by the light of the moon...

Read this article today in the New York Times about the controversy surrounding the newest Newberry Award-winning book, The Higher Power of Lucky. Librarians and parents alike are appalled that the nine- to twelve-year-old audience for this book (about a strong and gifted girl, no less!) would be exposed to the word "scrotum" in the first page.

To quote the New York Times, here is the context of this frightening and shockingly corrosive word:

The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

What a wonderful way to capture the experience of a bright child learning about life! I am so frustrated by this kind of knee-jerk paranoia in this country. Why would you deny a child the correct name for a perfectly normal part of the human body? Are we supposed to tell little boys it's a hooha (oh, no, sorry, that's actually a vagina, if you live in Florida) and keep little girls from knowing anything at all about male anatomy until they get married?

Please. If anyone has a good idea for changing this country from a puritan state to a place where we learn about healthy bodies, and treasure them, at all ages, let me know.

Posted by Lythande (formerly T) at 05:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Congratulations to all of you on your stellar careers! It is truly exciting to see a woman, a person of color, and a man who dares to speak of poverty as the three top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. Perhaps in the next election I will see this country returned to the values that I, and a majority of Americans, hold dear: compassion, fiscal health, environmental health, health care and quality of our lives, and America standing as a beacon for international stability, for a start!

However, we have not yet won. I believe we will, if we can convince swing voters of the truth: that we have the best interest of all Americans at heart. With that in mind, I have a radical proposal that I hope you will all consider very carefully:

I beg of you to completely refrain from any negative statements or ads about each other in the coming campaign. You read that right: completely refrain.

Although I'm pretty sure that my political preferences are more progressive than those of any of you, any of you would be better than a Republican. I don't think I need to remind you that the survival of the human species depends on environmental choices in the next five years which the Republican party has shown no interest in making.

I suggest using that as a touchstone: all three of you will be more powerful than any of you alone in swaying popular taste to supporting democratic ideas. Let's work together to say, "It doesn't matter to us which one of us you vote for. What we need is for any one of us to be elected. American needs a Democratic President. We all have varying strengths and resumes which you can see on our websites. But we all believe in each other's abilities to be the next great president, and we trust America to vote for the Democrat that they feel best about."

I ask you to ask yourselves, which would you prefer? Your Democratic opponent as president, or a Republican?

Please, let's use our collective campaign money to change the world, together. Put the good of the country ahead of your individual careers, and leave the name-calling against Democrats to Republicans. I believe that a united, positive front will do a great deal to court voters, and that a negative one will push them away, which we cannot afford. I beg you to test my theory. The fate of our civilization lies in your hands.

Sincerely,

Lythande

Posted by Lythande (formerly T) at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am struggling to find the words to describe this.

It's beautifully spelled out here at Americablog.com, so I recommend that you head over there and read the whole post.
Short version: Snickers (and parent company Mars, inc.) created a many-layered series of candy bar ads for the Superbowl and for the upcoming Daytona 500 that were startlingly homophobic.

How startlingly, you ask?

Well, here is a screenshot of a man drinking motor oil - a suicidal activity - as a remedy for accidentally touching lips with another man.

Or, alternatively, one could undo accidental gay touching with brutal violence, such as slamming a man under a car hood:

or beating him in the stomach with a wrench:

Apparently thinking they were being funny, Mars created an ad where two "butch" men, desperate to eat a snickers, end up eating the same bar and then being deeply disturbed when their lips accidentally touch. In the version aired during the actual Superbowl, they recoil in disgust and (apparently) start ripping out their chest hair. Homophobic, yes, but not graphically violent.

No, that content was apparently saved for the Snickers website. It's down now (thank you, HRC!) but apparently there was lots of additional content, including:

- alternate endings where, in the sequences that include the images above, the men drank motor oil or antifreeze to "undo" their moment of intimacy, beat each other with wrenches, or slammed each other under hoods of cars. Sure - it's definitely better to be dead than gay!

- and perhaps worst of all, what is apparently real footage of Bears and Colts football players reacting to the "gay" content of the ad. Here's a sample screenshot:

And people wonder why LGBTQ teens have a suicide rate four times that of kids who don't identify as queer.

I am so, so sickened. Please let Snickers/Mars know how you feel.

Posted by Lythande (formerly T) at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)