Senator Wendy Davis is fucking awesome. One rarely ever gets to say that about a senator. Texas should be proud.

Completely unrelated, but I finally found a quote by Margaret Cho that has been on my mind for awhile but I never remembered to Google it when in front of a computer.

I grew up hard and am still hard and I don't care. I did not choose this face or this body and I have learned to live with it and love it and celebrate it and adorn it with tremendous drawings from the greatest artists in the world and I feel good and powerful like a nation that has never been free and now after many hard won victories is finally fucking free. I am beautiful and I am finally fucking free.

I fly my flag of self-esteem for all those who have been told they were ugly and fat and hurt and shamed and violated and abused for the way they look and told time and time again that they were "different" and therefore unlovable. Come to me and I will tell you and show you how beautiful and loved you are and you will see it and feel it and know it and then look in the mirror and truly believe it. If you are offended by my anger and my might at defending my borders and my people you do not deserve entry into my beloved and magnificent country.

That right there is why I will always love Margaret Cho, even though our sense of humor don't always mesh.


You know what? Who cares whether it's official or not. Happy Rocking Ladies Day, everybody.

And that's just comparing Americans against Americans. If we broadened the scope of comparison...

Kind of horrifying to contemplate.

I was watching Scandal the other week when Cyrus said this:

I wasn't made to be the Chief of Staff. Do you know what I was made to be? I was made to be the President of the United States. I was made to lead the nation. I was made to ensure this country's place in the world for generations to come. I would've been great at that. I have the stones. I have backbone. I have the will. I would have been a great President. But guess what, I'm fairly short, and I'm not so pretty, and I really like having sex with men, so instead of being President of this land, that I love, I get to be the guy behind the President of the United States, and sure I have power. I influence decisions. I help steer the country. But I'll never be in the history books. My name will never be on an airport or a doctrine. Being the guy behind the guy is as far as my road goes.

My first reaction was complete disdain. Cry more, you big baby. Typical white dude, obsessed with his status rather than getting shit done.

Then I asked myself: What if he were a black man? Or a woman? How would I feel about it then? And I realized that I would be much more sympathetic to his speech if he had been anything other than a white dude.



This is not to say that Cyrus' struggles as a rich, white gay male are equal to other marginalized groups. Cyrus benefits enormously from white male privilege, even as a gay man.


I guess what I found most interesting about my reaction, and my subsequent questioning of that reaction, is how I basically picked & chose which of Cyrus' identities mattered and which didn't. In that moment, for me, Cyrus' whiteness and maleness negated his queerness. His privilege in one area invalidated his marginalization in another.

It's something I'm still chewing over.

Wow. That was racist.

( cut for spoilers )

I finally got around to watching this fabulous video.

Excuse me while I check out everything else they've done.




Unrelated except for the awesomeness, but Little Mosque on the Prairie is on Hulu and I will finally be able to catch up on it (assuming I can get myself to stop watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). If you haven't seen this adorable Canadian sitcom and you have access to Hulu, WATCH IT. WATCH IT NOW. Because who doesn't need a series about a lawyer-turned-imam from Toronto moving to a small Canadian town and hijinks ensue? I ask you.

I don't know what I'd do without The Mary Sue, which linked me to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, aka what would happen if Lizzie Bennet lived in 2012 and decided to do a video blog about her life (plus a tumblr, plus twitter, plus facebook...). It's hilarious, and the writing & acting are really superb. As entertainment, I highly recommend it.

As a Jane Austen fan who overanalyzes the shit out of things, I have thoughts.
( Read more... )

This was something I thought about when writing about whiteness and Legend of Korra, but I don't know much about it so I didn't bring it up: skin whitening products.

I have more thoughts, but they border dangerously close to table-flipping rantfests on subjects I can never fully understand because I am a pasty pale white person. (It also feels immature to bitch about Tumblr behind Tumblr's back. Because Tumblr...has feelings? I don't even know.)

So there you go. Your hilari-tragic link of the day.

Awesomely cool watching along/analysis of the first two Korra eps. I thought it was really interesting how they connected the evolution of bender privilege with the status of benders in the first series.

I gotta ask, though - am I the only one convinced Amon has an agenda that's separate from the Equalist agenda? /sits alone and lonely in her conspiracy theory corner

( Legend of Korra and race )

I've depressed myself with this. Time for some Jay Smooth.

That. Was epic. Holy goodness. I love it when Community fucks around with genre. When the credits started rolling, I was like "Best. Episode. EVER!"

And then I thought about it some more, and I got a little pissed.

( Spoilers )