In the blog, Dash explains her experiences living in Newport as a young woman. She talks about street harassment, being assaulted in bars and nothing ever really being done about it. She writes about how sailors and other men act as though women are merely objects. The blog is not well written–she makes drastic and broad statements that aren’t exactly true. She writes about how “Particularly in Newport, not only are women much more concerned with education than men, but also the only ones who go to work. “ While yes, it is true that many university students are young women, that is not to say that women are more concerned with their education than men. Nor is it to say that women are the only ones who go to work.

Sexism, in fact, effects men. Men are socialized to fit in a box–being strong and aggressive; being unemotional are just a few of the things men are pressured to be. What Dash does not mention in her post is that the Women’s Resource Center has recently developed a men’s work program alongside community leaders.

The Newport Buzz picked up Dash’s blog and posted a response. The response, written by Tristan Pinnock, starts out alright. He breaks down the flaws in Dash’s blog, starting with her generally poor writing. The post is actually almost funny until Pinnock starts to break down what Dash writes about sexism in Newport. As Lewis’ Law states, “the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.” Pinnock seems to think sexism doesn’t exist and isn’t a big deal. In the same vein of Pinnock’s “rebuttle”, I’d like to go through his article bit by bit.

“As a twenty-three year old woman, I can’t walk to work without expecting street harassment. I can’t go to a bar without the fear of a fifty year old man sitting next to me and chanting demeaning and derogatory terms.”

You know who else has that fear? Every other bar patron in America.

It’s not every bar patron that experiences that fear–it’s mostly women. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “25 percent of American women have experienced sexual assault, including rape. Approximately one-half of those cases involve alcohol consumption by the perpetrator, victim, or both.”

“I can’t call the police when the aforementioned gentleman throws glass cups at my sandaled feet and expect any sort of protection or resolution.”

Why not? That’s assault. If he didn’t immediately get tossed out by a bouncer, then you’re hanging out at the wrong bar.

Sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in the nation. The New York Times ran an article written by John Eligeon in 2010 on victim’s poor treatment by the NYPD. One woman, who had been drugged, was told by police that she was drunk. Another was laughed at by officers. Women who find the strength to report their attacks despite the overwhelming odds against them still find themselves under the oppressive nature of rape culture. Hmm, I wonder why women feel as though they can not call the police when they’re attacked.

“In Newport, it’s okay for the drunk sailor-bros to treat women like blow up dolls.”

I hate to be the one to let you in on this, but gender relations come down to whatever each party is willing to put up with. Men will behave as badly as they can get away with. We’d be living in cardboard boxes if we thought we could bring girls home to them.

I hate to be the one to let you in on this, but gender relations come down to how society trains men to view women as objects. Take, for example, this ultra-creepy ad for PlayStation Vita:

The gaming system has touch interface on both sides — so obviously the best way to advertise for it is a photo of a women with breasts on both sides of her body. Also notice that she has no face. She is literally synonymous with a gaming console. 

“We make eighty cents on your dollar. What do we know?”

That you would rather have children than advance your careers through your 30′s, you’re not really into engineering and you don’t like to negotiate for bigger pay raises.

Too bad being a full-time mother doesn’t “earn” the same pay rate of being a full-time jackass. (Or, I don’t know, if you’re still confused, ask the CEO of Yahoo!, or the newest president of NBC News, or the SEO of Facebook–all women.)

“Over the past fifty years women became the primary gender to obtain degrees in higher education. Particularly in Newport, not only are women much more concerned with education than men, but also the only ones who go to work. 

This sad phenomenon does not make the city inherently unsafe for women; it does, however, create and perpetuate a culture of male entitlement. That entitlement should end when it comes to a woman’s body. But it doesn’t.”

So women being better-educated and gainfully-employed sexually empowers…unemployed men?

That is some really nice deflection–it’s pretty telling that you have nothing to say about how men do, in fact, feel entitled to women’s bodies.

“Just saying “no” doesn’t work when you’re not heard. My $120,000 education doesn’t humanize me in this town. So long as I’m out alone or with other female friends I’m viewed as property. Take me. I’m for sale. No worth.”

A Bachelor’s degree doesn’t humanize you anywhere. In the current economy, it just means that you’re at the top of the list when you apply for any given job that might require a high school diploma. Your degree barely puts you at par. If you’ve got a lot of student loans, then there’s actually a good chance you’re going to be behind the people who just went straight into the workforce. You want to be humanized? Don’t hang out at meat markets full of drunken people looking to get some. Be interesting and fun and you should have no problem finding a decent social circle or two.

We tell young people that their worth lies in their ability to succeed in schools and receive a college degree. After we’ve gotten those degrees, though, not a whole lot changes. And despite poor writing, Dash does touch on this point. It is also interesting to point out that Pinnock doesn’t comment on how women cannot say “no”.  Seeing as in a survey of boys 11-14 years old, over half believed that if a man spent money on a girl or had they been dating, rape was acceptable while in a survey of girls 11-14 nearly half believed that if a man spent money on a girl or they had been dating, rape was acceptable. I could go on and on about how real rape culture is but I’ll let the statistics do that talking.

“While I know that’s not what the public education system teaches, (what exactly does it teach?) that’s the outcome.”

But education is another female-dominated profession. Surely you’re not suggesting that your sisters in the teaching trade are encouraging male privilege, are you?

Male privilege exists because men are the dominant group in society. Male  privilege, as defined by Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog, is:

“The long term effects translate into an impossible-to-break cycle of: drunkenness, revictimization and a consistent affirmation of worthlessness.

Fundamentally, this environment breeds a culture that’s abusive but familiar. It’s dangerous to be a woman in this town because it’s easy to drown.

And there’s no one to help you.”

Oh, so you’re depressed. Well, dwelling on everything you learned in your Wome(y?)n’s Studies classes isn’t going to cheer you up. You’re right that you shouldn’t have to go somewhere else. It’s almost summertime in Newport. Anywhere else is just going to be worse.

You’re right, Tristan Pinnock. What we learn in our Women’s and Gender Studies classes aren’t cheerful things. But women (and any gender minority) don’t have to learn that in a college class. We learn it on the street. From men like you. And it sure is depressing when you’re considered a “gender correspondent” for a legitimate publication.

It’s summer! Well, practically; it’s getting hot (and humid and sticky and I’m really frizzy, okay?), which means the time has come for me to abandon my oven and live on popsicles, avocado sandwiches and Italian cream sodas (oh man, these are super tasty — let me tell you). One of the greatest things about this recipe is its diversity; Torani makes over 100 different flavors of syrup (including “bacon,” “pumpkin pie” and “chicken & waffles”), so the possibilities are endless. You could mix and match two or three syrups (I’ve heard the combination of vanilla + cherry is amazing) to create something deliciously unique. Another bonus: from start to finish these drinks will take you less than ten minutes. No sweat, right?

Ingredients

3 tbsp. Torani syrup (I used root beer)

1/2 – 3/4 cup club soda

1 – 2 tbsp. plain soy creamer (or half & half)

Soy whipped cream & cherries (or sprinkles)

Ice, 3 – 4 cubes per glass

Directions

1. Add 3 – 4 ice cubes to your glasses. Fill each with 3 tbsp. of the Torani syrup and slowly pour the club soda over everything. Mix with a long spoon or straw to ensure everything is incorporated. Gently add the soy creamer/half & half, leaving enough room for whipped cream if you’re using it.
2. Top with ice cream/whipped cream (or both, be nice to yourself you totally deserve it) and a cherry.

This all seems strange when you consider the world of comics to contain a diverse number of male and female heroes (or at least a large number of female sidekicks, in the case of DC Comics). While the comic book world has many issues, specifically the inclusion and representation of race, sexual orientation, and gender minorities, it’s also a realm of escapism that once attempted to be the first area of fantasy where it didn’t matter who you were; a reader could look up to the heroes depicted within their pages.

When the writers of Green Lantern decided in 1971 to conclude Hal Jordan’s adventures by having his death lead to the first ever African American Green Lantern, John Stewart, there was backlash, but the creators, Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams, defended their choice, citing that the mantle of Green Lantern went to the person most deserving and best suited to be the protector of planet Earth. Stewart’s predecessors were first an All American Air Force pilot with merits of courage, and second, to Stewart’s creators’ disbelief, a gym class teacher. They looked at the death of Hal Jordan as an opportunity to say, if aliens would endow the powers of good and the Green Lantern Corps, would it, given the diversity of Earth populations, be to another white man?

Stories like those of John Stewart, or Miles Morales (the new Ultimate Spider-man, an African and Latin American teenager) are uplifting, and not just in the pages of their respective paperback-trades. It’s not hard to understand the appeal and why there is such a large, diverse fanbase even though the fanbases diversity is rarely treated fairly by the comics they love. And with many fans coming into comics from the Avengers franchise, or cartoons based on the comics and geared toward children, the fanbase is ever changing.

My own history with comics starts with 90s and 00s television and the number of cartoons on at the time that were based on the Batman or Spider-man series. Everything from the X-Men to Teen Titans made some appearance, and my brother and I watched, enraptured. We could recite the opening themes, and we still have arguments about the 90s Batman film franchise (which I continue to enjoy wholeheartedly, George Clooney in rubber nippled suits and all). It was all a part of my formative pop-culture education, and I have since had a diverse reading history with both the DC and Marvel Franchises. I am far from what would be considered new to comics and yet – every time I find myself in a comic book shop, even when I am in the same shop on multiple occasions, I am treated as if my presence is a lark, and that my information on comics could only be a result of having seen the Avengers films.

 There’s an idea created within the “boys club” of comics and perpetuated in popular culture that there is a “right and wrong” way of being a woman who enjoys comics. There are the “fake geek girls” who according to some sort of logic only like geeky endeavors to appear hot. It’s a trope well expressed in its own meme (see left). In “Nerd Culture” there is an ingrained idea that to have the “proper” interest you ought to have expert knowledge on the subject, lest you be demonized for it. I know women who have interests in comic books but refuse to admit to loving them before they can garner enough knowledge on the subject in case they are called upon to prove that they are a “true fan.”

Unfortunately, there isn’t enough time to memorize every detail about every universe Marvel has for X-Men, let alone for every comic book series under their logo. And yet, I can be talking with co-workers about the DC mantel of Robin in what I thought was a safe environment and in the next moment be subject to an interrogation on the subject.

After interrupting our conversation, a male comic book fan then began condescending to my two female co-workers and me about Dick Grayson (the first to take up the mantle of  Batman’s sidekick, Robin), who he called a “lesser known” character (as if to say I couldn’t possibly know who Grayson is) only to be surprised by my knowledge, and follow up the shock with outright sexual comments to me.

I have been treated like an idiot in comic book shops when my cleavage or bare legs are visible. Male employees at the shops are more likely to ask me if I need help being introduced to comics than if I need help finding a particular collection in their inventory, especially when I look feminine. Jessica Bagnall remarks in a blog post for Feminspire how often she’s been “asked if, or more frequently, told that I’m shopping for my boyfriend.” Whereas, if I’m wearing a shirt with a geeky subject on it and look anything but conventionally attractive, I’m left alone.

This discrepancy presents another way of being a woman in comics: this one, unlike the “fake geek girl”, is a “proper” way to be interested in geeky topics. This is the “nerdy girl”, like Amy Farah Fowler on CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory” (a show that, to note, isn’t very kind to its own nerdy demographic), who is almost the same as her male counterparts except for the fact that she, upon second glance, possesses breasts. A true nerdy girl doesn’t appear to have an interest in the feminine, and is as aggressive in revealing who is and isn’t a true fan. She’s the butt of jokes however, and seemingly safe in the geeky community because she isn’t attractive enough to be sexually interesting to her fellow fans.

This past week when I went into a comic book shop that I had been in previously, and had liked despite my issues with their customer service, I was greeted at the door with a surprised, “Hello miss,” that I thought was more funny than off-putting. As usual, I found that an employee was hovering beside me, waiting to help introduce me to the basics of comic books when really, what I was looking for was anything Beast Boy related, without luck.

When I went to the register to purchase the latest issue of Hawkeye instead, I had what started as a pleasant conversation about how depressing DC’s New 52 has been of late, especially in the Batman series, only to leave me with whiplash when I was asked a breath later, “Oh did [the hovering employee] introduce this to you? Is this your first venture into Marvel, because it’s a good place to start.”

Even though I had just, seemingly, passed the test of knowledge, I was being seen as someone who needed to be taught the basics of comic book appreciation. All in an agonizingly pleasant and well-meaning tone that I’ve watched be used on friends of mine, who even meet the “proper standards” for being a comic book loving girl, that in any other situation would make for great customer service, but in those instances means something more.

Comic books, like a lot of fantasy and science fiction, are about escapism, and are meant for anyone with a need to be somewhere or someone else.  You hear stories of how Spider-man saved some kid’s life and taught them how to stand up to bullies. It’s great, and tear-jerking, and part of the reason I love comic books so much.

But it’s not a safe, accepting place for everyone. Between the writers, the franchise CEOs, and their fans who can make shops and conventions hazardous places, the comic book world outside of the paneled pages isn’t as accepting as the message displayed inside the comic books themselves. It can leave a foul taste in your mouth when something you enjoy, while bringing no harm to anyone else by happening to enjoy it your way, whether it’s gender-bending your favorite character while cosplaying, being a person of color and cosplaying as your favorite hero who happens to be white, or just disliking the first three Robins and preferring Stephanie Brown, is disallowed. That there is a wrong or right way to enjoy that harmless past-time because one section of the readership doesn’t like it.

I think one of the best things about escapism arts is they can be places where you build a world better than the one you’re in now. And you can use that to explain to someone how wonderful the world could be. Or how awful the world could turn out if we’re not careful (such are the parables of The Hunger Games). While I wasn’t alive when the mantle of Green Lantern went to John Stewart, I remember the announcement of Miles Morales, and when Barack Obama appeared in the The Amazing Spider-man comics. These are the sort of change seeking comic stories that make the readership think that the franchise is trying. There’s hope.

But then I walk into a comic book store to buy that issue of The Amazing Spider-man and I’m treated like I’m dumb because of my low-cut shirt, and all of the uplifting spirit is crushed.

That sounds nice in theory, until you realize that even without much of an increase in the program, highly-subsidized corn and rice from the United States have managed to undermine local farmers in Mexico and Haiti, making many of the poor even more vulnerable to hunger and worryingly dependent on foreign food production. There’s absolutely a place for emergency food relief, but the subsidies that the Farm Bill has long been synonymous with are luxuries that many other countries can’t match, and which their farmers have to compete in international markets without. Changing how much of that would be bought and distributed by the US government to the desperately impoverished misses how our policies contribute to their poverty.

More recently, the Farm Bill was back in the news as a part of the “fiscal cliff” – an even larger bundle of tax cuts, subsidies, and other fiscal goodies that expired at the end of 2012. (Technically, the Farm Bill expired in the middle of 2012, but with something of a grace period.) Flawed as it was, many of the protections and investments stipulated by the Farm Bill are essential to the US economy. Over the course of the 2012 legislative year, negotiations went on over what portions of the bill should be kept and which should be allowed to expire. Those were cast aside during the last minute negotiations over the fiscal cliff deal. As the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) explained in January, the “Senate Republican leadership and the White House decided during their negotiations there were segments of agriculture that deserved extension and other segments that deserved to die.”

Evidently, what wasn’t worth keeping included disaster assistance, “extension of funding for farmers markets”, protections for the uniquely vulnerable farmers of color, and research on biofuels, specialty crops, and organic practices. The basic needs of many rural communities, namely supplies for emergencies and investments in their farms, were overlooked in favor of subsidies designed for industrial-level factory farms. This wasn’t just a dynamic that played out among the people and businesses that produce food, as support for “rural microenterprise assistance” was also allowed to quietly remain expired. As the NSAC has explained elsewhere, that meant that producers of specialized agricultural tools or products, which are often tailored to those specialty crops, have been squeezed out of the market.

There’s a sort of gastronomical imperialism in how this has played out. First, neighboring countries’ diverse agricultural markets were undercut. Now, a more comfortable but still economically insecure domestic agricultural class is also being pushed out of the market. The markets have been quite effectively rigged by a mix of international trade and national subsidies, with the inevitable winners being the large agricultural producers in the United States. That is to say, the rich.

This is probably the result of ad campaigns like the above, put out by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Naturally, it’s not true.

So guess what’s happened now with the Farm Bill? Republicans and Democrats are scrambling to renew the subsidies that are targeted for larger farms and in the process debating how much they should cut the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, or “food stamps”) in order to pay for it. Five years ago, this played out concerning farmers in other countries – with the decades of subsidies that made their livelihood increasingly impractical being presumed to help grow aid which the US would provide them (likely with strings attached). It seemed like a repellant conspiracy to force dependency on Haitians and Mexicans, among others.

Now, after dismantling those subsidies that assist poorer farmers and farmers of color in the United States, neither major party is presenting food stamps or charity as the solution to the coming shortfall. Instead, they’re planning to cut SNAP, which has long been essential to the survival of the rural poor. We’ve moved from what certainly seems like colonialism towards what sounds like this century’s “let them eat cake”.

PEPPER BOUGHT ME A WATERBED AND I WAS LIKE WHAT THIS IS SO I FILLED IT W/ MONEY INSTEAD

— TONY STARK (@tony_stank) May 20, 2013

BRAH IM JUST TRYNA BECOME ONE WITH THESE DOLLAZ

— TONY STARK (@tony_stank) May 20, 2013

DO ANYONE EVER LOOK UNDER UR BED AND THERE’S LIKE 234 MILLION BUCKS U JUST FORGOT ABT HAHA

— TONY STARK (@tony_stank) May 20, 2013

HAHAHA OH DAG MAN SRY FOR THE ABSENCE I WAS AT THIS DANK PARTY FOR LIKE MONTHS OH MAN

— TONY STARK (@tony_stank) May 20, 2013

DONT CRY BECAUSE ITS OVER GIVE ME MONEY BECAUSE IT HAPPENED OR SOMETHIN LIKE THAT

— TONY STARK (@tony_stank) January 8, 2013

Representative Trent Franks, from here. He might be familiar to you from this video.

Congressional Representative Trent Franks of Arizona’s eight district is a particularly vivid and recent example of that principle. After failing to force an unwanted ban on abortions after the twentieth week of pregnancy (without a health exemption outside of risk of death) for the District of Columbia last year, Franks has just introduced the same bill, but scaled up to affect the entire country’s regulations on abortion. Just like Romney purportedly wasn’t conservative enough, Franks seems convinced that the reason the first version of this bill failed was because it didn’t cover enough of the country.

Often, pointing out that there’s a conservative movement in the United States that wants to instate disastrous policies gets the response that these sorts of votes are just empty gestures to their fringe base, in this case, the pro-life movement.

Different conservative elected officials have proposed and in some cases voted for stringent new abortion restrictions (or other similarly out-of-touch proposals) only because that’s how they maintain their elected positions, so this line of thinking goes. Even if these are merely symbolic votes for proposals a majority of the population opposes, this perception among Republicans that they must continually escalate their proof of support for various subgroups within the conservative movement is something of a game of political chicken. Eventually they’re going to have to stop playing or we’re going to end up with laws that contradict everyone’s wishes other than the small minority who vote in Republican primaries.

And all of that is assuming that they’d have a motive to knock this out because they’re not a part of that shrinking hyper-conservative minority. The comments at conservative news sites highlight just how serious the average conservative is about radically changing the current laws, and these are the people who have spent the past three decades and counting taking over the Republican party.

Just scrolling over what’s been written at the now-deceased Andrew Breitbart’s website about this is chilling. One of the first comments starts by exclaiming that the this ban on many later term abortions is “A CONSCIOUS EFFORT TO BE SURE…BUT THERE SHOULD BE NO ABORTIONS…PERIOD!” Even this isn’t the endpoint for most members of the conservative movement. This hasn’t even been passed into law, but it’s already not conservative enough.

This is a political movement that’s making itself quite clear: it won’t rest until (among other changes) the legal rights to basic bodily autonomy that required nearly a century of work to attain are gone. To consider negotiating with it is foolish – it’s goals are by definition absolutes. To view now as the time to consider pulling apart the legal guarantees to those rights to better put them back together again seems worryingly incautious. What’s being proposed is a drastic, federal-level rollback on reproductive rights, and we need to respond to that appropriately.

Earlier this week actress Angelina Jolie wrote an article for the New York Times describing her decision to have a double mastectomy to combat her risk of breast cancer. The article is uplifting and more than a little fearless in how she describes the surgery and reminds the reader that having the surgery hasn’t made her any less of a woman. Many of the medical issues women face aren’t discussed in the mainstream media; for example, when a woman is having a heart attack, the symptoms are very different those that men exhibit, but it isn’t widely taught or discussed. For someone as private as Angelina Jolie to discuss her surgery openly is, as I said, more than a little fearless. She’s opened herself up to be discussed by people who think we ought to focus on “saving the boobs,” instead of working to take preventative steps, and Jolie has opened herself up with full knowledge of that because she found it to be more important to do so. It’s a subject worth an entire post, but I want to leave it as it is: a link to a Feel Good Friday subject, to let Jolie speak for herself. – Kaitlin

Global

There’s some good news out of Puerto Rico! This week the Puerto Rican Senate voted to modify local anti-discrimination laws to include housing, employment, and other forms of harassment or unequal treatment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. In San Juan, Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz has signed similar protections into law so that residents of Puerto Rico’s capital have already been put under some protections even though the broader measures haven’t been implemented yet. – William

Movies

I’ve had a very movie-oriented week. My American friend has been staying with me and we’ve been to the pictures an embarrassing amount of times; we’ve seen Star Trek: Into Darkness (brilliant!), Iron Man 3 (awesome!), The Great Gatsby (I’m not really sure!) and Dark Skies (enjoyable but predictable!). As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one film that really mattered: The Place Beyond The Pines. I don’t want to say too much – it’s an easy movie to spoil, and I enjoyed it immensely knowing almost nothing about it – but I will say that it’s one of the best films I’ve seen this year. Possibly the best. Everything was on-point: acting, costume, score, dialogue, everything. It was gorgeous. It was so, so gorgeous. I’m not going to tell you anything about it, but I will say that in a week of watching sequels (as good as they were), run-of-the-mill alien movies and sub-par book adaptations, The Place Beyond The Pines was a breath of fresh air. Go see it. – Lottie

Music

This week, I had the distinct pleasure of seeing one of my favorite bands in concert for the fourth time. Paramore headlined the House of Blues in Boston on Wednesday night and absolutely nailed it. The band Kitten opened; I’d never heard of them prior to this tour but I was so, so impressed with their performance. There’s a full recap on my blog that goes into detail about the night, but there were sing-alongs and an on-stage proposal and I sang so loud and yelled so much that I totally lost my voice. Last month, Paramore released its first studio album since 2009‘s Brand New Eyes, and the band seems to be stronger than ever. I’m so, so stoked. I (still) love Paramore and I had an incredible time Wednesday night. — Sam

This recipe is a slight adaptation of Isa’s Creamy Avocado Potato Salad from her Vegan Brunch book. While making a quick trip to our local health food store, Lila and I flipped through some of her recipes and immediately fell in love with the idea of replacing mayo with another, healthier fat; avocados are a fantastic substitution because they are rich in Omega 3. Blue potatoes lend a bit of color to the dish and taste wonderful when paired with the fresh flavors of cilantro and red onion. Although we renamed this classic side for it’s aquatic coloring, we admit that there is something a bit magical going on here.

Ingredients

Mermaid Potato Salad

1/2 lb bag of blue potatoes

2 avocados

1/2 a red onion, finely chopped

1 lime, halved and juiced

1/4 – 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped (you kids know me, I used a cup)

Salt, pepper and cumin to taste

Garlic Pita Chips

3 – 4 whole wheat pitas (if you’re feeling super hxc today, make your own!)

3- 5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

3 – 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Salt, pepper, cayenne and cumin to taste

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Scrub your spuds in cold water to remove dirt. Transfer to a cutting board and halve or quarter them, depending on their size. Place them in a medium sized saucepan and fill with water until the potatoes are submerged. Bring the water to a boil, add a pinch of salt and allow those blue beauties to cook for five to eight minutes or until you can poke them with a fork. Remove them from heat, drain away the water and transfer them to a bowl; pop them in the fridge and allow them to cool  while you prepare the rest of the meal.
2. Cut your pita into whatever shapes you like! We did triangles, but you could use small cookie cutters to get fancy. Spread them out on a cookie sheet. In a small bowl, mix together the chopped garlic, extra virgin olive oil, salt and spices; use a spoon to ladle/spread the seasoning on the pita pieces. Pop them in the oven for ten minutes but keep your eye on them. Pull them out when they’ve begun to darken/get crispy. Set aside.
3. In a medium sized bowl, cream together your two avocados and the juice of one lime until the mixture reaches a very smooth consistency (it should resemble green mayo). You could use a blender or food processor, if you like, but I prefer to eliminate angst/stress by pulverizing my avocados with a hand masher. Add salt/pepper/cumin, red onion and cilantro. Add your potatoes to the bowl and gently (!) stir with a spatula until they are coated in the avocado mixture. Transfer to a serving dish.
4. Now you have a bunch of options! Serve your mermaid potato salad alongside a handful of homemade garlic pita chips, hummus, tomatoes or some greens tossed in oil and vinegar.

 Before I begin, I should mention that I am a massive “Game of Thrones” fan. I personally think it is one of the best TV shows to come around in recent years. HBO has successfully managed to bring a fantasy series to the masses and make it cool and sexy. I have watched the series since the beginning and after the season one finale, read all of the books in a dangerously short space of time. I am a big fan.

This is why this article is so hard for me to write. I don’t want to dislike anything to do with it at all, but the truth is: “Game of Thrones” dances the line between being feminist and being disastrously misogynistic. Whilst there are tonnes of strong female characters on the show, such as Dany, Brienne, Cersei, Lady Stark and Ayra, the show also makes use of many scenes of sexual violence against women.

HBO TV shows are notoriously full of nudity and “Game of Thrones” is no different. We have seen numerous naked bodies since the very beginning of the show. Of course, with the repeated exception of Alfie Allen (who plays Theon), these images have primarily been naked women. Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist, put it succinctly when he wrote that he would “respect Game of Thrones‘ sex scenes more if the leads were disrobing as often as the extras, or if the men were exposed half as often as the women.”

One of the characters that has been seen in the buff numerous times is Ros, a prostitute from Winterfell, played by Esmé Bianco. Ros was a character invented for the TV show and doesn’t feature in the books, but despite this (because I usually hate when they change things) I have really liked Ros’ character. She was a woman who took her destiny into her own hands and despite her contextually questionable profession has been shown to be a character of deep compassion and strength. As a prostitute in a country as misogynistic as Westeros, Ros hasn’t allowed herself to be broken. That is why, in episode six of season three, when we saw her death at the hands of the tyrannical King Joffrey, I felt cheated. Ros deserved better.

In an interview Bianco did with HBO that was released the day after the episode aired, she said Ros’ death was another example of Joffrey’s cruelty. But she also said that she was shocked when she discovered how her character was killed — by Joffrey, of all people? Really?

After three seasons of “Game of  Thrones”, the viewers understand what a sadistic bastard King Joffrey is. We know. We’ve got it. We have watched Joffrey kill Lord Stark, then force his daughter Sansa to look at his head on a pike and proceeds to have her beat by his guard. We know he’s a little shit that doesn’t deserve the throne (THE KING IN THE NORTH!), so why must the writers of “Game of Thrones” constantly try to prove it again and again and why must they use violence against women as their tool for this? Last season we saw Ros beat a fellow prostitute to death whilst Joffery pointed a crossbow at her. We have also witnessed Joffrey have Sansa Stark beaten bloody and her clothes ripped off her in front of a whole court. These scenes were horrendous to watch, but this week it went that step further. Joffrey murdered Ros by tying her to a post and riddling her body with arrows — most of them shot into her breasts and groin.

Bianco’s comments in regards to the scene, and how we didn’t see the details of the death but rather the aftermath, were telling:

We see a lot of gory deaths on ‘Game of Thrones.’ It’s another example of how evil Joffrey is and how cruel, but I like that you don’t actually see it happening. I think there’s more of a shock. I’ve seen stills and it looks absolutely beautiful, like a painting. Really, every scene she’s been in is like a Caravaggio. I’m just glad she didn’t get her head chopped off.

Violence against women — particularly sexualized violence against women — is historically prevalent in all cultures. Women who take control of their sexuality — as Ros did in her profession as a prostitute, even in relationships with men who sought to take away that power — are constantly targeted for their “audacity”. For women, taking control of their own sexuality is incredibly dangerous.

The death of Ros through Joffrey’s sexual depravity is the ultimate example of how little the character of Ros is worth. Despite being built into the series as a fully formed character, Ros is used as a pawn by Littlefinger and cast aside when she is no longer useful. To the men in power, women are nothing more than bodies to be used, abused and then discarded. It is interesting that she is murdered with a crossbow, too, as it can be seen as a phallic reference; male sexuality killing female sexuality. (In a previous episode, there is an extremely sexualized scene in which Margaery strokes Joffrey’s ego by talking about the power of his crossbow — the relationship between Joffrey’s masculine power and his weapons has been well established.)

We don’t need anymore examples of Joffrey’s cruelty to understand him. George R.R. Martin gave us plenty of examples in his novels where Joffrey’s tyranny is shown; why did the writers have to use Ros’ character as a platform to show us what we already know? Ros is reduced from a strong, sexual character to nothing and I think that’s a real shame.

I honestly hope that this is the last we see of this type of sexualized violence against women, especially considering what is in store for Joffrey in the coming seasons. I hope that old Joff gets his just desserts.

Hillary Clinton, at the earlier Benghazi hearings.

We got another hint of that weird mix of sexism and paranoia a few months ago, when then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the Senate over the attack at a US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Amid the fiercely analyzed aspects of her testimony, even sympathetic coverage oddly focused on her distinctive glasses (one of the panes of which was treated to assist her eyesight after her concussion). Just like Lewinsky’s nose-scratching (and every other superficial aspect of her appearance), Clinton had at best peripherally relevant parts of her appearance treated as instructive as to her emotional state, even by comparatively friendly viewers.

Larry Klayman’s column on World Net Daily, published May 10, is something of an indicator of how that strange nexus of sexist paranoia, conspiracy theory, and the Clintons might make a comeback as the Republicans refuse to retire Benghazi as a talking point.

In an distressingly long paragraph, Klayman lists every non-murderous Clinton-era conspiracy, including ones he helped invent himself. He alleges that the Clintons “fired White House Travel Office employees to then hire their friends and when called on the carpet about his caper sicced the Internal Revenue Office on the head of the Travel Office, Billy Dale.” That’s also know as the last time Republicans cared at the federal level about embezzlement (which Billy Dale was charged with when he and his subordinates were fired). Likewise, that was also the last time Republicans at the federal level cared about the administration hiring someone on the basis of past connections (remember Halliburton? Remember “heckuva job Brownie”?).

Klayman goes on to reference Filegate, where Republicans claimed that the Clinton administration had too lax of a policy with regard to confidential information. There’s also another bizarre incident that Klayman explains as the taking of “bribes from the communist Chinese and others to fill their presidential campaign coffers and help pay for the Clinton library in Little Rock,” which was actually more of a case of private Chinese interests wanting to influence other prominent Democrats who weren’t doing adequate background checks on campaign contributors. At the same time, Klayman rehashes an old conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton herself was obsessively reading intelligence reports on all sorts of innocent people, while she and her husband also being disastrously disinterested in who donated however much to them. This isn’t just a revived laundry list of conspiracies – it’s one that’s confusingly inconsistent about how we’re supposed to feel about the Clintons, and Hillary Clinton in particular.

This, of course, is just the beginning, as Klayman makes clear once he reaches the point of writing, “more than 80 people, many of whom were material witnesses, “mysteriously” died during the Clinton administration. Lists of these dead people were not coincidentally left on the office chairs of such whistleblowers as Linda Tripp”. This is some Snopes-level nonsense.

Klayman’s real point is his conclusion, which is that after eight years of all these alleged events, the Clintons were never quite expelled from the White House and now, while Clinton was Secretary of State, a US consulate was attacked (gasp). The conclusion is obvious: no, not that this is all paranoid and frequently sexist nonsense, but that Hillary Clinton is going to get away with it! Unless, of course, average citizens “seek justice for the crimes of our politicians and other government officials who continue to play criminal games with our future as the greatest country on Earth.” Then comes the plug for the Grand Jury which Klayman is setting up.

It’s notable that Hillary Clinton’s, well, existence has prompted investigation after investigation (and prying look after prying look), while our deregulated banking sector destroyed the economy, the previous administration engaged in torture, the previous administration knowingly created a false pretext to invade Iraq, the previous administration failed to address the hundreds of deaths as a result of Hurricane Katrina, and the current administration created an international drone war. Why are we fixated on what we’re fixated on? Because we’ve convinced ourselves that women are enigmas? Or because they make easier targets?

As 2016 looms and the never-ending quest to make Benghazi a political liability continues, we might just see this Clinton-era brand of paranoia return.