Yes, you read that right. Maybe this sign will soon read “We serve skinny’s only. No fat or obese allowed.”

In Mississippi they are trying to pass a bill that would make it illegal for restaurants to feed the obese. This is absurd. Actually this is beyond absurd this is offensive and discriminatory.

Here is the article from U.S.A. Today:

Three legislators want to make it illegal for restaurants to serve obese customers in Mississippi.

House Bill No. 282, which was introduced this month, says: Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.

The proposal would allow health inspectors to yank the permit from any restaurant that “repeatedly” feeds extremely overweight customers.

The bill, written by GOP Rep. W. T. Mayhall Jr., was referred to the Judiciary and Public Health committees, but The Jackson Free Press doesn’t expect it to garner much support in the statehouse.

About two-third of Mississippians are considered overweight or obese, according to a recent analysis of federal health data.

-article link

I have my own issues with fat acceptance. I don’t believe the issue should be fat or thin. I believe it should be healthy or unhealthy, not perceived healthy, actually healthy. There are skinny people out there that are unhealthy as well as obese people. I support the idea of love your body, therefore take care of your body. But this is getting away from the issue. This bill is appalling. It is discrimination at its most obvious and historical level. Thankfully it will most likely not pass, but it should never have been proposed.

How about instead of running fanatically towards discrimination you pass bills that support healthy eating and exercise, as well as health care and help people find solutions for their weight issues.

This is so awful, that it is hard to put into words what I feel about this. It is like I am in shock, thinking, can this be real?

When do sex and violence go bad? Well, some would say immediately and honestly if you would prefer to keep your ignorance to the topic and believe it is just good ol’ party fun and the occasional song lyric, I can’t really blame you. However, if you start scratching the surface the plethora of information opens up like a hot spring. In spending less than 1o minutes researching rape I found some joke of an anti-rape contraption that was more offensive than funny (more on this in a minute), I found organization upon organization supporting rape awareness, anti-rape ad campaigns, brochures, websites, grassroots movements, artist contributions. You name it, it is out there. So why, if it is so prevalent, is IT so prevalent? Why are so many people still being raped? Yes, I did mean to say people. It is NOT JUST WOMEN. Women are still, by far, the majority. But men get raped to.

How many of you know a woman who has been raped? This question is posed often to people. They say that nearly everyone knows a woman who was raped. When was the last time you wondered if you knew a man who was raped? I do.

Rape is a violent crime. It is not about sex. It is about power. It is about control. It is about dominance. It is a symptom of a mental illness. It is the reptilian part of the brain running out of control. It is commonplace. It happens because sometimes ambiguity is easier to accept than distinction.

She said no. But did she? Do you really hear it? Did she really say it? If she is too drunk to say no, does that still mean no? Come on people, we have all seen the after school specials about this. We know what is right and what is wrong and what is ambiguous.

After a conversation this afternoon about the need for being proactive, I did my 10 minutes of research and discovered that we are being proactive. But what does that mean? We have great organizations like rapeis.org . There are ad campaigns like:

Though I appreciate the effort and the message. This seems to be one of those posters on the campus bulletin boards and on the walls in hallways that we all read a thousand times and just ignored. Just like do your monthly breast exam and get the flu shot.

There are good artistic voices getting the proactive word out. This is a moving slam poetry piece on poetry and feminism.

Or you can go the route that South Africa has gone with the Rapex anti rape device. Just looking at the thing and you can see why it is controversial. But as its challengers rightly point out, doesn’t this put the onus on the victim. When do we stop doing that? We do have a responsibility to protect ourselves from being victims. But does is have to involve putting teeth in our vagina’s? Apparently in South Africa it does. In Brazil they have all women police stations to deal with crimes against women. This is progressive. We certainly do not offer that in the US. Of course those police stations do nothing to prevent the crime. They are there because the government has accepted that the crime is inevitable and therefore should provide a more effective and protective way to deal with it. Well, they aren’t wrong. Not yet at least.

So why are our current efforts of being proactive so ineffective? Maybe we need a shock campaign to scare the issue into the forefront. This is a question to which I have no answer.

First she is not “human” enough.

Then she is too emotional.

Now she is dependent upon her husband.

Can the politics of president be separated from gender? It doesn’t seem that way.

Feminism has become skewed since the second wave movement in the 1970’s. Now women don’t want to identify as a feminist. To many it is synonymous with Femanazi, a term used to disenfranchise the feminist movement, equating women libbers with man hating, castrating, over bearing, dictator, hate driven women. Of course women like this exist, but they are a minority. To be a feminist is a good thing. It is to say we are women and we are equal. We are as good as men. We are as smart. We are as capable. We deserve equal pay, equal rights, equal lives. We deserve to be thought of and treated as equals. We are not objects here with the sole purpose of your sexual gratification, but we are sexual! We are mothers and daughters and business women and home makers. We are all of these things and do not have to compromise in order to “have it all” but neither do we need to be thought less of.

Hillary Clinton is trying for the ultimate “all.” Where she cannot necessarily be attacked with some of the more traditional “keep your woman down” slogans, she can be attacked with some of the more passive socially acceptable sexism that is pervasive in the US.

I agree with Gloria Steinum when she says that in this country gender trumps race. Sexism is still considered acceptable because it is considered a part of the natural order. Different is still not valued as equal, because different is different. One cannot be better at one thing than another, he must be superior in all things superior and dismissive of all things inferior.

Gender crosses the racial line! Woman does not mean white or republican or Christian. Woman means everybody, well everybody but men. It is an exclusive gender club that so many of us seem to be running away from. We are barred from the white mens club. We are barred from the black mens club. We are tolerated in the periphery of all men’s clubs as wives, mothers and daughters, and we accept this relegation gladly before we find the solidarity in our own club. Our club that crosses race, religion, politics and nationality.

So is it possible in this day where sexism is still accepted social banter and a part of the natural order to view a woman presidential candidate separate from her sex? Can we view her politics without tainting it with her gender? I don’t think so, at least not most of us. But don’t worry, no one will say that directly. We will just take hits at her that no one would conceive of holding against a male candidate. For instance Maureen Dowd in the NY Times said, “It’s odd that the first woman with a shot at becoming president is so openly dependent on her husband to drag her over the finish line.” Other candidates and presidents are given credit for consulting their spouses. What a healthy relationship they have! But Hillary asking her husband, and ex-president, opinions, well obviously that is a sign of weakness. George Bush Sr. consulted with him, but his wife better not. That is weakness, in him it is strength.

I think we need to stop dancing around this sex issue and address is head on. Do women have a responsibility to vote for Hillary? Should gender trump race in the vote? Should solidarity weigh more, and to whom do you share that solidarity with? Can we at least use this as a reason to really address sexism in this country? As Bob Herbert from the NY Times says, “If we’ve opened the door to the issue of sexism in the presidential campaign, then let’s have at it. It’s a big and important issue that deserves much more than lip service.”