"Voracious hunger is a sign of manliness"

Footnoote to two preceding posts, off a snippet from one of the links.

That line, "voracious hunger is a sign of manliness:" Whopper commercials and certain sportsy or fratly subcultures aside, you may not have seen that as being particularly true these days, even though its converse clearly still is. Ever since at least the 80's and the spawn of yuppie culture there's been an uneasy coexistence between the ol' "real men EAT, make strong like OX" and at least a nod or so to the idea of being relatively "healthy," "cut," drinking protein shakes and running on treadmills and shit. There are obviously other factors at work here, class not least of them. Masculinity is still as associated with power as it ever was, but the sleeker and faster advanced technocracy gets, the more likely you are to see power reflected by efficient eating habits and fat-free bodies: the straightforward opulence of a Diamond Jim Brady becomes replaced by the more ascetic ostentation of personal trainers and individually tailored "special" diets, the better to achieve that lean, mean, hard look.

If you -really- want to see hilariously over the top odes to the Manly Appetite, though...well, let's take a trip in the wayback machine, shall we?

I'm reading this anthology called Endless Feasts, a collection of essays from the soon-to-be-defunct magazine Gourmet. (One thing I may or may not have talked about here is: I read food porn. A lot of food porn. While I'm eating, specifically. I have my little habits, which...some other post).

Anyway, in this compilation, there are several essays by one Robert P. Coffin, each more exuberantly masculine than the last. The first two have to do with huntin' and fishin' with one's brothers in the wild, having dispensed with such "suave and civilized meats" as sweetbreads on toast: ripping apart hunks of lobster with one's bare hands, scarfing down deer limbs washed down with whiskey from the bottle, that sort of thing. Very proto-Iron John, very...woodsy.

The third piece, "Down East Breakfast"-- I'll just give you a taste, okay.

The Maine morning meal is like a tune on the bagpipes which calls the stouthearted Scot to war. It is something that must strengthen him deep to his marrow, and only the masculine and downright victuals will do. The ordinary American breakfast, with its precooked and predigested cereals, its hummingbird nectar of citrus, butterflies of bacon, and anemias of eggs, is as much out of place in Maine as...a French breakfast of a dry roll and chocolat chaud... It would be an insult to his oily manhood. Fat is the foe of weather, and fat is the making of Maine's first meal...

...The Maine breakfast is a hefty meal for hefty he-men.

...It begins with a seething and bubbling of pork fat in the skillet or spider. Fat salt pork in chunks, not lean and feminine bacon rashers, is its base.

...The Down East flapjack is the outdoors, masculine, New World crepe Suzette. It is about as much like its relative in Paris, in London, or in our own Sunny South, as an All-American tackle is like a boy in pants six inches long playing with a ten-cent-store football.

...In any case, there must be the cheese. And when I say cheese, I don't mean something that starts out as a mollycoddle of a food for babies, like milk. I mean...calf's head cheese or pig's head cheese. I mean meat...This is strenuous and fine eating, and it makes a "stick-by-the-ribs-Billy" dish that dish that will take a man straight through three cords of beechwood...without a rest and with a song in the heart.

...Naturally--and this breakfast is all nature and good-natured eating--there is a liquid constantly drunk to float all these ships of heavy meats and fish and wheat or buckwheat on. It is tea...It is as black as your hat. It is about as near to the tea drunk as tea parties by women and womanish men as the male in three-cornered pants is to the adult one in overalls that can stand by themselves...

...Some of the older men a bit past their full bloom, or some younger ones not yet come to theirs and having peach fuzz instead of whiskers on their cheeks, dilute this tea with sugar or milk. But the middle and powerful males take its tannin into themselves neat. It galvanizes their "innerds," they say, against the damp and cold...[A] wise saying is that tea is tea only when it puts whiskers on the bottom of the soles of your feet. Maine men's feet have hair on their bottoms so they can cling to their dories and rolling logs...

...The Down East breakfast is the strong meal of strong men.

At the conclusion of a meal like this--or more accurately, writing up the vicarious experience of it, as the actual Maine he-men are already lumbering off to put in a hard day's work stacking cords in the bitter cold-- presumably one lights up not an effeminate cigarette but a foot-long, thick, masculine cigar with a fine strong honest smell. None of your Cuban imports either, but a plain straightforward -American- cigar, completely free of foreign impurities and effete insinuating subtext.

The gentleman, perhaps, protests too much. But what exactly is it that he's protesting?

At first glance it's not a "protest" at all; it's a celebration of, well, bigness. Male bigness, but also American bigness. Clearly the particular cultural myth the author is appealing to goes back a long way, at least as far as, say, Paul Bunyan, Giant in a Great Land,. This piece was written shortly after WWII, when America was on top of the world, and Gourmet, along with the idea that fancy eating is a legitimate American pasttime, was in its early years.

And yet one could argue that there's a hint of...anxiety, here. The author, remember, is writing for Gourmet readers, which from the onset was decidedly on the upscale, not-very-likely-to-be-doing-much-cordwood-chopping side. "The Magazine of Good Living." The Song Of Masculinity is all entangled with class: it's basically romanticization of Hard Work And Simple Living, Like Our Pioneer Forefathers (and Their Helpmeets) Practiced. And which, one gathers from the Huck-Finn like paens to escaping the study and running wild in the woods with his pals, doesn't much resemble the life of the author or his audience; otherwise, it probably wouldn't seem that romantic.

This is all decades before the "wealth gap" widened dramatically. Second Wave feminism's still in its nascency, but Rosie the Riveter now has to be considered as competition for the men returning from the war. We're still a long way from the analysis of, say, Stiffed, or Stuffed and Starved; ironically, the era Coffin is writing from is one that's now viewed nostalgically itself. Traditional Families, Hard Work In The Heartland, Father Knows Best. As the ulcerated CEO's on their treadmills can attest, perhaps, even the simple joys of gorging oneself aren't that simple anymore.

Whatever the men are hungry for-along with the rest of us- it's probably not going be satisfied with a big breakfast, if indeed it ever was.

"Sometimes...you just need to stand around in a massive gyroscope and this is one of those times."

(h/t Queen Emily)

"Having been purchased, Lady Gaga is on her way to The Rumpo Area wearing a frock with a polar bear hanging out of the back of it. You may laugh but we've all at one point or another been out in a bar or club and started walking out of the toilet with a bit of loo roll stuck to one of our shoes, and this is exactly the same except with a polar bear."

Oh if only wank were a fossil fuel

"The flip side of this charming worldview..."

(riffing off the same SP post that inspired this one)

I hadn't even gotten into fillyjonk's other point, the one that started me commenting on this piece, before I got distracted by what felt like the main point. Said other point being:

The flip side of this charming worldview, of course, is male anger at women who don’t make themselves available — see many of our friends in that now-closed thread — or women who have the gall to have a body they find unattractive. That’s the real problem with feminism, with fatness, with (for some pseudo-enlightened guys) the extremely thin beauty ideal: it’s a boner-killer, and boner primacy is a paramount law of the dude cabal. You don’t have to read very far between the lines of most troll comments to see that’s what it boils down to: how dare you possess a womanly body I can’t or don’t want to fuck.

One of the -other- charming Tucker Max slogans, by the way, (not sure if it made it to an actual bus ad or not; I wouldn't be surprised) was "Fat girls aren't people." A motto he, like so many of his fellow yrch, upholds faithfully by the same kind of invasive in-your-space crap as goes to the "lucky" "hot girls," except instead of aggressive and hostile come-ons often laced with insults, you get...insults, often laced with aggressive and hostile-come-ons. e.g. (via the same Schmucker-related comment thread, I can't be arsed linking back to the original again):

Hey Sara Lee, I was only kidding! COME BACK HERE--MY FRIEND LIKES TO GO HOGGIN. MORE CUSHION FOR THE PUSHIN! IT'S LIKE RIDING A MOPED!!

Of course, this is the same attraction/disgust other "undesirable" women get: the exotically fetishized racial "Other," particularly those whose stereotypes don't map to "hyperfeminine" (i.e. the Asian "Lotus Blossom"); trans women; women with disabilities (viz Fuckhead's charming "I'm two thirds of the way to a Helen Keller"), women who are -too- "slutty" or "low-class," including sex workers; and so forth.

And yes, of course, in this "charming worldview," women are never entirely "people," not -really- (nor for that matter are quite a lot of men, but that's not the subject of this particular post) . Women who're "friends" or "girlfriends" or otherwise "special" may be (sort of) excepted, as long as they don't step out of line or lose their attractiveness and/or utility or make too many demands, like decent treatment. **

But the women deemed "unfuckable" (except, of course, when it's in the name of supposed desperation, or in the interest of gathering exotic/disgusting stories to tell one's friends, or in the dudely bonding activity of attempting to degrade via fucking, or even that the dude in question is secretly attracted but of course can't admit to any such thing in front of his dudebros)--well, those women get to be, shall we say, more -overtly- "not real people." Further objectified. Further dehumanized. Further to fall. Ain't it the way.

One could examine -how- each of these particular ways of being "unpersoned" starts with being "unwomaned." As noted in previous posts and elsewhere, the way trans women are treated perhaps most sharply illuminates this curious phenomenon (i.e. [cis] women aren't -really- people, but compared to people and especially women who get cast outside either the favored or disfavored gender boxes, it's still a lot more "personed"). The "unwomaning"/"desexing" (and/or fetishizing) of women of color and women with disabilities each respectively happens in its own way, within its own context(s), but in service of roughly the same ends.

Fat-bashing and especially fat-woman-bashing is an interesting one, and one I realize I haven't talked about much in this blog, curiously enough, because I am fat. As for the etiology of "fat is a feminist issue," today is my day for quoting Shapely Prose, I guess, because this here is a really good breakdown:

(summarizing themes from feminist philosopher Susan Bordo's book Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body):

-Voracious hunger is considered a sign of manliness.

-Hunger for food and desire for sexuality are constructed as analogous, but this is a gendered analogy. When women are targeted, “their hunger for food is employed solely as a metaphor for their sexual appetite.” When men are targeted, the metaphor goes in reverse: eating delicious food is depicted as a sexual conquest. (The examples for this include hilariously awful ads of men whispering sweet nothings to their Betty Crocker desserts.)

-Female hunger is represented in terms of misogynistic fear: sex is imagined as a form of eating in which the woman consumes and destroys a male object of desire.

...The connection between hunger and desire, especially, can be subterranean: the ideal of thinness, of course, depends on you having the goal of a certain kind of fuckability — but even eating itself is depicted as an act of sensual abandon instead of a necessity for every living thing on earth. As such, men are commended for having hearty appetites — boys will be boys — and women are told to keep their mouths (and their knees) shut.

The quote I highlighted above is the one that was most illuminating to me, because it says (in my non-theory translation) that dieting is the ultimate act of repressive femininity. Essentially, what Bordo argues is that not eating when your body needs food is participating in your own marginalization — but it’s marginalization dressed up as a sexual ideal. This, I think, is why trolls and anti-FA jerkwads are so obsessed with the idea that we want them all to have sex with fatties: fat is, on some unacknowledged level, about sex in our culture.

And of course, while these days women aren't supposed to keep their knees shut, "sluttiness" is still considered degrading, even monstrous, particularly if it's the woman's idea/desire. Also see.

This is all even before we get to: what if the woman desires women rather than men.

Let's skip over the relatively obvious trope of "any woman who doesn't desire the misogynist is a dyke (and probably fat and ugly to boot, and nobody wants those grapes -anyway-), whether she actually is one or not."

Let's start with "yes I am, and especially seeing you represented as the alternative, THANK THE SWEET WEEPING JESUS, because annoying as tolerating your existence is -now-, I can't even imagine what it'd be like to -want- attention from a shitbag like you, which is of course assuming not only straight but either with really low self-esteem or a taste for smug often-not-exactly-gorgeous-themselves mediocrities with more beer than brains."

Not that I am saying that the latter is a small population: hey, it was good enough for Laura Bush.

But the truth is, as much as the political lesbian and other such might like to romanticize the notion, being Sapphically inclined is not actually all that much of an opt-out from being on the receiving end of this sort of bullshit. For one thing, as noted here recently, women, dykes included, can be appalling assholes too. In eerily similar-sounding ways those of the brodudes, even, amazingly enough.

Mostly, though, what happens is, as with any other woman, you're going along your way, minding your own business, and some hairbag or frathole or other form of arrested male development decides to inform you that He Would Not Fuck You Anyway, He Does Not Like You, Spam He Am.

This happens in a variety of contexts, online or off. Occasionally it's completely out of the blue; you just happen to be unfortunate enough to occupy the same airspace (or bandwidth) as the meatsack, and, more to the point, his buddies; you are merely the means to the end of scoring a laugh/bonding moment.

Other times it (also) turns out to be, however obscurely, the meatsack's way of expressing that you have Stepped Beyond Your Place, whatever that entails. A political opinion he does not care for, say; or your not smiling when urged to do so; or laughing too loudly in public (what if it were at him!)

The implication that being adjudged "fuckable"*** by some random wet fart is something one should aspire to in the first place should be as obvious and pathetic as its rough equivalent, the small child changing from "You're pretty!" to "You're ugly! I hate you!" when one tells her firmly that it is past her bedtime (actual experience and Click Moment when I was a young woman of babysitting age).

And yet, as has been the thesis here, grown men resort to this devastating retort all the bloody time. More to the point, they feel comfortable referring to an implicit, sometimes explicit, authority in doing so. "Every straight man with a set of eyes." It's true because it's true, because it's true. Obviously the chode in question is being ridiculously self-absorbed; yes, attraction is subjective, but it's more than that. He's comfortable believing he's the center of the universe because he's -used- to that impression being reinforced. Of -course- he doesn't find you fuckable, unworthy woman; and of -course- this should be something you should worry about. What, you thought your life had nothing to do with the whims and demands of Average Entitled Dudebro? Think again. Attention, attention must be paid.

And sooner or later, the old "just ignore them, dear" bromide being as ineffectual to address the root of the problem--i.e. the misogynistic entitled assholes are being misogynistic entitled assholes, and it's their own damn choice to do so, which is unsurprising because they're only being rewarded for it, by and large--one sighs, and cracks one's knuckles, and puts down one's copy of Fun Home or whatever else was a hell of a lot more interesting than the overgrown fratholes who still run way too much of the planet, and -gives- them some attention.

One trusts the recipients of said troll food attention are suitably appreciative.


**If you're depressed enough already after reading that Gawker piece, you might as well skip the comments, a good chunk of which boil down to,

"I don't believe it, and even if it's true that's not really that big a deal anyway, not like -real- abuse, and also it's her own damn fault for taking so much horrific crap from anyone. No sympathy."

The ex ("Bunny") herself would appear to be largely in agreement with the sentiment that she has/had her own reasons for dating a knob like Tucker, and so forth. And no, the repeated labeling of other women as "whores" and so on isn't exactly endearing, that is true. That said, I find her a hell of a lot more sympathetic than him. For one thing, she's actually a much more interesting writer.

***p.s. in case you didn't get your full share of ugly: not just fuckable, but rapeable.

"Nothing interferes with a man’s ability to score like a woman who doesn’t think his ego trumps her safety."

Via guerrillamamamedicine, over at Shapely Prose hits all the points that -should- be obvious, but apparently still aren't, to any number of dudes like o f'r instance this one.

We’ve recently had a number of dudes dropping in to complain that asking them to be sensitive to women’s boundaries is essentially cock-blocking them. Sure, they say, if they don’t talk to us when we clearly don’t want them to, they’ll be making us feel less threatened in a world where one in six women is the victim of sexual assault — but on the other hand, they won’t get to talk to us, and how is that fair? Nothing interferes with a man’s ability to score like a woman who doesn’t think his ego trumps her safety. Underlying this argument, along with a host of other scuzzy notions, is the same idea Saletan spikes and the Navy wives catch: that taking a “womanly body” out in public is an a priori invitation for male attention...

Then there were the guys who were clutching their pearls (if you know what I mean) in the epic thread, horrified that women might think they were a danger. After all, it’s not their fault that women feel threatened — they’re decent, humane guys. Maybe some men are dangerous, but not them, and aren’t we really creating the problem by not letting them prove how decent they are all over us?

Those guys are right, sort of. There are lots of great men out there — you can tell who they are because when they read that thread, or Saletan’s piece, they go “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?” And it really isn’t fair that sometimes their wives also think they can’t be trusted in a sub with 138 other guys and a lady. That’s not their fault. But it’s also not their wives’ fault, or the ladies’ fault. It’s the fault of a culture that tells all of us, over and over, that men just don’t have the ability to resist. A culture that assumes it’s women’s responsibility to keep themselves armored and invisible, because sexual violence is a direct result of temptation.

In other words, the same cultural bullshit that asserts men’s right to invade women’s personal space and/or fuck 13-year-olds also perpetuates the notion that men are more dick than brain. That’s why they just have to talk to women, when they can see the women don’t want to! That’s why they get addled by a womanly body when they know it comes with a pubescent mind! They don’t have the willpower or intelligence to not act like cavemen, at least not when faced with feminine wiles.

Fuck that noise! The real decent guys sure don’t deserve that. And the pearl-clutchers, the ones who were horrified by our insistence that rape doesn’t occur in the passive voice… well, who says they deserve it either?

...But what if that’s not good enough for you? What if you’re the kind of self-styled decent guy who still doesn’t feel like it’s fundamentally worthwhile to contribute to a culture where women don’t feel threatened because they aren’t threatened? What reason do you have to forego the rape-joke T-shirts, notice body language signals, object to misogyny, back off when asked to, maintain a comfortable distance, or any of the other little things you can do to bring rape culture down by degrees?

If the well-being of women isn’t enough for you, consider this: patriarchy thinks you’re fucking stupid. It thinks you’re a penis without a brain that’s worthwhile and powerful only because women are vaginas without brains and that’s somehow worse. It thinks you’re untrustworthy, that you can’t be left alone with a woman, that you can’t be left alone with a child. Feminists didn’t make that shit up — they’re just noting it and passing it on.

Anyone who wants to lump this in with "victim feminism" or whatever the current moniker is isn't paying attention. Yes, women have agency. And responsibility. Same as any other human. But what's conveniently left out of the equation a lot of the time, or at least underemphasized, is not only that men have responsibility (also! too!), but what that responsibility consists of. It's not about being "good." It's not about not overpowering delicate wimmins with your brute masculinity or however that incredibly tedious and ubiquitous cultural fetish/trope goes.

It's about have some fucking empathy. It's about, there -is- such a thing as community, no matter what Maggie Thatcher said. And while you're trumpeting about your rights, your individual autonomy, your -free speech-, all those terrific American concepts that are the very same ones we invoke with such handy catchphrases as "my body belongs to me" (nifty little one, there, applies to a lot more than reproductive rights), you might consider that other cliche wherein "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose."

And, further:

When a whole bunch of swinging dickheads are swinging like all get out and getting into womens' space, at minimum, your responsibility is to not -unsee it-, because it makes you uncomfortable. At -minimum-, you don't go: "Well, yes, he's a jerk, but hey, freedom of expression!" even as someone's standing there clutching her nose. At minimum, you don't go, "yes, okay, there's a lot of fist-swinging going on, (although not as much as you say there is, because -I- don't experience it), but it doesn't add up to anything; it doesn't signify; one and one and one and one do not add up to four, because I will it so."

A side note about the latter phenomenon:

How often do people-the "male pearl clutchers" alluded to above, for instance- not believe that things aren't as shitty as someone else says they are, not just because they wish to perpetuate said shittiness themselves or at least passively profit off it, but because they don't -want- to believe that shittiness exists? Because, that might fuck with their entire worldview as well as their self-image?

(part two to follow)

ZOMG BABY PANDAS

("and now for something completely different")



Moar! :D

Happy National Coming Out Day, y'all.

For all that I wasn't all that sold on the National Equality March, reading the twitstream kind of makes me wish i were there. Somewhat.

"Stop being so full of ressentiment, you ugly pathological lefties of subnormal intelligence. Shouting is viceful."

I found another fuckwit, y'all. Yes! On the Internets!! Inorite? I'm too lazy for a recap, I've been busy slapfighting with her, because I am out of chocolate and booze and it seemed like the thing to do, but here, enjoy.

New group blog: Feminists With Disabilities/Forward

Belle Dame says check it out.

On the other hand, I postively love the Moon Dancers compared with the Misogynist Ratfuckers

Between this charming piece of "art" **

and the revolting ads for the motherfucking Tucker Max piece of shit all over -my- city (can't we have a ban?)

and the upcoming Roman Polanski nauseafest about to take over the media for the next ever...

among way too many others

i am not feeling the love today

**the "rape tunnel" would appear to be a hoax. to be honest I hadn't even gotten as far as someone was suggesting he was actually going to -do- it. It pisses me off enough that someone--like, o I don't know, Tucker Max? and the people putting ads like "Blind Girls Can't See You Coming" all over the goddam walls (unpeelable, I tried) not only think such things are hilarious and clever and "art" but get paid fuckloads to spray that shit all over everyone?

Enough.

Have I mentioned lately that I execrate Cultural Feminists of the FluffyBunny Wicca-y type?

Well, I do.

Sadly, I can't recount the entire story here, as it involves a listserve whose email isn't really for public consumption.

Suffice it to say that I firmly believe that if you anthropomorphize the moon to the point where this story drives you into a state of utter panic and mourning WHAT HAVE WE BECOME, sending out calls for a mass protest and vigil against the "insane" "dudes" of NASA who would DARE to harm our sister-goddess' body like this? to the point where you say you can't "bear" to do the research to confirm the details of the story?

And then, when someone snarks her dissent -very mildly- at you, you are "driven to tears?" and then -separately-, after that, after an (admittedly not very heartfelt) apology from said snarker, said snarker then posts a snark-free link to the story for public interest, and you email back that y'all already KNOW "these facts" but the snarker needs to let it go because you're "grieving" anyway?

This + this = you are driving me to increasing levels of sadism, Fluffy Dianic Too Sensitive To Live Person.

and I mean. a -graduate- student. wtf critical thinking skills...? oh, right, those are from the Patriarchy, never mind.

nyargh.

EDIT In fact, I feel compelled to burst into Song. and so I shall.

L¹Shanah Tovah Tikatevu, by the way

As my Irish lapsed Catholic best friend just reminded me. Me, I was all like: Huh? Oh, um, yeah. You, too.

"bad Jew, no matzoh"

Seriously, the closest thing I know from Jewish tradition is the ancient ritual of Chinese Food And A Movie at Christmas. I mean I did use some of the holidays to stay out of school when I was a kid, but I would've used Arbor Day if I could've gotten away with it. We certainly didn't go to synagogue or anything like that-well, for a year or so when it seemed like a good structured way to get me out of the house, we did, as a social thing. No one in my family's been observant on either side as far back as I've known anyone (i.e. grandparents and one great-grandparent).

Which, in itself, is actually sort of a tradition among the Ashkenazim, I suppose.

Truthfully I find the God of the Old Testament hard to connect to; canon-speaking, I prefer that Jesus dude (less crazy about the books/dudes who came after him). It's just, culturally, well, I've tried to go to church, even the most progressive ones, and there's...something...about the culture of it that just doesn't land. Like, at all. MCC, Unitarians-admire the idea, like the sermons, still not feelin' it.

Whereas I can go to synagogue and generally feel more connected with the general vibe/people, especially after the service, but the service itself tends to leave me cold.

and neo-paganism, I have determined, is probably not for me either.

I guess I'm sort of an agnostic mystic at this point. I like the idea of having a regular practice of some sort, not to mention a community, but, well. We'll see.

Indeed.

(h/t Ilyka)

"YOU'RE NOT LISTENNNNNNINNNNNNNNG!!!! I DON'T WANT IT NOW!"

It's the PRINCIPLE of the thing, and DON'T YOU FORGET IT, BUB.

WE'RE NUMBER 37!!

Watching this about six times a day

Its simple profundity of obseration and commentary makes me weep.

and lest we forget:

The Internets IS Srs Bzns. As is Life, the Universe, and Everything. And where better to go for a healthy reminder of this Truth than the fanwank community. Maud bless us, every one.

p.s. my ponies hate you, too.

"I'M NOT YOUR FRIEND, BUDDY!!"

"But Doc, it feels so good when I stop."

Flying while transgendered: no match, no flight.

And this, friends and neighbors, is a terrific example of how -systemic- transphobia works. Via Helen of Bird of Paradox:

The fixation that every citizen is a potential terrorist has gained so much ground in recent years that any concerns about implications for international travellers whose documentation might not match their gender presentation have been swept aside.

Now, via The Wall Street Journal Online (link here) I see that the paranoia about “suspected terrorists” has been extended to domestic air travel too:

Airlines this week will begin requiring some people making reservations for domestic flights to submit their dates of birth and genders as part of a screening process aimed at keeping boarding passes out of the hands of suspected terrorists, the Transportation Security Administration said.

[...]

The government’s goal is to vet all passengers on domestic commercial flights by early next year.

Of concern is that the TSA appears to be relying on the judgement of commercial airlines to make these decisions; and these decisions can also be applied to people who aren’t actually flying, but just accompanying a passenger to the boarding gate:

The TSA said it would be up to individual airlines or travel agents to decide how to collect the required information at the time a reservation is made.

[...]

People who receive gate passes, which allow them to proceed into secure areas of airports without boarding passes so they can assist other passengers, also could be required to furnish the additional data.

In other words, if the airline staff don’t like the look of you – or the friend who’s come to wave you off – you may well find that you miss your flight simply because you wore that comfy dress, even though the gender marker in your official documentation dictates that you should have been wearing a collar and tie. It’s absolute nonsense, of course – and trans-misogynistic nonsense, to boot.

...[M]y y point is that being required to provide information about one’s date of birth and gender seems unlikely to deter a committed attacker from hir objective.

It’s hard to see how this measure would have prevented, for instance, the attackers on 9/11 from boarding their planes – and, once again, the people most likely to be adversely affected are trans and gender variant people...

No-match has other implications too, of course, for being hired and fired, for medical care, for being arrested, for any number of situations where "your papers, please:" unless there are specific legal protections for trans folk in place (which there aren't in most states and cities, and even then, what's on the books is not exactly stringently enforced when it comes to civil rights, particularly if you're talking about already-very disenfranchised people), for not presenting or identifying according to your legally identified sex. And if there's a situation where you need to disrobe and your body either doesn't match what the "M" or the "F' on your paper is supposed to represent, or doesn't fully resemble what "M" or "F" is supposed to look like regardless of paperwork, well...you're not supposed to exist, and can be treated accordingly with no recourse.

See, the papers represent more than national citizenship, date of birth, basic stats: it's a way of declaring -personhood-. Which boundaries hold you? What nation, what sex? Are you a citizen of Manland or Womanland? Are you where we think you belong? Are you God forbid attempting to straddle a line that's supposed to be a wall? Are you "real?" Prove to us that you deserve to get on this airplane, work in this job, get that emergency medical care, step on this land, breathe this air. That box you need to check tells us whether you're human or not. Your papers, please.

This is of course not unrelated to the paranoia over "illegal" immigrants, or even American citizens suspected of being such: no papers? Too foreign? Too brown? Wrong time, wrong place? You, too, are a non-citizen, guilty until proven innocent. You're in the wrong box, and we don't have space. You fall in the crevice between the box outlines. Too bad, so sad; just trying to keep the rest of us safe from our formless, nameless terror; we need names, we need faces, and if yours doesn't match any of the acceptable ones, why, we'll stamp it with our fears and lock you away, overtly or covertly. Denied, delayed, detained, deported. De-legitimized. Your papers, please.

This under-the-radar scapegoating is not anything like "hope and change." This is not keeping anyone safe. This is, in fact, killing people. This is wrong, and it needs to stop.

Not with FDR's bright red atomic strapon, Squealer.

Limbaugh is having sadly Freudian fantasies about what he (fondly, secretly) imagines Obama and/or other Democrats would like to do to him.

And I say again: Not with Rosie the Riveter's brass-knuckled fist wrapped in ten tons of latex and rolled in a kegger of anti-fascist Icy-Hot flavored Crisco. Not if you -begged- on bended trotters. Not for every penny you've made from your noisome effusions lo these past 800 years or so you've been fouling up the zeitgeist. I may be a pervert, I may be a sadist, but goddam, there are STANDARDS.

and now, i must rinse. ick ack ugh.