yonmei

09:14 pm: Saturday: party / Sunday: tiredness
I don't remember being this tired after the party last year, but then the party last year didn't happen while I was still a little jetlagged.

The icing on the cake turned out a tad disastrous (though the other women at the party, with their own experience of baking errors, were extremely supportive of the cake itself turning out all right). So there will be no photos of cake. Also, there are large quantities of leftovers. (Though most of my sesame scones got eaten.)

But I spent long stretches of time standing around in the street (we need more folding chairs) talking with my neighbours and drinking wine and eating delicious food that my neighbours had prepared, and it was good. We agreed we should do it next year, though I think it would help to set a date four or five months in advance: say February for July.

I made the mistake of tracking down John C. Wright's infamous post on "homosex" (apparently Hal Duncan's first open letter shamed him into deleting it, but it's still available on Google-cache and has been echoed in a few places) and, even though I knew it was going to be an ugly rant, I was really stunned at how hateful he was. And inspired, apparently, by the mere thought that a TV channel might actively seek to do more TV programmes in which people are not depicted as uniformly heterosexual.

There are three other related posts on Duncan's blog: Stoicism, Sophistry and Sodomy, On Sophistry and Subjectivity, and A Story From Sodom. All very worth reading.

(Update: also, Kip Manley's John C. Wright is recoiling in craven fear and trembling, and I don’t feel so good myself is another good one.)



Tags: angry queer, howls of rage

04:06 pm: How To Handle A Homophobe


Good advice for people whose friends are bigots, any flavour:

You know a few. Don't try to tell me you don't. And you even get along with some of them, because many homophobes have other fine qualities which make them hard workers, good friends, and charming dinner guests. So there may be a couple lurking around in your party. If they rear their ugly heads, it is your responsibility as the host to gently push their snouts back into the mud and filth from which they have truculently emerged.

The rebuff should match in tone, severity and intensity the nature of the offense. If your guest has committed an accidental heinosity out of thoughtlessness or ignorance--for instance, saying, "Oh, why didn't you bring your wife along?" to Alan after he mentions that he's married, simply pointing out the error politely is the most appropriate response. After that, the response elevates with the level of intentional offensiveness. A sample graduated scale is appended below:

"Y'know, I don't see why they think they should be able to get married just like normal people."
- "Well, Joe Bob, there are some folks who would say the same about rednecks like yourself."

"So these two lesbians walk into a bar..."
- "So these 50 bigots walk into the Republican convention..."

"Why should we fund AIDS research when it's clearly God's judgment on revolting perverts?"
- "I'm sorry, did you not see the NO ASSHOLES sign as you came in? I displayed it clearly above the door..."

"Sorry, I can't sit next to him, faggots make me sick."
- "Well, I'm afraid the only way I can accomodate your disability is by hog-tying you and tossing you out into the barn, where you will eventually be able to enjoy the dinner when it arrives in the form of pig slop."

Now, these responses may appear rude to you, but remember that your guest was rude first. Your job as host is to provide a pleasant and relaxing atmosphere for your guests, and if one of your guests is making it impossible for you to do that, well, it's polite to take him out behind the woodshed and give him a good hiding. Metaphorically speaking. Most 'phobes who trumpet this sort of swill do so because they assume no one will mind. If you make it clear that you do mind and you are offended, ten to one says your guest will back down and apologize. It's probably too much to hope for to think that this may also cause your 'phobe to reevaluate his opinion of gay people, but at least you can probably get him to shut up for the duration of the party. If not, it's hog-tyin' and eatin' slop in the barn for him. This is your party, and you'll tie if you want to. (From A Straight Person's Guide To Gay Etiquette, by the Plaid Adder)

Or, as another participant in the discussion said: "I think the big question of this particular imbroglio isn't "How do white folk write CoC well?" but 'HOLY SHIT did she really just SAY that?'"

Tags: howls of rage, imagine better, let's all be outcasts together, powerful speech vs. powerless silence

11:47 am: Stupid Things To Say
Senator Linda Gray of Arizona, after explaining why she thinks her religion justifies legally preventing her colleague Senator Paula Aboud from marrying her partner of 8 years: "I don't see it as divisive ... I don't think it has to be hateful at all." Arizona Republic

Lillian Ladele of Islington, after explaining why she thinks her religion justifies her refusal to perform civil partnership ceremonies for same-sex couples: "As a Christian, I loved being able to help people, to talk to them when they needed advice – it’s what my religion is all about and I think I have a lot of empathy." Pink News

As it happens (I've read the tribunal's judgement) I now think Ladele was treated very badly - even considering her behaviour. She could show the tribunal that her manager was hostile to her before she refused to perform civil partnership ceremonies, and her manager did nothing to prevent or discourage the open discussion of her refusal and may even have abetted it. But the kind of ignorant arrogance that says "Hey, I want to deny you basic civil rights, but don't you dare act hostile towards me!" comes through in that comment from her, just as the blithe arrogance of blind privilege comes through in Gray's comment.

Of course the other difference between them is that Linda Gray is a powerful white woman actively working to ensure that the LGBT people whom she's paid to represent have fewer civil rights than straight people in Arizona. And Lillian Ladele is a black, Nigerian-born civil servant who just wanted to avoid having to treat LGBT people like anyone else when it became part of her job to do so. Both inspired by a particular homophobic interpretation of Christianity, both actively supported by the Christian right.

You don't know how much it sickens me to guess that the Ladele case probably got as far as it did because (I think) Ladele's manager was a racist asshole who treated her badly from the word go and was glad to have an excuse to harass her.

Tags: ***** this fir a kerry oan, evil american politics, howls of rage

02:19 pm: Travelling to the US: two news stories
Center for Constitutional Rights, 30th June 2008:

Today, the majority in a federal Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against Center for Constitutional Rights client Maher Arar’s case against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and interrogated for a year under the extraordinary rendition program.

The majority ruled that Mr. Arar’s constitutional claims that it was a violation of due process to lock him up for two weeks, obstruct his access to a lawyer and a court, and then to ship him to Syria for the purpose of having him interrogated under torture could not be heard in federal court for two reasons. It concluded that adjudicating the claims would interfere with sensitive matters of foreign policy and national security, and that Arar, as a foreigner who had not been formally admitted to the U.S., had no constitutional due process rights with respect to the government's interference with his access to a lawyer and the decision to send him to Syria to be tortured.

The majority also rejected Mr. Arar’s claim that U.S. officials are liable under the Torture Victim Protection Act, for conspiring with Syria to subject Mr. Arar to torture under color of foreign law. The TVPA creates liability for torture inflicted under color of foreign law, and courts have held that it applies not only to the torturer himself, but also to those who aid or abet in the torture. Arar alleged that U.S. officials aided and abetted in his torture at Syrian hands, but the majority ruled that the federal officials could not be held responsible for their conspiracy with the Syrians because they were federal officials exercising federal authority.

Financial Times, 2nd July 2008:

The US government will on Wednesday launch a tourism charm offensive in the UK, to persuade holidaymakers to take advantage of sterling’s strength against the dollar and make the US their next holiday destination.

Travel industry leaders, backed by Washington, will kick-start a tourism drive with DiscoverAmerica.com, the first dedicated national website selling the US to British and other international tourists.

( The letter I wrote )

Write to DiscoverAmerica

Tags: evil american politics, hitting something very hard, howls of rage, writing complaining letters

05:39 pm: Memorial Day: Kaija Seifert
I'm just reminded: today's a day to remember Kaija Seifert, a US soldier who was killed in Iraq.

"Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service." - www.usmemorialday.org.

This month a federal appeals court has reinstated the legal challenge made by Margaret Witt (formerly of the USAF) to the constitutionality of the U.S. military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Too late for Kaija Seifert, and for others who died in the closet. But a hopeful sign, nonetheless.

Tags: evil american politics, howls of rage, kaija seifert, powerful speech vs. powerless silence, war

10:41 pm: Ugh.
( More Easyjet venting )

Tags: buying things i don't need, easyjet are flying pigs, gah, howls of rage, travel, venting

01:44 pm: Easyjet: Pigs with wings
Easyjet always offers three days when you book: the day you said you wanted to travel and a day either side, so that you can opt for a cheaper price, if there is one.

We wanted to fly out on the 7th, so I searched on the 7th. Options for 6th and 8th came up, but I paid not too much attention to them (they weren't substantially cheaper or more expensive). Had discussion with Ajay about when to fly back. Opted for Friday.

More discussion. Stuck with Friday. Paid.

Somehow, Tuesday 6th got booked.

I'm willing to assume that somehow I changed it, though not intentionally: I don't recall doing anything to the dates of the flight out. First I noticed that we were now on the 6th was when the final confirmation page arrived, which said in large unfriendly letters TUESDAY 6th MAY.

No means of changing it immediately were offered. No contact phone number showed up when I clicked on "Contact Us". I tried to search on "what happens if a mistake was made in your booking" and got nowhere. If your question is not answered, they said, e-mail and we'll respond within 24 hours.

So I e-mailed. This would have been close to 1am Thursday morning, or Wednesday night, whichever way you count it. Easyjet had my landline, my mobile number, and my e-mail address.

When no one had tried to contact me by e-mail or mobile (cannot say for landline, but if they did ring, they left no message) I called Easyjet, using my google-fu to find a list of phone numbers via Cheapflights, which also provided instructions on how to get through to an actual human operator. Cost of call, 10p a minute. Length of call, about 20 minutes - I was left on hold twice, once for about 5 minutes. Operator, very pleasantly, tried to convince me that Easyjet's method of concealing their phone number from customers was actually very helpful: what you do, she said, is go to the search box which appears on the bottom of the page or on the Contact Us page and type in the keyword telephone. Then a page with telephone contact details appears. I cannot say I find this explanation particularly convincing: however, FWIW, I know now.

But, she said, you're saying a mistake was made when you booked. You e-mailed us, and we'd expect you to phone us right away if something like that happened. (See discussion about how Easyjet conceals its phone number.) It says on your record page that someone tried to contact you. (I assured her that no one had.) It shouldn't say anyone will contact you within 24 hours, because we're very busy right now. Then she put me on hold - having assured me that she did believe me when I said I had no reason to change from the default day to the day previous - and spoke to her supervisor (this was the five minute hold, 50p). No, her supervisor said, they wouldn't waive the change-of-flight charges: £17.50 per passenger, £35 in all. (Nicely calculated: I checked. It is just cheaper to pay these swingeing charges than it is to book another flight.) No, she said, when I asked, they wouldn't even reduce the change-of-flight charges by half. (Another hold, though a shorter one.)

She was very apologetic and nice about it, but it's a useful reminder - since the last time something like this happened to me (that time it was BMI) that airlines regard customer service as something their customers provide to them. Be helpful to a customer booking 4 months in advance when the Easyjet website makes it easy for them to book the wrong date? Don't be silly: charge them £35. Respond within 24 hours to explain? Don't be silly: just add to the customer page that you have contacted them, and assume she won't be able to prove otherwise. Publish your telephone number on the website so that when someone in a hurry clicks on Contact Us they find it? Don't be silly: make sure it's as difficult as possible to find, so that a customer can be told "you should have contacted us sooner, by phone - the information was available!" Sure. In best Beware of the Leopard style, it was available. Easyjet easyjet easyjet bastards.

(BMI used to run an early morning flight Heathrow to Edinburgh. If you wanted a vegetarian breakfast, it had to be booked 48 hours in advance, and if another vegetarian on the flight who hadn't booked a vegie breakfast claimed yours because they were sitting a few rows ahead of you, that was just too bad: the BMI flight attendant was not allowed to apologize. (After a while I just used to get on the plane and go to sleep: regard it as a non-food flight, which effectively it was if you didn't eat bacon.) Then there was the American airline that didn't provide enough drinking water to the passengers on a transAtlantic flight: I thought I was coming down with something by the time I landed in Boston, being unfamiliar with the symptoms of dehydration, but as soon as I'd had a drink I was fine. Then... Oh well. To airlines, we're crops for harvesting, not customers. Bah. And the worst of it is: I can see I really have no option other than to swallow the fees.)

Tags: buying things i don't need, easyjet are flying pigs, gah, howls of rage, travel, venting

11:39 pm: "Catholics refuse abortions with anguish"
When I read in the Guardian about Catholic schools in Northern Ireland shutting down Amnesty International letter-writing groups, I wrote a long-ish response (too long to be a letter) and thought about trying to reduce it to the 50-100 words or so that would have stood a chance of being published. But, I thought, probably I'm too late, there will be several such letters already in (in my experience of letter-writing to the Guardian, it's best to have composed and sent your letter by lunchtime the day of publication) and besides, reducing that spluttering wordage to publishable length felt too exhausting.

Someone did respond, though, and not briefly. His letter is entitled Catholics refuse abortions with anguish. There are two ways that could be intended, and given that this argument is all about Amnesty's decision to support the victims of rape and incest, developed with reference to the mass violations in war zones such as Darfur and Congo, you might think that it's by a Catholic woman explaining that as a Catholic she refused an abortion with anguish.

No, of course not. (Catholic women are, according to statistics from the US, as likely to abort an unwanted pregnancy as women of other Christian denominations: more likely to need an abortion, given their religion's rigid opposition to birth control: and are, doctrinally speaking, actually sinning less if they avoid contraception and just have an abortion whenever they need one.) Nor is this from a Northern Ireland Catholic who is actually affected by the decision to ban Amnesty International from NI schools. Nor from someone living in Darfur and the Congo. No, this is from a man living in Congleton, Cheshire. He writes:

I just cannot express the anger I feel at the unfair diatribe by Zoe Williams against Catholics who are taking a stand against Amnesty International (Faith schools should not be tax-funded, and here's why, September 19).

Nevertheless, he's going to try.

It was a Catholic who founded Amnesty

True. However, had he had any interest in the historical roots of Amnesty, he would know it had its roots in the Communist Party and in Quakerism as much, if not more so, than Catholicism.

it has been supported throughout its whole existence by the Catholic church worldwide, down to every local parish

Actually, the Catholic Church has always opposed Amnesty when Amnesty supports a woman's right to choose.

and only now that Amnesty has decided to support abortion has the church withdrawn its support.

Amnesty has decided that in certain limited circumstances - which fall well short of the legal status of abortion in this country - the denial of abortion to women who have been raped will be regarded as a human rights issue which Amnesty International will support. For example:

• In Guanajuato, Mexico, Human Rights Watch interviewed a woman who had been sexually abused by her father at least since the age of six – and who also faced criminal charges for “incest.” She had two children as the result of these rapes. The official legal record from her complaint against her father in 2002 reads: Then my father took me to a hostel.... He penetrated me, and it hurt a lot when he penetrated me. I cried and I said to my father that it hurt a lot.... I want to declare that I don’t want to have the child that I am expecting, because I will not be able to love it. Because it is my father’s, I will not be able to love it. (The authorities did not authorize a legal abortion.) (cite)
  
• 24-year-old Marija, an ethnic Croat virgin living in northern Bosnia ..... For two months she was held in a Serb brothel-camp and raped daily by five or six men. Captured during an afternoon walk near her village in northern Bosnia last autumn, Marija was imprisoned in a small room in a house in Obudovac and abused each evening by Serb irregulars. From other rooms she could hear the screams of other women, but never saw them. When she was released in a prisoner exchange earlier this month, she was pregnant. cite (She was able to get an abortion.)
  
• [Congo] Later the man [who raped me] came to my house. He found my parents there and he threatened them. So, my parents sent me to live with other family members. Then I realised that I was pregnant. When my parents found out, they chased me away. They told me that they couldn't take care of the baby as they were already having difficulties. I was very worried. Now I live with a neighbour who has a distant relationship with my mother. It is a life of suffering there. We eat with difficulty, even to find soap is difficult. It is hard. I regret I will have a baby soon. I have nothing to eat and to clothe it with. I was raped against my will. It is terrible because it isn't just me affected by this. There are many girls who visit me who also say that they are suffering. cite

</ul>
Amnesty International decided formally, in April this year, that from now on the denial of abortion to women made pregnant through rape/incest, and especially when rape is made use of as a war crime, would be treated as a human rights issue. The response of the Catholic Church was immediate and definite: they withdrew support from AI, and - as we see in NI - this decision is even trickling down to kids in Catholic schools who form Amnesty letter-writing groups to support prisoners of conscience.

The writer of this letter to Guardian claims:

And why? Not because it is indifferent to the awful sufferings of women made pregnant through rape or lack of birth-control facilities, but because it faces an almighty dilemma. Is the child in the womb a human being or not? Does it become one at some stage in the pregnancy or is it one from the moment of conception? And as we do not know the answer, can abortion be justifiable?

The assertion that if a fetus is to be regarded as a human being from conception that means abortion is not justifiable is rank illogic. My rights as a human being do not include the right to make use of another human being against their will. Termination of pregnancy remains justifable, if the pregnant woman can justify it, at any point during pregnancy: there is no point during pregnancy when a woman ceases to be human or loses her human rights.

To claim that the Catholic church is "not indifferent" to the sufferings of a 16-year-old girl, raped by her father for ten years, desperate for an abortion because "I will not be able to love it", or "not indifferent" to a girl rejected by her family because she is unmarried and pregnant from rape, is about as believable as their claim that they oppose equal human rights for LGBT people because they "love the sinner".

(Cardinal O'Brien celebrated the New Year in 2006 with a sermon preached about the awful moral degeneration of permitting two men to imitate marriage by having a civil partnership: I never liked The Herald so well as when they responded with an editorial inquiring of the Cardinal exactly what moral degeneration he thought was being imposed on society by giving a man the legal right to be with his dying partner in hospital, and what business it was of the Cardinal when these were civil partnerships, not religious? Since then the Cardinal has continued to demonstrate his "love" for LGBT people by accusing same-sex parents of being morally equivalent to child molestors. I am not joking or exaggerating. And this is what Catholics call "loving the sinner".)

It is a frightful problem not even addressed, let alone resolved, by Ms Williams blithely stating she is "happy ... to defend the right to abortion to all women everywhere at any time". If the foetus or child in the womb is a human being, has it no rights, not even that most basic right, to life?

Again, see above. If I am dying of liver failure, and it turns out this man is a perfect match, do I then have the right to have him tied down on an operating table and half his liver cut out - to his possible death - because I have the "right to life"? I used to be a blood donor: I stopped after ten years because the vein in one arm had collapsed and no donation was possible, and the other one would (apparently) go too after a while. I have B- blood, and no infections: I was a useful blood donor. Nevertheless, I had the right to decide for myself when to start being a blood donor, and I had the right to decide for myself when to stop. The notion that it's a "frightful problem" whether or not to deny that right to a woman (far from ignoring that problem, Zoe Williams noted the difference in the death rates between countries where abortion is legal, and countries where abortion is not). Oh, wait: this man wasn't interested in whether or not women die when legal abortion is denied...

There isn't a single Catholic doctor or nurse anywhere who refuses to assist in an abortion in the circumstances Zoe Williams describes without intense pain and anguish.

You know, when you read of teachers (in the bad old days when teachers were allowed to beat schoolchildren) claiming that "this hurts me more than it hurts you" as they prepared to beat the crap out of some small kid with a length of rattan cane, it really is, in a mordant and nasty kind of way, sort of funny. Not if you were the kid who was about to be beaten, but at a distance in time... well, yeah. It's sort of funny.

I looked up a number of sites to find examples to quote for this journal post. The more I read, and thought of this man claiming that what the doctor or the nurse feels is intense pain and anguish, when they refuse to help one of these women - I feel sick. I feel incredulous and sick and angry that this man thinks that it's the trained medical personnel who are willing to let a woman die or suffer horribly, a woman who has already suffered intense pain and anguish - but it's the doctor or the nurse who deserves our compassion, says this man: it's the Catholics who are refusing for the sake of a doctrinal belief that a pregnant woman is an incubator and only the fetus has human rights who deserve our compassion? I may vomit. I won't, because my keyboard will seize up.

But wait, there's more.

And that is because they - Catholic doctors, nurses, nuns, brothers, paramedics and priests - have been devoting their lives for centuries to founding hospitals and clinics for the poor of this world. Their history is absolutely heroic, their contribution indescribable, their dedication unsurpassed.

Actually, in the specific area he's talking about: I do not consider it "heroic" to decide that you would rather let a woman suffer and die than oppose the Church to which you belong; I find the Catholic church's contribution perfectly describable, and so did Zoe Williams, and so have many AIDS activists combating the anti-condom propaganda spread by priests: and the "dedication" of a doctor or a nurse who put their religion above the needs of their patients is easily surpassed by any doctor or nurse who would, professionally, put the health and wellbeing of their patients first.

I would love to see Zoe Williams spend a few months in their company - in the dangerous war-torn jungles of the Congo, or the dry and bitter plains of the Sudan, or the jobless impoverished townships of Mugabe's Zimbabwe - and come back and tell us then what she thinks of the Catholics she writes about with such contempt.

I doubt that he would change his mind merely faced with the actual victims of rape whom he dismisses with such indifference for their sufferings and such concern for their doctors, any more than I think Zoe Williams would suddenly discover that it's the Catholic medical personnel who deny these women abortions who really deserve her compassion and respect, as this man seems to think she would. So I would like to transform this man into a woman, and put him into a hotel room in Mexico, or rape cell in Croatia, or an undefended village in the Congo, and have him raped and made pregnant, and let him consider whether he himself has no right to human life, but is only an incubator for the fetus conceived of rape.

Tags: evil religious politics, howls of rage, i am an angry feminist, powerful speech vs. powerless silence, war

10:00 am: "uncontrolled chain reaction" just waiting to happen
In 1982/83 radioactive contamination began to leak from used fuel rods from the nuclear submarine reactors. These were stored in flimsy warehouses in the old navy installation at Andreeva Bay. Three large cement tanks became a hurried solution, housing a series of large metal pipes encased in concrete. The rods were carefully placed in these pipes.

This measure was intended as a provisional solution for four to five years, but nothing has happened since.

The large tanks, each containing 21,000 rods, are near the sea. Salt water has entered the tanks and lead to the rapid disintegration of the metal pipes. The salt water has then entered the pipes, breaking down the rods, releasing small uranium particles that fall to the bottom of the metal pipes.

A new report from Rosatom, the Russian government's highest nuclear authority, shows that there is a grave danger that the stockpile can explode. For Norway the consequences could exceed the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and no one knows how imminent the danger is - if it is a question of years - or hours.

Three people from environmental group Bellona, talked to a Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten: Aleksandr Nikitin, Nils Bøhmer, Igor Kudrik.

Nikitin: "These stockpiles and what they contain have been known to the world for over 15 years. Nothing is done. But now something must be done or uncontrolled events will take place of their own accord. The consequences will be more dramatic than we can imagine. Inaction for all these years has put us on top of a large nuclear bomb. We know where the 'gunpowder' is, but we don't know how long the fuse is."

"In the best case a small, limited explosion in just one of the stored rods can lead to radioactive contamination in a five-kilometer (three-mile) radius. In the worst case, such a single explosion could cause the entire tank facility to explode. We have no calculations for what that could lead to."

Nils Bøhmer: "It will at least, at a careful estimate, hit Northern Europe. There are enormous amounts of radioactivity stored in these tanks."

Igor Kudrik: "The conclusion of Rosatom is that when the amount of particles on the bottom reaches five to ten percent in relation to the amount of water, potentially explosive critical mass will occur."

Nikitin has had a prison term and a five year battle to be totally cleared of espionage charges by the Russian Supreme Court as his price for compiling Bellona's first report on radioactive contamination at Kola.

Tags: howls of rage

12:20 am: I hate the "pro-life" movement
The woman whose experience trying to get emergency contraception I linked to here and wrote about here has announced on her blog that - unsurprisingly, with the delay forced on her by various misogynistic doctors who think pregnancy is punishment for sex - Plan B didn't work, and she's going to have to get an abortion. Which her health insurance will not cover, because in the US, health insurance companies are permitted to refuse women full health care coverage by misogynistic legislators who think pregnancy is punishment for sex.

Remember, this is what the movement that calls itself "pro-life" is all about. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise, at best, they're deluding themselves. (Oh, and she's right: this is funny.)

And... remember the waffles.

Tags: ***** this fir a kerry oan, howls of rage, i am an angry feminist