Apologies, my pretties, for my slacking! I’ve been… well… I don’t have an excuse. I just haven’t been blogging. I know you’ve all been waiting around with your breath held and fingers crossed and on your tippie toes waiting for me! Please do breathe a sigh of relief and rock back on those heels, because my creative juices are once again pumping through my veins and I’ve got plenty to say and to show you. I’m hoping to create more art in the next few months and share what I can with you… I hope you’ll like it! Right now, I want to bring you some news that you’ve probably already heard. But if you haven’t, buckle up: this is a crazy news day for people who give a shit.
1) Rick Santorum is out of the presidential race. I am half ecstatic about this because Rick Santorum is one of the most baldly hateful conservatives I know of. He has no idea that anyone else in the world, except for himself and people who look and think like him (read: bigots and narrow-minded pricks) are real human beings with feelings, rights, desires, or dreams. He thinks women shouldn’t have the same rights as men do over their reproductive lives, he thinks that people who aren’t as far over toward “straight” as it’s possible to get on the spectrum are aberrations, and he has no respect for minorities, other cultures, or the environment. He’s a fucking pariah, and I for one am happy to know he won’t be making any bid, no matter how farcical, for the leadership of my nation this fall.
However. The man STILL WON DELEGATES. It is absolutely baffling to me… mind-boggling, cuckoo, reset-butt0n alarming… that this man could win the vote of anything but a troglodyte in the deepest cave in some mountain in West Virginia where Human Compassion has never entered. It upsets me deeply that a man who said, publicly, that gay marriage “threatens my marriage. It threatens all marriages. It threatens the traditional values of this country,” and that there is scientific data backing up porn’s harmful effects on the brain (there’s not) could get that far. It is unconscionable. But at least he’s out.
Which leaves us with Mitt Romney, who, as governor, did some things I totally approve of. But the man… well he has no soul. Santorum has one. It’s a shriveled little shadow of what a soul could be, but at least it’s in there. And the thing about Santorum is, if he had somehow been nominated by the GOP… NO WAY could he ever POSSIBLY win. Romney… now… I don’t know about that. And that guy scares me. He’ll do ANYTHING to make people like him. *shiver* Santorum may think that he knows How Things Are Supposed to Be (boring, regressive, exploitative, and ignorant), but at least he sticks to it. Ick. This whole thing gives me the creeps.
2) Similarly conflicting: The Miss Universe pageant has agreed to allow transgender contestants to compete, starting next year! Jenna Talackova, who was initially disqualified because she was trans, will be allowed to compete! ROCK out with yo’ bad self! This is HUGE LEAP FORWARD for the visibility of transgendered people! Millions of people around the world will be able to see gorgeous trans women in all their glory, under bright lights, in an environment that isn’t set up specifically to mock or ostracize! This is massive! Woop woop!
However.
It’s the Miss Universe Pageant. You know, a beauty contest. Where women are lined up and compared based on an arbitrary bar, set incredibly high, that tells them what “beauty” is, and that it’s mostly what you look like. Sure, they get asked questions about their platforms, and Miss Universe winners have gone on to do great things as more than just their gams and grins and other feminine wiles. But this isn’t exactly a bastion of equality of the sexes to begin with. It’s a victory, of course, and I support women’s rights and wills (whether cis or trans) to express themselves physically in whatever way they feel best suits them, even if those ways don’t fit into my version of feminism. And it’s not as if the Miss Universe pageant holds huge sway over the values systems of many Americans these days–it’s a relic of an older system of… well… patriarchal bullshit that doesn’t hold much in the way of a punch these days. It’s more… I don’t know… fun now than it used to be when more importance was placed upon it by society.
But still. It’s a bunch of women strutting around in ridiculous outfits trying to win the attention and approval of the public by being pretty. And that’s… you know… it’s troubling. But then, I guess that brings up a larger issue of how women, especially trans women, present. And that’s huge. That’s… I don’t have time for that.
So yeah. YAY! And… hm.
3) No conflict here: ASHLEY JUDD IS MY NEW HERO. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just click this link and bask in her awesome. You will be so, so glad that you did.