Fox talking heads and skin color
Category: Clothing
Something different
I’ve linked it here before, but not since I started posting. It’s called “Cover Snark,” done by the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books writers. It’s sooo funny, and there is eye candy for most, as well. The Smart Ones are good people. Enjoy.
A reality check on the ‘Tampon Tim’ meme
https://www.startribune.com/a-reality-check-on-the-tampon-tim-meme/600965646
Here is why the right / republicans are panicking. It is an attack on trans boys. This who line of they are putting them in the boy’s bathroom is really a way to say Walz supports trans kids. The truth is the bill doesn’t require the products be in any bathroom, just they be available to menstruating students and that includes trans boys. Ron and I off the top of our head thought of dozens of places in a school that they could be put instead of the bathrooms. Just a few, nurses stations, main offices, teachers could keep them in their rooms, a storage closet open to students, dispensers on doors or in hallways, student activity rooms, the rooms used for the gay straight clubs, so on. But even if they were in the boy’s bathrooms, what is the problem with that, other than the made up issue the right has with trans boys? That boys will see tampons and pads. Do these boys not have mothers or sisters? Have they never been in a store? Do they help unpack grocery bags? If boys do not know what these items are for, then they should be taught. It need not be a deep mystery and a shame for girls and women. It won’t turn them gay or trans, it won’t cause their spines to break. Below I post the important quote then the article. Hugs. Scottie
But the law’s actual language provides considerable flexibility for school districts to implement it, according to Deb Henton, the executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators.
That might mean making these products available for free in various locations for all who need them, such as unisex bathrooms, girls’ bathrooms, the school nurse or the front office, but not necessarily in boys’ bathrooms. Henton, in an interview, lauded the “local control” the law provides for implementation, and said she’s fielded no concerns about its rollout.
At Anoka-Hennepin, the state’s largest school district, the free products are not found in traditional male-only bathrooms, a spokesman said. But they are provided for free to all in “nongendered bathrooms,” girls’ bathrooms or from health staffers.
A smart, compassionate new state law is spurring misinformed attacks on Minnesota’s latest vice presidential contender: Gov. Tim Walz.
Star Tribune
AUGUST 8, 2024 AT 8:14PMOpinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.
•••
On Tuesday, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris tapped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. By Wednesday, the opposition had mobilized with lightning speed for its one of its first political attacks, dubbing Walz “Tampon Tim” in reference to a new state law providing free menstrual products to school students.
The nickname was trending nationally this week on Twitter, an indicator of its political currency. Chaya Raichik, whose scurrilous “Libs of TikTok” account on X (formerly Twitter) has more than 3 million followers, was one of the first to amplify it. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly added to the momentum, endorsing the nickname via tweet. Former First Lady Hillary Clinton weighed in from a different angle, with a tweet supporting the Minnesota measure.
Social-media users swiftly took sides as well, and as usual, facts and context were missing, especially from those who see the new law as evidence of a radical Minnesota under Walz’s leadership. But a closer, more informed look at the issue should yield a different conclusion. This is good and necessary policy. Providing free menstrual products is a practical, compassionate remedy to address an under-the-radar reason for student absenteeism. Some families can’t afford menstrual products, and when that happens students stay home instead of going to class, falling behind as they do.
There’s a lot of talk about closing educational achievement gaps in Minnesota and elsewhere, particularly for low-income students. The new state law, which has a price tag of about $2 million a year, is an actual solution to help address this, one that’s relatively low-cost. And there’s real-world data to back it up. New York City schools reported a 2.4% increase in attendance after a state law went into effect requiring free period products for students, according to the advocacy group Alliance for Period Supplies.
Minnesota is far from alone in providing this type of assistance. More than half of the nation’s 50 states have taken steps to help students who struggle to afford tampons and pads. Ohio, led by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, now requires period products in schools and has provided $5 million in funding for this, the Alliance for Period Supplies reports. Alabama and Georgia provide grants for schools to make free products available.
Other states, such as Washington, Nevada, Illinois and Utah, require schools to provide these products, though they didn’t fund them. To Minnesota’s legislators’ credit, the new law provides dollars to schools and is not an unfunded mandate.
Other background information is also useful as the dubious online debate continues.
The new law went into effect in January and applies to students in grades four through 12. The legislation itself was passed during the 2023 session as part of a broader educational bill, which Walz then signed. Rep. Sandra Feist, DFL-New Brighton, was the bill’s chief author in the Minnesota House. Sen. Steve Cwodzinski, a retired teacher and DFLer from Eden Prairie, championed the measure in Minnesota Senate.
But the most powerful advocates for it came from outside the State Capitol. Young Minnesotans reached out to Feist about this issue. After Feist introduced it, these students testified on its behalf as the legislation made its way through various committees. Among them was Elif Ozturk of Golden Valley, who is now 18 and will attend Columbia University this fall.
In an interview, Ozturk told an editorial writer she got involved after seeing other students struggle to afford these products in junior high. She spoke to counselors and was told that some students had to leave class or couldn’t attend because they lacked pads or tampons. Ozturk dug into the issue and discovered that other states had taken steps to help students’ access these products. She thought Minnesota should do the same.
“If we don’t talk about it, it’ll never be fixed. These people who are in power, predominantly old men, have no clue what young girls go through every single day,“ Ozturk said.
Other advocates for the law’s passage: school nurses, who testified movingly about how students struggle to afford these products and the educational and emotional consequences when they can’t.
A specific but ill-informed attack on the new Minnesota law is in dire need of a reality check. Critics contend, wrongly, that it mandates menstrual products in boys’ bathrooms. This has unfortunately been used to stoke ongoing culture wars over transgender individuals.
But the law’s actual language provides considerable flexibility for school districts to implement it, according to Deb Henton, the executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators.
That might mean making these products available for free in various locations for all who need them, such as unisex bathrooms, girls’ bathrooms, the school nurse or the front office, but not necessarily in boys’ bathrooms. Henton, in an interview, lauded the “local control” the law provides for implementation, and said she’s fielded no concerns about its rollout.
At Anoka-Hennepin, the state’s largest school district, the free products are not found in traditional male-only bathrooms, a spokesman said. But they are provided for free to all in “nongendered bathrooms,” girls’ bathrooms or from health staffers.
There’s nothing radical about Minnesota’s new law. Instead it’s a smart, low-cost measure to address educational achievement gaps, one that many states are embracing. Weaponizing this measure is laughably out of touch and likely to backfire not only with women, but all who care about them.
Mocking The Last Supper
Right wing Christians are always looking for things and ways to be aggrieved and insulted. They glorify in being the victims of crimes that exist only in their imagination. Not only are they sure only they only have a right to the Christian god, but they think only they control the Christian god and how he should be worshiped. Hugs. Scottie
Today’s comic
for me, anyway!
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for July 30, 2024
“The #GenderEqualOlympics Are Historic — But The Games Aren’t Close To Fair”
SYDNEY LONEY LAST UPDATED JULY 24, 2024, 9:30 AM
Medals aren’t the only thing that matters at Paris 2024. With Personal Best, we’re going beyond the scoreboards to champion the game changers and spark conversations about what it takes to make competitive sport truly fair play.
Trigger warning: This article references disordered eating.
After a three-hour ride to a lake outside the Olympic Village, teams of rowers from around the world stepped off their buses, in need of a bathroom break before they took to the water to train. The Korean women’s team was first in line for the porta-potties — until athletes from another country’s men’s team cut in front of them.
“It was as though the women weren’t even there,” recalls former rower and Olympian Angela Schneider, who went on to win silver for Canada at those games, and is now director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at Western University in London, Ont., Canada. “I was so angry. A group of us female athletes tried to knock over the porta-potty with the first guy in it. We weren’t successful, but we gave it a good shake.”
This was back at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Forty years later, women aren’t so easily ignored in the sporting world. Attitudes have changed since the ’80s, when only 23% of athletes competing in LA were women, and rowing was considered a men’s sport (“People used to call us ‘sir,’” Schneider recalls). In fact, the Paris 2024 Games will make history as the very first “gender-equal” Olympics: Out of the 10,500 athletes competing, there will be an even split between men and women.
The IOC seemed pretty pleased with itself back in March when it announced (just ahead of International Women’s Day, of course) this “monumental achievement,” dubbing Paris the #GenderEqualOlympics. “We are about to celebrate one of the most important moments in the history of women at the Olympic Games, and in sport overall,” IOC president Thomas Bach proclaimed. (An Olympics logo designed for the milestone — featuring a stereotypically feminine face, lipstick included — has riled the internet, with widespread memes that it would better suit a dating app.)
“The IOC is pretty good at tooting its own horn, and at every games we see a version of this celebration of gender equality. It’s not new. DUNJA ANTUNOVIC, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SPORT SOCIOLOGY”
But even though this year’s even split of men and women athletes marks progress, there’s still a lot of “porta-potty shaking” left to do. Tokyo 2020 was also celebrated for its 48% (almost) gender parity. Now, four years later, all we have to show for progress is another 2%. It’s kind of hard to get excited about a hashtag when we’ve heard it all before.(snip)
Inclusive language is one thing; inclusion itself is another. Another strategy the IOC has used to address gender inequality at the games has been to boost women’s participation by increasing the number of mixed-gender sports, like triathlon, and adding sports that historically excluded women, particularly combat sports. For instance, women’s boxing (finally) debuted in 2012 — and, as a result, 20-year-old Alyssa Mendoza from Caldwell, ID, will be taking her shot at an Olympic medal in Paris for Team USA.
“I think that sometimes the hard work that women boxers do gets discredited, and so I’m really glad we have this platform where we can show our skills,” says Mendoza. Even so, she still gets the occasional “Oh, you’re a female boxer? You’re going to mess up your pretty face!” comment, but she uses those moments to clear up misconceptions. “Boxing isn’t like a Rocky movie,” she says. “It’s not bloody and gory and dangerous. It’s a beautiful sport.”
Beyond stereotypes around certain disciplines, the inherently gendered nature of most elite sports — that is, women and men competing separately — means that athletes who don’t fit neatly into the binary face barriers to participation. The IOC allows individual sports governing bodies to set their own policies for trans athletes, for example, and at least 10 Olympic sports, including cycling, rugby, and rowing, restrict trans athletes from competing. In 2021, the IOC announced a framework laying out its principles for athlete inclusion and non-discrimination, including its stance that athletes should be allowed to compete in the category that aligns with their self-determined gender identity. But the framework is non-binding, so how much real progress we’ll see remains an open question.
The world of sport is rife with gender bias, regardless of which gender you happen to identify with. Paris 2024 will be the first year that men’s teams are eligible to compete in artistic swimming (formerly called synchronized swimming), for instance. Athlete Megumi Field has chatted with her team about how cool it is to be competing in a so-called gender-equal Olympics, but is quick to flag the derision that the men she trains with have faced. “This is not just a ‘girl’s’ sport,” she says. “For us, gender equity conversations are also around the importance of including men.”
Although 28 out of 32 sports will be fully gender-equal in Paris, many disciplines are still characterized as “men’s sports,” and there are lingering discrepancies based on the age-old belief that women are the weaker sex. (snip)
Yes, gender parity in Paris is a sign of progress. But we’re still far from the finish line in the race to full equality, both at the games and in the larger world of sport. Only then can we truly embrace #GenderEqualOlympics — let’s just hope it doesn’t take us another 40 years to get there.
If you are struggling with an eating disorder and are in need of support, please call the National Eating Disorders Association Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. For a 24-hour crisis line, text “NEDA” to 741741.
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2024/07/11750016/paris-olympics-2024-gender-equal
Miss Demeanor
I emailed this to myself yesterday to post; I’m getting caught up this afternoon.
Adidas apologises to Bella Hadid after she appeared in campaign criticised by Israel
Sportswear company issues statement after accusations it was conflating Palestinian identity with terrorism
Ellie Violet Bramley Wed 24 Jul 2024 10.38 EDT
Adidas has apologised to the model Bella Hadid after pulling adverts in which she was promoting a sport shoe first launched to coincide with the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Adidas last week said it was “revising” its campaign after criticism from Israel over Hadid’s involvement in the campaign for the retro SL72 trainers. Hadid is an American whose family has roots in Palestine.
The apology, issued on Instagram, said: “Connections continue to be made to the terrible tragedy that occurred at the Munich Olympics due to our recent SL72 campaign,” referring to the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre when Israeli athletes were taken hostage by the Black September Organization, a Palestinian militant group. Eleven Israelis, a German police officer and five of the attackers died.
The statement continued: “These connections are not meant, and we apologise for any upset or distress caused to communities around the world. We made an unintentional mistake. We also apologise to our partners, Bella Hadid, ASAP Nast, Jules Koundé, and others, for any negative impact on them and we are revising the campaign.”
On Friday, the German-based company had said in a statement it was “revising the remainder of the campaign” after criticism over Hadid’s involvement by Israel on X. “Guess who the face of their campaign is?” read a post on Israel’s official account. “Bella Hadid, a model who has a history of spreading antisemitism and calling for violence against Israelis and Jews.”
Hadid had previously been criticised by Israel for allegedly chanting: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” on a march in 2021.
Adidas was condemned by some Jewish organisations, with the American Jewish Committee labelling its decision as either a “massive oversight or intentionally inflammatory”. Others came out in support of Hadid. One fellow Adidas ambassador, the Palestinian-American author and activist Amani al-Khatahtbeh, posted an email she sent to Adidas on X, in which she said: “Bella Hadid is a model of Palestinian origin that has been a much-needed outspoken advocate for human right.” She added: “Adidas’s disappointing response conflates our Palestinian identity with terrorism.”
Hadid, 27, whose father is the Palestinian businessman Mohamed Hadid, has been vocal in her support for Palestine. In May she expressed her solidarity by wearing a dress crafted out of red and white keffiyehs during the film festival in Cannes. In 2023 she denounced the far-right Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for saying Jewish settlers had more rights than Palestinians in occupied territories.
When she appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine in 2021, she said on Instagram: “A Palestinian girl on the cover of Vogue. The joy it brings me to say that … I won’t stop talking about the systematic oppression, pain and humility that Palestinians face on a regular basis.”
Hadid, who recently launched her own wellness brand, has faced death threats for her outspoken support.
The apology to Hadid and her fellow Adidas partners comes amid reports that she is speaking to lawyers about her options.
A trend-setter across fashion, Hadid is perhaps particularly influential in the trainer space – she was a driver of the widespread popularity of the Adidas It-trainer, the Samba, which has been ubiquitous in recent years. She started wearing the SL72s, which are part of a campaign by Adidas to revive a series of its classic trainer models, earlier this year.
Let’s talk about shifting opinions on Project 2025….
Moms for Liberty have had a rough year. They’re still RNC darlings.
Moms for Liberty co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany JusticePhoto: YouTube clipThis article first appeared on Mother Jones. It has been republished with the publication’s permission.
On the second day of the Republican National Convention, I made my way back to Milwaukee’s symphony hall to attend a town hall hosted by the conservative parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty. This wasn’t my first Moms for Liberty event—I’ve attended the annual summits for the past two years. Back in 2022, Betsy DeVos, who served as former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, delivered the line that got the loudest applause. “While I know that everything we did was with the interest of kids in mind and policies that would really give as much power back to the states and local communities as we possibly could,” she said, “I personally think the Department of Education should not exist.”At the time, that statement felt a little bit edgy—like DeVos was saying the quiet part out loud. But two years later at yesterday’s event, many of the panelists expressed that same sentiment as a a foregone conclusion. “The fundamental problem that we have in the United States was the creation of the federal Department of Education,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) told the crowd of maybe 400 or so mostly white women. In his remarks, erstwhile GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy said, “We’re not just going to reform the Department of Education, it means we’re going to get there and actually shut it down.”
Does that mean that a ragtag group of moms single handedly turned the abolition of a behemoth government agency into a run-of-the-mill conservative talking point? Not exactly. On that issue and many others, Moms for Liberty has had a major assist from powerful conservative groups that share their goals—and are shaping the Republican agenda for 2024.
Founded in 2021 by three former school board members in Florida, Moms for Liberty rode the rising tide of anti-mask sentiment in the tumultuous year after schools were closed during the pandemic. The group’s leaders capitalized on the backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd. In fact, Moms for Liberty was one of the most prominent early groups to criticize the teaching of ant-racist curriculum in schools, which they incorrectly referred to as “critical race theory.” The group also vociferously opposed LGBTQ-inclusive lessons, and its members led campaigns to rid classrooms and school libraries of books deemed inappropriate.
Over time, Moms for Liberty grew in both membership and influence. Today, the group counts 130,000 members across chapters in 48 states. The organization groomed some members to run for local school boards, gradually expanding their influence throughout communities. Last year, all of the Republican presidential candidates, including former president Donald Trump, spoke at their annual conference in Pennsylvania.
In its marketing, Moms for Liberty comes off as a group of like-minded people, mostly women, who all happened to come together because of a shared concern for children. Founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Deskovich, the website says, are just a couple of “moms on a mission to stoke the fires of liberty.” But as I’ve previously reported, the organization’s connections to the Republican party run deep. Its conferences have been sponsored by the GOP training group the Leadership Institute and the conservative powerhouse think tank the Heritage Foundation. Earlier this week, after the RNC Heritage Foundation event, Moms for Liberty national director Catalina Stubbe told me that her group is “very close friends” with Heritage, which was one of the sponsors of today’s event, and whose president Kevin Roberts spoke on one of the panels.Considering the group’s cozy relationship with Heritage, the RNC town hall panelists’ focus on abolishing the US Department of Education shouldn’t be surprising. Project 2025, the 920-page conservative policy roadmap that Heritage spearheaded, calls for the complete elimination of the Department of Education, along with the codification of parents’ rights laws similar to those in Florida, which strictly limit teachers’ use of LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum and books.
After the event, I spoke to Lydia Dominguez, a Moms for Liberty member running for school board in Clark County, Nevada. Dominguez, the mother of two teenage boys, told me that she believed schools “are being oversaturated by national agendas.” What kinds of national agendas? I asked. “They’re having CNN in the classroom,” she said. “They’re pushing national topics such as the transgender topics, sexualized content.”
—————
She believed schools “are being oversaturated by national agendas…They’re having CNN in the classroom,” she said. “They’re pushing national topics such as the transgender topics, sexualized content.”
—————Monica Kepes serves as the secretary of a Moms for Liberty chapter in Washington County, Wisconsin. “I think the big bureaucratic institutions are instituting a lot of stuff that comes down through the education system,” she said. “I think the bigger you get, the more power there is, the more chance corruption and all that kind of stuff.”
At Moms for Liberty’s upcoming 2024 summit, which will take place next month in Washington, DC, it seems unlikely that the group will be able to muster a repeat performance of the star-studded speaker roster from last year. So far, this year’s list appears to be a grab bag of not especially famous ultra-conservative pundits, C-list comedians, and culture warriors. One reason for this lackluster lineup could be the fallout from a series of scandals in 2023. A group from a chapter in Kentucky posedfor a photo with the white nationalist group the Proud Boys. (Those members were later removed from the group.) Last year, a chapter leader in Indiana quoted Hitler in a newsletter. On the last evening of the annual summit a few months later, Justice, the co-founder, said in a speech, “One of our moms in a newsletter quotes Hitler…I stand with that mom!”
But the most damaging setbackcame in late 2023, when Christian Ziegler, chair of the Florida GOP, was accused of raping and illegally filming a woman who had been involved in a sexual relationship with him and his wife, Bridget Ziegler, a founding member of Moms for Liberty. As I wrote at the time, the situation was especially awkward because Ziegler helped craft Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” parents’ rights law, which forbids teachers in the state from talking about same-sex relationships. “The irony is crazy because you have this woman and her husband who are so concerned with preventing children from hearing anything that doesn’t totally align with their values,” one Florida mom told me at the time. “And then it’s like, I’m having to explain a three-way to a 12-year-old this week.” (Christian Ziegler has been cleared of rape charges; in March, the Florida state attorney’s office declined to criminally charge him for illegally filming the sexual encounter because of insufficient evidence.)
Unsurprisingly, no one mentioned the sex scandal (or any of the other ones) at the town hall event. But on one panel, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took a victory lap about a bill Ziegler helped to create. “It used to be…you didn’t have to worry about your kid going to kindergarten and being told that they should change their gender,” he said. “We put the kibosh on that in Florida—we said, ‘We are not going to be indulging in things like gender ideology in our schools.’” The crowd whooped with approval.
The Republican Party seems to agree. Its official platform, released last week, calls for funding cuts for schools that embrace “woke” policies like LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum. This serves as a reminder that even though Moms for Liberty’s star appears to have dimmed over the past year, the reverberations from its movement will be felt for years to come. Moms for Liberty, cofounder Tina Descovich told the crowd, “is here to fight, fight, fight, and win, win, win.” She paused. “And winning we are.”
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