life in mokievision

I don't know if I can take another guy saying the Hobby Lobby decision is no big deal.

Let's set aside that the Supreme Court has said it's OK for employers to insert their religious beliefs into an employee's private life, by specifically limiting that employee's options in areas where they should have no say. No, your employer should not have say over your health care decisions.

Let's ignore that the Court has given employers the go-ahead to insert their political beliefs into an employee's medical decisions, by ignoring how certain medications actually work according to doctors, in favor of their own 'interpretation' of how it works based on their political agenda - this even though that incorrect interpretation is still perfectly legal in this country. No, your employer should not get veto power over your perfectly legal health care decisions.

We can even sidestep the fact that the Court has said it's OK for companies to selectively ignore parts of laws they dislike by claiming a religious exemption, even if they're for-profit outfits and not actually people, and definitely not churches. No, your employer's religion should not affect your health care decisions.

Basically, your employer does not own you and should not have control of your private life.

Guys, the Supreme Court has given employers the right to veto preventative care for a specific class of employees.

If a woman gets pregnant and decides to have the child, she's going to see a doctor for prenatal visits, for tests and check-ups to ensure things are OK, and for intervention if things aren't going OK. When time comes to pull a human being out of her body, she's probably doing it in a hospital, and given statistics in recent years, she'll quite likely have surgery. Pregnancy and childbirth involves a chain of medical procedures and is very much a big deal, one that has permanent physical repercussions for the person doing it aside from the impact on their lives in general. That's why lots of women decide not to have the child, and lots more - 99% of American women at some point in their lives - take steps to avoid conceiving in the first place. That's what makes birth control 'preventative care'.

No, Hobby Lobby was not being forced to foot the bill for abortions. Don't forget that employees pay into these packages, which are meant to cover the health care needs of employees, not the political agenda of the employer.

No, it does not matter that Hobby Lobby covers some other types of contraception, because they've opened the door for other employers to deny contraception entirely, which gets us into the sticky fact that, apart from pregnancy being a real risk for some women, 'birth control' often has medical uses outside of preventing pregnancy - treatment of endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, and reduction of ovarian cancer risks, for starters. You should not have to sit down with your boss and prove you're not just horny in order to get medicine prescribed by your doctor, dammit.

No, "They shouldn't have to pay for you to have sex!" isn't relevant, because these insurance packages sure as hell cover prenatal care and treatment for STDs, so by that logic they're already paying for people to have sex.

No, "It doesn't cover my condoms!" isn't remotely the same thing, because even if the condom breaks, that guy is never, ever going to risk having a person pulled from his dick nine months later.

Yes, it is a big deal, because contraception is expensive, but so is getting pregnant, and if you're working retail at the fucking craft store level, in all likelihood you can barely afford either.

Update: Oh look, folks are already trying to use Hobby Lobby's "sincerely held religious belief" precedent to skirt LGBT anti-discrimination legislation.

Happy holidays, you crazy cats! I've not forgotten about you, I've just been buried under work, and unable to muster many big words.

So, did you guys know that I have a livejournal and a deadjournal and an insanejournal and a dreamwidth journal? They're all really the same journal, and all mokie. I mirror like a mofo, because I believe in the fundamental ability of websites to disappear without warning. But anyway, if you intend to bail on LJ and would prefer I read/comment at another site (when I dig myself out long enough to read), etc., feel free to say so.

For those not in the know, Livejournal has revamped the way its comments work, which is causing some consternation.

Some of it is trifling, like the font. Yes, there are people saying, "You bastards! I hate that font! Change it back NAO!"

Some of it is fair but still a little dramatic, like removal of subject lines and comment managing bits. I know these things have legitimate uses, especially in some contexts (like very talkative communities), but calm and clear feedback on why these things are not 'clutter' and are valuable is probably more helpful than screaming like someone murdered the kitten Jesus.

And some of it sounds trifling, like the new color combo, but is very much not, since the complaint is that it triggers migraines. Not migraines in the sense of drama queens who can't just have a headache, they have a migraine (though some jerky commenters on the news page are treating it like such), but migraines in the full medical sense, with nausea and hypersensitivity to stimuli and a crushing immunity to most painkillers. Gotta love a headache that brings its own 2-day hangover.

(If you're wondering: it's the new blue. It tricks the eye into reading the screen as washed out and much brighter than it actually is. Even users who don't get migraines are still getting headaches and reporting eyestrain. If you're sensitive to such things and have a paid account, I'd recommend viewing pages in your own style for a while, by adjusting your management settings and/or sticking ?style=mine onto the end of links. Don't trust Greasemonkey to customize things for you--I've seen a few users saying the site change has borked it.)

The much bigger problem is that this change to the comments appears to be the beginning of a site overhaul, in the same color scheme. So, that's fun.

Yet another LJ exodus is underway, and for good reason--if folks can't even read their comments without a headache and a hangover, then the site is fundamentally broken for them. Dreamwidth has open registration until the end of the year, and if any of my lovely readers need an invite for Deadjournal (or DW later), I'll share. Online journals with no commenting haven't been fun since '97.

I do hope LJ takes this one seriously. I know the userbase pitches a fit whenever a pixel is moved, but this is more in line with, "Hey, your cartoon causes seizures in certain percentage of small children." You fix that shit on principle, y'know?

From Indie Won. Now What? [Broken Pencil]

Authenticity has become dominated by persona (or worse, personal brand), serving to disguise or deflect a person's motives. At this juncture, indie needs to provide a better window into its soul -- and like every useful window, it must be transparent. ... The problem, of course, is that authenticity is much sexier (and safer) than transparency. 'Select only things to steal that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic,' explained indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch in a 2004 article for MovieMaker magazine. 'Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent.' Transparency has no place in this equation because it involves footnotes and citations and other unsexy tools of attribution. Ripping someone off, meanwhile, requires nothing but swagger.

David Shields, in his recent book Reality Hunger, is equally obsessed with artistic bona fides. He admits that he is 'desperate for authenticity and in love with artifice' and that 'we're clinging to anything that seems 'real' or organic or authentic. We want rougher sounds, rougher images, raw footage, uncensored by high technology and the powers that be.' Curiously enough Shields, like Jarmusch, endorses thievery, admitting that 'most of the passages in this book are taken from other sources.'

Meanwhile, in February of this year, it was revealed that Helene Hegemann, a 17-year-old German novelist, had also taken Jarmusch's advice and plagiarized (or borrowed, or remixed, or repurposed) a blogger named Airen in her book Axolotl Roadkill. 'There's no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,' Hegemann said in her defense, taking inspiration from Shields and nearly plagiarizing Jarmusch in the process.

The author goes on to point out the irony of carefully constructed and inauthentic authenticity, as part of the article's theme--that the indie hipsters need to embrace the inauthenticity of their authenticity to make it authentic instead of pretending it's authentic. Or something.

But I wish, oh how I wish, we had followed that tangent above: that hipsters and the indie movement have conflated authenticity, that which is genuine, "of undisputed origin or authorship," true and trustworthy and legitimate, with theft. The claim that there is no originality is a cover for an unwillingness to pursue originality in favor of rehashing the past with tongue in cheek, an excuse to sneer when you are caught stealing someone else's work--caught, because the plagiarist doesn't state upfront that she's ripped off a handful of bloggers and authors.

It's nothing to do with originality or authenticity, or the relative unsexiness of footnotes. The braggadocio of the embarrassed asshole caught in the act may be the hallmark of the hipster but it did not originate with him, and "Fuck you, I meant to do that anyway" is older than spit.

So, the author says, their authenticity now thoroughly inauthentic in that it can be bought and sold to market a car, indie has 'won'--a strange reversal of values, given that previous generations would have decried this as 'selling out' or having been co-opted by corporate interests, and a tragic undermining of the legitimacy of that movement/aesthetic. Except, that's right, their legitimacy isn't, their authenticity isn't, it's all been a snarky sham and if the suits are going to make a buck off of it (isn't marketing the ultimate example of inauthentic authenticity?), the hipsters might as well pose for the cameras.

And now that they've won, what's next? Transparency. Footnotes. Show your sources, show your work, because honesty and integrity are the new indie.