"Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced." -- President Barack Obama, 15 June, 2010. Whose interests are served by this view?

[image is from here]

This post was revised in tone and some content on 19 June 2010 ECD. Thanks to a friend for the critique of the original version! (The criticism was that naming President Obama "a liar" participates in a racist/white conservative Republican narrative about the President.)

Last night U.S. President Obama proclaimed the following, opening his address to the U.S. Empire:

"Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.  And unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it’s not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days.  The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years."

President Obama is presenting the version of history that accomplishes a white male supremacist conceit. The U.S. status quo depends and thrives on the denial of what this country does to people of color and land and water every day. Including to him and his family.

And I've written more about why I call this view of reality "bullshit" in a recent post, here. Invisibilising GENOCIDE and ECOCIDE against Indigenous people globally, on this blood-soaked and chemically poisoned soil--what soil is left, that is--is nothing new, didn't begin with President Obama and won't end with him. What anyone in high office in this country will do, out of political necessity, is proclaim contemporary problems as the worst ever, because it is imperative that we forget our past and deny most of our present. President Obama's proclamation isn't his, at its core. It is bound to and by the anti-historical view that this country stands on--one that has never served people of color or the land upon which they live. The sad truth is that a U.S. president cannot do anything but support the government designed to perpetuate and perpetrate the genocide against the descendants of West African slaves, and genocide and ecocide against American Indians.

From supporting chemical agribusiness, to grim factory farming, to gross and corrupt corporate waste, to advocating putting nuclear waste into the earth where American Indians live and struggle for economic, social, and environmental justice, there is a years-long environmental disaster that precedes by many decades and is centuries longer than what BP has done in the last two months. BP's actions were made entirely possible, and inevitable, because of the U.S. government not tracking their actions and not caring about the sea, the land, or the people who earn their living from each, by "relaxing" regulations of oil corporations, so that those companies can make more money for their CEOs and shareholders. How fucking corrupt and inhumane is all that? ALL of it, not just what has happened in the last two months.

This is a country which has, as Andrea Dworkin has written, "no memory and no mind". Nowhere is this more evident than in President Obama's opening remarks to the citizens of this greedy, bullying, rapist, delusional, sociopathic country that has never had an ethical center or moral soul since Columbus and other serial rapists and serial murderers set their deadly feet on this land.

The U.S government and its spokespeople have to pretend genocide and ecocide aren't standard practice for the U.S. government, including by planting our bombs and poisons in the lands where people of color live, virtually non-stop. This statement is backed up with plenty of evidence, below.


To the U.S. government: please stop ignoring the genocide you are is committing, barbarically, savagely, and callously, against the people and land of the First Nations of Turtle Island.

When you think "Terrorists" think White Christian Het Male Supremacists, and all those who ardently wave the U.S. flag to support and defend their crimes against humanity, non-human animals, and the Earth. President Obama won't oppose their agenda, primarily because he's not truly empowered by office to do so.

Accounts of off-shore terrorism in the form of racist and rapist military attacks that includes environmental destruction by the U.S. government, is detailed here.

Accounts of on-shore terrorism in the form of genocidally racist and rapist military attacks that includes environmental destruction is detailed here and here.

On Social Transformation, Religion, Sex, and the Unradical Values of Contemporary White Queerness

[image is from here]

Above is a graphic that states precisely my experience of most of what is 

being called "radical" action in white queer and non-queer circles. 

All that follows is a challenge to the
radicalism that appears to me to be 

"for display purposes only".

A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL
by Audre Lorde

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive
- The Black Unicorn

I address what follows primarily and directly to my white class-privileged gay brothers who seem most confused about all of this, or, rather, most willfully ignorant and self-servingly oblivious. And I know we've got one foot and a few toes of the other foot in the door to total dominance, privilege, and entitlement. Why, if we could only get married... bingo! Yeah, well, most female human beings--heterosexual or not--would not get and stay married without it being socially compulsory, legally enforced, and misogynistically oppressive and subordinating. (If marriage were not so oppressive to women, patriarchal societies wouldn't promote it so much.) Please consider that when you promote an agenda that bolsters an institution that is, still, currently, deeply classist and racist, especially for poor and immigrant women, and very dangerous for many other women and girls.

The white liberal, libertarian, humanist, and Leftist gay, bi, and straight men have been passionately fond of promoting the idea that any sexual expression is good, as long as it is for white men and leads white men to orgasm. If others are pleased, fine. If not, fine. Many of these philosophies are practiced by human beings who promote certain values which they state are socially "good", such as "respect", "liberty", "justice",  "democracy" and "free speech".

A point which I plan to make many times over the next months is that these philosophies cannot bring us to that promised land. Speech is never free, first of all. And justice, respect, liberty, and what is "good" are all bound by the definitions, decisions, and enforcement strategies of the most privileged members of society, never the least privileged. The least privileged aren't at the table, aren't in leadership, and aren't heard from or listened to except tokenistically and condescendingly. The definition of liberal humanism, and I think it applies as well to white libertarianism, and white male supremacist Leftist movements, is "they make promises they have no intention of keeping". This isn't only due to lack of will or sustainable passion. It is because they point to an imagined utopia, or, at least, something better than what we now have, without also providing a map, a route, a means of movement from point A (hell) to point B (heaven). Or they hack away at what exists now with no understanding of who will bleed to death from that cutting away.

A Westernised, blanched Buddhist humanist might argue that point B lies inside point A--the journey is not exactly a progressive journey; it is not at all linear in time or space. Maybe it is a seed waiting to be born that has already been born and is blossoming. Maybe it is a layer, a dimension, of reality hidden from us by the illusions, delusions, and distractions of the industrial material world--if only we'd wake up and remember: there it is, waiting to embrace us, to become us, to transform us; we are already transformed we just don't know it.

The white Conservative Christian view is far more pessimistic and bleak. It requires our physical death before heaven can be known. This philosophy--oh, sorry, I mean "The One and Only Truth"--dovetails nicely--or is it evilly?--with capitalism, which will destroy everything, leading us all somewhere, not into Life as we know it. While it may be true that if we all were to die we all would not suffer in ways we now do, it is a callous, heartless, and utterly soulless religion indeed that tells us to wait, wait, wait, for your suffering to end, rather than providing us a means of lessening it here and now while alive. The white-shirted missionaries who visit my door want to tell me their rather obnoxious, racist, anti-Semitic, and otherwise bogus version of Jesus is the answer to that suffering, but with few exceptions, no Christians I know suffer less than anyone else, unless they are privileged in various ways, by race, class, gender, and sexuality, for example. They may pray more, and in prayer there may be some spiritual power. But for white young men in white shirts to go door to door preaching His Word, means they don't experientially know the hellish forms of oppression most of humanity endures because they preach the way they do. They don't quite get that they are the materially, not spiritually rich, and what they are selling isn't spiritual liberation but cultural and physical genocide. Again, the Christians don't really care: because it's all about what happens AFTER you die.

Most of humanity, as Lorde notes, "were never meant to survive". And the Christian white male sky-god that white pro-corporate clones seem endlessly interested in telling me about has no plans of making this reality be different on Earth any time soon. Only partly because He doesn't exist and He can't do anything about it. Also, to the extent a non-theistic or polytheistic G-d does exist, it clearly doesn't intervene and make capitalism humane, racism disappear, and male supremacy evaporate. Surely such a G-d has had time to try out more solutions to the problems that plague us than Billionaire Prick Tony Hayward has tried to get that damn oil to stop leaking into the sea, washing up onto the land, poisoning everything it touches. The god that is talked about so much to me by those "good-hearted" Christians, might want to look around and come to this conclusion: maybe your god is into BDSM, and derives pleasure from human bondage and pain. That's a conclusion that is difficult not to arrive at if you're paying attention to who is suffering, and why, and where.

I live in multiple worlds simultaneously, in part because I work primarily with people who don't live anywhere near me. And I live in a U.S. society thoroughly dominated by a particularly virulent form  heterosexism that is fused or conjoined to capitalism, white supremacy, and male supremacy in utterly despicable and dehumanising ways. No facet or sector of public and private life is untouched, unscathed, and I experience a white queer community here in this country that promotes itself as radical, never really defining what "radical" means, NEVER being at all accountable to those whose lives, whose living, in and of itself, is a radically amazing accomplishment because death was the only promise made to them upon their entry into this world.

White class-privileged Radical Queers are "in" right now, in a way that radical lesbian feminists and militant anti-racists are not. Transgression is all the rage. Rage against systemic white male supremacy is not. And radical transformation of society isn't even discussed any more, except by a few individuals here and there. Has anyone ever taken a moment to note how, exactly, "radical" transgression leads to radical transformation?

Radical feminism, and especially radical lesbian feminism, is misportrayed, rather racistly, as being anti-sex. Tell me: in which work of Alice Walker, Gloria Anzaldúa, Chrystos, Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, June Jordan, or Cheryl Clarke do you find anything "anti-sex"? To reduce radical feminism to what you grossly and persistently misunderstand a few white women to be saying, is to denigrate and invisibilise MOST radical feminist writings and theories, values and practices. To my white queer siblings: please get that. It's what lesbians of color have been telling us for the last forty years, and there's no excuse for not having heard it and taken it to heart, and made it a central part of our self-concept and political-spiritual-sexual practice.

I know it's not cool these days to listen to "lesbians", unless they are "queer-identified", that is. (How convenient for the racist heteropatriarchal status quo.)

I will tell you what I see in this allegedly "radical" queer community: a whole lot of white privilege, class privilege, heterosexism, and ageism. The ageism is so thick that should an elder in our community speak out against the values and practices of contemporary dominant "radical" queer community, she will be told she is being ageist, in order to silence her and shut her up and make her go back inside out of sight, and out of earshot. "Into the closet with you" is effectively what older radical lesbian feminist women are being told by young queer people. White gay men won't even give older lesbians the time of day. And younger lesbians won't get much from us either, in the way of support, work, validation, and accountability.

I know radical lesbian feminist women who have attempted--not perfectly, to speak to young people who listen--not perfectly. And the message is always the same from the younger people: we will figure this out for ourselves. This response, in and of itself, is a particularly white, Western, and class-privileged stance in relation to our elders. We think we've got all the answers. Or, at least, that any of those old answers (as if twenty-five or thirty years is a long time!) can't possibly be of use to us because we're a new generation of "radicals", who want to reclaim as much racism, misogyny, classism, and heterosexism, and ageism, as we can, and put a patina on it and call it our golden queer calf.

White queer women and men tell me often how it's okay for us to say racist things and do racist things and find racist jokes hilarious, because, after all, we're not from the dominant class: we're queer. Well, if we're white, that means we ARE from the dominant class with regard to race. And how it is that a white person can ever think we are not white, positioned always to be a white supremacist, even if poor, even if queer, even if trans, even if a woman, is a source of great rage and despair for many people, myself included.

Another utterly non-radical dimension of privileged "radical queer" life is the ways in which white folks who are into BDSM and pornography and prostitution, who are also very education- and class-privileged people, get to tout these practices, industries, and systems as "liberatory" or, even, "feminist".

Let me ask you: how do you know how people without Western, "First" World, white, male, education, and class privileges experience being a slave? Do you want to sit down with a slave and discuss with her how words have different meanings, and how traces of meaning from one experience don't necessarily carry over to another? Do you plan to discuss with enslaved women how they just don't "get it" about pain being pleasure in ways that can enrich spiritual awareness? How do you know how boys, girls, and women in the Second, Third World, and Fourth Worlds experience being pimped, procured, and trafficked, while you promote the virtues of earning good money by selling your body to gay, bi, or het men for the behaviors that are sex to men who buy sex? (Is sex that is bought the same as the sex that is shared between economic equals?) How do you know, and what are you doing to find out? By what means do you set up systems of accountability to the least privileged people who also have to reckon with things like prostitution and masters and slaves? That's what I want to know. Because if you believe promoting pornography, prostitution, and bdsm as socially good, is unproblematically beneficial, healthy, fun, and "radical", then you've no clue at all what being radical means, except in your very, very privileged misuse of the term.

What most people who are slaves experience in a master/slave "relationship" is not pleasure or joy, or freedom, or liberation. Slaves aren't transgressing, after all. 1.3 million children in India alone are preyed upon often by Western white men, and are made to be slaves to white men's wills and wants. The white men sometimes take unlawful and anti-humanitarian ownership of Fourth, Third, Second World children and women from those regions and make them sexual slaves. (Also from the misnamed First World.) Does your use of the term "slave"--for fun--have any effect on them? If you think the answer is no, I'd remind you that all things are bound up with one another: that is one radical viewpoint, anyway. And if you think things all exist separately from one another, discretely and carefully not impacting anything else, then in my view you have no business calling yourself "a radical". If you think the systems and institutions of the rich don't oppress the poor, you're wrong. They EXIST to oppress to poor so that some, the few, the mostly white, CAN BE RICH. The rich can't exist unless the majority are significantly less rich--usually meaning poor.

What is it about raced and gendered systems of hierarchical oppression that make you think it works any differently? In any social hierarchy, the privileged oppressors benefit substantively and materially at the expense of the oppressed. The privileged get entitlements and rewards and the oppressed pay for it, dearly. Do you think white men's values and practices don't impact women of color? Do you think the heterosexism, transphobia, lesbophobia, and homophobia of sexual-social dominants doesn't impact queer people? Do you think misogyny can flourish in some areas and not impact women and girls everywhere?

I know what many privileged queer folks will say. You'll tell me "What we're doing isn't the same as what the oppressors are doing, because we're "queering it up". Yes, well. About that. Drag is still racist, misogynistic, classist, and heterosexist, and that's what makes it entertaining to the bigots who enjoy it so much. Those forms of oppression are also embedded in BDSM and even if your orgasm depends on it, other people's lives are lost so you can have that orgasm. This is a "radical" collectivist view that holds "unless we are all free, none of us is free". This view holds that the actions of the most structurally powerful reverberate negatively in the lives of the least structurally powerful. This view says that everything impacts everything else, and the more privilege anyone has, the more impact their actions have and the more power their professed values carry.

The same with pornography. "Queer porn" is no different, at all, than heterosexual porn, and the proof of that is in what is produced for profit--and the fact that the people who profit most from it are--no surprise--white heterosexual men (corporate pimps to be exact). Saying that it was made by women--when the consumers are still mostly het men, or that only gay men profit from it, doesn't make it non-heterosexist and devoid of misogyny and racism. Sorry to be such a downer. And let's not forget, sex can exist without a marketplace, right? Orgasms can happen due to touch--quality and intensity of feeling and being and sharing. Sexual pleasure isn't dependent on the use of bigoted terms being called out that trigger many of us into past traumas--who may be next door or downstairs from you. And what sex is doesn't have to be "a product" that is produced and sold by a pimp-driven system so virulently hateful and degrading that the more we purchase it, the more we are all collectively degraded. Exploiting and commanding another person into submission  aren't prerequisites for sex to be sexy--or are they? Note: I didn't say you're "bad" for doing any of the above. And I didn't say "you don't have a right" to do any of the above. I also didn't say you ought to refrain from sex if it is bound up with capitalist, racist heteropatriarchy. (How can our sexuality, our beings, not be?) What I'm saying is this: please don't pretend that pro-status quo behaviors and values as "radical" when they are utterly socially and politically conservative: conserving and preserving the master's tools, which are being used against people who are slaves--not the fun kind. Don't call feminists "politically correct" if they are opposed to sexism and racism being promoted as liberatory sex, when bdsm, pornography, and prostitution are entirely pimp-supported. The promoters of these practices, along with so many others, are the ones behaving in a patriarchally politically correct manner. And feminist values aren't ruling anywhere (yet), even while too many whiny men pretend feminism has already "gone too far". Patriarchal practices are still ruling this world and I wonder why you don't feel those practices, and the men who profit from and support them, have "gone too far". Let's be honest, at least:  if you're into domination, exploitation, and degradation as "sex", it is you, in fact, who are being "politically correct".

And with regard to prostitution: if you think there's a neat and convenient dividing line between systems and practices that are dehumanising, degrading, and destructive such that your own grand, pleasurable, and profitable versions of prostitution are somehow distinct and uninvolved with the other not-so-glamorous everyday pimping, sexual trafficking, procuring, buying and selling human beings, and sexual slavery, I'll suggest to you that you're either not living in the parts of the world that cannot afford to make those distinctions, or you're the pimps and procurers there. In most of the world, those distinctions aren't experientially and politically meaningful--except delusionally to the abusers. If you're going to promote "the right to be a sex worker" or advocate the legalisation of prostitution, please identify the ways people without your privileges benefit from you doing so. Exactly how does your defence of systems of atrocious harm and inhumanity make life better for those without the privileges and entitlements you enjoy?

In conclusion, for now, please define your terms and spell out how radicalism works, in practice in responsible alliance with the world's most unprivileged people toward a materially-spiritually radical experience of justice and liberation. If you can't do so, please demonstrate the integrity to stop using the term so flagrantly and inaccurately.

Radical Feminist Nawal El Saadawi on Creativity and Dissidence, and Adora Svitak on Learning, Creativity, and Listening to Children

We better be listening to those among us who are the youth and our elders, or we're doomed:

There are themes in lectures and one of them is how dominant systems of learning and values about who is most intelligent, rule out listening to the people we most need to support speaking out. Because the story of the White Man is a very limited, dishonest, and self-serving story, and while some white men have radical things to say, it won't be white men who lead us out of the hell on earth that has been manufactured through processes of unsustainable destruction and poisoning of our bodies, the land, the sky, and the sea.

If the BP oil spill crisis doesn't demonstrate how ill-equipped the White Man is to do anything good for the environment, I don't know what other evidence we need. The White Man cares about plunder and pillage, rape and theft; this is what the White Man does best and most often. It's time for him to be made to sit down and make room for others to lead.

To quote Audre Lorde's famous speech, the Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house: he will make every miserable use of his tools (including especially his weapons of mass destruction) to defend what he believes is his land, his property, his, his, his. And what is his has conveniently been defined and bounded only by the White Man's laws. No other worldviews and ethical standards support the way he sees himself and what he does that he calls "good" and "moral".

The White Man will defend his own distorted sense of his self-importance and allegedly necessary controlling presence in all earthly matters, at all costs to humanity, non-human animals, and the rest of Life. The White Man brings death and disease, destruction and degradation to all he touches. Why, then, don't we support women of color taking leadership?

First, this brief lecture by twelve year old writer/author, Adora Svitak:


Next, Nawal El Saadawi on creativity and dissidence:


Thoughts? Feedback?

"By Virtue, Not By Force"? The Boys that Prey Together Will Be Rapists, not anything close to Virtuous

[image of Landon School's crest is from here]

"Virtute et non vi" = "By virtue, not by force"

Landon School for rich boys states the following:

Landon School, an independent, non-sectarian boys' day school, prepares talented boys for productive lives as accomplished, responsible and caring men whose actions are guided by the principles of perseverance, teamwork, honor and fair play.

Unless men intervene in younger males' lives, boys will become rapists, harassers, batterers, pimps, and procurers of girls and women and see all of this as normal and natural. And they will do it while they are boys. This blog post contains graphic stories of misogynist behavior.

Consider this paragraph from another blog, Gender Across Borders, in a post titled “Boys Will Be Boys”: The Connection Between a Sex League Scandal and a Domestic Violence Murder.

What follows, blockquoted, is by Erin Rickard.

Last month I wrote about a domestic violence murder that became national news in the U.S., the death of University of Virginia student Yeardley Love at the hands of her former boyfriend and fellow student George Huguely. Now the private preparatory school Huguely attended, Landon School, is in the news because of an incident that happened there last summer. Maureen Dowd broke the story nationally in a New York Times op-ed on June 8. A group of students created what’s been dubbed a “sex league” game, wherein they divided unknowing girls from neighboring schools into teams named “The Southside Slampigs” and the “Crackwhores,” evaluated the girls’ measurements and attractiveness, and planned a series of parties where they would earn points through sexual encounters with the girls. According to the Washington Post, the “game” was shut down before the first party was held when a parent discovered the boys’ roster and descriptions of the girls posted online. Three freshman boys received in-school suspensions as punishment.

This next paragraphs are from Maureen Dowd's New York Times piece titled "Their Dangerous Swagger":

Landon is where the sons of many prominent members of the community are sent to learn “the code of character,” where “a Landon man” is part of a “true Brotherhood” and is known for his good word, respect and honesty. The school’s Web site boasts about the Landon Civility Code; boys are expected to “work together to eliminate all forms of disrespect” and “respect one another and our surroundings in our decorum, appearance, and interactions.”

The Washington suburban community of private school parents has also been reeling this spring from the tragedy involving former Landon student George Huguely V, a scion of the family that owned the lumber business that helped build the nation’s capital.

Huguely, who was a University of Virginia lacrosse player, was charged in the brutal death of his sometime girlfriend, Yeardley Love, a lacrosse player on the university’s women’s team who also hailed from Maryland.

The lovely young woman’s door was kicked in and her head was smashed over and over into the wall.

The awful crime, chronicled on the cover of People with the headline “Could She Have Been Saved?,” raised haunting questions about why Huguely had not already been reported to authorities, even though other lacrosse players had seen him choke Love at a party and his circle knew that the athlete had attacked a sleeping teammate whom he suspected had kissed Love. Huguely had also been so out-of-control drunk, angry and racially abusive with a policewoman in 2008 that she had to Taser him.

In The Washington Post, the sports columnist Sally Jenkins wrote about the swagger of young male athletes and the culture of silence that protects their thuggish locker-room behavior.

“His teammates and friends, the ones who watched him smash up windows and bottles and heard him rant about Love,” she wrote. “Why didn’t they turn him in? ... Why did they not treat Yeardley Love as their teammate, too?”

Some of the parents of girls drafted for the Landon sex teams think that the punishment for those culpable should have been greater, and the notification to parents should have been more thorough. Was the macho culture of silence in play?

This demonstrates institutional support for white boys' sexual and racist violence against girls and women. Class, race, gender, and sexuality all have a head-on collision in this story, but don't worry: none of the white boys were hurt. An elite educational institution which trains boys to be exceptional, gets mighty permissive when boys want to rape girls and be racist toward women of color who are police officers. What do you imagine would happen to a poor Brown boy or Black girl who expressed race- and gender-specific vitriol and violence towards a white male cop? I imagine the courts would argue the police officer was right to use deadly force. Call me jaded, or just aware of how this country's criminal justice system and educational institutions work to protect rich white boys and men. This is what rich white het men, and their lawyers and institutions value: full access to girls and women in order to insult, degrade, violate, and assault them, and boys respecting other boys.

The White Brotherhood is alive and well, and when it is heterosexual it gets especially virulently misogynistic and dangerous for females of all ages.

Ms. Dowd concludes:

Time for a curriculum overhaul. Young men everywhere must be taught, beyond platitudes, that young women are not prey.

Indeed. Now, how will they accomplish making that lesson socially visible such that area girls are safe and women police officers of color know they won't be mistreated by some rich little white boy?

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how "objective" online media report things like this. What follows next is from Wikipedia, which is known for its pro-misogynist bias in many cases on many pages.

On June 8, 2010, the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd published a column drawing attention to last years soon-to-be freshman boys at Landon. The boys allegedly planned a fantasy football-like "draft" in which female students at other local schools were chosen for each "team," and "points" were to be scored on the basis of sexual encounters with those students. Noting that George Huguely V, a University of Virginia student recently charged in the brutal murder of his girlfriend Yeardley Love, was a Landon alumnus, Dowd criticized the school's honor code for what she saw as hypocrisy. Jean Erstling, the director of communications at Landon, was quoted in the column as responding that “Landon has an extensive ethics and character education program which includes as its key tenets respect and honesty. Civility toward women is definitely part of that education program.”

What we can note is the way Wikipedia prefers to report this is as a view existing primarily in Maureen Dowd's mind, as opposed to primarily in reality. What the wealthy boys planned to didn't happen primarily in Ms. Dowd's mind. She saw hypocrisy with the school's honor code. Is the school administration hypocritical? Yes. Did Maureen Dowd note and report this? Yes. Does Wikipedia prefer to make this seem like her point of view might not reflect truth? Yes.

And Jean Erstling is doing what preparatory grade schools and "good colleges'" administrators in the U.S. are notorious for doing: making their schools seem honorable, when rapist values and practices abound.

Shame on Landon School's administrators.

When they implement a mandatory program of teaching boys about endemic male supremacist violence against girls and women, including a feminist analysis of the impact of massive online pornography consumption on boys' views of girls and what girls exist to do, I'll be impressed. And the critique, analysis, and conveyance of non-sexist values and practices ought to be delivered by older boys and traditional college-aged males, who these boys will look up to, not reject as "out of touch adults". Until then, they deserve our collective scrutiny and outrage.

What Are The Most Significant Issues Facing Us, You, Our People, Your People, and Your Environment?

 [the image above is from here]

The terms "you and your people" and "your environment" are meant to be interpreted however you wish. Sometimes I think of "my people" as "non-heterosexuals", as "white gay males", as "economically privileged", as "queer (outsider) queers", as asexuals and celibates; sometimes as White Jews, as Jews of all colors, as people of European descent, as Westerners, as "English-as-a-First-and-Only-Language speakers"; as "disabled people", as "survivors of sexual abuse"; sometimes as "radical activists", "pro-Indigenists", "white anti-racists", sometimes as "pro-radical feminists", as "radical profeminists". (Needless to say, in some cases, "my people" could fit in a walk-in closet!)

I personally don't identify myself in terms of my astrological sign, my age, my musical tastes, or my eating habits. With regard to age, I don't identify with it probably because I'm not an infant, a child, a teenager, nor am I elderly--I don't experience or suffer much in the way of ageism, in other words.

I might think of my environment as "Earth", the region of the world I live in, the particular ecosystem (however destroyed) I am part of; or more culturally and socially, such as "a predominantly white and middle class section of town", or "an environment where consumerism and liberal humanism are valued above almost everything else". Or I might think about my environment in terms of what the greatest pollutants and toxins are in this area.

I leave it to you to define and discern the people with whom you most identity, or with whom you are most readily (if inaccurately) socially most identified.

Today I am thinking about the fact that I live in a country built and standing on what its appointed privileged spokespeople deny: the atrocities it commits, will commit, and has committed here and globally. The media and government denies this country is white supremacist; the media and government will not even use the term "male supremacist" or "male supremacy" or "male privileges and entitlements". What does THAT tell you?  This country's mass media and government don't identify "heterosexism" as a significant social problem; nor, for that matter, do white het Leftist men, such as those who contribute to Tim Wise's discussions on Facebook. Misogyny is turned into an interpersonal matter, not an institutional one. Racist-misogyny is not understood at all in dominant media or by governments whose policies and practices target women of color specifically in atrocious ways.

I live in a country that educates people from everywhere, but is the most ignorant about itself and only teaches some things, neglecting very important areas of knowledge, experience, and information.

And part of this lack of education, this growing up in the U.S. as a white class-privileged person, means I can, if I so wish, be completely out of touch with what most of the world's people, aka "humanity" is experiencing, struggling with, creating, and celebrating.

I recently filled out a survey by WEAVE, and they wanted to know what issues the person taking the survey felt were most pressing and important to focus on, given that they can't do everything.

I'm curious to know what you feel the most important and pressing issues are in your own life. I'll give a list, and rank or list them according to what is most important at the top of your list. Note: more than one item on the list can be at the top: there can be co-firsts, co-seconds, or clustered/interlocking concerns listed as first, second, or third, etc. Ranking can be ignored altogether, replaced with a simple or not simple statement of what's most pressing in your life.

And please feel free to add issues and topics that aren't on this list:

Poverty and economic justice, employment opportunities, living wage issues
Corporations and the politics and values of corporate-ruled societies
Consumerism and alternative economies; barter economies
Classism, the rule of the wealthy, discrimination against poor and working class people
Asian American struggles for liberation
Mexican Immigrants' Rights in the U.S.
Chicana struggles for liberation
Latina struggles for liberation
Liberation Theology
Thealogy and Goddess Worship
Marxism, Socialism, Communism, and efforts to disrupt and radically transform capitalist systems
Male supremacy/patriarchal atrocities/misogyny
Women's empowerment, creativity, herstory, and cultures
Herstory vs. His-story
Mens Rights and Men's Wrongs
Father's Rights and Father's Wrongs
The myth of misandry
The politics of stigma and status
White supremacy/racism
People of color's empowerment, creativity, herstory, and cultures
Indigenism/the rights of Indigenous people
Environmental justice/addressing ecocide/concern for the health and well-being of non-human beings
Animal Rights
Land ownership
Expression of gender variance/genderqueer issues
Transgender issues in society, transgender people and women-only spaces
Transgender discrimination inside and beyond queer communities
Intersexuality/enforced sex assignment/forced surgery on babies and young children
Academia: issues, politics, debt
The social politics of intelligence
Support services and communities of support for the oppressed and assaulted
Rape and sexual assault of women
Incest, child sexual abuse, child molestation
Prostitution, trafficking, sexual slavery, holding slavers, traffickers, pimps, and procurers accountable
Ending battery and other forms of violence in the home, against women and children
Stopping sexual harassment and workplace discrimination, including by age, gender, race, disability, and sexual orientation
Stopping street harassment, stranger rape, and men's public entitlements to have verbal and visual access to women on demand
Intimate partner rape, marital rape, date rape
Drug rape, criminal voyeurism, and men's sexual predatory tactics and crimes
Campus violence
Community violence
Womanist and Feminist theory
Women's Studies
Sexism, racism, classism, and heterosexism in media
Lesbian Separatism
Women-only spaces, the rights of women to have their own spaces
LGBTI issues and communities
Lesbian/woman-centered politics vs. gay/man-centered politics
Queer communities of color
Blackness, Whiteness, and the politics of enforced or chosen racial identification
Ethnicity and cultural identity
Government corruption/State corruption
Parental custody, support for mothers, court injustice, giving custody to abusers
Parenting, child-rearing in communities, raising children to be strong, wise, caring, self-respecting, and socially aware
Consciousness issues
Indigenous philosophies and religions
Goddess spirituality, G-d, meditation, prayer, spirit, the spiritual dimension of life and being
Paganism, aetheism, and polytheism
Christianity and being Christian
White Christianity vs. Christianity for people of color
Islam, being Muslim
Islamophobia and bigotry against Muslims
Judaism, being Jewish
Anti-Semitism
Discrimination against people who are from or appear to be from the Middle East and Central Asia
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and resolution of conflict, Israel's apartheid practices and policies
U.S.-Israeli collaboration
Anglo-, Western-, White-, and Euro-centrism
Anarchism, revolutionary approaches to social change
Personal resistance work
Coalition politics, building community and alliances across differences without ignoring differences
Focus on specific activists and authors, such as the work of:
Marimba Ani
Nawal El Saadawi
Malalai Joya
Ruchira Gupta
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Audre Lorde
Andrea Smith
Patricia Hill Collins
bell hooks
Andrea Dworkin
Catharine MacKinnon
Sheila Jeffreys
Ruchira Gupta and Apne Aap
Yanar Mohammed and the liberation of Iraqi women
Malalai Joya and the work of RAWA
Indigenous activism in the Americas, Indigenous American cultures, politics, social and environmental and issues
Indigenous and colonial Australian and New Zealand cultures, politics,social and environmental issues
Indigenous and colonial sub-Saharan African cultures, politics, social and environmental issues
Indigenous and colonial East Asian cultures, politics, social and environmental issues
Indigenous and colonial South Asian cultures, politics, social and environmental issues
Political conflicts and cultural histories in Central Asia and the Middle East
Indigenous and colonial North American cultures, politics, and social issues
Indigenous and colonial European cultures politics and issues
Pornography as an industry and its influence on sexuality and society
Sexual behavior, sex education, sexual health
The intersections of gender, race, class, age, ability, and sexuality
Asexuality and celibacy
Pregnancy and childbirth issues
Reproductive health, reproductive justice, abortion politics, women's rights over their bodies
Social and political issues with pharmaceuticals and corporate medicine
Hospitals, hospitalisation, health services
Mental health, mental illness
Addiction and compulsion issues: drugs, sex, pornography, alcohol
Depression
What to do with our rage and disappointment, despair and fury?
Hunger, famine, and the politics of food distribution
Homelessness and economic instability with regard to shelter and safety
Health care options other than those that are corporate, patriarchal, heterosexist, and white supremacist 
Ageism, care of and for the elderly, being older in an ageist society
Visual and performing arts
Theatre, cinema, television, mass entertainment media
The politics of news media
Oil economies and the politics of fossil fuel acquisition and consumption
Sustainability, environment, and human and non-human ecosystems and community
Conservatism, Liberalism, and Radicalism
Western Modernism and post-modernism
The politics of theorising and abstraction
The West and the East: concepts and realities
The economics and sexual and racial politics of Global North and the Global South
War, warfare, and the military industrial complex
U.S. Empire, Western Cultural Imperialism and Exploitation
Women, Law, and Justice
Crime and Punishment
What to do about Sex Offenders and other Male Perpetrators of Racist-Misogynist-Heterosexist Crimes against humanity
Homophobia in school systems
Racism, heterosexism, and classism in school systems and academia
Fraternity violence against women
Genocide and white's war against people of color
Human Rights and Women's Rights: What's the Difference?
Gynocide and men's war against women

To WHM who are dads: Make It A Happy Father's Day--Stop Raping Your Daughter and Beating Your Child's Mother

 [photo of a family in Australia is from here]

And if you are a father and don't do either, and don't abuse your sons, or abuse your daughters in any way, or abuse or control your spouse (of whatever gender) in any way, please organise other dads in order to stop the fathers who are sexually, emotionally, and physically abusive to their children and spouses. And if you're white and class privileged, stop whining about the "Rights" you don't have and start dealing with the Responsibilities you have to be humane, and work to make room for more marginalised men to be good fathers: gay men, working class men, ethnically despised and invisibilised men, men of color, and disabled men.

And if you're a good father--married, partnered, or single--please stop expecting a Thank You from their mother (or anyone else) if you do things such as:

--change them, if they are infants and toddlers
--figure out what they're crying means
--get food for them
--cook food for them
--feed them
--take them to school or friends' homes
--attend to their wants and needs
--put them to bed
--spend time with them
--appropriately and respectfully parent them in any way

Stop expecting any more applause for what you do that women get for parenting.

And, if you're an excellent, loving, caring, non-abusive, anti-homophobia, anti-racist, tender father who is fully respectful of women, THANK YOU! I love seeing excellent fathers parent their children. It happens too little, though, in my experience. What I see more is fathers trying to control their children and gender them in ridiculously stereotypical and homophobic ways, and use their children in despicable ways when divorcing the child/ren's mother.

To all the great GAY dads out there: thanks for all you do to raise healthy children. I had a very good dad and was blessed. He died way too young but long enough to raise me. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

And to all the MOTHERS: THANK YOU for ALL YOU DO that is taken for granted, un- and under-appreciated, and disrespected, all year long.

And to one woman in particular, who is also mother, I am wishing and praying for you to be reunited with your daughter very soon, and for each of you to be free and safe from the male abuser who was with you and, against all humane measures of justice, is currently with your child... for now, but hopefully not for long.

[photo of parent and child in Mumbai is from here]

Sally Kruzan needs our support now; here's how to stand with her in her fight for freedom and justice

Sara was awarded the honor of “Woman of the Year” for the Honor Dorm and was selected for this honor by a vote of the prison guards. The award reads: “We commend you for your dedication to the mission of the Honor Dorm. Your encouragement, positive attitude and friendship to your peers shows that you are a positive link to a successful future. You stand as an inspiration to all. We thank you.”

More information about this video and this case is below.

Hello, A.R.P. followers and readers. I could use your help in spreading the word about the immediate call to humane people to support the freedom of Sara Kruzan from prison so she doesn't spend the rest of her life behind bars.

I just got this email from a colleague and am posting all the information he sent to me below:


Hi Julian,


I noticed that a while back you wrote an article [linked to *here*] about the case of Sara Kruzan. In case you haven't heard, Sara is now up for resentencing and needs letters of support for her release. I thought you might be interested in publicizing this among your readers. Letters need to be sent by June 30th and should be sent to kimdeanne@freesarakruzan.org


Letters should be in the BODY of the email only, no attachments. Letters should detail any or all of the following:


Why you support Sara's freedom
Why you feel she is no longer a threat to society
How you feel Sara will be able to contribute to society
How Sara made an impact in your life, your children's lives, etc.


If released, Sara plans to start a non-profit dedicated to helping child victims of sex trafficking throughout the world. A link to Sara's video can be found here:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR7mno6p9iQ

*          *          *  

I also got this information about Sara's efforts by the email:

http://www.youthlaw.org/fileadmin/ncyl/youthlaw/litigation/Kruzan/Kruzan_Final_Appellate_Petition2.pdf

It goes into detail about her life and also about the amazing transformation she's made.  Here's one nugget:

Most recently, Sara was awarded the honor of “Woman of the Year”
for the Honor Dorm and was selected for this honor by a vote of the prison
guards. The award reads: “We commend you for your dedication to the

mission of the Honor Dorm. Your encouragement, positive attitude and
friendship to your peers shows that you are a positive link to a successful
future. You stand as an inspiration to all. We thank you.”

*          *          *

See also this, from YouTube:
josephvbui — February 28, 2009 — Why we should ban life without parole for juveniles

Check out the following link for more information:
http://www.youthlaw.org/press_room/vi...

Join the "FREE SARA KRUZAN" Facebook group!
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/gro...

Sign the Petition to Free Sara Kruzan Today:
http://media.causes.com/651929?p_id=7...

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT FOR THE DEAF/HEARING IMPAIRED:

In school, I excelled. I was on the honor roll, the principal's honor roll. I was an overachiever. I ran track. I ran for student body president.

I wrote a book on drugs and it's effects and I won a young author award.

G.G. would start to take me or my little friends to rollerskating or to the mall. He was like a father-figure.

G.G. was there ... sometimes. And he would talk to me and take me out and give me all of these lavish gifts or do all these things for me. And he would tell me "sex wise, you don't know need to give it up for free." He would try and put in my head all of these different things and how men really think and how men are. So, I would believe him.

He had sex with me when I was 13 and um, he's a very ... he uses his "manhood" to hurt ... like break you in, I guess.

G.G.'s hours were from 6pm to about 5:30 or 6 in the morning. The girls would bring their money and give it to him. He was like married to all of us, I guess... This is just how they do.

Everything, everything was his.

The judge sat up there and I remember my lawyer saying that he wanted to ask for me to be sentenced as a juvenile since YA (Youth Authority) had found me immunable and susceptible to the treatment. Um, but the judge said that because of my crime, that it was well-thought out, I deserved life without...

That means, I'm going to die here.

I definitely know I deserve punishment. I mean, you don't just take someone's life and think it's okay.

So yes, I definitely deserve punishment. How much? I don't know. Everyday is something that is not going to ever go away.

I'm very sorry to take his life like that.

I've always tried to educate myself though... in far as reading books and things like that. I didn't think I could excel. Who wants to excel in prison? I mean, be all you can be is not much.

My guess is my little heart would tell me that I was worth more.

My judge had told me I lacked moral scruples and I understand that. I had no clue what morals were and no clue what scruples meant. So I had to find that in the dictionary and put the two together. So "integrity" and "honesty" and all of these things i needed to learn. I went ahead and started to build this.

At a parole building, I would want to tell them that first of all, I have learned what moral scruples are. Second, everyday is a challenge and i realize that i found an ability to believe in myself and i have a lot of good to offer.

Now, the person i am today, at 29, I believe I could set a positive example.

I'm very determined to show that no matter what you've done or what you've come from or what you've experienced in life, it's up to you to change.

Many thanks