Wendy Davis Teaches Us What the Filibuster Is

After watching the Republican minority in the U.S. Senate abuse the filibuster to the point of it being meaningless for the last 3 years, what Wendy Davis did 2 nights ago took on an extraordinary context.  Rather than simply invoke the silent filibuster and sit there while jobs don't get created, Texas state Senator Davis stood up and talked.

And talked.

And talked.

For 11 hours.

That's almost half a day without eating or sitting or even exiting the senate chamber to use the bathroom.

No, it's not a record by any means -- the longest filibuster in U.S. history is courtesy of Strom Thurmond, who spent 24 hours and 18 minutes running his mouth in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1957 -- but it's nothing to sneeze at.

First, before I get too involved, have a short civics lesson.  The filibuster is a check on majority power in the Senate by allowing the minority to kill a bill by running out the clock so it can't be voted on before the session ends.  Before 2010, this technique was brutal.  You had to talk, and you were not allowed to leave the Senate floor for any reason, and it takes 60 votes to shut you up.  After 2010, the rules changed to allow the "silent filibuster," which required no talking, nor even for the Senator who invoked it to be present for its duration.

The rules in Texas are still the old-school rules.  If you want to kill a bill that badly, you have to fight for it.  The idea being that if a Senator truly cares about not getting this legislation passed, they will endure it.  And fight Davis did, for 11 goddamned hours.  More importantly, she won.  At least for now, until Perry calls his special session and the bullshit parade starts all over again.

My point is that the other night, Wendy Davis showed us what a filibuster is supposed to do and the right way to use it, versus the cowardly shit her Congressional Republican counterparts have been pulling the last three years.  Clogging up the system with nonsense filibusters they don't even have to be present for purely out of spite to the point that routine business stops, because how dare they have to concede final authority to a black guy.

Wendy Davis, while wearing a back brace and pink running shoes, displayed more spine than nearly half of the current U.S. Senate.  Simply by refusing to shut up or sit down until she was forced to.

The problem we have with the filibuster being abused in the national Senate is because it's easier to hold one.  There's been a lot of talk of filibuster reform, and I think besides limiting the number of them per year, the most important change would be to do away with the silent filibuster altogether.  If you want to fight a bill, then fucking fight it and make your colleagues shut you down. If you walk away, you throw in the towel.  Because if killing the bill is that important to you, you won't.  You will stay there for the people who elected you, because you owe them that much.

Senator Davis more than repaid the people in her district.  Let's see just how many U.S. Senators would be far too apathetic to do the same.  Maybe then, Congress can actually get something done for once.

Another One Sees the Light

Alan Chambers, head of the defunct-as-of-four-hours-ago "reparative therapy" organization Exodus International, has effectively said this shit was a bad idea and is closing down the entire operation.

In case you're not familiar with the term, "reparative therapy" is a thoroughly misleading moniker describing the various psychological tortures used to try and "cure" homosexuality.  In the sense that "cure" means "hate yourself until you can't get it up anymore."

Today, Chambers not only announced the dissolution of the organization, but posted an apology to the LBGT community on the organization's website.  And not one of those dickish I'm-not-really-sorry-but-I-don't-want-to-be-seen-as-an-asshole apologies, either.  A genuine "I fucked up royally, I'm sorry, this shit stops now, and while I hope you'll forgive me I don't really expect you to."

It is all too tempting for us Not Straight people and our allies to be gleeful.  I freely admit, I did a fist pump and cackled when I read the headline.  But then I read the apology, and I was no longer laughing and jubilant.

See, Chambers himself is gay.  Chambers is a gay man who subjected himself to this very same "therapy" in an effort to "fix" his attraction to men.   And he finally realized that not only did it not work, but it made him feel like shit.  And then he realized just how many other people his organization had put through this same hell on earth, and had an epiphany.  An awful epiphany that probably made him feel even worse (and rightly so).

This is not something to be gleeful about.  This is not something to be smug and greater-than-ye about.  This is not the time for a petty I-told-you-so no matter how good it would feel to say it.

Because this guy is one of us.

It's easy to feel superior if you've never grown up Not Straight in a very conservative household.  It's easy to say "wow, the dumbfuck finally got it, shame it took so long."  But the reason that's easy is because not growing up with that baggage affords you the privilege of being an outsider.  It affords you a clear head.

For those of us who have grown up as such, it's a different ballgame.  You are conditioned from a very young age to hate not just that one aspect of yourself, but the entire package because of it.  You are made to feel it's a choice even when you know it isn't.  You hate yourself because that's the only way you're accepted by your family, and as a teenager you're fucking terrified of getting disowned.  You will, quite literally, do anything to resolve this conflict.  And the easiest thing at that time is to just stop being Not Straight.  You can't hate yourself if you are not the thing you're raised to hate, after all.

It can and does frequently take people half a lifetime to figure out that the path of least resistance only works for electrons.  Some never do.  And when you do finally realize it with the knowledge that there's a whole shitload of people mad at you, it really does take the courage of a comic book hero to stand up and say "wow, did I ever fuck up.  I'm so, so sorry."

Alan Chambers did just that.  He faced the anger of both his own organization and the LGBT community and said "fuck it, this isn't working, I'm done, and I'm sorry."

If we want more Christians like him, we can't be smug.  We can't sink to our base emotions and point and laugh.  We have to show them this is right, and to do so we have to be the bigger people and say "hey, better late than never."

We don't have to forgive them for the pain they've caused.  But we do have to meet their decision and their change of heart with the support and kindness we want to see in them now.  Not derision and mockery.

Me?  I get him.  I grew up with the same baggage and no matter how much I think I've conquered it, some days I still lug it around like ten-tonne shackles because that kind of programming is exceedingly difficult to even erase, nevermind rewrite.  This is a guy who is a decade my senior and is just now attempting to take those shackles off.

So yes, better late than never, Mr. Chambers.  You're on the right track.  Just keep going.

Why Real Men Hate Rape Culture

Again, massive trigger warning for discussions of rape and rape culture following.

So, we ladyfolk already know why we should hate rape culture and everything it stands for: the victim blame, the suppression of women's sexuality, and the attempt to control our thoughts and actions through the fear of violence if we don't comply.

But you know what?  Men, real men, should hate this idea just as much as we do, if not a little more.

When society says that it's the (usually female) victim's responsibility to cover herself up, not flirt, not drink or watch her drink, not walk home alone at night, not answer the door if she's alone, not accept a ride from a man, lock her door as soon as she gets home, not listen to music while jogging, or a myriad of other precautions, what society is also saying is that the reason she must do this is because men have all the self-control of Cookie Monster at a bake sale.  Society is saying that men are slaves to their penises.  That they can't help themselves.  That their natural state is "rapist."

Being told that you can't help but rape and are always looking for a target because that's just what you do since you're a man should make you want to break shit.  Because it's painting you as incapable of human cognition, reasoning, and compassion.  As less than human.

If this doesn't piss you off, then there is something very wrong.

But of course, this begs the question: if that's the case, why are so many men either part of rape culture or not nearly as angry as they should be?

I'm not a psychiatrist, obviously.  I'm merely going on my personal experience with men who endorse rape culture, as well as the experiences I've read and heard from other women.  To me, the problem appears to be that rape culture itself is a double-edged sword; while on the one hand it's telling men they're natural rapists, on the other it's also absolving men of responsibility for their actions which hurt other people.  And that absolution is very, very appealing and comforting to a lot of men who are constantly watching the privilege they've grown used to get eroded by feminism.  Now, when bad things happen as a result of their own or their fellow men's actions, they can just turn around say "it's your own fault" instead of listening to the victim.

I see this attitude at work every time someone tells a rape victim (male or female) "well you were drunk/walking alone/not paying attention/leading them on/etc., what did you expect?"

Obviously, we all should be expecting to be raped (unfortunately, statistics are on their side on this one).  Which makes our concern that we were raped easily dismissable.  After all, not the rapist's fault that we didn't take proper precautions (or the ones we did take weren't good enough).

Why real men (and hell, women, we're just as capable of both rape and defending rape as men are) should hate this?  Is because real good, honest people should hate being told they are natural predators.  That they're inherently evil.

If you don't hate being told that?  There's something broken inside.

Politics Is A Lot Like Online Dating

You may sound good on paper as a candidate, but seeing you in person is what's going to make or break your chances.  You may not look like a supermodel, but if you're intelligent, confident, caring, funny, and make it clear you're going places, you'll attract people.  More than you may know what to do with.  Being good-looking but dense as a sack of bricks isn't going to get you further than a one-nighter.  Being good-looking, smart, and an asshole isn't going to get you anywhere period.  You might dupe people in the short-term if you have any sense of charm, but they'll eventually drop your ass once they realize they can do better.  And word will spread, and you will eventually be known as That Guy.

While nobody's quite mastered the first type, right now the GOP are the poster children for that third one.  The Self-Proclaimed Nice Guys® chewing on the brims of their fedoras and chugging a can of Venom while complaining about those stuck-up minority voters constantly friendzoning them at the polls.

As so many of us ladyfolk know, this attitude is repulsive enough coming from a 20-something college kid who expects minor sexual favors as a reward for not being an overt douchecanoe.  When it comes from 60+ year old men who are more than old enough to know better, it falls somewhere between "hilarious" and "fuck this, I'm done."

See, when you make it painfully clear that there are certain groups you want to deny voting rights to simply because they won't vote for you, it's the dating equivalent of putting a "ps - no fat chicks, lol" line in your online profile.  Not only are you not going to get the fat chicks you don't want, but you're going to drive away a lot of the people you do want because you sound like an asshole.

Guess what?  That really doesn't leave too many people in your corner.

This "re-branding" campaign the GOP has launched in a mad scramble for votes after getting summarily whipped black and blue at the polls in 2012 is little more than just fluffing up their online dating profile with better pictures and quietly removing Ted Nugent from their list of favorite artists.  The same asshole is still behind it. And if you schedule a date and meet him in person, in public, you'll see it.  You'll see it in every ridiculous thing he says about rape, in every racist anti-immigration law he wants to pass, in every women's clinic and shelter he wants to close, in every gun he wants to put in the hands of a teacher, in every dollar of social aid he wants to keep out of the hands of the poor, in every public classroom he wants to put a Bible in, in every word of paranoid nonsense he says about climate change and evolution being hoaxes, and in every child he wants to deny sex education to.

It's not the "brand" that needs to change for the GOP.  It's the policies behind the brand.  It's the pining for an America that never existed.  The fear, the paranoia, the frothing insanity and denial of reality, the resistance to change itself.  The stagnation.  The fetid peat bog of stupid that is only serving to preserve this farce of a party for posterity, so we can look back on it in forty years and say "thank God Almighty we dodged that fucking bullet."