Billmon:
And this time, they might have affected the votes of white people. Equal protection! Equal protection!
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November 9, 2006
WB: Political Cross Dressing Watch
Comments
Okay… I don’t want to jump on the “everyone is a closet sexist” bandwagon… but this is getting ugly. Republicans often pejoratively “feminize” their opponents in various subtle ways; I don’t see the point when they do it, and I’m failing to see the point here as well. We can call Republicans hypocrites without suggesting that they are (horrors!) not real men… and without becoming hypocritical ourselves.
Posted by: Monolycus | Nov 9 2006 5:17 utc | 2
Here’s the correct one:
http://billmon.org/archives/002952.html
Posted by: Ensley | Nov 9 2006 5:23 utc | 3
@annie (#4)
Feminizing or infantilizing… it’s certainly not about rehabilition. I don’t see a whole lot of difference between treating people this way and the “frat pranks” of putting women’s underwear on the heads of Abu Ghraib prisoners and leading them around on leashes. This is entirely about the psychosexual hangups of the people holding the keys.
Posted by: Monolycus | Nov 9 2006 5:43 utc | 6
I’m in complete agreement here with you Monolycus. Treating people as objects through humiliation and shame is not rehabilition, by objectifying the criminals, their lives become less than human.
Traumatizing the traumatized is adversarial justice, which merely repeats the cycle of violence. Retributive justice is not true justice neither for the victim or the perp, and leaves no room for substantive reforms. It treats the symptom and not the problem of how we dehumanize one another.
I’m a hugh fan of Denise Breton’s work with Restorative Justice her work –as well as others– are what the Buddhist’s call mindful justice.
Also see, Mystic Heart of Justice: Restoring Wholeness in a Broken World
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 9 2006 6:06 utc | 7
Here I go again getting into a P.C. discussion but I have a feeling that what Billmon is doin is about changing gender. In other words if it had been a woman politician speaking out of the opposite side of her mouth then Billmon were have photoshopped her into a macho rig.
It’s not about saying Ed Gillespie’s behaviour is girlish and less than what it was; it’s about Gillespie taking the opposite point of view from the one he last held in public.
The litmus test should always be “is this image/text being used to demean the ‘marginalised’ group or is it being used because the image is apt without being demeaning”.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 9 2006 6:09 utc | 8
i see your point monolycus and agree that could be the intentions of some of the jailers, or all of them, i really don’t know. i do believe tho that colors effect us in very powerful ways. men are conditioned thru society to reject pink although i do believe colors effect us in ways we can’t always control. pink is one of the most healing soothing colors, this goes for both sexes. rose quartz is used in healing visualizations as is the color pink. that is where the idea behind rose colored glasses comes from. so while men (especially homophobic ones) may abhor the colors studies have shown it heals and soothes. the other color that nuetralizes is light shades of green which is why it is used in institutions.
put a woman in a tailored suit no one goes apeshit, but put a man in a dress all hell breaks loose. my first association of the term pretty in pink was ringwald at the prom. getting all formal and delicate on us. one could see the symbolism in Gillespie’s statement, easily. i just laughed at it, but then i didn’t get all bent out of shape w/that other PI post last week either. i also got a kick out of the youtube spongebob singing some victory song posted @ fdl. i think when your party promotes homophobia, racism, etc, one should get used to accepting a little jest or humor. thats just me, i respect your viewpoint.
and, if i were a warden at a prison (never!), i might paint all the walls pink, for a different reason tho. hey, pink is persuasive and relaxing.
Posted by: annie | Nov 9 2006 6:24 utc | 9
There are a lot of multisyllabic words in this thread. Words that clearly show people weren’t at Halloween parties this year. Ease up. You won’t be able to Social Studies fix the world.
Posted by: SteinL | Nov 9 2006 7:15 utc | 10
Addendum to # 7
Call me a radical if you will, for not being satisfied with this seemingly democratic victory, but the word “radical” derives from the Latin word for root. Therefore, if you want to get to the root of anything you must be radical.
If humanity is to evolve we must break free from our self imposed black iron prison and to do that we have to think deeper, the bars are made out of BS (belief systems)…
The most thoroughly and relentlessly Damned, banned, excluded, condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignored, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and defamed of all Damned Things is the individual human being. The social engineers, statisticians, psychologists, sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commisars, kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this Damned Thing into carefully prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the Damned Thing will not fit into the slot assigned to it. The theologians call it a sinner and try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish it. The psychotherapist
calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still, the Damned Thing will not fit into their slots.
There was also the Prison Project, where Timothy was hoping to rehabilitate selfish or self-centered or cruel people.
I think the scientific evidence from the early 60’s – before the government banned all scientific research and revived the inquisition – there were quite a lot of scientific studies published and I think it clearly indicates that psychedelics are good for almost everything they were used for – almost every disease – with some kind of positive result in one study or another and certainly produces religious experiences with only minimum suggestion to get them moving in that direction. Like in the Good Friday study that was done at Harvard; you put the subjects in a church and gave half of them acid and half of them a placebo and the ones on acid almost all had religious experiences. I look at Leary’s convict rehabilitation research, he reversed the recidivism rate, most of his convicts last heard of were still not committing new crimes, the average new convict is back in prison within one year, Leary’s convicts – almost about 80 percent of them – seemed to have stayed out of prison which means either the acid made them more compassionate and they stopped committing violent crimes or it made them more clever and they’re not getting caught, I dunno which, but it keeps them out of prison anyway. We think it made them more compassionate, besides they weren’t all in for violent crimes, a lot of them were in for non-violent crimes like drug use, embezzlement; things like that. Embezzlement is not nice though, I would not like people to steal money out of my bank account, though it’s not a violent crime.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 9 2006 7:34 utc | 11
ok, i’ll admit it, billmon putting gillespie in the dress was demeaning and mean spirited.
Gillespie taking the opposite point of view from the one he last held in public.
no… it was w/the properness he dressed his opinion.(lipstick on a pig) the use of the terms “dignified manner”,”accurately counted” vs “not a numbers game” “just counting the ballots”. the post could have worked w/condi or hillary all puffed up in a pink 50’s dress just as easily, it wouldn’t have had the same impact, but it would have worked and still cut.
uncle, those experiments were done w/psilocybin not acid btw, there is a distinct difference. pretty hard to have a bad trip on psilocybin , otherwise known as the ‘love drug’. now eating psilocybin in a pink environment, that would be radical.
Posted by: annie | Nov 9 2006 8:24 utc | 12
Again the PC deer in the headlights argument. i dont know why people insist on not taking into account the subject of the personification. Like the blackface issue, but unlike the gylangirl/DiD argument( which could convincinly be intrepreted as sexist because it was generically ground in femaleness) the subject, in this case is again a discredited stereotype of women, the oblivious, clueless, and submissive “honey, we’re having TV dinners tonight” 50’s type woman. It would’nt have worked if the (photo-shoped) womans body had credible, interesting, or even sex — appeal.
Posted by: anna missed | Nov 9 2006 8:55 utc | 14
I like the pink jails with teddy bears. At least the warden is trying something.
Maybe it would be a better idea to not have so many men in jail, no?
But the trend toward rehab I like. Maybe after a few years they can go to preschool. It’s worth a try.
Posted by: jonku | Nov 9 2006 9:37 utc | 15
@annie
I could go for that only if the intent was safety, trust and (godess forbid i say it…) love.
With the true intent of rehabilitation and compassion, however, the State has no compassion. The State’s true intention is to stand in for the Godhead. Omnipresence, omnipotence, all knowing all seeing, infallible and eternal. A place holder for God. God without emotion (emotion in latin means to move) The State as an entity only has one emotion, that emotion is wraith and it meters out cruelty in the form of justice. Cold antiseptic calculated Judaeo-Christian morals of revenge.
Reverend Desmond Tutu has stated, revenge Is not justice. Likewise, former hostage Terry Waite speaks to this in Justice or Revenge?. Revenge or vengeance consists primarily of retaliation against a person or group in response to perceived wrongdoing. Although many aspects of revenge resemble or echo the concept of justice, revenge usually has a more injurious than harmonious goal.
@jonku
At least the warden is trying something.
Yeah, they’re taking a page out of the CIA playbook.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 9 2006 12:52 utc | 17
This ain’t a road I’m chomping at the bit to go down with y’all. But since I started it…
@Debs (#8)
I wasn’t trying to play P.C. police here, although you can make an argument that the underlying contempt here is against women. My criticism isn’t the same as the “Blitzer Blackface”. What I am saying is that it is a stupid idea to take this route of parody. If Repubs “feminize” their opponents (and they do), then to call a Repub who acts uncharacteristically unRepublican “effeminate” is tanatamount to saying “You’re right. Republicans are real men. Republicans who stray lose their manhood and become helpless and effeminate… like the opposition.” It’s tactically stupidand hypocritical.
@annie (#9)
Those “color studies” they cite have been around as long as I have, and I have not seen that they make more than the tiniest nuance of difference in the behaviour of collections of individuals. I have been in garish classrooms and been in classrooms with “scientifically determined” color schemes, and am unconvinced it makes any appreciable difference. The psychology of color is an artistic pursuit, but does not seem, in my humble experience, to be a behavioural one. But then, I couldn’t think of, much less rationalise, half the degradations that seem to leap to the minds of U.S. prison guards and warders.
@SteinL (#10)
“Kos” is a monosyllabic word.
@Unca (#11)
You radical.
@animist (#14)
See my response to Debs. Billmon is no liberal… and I am no P.C. thug. That’s not the basic grounds for my complaint. I’ve just never seen much comical about men in women’s clothing. Personal shortcoming.
@jonku (#15)
Oh, they’re trying something all right. Not sure why you feel that Sheriff Lobo on a personal power trip is imminently qualified to perform human psychological experimentation, but you’re entitled to it… except calling it “rehab”, which doesn’t enter into the equation at all. Doubt they’ll be rounding up many Canuck protestors to fill their new “day care centers” on Martial Law Day, but those of us with eagles on our passports might not care so much for the regression and gender therapy a hillbilly wants to perform on us.
Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 9 2006 15:45 utc | 18
Me above at #18. Feverish and a little incoherent, so my failure to fill out required fields is the least of my worries.
Posted by: Monolycus | Nov 9 2006 15:48 utc | 19
I’m sorry but I see all of this carping about the images being used to put across a message whose intent isn’t in question as self-flagellatory and destructive. Destructive because if feminizing an opponent is seen as being pejorative, then the person claiming that is basically saying that there is something negative or laughable about the way a group of women have chosen to present themselves.
Yes we could argue over whether women who present themselves in the way that Billmon’s model did, do so because they feel compelled to by a patriarchal society or whether they do so to react against a patriarchal society and both would be correct which then leaves the image fairly neutral.
Just because rethugs use feminising as a, IMO, puerile way of attempting to denigrate another male, it doesn’t mean the rest of us do. In fact one could put up an equally valid argument that by putting this creep into women’s clothes Billmon is casting him in a positive light because women are ethically and evolutionarily superior, however we know that wasn’t Billmon’s intent, just as most know that it wasn’t Billmon’s intent to make the feminising of itself a pejorative.
If the image is seen as an attempt by the photoshopper to show that the subject is presenting himself in a different light than that which he last did then it works without making any judgement on the imagery used.
When people criticise other’s taste in imagery, in situations where the comment isn’t using that image to pass any negative comment (overt or covert) on anything other than the subject, in this case a mealy-mouthed, rethug hack, we may as well be at a Trotskyist wine and cheese party where the sole objective of most attendees is to get through the function without committing an ideological faux pas. In other words be miserable little fucks who couldn’t make a hyena laugh.
So consider the quote from Ian McKellen in todays
POPBITCH
“A couple of years ago I was sitting in the Kodak
Theatre with my acceptance speech in my pocket,
waiting to get up and say that I was the first
openly gay actor to win an Oscar. Unfortunately,
that was the year the blacks won.”
If McKellar can laugh about the way that earnest politburo commissars use discrimination against his sub-culture to further themselves while claiming to be ‘helping’ gay and/or black people, endangered species etc, then surely the rest of us can lighten up a bit and save our approbation for the deliberate assholes like Sacha Cohen, Trent Lott or Ann Coulter.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 9 2006 20:48 utc | 21