Return of the Chris Christie

I know I already posted about Chris Christie.  So even though I think two posts is over the top, I was grateful to this article for affirming pretty much everything that I want to say:

"Unfortunately for fat people, skinny people who don’t eat their veggies don’t carry around evidence of their moral failings; no matter what a fat person does, they’re fat, and because we have accepted “fat” as a substitute for “unhealthy,” there are plenty of reasonably healthy fat people who are derided for destroying their health.The societal equation of fat with unhealthy does not square with reality. That doesn’t mean that fat people are all healthy, of course, any more than all skinny people are. Still, it’s a perception rooted far more strongly in what “everyone knows” than what science shows us."

gay, smoking, fat

Whew, happy hurricane aftermath.  Is everyone okay?  I'm happy to report that I did not lose power, and in fact spent my Monday watching almost the entire second season of this glorious show:



RuPaul's Drag Race!  The most perfect application of the reality tv format that this world has ever seen.  And besides all the (staged) backstage fights, absurd challenges, and just incredible camp, I love that Logo, the (queer) channel that hosts the show, features moments of the queens talking about their experiences being gay and how doing drag has helped them after rough childhoods.

While I had that thought stewing in the back of my brain, I spent a lot of time today browsing Dave Eggers and Jordan Kurland's site, 90 Days, 90 Reasons, where 90 different writers and performing artists have written short essays on why they are voting for Barack Obama.  I came across Lemony Snicket's essay, which features jaw-dropping quotes from GOP politicians, including this one:

I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk.

We can credit Mike Huckabee with this quote.  He said it in 1992, an important year in the AIDS epidemic, when many, less extreme people shared this same belief.  It made me think about changing public perceptions of fatness: on one end of the spectrum we have fat advocates who equate fat hatred with the passe belief that homosexuality was an immoral choice/ communicable disease; and on the other, fatness is like smoking; a bad choice for your health that we should shame and legislate around as much as possible.

Ah, obesity, the next great public health disaster.  Are fat people just "born that way"?  Or are they a product of some giant obesity lobby?  By the way, there is no such thing.

If you read Huckabee's quote out loud and change the word "homosexuality" to "obesity", does it feel natural for you to say?

The most problematic part of this comparison, and Mike Huckabee's wording, is that the idea of fatness is that it's "sinful" - morally reprehensible.  (Uh, it's not.  Prepare for a post on that soon.)  And that it's contagious.  (That is also untrue.)

So yes, as you can imagine, I fall into the camp that wants to push the stigmatization of fat people where it belongs, in the past, with the unfair stigmatization of homosexuality.  Which I believe is not incompatible with a productive dialogue about health that includes every one, regardless of sex, size, or income level.

Okay.  Looking on the other end of the spectrum, we have condescending reactionaries who write garbage articles like this one and think they are so clever.  The beginning of the article actually sounds like a satire, or a critique of the many ways in which we already shame fat people, but by golly the man is serious.  It stresses me out to think that this writer represents the epitome of what we're up against; a complete ignorance of what fatness is/means, an unwillingness to accept that shame is not an effective motivator and a handful of crude fat jokes.

We've already tried shame.  It doesn't work.

Getting angry . . . for the wrong reasons

thank you abcnews.go.com

The RNC came and went in a flash of lightning, didn't it?  I've just spent the last twelve hours or so procrastinating instead of unpacking and catching up.  First, there was that hurricane, then Ann Romney and Chris Christie talked about how much the GOP totally loves women, then Clint Eastwood totally upstaged Mitt Romney (which was probably the point, now that I think about it).

Of course, the national conventions do nothing if to further polarize Democrats and Republicans.  The POINT is that they are unabashedly partisan and utterly lacking in a substantive political conversation.

And of course, there has been quite an uproar from my news feed, which I imagine as a single, many-headed entity that breathes fire at even the most innocuously-stated right-wing politics.  Unfortunately, social media is not structured to generate brilliant political dialogues.  There's only so much you can say in 140 characters, and with as many people reading it as possible, it had better be snappy and/or funny. And by now, I expect most people are browsing with the awesome/evil Google Chrome, trying to show me as many things that I like as possible.

Look, I can't point my finger at the naysayers, as I have definitely been guilty of taking cheap shots.  Sometimes, it's so satisfying.  And it's easy.

But it's important not to channel that anger into your pithy, brilliant tweet with the widest possible appeal.

Guys, STOP being angry at Chris Christie for being fat.  We ALREADY KNOW that he is fat.

credit jerseynut.blogspot.com

I should note that as far as today's GOP goes, Christie is a moderate.  He supports civil unions and believes that non-violent drug users should be sent to therapy rather than jail.  He has created some incentives to support local manufacturing  of sustainable energy.

Instead, maybe you'll be angry for his propaganda-style portrait of the current administration's policies at his RNC speech.  For at his relentless attacks on unions.  Or joining the rhetoric on "American exceptionalism" and for spewing misleading information about New Jersey's budget.

Exercise your democratic rights and educate yourself.  You're going to vote for Barack Obama, but what don't you like about him?  Where doesn't he go far enough?

It's hard.  Not every one can know everything about everything.  And you don't have to.

But if you scoff at the RNC because Clint Eastwood performed a shtick with a chair and Chris Christie is fat, and therefore scary/ lazy/ a bad example/ any other uninformed conclusion, you clearly know nothing.

the woman's role

I was just talking to my friend Sonia Oram, the highly talented and compassionate brain behind qwear.  (Qwear is an inclusive queer style blog, loaded not only with tips about dressing to express your gender identity but also empowering messages about being yourself, resources for self-harm, and other things.  Check it out!)

Anyway, it was one of those conversations that made me go

We were talking about obscure comments some Missouri GOP Senate hopeful made, something along the lines of "legitimate rape" and "doctors" and women's bodies producing scientific chemicals that block rape sperm if the rape was truly forcible enough to satisfy the far-right's hopelessly narrow definition of rape.

We speculated, what if men were the ones who got pregnant and had to make the choice about getting abortions?

But, of course, that world is impossible to conceive because it turns this world on its head.  We realized that, at the crux of every anti-woman inequality, is the notion that assumes that a woman's primary role is to maximize her sexual and reproductive fitness.

Or, as we put it, almost EVERY inequality stemming from patriarchy is a direct function of women being able to have babies.

I know that this is a very fundamental idea, and probably the first thing some of you learned in Women's Studies 101.  I've heard this concept expressed in other ways, always yoked to other ideas.  But it really lies at the heart of every major feminist debate.

Size acceptance: (Duh.) Pitting women in competition against each other under the pretense of "winning in order to be the healthiest/most desirable".  Like any good free market competition, to produce the highest number of women that fit the narrow beauty ideal.

The wage gap: because, more than a gap between women and men, it is a gap between mothers and non-mothers.  Fun fact, did you know that over 178 countries, which does not include the US, have guaranteed paid maternity leave for new mothers, 50 offering paid leave for new fathers?

Abortion: the most contentious of these debates.  Todd Akin, along with others (although they do not constitute the GOP majority) hold the convenient belief that we don't even need to talk about abortion in cases of rape because it's not even a possibility.   (BLARGH DO THEY SERIOUSLY BELIEVE THAT!?!?!  whew, ok, we have already beaten this to death.  That was cathartic.  Moving on.)

I will put aside statistics of the clear impact that unwanted births have on national crime rate and high rates of maternal morbidity, and the fact that low-income pregnant women are disproportionately affected by anti-abortion legislation, since wealthier women can (and do!) pay more money, take more time off, and travel further distances to meet that need elsewhere.  I believe the most baffling aspect of the debate are the politicians that trust women to make this big choice for themselves in this one, highly emotional instance, but do not trust them to make that big choice for themselves in other instances besides rape, when they are of sounder mind and judgement.

There is no room for them to accept a woman violating the terms of her pregnancy.

You can read my friend AJC's blog post about it here.

UPDATE: AJC has a fantastic take on Akin's comments.  Do yourself a favor and read her post!  You can find it here.