Ooo, the Sneaky Obese Women, Hiding in Non-Obese Bodies, We’re on to You

I had to call the Professor about this article because I was wondering if there comes a point where, when you say “people with characteristic X are more prone to condition Y,” if you make the pool of people with characteristic X so large as to encompass 50-75% of all women, doesn’t it really start to be meaningless? I mean, aren’t we almost at the point where you’re basically saying, “There’s a correlation between living and condition Y”?

I admit, I’m looking forward to this happening and then, in five years, they’ll be all, “The obesity rates in the U.S. among women sky-rocketed in 2010” and we’ll all get to sit and watch to see if they bother to acknowledge that it was their redefinition that increased said rate.

I’m also wondering if there comes a point when the hysteria is so hysterical that it ceases to be effective. I mean, so many people who have thus far been spared the burden of ruining it for everyone are about to find themselves ruining it for everyone.

I mean, yes, eventually all witch hunts overplay their hands, involve too many women, too many of the kinds of women that don’t tolerate being scrutinized, who society won’t tolerate being scrutinized and blamed.

I wonder if it’s when they’re arguing that half of the white women are fucking things up. You can’t overestimate the strange things that happen at the intersection of race, gender, and bodily autonomy.

It’ll be interesting to see.

Legalized Rape with an Object in Oklahoma

Whenever the anti-abortion folks tell you that it’s about saving babies, ask them whether they spoke out against what’s going on in Oklahoma or if they think that forcing abortion providers to shove an implement unnecessary for the abortion inside a woman before she’s allowed to have an abortion is okay.

If they say that forcing doctors to rape their patients before their patients can get medical treatment is okay, then you know they are anti-abortion because they believe pregnancy is the proper punishment for women and that women who try to get out of their punishment need some other severe psycho-sexual punishment to make up for it.

In other words, they have some really fucked up sexual disfunctions and you should stay far away from them.

This is disgusting and disheartening and I have to believe we need to be vigilant against this kind of nonsense here in Tennessee.

On the other hand, I’m glad they’re so blatant. What person who’d ever loved a woman, even once, could hear about this and not recoil in horror?

Gladiolus and Stepping Over My Grave

I saw the first spiky leaves of my gladiolus coming up this morning. I guess I should get out there and weed their bed for them. I swear, every fucking day I look around and see all the weeding I have to do. I wish I had a flame thrower. It would make the prospect of weeding a lot more fun if I could just send those fuckers up in smoke.

And a tiny flame thrower for the ticks.

Living in the country has made me more violent, I tell you.

Sure, it would suck for the plants I like, which would also be harmed by the indiscriminate shooting of my awesome flame thrower, but them’s the breaks, black-eyed susans.

Anyway, I was on my way to lunch today when I caught a full body of the heebie jeebies, just bleerrrghrrrrr all down my spine. And I thought, “Ugh, someone just stepped over my grave.”

On a rainy day, let me tell you, the notion of getting a huge chill because someone has stepped over your grave is the kind of thing you like to think about. Or I like to think about anyway. Where did this phrase even come from? Is it a cool notion of a sharp, backwards tug of time that present me can feel something that will happen long after I am dead? Or is it more the idea that there is a patch of land already destined for me, that it and I are tied together even now, without me knowing it, its purpose already plotted–that it will hold my dead corpse–and when someone walks across it, I know it because of that tie?

I don’t know.

It suggests some cool, kind of spooky stuff, though, about how we experience time and our ties to the land.

I’ve also heard it’s when a rabbit runs across your grave, that you get chills. This isn’t an expression we used growing up. It’s one I was familiar with, though.

That’s why I always thought that the parts about rabbits running in a ditch in “Season of the Witch” was especially creepy. Like whose grave is that ditch?

Last Night’s South Park

I have two thoughts (which is fitting, since there were two plot lines):

1.  My understanding is that Comedy Central added beeps. That the intention was always to make a joke regarding being unable to show Muhammad, but that the bleeping out of his name was a decision not made by Parker & Stone . If this is the case, some non-crazy asshole Muslims need to sit down with Comedy Central and explain how their approach to this matter is not doing Muslims any favors. It’s one thing for the South Park dudes to make fun of your religion; they make fun of a lot of religions. Even if they want to make fun of not being able to show a representation of Muhammad, that’s between them and the members of that religion.

When the network that hosts the show starts getting all weird about it, though, that’s a problem for Muslims. Because this large media conglomerate is regularly and repeatedly signalling that, even if they’re willing to stand up to angry Baptists or Jews with hurt feelings, pissed off Muslims are so scary and weird and “other” that they have to be handled with kid gloves. I know plenty of fucked-up Christians who I’m sure have sent angry letters and phone calls to Comedy Central about South Park.

So, what Comedy Central is saying is that some death-threaty, angry, fundamentalist kill-joys, if they’re Christian, obviously don’t reflect the opinions of all Christians or warrant changing programming to accommodate.  But some death-threaty, angry, fundamentalist kill-joys, if they’re Muslim, will be treated as if they are the legitimate authority on their religion and Comedy Central will respond in fear to them.

And fear is just the submissive expression of hostility.

Imagine you’re an employee or an advertiser who is Muslim. Are you really going to feel like you can do business with Comedy Central and get a fair shake?

I’m sure it gives religious fundamentalists a thrill to be treated as if they’re special and that their voices carry more weight than mainstream voices. But it’s an incredibly unfair position to put the mainstream people in.

Plus, once you start acquiescing to the fundamentalists, you embolden them. They learn violence and the threat of violence does work and does get them what they want. Which makes it dangerous for mainstream people to speak out against them.

Fundamentalist religious behavior is a problem for everyone, whether we share that religion or not. But for those of us who aren’t a part of that religion, it’s just a secular problem. We need to handle it the way we would handle any issue. And that means by not acquiescing to their demands to be treated like they are special. Whether the fundamentalists see it or not, that’s the only way to be fair to them. It’s up to the people who share that religion to try to reform the fundamentalists. And, again, the only way we can do our part to ensure that happens is to butt out and not acquiesce to the fundamentalists.  Continuing to treat them as special sends a message that they are special. They are not.

2. Scott Tenorman?! Oh my god. It was so brilliant. I was so afraid they were going to take it away somehow, make it more ambiguous or something.  But they did not. I honestly didn’t think they’d ever resolve the storyline of Cartman’s dad or, if they did, that it would be so satisfying, but it was. It was so beautiful.