Political Flavors


Conservatives are the OLD Punk Rock

Posted in Editorials on February 27th, 2017
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I balk when I see tweets about conservatives being the new punk rock just because people vehemently hate Milo Yiannopoulos for being a *fashionable* blowhard. This is because I associate punk with my rebellion against fascistic tendencies and I associate the alt right with shitty old nazis who just so happen not to carry the SES association with rednecks. But today, my “shuffle all” played 7 Seconds and I realized how much I cling to the good and put aside the bad in my memories of the punk rock I loved in my youth. As a tween and teen, I clung to bands like 7 Seconds because they had the edge and the energy I loved about punk, but they also created space for me. With feminist 101 songs like “Not Just Boys Fun” and lines like “fuck big business, church and war/that’s not what we’re fighting for” in “Definite Choice,” I had music to get me fired up for the political work and to comfort me in times when I felt like maybe I was the crazy one and I should just conform. The flip side of that realization of how fucking great 7 Seconds was, is that there was SO MUCH that was garbage.

I remember the first time I listened to Nevermind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols and thought Bodies was an incomprehensible story of abortion stigma. Is the problem that she was poor? “A case of insanity”? That she was a “no-one who killed her baby”? Was the transgression supposed in the graphic gorey descriptions? If so, then the purity ring wearing indoctrinated tweens outside clinics who carry signs bearing gorey images of god knows what are as punk rock as the Pistols. I did not find it to be progressive or transgressive, and I didn’t have the language or discourse of the problematic fav so I just had to live with my cognitive dissonance and continue to call punk progressive while knowing it could be weirdly conservative. Bodies is downright milquetoast compared to what I heard as I got into hardcore and oi!

I remember smiling while my at-the-time boyfriend and his bestie listened to “Politically Incorrect” by Combat 84 not quite ironically enough to justify their smirks at “Equal opportunity?! What about my fucking opportunities?!” (also lol, this line basically sums up the entire argument of conservative transgression). Yes, for every kid with a SHARP patch, there was a kid with an 88 patch (or the little patch with a no symbol over the SHARP logo because I guess graphic design for nazis died in the 40s); for every Kathleen Hanna there was a Fat Mike; for every “Jesus was a Communist,” there’s a really bizarrely high number of white dudes trying to convince you that Screwdriver is just really great punk music if you can put aside the white power shit. As a kid I had a lot of trouble navigating whether or not some kid I was meeting was gonna say some outrageously dehumanizing shit about Jews without noticing (or maybe intentionally because they did notice) that I’m Jewish.

At that time, I had to dig to find Team Dresch or Bitch and Animal (ok, does anti-folk count as punk? I don’t know, don’t @ me) to express that queer anger I had inside me, an anger that was definitely not acceptable to a lot of the traditional-gender-role-loving hardcore scene. Punk rock and queercore is now a huge part, if not the dominating genre, of punk. Thanks in part to band like MEN and Gravy Train!!!, we have bands like PWR BTTM being featured in the New York Times. The new punk rock is a glittering queermo paradise, not some fucking punch bait dude with a frog pin talking about how he’s *technically* not a member of the KKK.

My Favorites of 2014

Posted in Editorials on December 31st, 2014
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All the best in 2015. Here’s some of my favorite things from 2014.

Link Roundup – Some of these are long reads, and some are shorter. Here’s some posts from the year I hope you didn’t miss.
Dear America, I Saw You Naked
Popular Delusions: Sovereign Citizens
Survey: Overwhelming Majority Of U.S. Doctors Seeing Patients With Drug-Resistant Illnesses
Invisible Politics
Notes from a Pornographer on Sexist Sexual Imagery and Behavior
Why Did Anti-Choice Activists Harass Unitarians in New Orleans?

Marshallese poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner speaking at the UN Climate Leaders Summit in 2014

Books
My favorite book of 2014 is a novella published as an ebook by Atavist Books. Sleep Donation by Karen Russell

A crisis has swept America. Hundreds of thousands have lost the ability to sleep. Enter the Slumber Corps, an organization that urges healthy dreamers to donate sleep to an insomniac. Under the wealthy and enigmatic Storch brothers the Corps’ reach has grown, with outposts in every major US city. Trish Edgewater, whose sister Dori was one of the first victims of the lethal insomnia, has spent the past seven years recruiting for the Corps. But Trish’s faith in the organization and in her own motives begins to falter when she is confronted by “Baby A,” the first universal sleep donor…

Sleep Donation is so engaging I couldn’t put it down. The universe is rich and easy to get lost in. A quick and very satisfying read.

Honorable Misandry Mention:
Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation by Laura Kipnis
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

Television
My favorite new show of 2014 is Broad City on Comedy Central. I first heard Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer on the Ronna & Beverly podcast. I immediately became a fan of their hilarious web series. It was originally supposed to be on FX, but they cancelled the show and then Comedy Central Picked it up. I swear I remember articles at the time that FX didn’t know how to market a show about women to advertisers, but those links seem to have disappeared. But I’m so glad the show came to be. It’s the funniest thing on television.

Honorable Mention:
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver Adam and I subscribed to HBO to watch this show. John Oliver is brilliant.

I watched every episode of Married at First Sight on the new FYI network. I liked it, but I feel kind of guilty about that. Ultimately I think the show was somewhat exploitative of the couples. But I suppose that’s the point of reality television. Here’s some thoughts from Sarah Moglia Is “Married at First Sight” a Legitimate Science Experiment?

Music
The PinkPrint by Nicki Minaj. (More about all of my feels for Nicki Minaj here.)

Honorable Mention
Barefoot and Pregnant by the Dollyrots.

Movies

As everyone has probably already seen Guardians of the Galaxy and Birdman, and Horns disappointed me because it took out almost everything that made the book was so amazing, I’m going to recommend everyone go see Particle Fever right now.

This movie is accessible to people with all levels of scientific understanding. I’ve never taken a day of Physics in my life and I didn’t feel that lost at all. “Why do humans do science? Why do they do art? The things that are least important for our survival are the very things that make us human.”


Unitarian Universalism

I have to share these videos by some of my fellow UUs.

Here’s “Love Reaches Out” a song written about the theme of this year’s General Assembly

The Reeb Project is a movement to restore the Voting Rights Act in the United States by All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington DC. It’s named after Rev James Reeb a Unitarian minister who was beaten to death while protesting against segregation in Selma Alabama in 1965. This summer, The Reeb Project held a protest, and it’s the first (and possibly only) flash mob video I will share on this blog.

Other people’s Year End Posts You Should Read
It’s Been a Terrible Year for Reproductive Rights
The Frozen River: A Humanist Sermon

Political Flavors
Most popular posts on this blog this year:
Contradictions made by people insulting my husband (AKA, Misogynist Troll Insult Fails Part 2)
“That’s some training to give to girls.” The criminalization of female self defense

My favorite posts from the year:
Out, Damned Sperm! Why Everyone Is Freaked Out About Fruit Flies.
Our mockery of Fox Sports Sexism
Who Will Be The Next Republican To Endorse Andrew Cuomo?
The Untenable Incel
Red Pillers – Very Concerned about Ladies’ Fashion

Previously: My favorites of 2013

What I Didn’t Say To The (White) Dude Who Told Me Nicki Minaj Should “Shut Up And Get Naked”

Posted in Personal Essays on January 6th, 2014
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Fade in on me among a group of merry makers. “Starships” begans to play. Although it might have been “Pound the Alarm.” Bright eyed with beer and enthusiasm I say, “I’m 31 now so it’s time for my Nicki Minaj phase!”

It’s true. I’ve recently discovered that something about her music really resonates with me. I think Amanda Marcotte explains it here in her post about Beyoncé.

“Single Ladies”… is clearly for the women in the audience to sing along to… the idea is to boost yourself up and say that you deserve to have standards.

When Diana Ross sings, “I’m coming out, I want the world to know,” it is taken by the audience as a call to say fuck you to other people’s perceptions and just be yourself. It’s not just about Diana Ross. When Pink claims the party isn’t started until she gets there, she isn’t actually trying to make the people at your party feel bad because Pink is never going to show up. The listener is supposed to project herself into the song and borrow the confidence from it. The listener says to herself, “The party starts when I get there.” If Pink didn’t expect you to relate to the song, then it would just seem assholey. Now it seems fun.

Commenter Stuart Underwood pointed out the double standard:

Mick Jagger was no shrinking violet when expressing his appraisal of his own prowess, at least in the character of Jagger the rock star. In an uncharitable and overly literal interpretation, one could label the lead singer of damn near any 1960s-1980s “rock” band as a strutting egomaniac.

Was the braggadocio what these singers really thought about themselves or was it a vehicle to reach out to the audience to put them in a certain frame of mind?

Why should Beyonce be held to a different standard than Jagger or Plant or Presley?

I’ve told people that what I love about Nicki Minaj is her bravado. I think it’s powerful. Minaj’s music makes me feel more awesome about myself. She’s also one of many modern women artists who really own their sexuality. One of my feminist lightbulb moments was listening to the “Oh What A Night” remix when I was in middle school and realizing that if a woman had a song about joyfully and wrecklessly losing her virginity…the universe might explode. I’m glad it’s not 1994 anymore.

My pleasantly buzzed head bobbing was interrupted when a dude said to me, “No. She’s so annoying. She’s terrible, she should just shut up and get naked.”

This was more than a cheesy record scratch moment. It wasn’t a personal insult as in “The bands you like suck.”

No matter the topic, an argument I often find myself making is that words have meanings and context matters. “Shut up and get naked” in another context might be playful and fun. But when dripping with contempt it’s repugnant. Add in the racial and gender dynamic of this specific situation, and it’s even uglier. He said Nicki Minaj needs to stop talking and show more of her body. Her words, no matter how much acclaim they have garnered, mean nothing compared to the feelings he gets by looking at her. “A (black) woman’s confidence and pride threatens me. Quickly! Reduce her to a sex object!”

I ain’t gotta get a plaque, I ain’t gotta get awards
I just walk up out the door all the girls will applaud.
All the girls will come in as long as they understand
That I’m fighting for the girls that never thought they could win.
Cause before they could begin you told them it was the end
But I am here to reverse the curse that they live in.
-Nicki Minaj, “I’m The Best”

So Threatening. Such Girl Power. So Man Tears. Wow.

There were many things I could have said and many ways I could have said them.

Earnestness. “When you say things like that, it makes me think less of you as a human being.”

Sarcastic. “Who knew you were a man of such refined taste and erudition?” or “I know you’re a straight guy and all but you don’t have to flaunt it.” or “Wow, I didn’t know you’re a misogynist. How did I miss that?”

You got that hot shit, boy ya blessed
Let me feel up on your chest
Flex it, you the man
You the man 100 grand
This same poll, game goal
Yes I play it very well
Come baby lay down, let me stay down
Lemme show you how I run take you to my playground
Come and get this va va voom, voom
-Nicki Minaj, “Va Va Voom”

What kind of man finds this threatening? Oh, wait.

Later a few things came to mind that misogynists call “feminist shaming tactics” but most other people would probably call being a smart ass. There’s the classic “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” Or just a condescending “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you feeling insecure in your masculinity today?”

What I did say, as cheerfully as possible, was, “You know she’s the best selling female rapper of all time, right?”

He didn’t have much of a response. I think he said “So what?” or “I don’t care.” Sure he doesn’t. Fade out on me swallowing everything else I wanted to say with another sip of my drink.

I’ve written before about embracing my inner smartass. But sometimes it’s difficult to know the right tactic to take. Tone, word choice and delivery interact to make you either a loveable troublemaker or a mean spirited jerk. You may win over the crowd with your wit, but if you come on too strong people will roll their eyes and think you’re a killjoy. Even in this situation, my response didn’t explain why I objected to what was said, though I doubt that would have helped. Knowing when to blurt out the first thing that pops into your head, when to give a more measured response, and when it’s best to respond with only a raised eyebrow takes practice. In the meantime, jam to Super Bass.