you caught me lingering

Reference: Here (spoilers for Batman and the Outsiders #1).

Dear Chuck Dixon,

I'm not going to comment on most of the issues, because you've constructed some kind of wacky constructed-reality in your head where apparently it's clever to make jokes about oppressed classes of people and try and paint queer folks as special breed of oversensitive precious-pants, and I'm quite comfortable here in actual reality where it obviously makes you an asshole. So I'm going to go with the other question.

What part of 'Batman is the world's greatest detective' do you not understand? Batman, who is obsessed with studying absolutely everyone, in the course of looking at who's going to be on the team, is magically cured of this obsession (and detective-level observation skills, apparently) when it is likely to allow him to tell the difference between a friendship and a relationship? Seriously, are you so fucking incompetent a writer that you have failed to understand such a key aspect of Batman's character? Or are you just projecting your own ignorant baggage onto Batman, which, well, still makes you an incompetent hack who doesn't understand Batman.

You seriously expect us to buy your shite?

no love,
me.

Reference: (from the linked post) "Was this scene calculated to get precisely the reaction it got here? You bet. Did DC run the page it ran in the previews to get a lather on the knee-jerk fans always ready to go to the hate bucket? OH yeah.
Was all of this discussed in advance interrupted with much giggling? Uh huh."

Dear DC,

Uh, did you forget that the point of preview pages wasn't to piss people off but, um, to make people want to buy your shite?
Or are you still, in your financial floundering as an industry, still trying to act as though you're too good for the money of people who expect a little more from you?
Still, feel free to plead with the demographics you're pissing off about how much you'd like us to give certain titles another chance.

me.

Sweet Lemur on a Unicycle.

In response to the comments thread for this guest colum at GRC, wherein Willow makes a good, minor, point about the fact that one can't subversively read even background comics characters as non-white (without redrawing the comic), the way that one can subversively read background or even foreground characters as queer.

This somehow means that Willow is hatin' on queer folks, but, more importantly, it means that folks have SOMETHING ELSE TO TALK ABOUT IN THE COMMENTS BESIDES RACE. Same old privilege-palooza old.

Bye, G-W forums. I'll be back when folks take their damn fingers out of their ears.

Edit after going back long enough to link the thread to someone: Okay, seriously? I'm fucking done. I'd been teetering for a while, because the forums have been a little male-privilege-tastic of late, but this shit is just enough. It's just not a place I feel comfortable.

Carnivals:
1. 13th Disability Blog Carnival is up at Ballastexistenz
2. 13th Carnival of Feminist Sci-Fi & Fantasy is up at Words from the Center, Words from the Edge.
3. KitKat's Critique has the 37th Carnival of Feminists
4. abyss2hope has the 22nd Carnival Against Sexual Violence

Crablaw has a great round-up of the posts for Take Back The Blog

Diary of a Goldfish rounds up the posts for Blogging Against Disablism Day

brownfemipower has some on-the-ground accounts of the police brutality in LA during the May Day rally. Video can be found here.

Lauredhel speaks about her experiences with chronic illness, and has something to say about disability that's not necessarily visible.

Kim reprises her post about, quite simply, what it's like to have one leg.

Amp has some notes about racism and masculinity in August Wilson’s Fences.

Amanda is a little more coherent than I was at the sight of this boggling image on a site promoting breast implants.

vegankid reposted an interview with Iraqi feminist Yanar Mohammed (I've linked to where the interview was originally published).

Kai dispells some of the myths about Iraqi society being driven by 'ancient tribal rivalries', motivated by the news that Iraqi blogger Riverbend has decided to leave Iraq.

Pam reminds us that terrorists aren't just 'those brown folk over there'.

brownfemipower unpacks the US immigration debate and its links to the war on terror and labour rights.

Lauredhel also has a great link to her recent paper: Hearing Women's Voices - Digital Communities and Feminist Ethics, which hits my fascination with Carol Gilligan buttons.

In other scholarly feminist news, S&F Online's current issue is dedicated to Blogging Feminism. Some interesting stuff to chew on from some familar names in the feminist blogworld.

Also, the first issue of Cerise Magazine, is out from women gamers community The IRIS Network.

The Angry Black Woman has some ideas on promoting diversity in fiction markets.

In her Open Letter to Mrs. JV and Those Two Asian Girls on "The View", Jenn expresses some understandable frustration at the latest in the all-too-faminilar line of POC who run around excusing white folks' racist shit.

Over at Afrospear, Sylvia starts a great discussion about black-on-black crime, the moral panic about hip-hop's effects on the black community and paternalism.

Rachel gets some interesting race-relations insights from her partner's 7 year old.

Jill explores the implications of truly informed consent regarding women's reproductive choices, which is much more comprehensive than making women pay to have an ultrasound before they can have an abortion. It's also worth noting that the ultrasound for early pregnancies would mostly be transvaginal, which involves actually inserting a wand into the vagina (wheee, forcing that on "those abortion sluts" isn't creepy at all, and it certainly isn't telling of what the real purpose is).

Jill also reminds us that the forced-pregnancy crowd are hardly about babies - South Carolina is a shining example of just how that isn't true.

Queensland Senator Andrew Bartlett takes a look at what supporting out troops really means - there's been similar discussion in US blogs in recent years, but Andrew takes a look at the Australian context.

FireFly has some interesting thoughts on how social circumstances create distinctive characteristics of sexual harassment, and some discussion of the Richard Gere - Shilpa Shetty incident.

Marcella takes a look at wrongful convictions and acquittals not just in the view of justice but in the context of the risks created by making convictions even more difficult for crimes where perpetrators are actually quite unlikely to be convicted.

JoAnne points out that most warnings to women about rape are warning them about the wrong things.

Ilyka points out the problem with being condescending to young women, and I must admit, I'm also less than impressed with a 28 year old feminist blogger acting like she has to have some skinny white chick's bare torso on her book cover because otherwise young women won't care about feminism.
Edit - I owe Jessica an apology, here. It seems the cover was another case of publisher giving her a bunch of shitty options, and whilst I'm still unimpressed with the "no young woman" comment, it's a much better idea to get cranky at the industry that pushes this "we need sexy images on feminist books if we want young women to buy them" shite, rather than new feminist authors who get put in a hard place. Sorry, Jessica.

Luke discusses violence and ill-treatment of women, and how it's dealt with when the perpetrators are famous sportspeople.

This is a long'un, since I spent a few weeks away from the internets and then the next week kind of floored by this whole thing of my university deciding Humanities isn't valuable. Anyway, there's been lots of stuff.

Carnivals:
( lots of 'em )

Note: The glaring absence in this round-up is stuff about the VA Tech Massacre. Honestly, I just can't, at the moment. There's some stuff in the carnivals about it, and most of the blogs I've linked to have some discussion of it elsewhere on the blog, so I'm going to have to leave it at that.

Dora has a great series on Women and Violence over at Shrub.

Chris Clarke has a nice antidote to victim-blaming.

Whilst this is one of the first posts in the Carnival of Feminists, little light has a glorious post on 'the difficult relationships (family and general)' and feminism that I wanted to link especially.

Cecily at '...and I wasted all that birth control' has a great post about health v. life in light of the recent SCOTUS decision to uphold the ban on 'partial birth abortion' (and dayum do I wish we'd stop acting like that's a real term).

Amp at Alas (no-refer link included)talks about one of the scary implications of the SCOTUS ruling.

Round-ups about the SCOTUS ruling here and here.

Amanda debunks the anti-choice myth that abortion-clinics are just out for profit .

In something that seems interestingly timed in line with the SCOTUS decision, there's been another bombing attempt on a clinic that provides abortions. zuzu wonders why no one is calling this the domestic terrorism it obviously is.

And just in case we weren't clear of the sorts of attitudes that lead to this sort of domestic terrorism, Jill has a prime example.

Claire talks about the notion of white bloggers identifying as white ethnic bloggers as a way of at least trying to dismantle the idea of white as default.

Tim Wise has a great article about the white denial and buck-passing that went on with regard to the Don Imus debacle.

Tekanji talks about being an anti-racist white ally.

brownfemipower has an interesting musing how white people respond to protests against corporate waste-dumping by Indigenous peoples.

I don't link to LJ very often in linksposts, but hederahelix has two great posts that jump of some recent discussions of race and racism in fandom, that speak to white privilege and responding to criticism from fans of colour. Part 1, Part 2.

Designated Sidekick has what I believe is one of the best answers to the ever-present question ofhow to get your girlfriend into comics.

The Happy Feminist speaks against the idea that women don't need feminism because they have 'teh power of teh pussy'. I advise against reading the comments. Unless you feel masochistic, though there's some great snark in response to MRA-Nice Guy(TM)-types.

Tekanji has a post about harassment, silencing, and gaming communities. Ariel follows up with some more thoughts on how women are silenced in online gaming communities.

The Angry Black Woman has a great post about why she, as a woman of colour, writes speculative fiction, and how she responds to questions based around spec fiction's history of being rather racist in its existence.

Tekanji has a post about a game called Dance, where you can play as a non-white character, as long as you pay for it.

Speaking of gaming, tekanji also has a post about the beauty myth and character design, which debunks that tired chestnut of how feminists want all female characters to be 'ugly'.

Jeff has a three part post about being raised a feminist man1, 2 & 3.

Pavlov's Cat has a discussion of Education Minister Julie Bishop's plan for performance-based pay for teachers, and how, despite her bleating about Labor state governments being big poopy-heads for not liking it, it's really just rather awful.

*e has an interesting musing about how she's dealt with the notion of feminist methodology in her research.

For Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Rachel Edidin at Inside Out has been posting about sexual assault in comics (links to earlier posts in the series included in the linked post).

Speaking of sexual assault in media, MaggieCat at The Hathor Legacy has a two parter about Friday Night Lights actually getting a sexual assault storyline right.

Ragnell is unimpressed with Wonder Woman #7.

Helen has a reaction to the AFL (Australian Football - Please don't ask me to explain it. It's a crazy Victoria thing, and everything I hear about the whole operation leads me to believe it's run by misogynists) incident where a player taunted an opposing player by making sexual cracks about said opponent's daughter.

That Pussycat Dolls show makes me want to vomit. Thankfully, Ritchie at Crimitism takes one for the team and brings us awesome snark, which actually exhibits some of the really fundamental flaws of this entire show.

Hugo has some thoughts about young women and perfectionism, and how it might be tied up with guilt and fear about female sexuality.

First, links.

Via morchades. Best snark about fundies and same-sex marriage evar. Oh, SMH Opinion Columnist, you are made of win.

For polrua, 'cos I mentioned it the other day. Best thing to come out of 300.

In other news, I wandered into town after handing in assessment on Friday night and ended up seeing Priceless, because, hey, Audrey Tautou. There's some really sweet and funny parts in the film, but there was just something about the power and gender dynamics that really didn't sit well.Then, I kinda expected those dynamics to shit me, so the sweet and funny parts were a pleasant distraction from the expected, and really, if I only saw films with flawless politics, I'd see very few, if any. But, Audrey was lovely (though I was a little disturbed by how visible her ribs are - it's oddly distracting), and whilst Gad Elmaleh's character kinda bugged me, he himself grew on me, in that shallow sort of way, as the film progressed. *shrug* I have a weird fictional kink for slightly dorky-looking French men.

I'm still trying to figure out if I want to see Becoming Jane. Is there anyone on the who has flist seen it and would be willing to comment for or against?

Sorry for the delay this week, take-home exams are probably my most-hated form of assessment. It's too 'little of this little of that' for me. Still, it's done now, so I'll stop whining at get to linking. :)

Carnivals:
1. 11th Disability Blog Carnival is up at All About aBILITIES
2. 34th Carnival of Feminists is up at A Somewhat Old, But Capacious Handbag

In great news for feminist gamers, Andrea and Robyn have launched The IRIS Network, a site that aims to build and promote the voice of gaming women in the wider gaming community.

In disheartening news, tech blogger Kathy Sierra is being stalked, harassed and threatened. This shit is not okay. And quite frankly, I'm disgusted with the people who keep trying to defend death threats, rape threats and the like as 'free speech'. These threats silence people. These threats impinge on the free speech of others. Your free speech does not override the free speech of someone else. This is fucking basic, and that there are people who don't get this makes me fucking furious. abyss2hope has more.

Helen has a comprehensive take-down of the assumptions underlying Australian feminist Pamela Bone's ongoing complaint that if feminists really cared about women in the Middle East they'd be supporting the war. Have I mentioned that complaint really shits me off?

Robert at Larvatus Prodeo discusses the guilty plea of David Hicks, the Australian terror suspect who's been in Gitmo for the last five years. I'm waiting for the 'well he wouldn't have made the plea if he wasn't guilty' bleating. Also, I can't be alone in thinking that 'material support for terrorism' sounds like a rather bogus charge, can I?

Jenn is unimpressed by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "apology" for Japan's role in the victimisation of Comfort Women in WWII. I'm not either. Incidentally, the comments features an interesting discussion about how the women who were involved have rejected offers of monetary compensation/help from the Japanese government, simply wanting an apology. I think there's something in that for those claiming an apology from the Australian PM wrt the stolen generation is irrelevant and unnecessary and merely symbolic.

Via tigtog, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto tells the story of being the first head of government to give birth whilst in office.

In a move that's quite telling about anti-choice attitudes, legislators in North Dakota have rejected a proposal to allow pregnant teenagers to seek prenatal care without parental permission. BitchPhD has more. I have no words.

In a rather problematic move to encourage adoption as an alternative to abortion, Texas is considering an idea to offer $500 to mothers who carry a pregnancy to term and put the resulting child up for adoption, but only if they were considering an abortion to the point of visiting an abortion clinic (which would be required to inform all patients of the program). zuzu points out the glaring issue when you compare this with ovum donation, whilst Amanda points out that since the whole idea plays on the legal fiction of compensation for time and effort rather than treating babies as commodities, the $500 offering works out to approximately 7 cents an hour. Which is rather telling in how much pro-life attitudes include a valuation of women's valuable role in life-giving.

Pam has a Q&A with Joe Murray, former columnist for the American Family Association who has recently displayed a significant change in his views on homosexuality and has begun speaking out on the hypocrisy of organisation like the AFA. A number of the commenters have noted that perhaps the next step for Murray would be applying those thought processes to his pro-life stance and see what happens.

Speaking of hypocrisy, Pam has a great example of the 'good for me and not for thee' attitude of a lot of hard right social conservatives like those at Free Republic.

Dora has a great post at Shrub (celebrating its second birthday) on the tensions involved with dialogue between privileged and non-privileged groups.

And to finish with a heartening story for the week, two women acted to not only prevent a rape, but to ensure the failed rapist was convicted for his attempt. As BitchPhD notes, this is how we prevent rape, not changing what we wear and not drinking in public and brandishing guns.

Carnivals:
1. 19th Carnival Against Sexual Violence is up at abyss2hope.
2. 10th Erase Racism Carnival is up at Racialicious.
3. 10th Disability Blog Carnival is up at HIV/AIDS, Deafness & Disabilities.

One of the really important links this week: Donna has a good round-up of the New Bedford raids of immigrant workers, and information on how people can respond actively.

Also, for those readers who are still a little lost with all the feminism, or want somewhere to direct those asking somewhat more elementary questions in the middle of your discussion, tigtog presents Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog.

Tekanji has a great post dissecting the kinds of 'I don't believe in privilege' comments that invariably get thrown around when one is trying to talk to people about this sort of stuff.

Sara introduces us to her weapon against living with privileged asshats: the fridge against privilege, which I think is a damn fine idea, and I'm wholly sympathetic to those who have the pain of living with privileged asshats.

Pam has a great discussion about the recent review of a new book titled Missisippi Sissy.

little light, who keeps astounding me with the power of her writing, has some quite personal insight into how the political becomes personal.

Genni has a counter to all the folks who think street harassment just isn't a big deal.

Maia reminds us that 'not guilty' does not mean 'innocent', particularly when one is talking about 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. So when someone is found 'not guilty' or rape, there's no acknowledgement that it's quite possible the victim was harmed by the accused. 'Reasonable doubt' is just that; it's not definitive that the victim wasn't raped, or even definitive that they weren't raped by the accused. And then victims have to go out in the world and, in many cases, an environment that includes their attacker. How can these cases be accounted for and handled?

Amanda has a post about the role of 'fat-talk' and female self-degradation as a (perceived) requirement for women.

zuzu directs us to an article about girls doing weightlifting in high school.

emily explores the concept of gendered and sexual fragments and fragmentation.

Sheezlebub has a great takedown of the conservatives being oppressed at universities trope, because being asked to read something apparently means being asked to agree with it.

brownfemipower muses on the intersection of race, class and disability.

brownfemipower has also hosted a guest-post from Priscilla Huang about some of the issues that exist for Asian and Pacific Islander Women in America.

Ji In talks about the importance of names for (particularly transnational) adoptees, or, why Angelina naming the latest 'addition to her rainbow family' Pax makes me want to throw things. Possibly at her.

In media news, Richie at Crimitism has an interesting analysis of gender-bending webcomic The Wotch.

One in the WTF news of the week: Nipple tinting. For "fresh-looking nipples". I'm with Jill on this, I don't even know what that MEANS. I just know that it's broken.

Okay, I lied. Have another WTF story. Because it's really quite special.

Carnivals:
1. 33rd Carnival of Feminists at The Greatest Blog You'll (Probably) Never Read
2. 16th Carnival of Bent Attractions at Viviane's Sex Carnival

Blog Against Sexism Day had some massive participation. (link-tastic)

In celebration of Internation Women's Day, tekanji has begun a series of posts entitled Loving Our Bodies which is fabulous.

Also at Shrub, Dora has a great post about being an ally.

Speaking of allies, in her post for Blog Against Sexism Day, tigtog has a great post about good guys and gold stars.

Auguste at Pandagon talks about being a 'Nice Guy'.

Ilyka Damen has had enough of the tendency of certain (usually male) sections of the liberal blogosphere to sling to sexist and transphobic insults. The response to Ann Coulter's recent hatefulness as a key example.

Jill has a great post at Feministe about how people enable rapists and rape culture.
These are important attitudes to combat for many reasons, one of which is that in many societies, the people who hold these enabling attitudes have every chance of being on the jury of a rape trial. Of course, it's not all on juries and jurists. Jill's own experience suggests that law schools aren't having much trouble breeding the type of asshole that uses rape myths to defend rapists.

In another Jill double, we have the dichotomy of female roles with regard to female politicians. Coupled with The Pussycat Dolls as The New Feminism. You'll have to excuse while I go vomit.

Ilyka also shares a conversation with her partner about feminist blogs and the utility of 'Feminism 101' as a 'beginner blog'.
Sage at Persephone's Box riffs off this idea with 'Feminism 101'.

There's been another round of white feminists trying to paint women of colour as evilly oppressing white women. *sigh*I'm not going to link to them. Instead, R Mildred has a great response, as does brownfemipower.

In WTF advertising news, someone at Dolce & Gabana thought this ad was a good idea. In better news, the ad has now been pulled.

Linking back to a post from last week's round-up; there must be something in the water in Wyoming.

Also, this isn't actually related, but I really wanted to link to it anyway. Because Paul Keating is the reason I watched Parliament Question Time as a child. And really, no one comes up with ridiculous insults like he does. Desiccated Coconut indeed.

I'm going to take a partial leaf out of ScribeWraith's book today, and want to spend some of my post for IWD/BASD celebrating two of the women in my life who've inspired me, who I've been thinking about recently.

1. Yuen Siu Yu, my maternal grandmother. She brought up four children mostly on her own after my grandfather died, and had to make the very difficult decision of leaving her oldest son in Southern China just as the Maoist cult was on the rise, so that her other children, including my mother, would have the greater opportunities available to them in Hong Kong. . She came to Australia when I was three and did most of my raising, so that my mother could go back to work without my family having to spend money they didn't have on childcare, and she protected me as much as she could from my mother's violence. She never talked much about what her life was like, and none of the family talk about Mao, but she taught me about the food of her village, and the stories and customs and traditions and rituals that connect me with my Chinese heritage. I wasn't always open to it, but I treasure what I remember, and I remember more than I thought I would. She's not here, anymore, but I still feel her around, sometimes, and that's comforting, though I miss her.

2. Ms Thom, whose first name I sadly don't remember. She was my ballet teacher from age 4-11, and whilst I recall being a bit scared of her, she taught me how to love dance. She was my guide to a world where I could lose myself in movement, and the place where I was released from the kind of fear and anxiousness that made up most of my home life. One of the strongest memories I have of her is one time when she got angry. It was kind of scary, but the reason she was angry is what makes it so important. I would've been about 8 or 9, and she'd found out some of the other girls in my dance class had been put on ridiculously strict diets by their parents, supposedly for ballet. She was furious, and I remember hearing that she got absolutely furious with the parents involved. I didn't really understand at the time, but in hindsight, I feel so lucky to have been taught by her in an area that's so renowned for its encouragement of harmful beauty standards. She spoke her mind, and took care of her students, and in the last year or so of dancing, when I started growing hips and breasts and the kind of body shape that wasn't compatible with a dancing career, she never discouraged me, because I think she knew that for me, dancing was never about a career; it was about freedom.

And y'know, that sounds kind of trite, now, but it was. Dancing was how I got out of my own skin, and out of my own head, because I never felt comfortable there. It's only been in the last few years that I've really understood what feeling comfortable in my own skin and mind feels like. Part of that was the kinds of survival behaviours I learned from a young age to cope with what went on in my home, but part of that was also that I never felt comfortable with what being a girl or being a woman meant, and what being Asian and white meant, and what loving women *and* men meant. Part of coming to terms with those things was about working on those survival behaviours, and recognising where they came from. Another large part was understanding the wider societal underpinnings of my ambivilance and confusion. And in doing that, I realised there was another kind of freedom; one that doesn'te require me to flee from my own body and mind.

And this is part of why combating sexism, and racism, and homophobia, and classism, and so on, is so important to me. It's not just an ideal about how I believe the world should be. It's about understanding and coming to terms with and respecting who I am, and how I live my life in relation to other people. It's not just about how I'm treated as a woman, as an Asian woman, as a bisexual woman. It's about how I'm treated as a white woman, as a middle-class woman (despite my working-class roots), as a woman in a heterosexual relationship, as a cisgendered (as opposed to trans) woman. It's about the privilege and non-privilege in my own life, and the contradictions and intersections. It's about how I treat other people. And yes, it's also about how the world is and has been; it's about how my histories are interlinked with the histories of others in ways that aren't readily visible; in ways I'm not really proud of, as well as ways I am proud of. It's about how those interlinked histories are linked with the present; how the past isn't some discrete entity we can treat as 'over'; how the past isn't something we can choose to remove ourselves from or rise above.

It's because I deserve a world that both encourages me to feel comfortable in my own skin and mind, and requires me to encourage others to feel comfortable in their skin and mind. It's because everyone deserves a world like that. That's a world worth fighting for.

Somewhat shorter this week, but some really interesting discussions that span a few links, so follow the trails. :)

Carnivals:
1. 32nd Carnival of Feminists is up at Bumblebee Sweet Potato
2. 18th Carnival Against Sexual Violence is at abyss2hope
3. Feministe is hosting the March edition of Help Us Help Ourselves.
4. 11th Carnival of Feminist SF and Fantasy Fans is up at But Can She Spin?

Not-quite Carnivals:
1. A reminder that this Thursday, March 8 (which is also International Women's Day) is Blog Against Sexism Day
2. The latest episode of podcast Addicted to Race has a great discussion of Black History Month. Guest co-host Mat Johnson has what I think is a great idea of moving towards using Black History Month as a kind of report card to look at how black American history (and the like) is being included throughout the year.

tekanji has a great analysis of some examples of male privilege, asking the question: who's responsible for facilitating discussion on men's issues?

In a wonderful case of serendipity, I found at new blog Spinsterzine a review of a book I recently finished reading myself: Talkin' Up To The White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism, by Aileen Moreton Robinson. Moreton-Robinson is an Australian Aboriginal Woman, and the book is a great analysis of the race (and to some extent class) dynamics that run through feminism and impact on the relationships between white and Indigenous women.

Amanda at Pandagon has been hosting some interesting discussion about how for all the talk of compromise, conceding ground on reproductive rights might not be such a great strategy, or, why "abortion should be legal but ... (it's a terrible tragedy)" is really fucking annoying to keep hearing from pro-choice people.

In the realm of recognising the rare Republican with a spine, Wyoming Rep. Zwonitzer shows his colours as a straight ally in his vote against a bill to ban legal recognition of same-sex unions. (via Pam at Pandagon)

A writer at San Fransisco publication AsianWeek, Kenneth Eng, recently penned a glorious (not) screed entitled 'Why I Hate Blacks'. Kai at Zuky has a good round-up of the incident.

There's nothing I can say about this post from brownfemipower that would do it justice. Just go read it.

Emily at Sexual Ambiguities springboards off some recent reading on fundamentalism and has some interesting things to say about similarity and difference wrt gender.

Rachel at Inside Out has some ideas for the comics industry on attracting female readers

And, um, this is, er, interesting. In that way that's kinda terrifying for the fact that I wouldn't be at all surprised. Oh, Australian Government. Can you get anymore WTF?

Editorial Note 16/5/07: I've disabled comments on this entry because it's being spammed. I don't know why, but that seemed the easiest solution. Apologies if you wanted to comment on it.

Carnivals:
1. 17th Carnival Against Sexual Violence at abyss2hope
2. 9th Erase Racism Carnival at Writeous Sister Speaks


Ampersand has an excellent link round-up at Alas on prison rape and societal attitudes towards it. He follows up with some further discussion.

Over at Shrub, tekanji talks about why gender-inclusive game design is important.

Limyaael has a great discussion about writing gender-equal societies.

For those interested, Rachel at Inside Out talks about what comics editors do, exactly. Being an assistant editor for Dark Horse Comics, it's fairly safe to assume she has a pretty good idea.

Ide Cyan at Feminist Sci-Fi - The Blog has a great post on the dynamics of exceptionalism.

Amanda at Pandagon has a review of Stephen Ducat's The Wimp Factor, which I may need to pick up a copy of. Some interesting insights on what Ducat terms 'anxious masculinity' and its relationship to wingnuttery.

I think most of my readers know I'm quite baffled by the idea that feminism hates men, particularly when anti- and non-feminists seem to be, as Amanda points out, much better at it than us, like suggesting that hetero married/partnered women should add blowjobs to their list of errands/chores. Yup. That's not insulting to men at all. Except for the bit where it is.

Designated Sidekick has some advice for fellow guys about getting involved in feminist discussions on the intarwebs. Most of which would probably work for feminist discussions off the intarwebs, too.

Back at Pandagon, for anyone under the mistaken impression that the anti-same-sex-marriage brigade isn't about denying legal rights to same-sex couples, Pam has some news that may dissuade you of that.

brownfemipower jumps off the Tim Hardaway incident and into a discussion about racism and homophobia in sport.

From sigelphoenix comes a good article about (US) Black History Month in The Nation, and whilst I don't normally do quotes, this is just spot on: When it comes to excelling at military conflict, everyone lays claim to their national identity; people will say, "We won World War II." By contrast, those who say "we" raped black slaves, massacred Indians or excluded Jews from higher education are hard to come by.

Speaking of double standards, in light of the Amanda & Melissa v. right-wing shills debacle, Jill at Feministe wonders who the real religious bigots are.

Just in case we needed more proof of how the cult of motherhood damages women, Amananta at Screaming into the Void points out the reduction of pregnant women to their pregnant bellies.

In local news, yours truly is, unsurprisingly, unimpressed with federal Health Minister Tony Abbott with regard to his pregnancy counselling initiative.

zuzu at Feministe takes a look at what she refers to as the 'Broken Windows' theory of sex, as summoned by a recent book bemoaning "hookup culture" among young women.
Marcella at abyss2hope looks at the issue from a different perspective, in relation to sexual mistreatment.

Marcella also has a great post about the role of encouraging respect in the fight against sexual violence.

Carnivals:
1. The 31st Carnival of Feminists; so awesome that it needs two parts, is up at Truly Outrageous: Part One and Part Two
2. Medical Humanities hosts the 8th Disability Blog Carnival.
3. 15th Carnival of Bent Attractions is up at Queercents

Also, the beginning of a Carnival; Taking Place has a post about the new Ourstory Carnival, the first edition of which will be posted on Feb 24th.


As an aside to her series on The Gaming Beauty Myth, tekanji at Shrub takes a deeper look into femininity.
On a related note, riffing off another awesome post, belladame at Fetch Me My Axe hosts an interesting discussion about femininity and gender.
emily at Sexual Ambiguities also has a discussion about femme aesthetics, the need to consider gender performance and one's twist on hetero-gender if one is claiming to be reimagining gender, and considers that twist in the context of being queer.

Also at Shrub, yours truly is unimpressed with the latest Australian federal government report on childcare, wherein Treasury pretends there isn't a problem, and classism abounds with bad data interpretation

Amanda at Pandagon takes a look at the evolution of 'ladmags', from Playboy to Maxim.

Pandagon's taken on some new posters, since Amanda has taken on a position to run the campaign blog for John Edwards' presidential campaign, so in that spirit, Chris Clarke has a post about respecting the religious non/beliefs of others. Hugo has more at his place, from a Christian perspective.

And whilst I don't really want to give too much air to the right-wing witch-hunt that went on with regards to Amanda and Melissa of Shakespeare's Sister, Ilyka, also posting at Pandagon, riffs off some of the response to the whole debacle in her consideration about blogging and sounding human in the world of political commentary.

A columnist at the New York Post points out the obvious lessons from the Lisa Novak case. Where "obvious lessons" = "misogynistic crap". zuzu has a good discussion of the article at Feministe.

little light's girlfriend provides some discussion of the parallels between anorexia and addiction.

And yeah, I didn't post anything about the transbigotry that exploded last month (or whenever it was). But, in light of a recent case in Vancouver, earlbecke at definition has a great post about the gender essentialism that underpins this idea that transwomen aren't really women and have no place in women's spaces.

In more local news, Suki has a brief post about our lovely (in all those ways that aren't, really) Prime Minister, who stuck his foot in it by claiming that Al-Qaida would be praying for Barack Obama and the Democrats to win the 2008 election, whilst displaying his ignorance of the election process.

MaggieCat at The Hathor Legacy is much more eloquent than me about the trainwreck that was last week's episode of Studio 60 (The Harriet Dinner Part II).

P. M. McRae at Girl-Wonder blog Take Back the Knight has a couple of radical statements about sex, women and comics.

Also at Girl-Wonder, we have the launch of a new blog, Inside Out from Rachel Ediden, assistant editor for Dark Horse Comics.

So, January 22 was Blog for Choice Day, and aside from a slight gripe about the US-centrism of the choice of date (the anniversary of Roe v. Wade), talking about the importance of reproductive freedom is, well, important. And there's a bunch of excellent posts that were made.

And hey, I've never been good with dates and deadlines that don't involve grades, and all that better late than never stuff, so I'm going to start off with something a bit more personal. Particularly since this year's topic was 'Why you're pro-choice'

Really, the list of reasons why I support reproductive freedom is pretty damn long, and much of it is covered by some of the wonderful people below, so I'm just going to outline a few, some of which are quite personal.

I support reproductive freedom because it reduces the number of children who grow up feeling as unwanted as I did. I grew up being told on a biweekly basis for about eight years that I wasn't wanted, and that's not counting how many times I was shown the same. I don't know how many other six year olds have been told, or shown, with such regularity just how unwanted they are, but I'm certain that it's many more than I'd like, or anyone should like.

I support reproductive freedom because I think it's an insult to the wonderful mothers I know to think that motherhood is merely a duty or some kind of punishment for having sex. Hell, I think it's an insult to children to think they they're a punishment.

I support reproductive freedom because seeing pregancy as some kind of punishment for not having 'foolproof' sex, even if one supports the right to not choose motherhood (I'm looking at the adoption-not-abortion folks, here) obscures the real risks of pregnancy to women's well-being, obscures the quandries related to adoption, and really, is just kind of hateful. Because treating pregnancy as such means that only women are to be punished for the lack of 'foolproof' sex. And I'm just not down with that.

I support reproductive freedom because I think restricting the choices available to women with regards to their own reproduction and their own bodies, denies them a fundamental aspect of personhood, and displays a disturbing mistrust of women. And when I talk about restricting choices, I mean that I think forced pregnancy, forced abortion, forced birthing-method, forced sterilisation, denial of access to birth control, etc., are wrong. Because, regardless of what anti-choicers keep saying, being pro-choice isn't just about abortion. It's about trusting women to make the whole spectrum of decisions. Some of these problems effect different groups of women differently. There have been advocates of forced sterilisation of women of colour and poor women because they're "having too many babies". There have been advocates of forced pregnancy for white women because "there aren't enough approriately white babies oh noes". The relationship between abortion and women with disabilities, or potentially disabled embryos can be troubling (and, incidentally, women with disabilities who ask whether there's an undercurrent of ableism involved in the decision to abort potentially disabled embryos aren't anti-choice. They're asking a question. Because given the society we live in, it's likely that there is. And y'know, most of them are probably going to understand women who don't have the resources or support to look after a child with a disability. Most of them are likely agitating for greater support for parents of children with disabilities. The point is whether you're thinking about it. And I think they have some right to at least ask the question, within reason. The right to choose doesn't mean you don't have to think about how privilege informs your choices. ).

And finally, I support reproductive freedom because if I didn't, and if feminists before me didn't fight for it, I'd currently have a child who deserved to be wanted more than I could want them. And yeah, because of that whole growing up thing, children being wanted is a big thing, for me. For some people adoption is enough to solve that issue, and that's great for them. Really. I think people who decide to put their children up for adoption, when freely choosing to do so, are deserving of a whole bunch of respect, because it's not something I could do. Because giving a child away after they're born, for me (and I'm emphasising the for me, here), isn't enough to quiet the little voice in my head telling me that I'd still be showing that child that they're not wanted. And I freely admit that this is a very personal thing, for me, and I'm really sorry, because I know it's probably coming across that I think adoption is bad, but I don't - my words are being clumsy. If I want children later in life (which is a pretty big if at this point, but stay with me), I'd probably adopt. Which may sound hypocritical, but really has a lot to do with the fact that what it comes down to is that I don't think I'm psychologicially capable of putting a child up for adoption, for reasons that pertain to all kinds of my own shit, which I wouldn't dream of projecting onto other people, because it's MY shit.

And all of those things are also why I'm planning to volunteer for Children By Choice. Because whilst abortion wasn't really an agonising decision for me, because I'd thought a lot about it by the time I found myself pregnant, I know lots of other women need more support and help than I did in figuring out the decision that's right for them; women who need to be listened to and given the time and resources to make their own decisions, rather than have decisions made for them. And I want to contribute to that, and contribute to organisations that help that to happen.

But enough about me. Other people have said some awesome things. I don't normally quote, but this is a special edition after all.
( quotes and links behind the cut )

So, it's been a while, but we're back. I've been a little more discerning, given I've got a lot of backlog to cover, but pack a lunch, 'cos there's still a fair bit to get through. So here we go.

Lots of Carnivals:
( behind the cut )

Marcella posting at Alas, A Blog considers the fallout from contentious rape cases, or more specifically, those who say the alleged victims in these cases that fall apart have 'harmed' future, "real" rape victims.

Staying with Alas, Ampersand takes a look at The Pursuit of Happyness and, more particularly, the different interpretations of its message.

Dora over at Shrub.com talks about personal body image in relation to the fetishization of women of colour.

Just what children need. Obesity Report Cards! Yay! From Jill at Feministe.

Rachel of Rachel's Tavern directs us to an Washington Post article about a study which suggests a linear relationship between diversity and business success.

Thin Black Duke at Taking Place considers the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

zuzu at Feministe has started dissecting the book of a prominent anti-feminist blogger, Dawn Eden, who decided a life with lots of sex wasn't right for her, which is great for her, until she decided this meant that all women should remain chaste because Dawn knows what's good for them. Which, well, yeah. I dunno either. Jill has more. [1] & [2].

Still at Feministe, after some discussions about body image, zuzu responds to some feeling that the discussions were a bit disheartening with a wonderful exercise; talking about what we like about ourselves, without qualifying or offsetting with self-depreciation.

little light over at Taking Steps once again displays a wonderful flair for writing, with this powerful piece about hir own embodied trans experience.

Alyx at Mad Sheila Musings is rather tired of those rape myths that link 'rapeability' with attractiveness or dress. Seriously.

Speaking of victim-blaming, Amanda at Pandagon takes a look at the story of a priest accused of molesting young girls who blames the girls for enticing him to molest them.

Hugo takes a look at notions of responsibility and drinking with regards to rape and sexual assault. Or, why the problem to focus on isn't women's 'risky' behaviour that 'invites rape', but that (mostly) men keep raping them. If more discussions about how to reduce risks were combined with a discussion of, or even made reference to this problem, I suspect most feminists wouldn't get quite so cranky about it. I know I probably wouldn't.

But hey, obviously the problem is that men are being so horribly oppressed. And what's this pressing and urgent oppression that's so much more important than rape and intimate partner violence and so on? Why, Ladies Night, of course! Amanda has the details.

Amanda also has an interesting discussion of the problem with much discussion of obesity, wherein much of the health concerns about obesity are in fact used to mask the fact that for most people, it's really an aesthetic issue. All the research about weight and health often end up being ways for people to rationalise telling fat people how disgusting they are.

MaggieCat at The Hathor Legacy takes a look at what's troubled me about the last couple of episodes of Studio 60 (spoiler warning).

In other television, and still at The Hathor Legacy, sbg takes a brief look at the female characters in Numb3rs (again, spoilers).

Over to Megatrouble, who takes a look at some niggling issues with Heroes, particularly with Nikki (yeah, spoilers). Incidentally, Claire's growing on me more and more.

Keeping with media for the moment, kalinara of Pretty, Fizzy Paradise has an issue with Cassandra Cain (of DC comics-verse).

Still with comics, Karen at Girls Read Comics takes a look at an example of misandry with regard to Green Arrow.

Stephen at Designated Sidekick takes issue with Chuck Dixon's attitude to gay characters in DC comics, and Chuck's need for their sexual identities to be deniable. Because, bless my darling partner's heart, he wants other people to have characters they can identify with, just like he did as a straight white guy.

Speaking of characters to identify with. Because Mary is awesome, she has an awesome post about why she won't shut up about wanting solid female characters in media. And well she shouldn't.

Rachel prompts an interesting discussion about how to deal with racist comments from people we know and care about. Because I think we all know that calling out random people on the internet often feels different to the prospect of calling out one's best friend or relative.

Jill at Feministe has a good question about why the idea that birth control is wrong because it goes against the God's design of our bodies doesn't extend to things like cutting nails or hair, or, y'know, anything but uteruses.

Pam at Pandagon has a good round-up of why conservatives just can't cope with Mary Cheney being pregnant and wanting to raise the child with her partner.

And finally, go read Amanda's Real Consent Manifesto at Pandagon. Now.

Because this post is rather long already, my Blog for Choice Day round-up will be its own post, which will follow this one, and include my own (albeit late) notes on reproductive freedom. Weekly posts will resume from next week.

The money quote from this article?

"The mother and her partner did not apply for an adoption order because, if they did so, the father would lose his status"

I'm sure some will find some way to decide this is some kind of affront to fatherhood and proof that lesbians are destroying the family or something just as ridiculous, but when you've got a couple going to that much trouble to ensure that the biological father still retains his rights, even though they were able to ensure their own by abolishing his, I think it gets to be a really ridiculous argument.

As I've mentioned, internet has been sporadic over the last week or so, due to $tephen being in Brisbane for an academic conference and thus me spending the week in his hotel room, because whilst academic conferences tend to be rather my bag, marketing academic conferences really aren't, so I leave that to him. It works well.

Also, this holiday edition round-up is coming to you from the nation's capital, which has spent the day in a smoke-filled haze because there are some spectacular bushfires going on in rural NSW - about 40km outside Canberra - which are so spectacular that there are bits of ash in the courtyard outside. Given the distance, that's pretty damn spectacular.

Crazy weather mentioned, on with the show.

Carnivals!
1. The 12th Carnival Against Sexual Violence has been hosted by Marcella at abyss2hope.
2. The 28th Carnival of Feminists, hosted by Ginger at Diary of a Freak Magnet.
3. A happy first anniversary to The Carnival of Bent Attractions, being hosted this month at Spectrum Bloggers.
4. Marionette at Dance of The Puppets presents the 8th Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Carnival

Karen of Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed), in her hilarious glory (glorious hilarity?), presents Comic Misogyny Megaslam, otherwise known as Liefeld v. Land: FIGHT!

Over at Shrub.com, tekanji presents the next installment in her series on The Gaming Beauty Myth.

emily at Sexual Ambiguities unpacks the whole concept of the disgust reaction to the idea of gay men having anal sex.

Marcella at abyss2hope looks at a UK study examining our views on the link between alcohol and rape, and how these views impact on jury decisions in rape trials.

Jill at Feministe examines the effects of the 'global gag rule' - wherein the United States by policy denies international reproductive health funding to any organisation that mentions abortion - on the actual lives of women in developing nations.

Amanda at Pandagon debunks that charming piece of hogwash about men being irresponsible children, and the hogwash about that idea being something started by feminists.

Amanda also gives us the next installment of debunking 'Feminists For Life' and their claims of being feminists, wherein FFL talk crap about foster care and adoption.

Our last nod to Pandagon this week, Amanda examines Christopher Hitchens' latest piece of something I hesitate to call writing, about how heh, those wimmins just aren't funny. zuzu at Feministe has more.

Rachel over at Rachel's Tavern takes a look at the model minority myth as it relates to Asian Americans.

Maia at Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty discusses why the sexism in a lot of political folk music makes her uncomfortable.

At Women of Color Blog, brownfemipower kicks off some honest and open discussion about Israel, Jewishness and Zionism, and how she relates to the Israel/Palestine issue as another person of colour.

Staying at WOC Blog, brownfemipower has another post which I think is supremely important, looking at reactions to (in this case) racist ignorance within safe spaces, and falling down as part of liberation.

A slightly shorter round-up, since everyone's been a bit focussed on the US Midterm elections, over this past week. Some good news (Democrats regaining the House and Senate, First female Speaker of the House, First Muslim elected to Congress, Arizona rejects an anti-same-sex-marriage amendment, and South Dakota's drastic abortion ban is defeated, among other things), some bad news (Michigan obliterates affirmative action, all other states that had anti-same-sex-marriage amendments up which all passed).

Carnivals this week:
1. Carnival of Bent Attractions is up at Marti Abernathey
2. The 3rd Disability Blog Carnival is up at Growing Up With A Disability.

In my brief post about Bar Burlesque last week, I touched on the problematic nature of 'naughtiness' in such performances. The Happy Feminist delves a little deeper into this theme with regard to porn, as she points out that criticism of porn isn't about hating sex, so can we stop that now?

And, being much more coherent than I was capable of being the last time I tried to talk about this, Kai at Zuky looks at what lies beneath the boring whining about how political correctness is apprently going to end the world. If you read nothing else I link to, read this. Because from now on, anyone on my friendslist who whinges about "political correctness" in this vein is getting a comment with this link, and nothing more.

Rachel over at Rachel's Tavern offers part one of a brief primer on (US) immigration, in light of its use as a drawcard in the recent elections

Nubian over at blac(k)ademic points out the disconnect in the President of Texas A&M's denouncement of a video white students made an posted on the internet of themselves in blackface.

Maia over at Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty, looks at a study done by the NZ government about wage disparities in male-dominated and female-dominated industries. According to the Minister for Women's Affairs, the solution is that women should enter male-dominated industries. Because female-dominated industries deserve to be paid diddly, of course.

Over at the forums on Girl-Wonder.org, we're talking about how we 'became' (or how we always were) feminists.

Cary Tennis at Salon is being creepy and disturbing. Amanda(Pandagon) and Jill(Feministe) have more.

Over at Pandagon, Amanda once again tackles 'Feminists For Life' propaganda

Lauren over at Faux Real Tho! is starting up a new project; Help Us Help Ourselves - a feminist-oriented resource for getting through tough spots in terms of finances and bureaecracy, and she's looking for contributions.

Yeah, I'm a bit late this week. I had an essay to write yesterday, so my brain was a little distracted by feminist ethics.

Jill over at Feministe is disturbed by a recent court ruling that consent cannot be withdrawn after sex has started.

Marcella over at abyss2hope has a thoughtful look at systematic domestic violence.

emily over at Sexual Ambiguities considers (and debunks) the idea of emo as a queer heterosexuality.

Naamah takes the 'losing weight is easy' myth and blows it out of the water. (via sigelphoenix)

Ilyka, guest-blogging at Feministe snarks out the recent round of "let's blame stuff on fat people" - this week, global warming. Though my snark-admiration for Katherine Flegal of the CDC is high, for this comment: "Yes, obesity is to blame for all the evils of modern life, except somehow, weirdly, it is not killing people enough," she said. "In fact that's why there are all these fat people around. They just won't die."

Amanda over at Pandagon takes on the "liberals [US] are trying to impose their values on us" wingnut myth - the best bit is where the wingnut says caring about women's well-being isn't a moral value.

Sticking with Pandagon for the moment, Pam points us to the new plan for the country of wacky sex sducation, where the US wants abstinance education for 19-29 year olds because they keep having children without being married. Oh noes.

An older post, but one I've only recently come across: Ji In over at Twice the Rice considers international adoption, and says what privileged white people don't want to hear.

Along a similar track, Carmen over at Racialicious brings up the questions that don't get asked of Madonna when she's adopting kids from Africa.

brownfemipower over at Women of Color Blog talks about why we should care about what's happening in Oaxaca.

And this week, I finish with carnivals. Because everyone loves Carnivals!

The 2nd Disability Blog Carnival is up, hosted over at The Gimp Parade.

Also, 6th Erase Racism Carnival is up at Taking Place.

Last night, after forgetting about it completely until missy reminded me in the morning; I attempted to turn around a day of feeling rather crap and toddled off to the Queensland Orchestra's The Sounds of Sci-Fi. Many many nerds. *grin* Also, many children dressed as Jedi. I was seated next to children, which I was apprehensive about at first, but they were very well behaved and not a problem once I managed to tune out the fidgetting (I know kids fidget; that's not a problem. I just needed a few moments to tune it out.) It was much more theatrical and 'fun' than I'd expected, but there were only a few moments of true lame-ness, and the rest was light and fun.
It was great to see a fair few members of the orchestra get into the spirit of things and get dressed up. We had a few Enterprise crew, a Tom Baker, and The Flash (though there was some contention from the trekkies in front of me as to whether The Flash counts as sci-fi. But that's trekkies for you. :P) All in all, it was a fun night (although the premise of the light 'plot' of the evening of claiming that we don't portray aliens in an overall rather crap fashion is ... well, I've ranted about that before).

Afterwards, I'd considered hanging about in town for a while, but decided I was tired and still feeling a bit generally bleh, so off home to curl up in bed with the most recent Kate Forsyth, whcih I picked up the other day.

This morning I slept until I woke up (as opposed to setting an alarm), and potted about for awhile before finally putting the laundry on. Waiting for the machine to do its thing, I realised just how messy I'd let the house get of late, so off I went on a cleaning spree. The garbage bin outside is filled about 1/3 more than when I started, and I can flit freely between the door and my bed without having to step over things. Hooray!
I'm still working on balancing the fact that I'm a lazy sod with the fact that messiness really really bugs me. In the meantime, the buzz from a freshly-cleaned house is awesome.

Shortly, a trip to the shops, because I need groceries and have fruit and veg cravings. I have a nice cut of lamb thawing for dinner, which I'm thinking of marinating and grill-roasting in the toaster oven. I had some great luck doing that with the pork cut I had the other night. We shall see.

In news of teh intarwebs, Grant Morrison talks to Newsarama about Batman, and comes up with awesome smackdown on Frank Miller. I've no idea what Morrison's like in terms of his actual comic work (comic-geeks on the f-list? I'm curious), but anyone who can lay this kind of smackdown on Miller makes me tingly-happy. (via Bookslut)

GM: ...I'd rather Batman embodied the best that secular humanism has to offer - a sour-faced, sexually-repressed, humorless, uptight, angry, and all-round grim 'n' gritty Batman would be more likely to join the Taliban surely?
NRAMA: Er…
GM: And while we're on that subject...Batman vs. Al Qaeda! ... I'd be so much more impressed if Frank Miller gave up all this graphic novel nonsense, joined the Army and, with a howl of undying hate, rushed headlong onto the front lines with the young soldiers who are actually risking life and limb 'vs' Al Qaeda.

Another thing on the Morrison interview, as I said the boy last night; it's interesting to note that in Morrison's little condensed history of Batman, Robin is not worth mentioning beyond Dick and Jason. No mention of Tim or Steph. Which is perhaps interesting, even acknowledging that we're talking about a paragraph of Bat-history.

Also, a rather fascinating look at the 'traditional marriage' argument, and why it's so hard to swallow. (via Alas, A Blog)

It's not a defensive stance, no matter how it's framed. It's not "please leave my cultural values alone," because nobody is asking them to dissolve their marriages, reorder their families, change their church ceremonies ... They're just asking that other versions be allowed to exist, too, and treated equally. And these folks argue that that mere fact of coexistence will obliterate them...

And now, a snack, then off to grocery-shopping.

An Arkansas Republican claims that over 10,000 studies show that gay parents are problematic for children. The reporter fails to challenge this assertion, which would require there to have been one new study claiming this released every day for the last 27 years. EVERY. DAY.

Just ... Ten THOUSAND? Are there ten thousand studies on ANY specific subject? Seriously?

'the stupid. it burns' needs to be a mood.