Meat Dress Vindication!

Cher tweeted:

Loved doing VMA’s ! Lady Gaga rocked it ! Meat Dress was So INTERESTING Up Close. The way it was cut & fitted to her body was AMAZING ! Meat purse was genius ! As Art piece it was astonishing ! No moral Judgement ! Back in the day it woulda been called ” A Happening” ! modern art elicits discussion, introspection & conflict ! Everyone’s talking about it! BINGO!

Thank you Cher!

I realized that I need to do a full post on the phrase "attention whore" and what is so detestable about it. Also coming soon: a follow-up to the washroom signs post, elaborating on the universal male/female as variation idea, which a number of commenters seemed to have trouble with; and analyzing signs indicating washrooms are wheelchair accessible. More substantive content, on the way!

Defending Lady Gaga, And A Personal Reflection On Why I Do

I was looking over the comments at Jezebel's liveblog of the VMAs, and what's with vehement reactions to the meat dress? Folks are saying that it was, "Disgusting, wasteful, unnecessary, yes. Edgy, no;" it was, "too much;" "there can't possibly be a point to it; just a way to get attention." Although acknowledging that it was not real meat [note: to my surprise, I found out later that the dress was in fact made of real meat], one commenter wrote, "there are hungry people in the world and you're going to drape meat all over your body?" They "disapprove."

Lady Gaga And Being An Ally

It was good to see Lady Gaga not letting an opportunity to make a statement about gay rights slip by. But the way she chose to bring attention to DADT at the MTV Video Music Awards tonight was not the most thoughtful. She had service members, who had either quit or been discharged from the US armed forces because of their sexuality, with her on the "red" carpet. It was was like they were accessorizing her. She was wearing the issue. If she had given the mic to one of the service members to say a couple of words about why they were with her, that would have been better. Let it be about them, instead of about her.

ETA: Lady Gaga's official website is now a banner encouraging fans to go to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network website and take action against DADT. Yay! :)

Group That Thinks Jesus' Cosmic Tears Can Wash Away The Gay =/= Legitimate Charity

Via Canuk Attitude:

Mark at Slap Upside The Head has initiated a campaign to revoke charitable status in Canada to Exodus Global Alliance. What is Exodus Global Alliance, you ask? It's a US-based "religious" group whose aim is to "cure" gay people with the power of Jesus. They think homosexuality can be "treated" with religion and what is probably a traumatic bout of "therapy". Which is all kinds of degrading and harmful to gay people. Not to mention fanciful and impossible. This group should not benefit from the full registered charity status that it currently enjoys.

To learn more, and find out what you can do, see Slap Into Action.

Nuclear Proliferation: A-Okay If You Don't Stone Women?

On The Daily Show tonight, Jon Stewart made the claim that a major reason why the rest of the world doesn't want Iran to have nuclear weapons is because they stone women for adultery.

To which I say, "Really?"

Sin-Sational!

If you've been on the internet at some point over the past couple of years, then you've probably seen this photo. I encountered it again, recently. But for the first time I noticed the website at the bottom of the sign. I thought to myself, "that website is probably a hot mess of nonsense." So, because there were more productive ways I could have spent my time instead, I decided to look it up.

You'll be glad to know that the website is now defunct. However, it has been archived. Upon visiting the archive, my curiosity and persistence were rewarded with the following discovery:

What Comes After The Gender Binary

My post about washroom signs has been hit at Sociological Images. 407 comments; traffic to their website doubled on Friday; and it's being translated into French. Yay!

The comments are a mix of thoughtful discussion and privileged "you're reading too much into this... blah-blah-blah." There was one comment that I especially want to address because it contains a sentiment that I frequently see expressed. And it speaks to an interesting difference between how feminists/LGBT activists/allies and social conservatives understand gender.

In the comments someone going by "SP" wrote:

So male/female binaries are unacceptable. Ok. ... 

Why is this idea that the two sexes are biologically different so offensive to most sociologists? If there were a biological advantage to NOT being sexually dimorphic then that’s how we would have evolved, but we didn’t.

Males and females of our species are different. There’s nothing wrong with that! In fact, I think our biological and neurological differences are what make us more interesting as a species. Why is it necessary to obliterate every difference between genders?  ...

♪ I am by no means a sexist... ♫

In the comments on my guest post on Sociological Images (of which there are 328, at last count), someone posted a link to this very, very funny song. Basically, someone takes a mansplaining comment from a blog and mocks it by turning it into a folk ballad. Making it into a song somehow highlights the incongruity of the commenter's assertion that "I am by no means a sexist" and, well, everything else he says. "Lyrics" here.

I like The Toronto Star

Photos of a Manitoba judge in bondage and performing sex acts turned up on the internet, apparently without the judge's knowledge or consent. The judge is a woman. There are many ways that reports on this happening could take a turn for the disgustingly sexist. Based on public responses to the release of sex tapes without the consent of one of the partners, people - including a number of feminists (*cough* Mary Elizabeth Williams *cough* Jezebel commenters *cough*) - get really victim-blamey and slut-shamey.

And yet, this is the thought that The Toronto Star ends their article with:

[Bruce] Ryder, of Osgoode, believes if a judge isn't involved in anything illegal or something that could give rise to a conflict of interest - such as a citizen's crusade against city hall - their private lives should not be up for discussion. 

"We really have to start by asking ourselves, what exactly has Justice Douglas done wrong?

"Based on what we know so far," said Ryder, "maybe she deserves our sympathy more than our condemnation, because it seems she has been the victim of an egregious invasion of privacy."

Yes. Thank you.

Success!

I'm on Sociological Images today! Check it out.

Sex Workers =/= Organized Crime

A den of organized crime?

Sorry for the dearth of new posts, I've been a little preoccupied. I do want to take the time to draw people's attention to this article in the Toronto Star.

The Justice Minister announced new regulations which give the government powers to wiretap, deny bail and "move in on people," as the article says, without safe-guards such as warrants. These regulations were enacted without debate in Parliament, naturally. They're targeted at fighting organized crime. But one of the crimes that they apply to is "the keeping of a common bawdy house," the definition of which is broad enough to capture individual, independent sex workers who choose to work indoors rather than on the street. Working from home, or from a condominium that you split the cost of with a couple of other sex workers, gives you a lot more control over your work and your clientèle. The fear is that these regulations will drive sex workers onto the streets.

I recommend reading the entire article. It includes commentary on the problem with how Canada deals with prostitution (prostitution is not illegal, but communicating for the purposes of prostitution, and living off the avails of prostitution are), the failure of law enforcement officials to take violence against sex workers seriously, and the Conservative government's tendency to make policy based on moral conviction rather than facts.

Contact your MP and the Minister of Justice, and let them know that you care about the safety of sex workers.

The Despicable No Longer Surprises Me

So, there's this.

Which, sadly, does not surprise me. It fits in the same pattern of the Conservatives acting based on their ideology, rather than based on what's in the best interests of Canadians. In this case, specifically, Canadian veterans.

Can we please have an election now?

Go Where?: Sex, Gender, and Toilets

Women's and men's washrooms: we encounter them nearly every time we venture into public space. To many people the separation of the two, and the signs used to distinguish them, may seem innocuous and necessary. Trans people know that this is not the case, and that public battles have been waged over who is allowed to use which washroom. The segregation of public washrooms is one of the most basic ways that the male-female binary is upheld and reinforced.

As such, washroom signs are very telling of the way societies construct gender. They identify the male as the universal and the female as the variation. They express expectations of gender performance. And they conflate gender with sex.

I present here for your perusal, a typology and analysis of various washroom signs.

The Worst Anti-Abortion Ad I Ever Saw

The other day I was reading a story in The Toronto Star about anti-abortion organizations lying to women in their attempt to convince them not to go through with an abortion. I already knew the anti-choice side did this, but I was glad to see The Star reporting on it, and trying to correct the misinformation.

Anyways, among the other reactions it elicited from me, the article reminded me of a billboard I saw at Young-Dundas Square around January this year. An ad so effecting that I believe it is still worth blogging about over six months later...

Call Centre Employees Don't Bother To Be Cruel To Just Anyone

Seen on PostSecret:



Truthfully: No.

When you call for help, we're basically just reading out of the user's manual, which can be difficult to navigate. When we have to ask the manager for help, they aren't always easy to find. Customer service call centres constantly grade their representatives, and one of the factors is how long the calls take to complete, so it's not in our self-interest to put you on hold that long. Honestly, we don't care about you enough to spend the time torturing you like that.

Interviewers at survey research call centres, however, will schedule a call-back during dinner time if you're rude enough to us. One guy I worked with would write down the phone numbers of the people who were especially mean (which he was not allowed to do) and would drunk-dial them at 3am.