Edward, the romantic hero of the Twilight series, is a sweet, screwed-up high school kid, and at the beginning of his relationship with Bella, she is attracted to him because he is strange, beautiful, and seemingly repulsed by her. This exact scenario happened several times in my high school between straight girls and gay guys who either hadn't figured out they were gay or were still in the closet. Twilight's fantasy is that the gorgeous gay guy can be your boyfriend, and for the slightly awkward teenage girls who consume the books and movies, that's the clincher. Vampire fiction for young women is the equivalent of lesbian porn for men: Both create an atmosphere of sexual abandon that is nonthreatening. That's what everybody wants, isn't it? Sex that's dangerous and safe at the same time, risky but comfortable, gooey and violent but also traditional and loving. In the bedroom, we want to have one foot in the twenty-first century and another in the nineteenth.
True Blood also casts its shadow on the romance between a young woman and a vampire, but unlike Twilight, which is all subtext and love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name, HBO's cult series connects vampirism to homosexuality explicitly. In the opening credits — best opening credits ever? — a passing road sign reads GOD HATES FANGS. The vampires call the humans "breathers" instead of "breeders," and the series opens with a talk-show interview about vampires "mainstreaming," or "coming out of the coffin." True Blood contrasts its vampires' desires for normalcy with humans who are extreme drug users, shape-shifters, and orgiastic maenads, and it's a perfect encapsulation of the American bedroom at this moment: Everyone is a freak, even the people who claim to rail against freakiness.
I just think it comments on an interesting social phenomenon, and I certainly think there's some truth to it.
The last few generations have seen the genders hate each other... women stereotypically hate men because stereotypically men are all HURR DURR BOOBIES, BRING ME MAH FOOD AND LET ME WATCH FOOTBALL, GET BACK TO THE KITCHEN DURR HURR, NO WAIT, SUCK MAH DICK! NO MEANS YES!
It's a sort of social idea that sets up a really strong power inequality and leave the females unsatisfied (at least those who subscribe to it and play along). Vampires are also powerful, but they're generally refined. They are mysterious but deep and full of experience. They are sexual, but in a very giving way. And since vampires have become a pop culture icon in the last couple of decades, there's a new sort of model for masculinity there (even if few males subscribe to it.) The comparison to female porn is actually pretty apt, I think.
Of course, Twilight is in a completely different category... it's all Mormon and shit. But I suppose it too contributes to this.
FOR almost half of America's brides and grooms, wedded bliss eventually turns to divorce misery. But many go on to marry again (and then again) in the search for the perfect mate. According to Census Bureau data gathered for the first time in 2008, the keenest on remarriage are those in Arkansas and Oklahoma, where over 10% of women who have ever been married have been hitched at least three times. The proportion of men (of those ever married) who go on to have at least three weddings is lower: 9.7% in Arkansas and 9.3% in Oklahoma. Southern and western states have the highest shares of those who are thrice (or more often) married, partly because of younger median marrying ages, more poverty and poorer education. New Jersey and Massachussets have the smallest shares for both women and men.
It’s hard to figure out exactly where John Marcotte is coming from.
Here is what is clear: he took a logical idea, developed a cause around it, established a website, created a firestorm of support and just got authorization from the Secretary of State in California to move forward in getting signatures to put his cause on the ballot next November.
His cause? Eliminating the right to divorce in the state of California, called the California Protection of Marriage Act 2010.
In earlier interviews Marcotte has said a divorce ban is “the next logical step after Proposition 8 to protect the sanctity of marriage.” He believes if people supported Prop 8 but not this measure, they are hypocrites.
His website, rescuemarriage.org, appears on one hand to be very supportive of the mindsets behind Proposition 8; but if you read closely you may notice the writer’s tongue planted firmly in his cheek while he drafted each of the essays on the website. What’s more comical are the comments on each essay. They go all the way left and all the way to the right, as people shift in their seats trying to figure out exactly where Marcotte is coming from while they feign support of a cause they don’t quite truly understand.
A Facebook fan page was set up on September 1st and it already has 6,588 fans. He’s sold hundreds of shirts that say “You said till death do us part. You’re not dead yet!" and has been booked on both left and right leaning shows in an attempt to clarify his position. He is often questioned regarding his seriousness of the matter. The Facebook page says the group is “protecting traditional marriage by banning divorce.”
In a recent interview, Marcotte was quoted as saying “People who supported Prop 8 weren't trying to take rights away from gays, they just wanted to protect traditional marriage. That's why I'm confident that they will support this initiative, even though this time it will be their rights that are diminished. To not support it would be hypocritical.”
But is Marcotte anti-gay? Anti-anti-gay? Everything about him, his comments, his cause, his social networking - is completely ambiguous. Personally, I think he wants it that way to show how ridiculous we all are.
A rally is planned at noon on November 14 at Cesar Chavez Plaza (J Street and 10th) in Sacramento, to launch the now official, state-sanctioned petition.
The group must get 700,000 signatures to qualify the measure for the 2010 ballot. The proposed act would amend the state’s constitution, to eliminate the ability of married couples to get divorced. They could, however, still seek annulment (if they qualify).
The measure is widely supported by proponents of gay marriage, to make a point that those who argued for Proposition 8 last year may not in fact, want their own rights taken away in order to “protect the sanctity of marriage.”
The 2010 California Protection of Marriage Act’s Facebook page is offering ride-shares to the capitol area for the November 14th rally, so people can attend from all over the state in order to “meet like-minded folk.” It might be interesting to see just who these like-minded folk might be.
Woo!! This is awesome. At least... I think it is. If he's doing what I think he's doing. Which seems pretty obvious, at least in the way this article characterizes it.
I don't know how it is in the US, but normally, but normally the authority competent to end or leave certain act without effect is the one that enabled it in the first place.
New Delhi, India (CNN) -- Most Indian mothers want their daughters to marry decent men who make a good living. Now, in parts of rural India, women have a new -- and rather unusual -- demand for matrimony: a toilet.
"No toilet, no bride," has become a rallying cry for women raising a stink about the lack of a basic amenity.
They see it as a human rights issue, especially in villages where plumbing can be nonexistent.
It was that way in Sunariyan Kalan in the northern state of Haryana. Sumitra Rathi said village women had no choice but to relieve themselves without privacy.
They would go before sunrise or hold it in until darkness fell once again to avoid being seen. Or they would walk out to the fields and endure embarrassment. They don't want their daughters to face the same indignity.
"Many of them do make serious inquiries from the families of grooms about latrines," she said.
As a member of the local council, Rathi has helped build toilets in 250 houses in Sunariyan Kalan since 1996.
Still, about five dozen homes lack covered bathrooms.
The problem is so big in India that the country would need to construct 112,000 toilets every day if it wants to meet its sanitation goal by 2012, according to the Ministry of Rural Development.
Even as India emerges as a global economic power, millions of its citizens still live in poverty. The government estimates that less than 30 percent of villagers have access to latrines, which poses serious health risks and increases the threat of deadly diseases like typhoid and malaria.
To help overcome the enormity of the sanitation challenge, the government is offering incentives to encourage villagers to build bathrooms. The poorest
of the poor in Haryana stands to receive Rs. 2,200 ($48) for each toilet they install, said P.S. Yadav, a state coordinator for the sanitation campaign.
The incentives are especially attractive to women, for whom the problem transcends health issues.
Local women, often illiterate, have taken a keen interest in bathroom construction, said Roshni Devi, the council chief in Haryana's Kothal Khurd village.
And through it, they have gained a sense of self, making the lowly toilet seat feel more like a lofty throne.
After spending much of 2009 offline, the Chinese version of World of Warcraft has found itself in limbo once again. According to Reuters, the authoritarian nation's General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) has revoked the permit needed to operate the game from Blizzard Entertainment's localization partner, NetEase.
Regulators reportedly claimed that NetEase, which landed the localization contract for the massively multiplayer role-playing game in April, had committed "gross violations" of Chinese law. As a result, GAPP officials ordered NetEase to stop charging players of the game in China and cease accepting any new registrations. It also rejected the company's application to localize the first WOW expansion, The Burning Crusade.
As a result of the GAPP's move, NetEase saw its shares fall 2.4 percent on the NASDAQ stock exchange to close the day at $37.69. (Shares were down an additional 1.38 percent in after-hours trading.) Reps for the company told Reuters they believe they are in full compliance with the GAPP regulations and were seeking "clarification" as to what exact violations were committed.
Roth Capital Partners analyst Adam Krejcik blamed the sudden revocation on behind-the-scenes jockeying for power by the GAPP and China's powerful Ministry of Culture, which has been leading a crackdown on online gaming all year. "These guys are essentially stuck in the middle of this power struggle," Krejcik said of NetEase.
If World of Warcraft is shut down in China permanently, it will have an adverse effect on the earnings of Blizzard's parent company, Activision Blizzard. Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey told Reuters that $0.05 could be lopped off the megapublisher's per share earnings, which are expected to be $0.65 for the 2009 fiscal year.
Basically, there are two competing government agencies in China that both think they have the right to manage this. So they're duking it out and afraid of losing face, while in the meantime nobody gets to play WoW. It's a battle between the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China and the General Administration of Press and Publication of the People's Republic of China. I'm fairly confident this is only temporary, it'll probably be back up eventually. When, I don't know. In a week, in a month, in a few months, I dunno. But I'm sure it'll be back up sometime. The government knows too well what happens when millions of youth suddenly get pissed off at it.
Edit: So I got home and can still log on. Apparently it's not shut down yet. Or it's been ordered to but hasn't happened yet. Weird stuff going on.
So I got home and can still log on. Apparently it's not shut down yet. Or it's been ordered to but hasn't happened yet. Weird stuff going on.
In the article they said they can't charge players or take any new registrations. I think that means anyone who was already on can play for free until they sort out their problems.
Oh sorry, I didn't post the other article that clarified more. I forget where it was, but the government may cut off the company's entire internet connection until they get it resolved. Cause, you know, they can do that.
Edit: Apparently NetEase is trying to reach a compromise and sticking a 3 hour per day time limit on a bunch of accounts (mine included). After 3 hours you are "tired" in game, and you get half rewards for everything.
They have not. China is particularly bitchy about skeletons. I'm not entirely sure why, but it may be a cultural thing. Given that a girl I work with once cringed when she saw the undead in the game, there may be some truth to this. And given Lich King's death knight and overabundance of skeletons (I hear), it means that a lot of changes have to be made. Apparently a lot of changes have been made to the death knight, but I don't know what. Rumors abound that they are getting ready to release it soon, but I am not holding my breath.
Course, if I were to play on Taiwan servers, I could play Lich King. But I don't know anyone in Taiwan who can buy the game cards at local 7-11s, so I'm out of luck.
I'm not entirely sure. I always play on English copies of the game jerry rigged to access Chinese servers and read/write Chinese fonts.
For example, when you die in the game and pick up your corpse, there is a skeleton left behind. That was a no-no by the government, so Blizzard redesigned it to leave a little gravestone and mound of dirt instead. I think they also fleshed out some skeletons. But I haven't played on a Chinese copy before, except for like one or two levels at the beginning of the human campaign, so I haven't seen any of this firsthand.
Hmm...I wonder what they'll do with DK's then; Maybe....make them a whole lot less of a pain in my shaman ass. Well, The Chinese equivalent of my shaman ass.
Reports started spreading this weekend that iPhone users in Australia had been falling victim to "ikee," a worm that replaces default wallpaper with a picture of Rick Astley, the British pop singer whose song "Never Gonna Give You Up" has gained eternal infamy thanks to the mainstreaming of the "Rickrolling" prank craze. The photo is accompanied by the message "ikee is never gonna give you up," and it's apparently quite difficult to remove. According to security firm Sophos, this is the first worm detected that targets the iPhone.
The vulnerability is pretty specific: the phones must be jailbroken in order to be affected, and it appears to spread by searching an infected phone's contacts to find other jailbroken-phone users who have installed the Unix software SSH (secure shell) but haven't yet changed their passwords from Apple's default root password, "alpine."
Sophos says that it has not heard of any occurrences of the worm outside Australia, and that while it doesn't appear to do anything worse than irritate and embarrass affected users, that it highlights the vulnerabilities that jailbroken phones face.
Texas Accidentally Bans Straight Marriage
Law designed to forbid gay civil unions actually bars any unions
The geniuses who wrote Texas’ gay marriage ban may have accidentally banned all marriage in the state, according to one Houston lawyer. Subsection B of the ban, a constitutional amendment ratified in 2005, states, “This state…may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.” The intent was to prevent even civil unions for gay couples—but it doesn’t actually specify the “gay” part.
The wording essentially “eliminates marriage in Texas,” Barbara Ann Radnofsky, the Democratic candidate for state attorney general tells the McClatchy Papers. “You do not have to have a fancy law degree to read this and understand what it plainly says.” Conservatives scoffed at Radnofsky’s tactics. “It’s a silly argument,” said the head of an organization that helped draft the amendment. A lawsuit based on it would have “about one chance in a trillion” of succeeding.
Category: Religion • Social science
Posted on: November 30, 2009 3:30 PM, by Ed Yong
For many religious people, the popular question "What would Jesus do?" is essentially the same as "What would I do?" That's the message from an intriguing and controversial new study by Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago. Through a combination of surveys, psychological manipulation and brain-scanning, he has found that when religious Americans try to infer the will of God, they mainly draw on their own personal beliefs.
An image of an obese passenger squeezed into an economy airline seat has reopened a debate about how airlines deal with growing numbers of oversized passengers.
The picture, posted on an aviation blog, was reportedly taken by a flight attendant to illustrate to airline managers the difficulty of dealing with passengers who cannot fit into seats.
It is unclear if the man was aware his picture was being taken or whether the flight, on US carrier American Airlines, took off with the passenger spilling out of his seat.
Airlines already offer extended seatbelts to larger passengers to comply with safety rules but a number of carriers now insist obese customers buy an extra seat.
US domestic no-frills airline Southwest has a “customer of size” policy that insists passengers who cannot lower both armrests buy a second ticket which is reimbursed if the flight is not full.
American Airlines does not have such a requirement but urges passengers to “recognize ahead of time that they may need to purchase two seats”.
The image, apparently taken on a Boeing 757, was sent to writer Kieran Daly and posted on his blog at aviation news website, Flightglobal.
It is not clear if the image has been altered but Mr Daly wrote: “This is sent to me with the absolute assurance that it's a genuine picture taken by a flight attendant at American Airlines. The F/A took it to show her manager what was happening on the aircraft (757???) and why she was unhappy about it. Seems the guy paid for only one seat and the gate staff let him board.”
Comments below the blog entry illustrate the debate over how to deal sensitively with obese passengers while ensuring others have enough room.
In a statement, American Airlines said: "At this time American Airlines is unable to confirm whether or not the image referred to was taken by a member of flight crew but will investigate the situation internally to determine if any of the airline's strict policies were not correctly applied.
"American Airlines’ primary concern is for the safety and comfort of its passengers and crews and consequently passengers are advised to book two seats if they are concerned that they will require them. If a flight is not full, however, passengers' needs would be accommodated without charge wherever possible."
Comments
Vampire popularity blamed on young women wanting to have sex with gay men - much smaller article.
The last few generations have seen the genders hate each other... women stereotypically hate men because stereotypically men are all HURR DURR BOOBIES, BRING ME MAH FOOD AND LET ME WATCH FOOTBALL, GET BACK TO THE KITCHEN DURR HURR, NO WAIT, SUCK MAH DICK! NO MEANS YES!
It's a sort of social idea that sets up a really strong power inequality and leave the females unsatisfied (at least those who subscribe to it and play along). Vampires are also powerful, but they're generally refined. They are mysterious but deep and full of experience. They are sexual, but in a very giving way. And since vampires have become a pop culture icon in the last couple of decades, there's a new sort of model for masculinity there (even if few males subscribe to it.) The comparison to female porn is actually pretty apt, I think.
Of course, Twilight is in a completely different category... it's all Mormon and shit. But I suppose it too contributes to this.
World of Warcraft shut down in China
Basically, there are two competing government agencies in China that both think they have the right to manage this. So they're duking it out and afraid of losing face, while in the meantime nobody gets to play WoW. It's a battle between the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China and the General Administration of Press and Publication of the People's Republic of China. I'm fairly confident this is only temporary, it'll probably be back up eventually. When, I don't know. In a week, in a month, in a few months, I dunno. But I'm sure it'll be back up sometime. The government knows too well what happens when millions of youth suddenly get pissed off at it.
Edit: So I got home and can still log on. Apparently it's not shut down yet. Or it's been ordered to but hasn't happened yet. Weird stuff going on.
In the article they said they can't charge players or take any new registrations. I think that means anyone who was already on can play for free until they sort out their problems.
Edit: Apparently NetEase is trying to reach a compromise and sticking a 3 hour per day time limit on a bunch of accounts (mine included). After 3 hours you are "tired" in game, and you get half rewards for everything.
That'll just make everyone play twice as much.
Unrelated, But have they not even released Wrath in China yet? I thought I read something about that.
Course, if I were to play on Taiwan servers, I could play Lich King. But I don't know anyone in Taiwan who can buy the game cards at local 7-11s, so I'm out of luck.
For example, when you die in the game and pick up your corpse, there is a skeleton left behind. That was a no-no by the government, so Blizzard redesigned it to leave a little gravestone and mound of dirt instead. I think they also fleshed out some skeletons. But I haven't played on a Chinese copy before, except for like one or two levels at the beginning of the human campaign, so I haven't seen any of this firsthand.
http://www.newser.com/story/74400/texas-accidentally-bans-straight-marriage.html?utm_source=addthis&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=story