile, but not to write about it seems to give it no importance. So I hover somewhere inbetween, all the time burdened by the blogger's guilt. Maybe it would be enough to summarize the situation as dire and getting direr all the time?

Another blogging area that gives me guilt is John Kerry. He is of course the candidate to vote for in the next elections, as he is the only reasonable candidate being presented for our consideration. But I'd love it if he could give me something better to write about than the fact that he is actually quite human and reasonable and intelligent. Do something, John! Though of course he doesn't have to do anything, as in comparison to his rival he looks like someone zooming fast in the right direction.

And then there is sex. Should I write more about the touch of a questing tongue on the loved one's back than about the feeling of chocolate on the same tongue? So many on the internet look for sex, and I feel like a fraud when googling 'old men having sex with snakes' gives them nothing but my words. Just to clarify: the snakes don't want to have sex with old men or any sort of humans. They prefer to eat them.

The final conundrum is the dogs and their eagerness to blog. I keep telling them that there are hardly any other dogs who read, so there is no market for their endeavors, but Henrietta just wants to fume rebellion and Hank, well, who knows what Hank wants the keyboard for.
They both remind me of my words a long time ago (deep in nectar I was then anyway) that the Snakepit Inc. is a democracy, and they should have equal dibs on the blog. Either that or they threaten to go public with my address. I'm going to send them to e-bay one day.

But one thing I do know: Go and buy some strawberries! This is the time of the year for them.

The Laughing Fox

Via the Hamster:

NBC Nightly News aired a package by George Lewis describing this week's L.A. police beating, and aired video from FOX & Friends as the beating happened live:
Lewis: The people on one cable network laugh about it
[Cut to video of FOX News Channel]
E.D. Hill: Well I guest that guy's done for the day
Brian Kilmeade: It's gonna be hard to -- Whoa
Hill: Whoa!
Kilmeade: Takin' a few swings
Lewis: But the activists are not amused...

That's fair and unbiased for you. Who else would have made sure that the American public also gets the point that beating on an unarmed man can be fun to watch? Aren't you glad that we live in a country where the Fox News unearths the real news for us?

Savage Knows Women!

Here is what Michael Savage has to say about women:

From the June 22 broadcast of the nationally syndicated Savage Nation:
SAVAGE: But women in America don't really like anger. They don't even like the news, I don't know if you know that. They just want it to be calm, and safe -- and they want girl talk all the time. So I'll talk in a quiet, soothing voice today so that women don't get scared and run away. I'll make it friendly for women.
[...]
SAVAGE: Then again I just scared the women away from the show -- the women aren't outraged in America. No they want girl talk. They wanna hear about the latest movie -- perhaps BOTOX, like Barbara Boxer ... you know."

Just a reminder for all who think that the world is now full of fair and sane people, that the fights of feminism are all in the past, and that to be a feminist today means you hate men, as what other reason could there possibly be to be a feminist for?

But of course Michael Savage is an utter idiot, and we should ignore what he says. Then tell me why he has a public arena for spouting off like that while I, a real, brand-marked goddess have nothing but a crappy free blog? Oh no, I get the answer. It's because I don't like anger and news and prefer talking about BOTOX. What a good idea! Maybe inject some around the droopy lips of Michael Savage? Or if that doesn't work, we could always go for Superglue.

M.I.G.R.A.I.N.E.

At first you fear you will die. Then you fear you won't.

Something Puzzling

Why do we say: "Go fuck yourself!", when we are angry at someone? (Interpret the 'we' here as a general, most of us, kind of 'we'.) And why is giving good head a very bad insult on most blog comment lines?
And why is someone a fucking idiot?

I mean, after all we are telling the person to do something very enjoyable in most of these cases. What is it about sexuality that makes us use one of the few things that is also called 'heaven on earth' as the worst insult we can hurl at somebody? I have never really understood this.

The reason may lie deep in the Calvinistic underbelly of America, but not everybody has roots in Calvinism. Or is the reason something to do with a combination of yearning and loathing in sex? A desire to be free of the need for the 'other', which seems to have inordinate powers of attraction? Or perhaps simple misogyny, combined with the assumed hierarchy of power in sex, with the man on top?

Why not wish someone a long and loveless life instead? Wouldn't that be an insult we could all wholeheartedly support?

The Transmale Nation

An article with the same name in a recent issue of the Village Voice discusses the new generation of female-to-male transgendered individuals, now with much more variation in their gender identity labels:

" masculine-identified dykes, bois, and trans guys"

It seems that the transmen are now seeking wider recognition and publicity. Which is all good. Or is it? A very old message seems to be lodged within this new revolution:

Whatever their sexual orientation, most transmales remain in queer women's spaces because they feel safe there. Acceptance is growing in this community, but there still are dykes who gripe that all butch women are turning into boys, and feminists who label transmen misogynists out to gain male privilege. It's true that some transmen ridicule women, but no more than "real" men do—and there are feminists and lesbians who ridicule femininity. So what's the difference?

What's the difference indeed? Well, for one thing ridiculing women and ridiculing femininity are not exactly the same thing. For another, it's not that clear to me that just because we already have many misogynistic men we should not care about adding to their numbers. And perhaps most importantly, I get this eerie feeling from the article that it is now fine to look down on women because any woman who doesn't like it can go and get a sex change. Sort of joining the enemy you can't beat?

Not that this article necessarily reflects the true sentiments of transmales in general or even the sentiments of those interviewed for it. But they surely reflect the sentiments of somebody, most probably the author. And these particular sentiments are not wholesome. Just saying.


------
Thanks to Mrs. Jones for the link.

Ron Reagan on Larry King Live, June 23, 2004

A very interesting interview with the son of the late president. Here's a short excerpt from it for the benefits of those who were doing something more interesting last night:

KING: You said, dad was also a deeply unabashedly religious man, but he never made the mistake of wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. Were you referring to the president?

REAGAN: You know, it's interesting.

KING: Everyone thought that.

REAGAN: I know. I wasn't watching TV much after I delivered the eulogy for a few days. But after a couple of days I started getting calls from people saying, boy you really stirred something up, didn't you? I thought, well, what? Well, you know, the stuff you said about Bush. I said, I didn't say anything about Bush, why would I mention George W. Bush in my father's eulogy?

No, no, no, no, the stuff about the religion. I thought, ha, funny, you then everybody thought I was talking about George W. Bush. And then I heard -- everybody thought I was talking about George -- but people connected with George W. Bush thought I was talking about George W. Bush. And then I began to think, maybe I was, I just didn't know it.

KING: Do you think he wears his religion on his sleeve? He certainly refers to it more than your father ever did.

REAGAN: Well, you know, there was that answer he gave to the question about, did you talk to your father about going into Iraq? No, I talked to a higher father, you know, the almighty. When you hear somebody justifying a war by citing the almighty, God, I get a little worried, frankly. The other guys do that a lot. Osama bin Laden's always talking about Allah, what Allah wants, that he's on his side. I think that's uncomfortable.

KING: Do you have thoughts on the war?

REAGAN: Sure, I have thoughts on the war.

KING: And what do you think?

REAGAN: And I think we lied our way into the war.

KING: You think it's a mistake?

REAGAN: Absolutely, a terrible mistake. Terrible foreign policy error. We didn't have to do it. It was optional. And we were lied to. The American public was lied to about WMD, the connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam, which is virtually nonexistent except for fleeting contacts. But they're still trying to pull that one off now, Cheney and all are out there flogging that.

KING: Can I gather from that, that you will not support this president?

REAGAN: No, I won't.

KING: Will you support his opponent?

REAGAN: I will vote for whoever the viable candidate is who can defeat George W. Bush, yes.

Is this So?

That a smug self-centeredness is the most important requirement in a media political commentator? It does seem to survive most testing I've done in my mind. Think of Christopher Hitchens, for example.

This theory may explain why there are so many right-winger pundits, for one thing. And why they seem so unbearable to me. Maybe I have been wrong all these years, and never just got the point of this all media stuff? Now all we lefties need is a training academy in pompousness and self-puffing.

Some Good Quotes

From the most recent issue of the Utne magazine:

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
Penny Bright, anti-GMO activist

O the of it all.
Edward Gorey, artist and writer.

I've modelled my characters after women like my mother, who was strong. I am happily married to a strong woman. I love it when my wife holds her ground and says:"You're out of line." One must be able to say that to ones parents, ones spouse, the president of ones country. For me that is democracy.
Nuruddin Farah, Somali novelist

Wal-Mart and Women

Judge Martin J. Jenkins of Federal District Court in San Francisco has decided that a class action sex discrimination suit against Wal-Mart can go ahead. The suit, which could cover as many as 1.6 million women who have worked for Wal-Mart, is unprecedented in its scale and could create important precedents.

What is it that Wal-Mart will be sued for? According to the six women who filed the case in June of 2001, the retailer discriminates against women in pay and promotion and retaliates against those who complain. The New York Times tells the tale of one Betty Duke, a 54-year old African-American woman who has worked for Wal-Mart for nearly a decade. During this time she kept asking to be promoted, but she said that when jobs became available they were often filled without being posted. Ms. Duke also stated that she was disciplined for returning late from breaks, whereas male employees were not. A year ago her salary was finally raised from less than $9 to $12.53 an hour by a new manager.

The more general statistical evidence argues similar things. According to a study by a statistician hired by the plaintiffs it took women an average of 4.38 years from date of hire to be promoted to assistant manager, when it took men only 2.86 years. To reach a store manager level, women took on average 10.12 years and men 8.64 years. The average salaries of female managers were lower ($89,280 per annum, compared to $105,682 per annum). Hourly workers who were women were also paid 6.7 percent less than those who were men. In a study that compared Wal-Mart to other retailers in the same field the research found that the percentages of in-store managers who were female were 56.5% for Wal-Mart's competitors and only 34.5% for Wal-Mart.

The court case will try to explain the cause of these discrepancies, and perhaps also to account for comments like this from one Wal-Mart manager:

"Men are here to make a career and women aren't. Retail is for housewives who just need to earn extra money."

Of course, the explanation Wal-Mart has will differ from that the plaintiffs support. From the plaintiffs' point of view the explanation is sex discrimination which is still illegal in the United States (though for how long remains unclear if we get another four years of Bush). Wal-Mart will probably argue for societywide explanations that rely on women's lesser interest in being promoted and/or paid more. In other words, Wal-Mart will try to show that the adverse outcomes for women were based on either the women's own choices or societal inculcation of different values in men and women. Anything but Wal-Mart's own actions.

The crucial question in deciding on the most likely explanation in court is the amount of evidence the plaintiffs can gather on actual cases where women were either turned down for promotion when less qualified men were promoted or where women were clearly paid less for the same work. Evidence on retaliation is also important to obtain for the plaintiffs.

Lack of this type of evidence was the reason a similar case against Sears ended in the plaintiffs' loss in the 1980s. The promotion and pay statistics in that case were very similar to those mentioned above, but Sears won the case, largely because the plaintiffs had not gathered enough detailed evidence on actual women who had been denied promotion. Thus, statistical numbers which show that women do worse than men are in themselves not adequate proof of discriminatory behavior on the behalf of the employees. (Sears also had a little help from the judge that was presiding over the case, then a recent Reagan appointee to the bench, as well as from a feminist expert witness on Sears's side whose testimony argued that women are culturally less interested in promotions and higher paying but nonfeminine jobs).

The Wal-Mart case is unlikely to come to court for another year at least, but it's interesting to speculate about its likely outcome. I would argue that the study showing much higher female manager numbers in competitors' stores is pretty bad for Wal-Mart, as this piece of evidence can be used to refute any argument Wal-Mart might make which is based on women's characteristic differences from men in the culture. If other stores had a different experience, then Wal-Mart differences in pay and promotion can't be cultural. Of course, if Wal-Mart judges the likelihood of winning the case as too small, it will probably go for an out-of-court settlement.

Poor Wal-Mart. It is having employee trouble on several fronts at the same time. It is "facing allegations that management bullied staff into overtime without pay and regularly breached child labor laws." It is also examined for the possible use of illegal immigrant contractors, and unions have long been complaining that Wal-Mart is not allowing them to organize its workers.
Well, one reaps as one sows, they say.

Dear Diary

Today I woke up and had breakfast. It was cheese on toast if you're interested. I had my usual morning thoughts, about the meaning of life and if I really needed to buy more toothpaste.

Then I got dressed, and had the usual dressing thoughts, about why there is never anything to wear that is a) clean b) won't attract comments on the streets and c) won't strangle or chafe me somewhere.
I also hadn't finished the meaning of life thought.

Then I spent ten minutes looking for socks. What happens to socks? Who loves to divorce socks? Where do the ex-socks go when they die? Does it matter if I wear one black and one red sock?

Then I turned on the news and had the usual news-thoughts about why death isn't that bad really, and why they never advertize razor blades with the news shows. As usual, I quickly shed such disgustingly emotional ideas as very unpatriotic.

And then I sat down to write the Diary of a Boring Goddess in a Boring World. This is how far I've gotten.

Polio in Africa

The World Health Organization (WHO) is warning about a possible polio epidemic in Africa. Polio is a water-born disease that hits children especially hard. It can cause paralysis, deformation, muscular atrophy and even death. The new polio numbers are almost double last year's numbers:

The number of polio cases globally has reached 333 so far this year, almost double the number for the same period last year. Total cases last year reached 783.
In Nigeria, where Muslim leaders have refused to participate in immunization program, 257 cases have been reported this year.
"There is no question that the virus is spreading at an alarming pace," said Dr. David Heymann, who is overseeing the U.N. health agency's effort to eradicate the disease.

Polio is preventable through immunization. A major reason for the recent increase is the Muslim leaders' refusal to support this. Some of them believe that the vaccines contain substances which will make Muslim women infertile, and that such doctored vaccines are a Western plot against Islam. It seems like a good idea to have some Muslim researchers subject the vaccine to laboratory analysis to falsify this claim. Or would this not work? Sometimes I really think that grandmothers should be put in charge of this world for a generation or so.

Nosiness

I can't sleep. If your name wasn't what it is, what would you like to be called and why?

Tonight I'd like to be called Daniel. Something to do with the lion's den. But there is this silly convention about sex-specific names, and Daniel is one of those, so I could also go for Alma, after alma mater.
If I have to stay within goddess names, then Istar would be my pick of the day, though I don't want to have twenty breasts like she has in one sculpture I saw. Imagine the cost in bras!

John Kerry Is Rich and on Vacation!

A 32-foot Contender, the gentleman's fishing vessel, $150,000.
Yuzu-dusted day boat sea scallops at the restaurant Pearl, $36.
Two tubes for a Serotta road bike, $8
A house with a ketchup heiress, $9 million.
Basic equipment for kite-surfing, $2,500.
A writeup of all this by Jody Wilgoren in the NYT, priceless.

Yes, that's how the venerably old lady of liberal journalism lets an article on the Democratic presidential candidate be treated. This is liberalism, I guess, if liberalism is smearing everything with a sizable dose of snakeoil and selling it to the lowest bidder in taste and intelligence.

The gist of the article is that John Kerry is rich. He is rich because he has a wealthy wife. This is very bad, and should make all potential voters shy away from voting for him. Instead, they should vote for George Bush who is also rich. He is rich because he has wealthy parents. This is not bad at all, because he is a Republican and perfectly happy with the idea that only those who are rich matter. But Kerry shouldn't be rich because he is not perfectly happy with the idea that only those who are rich should matter. Got it?

Summer Posting Starts

Which doesn't make any difference to me, unless I have to travel to perform some weird snake rites in isolated areas. But it's nice to take note of the change in seasons, to stay in touch with the real events that are happening in nature. For example, now is the time to eat strawberries in northern climates, because now is when they actually want to ripen. Mmmm, fresh strawberries! One of the few things that I can name which is both wickedly delicious, non-fattening and very good for you. Especially wonderful dipped in melted chocolate.

After all that sinful talk, I'd like to give this list of opinions by the so-called Founding Fathers of the United States on the role of religion in the country they were creating:

"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian Doctrine."
~George Washington

"I do not find in orthodox christianity one redeeming feature."
~Thomas Jefferson

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My mind is my own church."
~Thomas Paine

"The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give the assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."
~Abraham Lincoln

(I got these from a commenter on a thread at Atrios, but I failed to copy the signature line, and now I can't locate the comment.)

My Apologies

for posting my short story so near to Fathers' Day. This was not intentional, and I was thinking of deleting the story, but it seems a bit late for that now. The posting was triggered by something in my private life, and I wasn't paying attention to the holiday schedules. In any case, my story is not about fathers especially but one particular type of family abuse.

Fathers in general are like mothers in general, people doing a difficult job with very little help. And for that they get one shopping day a year from the wider society. Though of course parenting has its own innate rewards. I heard a story today from a father who had to get up this morning at 6:30 a.m., because that's when his daughter's pancakes were ready to be eaten...

About Monsters

This is a short story. It might not be good to read for anyone who has suffered from childhood abuse. Come to think of it, it might not be that great a read for anybody (it's pretty horrible), but this is my blog and I want to publish it.

Pollyanna is a monster. She doesn't know it yet; she thinks that she is a little girl, but her father is a monster and her mother too weak to offset him. So Pollyanna is a monster, or at least will be one when she grows up. It is in her blood. It is written.

Right now she is playing, pretending. She pretends that she is Jesus. She stands on a rock, gauging the distance to the ground (it isn't very much), wondering if jumping down would kill her, wondering if anyone would miss her. This makes her pleased in a sickly sweet way, like finding the hidden places in her body which she is not to touch or she'll get beaten. These are the slender roots of monsterhood tentatively exploring Pollyanna. It isn't too late to uproot them yet, but it will be.

She will have a choice, of course. She could avoid completed monsterhood by becoming a mother of monsters instead; an empty receptacle. Most people would prefer that she choose this; most people are uncomfortable with fully fledged female monsters. Monsterhood seems to belong to men. But Pollyanna will choose differently; she will walk the path less trodden and perfect her own monsterhood.

She is quite a pretty little girl and very intelligent. She knows that her father is disappointed in her. But she is too young to understand that he would be disappointed in anything , that disappointment is what monsters feel, except when they inflict pain. Pollyanna searches herself for blame and finds plenty to work with. The pain will come later. Now it is enough that she has learned to strangle her doll, that she has learned to identify with the evil queen rather than with Snow White. Things are moving according to plan.

--------

Her father is restless. The monster inside him is hungry and wants to tear at something. Its eyes fall on Pollyanna, playing quietly on the floor. Her father thinks of things that might hurt her. He is not a smart or well-read man and his imagination is feeble. All he notes is her sex, but that is sufficient for the monster's needs. Pollyanna's father calls Pollyanna a whore, a whore's pup, a bitch. She doesn't know what most of these words mean but she knows about puppies. They are nice. So why is daddy so angry?

He tells her that she is useless, a burden, that all women are useless burdens. He kicks her. When she cries, he yells at her for being a shivering heap of jelly. Pollyanna doesn't know what to do, how to behave. She hides in a dark closet; her insides all locking up like so many dark closets, each containing a word or two, an expression of hatred on a man's face, saliva shooting from an angry mouth. She hides, waiting, growing thick shells everywhere. She thinks of something else: how the spider feeds herself, how the wind blows through her web. She hides like a small animal, waiting patiently for the predator to leave.

The predator doesn't leave, of course. The predator in this case owns the prey, it even owns the prey's love. Pollyanna's father is not a bad man, truly, only obsessed by his own monster. He even feels slightly nauseous after his outburst, but comforts himself by thinking how much he had benefited from a harsh upbringing. One day, he thinks, she'll thank me for this.

--------

None of this is credible. Monsters can't be explained, can't be made credible. They are human. Maybe it matters that Pollyanna's father was sent to wage war at sixteen, that a grenade falling next to him turned his best and only friend into spaghetti sauce all over him, that he couldn't wash it off for hours. Maybe it matters that his mother had a child every year and rejected this one in her exhaustion, that his father was also a monster. Then again, maybe none of this matters. All this is human.

--------

Pollyanna dreams that night. She dreams of killing her father with an axe; splitting him into two identical halves. She dreams that each of these halves splits again and again until the world is full of monster fathers. She wakes up and vomits. She knows about murderers going to hell and about the necessity to love the father. She now knows that she is wholly evil. The baby monster inside her sighs contentedly, sucking its thumb. A potentially perilous moment has been successfully turned into another step on the road to full monsterhood.



--------

Creating monsters takes delicate handling. It is important not to go too far too soon; this kills the victim. It is important to give her lulls from torture, time to gather hope and other interests, because these, at the right moment, are the substance from which the next layer of the monster will be built through careful destruction. One opens the door to the victim's cage, one turns away, whistling with apparent unconcern, one waits. When the victim finally believes her eyes and gathers enough courage to try to step outside, one slams the door on some fragile bone in her body. Simple.

But Pollyanna's father is not inhabited by a great strategist. Sometimes they forget about her for weeks, even months, while enjoying other escapades. This means that her monster is growing slowly; it might end up a puny puff of evil air. And her mother, weak as she is, still offers some resistance to the plan. So do her few friends, her books, and, later, some teachers. There is cause for some discomfort.

Still, most people won't stand in the way of the father's rights to his daughter. What helps even more is the nature of the barbs Pollyanna's father and his monster are inserting in her center: they are dipped in misogyny and Pollyanna doesn't have enough closets or shells for all of them. They will fester nicely, and once she is beyond her father's control there will be enough others who take over the task of feeding her monster. It will, after all, grow up healthy and powerful.


--------

What will they become, Pollyanna and her monster, when they are grown up? The possibilities are fascinating. Sometimes the shells the victim has built are so strong that the monster can't get out. It will then corrode the victim from the inside, slowly eating her up, tidbit by tidbit, until all that remains is an empty husk, like the ones bumblebees leave in the fall. These husks act quite normally, and have many good uses. But they are not perfected monsters, and we know that Pollyanna will reach perfection.

She could become a walking weapon, with breasts like hand grenades, a toothed vagina, a forked tongue. She could lure men into her bed and their deaths, or into madness, castration, womanliness. This would be too easy. Pollyanna's talents and promise are far greater.

Perhaps she'll take her poisoned barbs and use them against other little girls. Perhaps she'll wear austere, expensive suits and give measured speeches defending the sanctity of family, the primacy of parental rights. Perhaps she'll do research that proves little girls everywhere to be temptresses, seductresses, sirens; that proves they lack human worth. She'll tell us, in a bracing voice, that misogyny is but part of a healthy sexual instinct. She and her monster will take CEOs and politicians to their cold bed, choked in platinum chains, and orgasm, together, when the pain is almost unbearable.

She might reach even higher, for the stars. Think of our little Pollyanna leading her own army, her own country, with weapons we can only imagine today. Think of queen Pollyanna, with lips the color of dried blood, with long, raking nails, with garlands of human bones around her brow. Think of this. Why not? Many monsters end up on top. Pollyanna is smart and she will be well trained. Her father might, one day, indeed look at her with pride, hardly believing that he helped to create this exquisite creature.

--------

All this is still in the future. Right now Pollyanna is under her bed, not breathing very much, not moving at all, sucking the ear of her worn-out stuffed rabbit. She strains her ears to listen for his steps, falling heavily in the room, to listen for his breath getting angrier and angrier. She tries to be elsewhere, by the brook, watching yellow leaves floating on the water's surface, seeing them as boats with white sails, sailing somewhere far away. She tries, but it is so hard. Will he find her? Are the footsteps getting closer? She hurts all over, the doors of her inner closets bang open and shut in the wind, the boats sink, each in a little whirlpool. Are the footsteps getting closer?

They are.

How Life Imitates Life

This is my pondering piece for the weekend. I can do it without any research, so it's pure pleasure to write. This week's topic is on life imitating life, which is much deeper than you might think. It's a pun on life imitating art which is a pun on the reverse and so on, but it's also my feeble way to make the point that sometimes our little private circles reflect the big circles in which we are all just a bunch of caged hamsters.

For example, I have read today about the beheading of an American civilian in Saudi Arabia, and I have felt disgusted and so very sad for the family of the poor man who just happened to become a symbol of something in the hands of some people who no longer deserve being called people. The sadness isn't just about this one victim and those who suffer and suffered with him, but about the way the world seems to be changing: towards something coarser, more stupid, more elemental. I can't help comparing this all to the last days of Rome or the total outlawlessness of the early medieval period in Europe, and I feel like weeping and tearing my hair and scattering ashes on my sackcloth.

Instead of all that (which would be so unproductive), I am going to tell you about something that happened to me several years ago. I went out one night to walk the dog. It was pretty early, and I was slowly walking down a busy shopping street, looking at the goods in the shop windows, stopping to buy an ice-cream cone and sharing it with the dog and so on. Then I got an idea for a theory about something, and went into the private state one does when developing a new theory. The world went on at the same time, and what I didn't realize was that I was walking straight into a gang war. One gang was chasing a member with the other gang, and the chasers all had knives in their hands.

All the other pedestrians scattered away, of course, except for one very stupid goddess and her much smarter dog who was trying to get away, desperately. Some good soul pushed me into the entranceway of a restaurant, to protect me, presumably, but the poor guy that was being chased had had the same idea of this doorway being a sanctuary. So there we stood, side by side, squashed against the door which opened outwards, and all the chasers with bared knives were running towards us.

This is when I woke up and let the dog go. But I couldn't get myself out of there, and could just watch when the assailants reached us. For some happy reason the first one to reach us decided not to use his knife. Instead, he grabbed one of the steel chairs from the restaurant's outdoor section and tried to hit the member of the opposite gang with it. He hit me on the head instead.

I survived, of course, as goddessed cannot be killed. But I suspect that my head has never been the same. The dog also survived and wasn't even hit on the head, and neither was the gang member. This gang war had only one real casualty, and she had nothing to do with the war itself, except for the fact of having stepped into the same configuration of circles.

This is how I often feel about terrorism, the war against terrorism and the war in Iraq. The casualties are people who were thinking about something else, eating ice-cream or walking their dogs. That's one of the reasons why I don't write about these events very much, except to plead that they be stopped. Though of course I know that I am an intended participant in these wars, and that the terrorists for example have definite designs on how I should live (barely, and totally invisibly), but nobody ever really asked my opinions on how any of this should be run and most of the time I feel like a rabbit in the middle of the road, frozen in the headlights of all those cars and not knowing where safety is.

Today's Conservative Quote

From Bill O'Reilly, the conservative talk show host:

... Bill O'Reilly told listeners that he has "no respect for" the Iraqi people; that he thinks "they're a prehistoric group"; that they are "primitive"; and that the lesson from the Iraq war is that "we cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them."

Put that in you pipe and smoke it. Or if you're not quite so prehistoric, maybe this could be used as today's mantra by those who like to meditate on something that just rose from the premieval slime? And I don't mean the Iraqi people.

A Warm Welcome to Tucker Carlson

He's going to be the new conservative pundit on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). The PBS was regarded as the heart and core of liberal brainwashing, so the conservatives have been busy trying to demolish it. No longer, alas. Now the PBS is to be brought into light and harmony by simply infecting it with the same virus: Limbaughus O'Reillitis Malovelensis which already runs rampant in most of the so-called liberal media. Tucker Carlson's show is one of two new conservative shows that will be broadcast from this week onwards. At the same time, Bill Moyer's show NOW, the only show in the whole American media universe which is unabashedly lefty, will be reduced from one hour to thirty minutes! This, my friends, is called balanced and objective broadcasting.

So what's Tucker like? Well, readers of this blog might be interested in his views on women, the other sex, you know. Here's a taste of Tucker's views:

In an April interview in Elle magazine, Carlson stated, "One area of liberal phenomenon I support is female bi-sexuality -- this apparent increased willingness of girls to bring along a friend. That's a pretty good thing." And, in response to a question about which woman he would most like to be, he answered, " Elizabeth Birch[former executive director] of the Human Rights Campaign , because you'd be presiding over an organization of thousands of lesbians, some of them quite good-looking."
In that same interview, Carlson said of women, "They want to be listened to, protected and amused. And they want to be spanked vigorously every once in a while." The following are statements Carlson made on CNN's Crossfire on the subject of feminists and feminism:
You will admit that at least 40 percent of any vote in a Democratic race is humorless feminists. (7/18/02)
The traditional anti-fun feminist point of view is that of course men are bad, and they make women do bad things. (11/20/02)
Who laughs less than feminists? (5/26/04)
To be a feminist, you could cut your hair really short. You have to be really angry about something. (5/21/03)
Carlson falsely claimed that complaints from feminists had prompted Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department to cover with sheets the exposed breasts of The Spirit of Justice, the statue that stands in its Hall of Justice (6/03/02).
Carlson told Elle that his guilty fantasy is Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY): "Every time I see her I think I could, you know, help.... She seems tense."

Clearly, his is a voice that is desperately needed on the PBS, and one for which I, for one, will gladly pay a contribution check every month.
I need to know that I like to be vigorously spanked, as it would never occur to me on my own. Instead, what does occur to me right now is that maybe it is Tucker that needs some vigorous spanking? But of course this whole interview is just a joke, don't you get it? If you don't you are a) a feminist and have too short hair and/or b) you have never heard of the great truth that anything the nutwings say that is insulting to others is just a joke and you have no sense of humor if you didn't laugh from the bottom of your belly.

If you don't want to have Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, on your local PBS station, you can try to complain to the powers that be. This website will get you going.

The Bare Branches

I listened to a rerun of this morning's Connection-show on the local public radio tonight. The topic was the security consequences of China's distorted sex ratio; currently 120 boys are born for every 100 girls, which means that there will be quite a few eternal bachelors (called bare branches) in China (or elsewhere if the Chinese start robbing brides from neighboring countries).

The experts noted that the sex imbalance is a result from the 'traditional desire for sons', combined with China's rigid policy to limit the number of children per families. More recently, increased availability of ultrasound has made it possible for families to abort female fetuses, though female infanticide is still also common. Add to this a new cause for increased loathing of girls: the return of traditional stereotypes of what a good woman is (mother and wife) as opposed to the communist stereotypes (the 'steel' woman who works hard). The traditional stereotypes are bad for girls, because being a mother and a wife is not valued in China as highly as being a good worker or a good farmer, so to be reminded of these women's roles makes girl babies look like worse investments (after all, they will be mothers and wives in some other family).

What was interesting about the program to me was the instrumentality with which women and girls are viewed, even in the good ole U.S. of A.
The experts were concerned about the possibility of large male gangs being created, and one expert noted that there were even rumors of polyandrous marriages in some areas: a clear no-no for the Chinese government. To be fair, they also noted that the scarcity of women does not work to the women's advantage (as free marriage markets would make us predict...), but rather the opposite. Women are more likely to be the victims of sexual violence, kidnapping and sale in the rural areas, and those men who still have wives will guard them more closely which reduces women's freedoms.

Still, the problem was largely seen as one of not accommodating these extra men in ways which would 'tame' them. I must admit that I don't want to be a lion tamer, and I don't really think that men want to see themselves as wild beasts in need of taming. The whole conversation reminds me of the consequences of similar sex-selection activities in India, where people now have woken up to the fact that all these sons they have can't find wives.

Of course not every program discussing the lesser valuing of girls and women needs to mention that this is bad not only for those instrumental reasons but also because women and girls are human beings.
But I admit to feeling hurt on behalf of all those girls that were not wanted simply because of their sex. Very hurt.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Via Hullabaloo, this cute comment from Rush Limbaugh:

LIMBAUGH: I remember way, way back in the '80s, at -- at one of the fractious moments when the militant feminists were ruling the roost and defining a lot of the national debate. ... The NAGs would have a press conference. Six NAGs would show up somewhere -- National Association of Gals -- don't misunderstand this, my pet name for the NOW gang. ... The NAGs don't represent the majority of female thought in this country, and they aren't -- they aren't determining who wins elections. White men are. And this is -- I'm not being sexist. This is just pure demographics.

Who taught Rush demographics? Who told him that white men vote in larger numbers than any other population segment? Probably the same person who taught him most of his politics.

And on the NPR today, I heard Rumsfeld defend the treatment of some ultra-important prisoner as 'humane'. How does Rummy define 'humane'?
I really want to know the answer to this question.

News and Commentary

It turns out that churches don't get a safe harbor, after all. The little tacked on piece to the Job Creation Act of 2004 was deleted in the House Means and Ways Committee. It would have reduced the taxes that churches must pay if they inadvertently engage in political campaigning. The deletion of this addendum is very good news for people who want to keep the church and the state separate. For the time being, anyway.

In Africa, AIDS and the traditional legal codes are hitting the widows especially hard. Inheritance traditionally passes in the male line, though women do most of the cultivation of the land. When a man dies of AIDS at a young age, he is unlikely to leave sons old enough to inherit his land which then passes to his brothers. The widow and any young children she has are then at the mercy of those brothers and their willingness to be charitable. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Finally, the United States and local pressure groups have succeeded in inserting provisions in the constitutions or provisional constitutions of both Afghanistan and Iraq which aim for a 25% female representation in the respective parliaments. Maybe it is now time to do something about the domestic situation? The percentage of women in the U.S. Congress is 14%, and the United States ranks 57th among 119 countries in the proportion of women in the lower houses of parliament. This makes me wonder why democracy is seen as being introduced from the United States to these countries.

The problem is at least partially in the two-party system, and the sorts of calculations it provokes in those who decide on the candidates. But there are other things that could be done to make it easier for women who want to run for office. If this was an important issue, that is.

On Heat - As Translated by the Shizzolator

You can compare this to the original version below. I think this one is loads better than the original.

It has been hella hot here today, hot 'n humid, know what I'm sayin'? There should be an equivalent expression that one we use 'bout da sort of cold that doesn't seem that bad when yo' ass go out, but which lodges in yo' hella bones 'n sends shivers out fo' hours afterwards: bone-chilling cold." Nothing can get yo' ass warm then, nothing n' shit. Fo' Real cold doesn't act that sneakily, that shiznit either freezes 'n kills yo' ass outright or not at izzall, know what I'm sayin'? It's da bone-chilling damp cold that does real damage, know what I'm sayin'?

What I has experienced today is bone-boiling heat 'n humidity." I didn't feel that hot outside; I even spent an hour in da garden." But I has been suffering ever since from deep internal simmering 'n boiling, 'n cold showers do nothing stop that shiznit." My skin is bomb diggity touch, but my eyes look like they are turning into marbles, 'n when I breathe out yo' ass can see flames, know what I'm sayin'? Well, yo' ass can imagine flames." As I'm not related dragons, as far as I know, this state is not a natural one n' shit.

This is probably why we be like that animals are in heat when they suffer in da throes of severe sexual frustration n' shit. It gots feel like this: a burning yo' ass can't slake, a boiling that will slowly turn yo' ass into cinders n' shit. Poor things."

I can now sympathize wit some other phrases, too, like 'in da heat of da battle', know what I'm sayin'? It's not 'bout sweating because of lifting a heavy sword 'bout as I used think; that shiznit's 'bout this deep heat which makes yo' ass want crack something open n' shit. But I will never again want be called a hottie; never, know what I'm sayin'?

On Heat

It has been very hot here today, hot and humid. There should be an equivalent expression to that one we use about the sort of cold that doesn't seem that bad when you go out, but which lodges in your very bones and sends shivers out for hours afterwards: bone-chilling cold. Nothing can get you warm then, nothing. Real cold doesn't act that sneakily, it either freezes and kills you outright or not at all. It's the bone-chilling damp cold that does real damage.

What I have experienced today is bone-boiling heat and humidity. I didn't feel that hot outside; I even spent an hour in the garden. But I have been suffering ever since from deep internal simmering and boiling, and cold showers do nothing to stop it. My skin is cool to touch, but my eyes look like they are turning into marbles, and when I breathe out you can see flames. Well, you can imagine flames. As I'm not related to dragons, as far as I know, this state is not a natural one.

This is probably why we say that animals are in heat when they suffer in the throes of severe sexual frustration. It must feel like this: a burning you can't slake, a boiling that will slowly turn you into cinders. Poor things.

I can now sympathize with some other phrases, too, like 'in the heat of the battle'. It's not about sweating because of lifting a heavy sword about as I used to think; it's about this deep heat which makes you want to crack something open. But I will never again want to be called a hottie; never.

Should Saudi Women Drive?

Sixty academics, journalists and writers, half of them women, gathered in Saudi Arabia last weekend to discuss women's rights, roles and education. Among the topics was the question whether women could be given the right to drive cars again and whether they could serve on the Saudi king's governing bodies. The meeting received publicity within Saudi Arabia:

According to the Christian Science Monitor, women's issues (such as the high unemployment rate for women and the current divorce laws favor men) were major themes that were debated in several Saudi television programs, newspapers, and radio shows leading up to the three-day conference. The Saudi television anchor and consultant for the Human Rights Commission, Rania al-Baz, said that need address social issues. "The reason more women don't complain about physical abuse by their husbands is social conditioning. We're not taught to speak out and ask for our rights. We need to change the way we view ourselves and our lives. We need to change from the inside out," she said, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Similar questions are being raised in other Gulf countries, both because of external and internal pressure:

Before 1999, women did not have the right to vote in any of the six Gulf Cooperation Council members. In two of these states--Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates--neither men nor women can vote, so it was never a gender issue. (In Saudi Arabia, citizens air grievances in palace assemblies and the rulers of the seven emirates set policy in the United Arab Emirates.) But in the past five years women have broken voting barriers in the other countries. They have voted and run for office in Qatar, Oman and Bahrain. Now, Kuwait's parliament faces a vote on a bill conferring voting rights on female citizens.

Of course, Kuwait has had such votes before, and so far has not agreed to female suffrage. But in Bahrain, where women gained the vote in 2001, more women than men voted in the next municipal elections, and last April Bahrain appointed its first female minister ever, Dr. Nada Abbas Haffadh, to run the health ministry. Maybe change is in the air?

It's fascinating to note that despite the traditions and laws that affect women's opportunities in the Gulf countries the vast majority of university students in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates are female. In Qatar, for example, over seventy percent of university students are women.

This naturally casts considerable doubt on the right-wing U.S. argument that the (relative) lack of male students in American universities is somehow linked to an imaginary feminist plot not to pay attention to boys' needs. If countries where boys' needs definitely take first place face the same distributional patterns it seems pretty clear that the cause is not in feminism, even in its imaginary forms. Just wanted to mention that again.

I also want to mention that during the First Gulf War an ex-colleague of mine started advocating a ban on female drivers in the United States. He thought that it was very funny, though perhaps a little less so after I provided him with a few decades worth of reading on the actual accident rates by sex of the driver, adjusted for miles driven. Sigh. Some people just don't have any sense of humor.

Sun Myung Moon, the Washington Times and the Dirksen Senate Office Building

Sounds like the beginning of a story about the three little pigs, and in a way it is. Sun Muyng Moon is an eighty-four year old Korean billionaire, also known as the "True Father" of the Unification Church which has a most interesting religious dogma. The Washington Times is an ultra-conservative newspaper in Washington D.C., one which loses money every year. The Dirksen Senate Office Building is where Reverend Moon was crowned as the new Messiah in the presence of several ambassadors, U.S. senators and other politicians.

It's not for me to decide whether Reverend Moon is the new Messiah, but it's interesting that this coronation took place in the premises owned by the American people, and it's also interesting that such coronations are banned by Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution. All this is gleaned from the excellent research of John Gorenfeld whose blog is also listed in my links. John dedicates the whole blog to Reverend Moon which is necessary, considering that the mainstream media spends most of its time studying another billionaire who might also be sticking his nose into U.S. politics, George Soros. The reason why Soros is an important topic for the media and Moon is not has to do with the kind of politics they back: Moon is an extreme conservative whereas Soros is a liberal. Got it? Good.

Moon is the major financial backer of the Washington Times, the most hilarious source of a wingnut news in this country. The Times keeps on losing money, but that is not a problem as Moon has invested one billion dollars in its success. He is also major financier of other right wing causes. This probably means that Moon has friends in high places.

Some of them might find Moon's religious beliefs a little bit embarrassing. Not only does Moon argue that Jesus, Confucius, the Buddha and Muhammad have endorsed him, but he has even converted Hitler and Stalin to his cause. He calls homosexuals 'dung-eating dogs', and finds the salvation of the world to be in the strict enforcement of marriage a la Moon: Couples are paired off by Reverend Moon himself, then married on bulk ceremonies. Male dominance is to be honored within the marriage, and each person who is married is said to receive a holy handkerchief from the Reverend which is to be used to wipe the body before the first three sex acts of the couple.

Moon doesn't like the United States very much as it stands, of course. He's called it "the Satan's harvest", and he wants the separation between the church and the state to be removed so that the current system can be replaced by a sort of Moonland where he rules with his wife, "The True Mother" (the third of these, actually). Not that she'd rule very much of anything, of course, as Reverend Moon has a problem with sex which he assumes only exists in the shape of women.

Women are the cause of the original downfall of humanity in the mythical garden of Eden, according to Moon, who believes that Eve didn't just bite the apple but instead had a bit of hot sex with Satan himself. So now we all come from Satan's lineage. (Interesting. I wonder what he'd say about a goddess with a snake's tail. Not that I ever met someone called Satan in the upper spheres. I suspect that he's a Christian invention.)

Here's a snippet of Moon's thoughts about women. Ironically, they sort of link to some of my recent posts, which makes me very worried:

SUN MYUNG MOON
FOLLOWING THE COSMIC TRUE LOVE WAY
May 5, 1996 Belvedere -- Int. Training Center
Translator -- Peter Kim
"In order to have a relationship with your husband you have to be married. Women who refuse to marry will be condemned to death. If you were to survive, the universe would eliminate you. This is the truth. In that sense, following Father's teaching this morning, can we find a true original woman in the American secular world? (No.) Is there even one single woman who qualifies to meet Father's criteria? Does a woman with small hips have a good chance of bearing many babies? Do you American women prefer large, fully developed hips, or small, nice looking hips. Do you women prefer to have a slim body or a fat, well developed body? This question has something to do with our ability to bear children. Logically speaking, if any woman has small hips she is supposed to have small breasts as well. But usually it is the other way around. Even though women have small hips they have large, fully developed breasts. This means they are unbalanced. Whatever is unbalanced will eventually be eliminated by the universe."

But the conservatives don't seem too worried to have a friend like Reverend Moon funding many of their activities and getting coronated on government property. This is because Moon is an open secret in the media, one that is tacitly agreed to be below the radar of all respectable pundits who are anyway far too busy at studying Soros to check all this stuff out. Lucky for us that John Gorenfeld has taken the time instead.


Original inspiration via Atrios.

A Reminder from Mother Nature

That she's still all we have to live on, and that we are messing with her at our expense:

Climate change is already occurring and immediate steps are needed to both slow it down and adapt to the changes that will occur anyway, scientists said Tuesday.
There is no question there will be effects from climate change, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution of Washington said at a briefing at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"We are already seeing impacts, the question is, at what level will we decide it is a problem," Field said.
William Easterling of Pennsylvania State University said: "The time to act is now." He spoke at a separate briefing held by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
Climate change, specifically warming, has become a growing concern for many scientists, who worry that industrial exhaust and other gases in the atmosphere are raising temperatures and will damage crops and human health, raise the sea level and cause other problems.
They cite records showing an average worldwide temperature increase of about 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.
Some scientists disagree, however, saying the computer models that forecast climate changes are not yet accurate enough to be used as a basis for policy changes.
The climate models aren't good enough to say exactly how global warming is going to come out, but "they are good enough to tell us we should be doing something." Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University said at the AAAS briefing.

The polar ice cap will continue melting and the sea levels will rise. Low-lying areas along coast lines will disappear into the ocean, species of animals and plants will die. How fast this will happen and how much worse it will get depends on the humans. It also depends on the stubborn know-nothing policies of the Bush administration and on our incredible love affair with fossile fuels, with new addicts being created every day in India and China.

But the effects of these warnings will be nil. People will just turn to the other side and continue snoring. It's much more pleasant that way, don't you think? To dream about a bigger house and a SUV and a world with nary one regulatory constraint on the free markets.

Mother Nature doesn't mind really. She (why she?) will just redesign her surface levels to be more accommodating to the general well-being of all. If that means discarding humans as a failed experiment, well, her horizon is long enought to accommodate a few disasters.

Something Happier

I was in a very bad mood today, kicking the snakes if they didn't slither away fast enough, and otherwise causing havoc wherever I went.
Also, I made a crappy post, which should have made me feel better but didn't.

The only thing that really works to bring my temperature down in a safe way is meditation, preferably while moving. Bagua is my new favorite method of practising. Besides, it will make me capable of fighting eight enemies at the same time, a very useful skill for any minor goddess.

Meditation is like unhooking the world's pesky teeth one at a time. Sometimes it's easier than other times, but it's never very easy for me, partly because I've got my teeth deep in the world also, and I have to disentangle those, too. But the relief that comes from letting go is wonderful. Suddenly I notice what a lovely evening it is, how the wind feels on my skin and how the green in the trees has already grown stronger and more serious. Summer is coming.

Meditation works, but I'm not sure why it does so. Is it just letting your brain idle for a while that makes more space for new feelings and thoughts? Or is it something to do with our nervous system and it's ability to rejuvenate when it is not being overloaded with all the usual junk? Or just refusing to think certain thoughts for some time?

Other things work, too. A really good fight can be wonderful, but I can seldom find anyone who is willing to duke it out. I know, I know, fighting is not nice, and neither is annoying people which also tends to make me more cheerful. So I'm a good little goddess and practise my meditation instead.

News, Damn It! And none of them about Iraq!

I'm a very angry goddess today, for reasons unrelated to this blog. Let's see if I can hold my viper tongue.

Anyway, re my previous post: American women who have undergone breast augmentation and other cosmetic surgery in the Dominican Republic may have brought home more than a prettier-looking body, including a few nasty bugs:

The CDC said that it has yet to establish the source of the infection but that previous outbreaks in other places have been attributed to contaminated surgical equipment.

Elsewhere, the Supremos are singing a different song. Remember all that 'state rights' emphasis we have been hearing in recent recordings? Well, the state has rights, but not about taxes:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal courts can hear constitutional challenges to state taxes, a decision that could leave tax credits in nearly every state vulnerable to federal court challenges.
Justices said such lawsuits are permitted despite a 1937 law that says federal courts may not interfere with the "assessment, levy or collection" of state taxes. The 5-4 decision was a defeat for Arizona and its tax break that helps fund private religious schools.
The case arose from income tax credits given to Arizona residents for donating money for private school education. Those contributions fund grants and scholarships and are part of a state effort to give parents more choices in educating their children.
A group of Arizona taxpayers sued the state in federal court, arguing that the tax credits are an unconstitutional promotion of religion.

I like this decision, of course. But I wonder why the change now? Of course, it's probably just a last hurrah by the waning liberal wing of the judges, the ones that will be put out to pasture come November. Anyway, as expected, our boys in brown (Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas) were all strongly opposed to this decision.

And now to something serious: international trafficking in humans. Our beloved Colin Powell has spoken out against this issue. It takes a lot of courage in a politician to speak against trafficking, of course, but never mind. He does have a point:

Khan was 11-years old when she was kidnapped from her home in the hill country of Laos.
She was taken to an embroidery factory in Thailand. She and dozens of other children were made to work 14 hours a day for food and clothing. They received no wages.
"It's called slavery," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday in recounting Khan's fate as he released the State Department's annual report on human trafficking. He said the practice affects 600,000 to 800,000 persons each year.
"We're talking about women and girls as young as 6 years old trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation, men trafficked into forced labor, children trafficked as child soldiers," Powell said.

The current cure for this problem seems to be to punish the violating countries by using economic incentives. I wonder if that extends to punishing those rich countries which are also the recipients of many of those trafficked, you know, the U.S., the Western European countries and so on? Let's check:

On this year's list of offenders are Bangladesh, Burma, Cuba, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, North Korea, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Venezuela.

Hmm. No.

Finally, and in a more light-hearted mode, the official portrait of president Clinton was unveiled in the White House today. And George Bush gave a speech which expressed his great admiration of the Clintons. No, I'm not making this up:

With old political grudges left unmentioned, former President Clinton returned to the White House for the first time Monday and listened with delight as President Bush praised him for his knowledge, compassion and "the forward-looking spirit that Americans like in a president."
The occasion was the unveiling of the official portraits of Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Hundreds of former Clinton administration officials, from Cabinet secretaries to low-ranking aides, filled the East Room and applauded Bush's warm testimonials. His remarks were a sharp contrast with his promise four years ago "to restore honor and dignity" to the White House after Clinton and the sex scandal that led to his impeachment.
Facing re-election and trying to reach across party lines for support, Bush went out of his way to be gracious to both the former president and his wife, a favorite target of conservatives who fear she will run for president. Bush even offered a plug for Clinton's biography, being published next week. Pausing in his description of Clinton, Bush said, "I can tell you more of the story, but it's coming out in fine bookstores all over America."
Terry McAuliffe, the highly partisan chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told reporters, "Today is a bipartisan day here at the White House. Everyone loves everyone equally here today."

Gag me with a spoon.

On Breast Augmentation

Are your breasts big enough? I bet that you have never spared this a thought if you're a man, while if you're a woman you have certainly considered the likely answer to this question. What if the likely answer is that they are not big enough? Big enough for what, exactly? What do the breasts have to perform that would require a large size? Well, we all know the answer, and it has nothing to do with breastfeeding or with lifting weights with your mammary glands. It has even nothing to do with not being out of balance packwards or any other smart-alecky explanations I can think of. It's all in the eye of the beholder. If the beholder is a man, or, as I am going to argue, if the beholder is a male American*.

Science is wonderful. It has even come to the aid of those women who prefer larger breasts than nature's designs allowed. The operation is called breast augmentation, and it involves cutting the breast tissue open and stuffing it with bags of silicone or bags made out of silicone but filled with a saline solution. Then the breast is sewed up again and presto, you're a cup C or D now! Except that you aren't, not really.

Many women who choose breast augmentation do it for very good medical reasons. They may want to have their breasts reconstructed after surgery, for example. But many others have breast augmentation on perfectly healthy breasts. The medical problem they suffer from is that the society tells them their smaller-than-average breasts are not acceptable.

In fact, what is now becoming perfectly acceptable is to fix this size problem with surgery, even for girls under the age of eighteen whose breasts may not have actually stopped developing. Bigger breasts is a fashion item, something that would make a nice high school or college graduation present, and if mum and dad won't pay for them, well, there's always loans:

"When I graduated high school in 1990, the big thing was nose jobs," said Jo Trizila, director of media relations for the Greater Dallas Chamber. Now, 8 of her 10 friends have implants. Those who couldn't afford them took out a loan.

But getting breast implants is not like buying a new color of lipstick or eye shadow. Breast augmentation means surgery, anesthesia and recovery from surgery. All the usual risk factors of surgery and anesthesia apply. Add to this the possible side effects from having foreign material in your body, and the fact that no breast augmentation is for ever: practically every single patient will have to undergo more surgery later on in life:

Whether you are undergoing augmentation or reconstruction, be aware that breast implants are not considered lifetime devices and that breast implantation may not be a one-time surgery. You are likely to need additional surgery(ies) and doctor visits over the course of your life. You are also likely to have surgery to remove the implant with or without replacement sometime over the course of your life.
Many of the changes to your breast following implantation are irreversible (cannot be undone). If you later choose to have your implant(s) removed, you may experience unacceptable dimpling, puckering, wrinkling, loss of breast tissue, or other cosmetic changes of the breast.
Breast implants may affect your ability to breast feed. Also, breast implants will not prevent your breast from sagging after pregnancy.
With breast implants, routine screening mammography will be more difficult, and you will need to have additional views, which means more time and radiation.
Breast implant surgery and/or treatment of complications may not be covered by your health insurance. You should check with your insurance company regarding these coverage issues because, for some women, health insurance premiums may increase, coverage may be dropped, and/or future coverage may be denied.

The average cost of breast augmentation is 7,000 dollars in the United States. That would buy a lot of padded bras, and the amount is just for the first operation. Then there are all the possible things that might go wrong with breast implants: capsule contracture, capsule deflation/rupture/leakage, infection, hematoma/seroma, extrusion, necrosis and so on. While none of these effects occur in an extremely large number of cases, there is some cause for concern if breast implants are viewed as an innocent fashion item rather as a medical option with all sorts of nasty risk factors.

Now I'm beginning to sound schoolmarmish and prudish. But I hate to think of people unnecessarily exposing their bodies to all that cutting and drugging. There's plenty of opportunity for all that later on when the bodies get old. And I do think that the reason for much of breast augmentation is an unnecessary one: there is nothing medically wrong with smaller breasts; they might even be less prone to breast cancer than larger ones. But I'm not telling anybody not to undergo this surgery if they wish to. It's not my breasts that are being cut, and I can't know how someone must feel to voluntarily undergo such cutting. I just think that the culture could focus on something else than the female breast as a sexual marker for a while. Give us some breathing room, if you like.

This culture is largely the Western one. The Breast isn't that important in some other cultures. The Japanese traditionally found the nape of the neck in women the part that aroused men's sexual instincts, the Africans and Caribbeans tend to focus on the buttocks. Even in the Elizabethan England bare breasts provoked very little comment, as it was women's thighs which made men's hearts beat faster. And I can tell from my own multi-continent experiences that it is the American men especially who are mesmerized by the Breast, preferably a largish one.

That the focus on mammary glands as a sexual marker is so culture-bound is important to stress, as some wingnuts argue that breast augmentation is a natural evolutionary strategy for women to compete against each other in the search for the Best Sperm. This would make it unfair competition, by the way, but that's not the point of their argument. Rather, they imply that the yearning for better and bigger breasts is biological and therefore Just The Way Things Are. They are mistaken, as I so aptly point out in the preceding paragraph. The Breast is not somehow the naturally designated measure of a woman's sexual desirability; we have made it so in this particular culture.

What's worrying, too, is that fashions about breasts could change. Maybe suddenly breasts aren't the IT thing anymore, and then all the women who spent money on better breasts are no better off than they were initially. Of course, the culture would then tell women to carve out their thighs or to round out their noses or something, so a change in the fashions isn't a real answer. I don't know what the real answer would be. But it would help if we realized that this fixation on the Breast is a cultural one, and that there is much more to the sexiness of the body. It would also help if we all agreed that the breasts belong to the woman to whom they are attached, not to the advertizers or the movie industry or the pornographic industry or the FCC. But that's probably too much to hope for.


--------------------------------
*I'm aware that many men are not fixated on large breasts, and I apologize for using the generalization device in this post. The reason is purely stylistic, as you will see if you try to amend the offending sentences.

Fluff

This post is fluff if written by female bloggers (or goddesses) and it disqualifies the blog from being regarded as a Serious Political Blog. That's why I have to include it every once and a while. I shiver at the idea of Serious Political Blogging. Or Serious Anything, really. We all take ourselves far too seriously.

I just got up after having slept sixteen hours nonstop. Didn't even get into my pyjamas before I conked out. Why? It had something to do with lots of nectar and the world's largest chocolate ice cream cake with hot fudge sauce and whipped cream all over it. I used the whipped cream to write haikus on the tabletop about the pleasures of chocolate ice cream, and someone else ate the haikus. That's really awful, and I was so shocked that I had to go to bed.

The day had started badly enough. I slammed the phone down on someone who wanted me to write ten letters on behalf of leukemia sufferers and then to distribute them in my neighborhood so that for weeks afterwards people would run away when they see me coming. And then the self-recriminations started: How could I slam the phone down on all those suffering people? What sort of a monster am I? (Well, I know that one, but you know the idea behind the guilt.) Will I now get leukemia as a punishment?

This was so horrible that any counterargument from my Better Self (like the fact that I have already done this thing and know the consequences and that the majority of my so-called disposable income already goes to charity and that nine out of ten phone calls I get are like that one, and I always say yes) were drowned out. I was too upset to even do the laundry or the vacuuming, and the hours to nectar time seemed far too long. And then I started feeling guilty about not doing the laundry and the vacuuming just because I was upset and so it went on and on.

But of course this isn't about politics or sociology, no. The begging calls and letters are totally unrelated to the fact that we won't have the government support medical research and the poor adequately. And my guilt has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I have been carefully brought up to think that good women are charitable and kind and just love doing laundry and vacuuming and saving all the children in the world. Even when their compassion well is running dry and all they can dream about is chocolate ice cream. Even then it's just about some idiotic personal drivel fluff about some things that everybody faces bravely and courageously on their own and never utters to anybody else. Now, something about John Kerry and his motorbike, that would be real blog politics!