Not Anonymous

My uterus is trying to claw its way out of my body and these past few weeks have been no good, bad, horrible.

I think I'm warranted chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate milk this evening before I go off to make myself a proper supper.

I'm not feeling overwhelmed like I did before. I paid my first utility bill and am feeling mighty grown up, although I think I passes a level when it comes to adulthood regarding what I had to do yesterday.

You'll need a bit of back story and a strong stomach for this story is about plumbing and how it can sometimes become your life.

I'm recounting this, because suffering should be shared and not wallowed.

Some of you may recall the drama of my apartment.

I mentioned two weeks ago, or thereabouts, that the toilets in my flat were leaking and that the washing machine broke by deciding to leak and be an electrical hazard and whatnot.

Well the plumber came and did what plumbers do to fix leaks of this kind... He stuck some silicone goo stuff around the pipes, bid me farewell and left. I, being a first time tenant and overall helpless young bachelor(ette) called my land lady and informed her of the goings on. She said "fine, I'm covering the plumbing issues" and we say goodbye.

The washing machine repair man came, gave me a very expensive diagnosis (we need our washing machine!) and I called the landlady again, to tell her about this and the cost.

The woman blew up on me and flaked on me, telling me that I was inconsiderate and that I and [Sexy!Roommate] have done nothing but complain and did she not put in bay window for us on her own dime and I was utterly flabbergasted.

She told me to get the machine fixed, but it was at our own expense.

I spoke to people afterwards, people being my roommate and my sister who is a lawyer... yeah.

The washing machine was fixed and the guy said to let it run empty to make sure it works.

By this point I was a little rattled and had ranted and wailed to people. It all came to a head when I heard some rustle come from the service balcony. The rustle, as you may have guessed, was a flood of water from the washing machine.

I very bravely didn't cry.

I called the guy again and he returned to fix something he should have tightened before hand. I hope I never have to call a repair man, but if I ever do, I am never calling him again.

The man left and you'll be happy to know I've used the washing machine since then without incident, it's quite nice to have something that was supposed to work... actually work

It was after that, that I thought I could relax and actually use a non-leaky toilet without having to squeegee the floor. Well, nature called and wouldn't you know, the toilet didn't leak, because it was blocked. The water wouldn't go down and the water actually burst through the drainage pipe that is situated, you guessed it, on the service balcony.

At this point, I just wanted my fucking floor to be dry!

Cue the plumber again and me being very harried indeed.

The plumber said I looked like I'd been traumatised. Well, when you've had things go very wrong, very badly, very quickly one tends to get harried.

Once the asshole was done and took what was left of my cash he said to me, in that patronising way men of a certain age speak to women my age, "You know there are bigger problems in the world."

To which I replied before shutting the door in his face: "Yes, but these are mine".

And so, my landlady calls me not long after to inform me that [Sexy!Roommate] and I are no longer allowed to throw toilet paper into the toilet. Because this is what caused the blockage.

My roommate and I were utterly disbelieving, because what? We can't use the toilet the way man and woman intended? Seriously? And so we said "okay" and continued to use the facilities like civilised human beings.

Yesterday morning, nature called as it want to do. The water wouldn't go down. "Motherfuck" is what I said, quite succinct if I do say so myself. Being much poorer than I was and greatly reluctant to call a plumber and/or the landlady, I put on my big girl pants, rubber gloves and said to myself "Mel, you've changed the nappies of toddlers with diarrhoea. This is a piece of cake."

And indeed, toilet paper was the culprit.

I fucking hate this fucking flat.

Being independent is grand, I'm happy to be living on my own with a roommate. I'd be happier if this apartment actually behaved the way it is supposed to and would stop being such a menace to my health. Mental or otherwise.

But hey, at least I have cooking gas! It's supper time!

It's worse, because it is far more insidious than ever. You know the old saying about the frog in the boiling pot?

That's us.

It's been forever since I've had a good "bad news" round up. This platform has become something of an escape for me, you see, since the Summer in which thousands of people took to the streets protesting the current political, financial and social disparity in Israel - we forgot to take into account the underlying reason the current government has managed to shut us up and shut us out.

We are occupying another people and the Summer of so-called social change decided that that was too "political", not to do with "us" and not to do with the fact that the cost of living is practically unbearable within Israel. Because that's one thing and Israeli society is another.

Apartheid never seemed so clear.

Over the past few months, while we were resting on the laurels of actually being in the street and protesting the Men, the superficiality of (Jewish) women's equality has been steadily eroding.

Who is to blame? I mean, other than patriarchy. Of course.

Deepening religious extremism is one reason, I mean, when you have a Settler Rabbi telling soldiers should chose death rather than suffer a woman singing. You may go O_o at this little piece of News, but when you have more conservative interpretations to the Jewish adage "A woman's voice is Ervah" i.e. the sound of a woman's voice is pubic or sexual by it's very nature.

A woman is nothing but her sex, of course.

Speaking of voices, our freedom of speech has been basically been taken away, I can't tell you who you should boycott for fear of being sued for damages and now I can't call the Prime Minister, for example, a smug lying asshole, due to this abso-fucking-loutly spiffing amendment bill.

In which, and I quote the article linked above:

The bill represents an amendment to Israel's existing libel law, which would make it possible to sue a newspaper for libel, not only for commensurate compensation for any tangible damage caused by the publication, but for an additional sum of NIS 300,000 − without having to prove damages.

Emphasis mine.

Was there an emergency meeting of journalists? You bet there was.

Unsurprisingly, this bill coincides with the firing of one of Israel's few true watch dogs from public broadcasting Keren Neubach. As you can read in the link, the "reason" given? She "looks" bad on screen.
They're not even bothering any more.

Ditto on shutting down the Ramallah based radio station Palestinian-Israeli cooperative "Kol Ha'Shalom" (a play on words, as "Kol" is a Hebrew homophone for "voice" and "all").

Last night 2000 people rallied in protest of this bill.

2000. Yep, that many.

That really is the equivalent of crickets chirping.

The other bills that have been passing through the Knesset floor have been eroding civil society for years.

But wait. There's more.

The totalitarian nature of the Occupation is finally catching up with Israel proper. The non-violent demonstrations in the West Bank, exemplified by the recent Freedom Rider arrests (amazing pictures) shows the stark contrast of what is actually happening on the ground and the mindset of the average Israeli.

I mean, when the Prime Minister "shelves" the bill set out to persecute NGO's by limiting their funds, but his Foreign Minister goes ahead and does it anyway is, well, telling.

Add to that the fact that there is an all out political attack on the political science department of Negev's Ben-Gurion University, the alarm bells should be ringing off the walls.

Because when the Germans are telling the Israeli government: Um, excuse me, this is not very good and we're really sorry that we have to criticise you like this.

History repeats and really, the Germans would know.

In the meantime, my parents are watching commentary about a documentary about Steve Jobs and Apple.

I fucking hate the world.

It being the holiday season in my locale, it is a time of family and obligation.

Yesterday I was helping my mother arrange the place names for the seats, the name cards were a mess, so I quickly put all the couples and their children into smaller piles.

I was the only solo card.

Now, after an entire semester of studying the sociological aspect of singlehood and writing a 6000 word essay about the position of the single aunt in the extended-nuclear family for said course, you probably don't understand the feeling of sheer poignancy that came from seeing my name, alone, among the clumps of little families that make up my huge tribe.

I have no doubt that I'm not the only single person who has a family made up of couples and families and has felt this way. But I have been theorising about it, this position of mine in my family, the role I play of Dutiful Daughter, Doting Aunt (despite raising my voice a few times and having my cousin, a mother, come to make sure I haven't murdered her children) and Single Gay Relative.

I may be the only one who perceives myself this way. Who knows, maybe others do see me this way. Glass closet and all.

What has come to mind in my navel gazing about this, because I have been thinking about it the whole week, were the issues of "passing" and "flaunting" my sexuality in the context of my family.

My nuclear family are a paragon of harmony, support and TLC. Really, I couldn't have asked for a better family, really. My bitterness considering my coming out process and the crappy way I and [Southern!Girl] were treated when were together notwithstanding.

Being single and queer is easier than being queer in a relationship - man or woman. The invisibility I experience when I'm with a guy is painful because of the erasure of my identity and the culture I identify with. The all out double standard of being with a girl requires constant negotiation of what is appropriate or inappropriate behaviour in so many contexts.

It is sheer kismet that Spark In Darkness wrote about this very issue on his blog, where he writes about living your life through a filter:

Every question has to be passed through it, evasions and lies considered, examined and discarded or adapted. And damn if that isn't tiring, even now when I largely shut the filter down and try to answer without it – it still fires up and activates the closet instincts. Before when I nearly always used the filter it was even more draining – because everything someone said to me or I said back had to be run through the filter to ensure that the BIG DARK SECRET was hidden.

[...]that's before we get to simple things like the awful crime of kissing/touching and the dreadful decisions of whether it's ok to sit next to him or not – can we go out to dinner together or do we need to bring more people so it's not a date? Am I stood too close? Whose watching, who can see is anyone upset/angry/sitting on a cactus expression?

So, yeah, here's little ol' me “flaunting” my sexuality because not “flaunting” is a lot of work. I just don't have the energy not to flaunt.

I emphasised the last bit, because that pretty much hits the nail of the head. Sometimes, most of the time, we're asked to "tone it down", or stop making everything "about being QuILTBAG".

There are worse things that happen to gay people than being told by heteronormative society that we're disruptive and should shut up and suck it up, because you know, being beat up and murdered because you weren't quiet enough is worse than being escorted off a plane for kissing your partner.

But the incident with Leisha Hailey and the Southwest flight, brings to a head how careful we have to be in order to walk around unscathed.

I mean, if you read the statement from Southwest Airline following the incident, you can't help but cringe:

Initial reports indicate that we received several passenger complaints characterizing the behavior as excessive. Our crew, responsible for the comfort of all Customers on board, approached the passengers based solely on behavior and not gender. The conversation escalated to a level that was better resolved on the ground, as opposed to in flight. We regret any circumstance where a passenger does not have a positive experience on Southwest and we are ready to work directly with the passengers involved to offer our heartfelt apologies for falling short of their expectations.

All emphasis is mine. It would be mind boggling if it wasn't such a typical framing of "gay behaviour" in public.

First of all, the passenger complaints? Really? You know how many times I've complained about a child running up and down the isles of a plane? Are you going to remove that child and its parents?! Boy that would be grand!
Never happen of course, after all, a child running up and down the isles is "natural". As is, you know, kissing and holding hands between a man and woman.

Two women, well, that's "excessive". Because it disrupts the "family oriented" flight, of heterosexual and nuclear clumps of couples and their children.

And of course one must not make the customers uncomfortable, I mean, it's not like gay people pay for services, or use the same methods of transport as straight people. *snort* of course not, we have our own airlines, our own cities, our own laws and regulations, you know... in those "clubs". We'd never imagine doing that in public.

Existing, that is.

Of course, despite Southwest's hypocrisy, they are a well known airline that discriminates against its customers.

Dorothy Snarker who wrote about this earlier this week mentioned that Southwest is the airline that kicked Kevin Smith (Director of "Dogma" and "Chasing Amy") off a flight for being fat and Billy Joe Armstrong (Green Day front man) for dressing in baggy pants.

Obviously, Southwest feels very strongly about its well dressed, straight and thin customers. Everyone else just isn't up to par for this airline.

These are incidents that have happened to celebrities. Just ponder that one for a moment.

Reading about the above and planning out this post, well, it makes my own single status a thing of visibility and invisibility. I break the pattern of pairings in my family, but I am rendered silent because talking about wanting to date or going on dates is "flaunting" and "disruptive" and sometimes I just don't have the energy to deal with that.

It's giving into homophobia.

And the homophobia exhibited by Southwest, by accepting the underlying assumption that a kiss between two women is disturbing to customers, but being called disgusting by other people is just something we should suck up, is so entrenched in the culture, practically every culture on earth, that I sometimes despair at thinking I'll get to see or feel, fundamental change in my lifetime.

Happy New Year, if you celebrated I hope y'all aren't hung over.

For me, the new year actually started with the birth of my new Niece who was born two weeks ago, so really, the passage to 2011 didn't feel to important comparatively.


Some changed regarding this DW/LJ for 2011. I've started writing in Hebrew on a different platform, which is one of the reasons I hadn't been writing much here the past couple of weeks. That, and Uni is beginning to crunch, I'm being very bad writing here instead of studying.
So I may not write that much about politics here, though I don't know.

The current political climate in my locale is fucking scary. The fact that the court actually gave a guilty verdict to former president Katsav on two counts of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment is a small ray of light, that justice was served is a real point of optimism in an otherwise pretty bleak atmosphere.

This morning, Jawaher Abu Rahmah, died of tear gas inhilation. Yesterday was the 1000th demonstration against the illegal fence/wall that partisions the West Bank from Israel and at the same time annexes vast amounts of land belonging to the West Bank to the so-called Israeli side (the whole notion of the Green Line is pretty much dead). She was resident of Bil'in, anti-fence activist and sister of Bassem Abu Rahmah who died in April 2009 from a direct hit of a tear-gas canister.

And people are surprised that people become Shahid. And you're damn right there will be harsh reactions.

Of course, that's the crazy Palestinians and to be frank, I'm not sure how many outside my milieu actually give a damn.

But let's talk about them crazy Jews, who, much to my horror, appear to be a great majority rather than not.
I can't remember if I wrote about this at the time, but a few months ago, 50 municipal Rabbis (Separation of state and religion? What is this thing you speak of?) signed a letter calling flat owners not to rent flats to Arabs.
This sparked a huge wave of protest against this deceleration and of course for this deceleration as it pretty much fed the already burning fire of racism that is so entrenched in Israeli discourse. The biggest demonstration against Arab residents was in Bat-Yam, a city adjacent to south Tel-Aviv, there though, the focus was about - and I shudder to write this - miscegenation.

The notion of the nation's cunt being under attack is not a new one, but it is certainly gaining momentum, as the Rabbis' wives published a letter telling us, daughters of Israel, to stay away and not date Arab men.
There has been no mention of Israeli men to not date Arab women, of course, as it is Arab men who are hyper-sexualised (as all "primitives" are) and women who are fickle enough to fall under their Svengalli spell.

This is the society my baby niece has been born into.

Unfortunately, the voices of opposition which are not considered legitimate because they are part of the Reform Movement which has no standing whatsoever when it comes to Israeli Jewish thought.

Here's to 2011.

You know something, I had no choice in the matter.
I was born here.
I've never lived any where else. I will probably never live any where else, unless I'm forced out of here for one reason or another.

Still, this is home. As such, when someone shits in it, especially when he who shits is supposed to be the custodians of this house, I'm going to say something.

Here's what I have to say.

When a government forces would be non-Jewish citizens to declare allegiance to the state as Jewish and democratic in order to be a part of a collective, this government is telling those citizens - you are second class, because you do not belong to the superior class.

As we like to say Israel is democratic to Jews and Jewish to everyone else.

Sometimes, I wish we could go back to being an oppressed minority and fighting against Antisemitism, rather than perpetuate the notion of master race-hood like this loyalty law does.

You know, I don't mean to go Godwin, but one of the reasons Israel came to be when it did was because the WW2 sped up a progress that was happening in Palestine to begin with.

Call me naive and idealistic, but his law is such anathema to everything that made my parents immigrate here and "make a new life" and all that crap.

Now I just want to run away.

This is not all, by the way. I've yet to find any official report of this in English, but Hebrew radio on Friday announced that the IDF initiated a drill in which soldiers trained a scenario in which a "Population Exchange" would be initiated - a la Lieberman.

In case no one understood the nuance of what I wrote - there was a drill training for a transfer.

I'd be boggled, if this was a surprise in any way.

I know. I'm proud to be the only democratic country in the Middle East too.
I wish the democracy would stop shitting all over us.
I'll be marching and being dissident over the week.

Does everyone know what a "Honey Trap" is?

For those of you who do not, a "Honey Trap" (according to the various books, movies and tv shows) is a when a woman uses her "feminine wiles" to seduce a man and extort the information out of him using sexual favours, or blackmailing him into giving the information due to committing unspeakable sexual acts.

It will generally be part of a sting.

In fiction, it seems to be the staple of the female spy. I'd say James Bond often worked as a Honey Trap because he always managed to get info out of the women he slept with. But the double standard works double time when it comes to good ole' Double-O.

Why am I mentioning this?

Well, if there was any doubt this country was spiralling away from rational thought and desires to sink into backward theocracy is when the News deems a report from a Rabbi regarding the conduct of female spies to be printable. A report written for a publication published by an institution dedicated to merging Halachic Jewish Law into contemporary modern life.

Let me just say, EW!

For the Love of God:

A new halachic study ruled that seducing an enemy agent for the sake of national security is an important mitzvah

You're damn right I emphasised that!
A mitzvah!
A mitzvah?!?!
Fucking hell. In case there was any confusion, the use of the word "mitzvah" means that the act falls under the notion of moral obligation.

This Rabbi has stated that female security operatives are morally obligated to seduce the enemy!

For the love of all that is unholy does no one see anything wrong with Israeli security institutions getting religious carte blanche to whore out their operatives!

The ruling, made by Rabbi Ari Shvat, was included in the latest issue of "Tehumin," an annual collection of articles about Jewish law and modernity, which is published by the Zomet Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to seamlessly merging Halachic Judaism with modern Israeli life.

*vomits*

"Naturally, an unmarried operative should be preferred in 'honey trap' cases, but if there is no other choice but to use a married women… her husband should divorce her and marry her again after the fact," the rabbi writes.

Unfortunately, Shvat also rules that if a husband was unable to divorce his wife prior to her mission, he would have to do it afterwards, since according to the Halacha she would have committed adultery – even if it was for the sake of a national cause.

Can this Rabbi please be fired and stripped of his... right to be called a human being? Like, now-ish!

The thing is, this misogyny isn't even a surprise. If you know anything about Orthodoxy, moderm or not, the hatred of women, the marginalization of the experience and the reduction of their role to brood mare is apparent in the written law, even if in practice Orthodox women have a bigger role in the social reality.

What I find disturbing is that this is published in what is the most widely distributed subscription Newspaper in the country (and the most read online News outlet, YNET) - it's little more than a thick tabloid in my mind (and actually based a lot of its design on the "Daily Mirror"... yeah), but that's beside the point. The point is, this Newspaper is secular and not officially affiliated with religion or any particular Party politics.

So what does it mean that the rulings, which legally speaking, have zero standing in the law, is published with such authority in the most widely distributed Newspaper in the country?

Oh, snap.

H/T to R, for providing the link.

I know it doesn't make a whole lot of sense as to why I'm worked up about the fact that the Ministry of Truth Education is absolutely failing when it comes to the teaching on any kind thought in students.

Never mind critical thought, that's really far too much to expect, but simple liberal, everyone is equal and has a chance thought, the kind that has spread around the democracies of the world for the past 200 years.

Very soon after posting last night's entry regarding the axing of funds for the civics curriculum (LJ/DW) I read an update regarding the matter:

Education Ministry director general Shimshon Shoshani reversed on Sunday a decision by another ministry official to cut most of the budget for intensive 11th- and 12th-grade civics classes.

Even after this unusual change in policy, this year's civics budget will still be about half of last year's.
[...]
"This is a key lesson in teaching the students basic democracy," said a 10th-grade civics teacher at a school in the north. "The curriculum allows for a flood of questions on fundamental issues that almost never get addressed in other classes."

The money saved by the budget cuts was slated to be used for Jewish studies, including Bible, Talmud and Jewish philosophy.

Emphasis by me
All things that shouldn't be taught in public education at all in my opinion, or at the very least should be part of a non-compulsory education program.

But wait, there's more!

In his decision on Sunday, Shoshani reversed the civics curriculum cuts instituted by Zvi Zameret, who heads the ministry's pedagogic secretariat, after teachers and principals protested the reduction in classroom hours.

"We are primarily concerned about the trend led by Zameret, which represents a change in the Education Ministry's priorities regarding civics," said a member of the ministry's advisory committee on civics instruction. "There's a feeling that Zameret considers civics to be not very important."

The thing is, that civics is taught horribly.
Really horribly.
And I speak as a person who went to one of the most acclaimed secular public high schools in the country (if reports are to be believed) in the middle of fucking suburbia.

The problem is that we begin to study civics in the 10th grade. Everyone is 15-16 years old.
By that time Half of [Jewish] Israeli Teens don't want Arab students in their class, so say the polls:

Sixty four percent of Israeli teens aged 15 to 18 say that Arab Israelis do not enjoy full equal rights in Israel, and from that group, 59 percent believe that they should not have full equal rights.

Emphasis mine
Some people should not have the same equal rights as others.
Yes, liberalism has won the world over, obviously.

This is exacerbated by the fact that, and I quote:

The survey also revealed that 96 percent of the respondents want Israel to be a Jewish and democratic state, but 27 percent believe that those who object should be tried in court, and 41 percent support stripping them of their citizenship.

This is the future of my country.
I am not optimistic.

The thing is that I don't blame my civics teacher for failing, though perhaps she should have been able to tell me where I could look for answers to my questions.

Public educations mainlines kids into being obedient subjects of the Nation, they don't even need to work so hard at it like in totalitarian regimes. We're lucky, we chose the strength of ignorance willingly. Without overt coercion, while those who object aren't considered part of the greater collective that is Israel.

If that isn't fascism I don't know what is.

My next post is going to be about rape culture. Depressing, I know, but I promise there will be music and movies after that. These are serious things that need to be processed.

Let it be known, that I will never cross post any entry made of Livejournal using these new Facebook and Twitter buttons. I will not violate an f-lock in place.
It is my wish that people do not do this in my Livejournal as well.

Public entries are public and thus are available for the whole Internet to read and while I appreciate the courtesy of asking permission or being informed when I'm linked somewhere, I am aware that it is a courtesy.

Let's move on.

Via rm I read that Livejournal hatched a deal with Facebook.
This is upsetting, because it means that even if the LJ staff didn't die after the stampede of "No" that's been happening over the past couple of days, their hands are most likely tied by contract and the cross post feature is here to stay.

Alas.

However! Not all hope is lost! Via 51stcenturyfox you can work around the feature, detailed in her post.

You'll note that when you comment on my LJ, the twitter and facebook options are not there, you too can be rid of them by following the instruction in 51stcenturyfox's post or just read what I copied from her (which I did without permission, I hope she doesn't mind!).

Okay! Take this chunk o' code:

.b-repost-item, FORM#qrform > TABLE[style="border: 1px solid black;"]:last-child TD[style="vertical-align: top; text-align: right;"]:first-child { display: none !important; }

Cut and paste it into the bottom of your custom CSS stylesheet box, which is here.

In your options, you can't have custom comment pages disabled. So under: Disable customized comment pages for your journal, choose "No"

If someone posts all comments to facebook or twitter by default it won't work, but it gets rid of those friggin' choices on your journal for most people, at any rate.

I've implemented it and find it absolutely fine! No accidental cross post from anyone! Huzza!

As promised, this is a follow up to my previous post (LJ/DW) regarding the IDF soldier who posted pictures of herself and "the best time of her life" on Facebook.

It appears that this woman is just keen to dig herself deeper. As often happens on the Internet, this incident has taken on a life of its own. Honestly, I don't have the inclination to get very deep into this, because honestly it's not so much her stupidity that bothers me, but the fact that she has become a meme in the Israeli Blogosphere.

And what this memes, means.

This morning this meme reached the mainstream media (seriously disturbing language therein and quoted below):

[...]Since the photos were published by blogger Ido Keinan earlier this week, dozens of people have uploaded images on to their own Facebook pages depicting similar situations.

Abergil responded on Facebook to an image in which a women was pasted instead of the Palestinian prisoners in the original images, saying that it was not funny and that she would not let anyone ruin her "perfect life."

"I can't allow Arab lovers to ruin the perfect life I lead," she allegedly wrote. "I am not sorry and I don’t regret it."

Ms. Abergil is no doubt a particularly vile specimen of humanity. She is however, I think, being singled out in a way that would not have happened to a male soldier.
I mean, about a month ago the video of IDF soldiers dancing to Ke$ha is Hebron made the rounds and that was just hilarious wasn't it? The boys letting out some steam, of course.
The fact is what Eden Abergil did was not rare, you can go to Breaking the Silence's picture gallery and testimonials page (one for with testimonies made by female soldiers, carefull, PDF) and see how prevalent this dehumanisation is.
And yet, it is Eden Abergil who is singled out. Yes, she is the one to put herself on Facebook, but those guys put themselves on YouTube.

Eden Abergil is a woman, not only that, she's a woman from a Jewish ethnic minority and thus racialised within Israeli Jewish Identity politics and therefore what she did was "stupid" and "damaging".
If this had been a man, I believe we would be hearing a very different tune, one that wouldn't be talking about foibles, but about ethics.

Alas, we shall never know.
But we do know. Because a woman humiliating a man is always more punishable than when a man is humiliating a man - especially when there is a clear hierarchy between who is powerful (soldier) and who is dis-empowered (detainee).

Once again, this is considered a PR fiasco and not a necrotic wound in the way the IDF operates in the field.

Are you surprised when you hear about soldiers looting places they've taken over? No? Why should you be, as Eden Abergil herself says "In war there are no rules".

Yeah, who gives a fuck about the Geneva Conventions?

Sorry, I'm derailing myself.

Over the past few days evidence has been found that says that IDF soldiers, the crème de la crème of the Israeli Special Forces, looted the ships they raided during the disastrous flotilla to Gaza back in June (DW link).
The IDF is, of course, absolutely shocked by this turn in events.

"If the suspicions prove to be true, there must be a serious problem in the IDF in terms of values," a senior Israel Defense Forces officer said Thursday morning following Ynet's revelation on Wednesday that an officer is suspected of stealing laptops from the highly controversial aid flotilla to Gaza and selling them along with other soldiers.

"In such a case, we will not be able to say that these are just weeds," the senior officer added.

Weeds.
Stray weeds has been the excuse for years and years and years.
I, for one, am not shocked.
Not am I appalled.
This is what soldiers of every army all over the world do, the sense of entitlement, of power and ownership is hard wired into our minds by tacit approval that we can do no wrong.

In all these incidences I hear talk of values. But all I see is spin.

Damn you don't want to know what else I have open in my tags.
More bad News coming out of my country later.

This is a signal boost and and it may have triggers.

Female Genital Mutilation at Cornell University by Dan Savage, via copperbadge and Cornell Surgeon Used Vibrator To Stimulate 6-Year-Olds by Kathy Kellerher, via rm.

In the name of "science" a doctor is cutting down little girls' clitorises because they are deemed too big, by whose standards, I cannot tell you.
Oh, and as a follow up to these horrifying and traumatising surgeries, these girls are then stimulated by vibrators to test if they still have sensation at the place of incision.

I have nightmares about scenarios like this.

What you can do to stop this "science" from happening? Here are some links and numbers you can use:

Write about your outrage and send it to Weill Cornell: http://weill.cornell.edu/visitors/contact-us.html
Or to the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, ORIA at med.cornell.edu, (646) 962-8200
Or to the Dean of the hospital, Antony M. Gotto Jr, dean at med.cornell.edu
Or to the college's general address: Weill Cornell Medical College, 1300 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065.

If you are calling from outside the USA, the international code, to be punched in before the actual telephone number is 1*.

And of course, pass it on.

H/T copperbadge

There is also an article in Psychology Today, which has more info and which made me need to step back from the screen in rage.

Because, as someone else said, the vibrators is not what this is about.

It isn't about pervy surgeons having their way with little girls. Paedophiles can be, much to our distress, found in every walk of life. It isn't that he followed up on dodgy medical practices with dubious procedures.

This is about the fact that genital mutilation was given carte blanche in the name of misogyny, homophobia and "empiricism".

This is about wanting to erase, as in to make non-existent, the mere idea of female sexuality that is like that of men. That is why intersex children with clitorises that are too big will usually be said to have small penises and be assigned male gender after "corrective" surgery.

I don't want to go Godwin on this, because the Nazis are hardly the first and the last to go Mad Scientist in the name of Social Order, but my god it scares me. The notion that ones "potential" sexuality will cause such great panic that it will be, literally, cut off.

The real problem, was that this research was approved in the first place and that obviously, there was no one in fucking control of that lab!

Talk about oversight.

I am very curious to know what was going through the minds of the parents who agreed, in the name of these little girls, for this to happen. Have doctors terrorised them for so long, that their child was abnormal, that they simply handed her over? Were these parents so scared of their children?

I cannot imagine that anything short of abject terror of not being in control of your child's body would get you to do something like that. Because it is a fear many parents have regarding their daughters. When I was 11 I'd had my first hair cut in 8 years, I think my mother cried.
When I shaved my head when I was 20, I cried as my mother said to me "I can't believe you would do this", the "to me" hung off the end of that sentence like dying worm.

That is just a normal example.

I think rm said it best, and I'll paraphrase as to how it relates to me, that one of the most queer things about me is the ability to leverage my shame into action. I don't do it well, nor do I think I did it right when that action was needed, but it is that that makes me queer - I will not hide away because my presence causes someone else embarrassment and through that shame me into silence.

Little girls are not the arena upon which to shove your anxieties.
Gender non-conforming people are not the ones who deserve the shame thrust upon them.
Mutilation is the destructive symptom here, that it was given legitimacy in the first place is the problem.