Listling Without Commentary: Actual Answers to DADT Survey Questions, Out of Context
Culled from responses cited in the Department of Defense’s “Report of the Comprehensive Review of the Issues Associated with a Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” from soldiers both against and for a repeal of DADT. (The soldiers were acutely in favor of repeal, the over-representation of the pro-DADT responses on the list below indicate nothing more than the increased ridiculosity of the anti-gay statements versus the pro-repeal statements which sort of make me cry irrationally onto my keyboard out of love) (Okay, this is now a Listling with Commentary)
1. “Tell him if he hits on me I will kick his ass!”
2. “You just can’t show them around. Can’t take them out to a bar.”
3. “All I care about is can you carry a gun?”
4. “Like adultery, and drug use, I can not tolerate homosexuality. I will not work side by side with someone that is an adulterer, a drug addict, or a homosexual.”
5. “Given a task, a homosexual and a heterosexual can probably accomplish it the same way, so it should not have too much of an effect on getting the task done.”
6. “I think homosexual sex leads to diseases.”
7. “Am I supposed to celebrate gayness—do they get to wear a rainbow flag on their uniform? If that is the case, this uniform isn’t worth wearing.”
8. “Some will be flamboyant; they might get a beating.”
9. “I’m raising my family and was brought up a devout Catholic. Now all of a sudden Adam and Steve move in next door.”
10. “It is hard to explain to a child why their parents can’t hold hands or attend school or unit functions together the way other families do.”
11. “What would they [the DoD] do? Come out with a memo saying that the Bible, Koran, etc are wrong and that it is ok to be gay?”
12. “About separate facilities: we all went to college and stayed in dorms, we are all adults now and we have accepted it.”
13. “Those who are openly gay will be excluded from social functions, such as barbeques.”
14. “If you are in an infantry company in a fire fight, and you have an open homosexual who gets wounded, who is going to want to treat him for the fear of HIV and other stuff?”
15. “People get drunk and it’s a whole other thing.”
16. “I believe that the impact would be devastating to me, my family, my unit, the military, our country and the world!”
17. “This is an equality issue, and who doesn’t deserve equal rights? We’ve done it before with African Americans, and we have done it before with females. We can do it again. As brothers and sisters in arms, we stand and fight not only for our country, but for one another.”
Listicle Without Commentary concept stolen from The Awl, consequently made into our own.
Listling Without Commentary: Sh*t Your Family Said At Last Year’s Thanksgiving
Statements plucked from the Thanksgiving 2009 Open Thread [that’s happening this year, too, but here!]:
1. My family thinks Obama hates white people.
2. My Aunt was “offended by [Adam Lambert’s] performance, not because it was two boys, but because he was so aggressively sexual! Sexuality, I’m okay with. Aggressive sexuality is something different!”
3. My grandmother told me she doesn’t like vegetables because they are “sexless”.
4. My Dad asked me when I was going to get a real job. I said I had a real job. He said “Women’s Rights is not a real job.”
5. My uncle told me I need to lose weight. I’m sorry, I can’t. I love beer too much.
6. My grandfather asked if by Adam Lambert we meant Eddie Lampert.
7. My grandmother kept referring to herself in the third person.
8. My mom used the phrase “queer as a 2 dollar bill” in reference to someone she saw on TV.
9. My aunt and I argued over whether or not it is racist to ask if my Kenyan friend uses deodorant, whether or not Lady Gaga is a man, and whether or not a pineapple upside-down cake that’s been in the freezer since September is still edible.
10. My sister, in her “50′s housewife” outfit, told me I need jewelry so that I don’t look like a boy.
11. My uncle babbled about a chain email he couldn’t figure out which proved immediately that I’m too intelligent for my family and OMG I’m too elite for all this you guys.
12. My cousin decided I was a boy. He called me “Andy” the whole time.
13. p.s. My family has no clue who Adam Lambert is even.
Listling With Minimal Commentary: Gawker and its Satellite Sites, Ranked
In order from most favorite to least favorite:
1. Jezebel: Our soul sisters 4-life.
2. Gawker: Where Emily Gould got born. Gawker ‘changed the world.’
Riese: “Bloggorrhea was the quickest way to get like 4,000 new visitors to your blog in the mid-to-late ’00s.”
3. Lifehacker: Lifehacker is the internet’s best-kept secret that sometimes feels like a friendly neighbor and sometimes feels like a reminder of all the ways your life could be more efficient if you weren’t such a lazy fuck-up.
4. i09: We like Star Trek: The Next Generation.
5. Fleshbot: Sex.
6. Gizmodo: Seems “important.”
7. Kotaku:
Riese: what is kotaku
Rachel: i think kotaku is probably about japanese stuff
8. Deadspin: Better than Jalopnik because of the WNBA.
Rachel: i think jalopnik is about cars, therefore worse than deadspin
Riese: yes, worse
Rachel: deadspin could theoretically cover the wbna
Riese: i care more about basketball than about a fucking car. what is there to talk about with cars. just drive it.
9. Jalopnik:
Riese: Jalopnik is basically a blog about a product we can’t afford.
(“Listicle Without Commentary” title stolen from The Awl, then adapted for our own purposes.)
(We also recommend defamer au, owned by Allure Media)
Listling Without Commentary: Books On the Shelves of My Mom’s Guestroom
Hi. It’s me, Riese. Today is my Mom’s birthday, I think, so I am posting this Listling in her honor, which I compiled while residing in her Suburban Detroit guestroom for 4-5 days in early October, prior to moving out west.
If you want, you should send my Mom an email at mlynbernard [at] att dot net and tell her HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Try to attach some things to the email.
Books on the Shelves of my Mom’s Guestroom in Suburban Detroit
1. Many Roads, One Journey
2. Codependent No More
3. Gender Trouble
4. When a Jew Prays
5. Stop Walking on Eggshells
6. DSM-IV-TR In Action
7. 50 Signs of Mental Illness
8. Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality
9. The Thinking Person’s Guide to Sobriety
10. Understanding Body Dysmorphic Disorder
12. What Color is Your Aura?
13. Third Sex, Third Gender
14. So You Want to Be a Lesbian?
15. Dykes With Baggage
16. The Gospel of Food
17. “The Journal of Jonathan Hildreth” by Marie Bernard
18. “Mommy and Me” by Marie Bernard
19. The Diary of Anne Frank
20. When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport
21. Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish
22. Mac OS Tiger for Dummies
Listicle Without Commentary: Statements (NOT QUESTIONS) Left for Riese and Laneia on Formspring
1. Laneia! I just made my first ever gay lady friends! In this city! I have friends! I’m a real person! Dating! Sex! Friends! Ah! KITTENS!!!
2. You never answer my Haviland questions.
3. You’re very good with comfort and reasoning. I’m going to attempt to decode your algorithm, if you don’t mind.
4. After that HIV question you answered, I had a great idea: 24-hour text message support line you can chat with to talk you through getting tested
5. I have been in love with my best friend for 5 years. Which didn’t feel like that long until I read the last question and thought about it. 5 years ins’t 8 years, but it’s close. I cannot believe I have loved her for 5 years.
6. Tell Haviland I love her and that one day we’ll sing a duet together, preferably something from Miss Saigon or Funny Girl. That would be grand.
7. I just want to chime in and say that I am a pretty Asian girl (I feel so beautiful today.) who loves orange Fanta.
8. Nothing makes sense. Not anything, not at all. I just want to chuck in everything and shave my hair and move to a new city, except I’d look really stupid with a shaved head and in a new city I’d still just be me and I’d still feel like this.
9. I love you. I hope you know this.
10. I moved out of home and I’m too old but I miss my mum. I don’t want to grow up.
11. ALL DEM LESBIANS WE WEAR DA VNECKS YES YES.
11. I want: http://butcanshedance.wordpress.com/2009/03/04/mermaid/ soooooooo bad.
12. I think you should post more things your kids say, or give them their own tumblr, because it makes my heart warm.
13. You can still go to college. If you want to. You still can.
14. ANSWER MY QUESTION YOU ARE A SLACKER BUT I LOVE YOU
15. I liked it when I read that Slade has novels, that he writes novels.
16. I WANT TO CRAWL INSIDE YOUR CHEST AND LISTEN TO YOU BREATHE AND TYPE. hypothetically.
17. I’m eating gravy from DQ right now, just thought you’d like to know.
[“listicle without commentary” title stolen from the awl]
Listicle Without Commentary: Puzzling References to Homosexuality From Journals Found in My Room While Packing to Move to San Francisco
[in no particular order]
1. “I just wish [my boyfriend] would be more interested in the side of me that kisses girls.”
2. “A boy in my Earth Science class asked me why I had a “gay pin” on my backpack. It was an AIDS awareness pin. GOD.”
3. “I WANT SHANE FROM THE L WORD. My life is segmented insanity.”
4. “Basically I’d already imagined & planned our entire relationship before I realized she’d just called to see if I could work for Darci tonight.”
5. “I miss girls. I would never betray [my boyfriend] but I don’t think he understands the complexities of my sexuality.”
6. ” I like girls who don’t spend too much money on shoes.”
7. “Well, the impossible is about to take place. I am going to meet Kate Moennig, aka Shane.”
8. “I feel so close with my friends here this year, it’s like they are sisters. I’m not so surprised that so many girls here fuck around—we’re all so damn close!”
9. “I hate not being on the [Rosie Cruise] anymore. Everything here is dirty and hetero. I don’t know where to find more boyish women.”
10. “I was watching The L Word first season and thinking about how my heart is dead.”
11. “What I want isn’t about man/woman, it’s about needing a break from my constant need to be in total control of absolutely everything.”
12. “I am in Vermont at Rosie O’Donnell’s chateau with two crazy lesbian couples.”
13. “I need a girlfriend super bad. Drinking is boring.”
14. “What I want is a girl to be my friend. With benefits.”
15. “We want sexuality to be biological because then it’s more about instincts and nature pulling people together. Choice isn’t very romantic. Love is about surrender — the absence of choice — the irresistible pull of another body. We don’t have faith in the rest of it because we doubt the permanence of anything we are capable of changing with our minds.”
16. “I just had a drink at the airport bar. Women tear me up. I need, I think, 10 more drinks!”
17.
a. “I know I’m not a lesbian but I’m pretty sure I’m bi.” (’98)
b. “It made me realize I just might be 100% hetero after all.” (’04)
c.. “I want a girlfriend. What’s wrong with me? I don’t know if I’m bi or not.” (’05)
d. “Waves came over me, I wanted to cry, I wanted it to be over. I wanted it to be a woman.” (’06)
e. “I didn’t know if I felt that way towards him because I’m 100% gay or because now I’ve been fucked up and I can’t go back.” (’06)
f. “I think it’s the queer world I identify with the most.” (’07)
g. “I am a girlfriend to a girl, I am changed. And on fire.” (’07)
18. “It’s New Year’s Eve. I still like Shane.”
[“listicle without commentary” title stolen from the awl]
Listicle Without Commentary: Reactions to a Photograph of Rachel Maddow & Ira Glass
Comments added to “reblogs” of the following photograph of Rachel Maddow & Ira Glass, Together, published on Autostraddle Tumblr and taken from New York Magazine:
1. “Rachel and Ira look like the same ultra attractive person at opposite ends of the gender spectrum. UNF.” (affably)
2. “If these two people had a baby i would want to look like that baby.” (besttumblr)
3. “I am exploding into a big ball of melting Ira ice cream that doesn’t even make sense.” (seaponies)
4. “So they are not the same person.” (teallikethecolor)
5. “This reminds me, I am going back to Smith College SO SOON. THANK FUCKING GOODNESS. Northern California, it’s been… chill.” (carborundorum)
6. “You are looking at my sexual desires all in one image.” (delicate bone)
[“listicle without commentary” title stolen from the awl]
Listicle Without Commentary: Headlines Prepared for Losing Prop 8 Trial, or “The Art of Losing Inequality is Not Hard to Master”
Titles Prepared via Group G-Chat Between Rachel, Sarah, Laneia and Riese for Our Post on the Prop 8 Verdict, Which We Assumed We’d Lose
– August 4, 2010
1. Zen and the Art of Losing Your Marriage Rights
2. How to Lose Marriage Rights and Alienate Your Family
3. Problem Drinking, Therapy and Me: Living without Marriage Rights in 2010
4. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Inequality
5. The Brief Wondrous Life of Prop 8
6. The Unbearable Inequity of California
7. If You Have to Cry About Losing Your Marriage Rights, Go Outside
8. Life of H8
9. And the Heart Says Whatever Inequality
10. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of Rights You Don’t Have Cause You’re Gay
11. Are You There, Marriage? It’s Me, Disenfranchised Gay Person
12. The Art of Happiness, Sans Equality
13. Bastard Out of California
14. The Perks of Being a Homosexual
15. Oranges Pretty Much Are The Only Fruit, ‘Cause You’re Not Getting Wedding Cake
16. Twilight: Inequality
17. One Hundred Years of Inequality
18. Equality, Interrupted
19. How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Enjoy Being A Second-Class Citizen
Right after that one, we won.
[“listicle without commentary” title stolen from the awl]