Beth Ditto, My Hero

Beth Ditto is probably the most famous lesbian in Paris. She turns up nekkid on the covers of magazines, plays fashion shows, and gets interviewed for the hip culture rags. A couple nights ago when I was channel surfing I saw Beth on the show Taratata where she got a standing O when she walked on stage, and yells and screams after her group Gossip played a couple of songs.

Afterwards came the interview where the host Nagui Fam asked a few questions, and showed a montage talking about Gossip's history and Ditto's influences and favorite groups. Right from the start, he narrated that their breakthrough song, "Standing In the Way of Control" was "a manifesto that turned Gossip and Beth Ditto into a spokeswoman for the lesbian community, fat women and feminists, all at the same time."

From that moment on, we heard the word lesbian more times in ten minutes than I've heard in four years in France.

That sound you hear is all the queers in France sucking up the remaining bit of fresh air.

Photo not mine.

I need your help

I have 16 more days to raise $253 for EXILE gallery at the Kickstarter fund-raising site or I don't get a penny of what I already raised. Give me a hand. Support free range art!

The first exhibit of B-Ville 2049 began Friday night in Paris!

For more photos, check out EXILE gallery.

Closure for Semenya?

South Africa Says Gender Controversy Is Over, Semenya is cleared of wrongdoing and gets to keep her medal.

Reuters reported that “The I.A.A.F. said it could not confirm the details in the statement but said it had accepted the resignation of Athletics South Africa (A.S.A.) President Leonard Chuene from the I.A.A.F. Council and had opened a formal investigation into the handling of the Semenya affair by Chuene and A.S.A.”

Neither statement said what her permanent status was.

Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences

Worth checking out Sarah Schulman's new book, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences. Plenty of teasers in Doug Ireland's Gay City News review.

For example, she writes: “Today, in an act of diminishment, gay people use having children as proof that we deserve rights, respect, and representation. This of course reveals that our lack of children is a sign that something is wrong with us, that we are dangerous and deserve to be outside of power. This false accusation is another smoke screen, obscuring the real issue: that depriving children of relationships with gay people is itself child abuse.”

And Schulman argues, “The system of supremacy into which straight people are inaugurated is so pervasive, so dominant in its invisibility, and therefore unidentifiable, that parents and siblings and other relatives are often not individual enough to transcend its inherent cruelties. Instead they reinforce them to greater or lesser extents, and because we love our parents, we make excuses or try to help them expand their thinking, often without fully acknowledging the impact of their prejudices on our emotional lives. The greatest of which is to continue their dirty work in our treatment of each other.”

One of the most controversial parts of Schulman’s book is bound to be her denunciation of the “false discourse of tolerance” and her explication of why “homophobia is not a phobia at all, it is a pleasure system.” Schulman proposes that the strategic belief that visibility for queers, by demystifying homosexuality and ending fear of it, would end homophobia was a misplaced “engagement with magical thinking.”

Instead, she says, “What is most difficult to face but increasingly obvious as gay visibility provokes containment, but not equality, is that homophobes enjoy feeling superior, rely on the pleasure of enacting their superiority, and go out of their way to resist change that would deflate their sense of superiority. Homophobia makes heterosexuals feel better about themselves. It’s not fear — it’s fun.”

What God Wants

I feel like such a dummy, not knowing what god wants, or even if there is one, while everybody else seems to have a direct line to the Maker.

"It was a pleasure and an honor to serve my God," said Teitel at the Jerusalem courthouse. "I have no regret and no doubt that God is pleased."

Teitel also denied recent reports that he had operated as an undercover Shin Bet agent. .. . The indictment also lists Teitel's efforts for more than a decade to harm Arabs, gays and lesbians, leftists, police officers and messianic Jews.

Our Fierce Advocate

Pam's House Blend reports on new Obama admin gaffe.

Melody Barnes, Obama's senior domestic policy aide, recently gave a talk at Boston College; she indicated not only her personal opinion on marriage equality (she's for it), and provided insight on WH policy. Apparently her answer was not from the script and the White House freaked and denied Barnes said anything about her views.

Let's go to the videotape... Check out the PHB article for the bizarro sequel.

Fort Hood

I like this Megan McArdle post on The Lessons of Fort Hood. Last week she said there weren't any.

As of last week, what information did we have that would lead to any useful political response? Were we going to start kicking Muslims out of the government and the armed forces? That's unconstitutional, would brutally wrong the overwhelming majority of the Muslim community that is not involved in terrorism, and would deprive us of a valuable source of translators and other advisers to our military and intelligence efforts. We know that some number of Muslims living in this country hate our government and want to act against it. We also know (by the rarity of attacks, if nothing else) that this number is small, and any loose networks are poorly organized and largely ineffective. Given this, there's not very much you can do with this information, other than what we're already doing, which is have the FBI try to track down terrorist plots. Something that they seem to be doing very well when the attacker is not a lone gunman with no need for a support team. This particular attack would have been very hard to stop for anyone, without doing terrible, terrible things to our Muslim citizens.

And if you think that's okay, I invite you to consider whether you would be all right with similar incursions into evangelical churches every time an abortion clinic or doctor gets attacked. After all, the pro-life community does produce these wackos, and its radical fringe may even shelter them. Why shouldn't every Southern Baptist get a little extra scrutiny?

This week she's changed her mind. Worth reading to the end.

Health Care Bill In Brief

The Washington Monthly gives a brief summary:

if you have insurance, you'll have better, more stable coverage with consumer protections. If you don't have insurance, you'll get subsidies to help you purchase coverage from an exchange.

He also quotes Harold Meyerson from the Washington Post:

The health-care reform bills emerging from the House and Senate, when melded and enacted, will constitute an epochal achievement: the near-universal provision of medical care to the American people. But the House version is clearly the more epochal, as the health coverage it provides is more universal, chiefly because it's more affordable.

For families who buy their insurance on the exchanges that both bills establish, for instance, the House bill includes more generous subsidies -- on average, $1,000 more, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The House bill also offers a lot more assistance to Medicare recipients by reducing the cost of their prescriptions. While the bill that emerged from the Senate Finance Committee renews the Bush administration's mega-bucks gift to the drug companies by continuing to prohibit Medicare from negotiating drug prices with them, the House bill authorizes those negotiations. The Senate bill reduces by half the payments that Medicare recipients must make for prescription drugs that fall into the "doughnut hole" (annual drug expenses are covered up to $2,700, and coverage kicks in again at $6,100, but for all purchases in between, Medicarians are on their own). The House bill would cover all prescription purchases by 2019.

As to the screwing of women in the plan, these guys ignore it.

Somebody's been twisting Obama's arm lately on the anti-abortion provisions, because today the Times reports a little hemming and hawing from the great one.

On the one hand, Mr. Obama said, “we’re not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions.”

On the other hand, he said, he wanted to make sure “we’re not restricting women’s insurance choices,” because he had promised that “if you’re happy and satisfied with the insurance that you have, it’s not going to change.”

Uh huh.

Angry Black Bitch on Health Care Bill Passage

Celebrating? Hardly.

Over the weekend, at 11:15 p.m. Saturday night, the House of Representatives voted to fuck women when they passed a health insurance reform bill with an anti-choice amendment that includes a ban on private abortion coverage and would prohibit it in the public option. Despite countless attempts to lobby the House, enough members caved to anti-choice freaks ‘cause some Dems managed to convince themselves that passing a health care reform bill that leaves women flattened by a bus is a legislative victory.

Let me once again denounce the American "left's" reliance on the Democratic Party that trembles at defending civil rights. How they turned their backs on queers in Maine! How they traded away a woman's rights to control her body and health!

Health Care Reform Bill Passed House

Now, does anybody know what exactly's in there? See The Field Negro's concerns.

“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1] - - - - - - - - - -
“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2] - - - - - - - - - -
“Criminal penalties Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual: • Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

Umm...

And just how royally did women get screwed? Pretty thoroughly. Thanks, Nancy. What a difference it makes having a female running things.

One for the girls

Sgt. Kimberly Denise Munley was the hero at Fort Hood, bringing down the gunman after he went on a shooting rampage.

On Wine

Most American bottles are little more than grape-based processed food products. Uh huh. Shocker.

The article should also have mentioned how common it is for "winemakers" to add a bunch of sugar to their juice to ratchet up the alcohol when the grapes weren't ripe enough or the year was bad, or put it in centrifuges when on the contrary they want to get rid of excess alcohol because they picked the grapes at the wrong moment of ripeness, or clear the must. Sometimes they actually add flavorings. I'll have wine-flavored wine please.

Marie NDiaye Takes the Goncourt

UPDATED.

One of the best writers anywhere takes France's top literary prize, the Goncourt.
(Here's a much better article in the Guardian.)

What's the world coming to? First Herta Muller then Marie NDiaye. What will I have left to complain about?

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