Pink. Amazing, Miraculous Pink.

Saad sent this fine example of everyday patriarchy, and the Power of Pink™:

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Okay, the only actual difference I see here is the pill colour. Orange in the standard package, pink in the special Pink Power package. Oh, wait, the Pink Power states it’s for sensitive stomachs. Going by the handy dandy coding, this means only women have sensitive stomachs. Sorry men, you can’t have one of those. There’s a bit more interesting coding, too. The standard package: Gentle, predictable overnight relief. The Pink Power package: Gentle, dependable relief for sensitive stomachs. Women aren’t interested in predictable, no. They want dependable. Got to have that specifically coded assurance of stability and security, a pat on the hand, a pink promise you’ll be taken care of, sensitively.

Jesus, what a load of shit. A bright pink load of shit.

Simon Stalenhag.

Simon Stålenhag has an amazing body of work, paintings which are sci-fi, dystopian, poignant, a little bit sweet, a little bit horror. It was really difficult to choose some to post here, they are all fabulous. Have a visit at Simon’s gallery, it’s well worth it.  Click for full size.

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All art by Simon Stålenhag. Simon Stålenhag Art Gallery. The prices for prints is very reasonable, I think I’m going to have to indulge once. Or seven times.

Muhammad Ali has walked on.

It’s a sad day. Growing up, Muhammad Ali was one of my first windows into thinking outside the white, Catholic box I had been stuffed in, and was being raised in. I owe him a great deal of thanks.

Statement from President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama on the Passing of Muhammad Ali.

Muhammad Ali was The Greatest. Period. If you just asked him, he’d tell you. He’d tell you he was the double greatest; that he’d “handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder into jail.”

But what made The Champ the greatest – what truly separated him from everyone else – is that everyone else would tell you pretty much the same thing.

Like everyone else on the planet, Michelle and I mourn his passing. But we’re also grateful to God for how fortunate we are to have known him, if just for a while; for how fortunate we all are that The Greatest chose to grace our time.

In my private study, just off the Oval Office, I keep a pair of his gloves on display, just under that iconic photograph of him – the young champ, just 22 years old, roaring like a lion over a fallen Sonny Liston. I was too young when it was taken to understand who he was – still Cassius Clay, already an Olympic Gold Medal winner, yet to set out on a spiritual journey that would lead him to his Muslim faith, exile him at the peak of his power, and set the stage for his return to greatness with a name as familiar to the downtrodden in the slums of Southeast Asia and the villages of Africa as it was to cheering crowds in Madison Square Garden.

“I am America,” he once declared. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me – black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.”

That’s the Ali I came to know as I came of age – not just as skilled a poet on the mic as he was a fighter in the ring, but a man who fought for what was right. A man who fought for us. He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.

He wasn’t perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved. But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes – maybe because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves. Later, as his physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace and reconciliation around the world. We saw a man who said he was so mean he’d make medicine sick reveal a soft spot, visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a torch, and fight his greatest fight of all on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that ravaged his body, but couldn’t take the spark from his eyes.

Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it. Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family, and we pray that the greatest fighter of them all finally rests in peace.

DC Comics Reboot: Rebirth

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DC Comics, once known as Detective Comics, slowly came to life and prosperity in the late 1930s and early 1940s. While moderately successful in its early days, it wasn’t until the rises of Batman and Superman that the company really took off. Skip ahead over 75 years, and DC Comics is one of the “big two,” along with Marvel. Now, they’re about to completely reboot their entire line of comics… again.

After the marginal success of their last reboot, the company aims to refocus on the core of what makes their characters so special. This reboot’s called Rebirth, and as DC Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns explained in an announcement trailer, “The whole point of Rebirth for all of us is to get back to the essence of the characters.” Because sweeps like this don’t happen very often, this week we’re looking at Batman, Superman, Green Arrow, and Green Lantern. Do they mark a bold new direction for the company? Or should readers steer clear?

Giaco Furino at The Creators Project has the low down on all the new rebirths – Batman, Superman, Green Lantern and Green Arrow.

McCrory: I’ll Stand Firm.

Andrew Dye/Journal.

Andrew Dye/Journal.

Gov. Pat McCrory said he will continue to fight for a “respect for privacy” in the face of a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit over the state’s controversial “bathroom bill.”

McCrory was speaking at North Carolinians for Home Education’s annual conference, being held this week at the Benton Convention Center.

McCrory praised the several hundred families in the crowd for their choice to home school their children. He said it’s important for families to have choices about educating their children and for leaders to respect all of those choices.

[…]

“One other advantage of home schooling is you aren’t going to have the president, the attorney general or the mayor of Charlotte telling you what bathroom (to use),” he said, to a standing ovation.

[…]

McCrory said he would support unisex bathrooms for transgender students, saying that we should give kids with “special needs and unique needs” an option.

“But don’t change the norms that have been working for generations,” he said.

“Special needs and unique needs”? FFS, how dense can McCrory get here? This is as simple as it gets: transgender woman = woman. Transgender man = man. Transgender girl = girl. Transgender boy = boy. It’s quite interesting how McCrory thinks that unisex lavs are great…for those weird people. Not so great for actual people, eh, Pat? I have a question about these wonderful, unisex, transgender persons only lavs, Pat – who is going to police them to keep all the cis people out? Perhaps all cis people should be made to go through years of red tape to get a special identification, and absolutely must be karyotyped!

McCrory blamed the kerfuffle on Democrats, saying there were no issues with bathroom rules until the Charlotte City Council passed a nondiscrimination ordinance to provide legal protections for gay, lesbian and transgender people that included language would allow transgender individuals to use the bathroom corresponding to the gender with which they identify. HB2 was passed in a one-day special session to reverse Charlotte’s ordinance.

Tsk. You’d think those ‘norms’ that had been working great for generations wouldn’t have gotten knocked down by a bit of non-discrimination. Also, this is a “kerfuffle”? People’s lives. Legislation of hatred, fear, and bigotry. Inciting hatred and harm. Kerfuffle. Fuck you, McCrory. I hope you go down in a blaze of shame, a sad footnote on the rigid, atrophied thinking of a conservative bigot.

Via Winston-Salem Journal.

Just Pee (Where You Wanna Pee).

The Tony-winning Broadway stars at Kinky Boots have put together an elaborate response to the bathroom panic that’s criss-crossing the nation — especially North Carolina. It includes a message from the show’s creators Harvey Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper.

Said Fierstein in a scathing post on Facebook:

“So, you don’t like transgender people? Have the balls to honestly say it. Today’s bathroom controversy is fueled by the same bigots that sought to ban gay and lesbian teachers forty years ago. All these years later they’re still hiding behind the claim that they’re only protecting their children. These discussions are great opportunities to educate and strengthen the bonds that make us all one human family. But when I see discussions on social media proposing a Men’s Room for adult males, a Ladies’ Room for adult females, a Little Girls’s Room for little girls, a little Boy’s Room for little boys and then another pair of bathrooms for Little Boys with a parent and Little Girls with a parent… Well, it’s time to take a step back and laugh at our own absurdity. This video is a reminder that sometimes we go to the bathroom just to pee.”

“You can change the world when you change your mind,” was the message posted by Kinky Boots to Facebook with the video, using hashtag #JustPee.

Thankfully, I haven’t seen those discussions, but if I had, there would be one question: how would that solve anything? You’d still be forcing transgender people into a binary they most likely wouldn’t be comfortable with. Absurdity is the only word for this nonsense. All this anxiety, all this panic, over what? Transgender people have been using public lavs, this didn’t just start a few months ago. It had seemed that a lot of people were finally coming around to the idea of unisex a/o family type public lavs, and now every possible permutation of a person has to have their own?

Via The Advocate. Now I have to watch this Kinky Boots again. That’s a good thing.

Going Catholic On Condoms.

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Perhaps I should say, doing Catholics one better on condoms. The Catholic Church has been telling people, for decades, that condoms don’t prevent HIV at all, and that they are against god. It seems Russia is prepared to outdo them on the misinformation score.

A Russian study actually blames condoms for the spread of HIV. The Russian Institute for Strategic Research (RISR), which was set up by the Kremlin in 2012, presented a report on Tuesday to Moscow’s city council that casts doubt over the validity of well documented statistics showing the spread of HIV in Russia.

It’s worth noting that one of stated goals of the RISR is “Family-based solutions as a strategy for overcoming depopulation.” Which is perhaps why it’s not a surprise to see that the study’s authors alluded to “traditional values” being the route to stopping the spread of HIV, blaming promiscuity and homosexuality for infections.

That certainly sounds familiar. Looks like the U.S. and Russia have a lot on common these days.

Tatyana Guzenkova, deputy head of the organization, presented the report, as according to the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant. It is also not a stretch to imagine this being used by the Kremlin to buttress its ongoing hostility towards Russia’s LGBT movement.

Like most things under the Putin regime, the RISR is hard to see as anything but government loyalists, especially because internal dispute about the study was quite vocal. The head of the Federal Center for fighting AIDS, Vadim Pokrovsky, for example, stressed the importance of focusing on condoms to reduce the spread of HIV.

Via Plus.

The Big Gay Hindu Wedding

Rishi Agarwal and Daniel Langdon, right, pictured here with Agarwal's parents, Vijay and Sushma. Agarwal’s parents have come a long way since Rishi came out in 2004 and hope sharing their story can help other South Asian parents who may be struggling with supporting their LGBTQ children. (Vince Talotta / Toronto Star)

Rishi Agarwal and Daniel Langdon, right, pictured here with Agarwal’s parents, Vijay and Sushma. Agarwal’s parents have come a long way since Rishi came out in 2004 and hope sharing their story can help other South Asian parents who may be struggling with supporting their LGBTQ children. (Vince Talotta / Toronto Star)

Rishi Agarwal’s story is nothing especially new, but his happy ending is one that’s spreading a message of tolerance and acceptance within a community that desperately needs it.

Agarwal was raised in a devout Hindu home in suburban Toronto by his parents Vijay and Sushma, who both emigrated there from India over 30 years ago. When Rishi came out to them in 2004, they were initially shocked and devastated.

But after opening themselves up and doing some research, the parents changed their opinion.

“There is a cultural kind of a stigma,” Vijay told The Toronto Star. “This is strictly our baggage, what we bring from India,” said Rishi’s mother Sushma. When their son asked them if he should move out of the house after coming out of the closet, they told him absolutely not, and that they still loved him.

Even though his parents’ mother country still frowns heavily on homosexuality—it is illegal to be gay in India and the topic is considered shameful in traditional Indian families—Vijay and Sushma not only learned to embrace their gay son, but also threw him a classically opulent Indian wedding when he decided to marry his boyfriend, Daniel.

Vijay told The Star of the struggle they faced in trying to make the wedding happen, in all its traditional pomp and circumstance. He says he was turned down by seven priests before finding one who would perform the ceremony. “They initially said yes,” he says, “and as soon as they found out that it was a gay wedding, they turned away.”

In spite of this, the wedding was a huge and beautiful bash, replete with all the colorful rituals: matching turbans, the grooms circling a sacred fire, exchanging flower garlands, and getting matching henna tattoos of each other’s initials.

[…]

Now, the Agarwal family is publicizing its story. They have spearheaded their chapter of PFLAG outside of Toronto, which specifically targets South Asian parents of gay children, and Sushma has even written a book about her experience, called Loving My Gay Child: A Mother’s Journey to Acceptance.

Agarwal and Langdon are cheered after exchanging flower garlands at their wedding. “The purpose of that is to welcome each other into each other’s lives,” said Agarwal. “The second that garland has been placed, it’s kind of like the point of no return.” (Photos by Channa Photography)

Agarwal and Langdon are cheered after exchanging flower garlands at their wedding. “The purpose of that is to welcome each other into each other’s lives,” said Agarwal. “The second that garland has been placed, it’s kind of like the point of no return.” (Photos by Channa Photography)

Via Out, The Star, and Metro.