sundries

[rm]

An Iranian actress who is openly gay has been denied asylum in the UK, which means she is going to be sent home to be executed. There is a petition to appeal the Home office ruling at the link.

Jesus christ, jet lag. I went to bed at 9:30 last night, claiming it was a nap, had a couple of weird sleepy conversations with Patty when she came to visit me and passed out for real at some point after John Stewart. Blech. I'd like my clock to sync, please.

What will the post-volcano era mean for air travel?

Bamboo above the city.

Long thing about Buffy fandom issues deleted, because like I said, I'm not in the Buffy fandom and I just stumbled into a whole mess of drama with history that involves all sorts of people I know, and since I'm not able to sort it out, I'm pulling the link.

However, the points in my own head from all this I care about are:

1. It's crappy to call "sexism" or "homophobia" or whatever else because you didn't get the story you wanted.
2. It's also crappy to use sexism or sex-negative language to try to silence people in fandom.
3. A complicated world means that sometimes things that look like 1 or 2, aren't.
4. There's no such thing as the truth, especially when it comes to stories.
5. Less hate; more joy.

sparkindarkness has a roundup of anti-LGBTQ violence.

By now you've a presumably all heard about the Lane Bryant ad deemed too sexy for TV; it's like concern trolling by the networks or something.

Anyway, the issue, I suspect, is about "curve" and "jiggle" because those are both items that often get cited in movie ratings stuff too.

Is this a completely evil double standard? Yes.
Is it one with a lot of precedence? Oddly enough, yes, but like I said, it's in film ratings decisions.
Should we be talking about this? Oh yes.
Should people of all genders be pissed off? Yes.
Should this shit stop? Yes and immediately.

But, can we please not use this as a way to condone other types of body policing even if they are less severe/constant/societally detrimental? All body policing is bad.

Look, I have skinny privilege. I get that. I get that when people say negative things about skinny people the overall personal effect on me and people like me is smaller than when people say things about fat people. So my asking you not to do the stuff I'm about to describe below is less societally important. I get that. But I'm going to ask anyway:

When you say "disgusting women with no meat on their bones", "anorexic looking" to mean any skinny person, and otherwise deride people who are built like me as not being "real women" because of their weight -- you're talking about me. And then maybe you'll go, "no, no no, I don't mean you" and that's when I have to say "well, actually you do."

Look, I don't care if the way I look isn't your cup of tea. I don't need it to be. And I don't care if you find me revolting. But a modicum of manners and a world in which one group of people doesn't need to be cut down in order to sing the praises of another, would be awesome.

Because you want to know what I think? The Lane Bryant ad chick is HOT and I don't need to hate on anyone, including myself, to think so. And neither do you.

Last night we watched "Guise will be Guise" and "Darla" on Angel before I passed out. Poor fucking Wesley. He's so incompetent, until he's not thinking and then he's awesome. Also, boy gets around! There was the bleached blond thing a couple of episodes back, and now with the sacrifice chick! I _loved_ her enumerating the sex she'd had and I _loved_ Wesley being all "thank god" about it. It was funny and awkward and true to life, and isn't Welsey a funny creature. So awkward and weird and ridiculous, but apparently his one secret skill is falling into bed with people.

Meanwhile, "Darla" -- OMGWTF, Spike, you actually used to be even more ridiculous! I can barely stand it! Also, that long hair thing, not a good look for Angel.

And from misfitina: Woman wears men's clothes to prizefight, world gasps. It was, of course, 1910.

Comments

[keever.livejournal.com]

FWIW, Lane Bryant says they pulled the ad from YouTube themselves because of a trademark/clearance issue. (You can also see non-YouTube video of the commercial at that link.)

rm, I love what you said about body policing. I think for fat women in particular (of which I am one), it's very tempting to buy into the "real women have curves" narrative because it's one that actually prizes our bodies in a culture that utterly lacks positive messages about them. I think for some, that feels so good that they just don't care to look too critically at what accepting that line really means. I think there's also a definite -- and misguided -- sense of wanting the privileged to feel what it's like to be down here for a change, too.

This is where I think the acknowledgements of thin privilege like yours from those who enjoy it go a long way towards helping people embrace the critical thinking around this: when thin people demonstrate that they get that for us, it's about pervasive discrimination as well as the personal pain, it becomes easier to drop the defensiveness and actually see other women's experiences with body policing on different points on the spectrum as another expression of the sexism we're all subjected to. It's easier to hear "all body policing is bad" coming from someone who isn't fat when it doesn't feel like they're equating our experiences and thus, minimizing or dismissing them.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

I was once in the elevator at work with a quite thin coworker and another fat woman got on and gave me a smug 'skinny bitch' bonding sidelong look at my coworker and I wanted to jump up and down and be like SHE IS SO NOT LIKE THAT b/c she WASN'T. It was like, look, yes, I'm fat, and I feel good about myself when I'm around my friends who love themselves and me, not when I'm bonded with other fat women who think of themselves as against other people. It was such a quick interaction though and I couldn't pack all of my 'we're all pushed against similar oppressions / it's all such a fucking trap' stuff into one moment before we got off the elevator; the best I could do was NOT play into the bonding-against-my-coworker dynamic (who thankfully didn't notice it until we talked about it later).

[keever.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've totally had this experience, too. I get why it happens, but it makes me sad.