Presente, Miss Molly…And Goddess Bless

Very sad to see her pass on….but her sprirt and her humor — and her ability for instanteous smackdown of evildoers, will survive beyond her.  Hopefully, she’ll get to lay some smack down on "Shrub" (her gloss for Dubya) on his way down.

The story of the passing of Molly Ivins from the Associated Press today:

 

       

Molly Ivins dies of cancer at 62

By KELLEY SHANNON
Associated Press Writer

 

   

AP Photo/HENNY RAY ABRAMS

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Best-selling author and columnist Molly Ivins, the sharp-witted liberal who skewered the political establishment and referred to President Bush as "Shrub," died Wednesday after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 62.

Ivins died at her home while in hospice care, said David Pasztor, managing editor of the Texas Observer, where Ivins was co-editor.

Ivins made a living poking fun at politicians, whether they were in her home state of Texas or the White House. She revealed in early 2006 that she was being treated for breast cancer for the third time.

More than 400 newspapers subscribed to her nationally syndicated column, which combined strong liberal views and populist humor. Ivins’ illness did not seem to hurt her ability to deliver biting one-liners.

"I’m sorry to say (cancer) can kill you, but it doesn’t make you a better person," she said in an interview with the San Antonio Express-News in September, the same month cancer claimed her friend former Gov. Ann Richards.

To Ivins, "liberal" wasn’t an insult term. "Even I felt sorry for Richard Nixon when he left; there’s nothing you can do about being born liberal – fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed," she wrote in a column included in her 1998 collection, "You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You."

In a column in mid-January, Ivins urged readers to stand up against Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq.

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war," Ivins wrote in the Jan. 11 column. "We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, ‘Stop it, now!’"

Ivins’ best-selling books included those she co-authored with Lou Dubose about Bush. One was titled "Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush" and another was "BUSHWHACKED: Life in George W. Bush’s America."

Ivins’ jolting satire was directed at people in positions of power.

"The trouble with blaming powerless people is that although it’s not nearly as scary as blaming the powerful, it does miss the point," she wrote in a 1997 column. "Poor people do not shut down factories … Poor people didn’t decide to use ‘contract employees’ because they cost less and don’t get any benefits."

In an Austin speech last year, former President Clinton described Ivins as someone who was "good when she praised me and who was painfully good when she criticized me."

Ivins loved to write about politics and called the Texas Legislature the best free entertainment in Austin.

"Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair’s-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?" she wrote in a 2002 column about a California political race.

Born Mary Tyler Ivins in California, she grew up in Houston. She graduated from Smith College in 1966 and attended Columbia University’s journalism school. She also studied for a year at the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris.

Her first newspaper job was in the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle. She worked her way up at the Chronicle, then went on to the Minneapolis Tribune, becoming the first woman police reporter in the city.

Ivins counted as her highest honors the Minneapolis police force’s decision to name its mascot pig after her and her getting banned from the campus of Texas A&M University, according to a biography on the Creators Syndicate Web site.

In the late 1960s, according to the syndicate, she was assigned to a beat called "Movements for Social Change" and wrote about "angry blacks, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers."

Ivins later became co-editor of The Texas Observer, a liberal Austin-based biweekly publication of politics and literature.

She joined The New York Times in 1976, working first as a political reporter in New York and later as Rocky Mountain bureau chief.

But Ivins’ use of salty language and her habit of going barefoot in the office were too much for the Times, said longtime friend Ben Sargent, editorial cartoonist with the Austin American-Statesman.

"She was just like a force of nature," Sargent said. "She was just always on and sharp and witty and funny and was one of a kind."

Ivins returned to Texas as a columnist for the Dallas Times-Herald in 1982, and after it closed she spent nine years with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. In 2001, she went independent and wrote her column for Creators Syndicate.

"She was magical in her writing," said Mike Blackman, a former Star-Telegram executive editor who hired Ivins in 1992. "She could turn a phrase in such a way that a pretty hard-hitting point didn’t hurt so bad."

In 1995, conservative humorist Florence King accused Ivins in "American Enterprise" magazine of plagiarism for failing to properly credit King for several passages in a 1988 article in "Mother Jones." Ivins apologized, saying the omissions were unintentional and pointing out that she credited King elsewhere in the piece.

She was initially diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999, and she had a recurrence in 2003. Her latest diagnosis came around Thanksgiving 2005.

—

Associated Press writers April Castro in Austin and Matt Curry in Dallas contributed to this report.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

Although I ultimately became much more radical in my political philosophy than Miss Molly would become, she was one of my first influences in politics as not only a female journalist and a principled liberal/progressive who was unashamed and unafraid to defend and bear that label, but as one of the best political satirist and humorists alive on the face of the earth. From her days at the Texas Observer to her regular columns over at The Progressive magazine, to her regular syndicated columns, she always seemed to combine the perfect mix of passion, anger, humor, and smack….and always in defense of common working people against the inanety of corporate and political powermongers.

Not to mention the fact that Miss Molly was as proud a Texan as ever…even if she ripped their politicians new orfices every day.  I’m sure that even at her deathbed she probably was giving a one-finger salute at Dubya with one hand…and the "Hook ’em Horns" salute with the other. Even a Louisianian like me had to respect her loyalty.

There were few like her, and in this age of herd journalism, I fear that there will be fewer to carry on her legacy (well, there’s always Keith Olbermann..if he wasn’t a Cali-bred). 

Step right in through the gates, Miss Molly…you’ve done well. 

 Update:  Here’s one of the best examples — relevant to the theme of this blog — where Miss Molly showed her expertise at laying some serious smack on the stupidity of some legislators….this time, on the subject of the inane laws against the possession and sale of…sex toys.  (Warning…definitely NOT safe for work or for children.)

 The Dildo Diaries (a short documentary about Texas’ anti-sex toy laws featuring Molly Ivins, courtesy YouTube)

 

Only exception to that excellent smackdown for me: it ain’t just Texas, Miz Molly, that’s full of "dipshits" who put more emphasis on regulating women’s wombs and clits than the regulating the environment or the budget; take a trip further east to Louisiana or Mississippi or Alabama or Georgia with a Pocket Rocket and see how the authorities will respond.  They don’t call this (red) neck of the woods "the Bible (Chastity) Belt" for nothing, you know.

Only Linda Ellerbee represents badasssss Texas feminist journalism as well as Molly Ivins did….Please, Goddess, try not to take Linda away before her time.

Another Reason Why MRA Freepers Need To SYAD and STFU

You know….I would be actually amused by the continuous attempts over at Renegade Evolution’s blog by certain right-wing Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) and their KKK affiliated cousins to scoff at the legitimate claims of feminists and people of color about injustice and discrimination.  I mean, throwing out stats straight out of one’s ass, posting regurgitated talking points straight out of the mouths of Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schafly and Vox Day, not to mention the "conservative" scholars of David Horror-whackz’s FrontPage.con and FreeRepublic.com, and generally making asses of yourself, must make for a real use of valuable time.

Problem is, though….all their smack about (White) men being the discriminated ones, Blacks being better off under Jim Crow (and, if you search deep enough into the cavernous abyss that is the MRA/Freeper Borg collective mind, you will probably find the opinion that Blacks were even better off in slavery than they are now), and feminists being evil lesbian malehaters out to "feminize" this country thorugh porn and rape shield laws tends to fall flat when confronted with the real world experiences of women and people of color.

And…as the following story appearing today on the website of the FOX-TV affialate in Tampa so vividly reflects, sometimes what women who happen to be victims of rape say about the abuse they suffer at the hands of the system do turn out to be the damn truth.

(Hat tip to Chris at Suburban Guerrilla for finding this gem of a story…and all the best to Susie Madrak, too):

Rape victim jailed after reporting attack
Last Edited: Monday, 29 Jan 2007, 10:45 PM EST
Created: Monday, 29 Jan 2007, 6:27 PM EST
<!– Had to use this funcky scriplet to have breaks where ever there is \n bean:write does not differentiate “\n” new line characters. Perhaps use of jstl or just enabling jstl so that we can just write ${bean.property} and jsp takes care of the new lines. –> TAMPA – A young woman was walking back to her car after the Gasparilla parade on Saturday when she says a man dragged her behind a building and raped her near the intersection of Howard and Swann. She managed to get away and called 911. Police took her to the hospital and began a routine rape investigation. When they started checking the victim’s background, they discovered she had an arrest warrant out for her. It was from an arrest when the woman was a juvenile and she was accused of not paying restitution. The woman says she was not aware there was a warrant out for her, and her attorney says it appears to be a paperwork error. "They were more interested in prosecuting her for something that’s a paperwork snafu from four years ago, that was juvenile. They were more interested in working on that than finding an experienced rapist," stated the victim’s mother. Still, the woman was put in handcuffs and taken to jail. She was not allowed bond, and the medical staff at the jail refused to give her the Morning After Pill even though it had been prescribed at the hospital. "The medical supervisor would not allow her to take the pill because she said it was against her, the supervisor’s, religion. So, here we have a medical supervisor imposing her beliefs on a rape victim," claimed the victim’s attorney Virlyn Moore. "As a human being, how someone could be so violated by this monster and then the system comes along and rapes her again psychologically and emotionally – it’s outrageous and unconscionable." "At this point, we’re very concerned about the welfare of this young woman," said Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy. "There’s a lot of unanswered questions about exactly how this unfolded we are going to get to the bottom of it." McElroy says there is a policy in place where anyone who is suspected of a misdemeanor is not taken to jail if they’re the victim of a sex crime. She says while it’s nearly impossible to draw up a policy that addresses every situation, this may be a case where department policy should be reexamined. "The system as a whole, that is so broken, it needs to be completely fixed, so broken, so broken that something like this could happen, something like this should never have happened," said the victim’s mother. The victim did manage to finally bond out of jail Monday afternoon. She was too emotionally distraught to speak with the media, and FOX 13 does not identify the victims of sexual assault.

But I guess that the likes of ByrdBrain and Cron and the rest of the MRA/Freeper groupies now polluting RenEv’s blog will respond to this story with their usual chorus:  "But…butbutbut….the beeeyatch shouldn’t have been alone on dangerous streets at night, and she shouldn’t have committed the crime four years ago, and if she wasn’t dressed like such a slut, she would have been left alone….and why can’t we Christian’s be allowed to live their beliefs against attacks by you dirty Godless communists….ahhhh, I mean, "secular progressives" and whore-lobing, man-hating feminazis???"  After all, since they feel so liberated by recent events in the Duke University rape trial to throw their full missiles of shit at the female accuser, why not simply label all rape accusers and victims as liars, sluts, and man-bashers??

Oh, and the thing about the supervisor at the jail refusing a direct prescription from a medical professional based on her "religious beliefs" (which, I figure, translates into "All "sluts" who are raped deserve to have pregnancy forced upon them; and they should suffer the fruit of their consequenses"):  I always thought that the Constitution, not the Bible (especially not the Pat Robertson/Randall Terry interpretation thereof) was the dominant document for public officials sworn to "protect and serve".  Last I heard, refusing to offer a legal prescription was still very much illegal…and there was no exception for "religious reasons".  But then again, convicted felons — even those who are victims of paperwork mashups — shouldn’t get the same rights as "law abiding" citizens, ehhh???

And in the meantime, another rapist is free to prey on more women.  So much for the old "the rights of victims matter more than the rights of criminals" meme….women who are vicitms of rape who don’t meet the Right’s exacting standards of "morality" excepted.

Do me a favor, MRAs and Freepers: heed the warning on the title of this post,….and please, don’t even think of coming here and defending your bullshit. I have reserved a full can of SmackDog Whupass(TM) with your name on it, and I will not hesitate to use it.  And I do reserve the right not to post your nonsense here, too.

BTW…."SYAD" = Sit ‘Yo Ass Down….and you should already know what STFU means.

 Update:  Well, I guess that the copyright by the Associated Press won’t allow me to post the entire article….just use the link stated above to get to the FOX Tampa site.

Update #2:  OK, let’s see if this works…here’s a quick cut-and-paste of the article:

TAMPA – A young woman was walking back to her car after the Gasparilla parade on Saturday when she says a man dragged her behind a building and raped her near the intersection of Howard and Swann.

She managed to get away and called 911. Police took her to the hospital and began a routine rape investigation.

When they started checking the victim’s background, they discovered she had an arrest warrant out for her.

It was from an arrest when the woman was a juvenile and she was accused of not paying restitution. The woman says she was not aware there was a warrant out for her, and her attorney says it appears to be a paperwork error.

"They were more interested in prosecuting her for something that’s a paperwork snafu from four years ago, that was juvenile. They were more interested in working on that than finding an experienced rapist," stated the victim’s mother.

Still, the woman was put in handcuffs and taken to jail. She was not allowed bond, and the medical staff at the jail refused to give her the Morning After Pill even though it had been prescribed at the hospital.

"The medical supervisor would not allow her to take the pill because she said it was against her, the supervisor’s, religion. So, here we have a medical supervisor imposing her beliefs on a rape victim," claimed the victim’s attorney Virlyn Moore. "As a human being, how someone could be so violated by this monster and then the system comes along and rapes her again psychologically and emotionally – it’s outrageous and unconscionable."

"At this point, we’re very concerned about the welfare of this young woman," said Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy. "There’s a lot of unanswered questions about exactly how this unfolded we are going to get to the bottom of it."

McElroy says there is a policy in place where anyone who is suspected of a misdemeanor is not taken to jail if they’re the victim of a sex crime.

She says while it’s nearly impossible to draw up a policy that addresses every situation, this may be a case where department policy should be reexamined.

"The system as a whole, that is so broken, it needs to be completely fixed, so broken, so broken that something like this could happen, something like this should never have happened," said the victim’s mother.

The victim did manage to finally bond out of jail Monday afternoon. She was too emotionally distraught to speak with the media, and FOX 13 does not identify the victims of sexual assault.

The more I read this, the angrier I get.  Piss off, MRAs.

 

Quick Memo To All Regular SmackChron Clones….

I’ve heard that some of you are having problems commenting to the blog due to the WordPress quirk of requiring a passsword to comment.  Sometimes it is accidental on my part (I forget that my browser automatically enters a password into the post and I forget to delete it), and sometimes it’s a flaw on WP’s part (regular members have to register to even post comments; this is to avoid anonymous hit-and-run trolls and spammers).

If you are a regular and have had this problem, please email me at anthonyk6319 at gmail dot net (make the neccessary adjustments), and I will send you a new password.  Once you are in, you have the option of changing it to whatever you desire.

This is for regular viewers ONLY…..spammers and trolls need not even try.

Also….I discovered that Blogger has updated their blogging software, and I have updated the Blogger version of the vintage SmackChron blog to the new 2.0 system.  I’m considering either reviving it as a backup in case this blog starts acting up, or even running it as a dual mirror of this blog.  Your feedback on this would be greatly appreciated.

OK..off to work I go. 

 

Reflections Of A Pro-Choice Radical Man

Well…once again I should apologize for my lack of posts here; with work and all, I hope you understand.

Due to lack of time, I wasn’t able to blog this during Blogging for Choice Day….but since I’ve seen some excellent commentary by others (you can go to Belledame, Renegade Evolution and Brownfemipower (here and here) for a summary and links to the better posts), I decided to add my very belated commentary to the mix.

As anyone who has read my type knows, I happen to be quite a radical (from the Left side, of course) when it comes to reproductive freedom and reproductive choice. It is simple enough for me: Since only the woman has to face the dire threat of an unwanted pregnancy, and since it’s usually only the woman who gets to bear and raise the subsequent baby by herself without any assistance from the father or the state, only the woman should get the option of whether or not to terminate an unwanted pregnancy through contraception, abortion, or whatever…and if she chooses to terminate, it is the responsibility of society to offer a safe, legal and effective means of executing that choice. This has nothing at all to do with the ascetic beauty of abortions; personally, I’d rather that unwanted pregnancies be prevented from happening so that abortions not be neccessary to begin with.  But, because women do face the threat of unwanted pregnancies through coerced means (such as rape or incest), it is simply not enough to insist that women simply "close their legs and not have sex until and unless they are married" as so many on the Right suggest so loudly….women should and do have as much a right to their sexual desires and actions as men do.

"But….but…she’s killing an unborn baby!!!" you may shriek in response.  Ahhh, no….she’s terminating a fetus that may develop into a child outside the womb.  And she does reserve the right to willfully bring wanted babies into this world if she wishes….but if she dies from complications from pregnancy or a botched illegal abortion, she certainly can’t bring any more babies into the world, now can she??   In other words, dead women can’t make babies. There are more than enough women willingly making babies for our planet to survive.  (Some would say that there are too many..but that’s another issue entirely.)

But reproductive freedom for this radical ‘Dog means far, far more than just safe and legal abortion and safe and effective contraception on demand.  It also includes protections for those women — mostly women of color and immigrant women — who face just as much pressure NOT to bear children due to their lower socioeconomic status and their lack of political and institutional power.  It means opposing efforts to impose sterilization and other means of "population control" (often exclusively) on women of color and poor women as a condition of receiving financial support from the State.  It means opposing the imposition of such lunacies as "abstinence-only" sex "education", or imposed chastity for non-married adults as a condition of receiving government aid.

Reproductive freedom and choice also means to me full and total sexual autonomy for women and men to make informed decisions about their sexual lives and desires, and to practice those desires in a safe, consensual, and mutually respectful (and mutually pleasurable) fashion.  It is no surprise that the loudest voices for protecting the "unborn baby" are the same ones who  would condemn gay men and lesbians and women who dare to go outside the "charmed circle" of sex for procreation and actually enjoy sex for its simple pleasures…..as if an unwanted pregnancy and the dreaded STDs (followed up by the usual surrender of the child to a foster care agency..that is if the child is considered desirable enough for the wealthy and mostly White adoption market) should be God’s Scarlet Letter for all "sluts", "whores", and "harlots" who don’t follow "God’s plan" and make babies fast enough.

But mostly, reproductive freedom will mean very little if it is detached from the much larger and comprehensive struggle for racial, economic, and social equality, including a systemic approach to battling the main source of such inequality….namely, the system of capitalism and its supporting ideologies of racism (mostly White Christian Supremacy), sexism, and authoritarianism.  Sad to say, but as the history of occasional collusion between Planned Parenthood and racist eugenicists shows, not all who advocate reproductive choice are as willing to broaden their views outside their own elitist agendas.  (I am not opposed to Planned Parenthood in general principle, BTW; they are still preferable to the antics and ideological madness of Operation Rescue, and under Faye Wattleton’s leadership, they have overcome their past history quite well. But they cannot deny their history of being used by racists to justify the most horrid of policies.) 

The bottom line for me comes down to this: Until ALL women are given the resources and the leeway to gain control over all aspects of their lives, including their wombs, their vulvas, and the rest of their bodies, then NO woman indivdually can be seen as truly free to make a "choice". (And men have just as much a responsibility and a role to play as well, since it’s their sperm that make a baby, too.)  As important a principle "My body, my choice" should be for a progressive or a radical (and that includes a sex radical like moi), it would mean nothing if not accompanied by the other principle "An injury to one is an injury to all." 

Oh, and memo to the MRAs (meaning especially YOU, Byrdbrain) who would want to run to this blog to defend your nonsense about "the bitches getting what they deserve" and men being the discriminated species: Save it. It just won’t play here. And neither will your posts or innane comments, unless I decide to use them publically for testing my new 2007 formula of Concentrated SmackDog Whupass ™….as the Queer Bitch says so well and so often, this blog is not a free carrier.

 

Because It’s Always Good To Have A Backup Plan…

I noticed that Blogger has now totally rebuilt itself with their 2.0 version; since they were the ones to offer me space to begin with, I’m going to test their new version out.

I am going to attempt to export some posts from the WordPress version of the SmackChron over here; if it works, then I may decide to use both blogs simultaneously, or at the very least use this one as a backup in case WP fails me.

Cross your fingers and wish me luck…. 🙂

Doc Suzy Goes Bloggamy All Over The “Cockfight at the Badghad Corral”

Leave it to a sex therapist to have the final word on Saddam’s kangaroo lynching….errrrrr, trial and execution.

Quoteh Dr. Susan Block (from her "Blogammy" blog and Counterpunch):

So the Cockfight at the Baghdad Corral has climaxed with the Snuff Film of Saddam Hussein. And the important international question of “Who is the bigger dickhead, Bush or Saddam?” has been answered, sort of.

Let’s examine the contenders. Measuring up first is Saddam the cocky Iraqi, the brutal B-movie schmuck of a dick-tator who conducted mass executions, torture fests and disastrous loser wars while munching Doritos, writing romantic screenplays, erecting giant statues of himself and masturbating to Britney Spears videos. How much more evil and banal can you get? Most of his large-scale evil was committed with full support and often under the instructions of the U.S. government. Eventually, Saddam did have the balls to stand up to his bosses in Washington, and he seemed to have a good time doing it, winning him a few pan-Arabic fans, though it eventually cost him everything. He went limp when it came to defending his government, his country, his family and his life against the Anglo-American invasion of 2003. He was fished out of a hole, forced to open his mouth for an American tongue depressor, pushed and prodded through a kangaroo court, and finally made to bare his neck for the noose. Allahu Akbar!

Meanwhile, on the other end of the Baghdad Corral, so far into the Green Zone he’s not even in Baghdad, stands the American Presidential dickhead, George W. Bush, also a fan of Britney the Panty-less One (or is she a fan of his?). No stranger to hasty executions, during his six years as governor of Texas, he presided over the implementation of 152 death sentences, more than any other governor in recent American history. No stranger to disastrous loser wars either, this self-appointed “War President” has the cajones to demand more and more of the ultimate “sacrifice” from Americans outside his family circle.

Making sure the Bush Family and their cronies don’t have to sacrifice a thing is crucial to this American President’s mission. The only way in which GW Bush is, perhaps, not a dickhead is his sense of “family values,” that is, his Corleone-style devotion to his own family. Here is where the Biblical origins of the Cockfight emerge: Saddam insulted Bush’s family, specifically, his Dad. He did this first by sticking his dipstick into the forbidden American oil harem of Kuwait (though some might say Kuwait was “asking for it”). Then, despite being beaten soundly in Gulf War I and heavily sanctioned, he further affronted the Bush Royals by staying in his saddle and continuing to rule Iraq like a king with his long hard scepter, outlasting George I by over a decade. Saddam’s final humiliation of the retired American President was his botched but cocky assassination attempt during what was supposed to be a laurel-receiving pleasure trip to Kuwait for the Old Man.

[excerpted from Doc Suzy’s blog; see the full article here and here]

I guess that it isn’t about oil after all.

 

Queer Dewd Layeth The Bitchslap Down For Sex-Positive Feminism

There are times when you turn the other cheek….and then there are times when you just gotta lay out and grab the football bat and just bust ass.

The Queer Dewd (formerly known as Bitch|Lab) just decided that when it comes to battling the Radfem Caucus, she’s just reached the boiling point….and thusly, she has broken out the definitive bustout to end all bustouts.

The foundation of all this was a comment thread at I Blame The Patriarchy which started as the usual dissing of makeup and lipstick as Tools of Patriarchy ™…which then quickly dissolved head-first into a hatefest against transsexuals and transgendered people as male double agents attempting to get into "women’s spaces".  And as these highlights from some especially nasty comments go, the bigotry got pretty ugly (hat tip to Lucy at Shouty Woman for saving these tidbits; I’ve added the originators of the comments to indict the guilty) :

• “I’d like to take a piss in a public can knowing for a fact there are no boys in there whining “I was born in the wrong body” for fucksake, insisting I refer to him as “she.” Phobic? Hardly. Resentful that women lose yet another space of their own? You betcha big time.”  — Mar Iguana
• [….] “Why is it every time women tell men to get their foot off our necks, men cry we’re manhaters and claim they’re being oppressed? “Transphobia” is the new version of this very old game. Same shit, different label. “  — Luckynkl*

• You want to know how men can hurt women? **chuckle** You’re joking, right? Oh wait. I’m supposed to believe men in drag are women. And if you put on a werewolf mask, will you also expect me to believe you’re a werewolf?
  Well shoot, if that’s the case, if I go in drag as Napoleon, do you think France will hand their country over to me and hail me as their new leader? Can I cry I’m being discriminated against and I’m oppressed if they don’t?

  [Comment by another poster] What bathroom is she supposed to use instead, since if she uses the men’s bathroom she very well could get attacked.

  OIC. And trans boys would like to maintain the position they’re use to — being the fuckers instead of the fuckees? Can’t say as I blame them. But I’m afraid their issue is with men, not with women. So take it up with men instead of demanding that women be your mommy and take care of you. I owe you nothing, boy. You’re not entitled to a damn thing from me. Get that through your thick, dense head. — Luckynkl (added here by me)

• “Well if men can now use the women’s bathroom, wouldn’t that make the women’s bathroom just as dangerous as the men’s? Or do trans boys imagine they’d be the only man allowed in there? Ooops, sorry. Didn’t mean to use logic. And ruin that trans boy harem fantasy they have going on in their heads.” —  Luckynkl (Notice the trend, Clones!!)

The rest (unless noted) are strictly from Luckynkl, who added her special brand of high-octane bigotry to the mix:

• [Another commentator] Go ahead, come up with a single instance of a transwoman attacking someone in the bathroom. Hint #2: You can’t. Who told you these big fibs? Actually, there are many cases of men dressing up like women and not only just attacking women, but killing them. Trans assault women regularly. Both verbally and physically. Boys will be boys, ya know. They don’t get brain transplants with SRS.

• “Oh, I have no problem with trans using the right bathroom. The one with the sign that says “men” on it.”

• “Now let’s cut through your load of bull. Ask yourself one question. Who benefits? Women? Do women benefit when men use their bathroom? Do women benefit when men pass themselves off as women?” 
• “So, do I get to be whatever race I choose? Do I get to be an woman of colour or a black woman because I *really* feel like one (even though I’m white as the freshly driven snow)?” — Mary Sunshine
• “Sex is static. It cannot be changed. Men cannot be frogs, they cannot be giraffes, they cannot be trees, they cannot be rocks, and they cannot be women. Get over it.”
• “Just for the record, I do not fear or hate these psychologically damaged boys. I pity them. I do hate that “professionals” can say they are able to magically turn these pitiful guys in a woman. As I said before, they should lose their license to practice medicine by praying on and profiting off the mental problems of these unfortunates.”

• Ah, it’s the invasion of the body snatchers.
  As I said before, every time women tell men to get their foot off our necks, they scream “foul,” call us manhaters and claim we are oppressing them. Oh, and I forgot one. We’re “biggots.”
  Trans are no different than their knuckle dragging brothers. Men are raised and conditioned in this society with an enormous sense of entitlement towards women. Women’s purpose on earth is to serve men and take care of them. No matter how bizarre their wishes and desires may be. Basically what all men want are mommies without any authority.
  Trans objectify women even more so than their knuckle dragging brothers do. Trans look at women as “things.” Nothing more than a suit of clothes for men to try on.
  Ever see “Silence of the Lambs?” 

• [Comment from another poster] That sounds so familiar, somehow. Oh, right. “Gay people do have the right to get married. They can marry someone of the opposite sex.”
  [Luckynkl] Gay people? Oh, you mean really, really happy people?
  Besides the fact that your ANALogy is at best, bizarre, I oppose ALL marriage, happy or not. Marriage is a barbaric institution, sanctioned by the church and state (which contrary to the lip service we’re given, is one and the same), which grants men legal ownership of women, their assets, their services, their labor, their bodies, as well as anything that might pop out of those bodies. You know, sorta like the way men own dogs and their pups?
  One doesn’t dismantle the house by adding another room onto the house, silly.

   

 Oh, but having genitals of both sexes or cross-dressing isn’t really being transgendered, nor is attempting to avoid being beaten or even killed (do the names Brandon Teena and Gwen Arroyo ring any bells, Rustednkl??) by using the women’s restroom an act of self-defense; it’s just more men trying to get into "our" space and violate "us"!! Just like those damn "feminist pornographers" and "butch lesbians" with their dildos and vibrators invading "our sacred spaces", I guess.

Anyways…that series of comments sparked a genuine firestorm amongst the feminist blogosphere with more progressive bloggers condemning the height of such hatred from the likes of Luckynkl, and some went even further to condemn Twisty for tolerating such vile, crypto-Nazi bullshit in a feminist blog. (Considering the history of Twisty’s blog generating such a tempest (remember the blowjob controversy a while back, it wasn’t necessarily unexpected.) A few bloggers even went as far as to delist IBTP from their blogrolls in protest.

This is where Bitch|Lab….errrrr, Queer Dewd…..came in with a post at her blog documenting, using her typical detailed analysis and academic mind, the pitfalls of how radfem thought can easily produce the likes of Luckynkl.  (Brownfempower at People of Color Blog added her own perspecive about how WOC bloggers were also being harmed by such rhetoric; and Belledame, as is the usual, added her nickel’s worth. That elicited some reaction from a couple of radfem bloggers (mostly Heart of Women’s Spaces) who didn’t take too friendly the idea of being lumped together with Ln; she responded with a heated exchange with BfP where she noted that not all radfems share Ln’s prejudices towards transpeople; and that it was merely "bashing radfems" to lump them all in the same bag.

 Another blogger, AradhanaD of Leftist Looney Lunchbox, decided to just come out and explicitly target B|L, Belledame, and Amber Rhea as mere moochers who tagged on to defend "dissident feminists" like Nubian and BfP merely for the purpose of scoring brownie points against radfems…as per this blast she posted at her blog (though slightly edited later):

PS. If you’re from the pro-pornstitution feminist tag team (you know who you are) that somehow miraculously appears to suddenly ‘befriend’ every dissenting feminist voice on the net, to support them with their ‘radical feminist bashing’, there’s no nice way for me to say this ‘don’t bother’. Seriously, on any other post I’d love to hear your comments – just not this one. Pornstitution is racist, it harms WOC and I have no desire to get support from any of you – just because you think ‘I’m bashing your enemy’. No thanks. I do however, encourage you to comment on my other posts if you ever feel like it because like “white radical feminists”, I do know that we have things in common – just not as many as I’d like.

Aradhana did go on to partially repudiate that last paragraph, but the damage was already done.

First Queer Dewd got pissed.

Then, she got prophetic.

And then…she got busy.

Just run your asses over to her blog (via the last link) and free your mind a bit.

Welcome home, Dewd.

Welcome To A New Year…Same As The Old Year, But Newer

Well, friends, neighbors, Clones, and fella and sista lefty sex-pozzie rads and  pro-‘pornstitution’ tag teamers  (though I still would much prefer Stan Goff’s derivative smack of "Pro-porn posse"); a new year is now upon us.  Hopefully 2007 will serve to be as interesting and prosperous as 2006 was…yet with half the drama and one-third less calories.

Some things will change radically….like the New Orleans Saints actually being said in the same paragraph as "Super Bowl" (and who’d think that after Rusted Mike Ditka sold the entire 2000 draft for Ricky Williams, only to see him shipped to Miami three years later???); or the Republicans actually having to face the prospect of being a minority party for the first time in 12 years (thank you very much, Dubya, for that).  And then, some things will never change…like celebs attempting to revive their staggering careers by miming porn starlets (see Mariah Carey’s suit against Mary Carey’s trademarking; or Britney and Paris doing their Jenna Jameson impressions and flashing hoohah for the world to see and sqawk about; or certain antiporn radicalfeminists flashing their predjudices and bigotry against sexual dissidents (as in the latest brohaha over transsexuals and their dire threat to women’s restrooms and other sacred womyn’s spaces).  And, of course, our one-party-with-two-wings political system will continue to create new and different ways to rob working folk of all their hard earned money  while funding more death, destruction, and brutality worldwide….all the while targeting their rhetoric and bile towards acts that do less to harm anyone than all their war games and torture havens.

Either way, ’07 should be one hellava ride.