Jenny’s Pennies

I have been too busy to post today, but I have to direct you to this little gem: A “psychiatrist” has diagnosed liberalism* as a mental disorder.
Well, it takes one to know one I guess.

Via Pam.

*Liberalism, as you know, has a slightly different meaning in the States than it does here.

All I can say is: WTF?!?!

For non-Swedish readers, the story is this: A dad buys his son a present for his sixth birthday at a big toy store in Gothenburg, Sweden. When the son opens the toy package, a card falls out. It says (my translation):

Homosexuals spread AIDS when they lick each others assholes.
What are they doing? Look at:

www.amoso.se

Dislike homosexuality
Not the homosexual

The store (Toys R Us) takes the incident seriously and say that it is unlikely that an employee is behind it. They say that they will search the part of the store where the toy was displayed (but of course they won’t be able to open all the toy packets to see if any more include the lovely surprise-gift).

AMOSO is a Swedish “organization” (or more like a one-man crusade) led by Ron Linden a.k.a. Ronnie Lindén. Linden says he’s a Swedish American living in California where he earns a PhD in science (yeah right). AMOSO stands for Avslöjande av Myter Om Sexuell Orientering or, in the international version, Exposing Myths About Sexual Orientation (EMASO, yes there is a website, won’t link, Google is your friend). In 2006, Linden went on a strange tour around Sweden, where he parked his van outside roadside McDonald’s and gas stations, and gave out free anti-gay literature aimed at parents who “worry about their child’s sexual orientation”. Sadly, his van was attacked, evidently by AFA (Anti-Fascist Action, an extreme autonomous left organization), which was a stupid strategy and only adds to the “they are out to silence us”-rhetoric used by Linden and his kind (of course, he blamed the attacks to “the homosexual mafia”). Linden has also linked hurricane Katrina and the tsunami to acceptance of homosexuality. He is behind the site www.akegreen.com, about the Swedish minister Åke Green who was tried for hate speech after a sermon about homosexuality. The case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, where Green was acquitted. Still, his case is used by fundamentalists who say that they aren’t allowed to say what they believe (only now they have a Supreme Court decision that says that they are…). (For more ranting about this kind of reasoning, I direct you to this post.)
Antigayretorik has more about AMOSO (in Swedish).

Well, back to the card in the toy package. I wonder what the usual anti-gay suspects will say about this type of guerrilla activism. Of course we can’t know that AMOSO or Linden is actually behind it, it could be a supporter of Linden´s cause, or just someone’s idea of a sick joke. From what I could stomach of the AMOSO website, it seems limited to male homosexuality (with the usual anal fixation). So, if there are any more toy packets with cards, I guess the pink section of the toy store is safe.

Via Feministe, I find this old, but still puke-worthy story about Justice Jon-Jo (sic!) Douglas, judge in Ontario, Canada.

An Ontario judge is at the centre of a misconduct investigation after insisting a witness who is HIV-positive and has Hepatitis C don a mask while testifying in his courtroom.

Three groups have complained to the Ontario Judicial Council about the conduct of Barrie judge Justice Jon-Jo Douglas, who later moved the case to a bigger courtroom in order to create more distance between the witness and the bench. (…)

“The HIV virus will live in a dried state for year after year after year and only needs moisture to reactivate itself,” Douglas insisted, according to a transcript of the Nov. 23 trial proceedings.

Maybe someone needs to tell dear Jon-Jo that it is very possible that he might have been sitting next to someone with HIV or Hepatitis C in a movie theater, or in the subway, or in a restaurant. He might even have shaken their hands. Because, thankfully, there is no law requiring people infected with either HIV or Hepatitis to wear a scarlet letter pinned to their clothes. If that scares Jon-Jo, maybe he should move out to the forest where he can live his life in isolated assholyness.

Really, there is absolutely no excuse for ignorance like this in year 2008.

Via Feministing, I found this story called “Marry him: The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough“, written by a Lori Gottlieb and published in the US magazine The Atlantic.

Short story: If you’re a single and childless woman over thirty, you should stop being picky and just settle for a guy you find tolerable. From the article:

And despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra to get married young was finally (and, it seemed, refreshingly) replaced by encouragement to postpone that milestone in pursuit of high ideals (education! career! but also true love!), every woman I know—no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure—feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.

Oh, I know—I’m guessing there are single 30-year-old women reading this right now who will be writing letters to the editor to say that the women I know aren’t widely representative, that I’ve been co-opted by the cult of the feminist backlash, and basically, that I have no idea what I’m talking about. And all I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous.

That’s right. If you’re not worried about your state of (heterosexual) singleness when you’re a female over thirty, you’re either lying or in denial. You can’t possibly be happy with the way things are. No missy, what you need to do is this:

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.

So it’s better to already be disillusioned to begin with, than to have experienced passion and butterflies in the stomach-happiness and then realizing that no, it wasn’t forever (but that you can work on it)?

Now, that small annoying habits and weird tastes shouldn’t be definite deal-breakers with a partner you otherwise feel happy with, I can agree with. But that you shouldn’t worry about passion and intense connection, that is just sad. There is a vast difference between expecting a knight in shining armor on a white stallion to sweep you off your feet and take you to the land of magical faeries and lollipops where you’ll be happily ever after™, and settle for just anyone that you can tolerate.

I think Hugo Schwyzer put it really well in his response to Gottlieb’s article:

There’s much to be said for compromise in intimate relationships. But wisdom is knowing the difference between a “have to have” and a “would like to have”. And I think the collective experience of a great many people is that at least a period of powerful, mutual, sexual longing falls into the first category.

The article is really long, and just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. For instance, she’s telling people (sorry, women), that when you’re forty, even if the thought of being touched by a certain guy repulses you, you should make an “adult compromise”.

Choosing to spend your life with a guy who doesn’t delight in the small things in life might be considered settling at 30, but not at 35. By 40, if you get a cold shiver down your spine at the thought of embracing a certain guy, but you enjoy his company more than anyone else’s, is that settling or making an adult compromise?

To Gottlieb, marriage seems to be a business arrangement. The husband is a way of getting a free babysitter and financial security - this quote is particularly puke-worthy:

Even women who settle but end up divorced might be in a better position than those of us who became mothers on our own, because many ex-wives get both child-support payments and a free night off when the kids go to Dad’s house for a sleepover.

Yay, first I married a guy I didn’t really care about and whose touch sent shivers down my spine and now we’re divorced and everything turned out so well cause he still gives me money AND I get a night off when he takes the kids to his place. I’m so happy!!!
/snark

You know, couples who do marry because they love each other and have an “intense connection” and truly want to spend the rest of their lives together - even these couples grow apart and get tired and weary of each other. So what’s going to happen to the couple who merely “settled” with each other? Somehow I don’t think they will hold the blueprint to a healthy, happy, equal relationship.

What’s disturbing is her lack of feeling for the man in the equation - is she going to tell him that she has “settled”, or is she going to put on a charade to lead him to think that it’s twu vuw while she really suspects that he’s gay? (Yes, that is an example from the article.)

And to bring children into this equation is just evil. Gottlieb is a single mother (she used a sperm donor). So when she “settles”, she will not only inflict a bad relationship on herself but also on her kid. And kids notice when their parents aren’t happy with each other. There doesn’t have to be any yelling or slamming in doors or abuse of any kind. Kids notice when there is a lack of love. Kids notice when adults pretend. And it’s not making them feel good about themselves.
Trust me on this one.

Pandagon takes on the article here, and Feministing here.