Rachel’s Musings

Six weeks down and two weeks to go with $442 more to raise to meet my goal. Thank you to everybody for your support. Both monetary and verbal support are greatly appreciated. And if you’ve been meaning to help me reach my financial goal, now is a good time to do so . I can see why this combination of physical activity and fundraising is used a lot: It is very motivating to me! Not sure if I wouldn’t have succumb to the excuses today – I am too tired, the hills are too steep… But 1 hour and 35 minutes later, I was glad I walked! Again I was accompanied by another great interview by C.S. Soong of Anne McClintock, a professor at my alma mater UW – Madison: Paranoia, empire, and torture. The interview is based on a recent article by McClintock published in Small Axe, a journal published by Duke University Press.

This is a rather timely interview given the Obama administration’s decision to keep some of the Guantanamo detainees indefinitely. According to McClintock, only 8% of the detainees at Guantanamo have even been accused of being linked to Al Qaeda! The vast majority of detainees are neither terrorists nor enemy combatants; many of them are innocent; some of them are family members of Al Qaeda members held in violation of the Geneva Convention.

McClintock argues that the combination of power with fear created an atmosphere of paranoia that lead to two wars and the acceptance, even encouragement of torture. She gives as one example Dick Cheney who was one of the most powerful VPs in US history. Yet after 9/11, he was convinced that more attacks would be imminent; he saw threats of attacks everywhere. What happened on 9/11 tremendously fueled the paranoia. Here we were, the only superpower, and a handful of men with boxcutters were able to shut down the whole country. Congress was evacuated. The airlines were grounded. Everything had come to a halt. Yet, the men who brought us to our knees had evaporated. They went up in the same flames as the towers. So there was no one left to publicly force to answer for the crimes committed. We needed to show that we were still strong by humiliating someone else: Osama Bin Laden. Since we failed to get our hands on him – probably due to incompetence – others had to stand in as those to be blamed. Torture victims are a result of this desperate attempt to regain the power we felt we had lost on 9/11. This was (is?) the overarching climate. On the ground level, at Abu Ghraib, torture was enabled by a similar power-fear mixture. Although McClintock stresses that it is vital not to forget that the torture happened because it was encouraged by the Bush administration without this mixture it might not have been carried out. Normal prisoner to guard ratios are around 4 to 1; at Guantanamo, they are almost 1 to 1; at Abu Ghraib they were 75 to 1! Here is a prison in the heart of hostile territory, exposed to attacks, and the guards are far outnumbered. A recipe for fear! Yet, the guards are part of an elite military from the most powerful nation. Power. Fear. Leads to paranoia. Torture has been used by empires past – from the Spanish Inquisition to Hitler – to disempower the torture victims, to put them back into their place.

There are two arguments presented to counter the claims for responsibility by the leaders of the US government for the torture. The first is the “few bad apples” argument debunked by Philip Zimbardo among many. The second I hadn’t heard before: The torture was a result of the influence of pornography. This was automatically disarming the torture because it becomes harmless, almost playful, like pornography. It also removes any responsibility from the higher-ups after all pornography did it. Now I wish I could refresh my memory with the article! Unfortunately, it costs $15, which is a bit too steep of a price… Well, let’s switch gears a bit. I’ll add more if I can get the article through a library.

The Alternatives to Marriage Project blog is sporting two interesting posts that I’d like to share to finish up this week’s uphill battle post. The first note brings together voices that are calling to move away from the single focus on same-sex marriage. The other describes a recent action alert that went to AtMP members asking Obama to go beyond supporting couples by stating that

All federal employees should be allowed to put one adult on their health plan along with their children. At a minimum, benefits should go to both different-sex and same-sex partners of government employees.

Of course the truly couplemania-free health care solution is universal health care but this 1+ option would allow singles by choice (like me) to add another adult, like a good friend or relative, to our health insurance. That certainly would be a step in the right direction!

To go back to my weekly updates please click here where you also can find out what all this walking is about…

First his administration files a brief in defense of DOMA – the defense of marriage act, which “defends” marriage against people identifying as LGBT who’d like to get a piece of the marriage pie. And as AmericaBlog points out:

I cannot state strongly enough how damaging this brief is to us. Obama didn’t just argue a technicality about the case, he argued that DOMA is reasonable. That DOMA is constitutional. That DOMA wasn’t motivated by any anti-gay animus. He argued why our Supreme Court victories in Roemer and Lawrence shouldn’t be interpreted to give us rights in any other area (which hurts us in countless other cases and battles). He argued that DOMA doesn’t discriminate against us because it also discriminates about straight unmarried couples (ignoring the fact that they can get married and we can’t).

And now, Obama suggests that some detainees in Guantanamo should be kept indefinitely. No charges, no trial. As Amnesty International puts it:

Indefinite detention without charge violates US and international law, international human rights standards, and the core principles of justice, liberty, equality and fairness on which the US legal system is founded.

Is he already this tired of being President that he’s doing whatever he can to avoid reelection?!? We are watching, Mr. Obama! Actions speak louder than words, especially for politicians!

Two things converge today: The Pride Parades and the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. As a newly released anthology chronicles, the Stonewall Riots sparked a radical movement for gay liberation. But as Tommi Avicolli Mecca pointed out in a recent interview, the movement quickly morphed into something that was acceptable by mainstream: Instead of fighting for liberation – something that would lay the seeds of a different society – assimilation was promoted. The LGBT movement was born, which now seems to be the same-sex marriage movement, a single issue platform with the goal of normalizing. Husband, wife, 2.5 kids, and white picket fence. Sure that husband and wife are of the same sex is different but that is the only difference. Otherwise the family is normal. As Michael Warner so eloquently decried, any attempts to move away from the dictates of “normal” – a dictate that makes everything else abnormal – have been given up. People who want to live differently are left out. Other ways of living are no longer honored, though some still dare to explore them. At least, that’s what the national scene looks like. Amazingly enough, there’s a pocket in Salt Lake City where “mainstream assimilationists collaborated with radical activists to develop talking points, coordinate strategy and change homophobic policy.” Something that honors the legacy of Stonewall but is also more effectively fighting for the rights of all people, not just those folks who want to get married. As Lisa Duggan points out, the Utah strategy that fights for anti-discrimination protection rather than same-sex marriage is brilliant.

The brilliance of the strategy is its ability to refocus public opinion, put conservative opponents on the defensive, shift public perception of the barriers to LGBT equality and broaden the scope of action to include the needs of people living in nonconjugal households, be they straight, gay or other. [my emphasis]

Furthermore, the broader struggle in Utah – required by a Super DOMA, which not only defines marriage as between one man and one woman but also restricts “marriage like” entities – has brought to the forefront

a simple but often overlooked fact: many basic rights and protections for LGBT citizens, including some on the CGI list [Common Ground Initiative, a platform that fights for a list of rights beyond marriage], are not guaranteed by marriage. Housing and employment discrimination, for example, could continue against married or cohabiting couples as well as single people. That point is very well taken in the current political climate, when marriage equality often stands in for all civil equality.

Getting around the Super DOMA forces activists to look at all relationships, not just marriage-like couples. The end result is that they are fighting for equality for all and really mean all, including the uncoupled.

This also has another beautiful side-effect:

Such proposals begin to make the diversity of households and interdependent relationships visible and highlight the limits of a marriage-focused gay rights agenda that prioritizes the needs of the conventionally coupled.

The work in Utah embraces the spirit of Stonewall and moves it ahead by fighting for all family constellations, including alternative ones. The critique of the exclusive focus on same-sex marriage seems to be getting louder (see also here and here and here). The time is ripe to build coalitions around marriage inequality and follow the Utah model to fight for rights for all people. It is time to call for full civil equality for all and really mean all!

Hat tip and big thank you to Nancy Polikoff for making me aware of Duggan’s great article!

I am in week 5 of walking home and week 3 of fundraising, which is slowing down, so I hope some of you who’ve meant to give will do so soon! (I’ve listened to too many NPR fund drives, I think ).

Today, I split my walk because I had an appointment at the RunSafe clinic on Divisadero and Sutter, a bit more than half-way home (and after the three major hills). Even though I don’t run, they were happy to work with me to ensure that I walk safely, i.e., work on those postural habits that eventually cause injuries.      Continue reading this post » » »

Thanks to your help, I’ve raised $328 so far, about a third of my goal – not bad! I look forward to more support from you for my uphill battles. And I really needed the knowledge that there are people out there supporting my physical uphill battles. The urge to just hop on the bus and go home was pretty good. It’s gray and overcast here in San Francisco and the thought of scaling up those hills was just not very appealing. But you would know! So, I decided I better go – and I am glad I did because I listened to yet another interesting podcast and the physical exercise improved my mood: I have a nice sense of accomplishment now!

I listened to an interview with Tommi Avicolli Mecca and Paola Bacchetta as they remember the radical activism of the 1960s and 1970s.      Continue reading this post » » »

There have been quite a few posts on singles blogs recently about sex, in particular on how to deal with sexual energy when there’s no obvious outlet like an intimate partner (for example, the Onely post and Bella DePaulo’s writing). It seems fitting, then, to summarize Chapter 8 of Edwards and Hoover’s “The Challenge of Being Single” even though the topic of sex on a blog feels somewhat dicey… Again, I am struck how current this book still is – it was published in the early 1970s, yet so little has changed. For example, I think that this is still true (even though many of us would rather not admit to it):

In our society, getting sex in perspective is no small achievement. On the one hand, since childhood many of us have been subjected to repressive teachings that result in guilt and embarrassment where sex or almost anything to do with the body is concerned. In or out of marriage, few of us are able to overcome this unfortunate upbringing completely. On the other hand, we now live in a sex-obsessed culture that hard-sells sex in movies, TV, and magazines, on billboards and at the corner newsstand. (161)

     Continue reading this post » » »