“I’ll have a martini, very dry, with a Glock on the side, hold the olive.”

I leave my adopted state, Ohio, for my annual summer sojourn in Germany, and this is what happens! Nothing but lunacy!

Ohio’s Governor Kasich just signed a bill allowing bars to allow people to carry concealed firearms into bars. As Slate puts it: “Because nothing goes better than guns and crowded places …”

Ha! I know an even better combo: guns + crowds + booze + students + beer pong + flashpoints of overt racism. That’ll be the new scene on Court Street, the main drag where my students congregate to imbibe, socialize, and – all too often – get into fights.

Last fall, 0ne of my former students was racially targeted and physically assaulted on Court Street. His tormenters managed to frame him on assault and menacing charges. This Athens News article ably describes the beginning of his saga and hints at the weakness of the case against my student. All charges were ultimately dropped as evidence mounted that he’d been the victim, not the perp. Ultimately he was exonerated. While I avoided writing about his case because I didn’t want to disqualify myself as a character witness, I posted a thinly fictionalized account of how the local jail radically isolates inmates, especially newbies, from the outside world. My student was in that hellhole for a week before he even saw a lawyer (the hardcore folks of course have their attorney’s number memorized), facing racism from fellow inmates, fearing for his freedom.

I now try to re-imagine the whole ugly story with a gun in play. The likely outcome? My student bleeds out on Court Street. An alternative scenario: My student seizes the gun from his tormenter and finds he’s up against high-grade felony charges, even after allowing for self-defense.

Another student, recently returned from Iraq in 2006, was gravely injured (on his head, I believe) by a bouncer at a Court Street establishment. He had to be airlifted to Columbus for treatment. I don’t know yet how his story ends. While writing this post, I did my best to locate him in the Facebookgoogleplex, and I think I might have found him. I’m now so hopeful that he might be living a good life. (I’ll be sure to update if I learn more.)

But again, what if that bouncer had had a gun? What if my thoroughly traumatized student had been carrying, his wits sharp but his nerves frayed from facing down death in Iraq? Two men could have died that night.

What about the goofy, good-natured football player who showed up with his arm in a cast? “Training injury?” I asked brightly. “Um, no, a bar fight.” Gotta admire these students’ honestly. His athletic career continued – in no small part because he hadn’t been riddled with gunshot wounds.

What about a female student (way back in 2003) who took a certain pride in holding her own in “girl fights”? Will her successors all morph into clones of Bree Vanderkar (or Sarah Palin)? Hey, chicks can shoot as straight as any dude! Their flesh can absorb just about as much lead as a man’s can, too.

I realize why this bill passed. The NRA has legislators at the point of, well, a gun. My Democratic and generally progressive rep in the State House said she had to respect her consituents’ overwhelming support for the guns ‘n’ bars bill. Even an abstention (for me, the least-bad path) might have allowed the Repubs to vote her out in the next cycle. And it’s true that bar owners can post “no guns” signs on their doors, which are just as valid there as in any other public space.

But as for myself, I’ll be avoiding the Court Street bar scene, especially past 7 or so in the evening, until it becomes clear whether full body-armor has become the new trend, replacing the standard-issue shorty-short skirts and towering heels.

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I Could’ve Been a Weiner FB Girlfriend … Plus, Return of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy!

It’s true I didn’t friend Anthony Wiener on Facebook, but I did follow him on Twitter. His voting record on feminist and LGBT issues is impeccable. That adolescent picture of him on Twitter? To die for! Weiner is funny and self-deprecating, in a profession where the ability to laugh at oneself is rare.

So I followed Weiner (even though I follow very few folks on Twitter). And one day, in the midst of congressional horse-trading (uterus-trading??) on Planned Parenthood, I boldly tweeted him this:

I didn’t call him my boyfriend, straight up. Just a simple declaration of love! Nor did I keep tweeting him. Nor did I look him up on Facebook (much less call him my boyfriend there). But I could have! Just look at the guys I’ve called my boyfriend on or off line. Jon Stewart. Stephen Colbert. Hugh Laurie. Our school’s superintendent (as documented for Internet-posterity on this here blog). And, in fact, Anthony Weiner joined this boy-harem of mine after the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. Good thing the tomatoes on my Twitter icon only give a glimpse of my face. Had I displayed my true hottness, who knows? I might have become sext-partner seven.

When the scandal broke, I thought it was complete bunk. I mean, Breitbart! BREITBART!! The man is a sleazy, lying, slimewad on a stick. The most pernicious consequence of this scandal won’t be that we lose a strong progressive voice in Congress and cable TV (though that seems inevitable, and lamentable, in the short run). It’ll be the rise in Breitbart’s fortunes.

Breitbart has made a career thus far of slinging political spaghetti against the wall and hoping it will stick. Unfortunately, his spaghetti has not been made of good ole North Dakotan durum wheat. It consists entirely of fecal matter. With each lob of it, he has discredited himself further. Even the mainstream media was starting to see through his tricks, and that’s saying a lot.

Until now. Much like the National Enquirer, which booked a permanent gain in credibility when it busted John Edwards hiding an affair and a child, Breitbart just scored. From here on out, no matter what vile lie Breitbart propagates, the media won’t dismiss him as a liar and propagandist. Breitbart comes out of this a huge (and undeserving) winner.

As for Weiner, considering that his missteps were private and (as far as we know) legal, I’m glad he’s refusing to resign. Those conservatives lawmakers who call him “creepy” forget about their own David Vitter, still a senator after being busted with a DC prostitution ring, engaging in clearly illegal activity and allegedly donning a diaper to boot. They ignore the fact that sexuality is changing. For young people – as well as those immersed in the new social media – sexting is not a kink but merely a new way to express one’s sexual impulses.

I suspect that Weiner truly believed that his activity was really just “frivolous.” That somehow, because it took place in cyberspace, it wasn’t real. Fidelity to one’s marital partner is one of the few values on which most Americans agree, and yet many of us fail to live up to our ideal. People seem to reconcile lapses in one of two main ways: 1) “This isn’t real because it’s online/at a conference/with someone I could never love” – or 2) “Yes, this is wrong, but my life will be hollow without some pleasure to relieve the drudgery and self-abnegation of my daily life.” I’m guessing that Weiner falls into the first group. I also suspect that these two rationalizations are gendered, with men tilting toward #1 and women toward #2, with lots of exceptions, of course. (Readers, if you have other interpretations – or other theories about how people rationalize infidelity – I’d love to hear them.)

In the end, it’s up to Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, to decide what Weiner’s online dalliances mean. She’s the one person who has been seriously wronged here. She didn’t give him carte blanche to flirt with women online and send them pictures of Weiner’s weiner at full staff. While it’s true that some people have open relationships, that’s a moot point here (and Amanda Marcotte only creates a distraction by bringing it up). Weiner and Abedin obviously did pledge monogamy; otherwise, why the public apology to her? I applaud Abedin’s refusal to perform the aggrieved wife for the ravenous gossip machine, and I hope she’ll find future happiness, whether through a fresh start or through Weiner making amends.

But it’s silly to say that the public at large was victimized by Weiner’s conduct. I can’t get too worked up about Weiner lying to the media and the country about entirely private behavior. I can’t even care much about whether he sexted during “work hours” because congresscritters – like professors – are rarely truly off the clock. If the public is screwed, it’s due to the power of special interests and corporations in Washington, not Weiner’s private fantasies.

The other genuine victim here is the final recipient of Weiner’s sexy tweets, college student Gennette Cordova, who appears not to have invited any sort of sexual attention. She has my compassion, too. She didn’t ask for the media circus. If indeed Weiner sent her his famous crotch photo out of the blue, then it’s harassment and a demonstration of sexual entitlement that clashes with Weiner’s perfect congressional record on women’s issues.

To my mind, though, there’s reasonable doubt that Weiner really sent that photo to Cordova. As Joseph Cannon argues, the only way to make the scandal go away was to confess to the real dalliances. (Via here.) Having admitted those indiscretions, it would be difficult for Weiner to argue credibly that he hadn’t sent Cordova his underwear shot. Cannon has explained the evidence for a third party having uploaded the picture to Twitter. Moreover, Breitbart evidently has possession of a photo of a naked, erect Weiner, which means – as Cannon again notes – Breitbart can essentially blackmail Weiner. Cannon can’t (yet) prove his case, but I think it’s plausible.

In addition, sending a sexy photo without prior contact completely breaks the pattern. With his consensual partners, Weiner first made conversation and flirted. Only after establishing a flirtation did he proceed to send them pictures. The fact that those flirtations escalated quickly and even recklessly shows that Weiner had developed a comfort level with sexually-charged online relationships. As one of his partners, Megan Broussard, said, “This is something that’s regular, he’s done all the time, he’s comfortable.” But sending women photos without prior flirtation was not his regular modus operandi. Add to that the fact that a gaggle of conservatives were gunning for him on Twitter, and Weiner’s confession regarding Cordova looks ever more contrived.

Weiner’s other sext-buddies, including Broussard, appear to have been completely consensual. But the now-public evidence for this raises other troubling questions. His entire Facebook exchange with a Las Vegas woman, Lisa Weiss, has been reprinted at a gossipy site called Radar. How did these screen shots become public in the first place? Were they captured when Weiner’s account was hacked (as he claimed a few weeks ago)? Was Weiss coerced or paid or even blackmailed? How secure are everyone’s Facebook transactions?

The other question is why women have now “come forward” to describe details of their consensual relationships with Weiner. What induced them to do so? They will be subjected to slut-shaming in the media.Private details of their fantasy lives have been made public. Why is Broussard giving interviews to ABC news? Is it really, as she claims, to shield her toddler daughter? As a parent, I don’t buy it. At three, her daughter is too young to understand any of this, and she won’t be protected Broussard releasing oodles of photos and electronic messages – quite the opposite. So is Broussard just responding to our reality-TV culture and grabbing her 15 minutes of fame? Could she, too, have been a target of blackmail?

Above all, how did Breitbart get his paws on compromising private photos in the first place?

The end of the FB conversation between Weiner and Lisa Weiss indicates machinations to put these women under pressure. This section of their chat is not reproduced as screen shots at Radar, but is included at the very end of the pdf transcript:

So yeah, Weiner behaved stupidly. He committed a breach of private ethics. He hurt his wife. He left himself open to the machinations of his enemies. He was so reckless, even I could have become one of his Facebook girlfriends.

But behind the scandal is a problem of bigger proportions: right-wing propagandists who have already shown no compunction about lying and now prove willing to stoop to blackmail and coercion. Weiss writes: “someone contacted me about u …” Who is that someone? Breitbart? Drudge? One of the wingnut Twitter conspiracists who were out to destroy Weiner? (See also a similar article at the NYT if you want a “respectable” take on these Twitspiracists. They look no better there.)

This right-wing smear machine – and not Weiner’s dick pics – is what constitutes a real threat to democracy.

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The Mysteries around Trig Palin’s Birth: Why Should We Care?

Did Sarah Palin really give birth to Trig Paxson Van Palin – and should we care?

The case for Trig’s birth being a hoax has been revived in a scholarly paper penned by a Northern Kentucky University professor, Brad Scharlott. Luckily for him, Kentucky is very far from Alaska – and he’s tenured – so he’s unlikely to lose his job over this. If he were a trash collector or librarian in Wasilla, he’d surely be toast. But in my opinion, he’s also unlikely to find a journal willing to publish his article, even though his main scholarly point – that the mainstream media failed to even investigate the rumors about Trig’s parentage, shutting it down in a “spiral of silence” –  accurately describes the media response. If you write about rumor, you own work gets tinged with its stigma, especially if you make the case, as Scharlott does, that a rumor is probably true. In a series of interviews with journalist-novelist-blogger Laura Novak, Scharlott comes off as a credible, intelligent, non-flaky guy. In my estimation, he deserves to be taken seriously.

But still – does the story matter at this late date? The most prominent blogger demanding answers, Andrew Sullivan, has argued repeatedly it does because he sees Palin as a viable Republican candidate whose entire political persona is based upon lies. I agree that she’s a pathological liar. I fear she’s running in 2012.

I’m not sure how much the truth matters politically, though.

Let’s say some enterprising reporter were to uncover proof that Palin is not Trig’s mother. Would that really sway her hardcore political base? I suspect not. They’ve embraced her despite Troopergate and a passel of other ethics violations in Alaska. They tolerated her quitting in the midst of her gubernatorial term, whether to damp down ethics allegations or simply to make truckloads of money as a Fox commentator. They don’t seem to mind her millenarian Pentecostal beliefs that suggest she might not be opposed to Armageddon in our time. They tuned in to her reality show, for god’s sake! Given all they’ve swallowed, why should her loyalists mind if she’d fabricated her fifth pregnancy from whole cloth? (Or from fake bumps and scarves?) She has already shown her contempt for the reality-based community. Why would one more lie – however spectacular – affect Palin’s political future? (It might sway some independents, but we have to hope they’ll be repelled by her overall deceptiveness. If they aren’t, then we really are in deep shit.)

For those of us on the left, there’s little political gain in pursuing this story at this late date. If we do, we risk being lumped in with the Obama Birthers. Plenty of lefty bloggers are already doing just that: Melissa McEwan at Shakesville, Jill at Feministe, and Atrios, just for a sampling. (There are also specifically feminist objections to demanding the truth about Trig’s birth; my next post deals with them.) Through some bizarre political calculus, it seems that the right can only win when it promotes Birtherism (see: Trump, Donald), while we on the left are marginalized by our own kind as soon as we question the oddities surrounding Trig’s birth.

And yet, I want to know the truth, despite the lack of political upside. Blame it on déformation professionnelle from my training as a historian. Maybe I just read too many Nancy Drew books as a girl. But I want to know. And since Sarah Palin remains a powerful politician even out of office (!) it’s in the public interest to know whether she’s a pathological liar or just a reckless narcissist. If she did lie about Trig’s birth, it’s surely not the most important lie she has told (Sully has catalogued dozens in his series “The Odd Lies of Sarah Palin”), but it’s a pretty spectacular one.

The truth matters, especially when it concerns someone who was a candidate for high office – and may be again. It matters even if it’s not politically expedient to pursue it. In fact, if we’re not just political hacks and shills, the truth matters especially when it’s politically inconvenient.

Litbrit has made one of the best cases I’ve seen for Palin having faked the whole thing. She argues that it’s improbable Palin would have risked going into labor on one of those long flights from Texas back to Alaska. She exposes the hypocrisy and sexism of giving Palin a pass on a story that’s a key part of her political persona and appeal just as military heroism is for John McCain.

I’m on record as saying that the more likely scenario is that Palin exercised awesomely bad judgment in traveling in traveling from Dallas all the way to Wasilla after her water broke (by her own account). A recent article by investigative reporter Geoffrey Dunn concurs. (He’s got a forthcoming book titled all-t00-appropriately The Lies of Sarah Palin.) Palingates has a handy compendium of the facts (such as they can be known) about Palin’s Wild Ride. Politicalgates offers a set of questions that would help ferret out the truth, assuming that reporters dared to pose them and the principals answered truthfully (unlikely in Sarah Palin’s case). Early on, before we had other examples of Palin’s recklessness, the Wild Ride placed Palin’s acceptance of the VP nomination – for which she was utterly unprepared and unqualified – into a context. It suggested that delusions of grandeur and invulnerability might be hard-wired traits.

But even though I lean toward believing Palin is narcisstic and unbalanced enough to have risked delivery at 35,000 feet, I’m not at all persuaded by the debunkers that have sprung up like mushrooms in response to Scharlott’s paper. At Slate, Rachael Larimore suggests Occam’s Razor undermines any scenario except Palin being Trig’s birth mother. That argument would be more convincing if Palin’s life weren’t already chockfull of elaborate plots and ruses (see: Troopergate) and erratic behavior (her early resignation). Her life is literally a reality show. Why should we leap to the conclusion that the simplest explanation – while prima facie more likely – is thus bound to be true?

At Salon, Steve Kornacki argues that the Trig rumors are irrelevant because McCain didn’t choose Palin on account of her motherhood, he picked Palin because she was an exciting young female unknown, and thus Palin had no reason to fake a pregnancy. I don’t think anyone has ever seriously argued that Palin’s choice to mother a child with Down syndrome swayed McCain’s choice. It is, however, a potent part of her appeal to her base. Her decision to continue the pregnancy remains a pivotal story in the speeches she delivers to her fans. Whatever else Palin may be, she’s opportunistic. If you postulate that her pregnancy was faked, she might have had completely apolitical motivations, yet seized on the chance to make political hay out of “choosing life.” (One of Sullivan’s readers lays out a scenario where a faked pregnancy would have evolved as an improvised solution – I’m not endorsing this theory, but I do think it has a certain logic .) Kornacki’s argument is thus beside the point. He assumes that any plot by Palin would have relied on rational calculation. She’s politically savvy, but we have plenty of reason to believe she’s not rational.

But the main debunker – who claims to have definitively laid the rumors to rest – is Justin Elliot, also at Salon. Elliot cites numerous eyewitnesses who claim they saw Palin’s pregnancy up close. Among them is Wesley Loy, a former reporter for the Anchorage Daily News who questioned Palin on the authenticity of her pregnancy in February 2008, two months before Trig was reportedly born. In response, Loy says (also at Salon), Palin lifted up her outer garment to display her belly bump. Of course, if Palin really was aping the fake-pregnancy plot line from Desperate Housewives (which she referred to in her interview with Loy), a fabric-covered bump proves nothing. (And no, I’m not suggesting Palin had an obligation to bare her belly, just that this is far from conclusive evidence, especially when said witnesses were men.)

If Loy was so convinced, why didn’t he say so at the time (as Gryphen asks at the Immoral Minority)? (Scharlott tried contacting Loy in the course of his research but received no reply.) Joe McInnis points out the oddity of both Loy and another Alaska reporter, Steve Quinn (also cited in Salon), coming forward with nearly identical accounts three years later. McInnis, who is also soon to publish a tell-all Palinography, positions himself as a “Trignostic.” Still, he’s not convinced – and he reminds us that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Gryphen further notes that Quinn may not be an impartial observer, as he was having an affair with a Palin staffer at the time.

Moreover, the eyewitness accounts cited in Salon do not stand alone. They’re contradicted – ta-dah! – by other eyewitnesses. Here’s what Geoffrey Dunn found:

One close friend of Palin’s–a widely respected woman who had given birth to several children as well and who had close contact with Palin in Juneau up until the time of Trig’s birth–told me that “Palin did not look like she was pregnant. Ever. Even when she had the bulging belly, I never felt that the rest of her body, her face especially, looked like she was pregnant.” When I asked her point-blank if she was certain the baby was Palin’s, she said, “No. I don’t know what to believe.”

The news of Palin’s pregnancy came as a complete surprise to Palin’s State Trooper security detail Gary Wheeler … Only two weeks earlier, in late February of 2008, Wheeler had accompanied Palin back to Washington, D.C. for a Republican Governors Association Conference … Wheeler remembers that Palin had changed into jeans upon her arrival in Washington, with no apparent revelation of pregnancy.

Wheeler also said that his wife, Corky, actually made fun of him when the news came out because he was supposed to be a “trained observer.” Wheeler simply shakes his head: “I had nary an idea she was packin’.”

As Wesley Loy of the Anchorage Daily News reported it at the time, Governor Palin “shocked and awed just about everybody around the Capitol” with her announcement.

This is at seven months.

Yup, that’s the same Wesley Loy who now says Palin showed him her clothed belly.

This issue could be laid to rest if Palin had disclosed her medical records while she was running for the vice presidency. This isn’t an extraordinary request. It’s simply what every other candidate has done in recent memory – including Obama, Biden, and McCain in 2008. Medical records would settle the case definitively. Palin claims she has provided a birth certificate, but that’s yet another lie. Instead, she merely released a letter from her family physician, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson (on election eve, no less). The letter was written mostly in passive voice, which is normal doctor-speak but allows for evasion and circumlocution. This letter included no documentary verification, and none has been provided to date.

In the absence of this data – which, again, is provided by EVERY other candidate for our highest office – rumors will continue to flourish. At Immoral Minority, a commenter from Wasilla states categorically that Palin announced getting a tubal ligation after the birth of Piper. If true, it would certainly explain why candidate Palin refused to release her medical records. If false, well, then why not release those records? Or do they conceal some other secret that could damage Palin’s pro-life cred?

We should ask: cui bono? As Laura Novak writes, “Forget follow the money. The question is:  who benefits from this controversy continuing?” Does Palin gain something by allowing the rumor mill to churn – notoriety, sympathy, or some other intangible? Or is she trying to hide a secret – perhaps one only tangentially related to Trig’s birth? We really don’t know.

However this plays out, it confirms that Palin is a reckless egomaniac, a liar, or – most likely of all – both. And while I disagree with Amanda Marcotte’s contention that the Trig rumors have been wholly debunked, I think she’s right to say they resonate with many of us because we already know that Palin is a “phony.”

Update, 4/26/11, 10:50 p.m.: As this high-school girl demonstrated, it’s not too difficult to fake a pregnancy over six months with the help of just a few confederates. (“A few” is probably key, because if large numbers are in on the secret, it’s bound to spill.) Of course, it’s probably easier to pull off a faux pregnancy if people are predisposed to believe it due to your ethnicity.

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Transitions Profound, Bemuddling, and Lightning Bright – an Awesome Return to the U.S.

So I just flew back from Germany with my family, and what’s the first thing I see at the screens at JFK? Not my connecting flight – lordy, we’d missed that already, because JFK is still JFK, and it is dysfunction beyond any mere family dynamic. No, the tube is tuned to CNN, and Prop. 8 has just been relegated to the history books. Wahoo! I’ve been a loud cheerleader for the “equal-protection” argument all along, even before Olsen and Boies bet the house on it. From what I gleaned, it sounds as though “equality” carried the day. I’ll know more about the judge’s reasoning tomorrow, I guess, when I’m a bit less stunned from jet lag and oxygen deprivation.

We also got an impromptu lesson on how to drive an airport shuttle bus. Because Delta had mucked with our flight times without telling us, then parked us on the tarmac for a good half hour before finding a gate, then sliced more of our connection time by unloading baggage as if it were my grandma’s porcelain (one piece at a time, almost prissily), and then vetoed any chance of catching our original flight by sending us to wait for an inter-terminal train that was broken. It only went one way. The wrong way.

Hey, JFK has improved since our last sojourn there: the one with flood, tornadoes, and threats of arresting my darling husband.

So yeah, the shuttle. We rebooked for the last flight out of the day, and then got on this “shuttle,” where the driver needed to be instructed on how to put it into reverse, how to stay under 10 mph – no, really, UNDER 10 MPH! – and here’s where you have to make sure no plane is crossing your path, and here, and here – it was like watching an astronaut getting his first training, except you’re in the space capsule with him, and you’re positive you’re about to crash with the people you love best, plus their stuffed animals. None of the seats have belts. There are only four seats. I keep hectoring the Tiger to hang on (FER FUCK’S SAKE! …well, that part was conveyed by my tone). The newbie’s teacher said, at one point, “Just like driving in New York.” Fuck yeah. I’ve driven in New York. I wasn’t ready for primetime, but this gal wasn’t even in line for the late-late show. Also, she didn’t have my 16-year-old blonde sister to dangle out the window as a peace offering for a scary traffic move. This was the real thing, weaving in and out of 767s and more.

The shuttle adventure was awesome simply because we lived to tell the tale. Also, the other family riding it had two children who clearly intend to grow up to be Dora and Diego (from Nickelodeon, aka Dora the Explorer). The Tiger righteously complained about their decibels. Might he be inching toward his own genuine appreciation for an “indoor voice”?

More delays, this time presided over by an Asian-American flight attendant who keeps us down to three minutes tops outside the confines of our seatbelt. People turbo-pee, then wait out the end of the flight, wondering if said flight attendant might earn more money for less bother as a dominatrix. (Okay, I admit it: I am the wench wondering that.)

We finally land in Columbus at 10:30, just before our car rental agency is about to close. As I grab my gate-checked bag, I note that it has grown a new strap that seemingly sprouts from the top of it. I ponder whether this could be a trunk, and if so, might my carryon be morphing full-blown into an elephant? If so, how should I expect it to change in the days ahead? (Note that hallucinations have already seized center stage in my perception.) Then I notice the Emirates tags on the faux-Sungold luggage. Oops, someone grabbed the wrong red bag. My sweetheart husband sprinted toward the baggage carousel. By pure coincidence, I spotted and waylaid the lovely and apologetic perp as she left the ladies’ room. My computer cord was in there, so if it had scampered away, I wouldn’t be writing this now. But hey, full disclosure: A couple years ago, I was the woman who took off with someeone else’s crimson carryon, certain no one else had a matching color. I’m pretty sure I was less gracious, more doofus-y, and just plain panicked.

From Columbus, my beloved drove back from the airport in spires, gyres, and forks of lighting that backlit the night sky green-violet-grey. At times you didn’t need headlights at all. We found an all-Grateful-Dead, all-the-time station on Sirius radio. (Why do I not have this in my daily life?) It was the best Dead light show, ever. But then again, I didn’t have to drive. All that was missing was China Cat, Black Peter, and Terrapin Station. I love my husband a little extra for taking on the responsibility and letting me enjoy the storm – a pleasure that echoes back to my dad, and to his mother before him.

Oh, and we got a whiff of skunk as we inched through the Hocking Hills. Just to remind me that this is home. (I think the skunkish message for my husband is a whole lot more contradictory: home/not-home/fascinating-weird. But he likes it!)

And now I’m back in our beloved house, feeling melancholy about places and friends left behind in Berlin. I’ll reintegrate in the next day or two. Transitions like this are always beastly for me. But as the Dead remind me again and again, transitions – those unbounded, undefined spaces between the songs, even the very gaps between the notes (focus on Jerry and Phil to see what I mean) – are the wellspring of creativity and innovation and surprise and ineffable beauty. Coward that I am, I shouldn’t shrink from transitions just because they exact massive housework (like moving house, really) and overtired children (who were both champs).

In the meantime, until I can fully appreciate transitions and the Prop 8 victory, I drink a marbiggie (aka a slightly oversized martini), applaud the Prop 8 decision, and lay me down to rest.

(Go here if the clip doesn’t deliver Jerry to you.)

Update 8/6/2010: I fixed a few typos. I’m sure there are more. Writing on jetlag and lightning intoxication is a sure recipe for fingers running amok on the keyboard.

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I Write Like Who??? (And How Did Dan Brown Sneak in Here?)

Via Echidne, I took one of those silly internet quizzes, this one purporting to correlate one’s own humble prose with that of famous dudes. (I suspected they were all dudes because I took it multiple times and did not turn up Margaret Atwood, to my overwhelming sorrow. A commenter at Echidne’s subsequently turned up a discussion elsewhere of the dudeliness – and whiteness – of the allowable matches.)

First my truly shameful revelation: my latest post on Sarah Palin’s wild ride churned up “Dan Brown” as my famous-dude counterpart. It’s enough to make a gal stop dabbling in conspiracy theories.

Otherwise, though, I came out as “David Foster Wallace” and “H.P. Lovecraft.” I am churlish. Despite my assumption that Atwood was off the list, in fact other commenters at Echidne’s did match Atwood’s style. So why, in the name of the holy Magdalene, do I resemble Dan Brown, even if only on the margins? I’ve read virtually all of Atwood’s corpus, including lots of obscure early poems. (Circe, anyone?) From David Fucking Foster Wallace, I’ve read not a word. Maybe it’s time I began?

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

All I know of H.P. Lovecraft is that he wrote horror and sci fi, which are not my bag. Otherwise I couldn’t distinguish him from H.R. Pufnstuf.

(Image from here.)

Knowing that most of my readers are writers of some stripe, I’m curious how y’all might come out. Go here and run your blog posts, lab reports, or Great American Novel through the robot. Leave your results in comments; post ‘em on your blog. If you’re anointed the new Margaret Atwood, just be kind enough to refrain from gloating. For what it’s worth, the robot thinks Atwood writes like James Joyce.

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The Gift You Just Can’t Re-Gift: Sarah Palin (and Her Wild Ride)

Is it possible to be both a skeptic and a tin-foil-hatter? Because it seems I combine both in one handy package.

The day after Palin was nominated, I got wind of her wild airplane ride, and then drew my own conclusions that something was stinky – well before I even checked out the Daily Kos post that launched a thousand  conspiracies (and is now weirdly deleted!), and days before a friend pointed me toward Andrew Sullivan’s blog, the Daily Dish.

I’m just one Z-list (I prefer “boutique”) blogger, but I think it’s useful to recognize that instead of a bandwagon effect, various individuals independently began to ask apparently unanswerable questions about Palin’s pregnancy, which included more mysteries than the Virgin Mary’s. Now lit brit has added her voice to the skeptics, and she’s got a medium-sized bully pulpit at Cogitamus. Her first post and its followup sparked a rebuttal from Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon. (Much of the following is shamlessly borrowed from my comments there.)

First, why should we care? Well, if Palin lied about her final pregnancy, then she didn’t just hoodwink her immediate family. She took the whole country for a ride. I personally was not on the bus, but those who drank the Kool-Aid believe that Palin is the very embodiment of sacrificial motherhood – never mind that she seems quite content to delegate Trig’s care to others as much as possible. (Yes, I get the urge to delegate, and I’ve done it – most recently to Shaun the Sheep. I just don’t brag about my mothering practices as qualifying me for the presidency.)

I remaining mystified by Palin’s motives for faking a pregnancy. But whatever transpired back in winter 2008, she could puncture the rumors by releasing Trig’s birth certificate, as Obama has done with his own. This has been one of Andrew Sullivan’s core demands, and I agree with him. No, we voters cannot demand every last scrap of health information of our candidates. Convention, however, favors transparency when it comes to the wanna-be “leader of the free world.” Releasing Trig’s records wouldn’t just jibe with standard practice. It would also deflate me and everyone else who aren’t professional, full-time tin-foil-hatters. Most of us are highly educated, skeptical types. In fact, I came to this story precisely through my own skepticism. Give us some plausible evidence, and we’ll happily go back to writing schlock about Transformer Porn.

Before I proceed any further, one point of order: I think we should leave Bristol alone. It’s possible to juggle dates to create a scenario in which she bore two babies in quick succession. However, it fails the Occam’s Razor test. I can’t countenance picking on people who were minors at the time. Anyway, whenever we turn the camera toward Bristol, we’ve tilted it away from Palin herself. That’s not just ethically problematic, it’s also a tactical mistake.

Now, back to the evidence. Those pix from Sarah’s final weeks of pregnancy? There’s a reason why the women kicking up dust about this have primarily been mothers – me, various Alaskan bloggers, and now (on a bigger stage) litbrit. Of course not all women experience pregnancy the same. Of course a few barely show until the final week. Those “late show-ers” are almost invariably bringing their first pregnancy to term. They go on Oprah or they are expelled from their high schools. In any event, they’re not on baby number five. It’s not impossible, but it’s highly implausible to reach the seven-month mark without clearly looking pregnant. This is especially true for fit women. To hell with Palin’s ultra-fit abdominal muscles – if you’re slender, the bump is gonna show more dramatically. (BTW, I’d love to hear from other parents who can confirm or refute my observations.)

I come to this kerfuffle not just as a feminist and mother, but as a scholar with some relevant credentials. I wrote my dissertation on historical experiences of pregnancy, and though I’m not an M.D., I play one pretty well in the archives. I’m drawing on the absurd amount of time I’ve spent immersed medical journals (historical and present), plus my experiences as the mother of two sons. Sure, my experiences are not representative, nor are those of my friends and research “subjects.” However. I’ve collected enough experiences to know that Palin’s are just off the chart.

What most makes me wonder, more than anything, is Sarah’s wild ride. It smacks of gross negligence, which ought not to be a selling point with the pro-life crowd. It doesn’t even fit into her newish mama grizzly narrative. After all, the grizzly ought to protect her young, not eat ‘em … or endanger them by giving birth an hour outside of Anchorage, be it by car or plane.

I’m not gonna rehash my posts on Sarah’s wild ride here, but re-reading them, I’m struck at how it’s truly a tale of miracle and wonder. My old commentary starts here with Palin’s arrogance, moves on to my condemnation of  her cowboy judgment, and concludes with a look at the tension between Palin’s actions and reproductive rights. Go read those posts if you’d like to offer up your own comments, because I’m loathe to trot through quotes from them, and yet I think they perfectly illustrate Sarah Palin’s absence from the reality-based world.

Sarah’s wild ride is a narrative that fits pretty well with shooting wolfs from planes. When it comes to establishing love and concern for disabled kids? Hmmm, that doesn’t work quite so well.

Not saying I’ve got the answers. Only that the questions are compelling enough – once you direct the focus away from Bristol – that they’re not merely JAQing off (a charge Amanda repeatedly raised in her post and comments). Even Sully, bless his male-centric soul, sees that Palin is using her cred as sacrificial mother of a “special needs” infant as a basis for her campaign. I don’t think it’s illegitimate to draw on one’s experience as a parent (or other caretaker) in campaigning or governing. I do think it’s bogus to build a campaign on a legend of fearless maternity that is either pathological or a prima facie lie. That’s the point where Sarah Palin’s right to family privacy evaporates into the same ether as her thoughts about Kyrgyzstan. Notice that the argument over privacy does not depend on her anti-choice politics, though they add an especially rich irony. In the end, I have to concur with a female reader of Sullivan’s Daily Dish:

As a woman and a mother I am deeply offended by your reader’s suggestion that Sarah Palin ought to be given privacy about whether she really gave birth to Trig because “women lie about pregnancy/birth/parentage all the time.” Give me a frickin’ break. If a woman lies to her mate about whether she’s carrying his child, that’s between them. But if Sarah Palin lied about giving birth to Trig and then goes around talking about his birth in her book and in speeches, that’s a public matter.

“E]ven if you prove what is likely true – that she is lying – it is neither unique nor crazy.” Well, it may not be unique to fib about a pregnancy, but it is crazy to build an entire political identity on what even this reader thinks is almost certainly a lie.  If Palin can blatantly lie about something this big, and keep lying and embellishing the story, then how could we possibly trust her in public office? This is why it matters to voters.

I am sick and tired of this sexist bullshit. She’s a politician. She made it part of her identity.  It’s fair game.

Yep. Just imagine if McCain had turned out to fake his war injuries or imprisonment? If Kerry’s medals came from a gumball machine?

Dontcha think the mainstream media would pounce on either of those (fake) stories?

So why is motherhood sacred, even if it’s essentially the greatest credential a candidate boasts in seeking higher office?

Anyone else getting a brimstone whiff of sexism about now?

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A Little Pedantry

(I will forgive you if you’re asking: so what else is new at Kittywampus? Are we not already pedantic enough?)

First comes this recent New York Times piece on the proliferation of valedictorians like bunnies –  via Jesse at Pandagon, who observes:

they [high school principals] simply label each person who’s received honors a “valedictorian”, which is sort of like naming a Pro Bowl team in the NFL and then simultaneously declaring every qualified player the MVP.

(More here.)

Full disclosure: I was valedictorian in a class of about 400. The salutatorian – let’s call him Max – got a B in wood shop his freshman year. He was better than me in physics; I surpassed him in English. We still both earned A’s in those classes. Unfairly, my D (yes, D!) in swimming didn’t count. We absolutely should have shared the honors.

Neither Max nor I worked our asses off. We got good grades with pretty rudimentary study habits. There was none of this “5.0 points entered into the GPA for an A in an AP class.” There were no AP classes. The grade scale topped out at 4.0. We nonetheless learned about parallel construction in English, which fewer than five percent of my college students have even heard of. (Note: that’s fewer than, not less than.) Outside of school, I spent a lot of time tooting my horn (literally) and playing organ for the Christian Scientists (as a crass mercenary). Max played a mean air-guitar version of “Godzilla.” He and I each had a life. I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes and he idolized Jim Morrison, but neither of us were hopped-up overachievers. Much later, Max taught me how to operate a bong (purely on an theoretical, academic level, of course – oh, hai, DEA!).

I gave a speech that was pure pandering to shared memories. It was written in a few minutes after drinking beer all afternoon at Folsom Lake. This turned out to be good preparation for teaching – writing under intense pressure, that is – not quaffing a beer prior to lecturing.

As gladly as I would have shared the honor with Max, splitting it even five ways would’ve sucked. Some of my favorite stats from the Times article:

In Colorado, eight high schools in the St. Vrain Valley district crowned 94 valedictorians, which the local newspaper, The Longmont Times-Call, complained in an editorial“stretches the definition.” And north of New York City, Harrison High School is phasing out the title, and on Friday declared 13 of its 221 graduates “summa cum laude.”

William R. Fitzsimmons, the dean of admissions at Harvard, said he had heard of schools with more than 100 valedictorians, and had seen home-schooled students praised as No. 1 — out of one — all of which has helped render the distinction meaningless.

Exactly! Despite my lifelong slackerdom (or maybe because of it?), I’d like to see my nanosecond in the sun (at age 17) retain its glitter. Folsom Lake glittered. The beer glittered. Quite possibly, I glittered.

But the issue here is really not about me. Since the 1980s, not only high-school GPAs but also the SAT and GRE have experienced major score drift. And yet the poor kids work ever harder. To me, it looks grim and joyless. What’s the help of grade inflation if everyone now must get an A?

Indeed, what happens when you dilute achievement to the extent described in the Times? You invite people to start gaming the system. You give extra points for honors classes, and so students pile on the honor classes just for the GPA advantage, not because a superhuman workload is good for them educationally. Or you don’t reward honors classes but count an A in home ec just like an A in physics, resulting in a pile-up of busy-beaver achievers in home ec. All of this is magnified by a cultural attitude toward college admissions that encourages kids to “build a resume” from preschool onward, rather than learning things they love, pursuing activities just for fun, and gently stretching their comfort zone.

And y’know, it’s possible to be both fun-loving and pedantic. Case in point: my love for this clip that Andrew Sullivan published a couple of weeks ago:

I have to admit, red-faced, that I’d never thought through the phrase “hold down the fort.” I’m a new convert to killing the superfluous “down.” But “I could care less”? Well, I’ve cared less about this abomination – a lot less, to no effect whatsoever – for a couple of decades now. Behold the graph. This is not Monty Python (although I did laugh out loud). This is logic. Bow down before it!

I wonder how many of those 94 valedictorians know the difference? Or couldn’t they care less?

Update, 30 seconds after I hit publish: Now you get to point and laugh at all of my typos in this post. I just found the first one and corrected it. Starting sentences with coordinating conjunctions and ending them with prepositions is not fair game; this is accepted Kittywampus style, as are split infinitives. Otherwise, fire away!

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The Perils of Abby Sunderland: The Problem Isn’t Lax Parenting, It’s the Romance of Risk

I’m glad Abby Sunderland has been found, adrift but safe in the Indian Ocean. As a parent and a sister, I empathized with her family and worried that they’d never see her again.

I will admit that I also had a moment or two of wondering: “What were they thinking? How could her parents let her sail around the world?”

Then again, just a few days ago I watched my little Tiger dangle from the monkey bars where he broke his humerus last winter. I felt my stomach clench and tumble. I checked my overprotectiveness. I cheered him as he swung from one end to the other. I imagine Abby’s parents went through something similar in deciding to let their beloved daughter try to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world – with, however, one difference. They had pretty good reason to assume Abby was up to the challenge. The Tiger, by contrast, has a very dicey record on the monkey bars.

That’s why I have to agree with Hugo Schwyzer’s thoughtful post on how not all 16-year-olds are equally mature, and how Abby’s parents likely made a reasonable decision based on her capabilities. I especially appreciate his point that 18 is not a magic age of reason, nor does it revolutionize the way parents see their babies:

On the one hand, I can’t imagine being comfortable sending my own child off around the world on a sailboat by herself. But if I’m honest, I know full well that protectiveness won’t vanish when my Heloise [Hugo's baby daughter] turns 18; I’d worry just as much if she were 18 as if she were a few months younger. Lines of demarcation don’t have much effect on the heart.

(Rest the rest here – it’s all very thoughtful.)

But here’s where I part ways with Hugo, and with the other commentary I’ve read: I don’t think parenting is the real issue here. Yes, American culture is riven with divides between parents like me who let our ten-year-olds bike to the local libarary, and those who think this is lunacy; parents who let their four-year-olds wander the neighborhood, and parents like me who worry that such small persons will be crushed under a car.

The issue in Abby Sunderland’s situation is, rather, this: Why does anyone feel compelled to set records at the cost of life and limb? Why do so many people still feel called to climb Everest, despite the fact that not only they but their local sherpas may well expire before they reach the peak? (This happened again just recently to a British climber, though he did get to the top first. Cold comfort, I say.)

I understand the impulse to explore and discover. In junior high, I dreamed of being an astronaut. That dream died forever in 1986 along with the passengers of the Challenger. But I can see why scientists still go to wild places. I have a friend who travels to Antarctica to research low-temperature life forms, and I completely understand why she does it, even though such expeditions always involve modest risk.

What I don’t understand is the desire to set records – to push one’s body beyond its healthy boundaries – to embrace risk just for its own sake. Sailing solo around the globe makes as much sense to me as playing chicken with a train, or drag racing on the freeway.

But drag racing and playing chicken are the desperate sports of poor kids. Setting records is the province of the privileged. The assumption is that no effort will be spared in trying to save you if your boat runs awry.

I’m not saying that Abby Sunderland should have been left to drift endlessly on the open seas. Of course not. I am truly glad and relieved she was found.

And yet. Every time an extreme athlete runs into trouble, massive resources are deployed to rescue him or her. Clueless skiers go into the Sierra backcountry and get stranded in a blizzard. Mountain climbers underestimate the danger of avalanche. Solo pilots fly into oblivion. The “resources” deployed aren’t just financial; human beings often risk their own necks in hopes of saving a life.

Just to underscore how much this is a function of privilege: In the last several days, tens of thousands of children have died of preventable disease: malnutrition, dysentery, malaria, typhus, etc. ad nauseam. How many could be saved with the money spent on rescuing people (children and adults) who – from a place of tremendous economic privilege – challenge themselves to break records, or simply assume that they will be “safe” in the wild because their lives have always been safe? Again, I’m not saying in any way that Abby should have been abandoned. Not at all. Only that we should question this cultural impulse to take risks and set records just because.

Once upon a time, parts of the globe were untouched by human exploration. Perhaps the urge to explore was extraordinarily adaptive a few million years ago – even a century ago. Today? We’d be wise to ask when exploration and adventure truly serve human knowledge, and when they’re only yoked to ego.

And I’m not saying this only because I’m so cautious, I only ever climbed one tree in my childhood. Perhaps that makes me an unreliable narrator – or just a chicken. Still, I think the larger point about risk and privilege is still valid.

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Imposter Syndrome Vanquished (for Now)

You’re in front of the classroom. First day of school. You’re late for class, and then – suddenly – you realize you’re the teacher, not the student. Who the hell made that decision? And – oh, ooooops! – you’re teaching calculus.

Calculus!?! Which you passed with a shining A! Back in 1982!

Somehow, inexplicably, you’re outside the classroom again. You’ve got four hours to prepare. Then two. Oddly, the hours glide by as you bicycle up endless hills, ride circles on public transit, do anything to avoid cracking a book.

Finally, you arrive at the classroom. Thirty fresh-scrubbed faces turn to you, waiting for you to initiate them into the mysteries of the derivative.

You think: X axis. Y axis. You gulp.

Did I mention: you’re buck naked?

————

Every teacher has experienced some variant of this dream. Maybe you have, too, even if you don’t officially “teach.” Maybe your kids catch you out. Or maybe, like my mom, you’re years retired (in her case, from a career in teaching English), and you dream you still haven’t learned your lines for the play. Maybe in your nightmares you’re giving a major presentation to to the muckety-mucks at work – unprepared and, naturally, wearing your birthday suit.

Way back in February I started dreaming about the first day of class for the Nazi Germany history course I was scheduled to teach in the spring. Dreaming? Oh, no. These were wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat nightmares. Yes, German history was my major field in grad school, but I’ve taught women’s and gender studies unabated since 2002. I love WGS. I love being a historian, and I’ll forever think like one. But could I still teach history? And where did I leave my clothes, anyway?

The scenario repeated with variations: I’d stumble into the classroom, utterly unprepared. (That part never varied.) I’d start ad-libbing my worst impression of a cartoon women’s studies instructor: “So, how do you feel about Hitler?” “Certainly some aspect of your experience might resonate with women in the Third Reich! Can you imagine a sisterhood with them?”

————

Flash forward a few weeks, and it’s the first day of class. The wretched projector does not work. I am planning to show some maps, insurance that I will not start to mimic a demented group therapy leader. The maps will not project.

My clothes are on. They appear to be staying on. I call classroom services (cursing my colleagues who didn’t bother to fix this earlier in the day). Ted the tech guru shows up, the same Ted who knows a remarkable amount about the Albigensian heresy. I know Ted from my stress management class. I think “what would the Buddha do?” I breathe. The Buddha remains remote. But in my head, my instructor Bonnie says calmly, “This is just how things are right now.” I breathe. Ted tinkers. He  breathes the projector back to life.

————

Jump to the end of the first week. The students appear to be developing carpal tunnel – all 150 of them. I get the hint. I start to slow down.

Oh, the irony! I know too much! I’m trying to say too much! I’m amazed at how much I recall from 20 years ago. When I don’t know it, I know where to look. I’m thrilled at how much I’m learning along the way.

I’m not quite fully dressed after all, because the classroom tops out at 98 Fahrenheit the second week. My skirts are thin and rumpled. They’re suboptimally professional (but then again, my preferred look is nouveau hippie anyway). The main thing is: I’m not naked. And I realize I really know this stuff: the fatal conservative resentments of modernity, the violence of the SA men, the brutal logic of racial “science.”

Now I just need to hit my stride and hold a pace that works for everyone. I need to hold it even though I’ve been sick most of the quarter and my kids have soccer four night a week. I need to keep it up even when I occasionally burst into unscheduled tears while preparing a lecture. If you teach about the Nazis and never feel your soul split in two, you need to either cultivate compassion – or consider a career at Halliburton.

————

This class, this history of Nazi Germany, is a work in progress. So too am I. I spend a little too much eating marzipan at 1 a.m. while tinkering with my next lecture. Imposter syndrome lurks around every corner. But momentarily, at least, I really have conquered fear. I know I can do this. I know I know enough. I’ve delivered 18 lectures, with just 11 to go. And that will have to be enough – even if one day I appear in class and discover I’m utterly naked, after all.

————

I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s had to climb the cliffs of self-doubt. If you’re willing to share you similar story (naked dreams and all) I’d love to hear it.

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Caturday: Basement Cat’s Inferno

A couple of days ago, Historiann linked to a hilarious quiz, “Dante’s Inferno Test.” It’s definitely a cut above the average Hello Quizzy offering, and I was tickled to see her seriously edumacated commentariat parsing the second circle of hell (for sins of the flesh) versus the third (gluttony!).

In light of yesterday’s post, I can’t even offer a prize for the best guess at where I landed. Y’all know, I’m sure:

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 – Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very Low
Level 6 – The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Low
Level 9 – Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Or in other words:

Huh. Sounds like a fun crew, down there in the second circle.

Maybe this is a neurosis left over from grad school, but I can never just take a quiz once. I always have to tinker with it to see how it works (and, um, also to manipulate my results – good thing I didn’t go into the social sciences). Turns out that flipping the answer on the one question that was hard to decide – “Would you sooner go without sex than go without good-tasting food?” – bumped me up into limbo along with the virtuous non-believers. It also ballooned my gluttony score from low to moderate, which sounds about right.

But I’m gonna stick with my original score. I figure if I’m in level two, I can occasionally pop upstairs for good conversation with the virtuous non-believers – and then slide down to visit the gluttons foodies on three, in hopes of creme caramel.

What about you, dear readers? Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test and let us know how you did in comments!

Also: The following picture might just knock me down to level six, the heretics. I’m betting it’ll be full of LOLcats and their human minions.

Helter Skelter kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburgers?

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How to Keep Stranger Rape the Dominant Paradigm

Earlier this week, my university’s venerable police force sent around the following email through the campus safety alert system:

SUSPECT DESCRIPTION :

Suspect #1: White male, early 20s
Shoulder length, bushy brown hair
Wearing a dark green “Ohio” hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans

Suspect #2: White male, early 20s
Wearing a ball cap with a Buckeyes mascot, grey hooded sweatshirt, and blue jeans
Also wearing a metal, link style bracelet

NARRATIVE:
At approximately 9:30 a.m. on Monday, March 1, 2010, a female student reported to police that the suspects described above sexually assaulted her in the parking lot of Riverpark Towers, across from Pickering Hall, at approximately 10 p.m. the night before.  The victim stated she was walking through the parking lot when the males approached her and forced her into the back of a black, 4 door sedan.  The victim stated she was sexually assaulted by each male, inside the vehicle.  After being assaulted, the victim stated, she was pushed from the vehicle and the males drove off in an unknown direction.  The victim was treated and released from the hospital; Athens City police are investigating the incident.

If you have information pertinent to this investigation, please contact the Athens City Police Department (740) 592-3313.  Anonymous tips can be made to Crime Solvers Anonymous at (740) 594-3331.

Personal Safety Reminders:
- Remain alert to what’s going on around you
- Report suspicious people to police by calling 911

Now, the crime itself is just horrific. The woman must have been terrified, and my heart goes out to her. It occurred on the fringe of campus in an area that’s quite heavily populated but notoriously dark once the sun goes down. Whenever I ask my beginning students how we should combat sexual violence, they propose more lighting (well, any lighting) for that area of campus. Lighting is only the tiniest part of the solution. And yet, nothing has changed over the past four years. That area remains creepy dark.

I’m glad to see that the campus alert system is functioning. Okay, so I only got the email 40+ hours after the crime occurred. The perps had ample time to escape. One might also reasonably ask how to determine “suspicious people” to report to 911. Ohio U. and Buckeye paraphernalia aren’t exactly rare around this joint. But I get that the cops are at least trying to use technology to help do their jobs. Let’s give ‘em an A for effort, a C- for performance.

Funny how we never hear about acquaintance rape through this alert system. Imagine how we’d view things differently if all rapes were reported via the campus alert system. Imagine if campus police sent out an email like this:

A sexual assault was reported last night at 1:30 a.m. in the DUDE fraternity.

Suspect is a white male, approx. 20, blond hair in a buzz cut.

Wearing a dark green Ohio U. hoodie and blue jeans.

Also wearing a metal, link style bracelet.

Suspect is deemed an ongoing danger. Women are advised to avoid the DUDE house, and also the adjoining DUD house.

I realize this is pure fantasy. And yet … we might just move past the myth that the only “real” rapist is the one who leaps out of the bushes.

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Perverting Star Wars for Good: Minimizing Mastectomies

While I’m stewing a couple of longer posts, here’s a medical breakthrough. And for once, I don’t have anything critical to say about it. I’m all gee-whiz-isn’t-science-awesome!

Science Daily announces that a team headed by Dr. William Dooley of the University of Oklahoma has developed a technique to radically shrink large breast tumors. The study is not out yet (it’ll appear in the Annals of Surgical Oncology), so here’s what Science Daily reports:

They are working on a treatment called Focused Microwave Thermotherapy. The technique, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, uses a modified version of the microwave technology behind the “Star Wars” defense system.

In the most recent study, researchers tested the therapy on tumors that were an inch to an inch and a half in size. These large tumors usually require mastectomies. When researchers used the heating therapy within two hours of patients receiving chemotherapy, the tumor was more susceptible to the chemotherapy and shrunk rapidly. The percentage of patients needing mastectomies was reduced from 75 percent to 7 percent.

(More here.)

In other words, only a tenth of the women who would’ve needed a mastectomy ended up having one.

In their next step, the researchers will zap tumors as large as five inches. (I cringe at the idea that a tumor could grow that large without detection. We’re talking about the size of a small melons. My entire breast isn’t five inches in diameter.) In theory, the therapy could be applied to any organ that can be immobilized.

So this is really, really cool. It’s also making me rue my role in the Star Wars program – Reagan’s, that is, not Darth Vader’s. Back in the summer of 1984, I worked as a lab assistant at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto. I was supposed to grow laser crystals. The specifications were tight. The equipment was old. Control of the reactor was all manual. I grew a lot of crystals, measured them, tested them, watched them fail. This went on all summer. Donuts were served daily, and they were scrumptious. Only at the end of the summer did I learn that those useless wafers were all intended for Reagan’s Star Wars initiative.

I felt much better.

But now I wonder. What if our failed research could have fed into a great peacetime medical application, as this thermotherapy process promises to be? How many other projects funded by the DoD, Department of Energy, etc. might spawn brilliant but overlooked civilian applications? I mean, I know we’ve got computers and the Internet thanks to DoD, but what other wonders might be hiding in their junk closets?

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Beyond the “Faux Hos” – What about the Faux Academics?

So there’s another possible case of a blogger creating a false persona on the web – and this time, not just gender but sex is in play. At Carnal Nation, Monica Shores alleges that Alexa Di Carlo, who chronicles her career as a paid escort at the Real Princess Diaries, is not a sex worker. According to some of the allegations, she may not even be a woman. Quite a few sex workers are outraged at this apparent fakery (for instance Tasty Trixie, Jenny DeMilo, a dancer named Kat, and lots of others, I’m sure – be forewarned that their sites are generally not safe for work, as is Real Princess Diaries). They have at least two main grievances that seem pretty righteous to me: If Alexa is indeed a fake, she is creating fake expectations, too, that at their worst could put sex workers at greater risk. And Alexa uses oodles of erotic photos that aren’t of her, without any attribution.

Now, having never sold any service sexier than food, I’m totally unqualified to judge whether Alexa is credible as a sex worker. However, I’m totally fascinated by how people can play with and fake identities on the Web, and so I started rummaging around in her archives when I first heard about this story (via figleaf) a few days before Christmas.

The first thing I read was a post titled “The History of Sexuality,” since that’s my own turf. Guess what? Alexa also claims to be a graduate student in human sexuality studies at San Francisco State University, aspiring to an academic career. Now that’s an area where I’ve got a clue.

And guess what else? I’m dead sure her academic credentials are fake. I have no interest in outing anyone – I expect people to honor pseudonymity and anonymity – so even if I knew who the “real” real princess was (which I don’t), I wouldn’t be inclined to reveal her name. But as an academic, I feel pretty strongly disinclined to tolerate fraud in my corner of the world.

When I went back after Christmas to look for that “History of Sexuality” post, it had disappeared from her archives. Since then, her whole blog has gone dark, including a very long post in which she defended her authenticity. She has also deleted her MySpace profile (though it – like her blog posts – is still in Google’s cache) and protected her tweets on Twitter.

The very fact that her “History of Sexuality” post disappeared early is suggestive because it contained a lot of detail that can be mapped onto real world correlates. For instance, SFSU really did offer a grad-level History of Sexuality course in fall 2009, which was taught by Prof. Amy Sueyoshi, and its syllabus (freely available online) really did include an assignment matching Alexa’s description of it:

For one of my classes this semester I have to develop my own syllabus for a History of Sexuality class for undergraduate college level students.  This has to include a description of the topics and suggested readings (along with justification for those readings) for each.

With that in mind, I’d like your input.  Read through this proposed two-semester outline and see if there’s anything else you think should be covered in a History of Sexuality course.  I don’t mind you delving a bit into each topic, but don’t get into minutiae about specific thoughts or points of specific discussion within each.  Other than that, though, feel free to make any comments you wish about this.

(This and subsequent quotations are from the cached version, so I can’t provide a permanent link, but you can access my pdf of the cached version of History of Sexuality for verification. For as long as it lasts, Google’s cached version is here. Just in case the site ever goes back online, the original URL for the “History of Sexuality” post is here.)

She then includes this list of textbooks:

• Sexualities in History
• The Mythology of Sex
• Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices
• Passion and Power Sexuality in History
• Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others
• Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work
• The Ethical Slut

One of her commenters proposed an obvious addition:

I can’t imagine a course titled History of Sexuality that doesn’t list in its readings The History of Sexuality: An Introduction by Michel Foucault. Of course, this isn’t a history in the traditional sense, but an examination of the construction of Sexuality as a concept, the categorization of sexual behavior, and the proliferation of sexual discourse (primarily as a control/power structure). Having a course with that title will immediately set up expectations for reading Foucault.

Okay, so Foucault is a tough read, and you wouldn’t necessarily want to assign it in an undergrad class unless it was aimed at especially advanced students. But that’s not how Alexa responded:

And you’ve explained why it would not be a central reading assignment in the course itself. Certainly, it’d be discussed, but, as you say, it’s not a historical text in and of itself.

Oops. Anyone who’s actually read Foucault’s History of Sexuality would never dismiss it on these grounds. No, it’s not a traditional history, but it’s conceptually crucial to understanding the history of sexuality. For instance, it was Foucault who first argued that homosexuality is a socially constructed and thoroughly modern category (though other historians have since fleshed out this insight).

In an earlier post, where Alexa listed her recommended books on sexuality, she did include Foucault – but in a way that only undermines her academic credibility:

The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, Michel Foucault.  Foucault is difficult to read, so I am only recommending the first of his three books on sexuality.  If you can get through this and want to continue reading, feel free to buy the other two.  His philosophy is constructed around the assertion that regulation of sexuality is the work of power elites who are seeking to garner and protect their position of social dominance.

(A cached version of this post, “Recommended Reading,” is here. My pdf of Recommended Reading is here. The original URL is here.)

Again, no! If a student submitted this précis to me as part of an annotated bibliography, or if she described Foucault’s thesis in this way, I’d have to assume she hadn’t read him. At a minimum, I’d question whether she understood him. The whole point of Foucault’s History of Sexuality is to describe power as decentralized and local in its workings. He does not conceptualize power as exercised in a top-down fashion. Instead, we’re all implicated in the workings of power/knowledge, which are not simply “the work of power elites.” I first read this book the summer before graduate school, and I understood that much. So should anyone who’s already logged a year as a grad student in sexuality – if she’s actually read the book.

But she does at least indicate here that she knows Foucault is difficult. How does she know this? And one thing weighed against my supposition that she hadn’t done the reading: she also picked up on the term “regulation,” which is pretty central to Foucault.

Well, I’m unfortuantely familiar with what students may do when they haven’t done the reading but are desperate to keep up appearances. The worst response? Plagiarize from someone who has read it. I say “worst” because it’s not only unethical, it’s stupid. Professors know how to use the Google, too, you know.

And that’s precisely what Alexa did here. She plagiarized. Here’s Alexa:

His philosophy is constructed around the assertion that regulation of sexuality is the work of power elites who are seeking to garner and protect their position of social dominance.

And here’s its original source, in a New York Times article from June 23, 2001, by Peter Steinfels on books that religious leaders have criticized as harmful:

Ellen Charry, another professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, chose ”The History of Sexuality” by Michel Foucault.

”The effect of this book is to endorse the notion that the regulation of sexuality is the work of power elites who are seeking to garner and protect their position of social dominance,” Professor Charry wrote.

By the way, with all due respect to Professor Charry, I still think it’s a crappy precis for the reasons I described above. Professor Charry doesn’t like Foucault’s embrace of kink, which may explain why she’s not inclined to tease out any of the nuances of his argument.

Now, only after I’d combed through Alexa’s post without any inside information from people at SFSU did I learn through Tasty Trixie’s comment section that one of the other SFSU grad students has a blog, The Sexademic. It’s a smart and interesting blog. Its author, Jessi, confirms both that Foucault is a standard part of the curriculum, and that Alexa is not a student there:

She claimed in her posts to be studying in my graduate program (Sexuality Studies at SF State) and seems to have lifted information from the department profile of a fellow male graduate student.

For the record: there is no way this person is affiliated with my department. She knows a fair amount about sexuality studies but she constructed a syllabus of the History of Sexuality without including writings from Michel Foucault [Thanks Zoey for the cache link to Alexa's syllabus post]. History of Sexuality: An Introduction is one of the first sexual theory texts first year students read. No-one would leave Michel Foucault out of a basic sexuality reading list. This is tantamount to discussing the history of social labor movements without reading Karl Marx. Fail lady, fail.

I don’t know who this person is and the only thing I care about is that she is falsely claiming intellectual territory in Sexuality Studies at my university. Back off. Go fake yourself a life somewhere else.

(Read the rest here.)

The Marx comparison is spot on (and wonderfully phrased!). The sexuality studies grad program at SFSU is pretty small, and having been in a similarly sized program, I know how hard it would be to hide a secret this big. Jessi’s own identity is borne out by its website, as is the male student’s. Elsewhere, Jessi makes a persuasive case that her fellow student is essentially being libeled (see the comments in Trixie’s post) with details that again ring very true to an academic reader (“He would rather talk about Judith Butler and structural violence than write about deep-throating.)

Jessi’s post not only provides further confirmation of Alexa’s fakery; it also shows how a fake persona can have real world consequences. Alexa’s charade put a completely innocent male grad student under suspicion. She has also used countless erotic photos on her blog without any attribution – which is one of the things that rightly infuriates other sex workers, because she’s stealing their work. I guess a little academic plagiarism hardly registers when you’re routinely swiping people’s erotic photos to promote yourself.

The plagiarism really seals the deal, but other aspects of Alexa’s proposed syllabus raised my eyebrows, too. Her statement, “I don’t mind you delving a bit into each topic, but don’t get into minutiae about specific thoughts or points of specific discussion within each,” might have just been an attempt to keep comments focused on the big picture. But given that she’s faked at least some of her academic background, it more likely indicates a fear of being caught out.

Her reading list is a curious mix, too. She has three academic titles (Ruth Karras’ Sexuality in Medieval Europe, plus two essay collections, Passion And Power: Sexuality in History and Sexualities in History. The Mythology of Sex is an illustrated history – basically a coffee-table book. The two encyclopedias are completely unsuitable as textbooks, both because they consist of many short entries (duh!) and because the one on prostitution is super-expensive: $164 at Amazon, $225 list price. Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices is affordable but it’s not academic. These are books that might well be in the collection of someone who’s fascinated with sexuality and sex work, but they’re not the kinds of works that an instructor would steer a student toward, and certainly a second-year grad student ought to recognize their unsuitability.

Then there’s the incredibly broad scope of the course itself. In the first week, she proposes covering:

Ancient and Early Cultures
Sex from the beginning of recorded time through ancient civilizations, including Mesopotamia, Babylonia, the Roman Empire, Greece, and Egypt.  Discussion of gods and goddesses of sex and related subjects.  Discussion of Aztecs & polygamy, Mayan and Incan civilizations and incestuous practices.

(This and the following comments all come from the History of Sexuality post again.)

Another commenter, Charlie, notes that this kind of breadth is pedagogically self-defeating, even in a survey class:

It’s not quite clear to me from your description of the assignment- is this supposed to be an examination of all of human sexual history? Can it be a course on some slice or portion of the topic? I don’t think it’s reasonable to try to cover this much material in this much detail. The amount of information that you propose to include, even in a two semester course, is more than most people can absorb, process, or integrate, at least in my experience. While others have said similar things in the comments, I would add that when you’re asking students to explore sexual philosophies that are different from their own, you need to create the room for resistance, debate and exploration. This syllabus is so large and dense that I would expect there to be insufficient time for that. I think you’d do better to narrow the range and have more depth, in order to create room for people to challenge their ideas about what sex is and engage with ways of thinking about sex that are different from what they know.

Although it’s evident that Charlie has a lot more experience with teaching than Alexa does, her response brushes off his very reasonable concern that the course is overly broad:

I think it depends on how in-depth the subject matter is covered. It is, obviously, not intended to be a comprehensive treatment of the totality of human sexual history.

I think the first semester is easily doable, without constraints.

If you’re a graduate student really looking to refine a class assignment, you might want to seriously weigh advice from someone who’s been there, rather than dismissing it.

After I’d already formed this impression, I found that “Charlie” appears to be Dr. Charlie Glickman, who writes at the Good Vibrations blog and works as a sex educator. In a post titled “Who Is Alexa di Carlo?” he says that he took her at face value and provided help on the syllabus assignment, including some email exchanges. But based on her alleged theft of images from a camgirl, he now very much doubts that Alexa is who she says she is. He strikes me as smart, credible, and generous with his time. He also knows Jessi through Good Vibrations, which gives her a few bonus credibility points, too.

So why would someone pretend to be a sex worker? Well, the consensus seems to be that one might do it for the attention or in hopes of a book deal down the road. Certainly Alexa doesn’t seem to have earned any money directly through the blog (I saw no ads). She claimed to have attacted all of her clients through the blog, but that motivation collapses if she wasn’t really a sex worker.

Even more puzzling: Why, oh why, would anyone pretend to be a grad student? Sure, it might give your wanna-be “educational” posts a little more cachet. But for most of us, graduate school is a time of penury. I’m perfectly aware that some grad students choose sex work. I’d say it beats living out of your vehicles – and a recent vehicle-dweller just moved into the rental three doors down from me. Let’s face it – academic credentials don’t give you much of a boost in the blogosphere, especially if your claim to fame is that you host unprotected gang bangs for fun in your spare time. Academic credentials are also tough to fake.

Alexa di Carlo is a plagiarist. I’m be willing to bet my own credibility that she’s not a grad student in human sexuality studies at SFSU, either. As for her motives, your guess is as good as mine. Theories are welcome in comments!

And by the way, if anyone has a problem with my pseudonymity in this context, please drop me a comment. I’m pseudonymous so that my blogging doesn’t show up first when someone Googles me, not because I’m afraid to stand behind my writing. In this case, I realize I’ve made serious allegations and I don’t want them to be undermined by any suspicion about my own bona fides.

Added 12/29/09, 12:20 p.m.: Since this post is getting a bunch of hits from people who obviously aren’t my regular readers, here’s a short run-down on my academic credentials: I hold a Ph.D. in history from Cornell with women’s studies as a minor field, wrote a dissertation on the history of pregnancy and childbirth in early 20th-century Germany, and now teach women’s and gender studies at a public university in southeast Ohio. My graduate work, teaching, and research have all dealt with the history of sexuality.

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Catholic Nurse Cites Her Conscience in Refusing to Help Gravely Ill Woman

There! Much better! My title carries a whole different set of connotations than the anti-abortion media’s headlines: “Catholic nurse forced to participate in abortion, lawsuit filed” (Catholic News Agency) and “Nurse ‘Forced’ to Help Abort (the New York Post). Despite vigorous googling, I’m not finding much other reporting on this story at all, except from Jill at Feministe. You know your sources are thin when the Washington Times appears to give the most dispassionate and complete account:

Catherina Lorena Cenzon-DeCarlo, 35, a Filipina nurse who is a permanent U.S. resident and married to an American, says that Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan “blatantly” violated a 35-year-old federal law that protects health care workers with religious objections from having to assist in performing abortions.

The hospital performed a late-term abortion on a woman whose health was not at risk, she says. The nurse is asking for a jury trial that could strip the hospital of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding until it complies with the law….

According to the 26-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court for New York’s Eastern District, the lawsuit says when Mrs. DeCarlo was hired in August 2004, she told hospital officials outright that she would not participate in abortions. She is Catholic and her uncle is Bishop Carlito J. Cenzon, who leads the Roman Catholic diocese of Baguio in the northern Philippines.

The hospital did not object to this and gave her a form to complete that indicated her refusal to take part in the procedure. During the nearly five years from her hiring date until this May, the lawsuit said, the hospital had avoided asking her to assist on abortions, as it has a cadre of other nurses who have indicated their unwillingness to do so. …

But it was on May 24, a Sunday morning shift over Memorial Day weekend, when matters came to a head. The nurse said she was told she was assigned to help with a “D&C,” signifying “dilation and curettage,” a procedure to remove the remains of a miscarriage from a woman’s womb. But when she began preparing the operating room, she learned she had been assigned to help with aborting a 22-week pregnancy.

Dr. Noel Strong, the resident on duty, said the mother had preeclampsia, a medical complication involving hypertension and protein in the urine that is treatable with magnesium sulfate. Mrs. DeCarlo thought the preeclampsia not to be life-threatening and thus not an immediate cause for an emergency abortion. A flurry of calls then erupted between her and supervisors Fran Carpo and Ella Shapiro after Mrs. DeCarlo refused to take part in the procedure, the lawsuit says.

Ms. Carpo – on instructions from Ms. Shapiro – then forbade the nurse to try to find a substitute, adding that the doctor performing the abortion had called her, furious about the delay, the lawsuit charges. While Ms. Carpo said the patient was in mortal danger, Mrs. DeCarlo pointed out the patient was not even on magnesium therapy, the first step of treatment for the condition.

Ms. Carpo, the lawsuit said, was the manager on duty and could have easily stepped in as a replacement but instead threatened to charge Mrs. DeCarlo with “insubordination and patient abandonment,” charges that could have ended Mrs. DeCarlo’s career.

Mrs. DeCarlo broke down at this point and offered to get her priest on the phone to explain her point of view, says the lawsuit, but hospital officials were adamant that she participate. When she pointed out the abortion could be delayed until another nurse could be found to take part, she received more threats, the lawsuit says, until she finally capitulated, saying she would take part “under protest.”

When asked why she didn’t simply walk out of the building, one of her attorneys, Matt Bowman of the Alliance Defense Fund, said the plaintiff “strenuously protested to the point of tears. Employees should not be forced to choose between their jobs and their beliefs.”

The nurse said she was “forced to watch the doctor remove the bloody arms and legs of the child from its mother’s body with forceps” and carry those body parts in a cup to another area of the operating room.

Bear in mind that the only source of info for this story is the lawsuit filed. Everyone else is refusing comment. Of course the patient’s identity and history are being kept confidential, as well they should.

Jill and her commenters have done a fine job discussing the legal and moral obligations of hospitals and medical practitioners. I don’t want to rehash that here. I’ll just say that no nurse or doctor should be hired to work in the ER, as DeCarlo was, if they would withhold lifesaving treatment.

Instead, I want to look more closely at the medical issues. Preeclampsia is a fairly common complication of pregnancy, occurring in 5 to 10% of all pregnancies. It’s signaled by a rise in their blood pressure, protein in their urine, and (sometimes) edema, or swelling, especially of the extremities. Many women experience no overt symptoms and might not even know that they have it. Most women survive it just fine.

But in a small number of women – between 5 and 7 per 10,000 deliveries – preeclampsia progresses to full-blown eclampsia, which includes seizures sometimes followed by coma and death. It accounts for 17.6% of maternal deaths in the U.S and 15% of premature deliveries.

Just because preeclampsia is a fairly common condition doesn’t make it harmless. I know someone who died of it, a college classmate of mine. A former colleague of my husband’s lost his partner to it.

We don’t have many more tools to predict or control eclampsia than we did 100 years ago, although one major reason health officials tout prenatal care is that it can catch and monitor preeclampsia while it’s still mild. We also don’t understand its causative mechanisms, despite countless research studies. Magnesium sulfate can be given by IV to prevent seizures, and while it saves lives, it’s no miracle drug. The only definitive treatment is delivery of the fetus – and even then, the new mother remains at risk for a few days thereafter. Of the three major killers of expectant mothers 100 years ago – hemorrhage, infection, and eclampsia – we’ve only made great inroads against the first two, thanks to transfusions and antibiotics. Mortality from eclampsia remains significant.

So what was going on with the pregnant woman in DeCarlo’s case? Well, according to the Catholic News Agency, she wasn’t really in jeopardy at all:

Hospital officials told Cenzon-DeCarlo that the situation was an “emergency,” although evidence suggests that this was not the case.  The hospital itself labeled the case as a “Category II,” meaning that the operation needed to take place within six hours.  This would have allowed enough time to find another nurse without moral objections to assisting in the abortion, her lawyers said.

Matt Bowman, legal counsel for the ADF, explained that the hospital could not legally have required the nurse to participate in the abortion even if the case had been a “Category I,” meaning that the patient required “immediate surgical intervention for life or limb threatening conditions.”  Federal statutes prohibit recipients of federal health funds from requiring employees to perform abortions, Bowman told CNA.

However, the evidence in the case suggested that the patient was not even at the “Category II” level, as the hospital had claimed.  When the woman was brought into the room, Cenzon-DeCarlo observed no indications that the case was a medical emergency.  The woman’s blood pressure was not at a crisis level, and standard procedures for patients in crisis [administration of magnesium sulfate] had not been taken.  Yet the nurse was still required to aid in the abortion.

Since we don’t have any hard information, I’d like to put on my historian-of-childbirth hat and offer some informed speculation. Severe preeclampsia at 22 weeks’ pregnancy is not very common. However, it can occur, and there’s one variant that would demand immediate action: HELLP syndrome. Here’s how Reese at Feminist Mormon Housewives describes her experience with HELLP:

Earlier this year I had my first child. He was born at 28 weeks because my life was in danger. It turned out that I had HELLP syndrome, which is basically preeclampsia turned up to 11. My blood pressure was 186/110, my organs were failing, my red blood cells were disintegrating, and my platelet count was dropping making it so that my blood wouldn’t clot. If I could manage to function with my organs failing, and if I could have avoided having a stroke or heart attack, I would have bled to death in childbirth.

If the patient at Mt. Sinai was suffering from HELLP syndrome, the attending physician could have very reasonably determined that there was no way she could hold out for several more weeks, hoping for a viable but very premature fetus. Indeed, he judged her case serious enough to require intervention within the next several hours. This suggests either HELLP or another serious complication, such as a severe headache (indicating a high risk of seizure) or chest pain (possible embolism). If you’re going to go straight to delivery (in this case, abortion, because the fetus was still a couple weeks short of the very outer limit of viability), then you might start administering magnesium sulfate as seizure prophylaxis as part of pre-op procedures, but the main priority would be to get the operation underway. Ordinarily a nurse would start an IV. In this case, the assigned nurse was arguing with her supervisor instead of tending to the patient. Could that possibly have anything to do with why the patient wasn’t on magnesium sulfate?

The patient’s relatively normal blood pressure is a red herring, because as emedicine notes, HELLP can present differently than regular preeclampsia:

HELLP syndrome (hemolysis, elevated liver enzyme, low platelets) is a form of severe preeclampsia that has been associated with particularly high maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality and may be present without hypertension or, in some occasions, without proteinuria. [my emphasis]

So we don’t know all the details, but certainly my speculations are a whole lot more believable than a scenario where mild preeclampsia was used as a pretext for elective abortion at 22 weeks. This was presumably a wanted fetus. On the off chance that it wasn’t, the woman could have sought elective abortion, which can still be carried out legally at 22 weeks. While it can be tough to find a provider for late-term terminations, last I knew New York City was one of the meccas for women needing such abortions. So there’d be absolutely reason to show up in the ER, hoping on spec that you could get an elective abortion. There’s also no reason why an ER doctor would prioritize a procedure if it weren’t urgent. Folks in the ER have a few other problems on their plate.

Just imagine you’re a woman hoping to bring a child into the world. Imagine you get sick with a condition in mid-pregnancy that you’d never even heard of. Imagine hearing the ER doctor – whom you’ve never met in you life – tell you that you need to abort in order to save your own life; otherwise, HELLP syndrome is liable to put you into liver failure, possibly complicated by kidney failure and blood that refuses to clot. And then imagine that your story of loss is plastered throughout the court system and the yellow press, trumpeted by pro-lifers as evil incarnate, and held out as an example of women’s and doctors’ supreme depravity.

No, we don’t know exactly what happened. But my speculative reading of the paltry facts is a whole lot more coherent and compelling than the tale DeCarlo tells in her court filings. Given that DeCarlo is the niece of a Catholic bishop, this whole thing stinks of a set-up. If it’s not, why she didn’t she just quit on the spot when her boss ordered her to aid in an act she considered murder? I’d like to think that I’d have that much moral courage. Instead, DeCarlo cooperated just enough to add drama to her lawsuit – after she’d gambled with a woman’s life.

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Is Rumsfeld Writing Vi*gra Spam?

The one semi-redeeming quality in Donald Rumsfeld was his poetic streak. Who can forget this classic?

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

(From Hart Seely’s collection at Slate, “The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld”)

We’ve heard a lot from Dick Cheney since he crawled out of his bunker and left office, but what has Rumsfeld been doing with himself? Well, based on the deluge of penis email that is swamping me lately, I think he’s found a second career – as a spamwriter.

Consider these little gems, which are taken verbatim from the emails except for deleting the link in the middle of each one; I’ve only arranged them as I think an editor might do for Rumsfeld:

blithe spirit behind ocean
(link)
clodhoppers somewhat

overwhelmingly haunch inside pork chop
(link)
ruffians

around cough syrup
(link)
starlets often

shadows lazily
(link)
tenor toward photon

and hypnotic
(link)
abstraction inside related to host

stalactites inexorably
(link)
waif behind globule

because brides
(link)
assimilate for dust bunny

guardian angel inside philosopher
(link)
necromancers slyly

operate a small fruit stand with
(link)
beyond abstraction goes to sleep

The fruit stand is a recurring motif, by the way. I suppose it’s significant that it’s a small one.

Some of the subject lines have also been outstanding, if a bit less poetic:

• SexualAndEroticAnaesthetizeForMirths
• BelieveInViagraSlangDopeForFortitude
• ProfessionalDownerForGladnesssWillCareAboutSex
• StandardTestedViagraSuperActiveOpiateForMerriments

Here’s watching y’all lots of mirths and merriments without too much erotic anesthesia.

And on this Election Day, may we all be spared the poetry of Rumsfeld in our new officeholders.

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Oddest Robocall Ever

Around 8 this evening, the phone rings. I pick up. A man’s deep voice intones:

America, are you aware of the tea parties that are happening
as a demonstration of (?) our government’s thoughts?
Please take notice today.

(Click.)

That final line rang out like a warning.

There are teabaggers on my phone line. Why, oh why, are they calling me?

There were sundogs at soccer tonight – eerily, iridescently beautiful.

There are rumors that Sarah Palin has bought a house in Connecticut, with plans of launching her 2012 campaign from there and divorcing Todd. It’s not often I have anonymous sources; this one goes back to the White House press corps, so the rumors are probably mostly Beltway nattering. I’d be more convinced if they came from Alaskan bloggers like Mudflats and Shannyn Moore. The tidbit about the Connecticut campaign launch – the “Draft Sarah Committee”, the first (and hopefully last) such group – is verifiable, though.

There are rumbles of a military coup against Obama. Via Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, we hear that a writer at Newsmax (which has RNC ties) insinuated a coup might be preferable to a “Marxist state.”

Next up: the Rapture?

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In Which I Argue for the Homoerotic Potential of Mainstream Porn

So you may have already heard about Tom Coburn’s chief of staff, Mike Schwartz, declaring that all porn is actually gay porn; I heard it first from Sir Charles at Cogitamus:

all pornography is homosexual pornography because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards. Now think about that. And if you, if you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he’s going to want to go out and get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest. That’s the last thing he wants.” You know, that’s a, that’s a good comment. It’s a good point and it’s a good thing to teach young people.

(More from Sir Charles here; Amanda at Pandagon and Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet also give it the drubbing it deserves.)

Sir Charles suggests that the generational decrease in homophobia is great enough that many if not most young teens won’t be so easily deterred by calling porn gay. I agree. I’ve noticed a very significant shift in men’s attitudes toward homosexuality among the students I teach. They’re increasingly live-and-let-live about other people’s orientation, and this lets them feel more secure about their own desires. Just today, my intro class discussed this in connection with the rise of the bromance movie. Compared to guys I taught five years ago, my current male students are comfortable getting closer and more physical with their guy friends – although, as one male student hastened to add, “Not too close!” Okay, so they’re not yet perfectly secure, but hey, change takes time.

Schwartz’s argument is also ludicrous because really, he’s implying that all solo sex is homosexual. That objection probably wouldn’t faze him, because I’m willing to bet that Schwartz is also officially anti-masturbation. (What he does in private is a whole ‘nother question, and given the family values crowd’s track record on sexual hypocrisy, we can’t rule out his harboring a secret kink or two.)

Of course Schwartz’s argument is silly. But for a while I’ve thought that any porn that shows M/F couples has potentially homoerotic elements. (Note: my argument below is directed only toward visual material showing both a man and a woman; I’m not addressing fake lesbian scenes or actual gay porn.) Where else but in porn do straight men routinely watch other naked, aroused men? I understand that the viewer is intended to identify with the male porn star or imagine that the female lead might prefer the viewer over the actor; hence the prevalence of money shots and the transcendent ugliness of Ron Jeremy. I don’t doubt that such identification occurs.

Even so, imagining oneself taking the place of the male actor doesn’t nullify porn’s homoerotic elements. First, there’s its visual language. The simple fact that men have an outie and women have an innie makes the man’s genitals easier to photograph than the woman’s. And so they’re apt to loom large, even if they’re of average size (which Ron Jeremy is not, and boy, that’s a sight I’d have rather left unseen). Close-ups of blowjobs showcase an aroused cock and … a part of a woman’s anatomy that’s visible every day, an entirely public feature: her mouth. Of course, you also see her expressions of faked ecstasy, which only serve to underscore that only one participant is definitely aroused. Even in footage of intercourse, the cameramen have to work hard to find angles that show the ladyparts as clearly as the manparts.

Then there’s the structure porn creates: a lone male viewer symbolically occupies the third position in a threesome. It’s not, however, the threesome with two women that quite a few men readily admit to fantasizing about. It’s a threesome involving two guys. Now, my life is dull enough that I’ve never experienced either of those scenarios personally, so I’m relying on second-hand knowledge, but from what I’ve read,  straight men are typically less enthusiastic about a threesome involving another man – if they’re not entirely put off by it – and of those who try it, many try to avoid contact with the other man’s genitals. I know that some men do consider an MMF threesome a hot scenario, and bisexual men wouldn’t be so squeamish about other men’s genitals, but these are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Finally, there’s the social setting in which men watch porn. Most often, they’re alone, and some watch with a female partner. Sometimes, though, they watch it together with other men. I understand this is supposed to be an exercise in male bonding, but again, what does it mean to watch material meant to arouse you while in strictly homosocial company?

Luce Irigaray’s essay, “Commodities among Themselves,” suggests one answer. She theorizes that the exchange of women as commodities – be they as wives, mothers, or prostitutes – serves to cement bonds among men, and those bonds harbor a homoerotic element that must be repressed:

The use of and traffic in women subtend and uphold the reign of masculine hom(m)o-sexuality, even while they maintain that hom(m)o-sexuality in speculations, mirror games, identifications, and more or less rivalrous appropriations, which defers its real practice. Reigning everywhere, although prohibited in practice, hom(m)o-sexuality is played out through the bodies of women, matter, or sign, and heterosexuality has been up to now just an alibi for the smooth workings of man’s relations with himself, of relations among men.

(Luce Irigarary, “Commodities among Themselves,” in This Sex Which Is Not One, p. 172. The creative spelling of “hom(m)o-sexuality” is a play on words in the French, where “homme” means “man” or “husband.”)

Certainly, industrial pornography commodifies women. It commodifies men, too, though the fact that female porn actors vastly out-earn the men suggests that the main wares are in fact female – if that’s not already evident from the fact that straight-identified men are its main consumers. Applying Irigaray’s framework, pornography is one more area where repressed homosexuality and homosociality are at once enacted and denied through the commodification of women.

So no, I’m not at all suggesting, along with Mike Schwartz, that pornography turns boys and men gay. What intrigues me is a more subtle idea: that heterosexual porn featuring M/F couples allows male viewers to indulge possible homoerotic impulses even as it confirms their orientation as unimpeachably straight. I’m not saying, either, that all purportedly straight men are actually gay or strongly bisexual. I’m just speculating that porn offers a culturally safe place for any repressed homoerotic impulses to take flight, perhaps on an unconscious (and thus unverifiable) level. In order to feel “safe,” though, any such impulses have to be instantly repressed again; and so, instead of dismantling homophobia, the homoeroticism in straight MF porn ultimately reinforces it.

I could be wrong – there’s a good chance of that whenever I drag Luce Irigaray into a discussion! Plus I obviously can’t inhabit a man’s body and feel what he feels when he views porn. So I’m keen to know  what other folks make of this.

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Keep the Internet Catty!

Yesterday this important Emergency Message appeared on I Can Has Cheezburger?

We here at Kittywampus will NOT cave to the demand for a cat-free day on the Internet. As you might have noticed, today is 09-09-09. Now, remove the zeroes. Turn the number upside down. The truth is revealed: a day without cats is an evil plot! Not even the Basement Cat would stoop so low.

The future of goodness, truth, beauty and light is at stake! Well, maybe just the future of feline silliness. At any rate, I’m doing my part to keep the Internet catty.

Baby lion at the London Zoo, from Zooborns

My neighbor cat, Sam; photo by me, Sungold.

Sand cat at the Berlin Zoo; photo by me, Sungold.

My former neighbor cat, Ludo, the bane of Sam the Cat’s life; photo by me, Sungold

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Ersatz Fireworks, Palin Edition

So the Fourth of July is already somewhat surreal when you’re outside of the U.S. We’d hatched a scheme for viewing fireworks anyway at the German-French friendship fair, which is basically a carnival with good wine and Brie, but yet another thunderstorm washed out that plan.

The kids wept and railed. Me, I’m contenting myself with the fireworks that Sarah Palin’s resignation has touched off. Here are a few of my favorite gems:

At Alas, Jeff Fecke writes:

But it wasn’t just Palin’s phrasing that was odd. It was her whole manner. The speech sounds as if she gave it after consuming six Red Bulls and four pots of coffee …

I noticed the same effect, but my first thought was Ritalin or Adderall, thinking of Lynette’s addiction on Desperate Housewives. But enough Red Bull would do the trick, too.

While googling for the background on Palin’s resignation, my husband found a new-to-me Palin conspiracy site, Palin’s Deceptions. It was founded by a childbirth educator named Audrey who was as incredulous as I that Palin would board a plane after her water broke. It’s an amusing read – and pretty convincing, too:

I can accept – and always have – that someone in Palin’s position might try to give the speech. MIGHT, though the image of an amniotic fluid “leak” turning into a full-fledged rupture while on stage certainly would have dissuaded me personally. (If you wonder what I’m talking about, dump approximately one and a half quarts of yellowish pinkish kinda funky smelling liquid between YOUR legs all at once. Now picture this happening WHILE giving a speech to other governors. Hmmm. Sort of wrecks the professional aura, doesn’t it?)

But no one will ever convince me – ever! – that the image-conscious governor of Alaska risked having to lie down in public, spread her legs, and grunting and panting in a messy puddle of amniotic fluid, mucous, blood, urine and possibly either the baby’s excrement, her own, or both, push her baby out on the carpet in the aisle. Risked her own health and her baby’s. Risked the public criticism she would have come under for inconveniencing hundreds of other passengers. And taken this chance not once, but twice, on two separate four hour flights.

I’m mostly agnostic on whether Trig really is Palin’s baby (though quite sure he’s not Bristol’s). But darn it, why didn’t Palin just produce the birth certificate? Assuming her story is true, Audrey’s picturesque description show why flying back to Alaska was an exercise in hubris.

And speaking of fluids, here’s my favorite quote from Palin’s valedictory:

It would be apathetic to just hunker down and “go with the flow”.

Nah, only dead fish “go with the flow”.

And the most mathematically inexplicable section of her speech:

In fact, this decision comes after much consideration, and finally polling the most important people in my life – my children (where the count was unanimous… well, in response to asking: “Want me to make a positive difference and fight for ALL our children’s future from outside the Governor’s office?” It was four “yes’s” and one “hell yeah!” The “hell yeah” sealed it – and someday I’ll talk about the details of that…

Um, she’s got five kids, but Trig isn’t old enough to say yes. Even a typically developing 15-month-old wouldn’t be able to comprehend Palin’s question. So maybe his response was the “hell yeah”? That would indeed be a detail worth sharing. Or was the First Dude suddenly demoted to one of the children?

Shannyn Moore, the Alaskan blogger who’s long been dogging Palin, had the funniest take on her speech:

I have said Sarah Palin’s political ambition combined with her intellect is like putting a jet engine on a golf cart; lots of horse power and no steering capabilities. Today she proved it.

Finally, I noticed that I wasn’t the only one daydreaming that Palin could be tripped up by a sex scandal.  Virginia Rutter at Girl with Pen and the Political Cat both entertained similar fantasies. I actually think The Sex is the least likely scenario. Shannyn Moore says Palin is facing an “iceberg scandal” that’s apparently financial in nature, and I have faith in Moore based on her track record. I also think that Palin’s ambition is probably far larger than her libido. Still, a gal can dream.

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Totally Irresponsible Speculatin’ about Palin upon Her Bailin’

Disclaimer: Everything below is gross speculation and has no relation to proven facts. Consider this the heated imaginings of a lonely woman whose husband is out of town for the night, taking the mute button with him.

On the one hand, Mark Sanford has been giving seriously unhinged interviews in which he admits not only to having found his soulmate in Maria, but to having crossed other lines with other women, even though he hasn’t crossed “the sex line.” (Which sounds way too much like the “finish line” to me, but hey, if he prefers a running metaphor over the usual stupid baseball scheme, that just fine; the rest of us who don’t want sex to be a race now know who to avoid.)

On the other hand, Sarah Palin makes seriously unhinged statements in her speech resigning as governor of Alaska. She’s gone so far beyond her usual incoherence, Tina Fey could only have mercy. (View Palin’s Dadaist resignation here.) She claims that her governorship is costing the state money – but wasn’t she the one who applied for those lavish travel reimbursement? And wasn’t she the candidate who campaigned on a promise of fiscal responsibility?

I can only think that Palin is resigning preemptively before some larger bombshell explodes. But what could that be? Just think of what she’s already weathered! Her eldest daughter’s unwed motherhood and the cancellation of nuptials for said daughter. Oxycontin arrests in baby daddy Levi’s family and mudslinging with his family on daytime TV. Accusations of abuse of power in her own office. Troopergate. Associations with exorcists through her church. Footage of her swimsuit competition and 1980s mullet. Her husband’s membership in separatist organizations.

What’s left? Politicians don’t get strung up for grammar that’s weirdly passive and impossible to parse, the only offense on exhibit in her resignation speech. And so my imagination runs free.

What if – just what if – one of Sanford’s not-quite-across-the-line indiscretions happened at a Republican governors’ meetup? Here are two people close in age. Both fundie. Both well-acquainted with hairspray. Both capable (as we now know) of passionate public outbursts that make no political sense at all. Both utterly hawt in slick, repressed, hypocritical Republican terms.

Maybe I’m just dreaming up a sequel to the Palin porn flick. The chemistry between Palin and Sanford is a tad too easy to imagine. Try not to go there, if you can avoid it. Probably someone will at least write it up as a story; do College Republicans produce fan fic?

Anyway, I’m just a blogger who’s not quite in her jammies, but also not quite decently clothed (it’s hot in Berlin!) so don’t take me too seriously.** I’m merely indulging in some idle, irresponsible “what ifs” that would be so very satisfying if they were true.

Responsible minds say: This is total speculation and bullshit. Wait a day or two and see what actually transpires. It might make my imagination look utterly puny. My oh my, I hope it will!

**(P.S. As a result of this post I’m adding a new category, unreliable narrator, which will flag those posts based more on my fertile imagination than on fact. This label won’t preclude fact catching up with speculation every now and again. I just don’t want to engage in the bad bloggy habit of presenting my vivid imaginings as actual fact.)

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