gender

David and Michael have the uncanny ability to read my mind. David and I hadn't spoken in a while and yet the day he posted this photograph, I was toying around with a new banner for the front page with another photo of "Barackelle".

Yes, I've Brangelinaed Barack and Michelle, so sue me.

The front page image hadn't changed in a while not only due to the surprisingly long primary we're experiencing but because I have to code that particular part of the page by hand.

Not anymore, and not a moment too soon.

I've been DYING to use our galleries more and to be able to create impactful front page posts on the fly. Now we can. The image is being pulled from the a photo gallery called "Banner Posts". As long as the image is 660 pixels, we'll be able to have the site automatically pull a new image when a new banner post is created.

Awesomeness.

And I'm happy to test it with not only the woman who is our presumptive First Lady; but my namesake. You see, my full name is Liza Michelle Sabater Tirado.

Not only that, but Michelle reminds me a lot of my sister-in-law Milly. I spent quite a lot of time during my pre-teens with my oldest brother and his then fiancee.

She won the popular vote by a sliver (4%).

Some people think that Rush Limbaugh's call to Republicans to go vote for Clinton may have something to do with it.

Early exit polling shows 10 percent of the voters in Ohio's Democratic Primary identified themselves as Republican, along with 22 percent who said they were independents. It was the same story in Texas: 10 percent of the voters in the Democratic primary identified themselves as Republican, along with 25 percent who said they were independents.

Funny, because I was being smacked around a week ago when I suggested that Republicans voting for Obama is a good thing. If they did vote for Clinton though, to throw off the race, we'll have hell to pay in November if she is the nominee.

Just as in Ohio, last minute voters went heavily to Clinton.

Just as in Ohio, gender wasn't an issue.

Race on the other hand ...

So Texas and Ohio were almost identical in outcome --although Clinton's winning margin was bigger in Ohio.

Hillary reemploys "The Cry" on the eve on a hotly contested primary election.

Yep, it's official. Hillary Clinton is running to be Crybaby-in-Chief. According to the Tribune Co.'s politics blog, the Swamp, Clinton teared up after a heartfelt introduction by a former colleague at the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, where she worked in college. The emotional speech led "Clinton's eyes to fill with tears, which she wiped out of her left eye," reads the report (so clinical). "Well, I said I would not tear up; already we're not exactly on the path," Clinton said immediately after. AHEM. Now, to be fair to Clinton, who after all is human no matter what people say, hearing a tearful tribute to you from a former mentor is exactly the kind of thing that would choke up nearly anybody. But it won't be lost on the press that she happened to cry just on the eve of an important primary vote, and that she happened to do so in a state where she has been losing her edge.

The blogosphere explodes.

i’m a free woman. and being free means you get to think for yourself, and you get to decide for yourself what to do. so i say i am not a traitor. no, i’m not a traitor. i’m just following my own truth, and that truth has led me to barack obama.

[...]

don't play me small. i am not voting for barack obama because he's black. i am voting for barack obama because he's brilliant.

OH SNAP!

When it comes to smackdowns, Oprah is the queen.

Via Baratunde.

I find it incredibly ironic that since the loss of 2004, certain parts of the liberal blogosphere have complained forcefully about how the 'women studies' groups and "those whinny colored people" are destroying the Democratic Party and yet, here we are, almost a general election later and guess what? The emotional baby-eating feminazis and those colored folks who don't STFU are indeed destroying the Democratic Party we've grown to love and loathe.

I don't know if to to laugh or cry a little.

Oh, who am I kidding : Of course I am going to laugh!

Sure, when I started writing this article, I started out of the anger I felt after reading Gloria Steinem's now infamous "Hos Before Bros" editorial. After all, the mother of the modern feminist movement basically says white women are entitled to have their day in the White House before a black man.

Yet the anger turned into more of an outraged amusement. A lot of people around me are absolutely astounded at the transparent viciousness of the Clintons and company. Yet there's those who are kind of sitting back saying, "We were right all along".

Everything in this country, no matter how you cut it, ends up being about race. There is no denying it. There is no escaping it.

To walk away from a discussion about Race is to walk away from the possibility of understanding better the madness that produces Influence, Power and Wealth in this country. To walk away from Race is to walk away from understanding the craziness that produces this set of rules, preferences and practices we call American 'culture'.

The craziness that, for example, makes it possible for white women to compare sexism to racism.

Ahhh ... hmmmmm ... no.

I believe that Hillary Clinton won for 4 very important reasons :

1. The campaign was able to get as many registered Democrats to vote for her as possible.

2. Since most registered Democrats who came to vote were women, the "tear heard around the world" was successful in getting her the last minute sympathy vote from people who ...

3. would have otherwise voted for John Edwards.

I think it is clear that for Hillary Clinton to stay in the race she needs to beat John Edwards, not Barack Obama. Edwards ran a remarkable game in Iowa. Had he had as much money as Clinton, he probably would have beaten her by more than just 1%. I am not sure though that under the voting trends of Iowa, he would have been able to beat Barack Obama.

4. The Obama campaign has insisted in equating their "I am not a black candidate" campaign with a complete disregard for the colored blogosphere. Yesterday was the day that it showed how much that has cost them.

So let's look at the numbers, courtesy of MSNBC.com :

A growing number of women of color are seeking alternative mental health services to help cope with stress and other recurrent struggles in their lives more effectively. Many of these women are now utilizing hypnotherapy, breathwork, and reiki as means of effective therapeutic intervention minus psychiatric labels and medications.

One of them is "Maya," a 36 year-old African American woman. Among many things, Maya is a single mom of two pre-teens, and a lawyer. In the past, Maya sought treatment from a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She had been an incest survivor since age 8 and experienced recurrent nightmares, flashbacks, and anxiety attacks. Maya also had difficulty maintaining relationships with men as a result of her childhood trauma. Years of intensive talk therapy and anti-anxiety medication led Maya to see very little improvement in her recovery, until a friend recommended that she try hypnotherapy.

Maya says, "At first, I was skeptical about hypnosis and what it could do for me. But I was frustrated. I felt like I was hitting a wall with my therapist and that she didn't really understand where I was coming from. This had been the eighth therapist I had been to, and I was beginning to feel like talking about my symptoms and my past was beating a dead horse. When was I going to get over it? I just wanted to feel better and stop the panic attacks. . . "

A white woman's spite turns into a racist political campaign now passed into law. A law that would allow public universities and civil service departments to discriminate against minorities.

What does Jennifer Gratz think? That it will give the advantage to white women over white men?

This in from Michigan:

The ballot proposal was headed by Jennifer Gratz, the Southgate Anderson High School graduate who sued University of Michigan in 1997 to challenge its use of racial preferences in admissions.

Her case went all the way to the Supreme Court. When the court upheld the use of race as a factor in university admissions she and Connerly went to work to put the question before voters.

The passage of Prop 2 effectively overhauls the University of Michigan's selective admissions process and puts outreach, recruitment and financial aid programs for minorities and women in jeopardy. While U-M's use of affirmative action has been widely publicized, other less-selective Michigan colleges have gender- and race-specific programs and scholarships that would likely be challenged.

U-M President Mary Sue Coleman will address the university at noon today about the impact of Prop 2's passage. Leaders predict that enrollment of black, Hispanic and Native American students combined will plummet from 12-14 percent of the student body to about 4-6 percent.

Anything short of a miracle!

Completing one of the most extraordinary political journeys the state has ever seen, Democrat Deval Patrick today won a landslide victory over Republican Kerry Healey and two other candidates to become the first African-American elected governor of Massachusetts.

And completely amazing:

Coakley faced no challenge in the Democratic primary and coasted to a win tonight. During the campaign, her highest profile moment came when she appeared in television advertisements hailing Deval Patrick's gubernatorial candidacy.

What a night.

News out of Great Britain suggests that a male contraceptive pill is not too many years away from the market. The pill has been shown to not affect male hormone levels (thus not making them into girly girls), but it does prevent the manufacture of sperm.

In trials so far these have produced no worrying side effects - however scientists think men may still worry about whether introducing female hormones could harm their virility in some way.

The new approach would therefore avoid this problem. The common perception is that few women would actually believe a man who said he was on the Pill.

However a study published in the British Medical Journal in 2000 found that only two per cent of women said they would not trust their partner to take a male Pill.

I bet you can tell where this diary is going. Down.
If you are a woman, would you feel comfortable relying on your male partner to take care of contraception?

If you are a man, would you consider taking the pill in order to ensure not getting your partner pregnant? Would you worry about side effects? Would having your fertility affected make you feel less "manly"?

Politics, media, culture and life from a queer boricua in Brooklyn.

Black. Gay. Father. Vegetarian. Buddhist. Liberal.