CA lifts ban on gay marriage

Just got a text message from my friend Michelle, and I wanted to share the big news: it looks like the California Supreme Court has lifted the ban on gay marriage. Regardless of whether you’re a big fan of the institution itself, I think many will agree that at least it says something about the validity of same-sex relationships.

Edited to add: My partner just reminded me that after we had lived in Massachusetts for a couple of years, Mass got gay marriage. After we’ve lived in California for a couple of years, California gets gay marriage. We’re moving to Ohio next - I’ll be sure and keep folks posted on our progress!

VIOLENT LESBIANS VIOLATE CIVIL RIGHTS

… Or so the Youtube video would have us think. I know I’m a little late on the whole “hatemonger Ryan Sorba is thoroughly owned by protesters at Smith College” bit, but I just now found this video, which seems to be the longest one of the protest. And, as a Smithie alum (and a person who is not a big fan of hate speech), I have to say I’m amazingly proud to be a Smithie watching this.

I particularly like the “catholicmilitant’s” description of the “VIOLENT LESBIANS.” I didn’t see any queers being violent, but if you watch on the right side a little more than a minute in, you see some guy manhandling one of the protesters. Who’s the violent one there?

Carol Christ issued a response and it was lackluster as always. She should have applauded the protesters - this guy isn’t bringing any new knowledge to Smith, he’s just there to regurgitate his hateful, homophobic rhetoric. Would she defend the right of Fred Phelps to speak at Smith?

Oh, right. Probably yeah, since she (or at least, the general college administration) hasn’t exactly been on the forefront of defending human rights and student dignity. A good number of tamer Smithies (and “liberals”) have opposed the Smithie action, but I am in awe of the quick and powerful response. I only wish, really, that there’d been such a response a few years ago when I was at Smith and the Republicans invited - no joke - Ann Coulter to speak at Smith. The silent protest, while powerful, was… less effective.

CLEARLY NOT RACIST

Via Karnythia at Feminist: Oh, Clinton. I was never a big fan, and I’ve been decidedly less so since your campaign started and you’ve regularly more or less condoned the racist actions of various supporters and members of the campaign.

But seriously? “These are the people you have to win” in order to get elected? That’s… not… problematic. No, not at all.

Can someone remind me why she even bothered kicking Ferraro out of her campaign in the first place? Clearly, Clinton’s got the racist thing plenty covered on her own.

SDSU in the News

It figures that one of the few times I hear about San Diego State (where I’m currently finishing up my MA) in the news, it’s because 96 students were arrested in a drug bust. I’ve never really been big on “the war on drugs,” but it still makes me wonder what others must think about this place when you see a bunch of frat kids being arrested for peddling cocaine on the news. As far as I know, none of my students are frat boys (or among those arrested… though there were a few folks absent for presentations today…), but it still makes you wonder.

Oh, update: a large portion of them are Criminal Justice or Homeland Security (that’s a field of study?) majors. Classy!

Also, amusing mis-speak of the day: “Also, two female blow-up dolls were found in the White Hou-, White Sox clubhouse.” Oh, CNN.

Students justified in harassing feminist professor

My friend Michelle just forwarded this editorial from the Wall Street Journal to me. Apparently a professor at Dartmouth tried problematizing some things for her students and trying to enlighten them about feminism/ecofeminism, and the response seems to amount to heckling and bullying from the students. The quote, from author Joseph Rago, apparently a Dartmouth alum (Class of ‘05?), pretty much summarizes the blatant sexism and ignorance of the entire piece:

After a winter of discontent, the snapping point came while Ms. Venkatesan was lecturing on “ecofeminism,” which holds, in part, that scientific advancements benefit the patriarchy but leave women out. One student took issue, and reasonably so – actually, empirically so. But “these weren’t thoughtful statements,” Ms. Venkatesan protests. “They were irrational.” The class thought otherwise. Following what she calls the student’s “diatribe,” several of his classmates applauded.

Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was “fascist demagoguery.” Then, after consulting a physician about “intellectual distress,” she cancelled classes for a week. Thus the pending litigation.

Such conduct is hardly representative of the professoriate at Dartmouth, my alma mater. Faculty members tend to be professional. They also tend to be sane.

That said, even at – or especially at – putatively superior schools, students are spoiled for choice when it comes to professors who share ideologies like Ms. Venkatesan’s. The main result is to make coursework pathetically easy. Like filling in a Mad Libs, just patch something together about “interrogating heteronormativity,” or whatever, and wait for the returns to start rolling in.

Problems with (eco)feminism, questioning established “knowledge” and suggesting that “interrogating heteronormativity” is all just a joke… Smells like a temper tantrum backlash to me.

Grand Theft Auto, Old School

Listening to Weekend America just now, a story came on mentioning that the newest Grand Theft Auto has just come out. They mentioned that it wasn’t the first game to feature wanton killing, though - way back in the 1970’s, the game “Death Race” featured cars just running people over, and when you ran them over a little grave marker appeared.

I never did get to recap my trip to San Francisco for the PCA conference, but one of the fun things we did while in town was visit the Musee Mechanique. And one of the games at the Musee Mechanique? You guessed it.

Death Race:

Perception can be a funny thing, though - when we first started playing, I thought that you were driving around killing zombies (maybe because I’ve been playing apocalyptic zombie games so much lately). I didn’t realize until half-way through the second game (we, uh, didn’t know how to make the cars *move* in the first round) when Colleen said something that you were steering your cars into people. Which is not to say, of course, that zombies aren’t people - if any zombies are reading, you’re certainly as much people as the living.

Digressions aside, I clearly killed it.* Har har.

* I do not condone motor-vehicle related violence, in Grand Theft Auto or anywhere. I just couldn’t resist am clearly a bad person.

Things I Will Do Between My MA and my PhD

1. Read. I will have almost three months this summer where I’m not working on my thesis, or doing massive amounts of prep for a course I’ve never taught before. The free time is all going into books; fiction, non-fiction, short fiction, graphic novels, I’m reading it all. I haven’t read anything purely for pleasure in so long that I’m not even sure where I should begin - new Harry Potter releases are a thing of the past, and Alison Bechdel’s new memoir was, as of last year’s Comic-Con, something in the moderately distant future. If anyone’s read any good books lately (non-fiction, short fiction, novels or graphic novels - I’m not picky), feel free to share the scoop.

2. Head to Comic-Con, this time for the full event. I went last year - again, just to see/hear Bechdel speak - and the one day just didn’t whet my appetite. Since I’m moving part-way across the country and I’ll continue being a poor grad student for the next four years, I’m anticipating not having the money to come back for quite a while (unless it miraculously starts to count as “research”). Thus, I plan to spend this summer reveling in four days of geeky, geeky goodness.

3. Blog. Likely a lot more. Possibly with the Blogathon (possibly running Blogathon?), possibly not, but I’ll definitely be around here more frequently. Aren’t you lucky? And then, of course, there’s number four, about which I am most excited…

4. Restarting The Fat Diaries, which went MIA a couple of months after it was sent out. Keep an eye here for more news on that as it develops. Woo!

Fatphobic covering of the MA size discrimination bill in the Chicago Tribune

You had to know the article wasn’t going to be exactly unbiased when it started like this:

In an overwhelmingly overweight nation that worships thinness, many describe prejudice against the obese as one of the last socially acceptable biases. Advocates for the plus-sized, particularly activists in the “fat acceptance” movement, want obesity to become a category legally protected against discrimination, like religion, race, age and sex. But not everyone agrees.

There’s not a whole lot positive going for this piece… Marilyn Wann makes a brief appearance, as does the author of the fat girl detective series (about one “Odelia Gray”), Sue Anne Jaffarian. At least there are two fat women coming out strong in favor of the bill. Oh wait:

“Legislation happens when people are too childish to police themselves,” said Sue Ann Jaffarian, author of the Odelia Grey mystery series starring a 220-pound heroine who is a reflection of her creator.

“But, as a fat woman, I don’t want a green light,” said Jaffarian, 55, who worries that such a law would validate what some consider unhealthy weight. “The downside of legislation is that the prejudice would go more underground.”

Totally agree on that one - if oppressed groups would just stop being so goddamn easy to oppress, we wouldn’t have to HAVE this silly legislation. Gawd. Can’t you guys/we just, like, stop that already?