stuff always happens over finals week! stuff can’t happen in normal people time? what is this?

Apparently, Andrew Sullivan has chosen this time (FINALS TIME, SULLY, AND NOT YEARS AND YEARS AGO WITH ALL THE SANE PEOPLE) to make his exit from the right wing and flounce to the meandering middle.  Unfortunatly for him, what reads like a priority list doesn’t say nice things about him or the Republican party.  Budget deficits – then, torture. He also – and this is nice work, from a believer – calls out the theocratic element of the hard right.  He loathes the homophobia and racism of the modern right, but is perfectly buddy-buddy with their misogyny.  He so much gives away the misogyny part when he trashes Sarah Palin’s campaign as “identity politics,” which he clearly sees as a bad word.  Um, hey, an attempt to appeal to half the voters in the country because of our identity which YOU continue to marginalize?  Not an irresponsible decision.  The criminalization of private behavoir in the war on drugs is rotten in Sully-ville, but the criminalization of a safe medical procedure based on the class of Americans who use that procedure?  Cool beans!   Sadly, the fool fits right in with the rest of the Democrats.

Women challenge Irish abortion law in the ECHR – a case which had to wait  until after the Lisbon referendum, but nevertheless, is crucial.  Ireland has a constitutional amendment protecting “the life of the unborn” (more in this old post) and has resisted, for years, recognition of the rights of women on this score.  Now, this isn’t exactly like a Supreme Court decision – I’m pretty sure parties to the case have to accept its decision, but how much precedential power it will end up having will be up to the individual state.  The UK does seem to accept the ECHR’s judgments – I’ll check this tomorrow – as supreme to its supreme court, at least in cases where the UK is a party.  If it accepts all decisions as precedent, they too will have to repeal the ban on abortion in the North.  This could be a huge step for all Irish women.

Seattle pimp gets 18 years for human trafficking. Say, that’s less time than he’d have gotten for 50 grams of crack!  It’s almost like Americans have skewed law enforcement priorities.

New blog I <3:  http://fridaythang.com

Barbara Erenreich on why optimism is unhealthy

See Rachel!  See Rachel fight the murderiously anti-gay legislation in Rwanda! Since that post went up the death penalty and life in prison provisions have been taken off the table, but the bill still remains awful, and remains written by Americans like Rick Warren trying to export our bigotry.  Unfortunately for everyone, it seems to be a renewable resource.

Stupak tries to defend himself.  I can’t even read it.  Can’t.

Douthat freely admits that he cares more about prying into girls’ sex lives than getting victims some actual medical care.

NEW STUDY FINDS 70% REDUCTION IN MATERNAL DEATHS AND NEARLY 50% DECLINE IN NEWBORN DEATHS ARE WITHIN REACH. Rational   people:   DO IT THEN RIGHT NOW WTF IS STOPPING YOU!  Douthat, Sully, Stupak, and their friends:  no thanks.

OHMIGOD, another intergenerational abortion-based throwdown!  I’m glad I’m too doped up to be as annoyed as I will tomorrow.

Patrick Kennedy does the right thing; RI bishop loses his shit.  Shit-losing seems to be a theme among these folks lately.

And also, Amanda Knox. Stay tuned.

In Defense of VAWA.  Because now we have to fucking defend VAWA.  From feminists.  Alternative title:  IN WHICH I GIVE THE FUCK UP AND DIE.

If you wanted to go out and look for a paradigm example of a piece of legislation which made a swift, real, on-the-ground difference in a lot of women’s lives in a very short amount of time, you couldn’t get a better example than VAWA.  Therefore, Ms. Ann Friedman (of Feministing and the American Prospect) has taken it upon herself to explain to all of us Why VAWA Is Made of Wrong.  Its main crimes are (1) inventing the idea of prosecuting crimes in the criminal justice system, (2) all but excluding every other method of approaching the problem, even the ones it has explicitly embraced for fifteen years now, and (3) being for nerds and old ladies.  While the article sometimes ambles towards valid criticisms of a policy-heavy approach to ending VAW, it fails to engage appropriately with VAWA and frequently falls into anti-feminist language and framing.

Onto the article!

 

The Polanski Paradox

LOL YOUR SHAMELESS HEADLINE SENSATIONALISM.  “The Polanski case is prominent right now and will get me lots of hits!  But I want to hate on VAWA!  Maybe my readers will not notice that the Polanski shit went down FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS BEFORE ANYONE THOUGHT OF VAWA!”  Unfortunately for the Prospect, its readers can, you know, read.  (Also, as it turns out, the Prospect’s definition of “paradox” turns out to be something like “irritating but necessary policy decisions, which sometimes end up being non-optimal.”  That’s cool, our language is alive and vibrant!)

[two relatively harmless paragraphs omitted]

VAWA is also controversial among some liberals but for a very different reason. While overall the legislation has been incredibly successful at increasing privacy protections for survivors and funding the organizations that serve them, VAWA also injects our flawed criminal-justice system into personal relationships. In doing so, it poses a deep quandary for those of us who are critical of that system but believe strongly that rapists and domestic abusers should be accountable for their actions.

The argument that VAWA is what “injects our flawed criminal justice system into personal relationships” is patently ridiculous.  The criminal justice system has a long and storied history of getting involved in personal relationships.  It’s a crime to hit or kidnap YOUR OWN CHILD.   That’s government all up in our personal relationships for you!  Plenty of states (where most criminal justice goes down) would have DV and SA laws independent of VAWA, and had them long before the bill was written.  THE GOVERNMENT GETS BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DEALER EVERY DAMN DAY.  Law enforcement meddling in relationships is not some wild-eyed innovation created by cold-hearted ladies in power suits and foisted on an unwilling population.  Setting aside VAW as something “personal,” something which is primarily about relationships rather than about a cultural, historical, and yes Virginia legal framework which oppresses women does more to support those who would argue that government should get out of the woman-protecting business altogether than to support the argument (which in my infinite charity I assume the author is trying to make) that personalized victim services are of grave importance.

Originally, the legislation required states receiving VAWA funds to implement “mandatory arrest” policies if police were called to a home on reports of domestic violence. As Elizabeth M. Schneider writes in her book Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking , the provision was lawmakers’ answer to the fact that many police officers are reluctant to arrest batterers — and that many survivors of abuse are reluctant to charge their abusers with a crime. This policy, which was ratcheted down from “mandatory arrest” to “pro-arrest” when VAWA was reauthorized in 2005, disregarded the fact that not all women interact with the criminal-justice system in the same way. An upper-middle-class white woman may conclude that involving the police (getting a restraining order, perhaps) against her abusive husband will make her safer, but will a woman of color in a low-income neighborhood come to the same conclusion? When your community has a contentious history with law enforcement, involving police might not seem like such a good idea.

Hey!  Wow!  And, recognizing that it wasn’t working, they fucking changed it!  It’s like VAWA is almost, wait for it, sustained and improved by people who actually want to make the legislation better in order to make women’s lives safer!  But!  But!  That doesn’t fit with my too-hip-for-school worldview!  I know, I’ll just judge the program by its past mistakes rather than its work to rectify those mistakes, which is not self-serving or misleading at all!

This particular use of criticism of the criminal justice system is, in a huge way, a double-edged sword.  I doubt Friedman and I have many significant political disagreements on how we’d like to see the criminal justice system change.  Less racism!  Better prosecutorial ethics!  More treatment, less incarceration!  Now that I’ve established I am a Good Liberal, there’s a significant however. HOWEVER, the fact remains that (a) the criminal justice system is the strongest means our society has to say that some action is wrong and must not be tolerated, (b) there are a significant number of people, who hold way more power and privilege than victims of violence against women, who do not believe that this violence is worthy of punishment or indeed believe that it should be tolerated, and (c) that moving violence against women out of the criminal realm, should Good Liberals ™ succeed in killing such initiatives by sheer power of disdain, will be taken and read as a victory for those who think violence against women should be permitted by the government.  Flawed as the criminal justice system is, it is what there is.  This is an argument that should be made very, very carefully, with depth of thought and painstakingly careful language – and it’s not one that is ever likely to fully persuade me.  But it’s a reasonable argument that has been made respectfully and persuasively many times over, and has influenced policy and society for the better, including in this very specific VAWA example, which shows both an early error in judgment and a commendable flexibility and ability to act on criticism on the part of Congress and the DOJVAW office.

It’s understandable, given the prevalence of violence against women in this country, to want to push for big, systemic solutions to the problem. That is the premise on which VAWA was based.  But the deeply personal nature of this crime is what makes such a broad response inherently problematic. Many observers were shocked when Rihanna chose not to press charges against Brown. The woman who, as a child, was raped by Polanski later said that she wished prosecutors would drop the case. This may be hard to accept for those of us who saw the photos of Rihanna’s bruised face or read the damning testimony from Polanski’s trial, but these women have a right to decline to get involved with the justice system. Violence against women is a public scourge, but respecting survivors’ wishes must be paramount.

Anyone else notice the fuzzy fee-fee language of the first sentence?  “Understandable.”  “Want.”  As if there aren’t objectively brilliant minds which have spent decades intellectually grappling with the most effective, ethical, pain-free way to help victims and prevent victimizations.  SPOILER ALERT:  THERE ARE.  The use of this language, deliberately stripped of the rational reasoning behind approaching VAW using systemic solutions as one of many tools (1.  NOTHING ELSE HAS WORKED.  2.  THIS SEEMS TO KIND OF WORK, EVEN IF NOT AS WELL AS WE WANT IT TO.  3.  BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF A DUDE IS A CRIME, MAYBE LADIES SHOULD BE MORE THAN JUST RAPEABLE PUNCHING BAGS IN THE EYES OF THE LAW.  And so on) reflects the cherished anti-feminist tactic of making the person arguing for women’s rights seem driven by emotions rather than reason.  Dear fellow feminists:  just because our stance is moral and deeply-felt does not mean it is any less rational or intellectually based.

In her haste to paint the Mean Haters as emotion-driven, she conveniently skates over a significant issue with her suggestions which is both practical and ethical.  Our problems are huge and indomitable, but our resources are tiny and dwindling.  A personalized, sensitive, victim-specific response to every crime is indeed preferable, but it’s simply not realistic when women’s rights advocates are begging for the scraps they need to keep their websites afloat.  It is the job of the legislature to come up with systemic solutions to systemic problems.  That doesn’t mean nobody should do individual and community focused work (and in fact such work is supported by VAWA) but that a systemic approach is one part of the solutions we need.  I realize the women’s movement is, as ever, an easy punching bag, but it’s tough to justify blaming it for the nature of state resources (namely:  that there aren’t enough).  The philosophical questions of the needs of the many and the few is a terrible one, and one that you have to shut yourself down a bit if you’re going to engage with it appropriately.  If Polanski isn’t prosecuted, respecting the victim’s wishes, and wealthy rapists all start raping with even greater impunity and fleeing to France, thus creating more victims (here and in France) without the criminal recourse some of those victims would want (funny, how women who inconveniently do gain some measure of peace or closure by following through with prosecution are so easily erased in this discussion) would it have been worthwhile?  If VAWA’s criminal provisions have had some effect on the not-steep-enough fall in rapes, and removing them leads to a slow in the decline of rape but brings less people into contact with the Evil Law, would that be worth it?  Because remember, if you think that every victim matters – not just the famous ones who entice people to read your article! – then every individual that could be or has been helped by an admittedly harsh systemic solution matters equally, and exposing them to further harm should be equally (or more) difficult.  The question has launched a million iritating ethics seminars because nobody knows the answer or where to draw the line, which makes Friedman’s presumption that everyone does or should fall on her side a bit questionable.

I wonder, do Good Liberals make this argument about people who are afraid to testify against violent mobsters – we don’t want to traumatize that wounded mob informant any more, after all, clearly his pain trumps the interests of justice!  Or is it that the patriarchy syndicate deserves special protection from the legal system?  We’re unlikely ever to demand that victims of sexual or intimate partner violence receive the same protections as people who testify against criminals who are dangerous to, you know, people, but it’s not a bad idea – and not unlike what VAWA actually does – to consider how we may make participation in the criminal justice system as safe and trauma-free as possible.  This assumption that women must be put through the worst trials of the crucible of the current criminal justice system, or else opt out of it entirely, ensures that women will continue to avoid the system rather than making it safer for them to engage in it.   I am not arguing that there is no valid critique to be made, or that all rape victims are about to storm the gate of a magically reformed judicial process.  However, sulking at the imperfection of VAWA, which is an ongoing and admirable project which has helped us to make great strides towards this particular reform, does absolutely nothing to help anything but the Prospect’s hits.

As a member of the press, it’s possible that Friedman is contractually unable to plainly state what seems to be one major, if not the major, reason for Polanski victim’s dread at the idea of another trial, which may well be true for Rihanna as well – they don’t want it revisited everywhere they turn in the press.  They don’t want to keep hearing about how “some think” they had it coming, or their victimizers are upstanding gentlemen who have been unfairly maligned.  Mass media is at least as deeply seeped in rape culture as everything else around us.  The craven, profit-driven, misogynistic behavior of the mainstream media is a tool of rape culture, and when it becomes a factor in an eventual failure to prosecute, rape culture scores off of that victim again.  Respecting the wishes of a victim and the interests of justice is a difficult balance to begin with, but it’s made exponentially more difficult by the woeful behavior of the press, and for a member of the press to skate blithely over this reality while critiquing another failing prong of our society is laughable.

Again, I’m really concerned about Friedman’s use of antifeminist tropes to support her argument that the criminalization of violence against women isn’t particularly important.   The victimization of women, as I am absolutely sure Friedman well knows, has been justified for centuries on the idea that for some reason or another, it isn’t the place of an outside authority to meddle between a man and his horrified victim, and the oppression of women in general is excused on the grounds that we require protection from the harsh vagaries of the public world.  For the umpteen thousandth time (and isn’t this manipulation so well-crafted that I have to keep repeating myself on this point?), I’m not saying that the wishes of the victims shouldn’t be taken into account, but that this argument doesn’t happen within a vacuum.  It happens against a pro-rape, anti-woman backdrop, where exactly these arguments are made against women’s equality.

If our goal is to keep women safe from violence and, failing that, help those who have experienced it to heal and move on, a more personal response may be warranted. Of course, VAWA does fund many programs that do just that. It has funneled grant money to organizations, advocates, and shelters that do critical work within communities to reduce the incidence of violence against women and to support survivors. When it comes time to reauthorize the legislation next year, that’s where we should put the focus – on educating men and empowering women.

Hey!  I agree!  EXCEPT THAT IS WHAT VAWA ALREADY DOES.  The vast majority of this article rests on some serious false dichotomy action – Friedman all but outright claims that it’s either The (Wo)Man, with those big swaggering laws, or Caring About Victims.  You’re with her, and therefore With It, or against her, you heartless hater.  This is crap, of course, as encapsulated not just in VAWA, which takes a multi-pronged approach including not just criminal justice but also civil law, education, culture, and victim services, among other things, but in the context of broader movements fighting violence against women.

Look, I don’t have a problem with Friedman or anyone else not wanting to sign up and work for the DOJ.  More positions for those of us who do, say I.  Nor do I have a problem with people who prefer to work outside of the political system, or who criticize a social justice strategy which focuses exclusively on political and legal solutions to social problems.  But this sloppy, sensationalist article does not do those things.   It lumps together a fact-dump of stories and statistics, most of which are never referred to again, blasts the entire Violence Against Women Act for parts of the legislation the author disagrees with, some of which are no longer even in force, and then as a postscript nods to the enormous work done by the bulk of the different incarnations of VAWA, which if the author were honest about them, would completely defeat her argument about how VAWA doesn’t do exactly what they do.

My argument is not that anyone needs to toe a particular party line, but I am pointing out that breezy contrarianism is just as stupid, and in this case also deeply incorrect and harmful.  Perhaps a useful tool for feminist writers would be not to make arguments against women’s wildly insufficient legal protections using the language and tactics of anti-feminists, as this is sometimes unhelpful and unpersuasive?  Could that be a thing?

Now, imagining the article without the crap I’ve pointed out, it’s possible that Friedman could have made a decent point, even several!  Groups focusing on victim services deserve more support, and victims themselves deserve respect and support, not further victimization.  Evolution of such critical legislation is important and necessary.  Criminal law alone will not solve our problems.  That post would get a resounding amen from me!  But this is not that article.  Not by a long shot.

Dollhouse – Instinct

ON last week’s episode of Dollhouse, Topher enhanced an imprint in order to trigger lactation.  This is used in an engagement where Echo is imprinted to be a man’s dead wife because he blames his baby for his wife’s death.  The husband had considered adoption, but decided to try the DH first.  Echo, convinced he is trying to kill her, attempts to leave but is thwarted by the Dollhouse.  They bring her back and wipe her, but it doesn’t work, so she fakes a successful wipe and goes after the child armed with a knife. Within the Dollhouse, we meet with post-DH Madeleine, who tells Paul about the reason she entered the Dollhouse and how she’s been feeling since.

I really did have a visceral response to the engagement itself.  Making someone artificially bond with a baby seems so awful to me – even though people bond beautifully with children that aren’t biologically theirs, and even though we know the DH deals in created love, somehow faking parental love skeeves me out.

You know, it’s really a shame about the sexist and essentialist “breast feeding makes the ladiez all loopy” last ten minutes, because in the first half hour, we’re looking at one of the best metaphors for the feminine mystique I’ve ever seen in popular culture.  Echo is nobody as far as the client is concerned, a blank head on a hot body, he rents her out, and manipulates her body and brain to make her a happy wife and mommy.  He creates a scenario where she’s dependent emotionally and psychologically on him.  Her friend has been through the same thing, and her font of wisdom is to tell her to suck it up and smile.  And when she gets terrified and bails, with every reason to do so, she’s only important until there’s even a hint that the baby is in danger, in which case her husband’s word becomes sacrosanct and she becomes stigmatized as delusional.

As ever, it’s interesting to wonder how much of Echo’s experience here is the effect of the experimentation, how much of it is Caroline, and how much of it is the composite event.  Because any one of those could be causing this.  It’s possible that Sierra or Tango could have had this particular imprint and not had the maternal instinct awakened – it seems perfectly calibrated to Caroline’s zeal for protecting the helpless.  You’d think after Alpha-Kroft they wouldn’t stray too close to original personalities, bu this almost seems like Topher trying to prove to himself that the original personality doesn’t matter and he can do whatever he wants.

Interesting to see Adele with Madeleine – of course she always has an agenda, and it’s fun to see Madeleine call her out, but I think her interest is the same as the one she told us about last week- research.  Topher is relatively new to the DH, she’s probably one of the first to be let go with his new processes, or the first sleeper to be let go.  Or the first let go at all b/c of ballard, could still be that the rest of them are all languishing in the attic.

This could be interesting if they’re really going to stay faithful to this character.  madeleine is really different than the madeleine we saw in Needs.  back in 1.08, amnesiac Madeleine panics unashamedly, and frankly calls what she’s doing a “defense mechanism,” suggesting psych training.  that means that not only is she an educated person with prospects, but she, probably better than any of the other actives, had some idea of what she was signing up for.  Now that she’s awake, if something does go wrong, she’ll know exactly what it is and not be able to do anything about it.  Chilling.  she’s the one of the reawakened Actives to smirk and unabashedly get into the unisex showers.  doesn’t really square with the woman we see here.  her taste is expensive, which is maybe to be expected now that she has money to spare, but her diction is impressive, she sounds thoughtful and though not upper class, very well educated (which she didn’t back in Needs, IIRC, she just sounded standard american then), and she’s still forthright, but calm enough to face down and decipher Adelle, which is no joke.  none of the other actives, that we know of, are demonstrably different from themselves – Victor doesn’t know what happened in the military, but he acts like a soldier; Priya doesn’t know she was sold but she has an instinct to run; Caroline doesn’t remember her boyfriend or rossum but is instinctively terrified of losing her self.  granted, the shock and utter weirdness of the siuation in Needs surely explains some of it, but not enough for my satisfaction.  and really not enough to explain the CHANGE IN WARDROBE, OMG, SO MUCH BETTER.  (the woman who chose that awful floral smock is not the same as the classy, neutral color, figure flattering lady we see in front of us.  we saw this person being able to choose anything she wanted twice, and it was two totally different things.)  “You’re happy?”/”I’m not sad.”  There isn’t the agony over her daughter, but there isn’t the unselfconscious sense of mischief we got from November in Needs.

i go to sleep for five years, i wake up without pain…that is not how grief works, she should have woken up still freaked.  Especially since Madeleine told us at the end of Omega that it didn’t feel like any time had passed.  After all that happened to November, she wouldn’t wake up feeling like she’d even had a good night’s sleep, she would wake up, get her bearings in the chair, and have to remember what happened to Katie, those awful couple of minutes every morning of grief.  She should not be okay.  Not by a long shot.
It took reading meloukhia’s excellent review (hey you guys!  read Meloukhia’s reviews!  Also her blog, which is smart and fun) to remind me of the intentional contrast of Echo, the imprinted mother, with Madeleine, the wiped mother.  But I’m going to go in a different direction from her take on it (that the writers dropped the ball, and in an insulting way no less) and say that I think this is another huge goddamn red flag that something is up with Madeleine-November.  I mean, what did we gain from her showing up, besides lots of squealing that Miracle is back?  Paul offered Echo the choice of a clean wipe, and, uh….in case we forgot, Adelle got a haircut?  I don’t buy it.  We certainly didn’t get closure for Paul on the Mellie issue, and they certainly didn’t need to bring back a former Active just to say “look, a normal person!”  They didn’t need Madeleine to bring us back to drama in the DH to break up the meh-ness of the assignment – there’s always something going wrong in the DH.  We have “some things can’t be erased!  Like parenthood!” happening within minutes of “la la la, my kid died HORRIBLY and to me it feels like five minutes ago, but hey handsome feller, check out my NEW BLAZER!”  That would only be oversight on a fundamentally shallow show, and I don’t think there are a lot of us who really think taht DH is that.  The show is quite loudly telling us that Something Is Wrong with Madeleine.
The rest of the Dollhouse were pretty interesting tonight, too.  Not enough Adelle, but interestingly, this i the second time in a row we’ve seen her get personally invested in someone’s relationship, in this case, the client’ with the son.  Unlinke the Mellie  confrontation during Vows – hm, is that why Adelle involved herself personally in getting Mellie back?  Maybe when she was masking her Sekrit Plan to Paul in episode one, she was telling us her plan for him – she wants to find out if genuine love can exist between an active with the real personality and a past client.  NOW WHY WOULD SHE WANT TO KNOW THAT.  I like it.
The Ballard/Topher dynamic is much more enjoyable than the Boyd/Topher dynamic.  Ballard is learning how Topher thinks and what he can do, and since he’s committed and tweaked his moral compass a bit (protect the girl right now, rather than save her forever) he can go with it.  The absence of Boyd is, as far as I am concerned, a serious plus for this episode, about as much as the further development of Ballard.

however, in his quest for knowledge, we see paul making a huge mistake – he forgets that you can’t trust the DH.  it seems like he wants so badly for Madeleine not to have been victimized – because then of course he’s not a predator – that he totally overlooks the possibility that she’s not okay, that there’s been some alteration to Madeleine, that she could start glitching any day now.

Since when is “finding us” the same as “bringing down the dollhouse”?  Hey, Paul, it’s not!  Even when he’s trying to be selfless – and yes, he’s being foolish and not considering all possibilities, but he’s listening and learning and not making decisions for her, which for Paul is an improvement even though I devoutly hope it’s not the end of the road – he’s still being selfish and reflecting his own desires onto her.  She could just want to get herself and her friends the hell out of there and not care what happened to them, but he assumes his goals are the same as hers.  He’s correct in this instance, but it’s still a huge unwarranted presumption, and he can’t afford to operate without making that distinction.

“You’re not real.”  I would be a little more tactful to the lady with the KNIFE and my BABY.  As in, I would lie.  But it’s a nice bookend to Lars’ “you’re not real” back in Omega.  As is Echo, having escaped from the chair and holding a knife.  It is really, really a shame about the f-ed up metaphor.  Because this is really creepy, intriguing framing, with the Echo-Alpha parallels continuing even after she’s tried to throw him out of her head.

I enjoy Paul (as a character, he is still a creeper) better in this episode than I have…probably ever, but definitely since the first few episodes.  He’s treating the chair like he treated the Dollhouse and the leads about Caroline – with this horrified fascination that’s going to bring him down.  You can see from the moment the camera hits him that he wants to get in himself “just to understand.”  He’s trying to learn.  He wants to understand.  his conversation with Madeleine is respectful – he wants to learn about her, and he listens, and he processes that to try as best he can to give echo a choice.  he sits in the chair.  he talks to topher.  explain it to me.  This man I can buy as not just an investigator, but a good one, the one that almost got to the Dollhouse and had to be stopped by Dominic.

It’s not a coincidence that we see him talking to topher at the beginning.  And how much fun to see Topher and Ballard talk shop.  Less fun that “shop” is Echo, is a  girl to be saved to ballard, and a lab rat to topher – she’s all they have in common and they’re treating her like clients, celebrating that which isn’t uniquely her.  topher’s just learned that too much knowledge can be dangerous, and now paul, seeking knowledge goes further down the rabbit hole.  saunders-whiskey and november-madeleine are crossing each other on one set of paths, and topher and ballard are crossing each other on another.

The comparisons between the episode in and out of the Dollhouse of course make great sense, but there’s also a lot to be learned when comparing to last week’s episode, where Whiskey chose to be her programmed self (at least for now) and we think Madeleine, through Ballard’s choice, seems to be herself, but we have good reason to doubt her.
i know it’s the most obvious route, but i’m just dying for the blank Alpha-style package for Perrin to be from Saunders.  It would be a nice echo (HAHA GEDDIT?) of Alpha’s impact on her life to have her behaving like him, though obviously sans violent sociopathy, and would really bring the soft psychology of the show home.  This wouldn’t be some prgramming error, this would be a person cracking under the weight of an identity nightmare – or OMG, choosing a side and creating alliances not with the dollhouse -  which is far more interesting.  As for the senator himself, this is a revenge thing, I trust this senator way more than I ever trusted Ballard.  It’s not all idealism with him. Ballard wanted to Show that Might Makes Right.  The Senator wants to bring someone down, and I like that.  I know we’re supposed to think the source at the NSA was Dom, but that’s exactly the opposite of what he was supposed to be doing.

so, okay.  i enjoyed most of the episode while i was watching it – i am not crazy about contrived suspense, even if done well, like it was here – t’s too obvious and uncomfortable wht’s going on in the engagement.  i don’t like it and i don’t like watching it.  it’s well done enough to know that we’re feeling her fear even though we know it’s futile.  I have to say, I loved Emily’s reaction to the creepy black man and the huge man following her.  Because those things are scary.  It’s something that a normal active shouldn’t have ever picked up on.But reflecting on it, the section in the DH was telling us a lot and setting up some interesting relationships.  This episode isn’t filler, by a long shot, like 4 and 10, it’s more a layer that will give us some interesting things to chew on in the next few episodes.

Deep Thoughts

• It says something nice about Topher’s chairside manner that he speaks to Madeleine in pretty much the same way as he speaks to the Dolls and the personalities he’s created.  Something nice, or it’s another hint.
• Dear Topher:  I am practically lactating looking at that baby.  It can’t have been that hard.
• Feelings on how there hasn’t been any “prviously on DH?”  It looks like the writers got a little more dependent on those extra seven minutes than they said they did, because these episodes are pretty layered and based on things that came before, they’re going to have to start giving up those couple of minutes soon.
• One more time, folks, they learned how to dress Miracle!  It’s a….wonderful and surprising event we never expected!   Here’s to having size 6’s and 8’s on the teevee…um…for body diversity!
• “Instinct” does not take one from thinking cars are voice controlled to knowing how to drive.
• Professor Brink, I have a question.  Aren’t glands controlled by the brain? In which case, you just did what you always do?  I kind of think making Echo visually impaired or blind is more of what they’re boasting about now.  But seriously folks, anyone who can explain that to me gets a cookie.
• Neat call-back to Stage Fright, with Sierra in the field as her second.

K.  I had no stake in the NOW election.  I had no preference for one candidate or sslate over another.  I have no bones to pick or excessive wild love for any supporters of either candidate.  That said, I do have a stake in the state of political feminism in the US, and an even bigger iinteres in my own ego and my growing annoyance with the Third Wave.  So.

This whole nonsense started in teh run0up to the election.  A writer at Salon’s Broadsheet, I shit you not, suggested that Lyles was the better candidate because NOW’s website isn’t cute enough for her.  Lest you think this is a total non-sequitur, a Mad Libs approach to journalism, written in a glamorous haze of booze and pills, fret not.  See, the website content and design are strictuly and directly under the control of the president of a large organization, which means the exact sill set of the president of NO will dictate the website’s layout and content.   Likewise, it is a given that knowledge and ability regarding website layout are directly inversely correlated with age.  Both of these assumptions are flagrantly stupid, one is deeply bigoted in that it projects its own level of stupidity onto older women strictly because they are older, and the assumption that the reader (that’s us!) will share that stupidity and bigotry is shocking.

If only the Salon stupidity were happening in a vacuum, it’d be pretty easy to dismiss.  But no.  I really hope  y’all were spared the excreable AP article interviewing, among other pretty, well known, media friendly feminists, Jessica Valenti.  Jessica (paraphrased and then quoted by AP, so hopefully this isn’t what she meant) “says her contemporaries would be far more excited if Lyles triumphs over O’Neill.”  Will we? She helpfully explains why we – that “we,” beloved f-list, includes me and most of you – feel that way in the following paragraphs.  Some people think NOW is 70s feminism, which is self-evidently “white middle-class feminism.”  Way to erase huge numbers of 70s feminists who don’t fit that description – all in the name of inclusion! – while perpetuating a myth about feminism.  Give us what we want, older feminists, or we’ll trash-talk you and crap on your achievements, which directly benefit us, if we even deign to acknowledge you existed in the first place!  I am not against historical honesty about feminism, or against critique where critique is relevant and warranted.  On the contrary, I support it wholeheartedly.  What I am against is the use of harmful, broad-brush stereotyping in the interests of a personal campaign.  There’s a huge difference between “I feel X Candidate cares deeply about and is most qualified to address the interests of my group” and “MY GROUP THINKS that HER GROUP SUX.  Isn’t it great that my group reinforces your existing perception of her group?  Isn’t it just self-evident that her group sux?” This is the languge of the backlash – older feminists are self-evidently wrong and embarrassing, and even if they aren’t, that perception isn’t worth challenging, not even among ourselves.

She then goes on to blithely assert that we Awesome Young Things are more interested in smaller, youth led groups (because what, once the director of an org hits middle age, her employees spontaneously reproduce until they become large national groups?), implying that NOW, by its definition a national organization, whwich has always had a broad advocacy agenda, should have more in common with small, targeted, shoetring-operations because those organizations are inherently better and appela more to youth.  this strikes me as a classic case of shooting the messenger, of blamming the doctor for your cold.  NOW is a political, broad based or ganization focused on the most basic of feminist battles because those bttles haven’t been won yet.  That doesn’t mean there’s no room for smaller organizations – there’s not moral infereioroty or superiority in specilaization or general practice because we need both, despearately.  It means tht a ntional organization election is about a large national organization.  Do young feminists not feel like making that distinction?  Do our respect and support bottom out so quickly that we get support fatigue after expressing enthusiasm for one organization alone?

It’s a bit misleading of Young Feminists (TM) to tell us tht our youth shsould be a ticket to anything .  Not just becuse it’s ageist, though that should be reason enough, but also because most of us won’t be media feminists, pro athletes, or presidential candidates.  Youth isn’t a career bonus for most of uss because we’ll have more experience and expertise when ere older, not now tht e’re younger.  Trusts me, I get how frustrating this is.  I’l be looking for aob next year and curing all those more experienced wowmen ahead of me for every position.  It’s tough enough to get wommen’s expertise recognized, ever.  Older wome are mos who fce enough crap in the workplace, here they still need to ork tice as hard to be considered half as good and not get paid as much.

e need to start recognizing youth privilege.  Where you at least have a prayer of having clothing and media reflect your attractiveness.  here you’re a valued marketing demographic, and thus, worth attention in the mainstream culture.  You don’t have to think something is good or just to gain privilege from it. Where you don’t yet, in many cases, make less money than your male peers.  Where you’re of childbearing age, which sucks in our culture, but at least organized feminism is spending a huge amount of its time protecting your rights through this time (even as you malign its myopic fixation on reproductive rights).  My nae is P, and I have cis, het, middle-class, well-educated, and youth privileges.

Much was made of Lyles’ race, conflated with her youth.  I really recommend checking in with BA on this one – if you assume that this generation of feminists of color are the only feminists of color, or the only ones that matter, enough that you can and should entirely ignore the history of NOW and the feminist movement, you’re saying those other WOC don’t matter.  You’re erasing them in the name of speaking for them, and in order to support your own ageism.  It’s appalling, and it’s factually wrong.  It perpetuates the myths – rooted somewhat in history and also in misogynist anti-feminist propaganda – that feminism is a white women’s country club.  It also strikes me as deeply appropriative to pretend that young white folks invented inclusiveness.

I really wanted to ignore the whole “2008 Primary II” vibe everyone kept drawing, based solely on the fact that Lyles is Young, Black, and Hip while O’Neill is an Old White Harpy, but it’s too fucking insulting to Lyles to let it pass.  For the hundred thousandth fucking time, there were substantive differences during the primary, often on feminist issues.  Just because they ere sometimes nuanced and even once in a while required a shred of actual critical thought – apparently we’d rather you kids not try this at home – does not mean they weren’t there.  This really was a conflict of style, and while style matters sometimes, it’s shallow-minded and ultimately harmful to conflate it with substance.  Not to mention, it’s extraordinarily reductive and offensive to boil Lyles down to her racial identity, pretending her Blackness erases her gender, particularly in order to compare her to someone who fails on feminist and LGBTQ issues.

Being young isn’t an automatic merit unless we’re going to get in the habit of attributing merit to characteristics people don’t choose.  It’s not even a “respect your elders” thing, not that that’s inherently bad.  It’s a “refrain from attributing merit based on inherent and unchosen personal attributes” thing.  Aren’t we against arbitrarily privileging some people over others?  Even when those privileges are temporarily useful to us?   And I do mean temporarily, because I devoutly hope that we Awesome Young Things will eventually be middle aged and old.  And since I don’t reasonably foresee, barring (more severe) mental illness, losing the ability to engage with the outside world, but rather collecting more experience and knowledge, I choose to extend that hope and respect to omen who want the same things I do.

I feel like this ageism is conscious stereotype-defying to the point of stereotype-reinforcing.  We spend an awful lot of time bending over backwards to show that we’re not, really, really not the stereotype of feminism!  The age one showing up here is particularly pernicious because it’s not just meant to put us on the defensive, it’s meant to try to get us to reject our brightest, most experienced activists who (by virtue of already not soothing the kyriarchy with their mere appearances and collective fecundity) have less to lose and more to gain.  So when we perpetuate the idea that feminism is (a) largely older women and (b) shouldn’t be, we’re actively helping the backlash along. I’d rather not.

There’s a pernicious “us versus them” vibe to the reporting of this whole thing, too.  For instance, the bizarre allegation that “Palin people” somehow infiltrated NOW and lined up, zombie-like, behind the anti-Obama seems to be, in fact, bizarre, getting mindless repetition and linkage (most notably from Feministing – twice – and somewhat surprisingly,  Shakesville) without, well, substantiation.  I was alarmed at first – Palin people?  Anti-choicers?  in NOW? – but when I kept looking, I could only find the allegation, not the reasons behind it.  Did Palin people (notice the failure of the original post to even use the word “supporters” which would imply thought on the part of these sleazy Republican moles) swing the NOW election to a pro-choice, anti-conscience-clause DV survivor?  It sounded kind of irrational, but I suppose as long as you put a question mark on it, it’s okay.  Maybe there was a bit of unintended conflation on the original author’s part – she talked in the first half of the blog post about her reactions to the outcome of the election, and then in the econd part about conversations she had with people about the inclusion of anti-choice feminists in the organization, making it look that these two things are the same topic when they may not in fact even be.  But I couldn’t get my hands on a more detailed report until my favorite phantom feminist (pheminist?) posted her reflections on the NOW conference.  Dr. VS isn’t any more an unbiased source than all the Lyles supporters above – she was enthusiastic about her support for O’Neill and explicit bout her reasons for it – but she did have enough respect for her readers to give us details.  As I have to admit I was starting to suspect, “Palin people” actually meant “Hillary supporters, Obama critics, and people who were frustrated about sexism against Gov Palin, along with one actual Palin supporter who is a pro-choice feminist Democrat but followed her informed feminist conscience, all rolled into one convenient ball of morally reprehensible female nastiness.”  Exaggerations in the wake of disappointment are to be expected, and disappointment in loss is normal.  Perpetuating what amounts to character assassination is reprehensible.  There was, as far as I can tell (and again,  the only detailed description I can find is coming from a pro-O’Neill source), no anti-choice contingency at the NOW convention, and saying otherwise is a laughable effort to beat other feminists with the Roe stick, for electing a pro-choice president of NOW. But, you know, they voted for the old lady, the old white lady, clearly they don’t care what other people think of them, so they must be evil, and we can say what we’d like.

You know what?  Those Roberts people sure are sore losers!  After all, if Lyles is clearly Obama, her supporters are all Obama-syncophants, and since Obama once failed to criticize John Roberts, all Lyles supporters, by their own logic, LURVE John Roberts.  Did Roberts people infiltrate NOW and almost steal the presidency from Terry O’Neill?  I have no proof, and in fact only the sketchiest of reasons to even say that, and it’s insulting and highly inflammatory, so I’ll just ASK WHAT YOU FOLKS THINK.  ASK ALL OF YOUR FUCKING FRIENDS.  Then ask them again, just in case you missed it, to make sure they and you know these folks are OUT THERE TAKIN OVER UR FEMINIZM.  If you even have any friends, you grumpy, house-bound, internet-illiterate, Second Wave old Ginsberg-huggers.  FEELS TRUTHY TO ME.

I’m being really harsh here, more harsh than I think I’ve ever been on any identified group of feminists.  Not because I haven’t had serious disagreements with feminists before, but because I really do think that the enemy is out there, not in here.  It’s one of my biggest pet peeves at my feminist peers, that we spend so long eating our own, and then I don’t want to contribute to the problem by criticizing people I respect.  But I didn’t bring this bullshit into the public, always salivating over a feminist catfight (which means inevitably that we’re spending that much less time doing untoward things like Challenging Teh Menz) and I feel like by not saying anything, I’m contributing to a problem that’s bothered me for a while and that is directly harming women who I deeply respect. Moreover, I’m fucking insulted.  How lazy, uninvolved, and deeply fucking selfish do these self-appointed advocates of young feminists think I am, that I need someone who soothes my fucking ego by being just! like! me! in charge of every fucking thing?  How stupid would I have to be to stop caring about contraception and equal pay and pregnancy discrimination just because the head of NOW didn’t meet some arbitrary age barrier?  If I were considering membership in NOW  but was afraid I wasn’t represented, would I really be so resistant to thorough research that I would look no further than the president, and ignore the diversity of the people she’s chosen as the most effective and qualified folks to execute her vision?  On the one hand, I hate to hold feminists up to a higher standard than everyone else because feminism about equality and all, but on the other hand, being a feminist in a patriarchal society means you have at least some tools and desire to challenge harmful preconceptions.  Maybe not stopping at the ones that benefit us personally might not be the worst fucking thing in the world?

It’s the dangers of personalizing somemthing like this, you kno?  From all accounts – even the wildly obnoxious ones – the to candidates were pretty much the smame.  The two candidates had orked inthe samem position at different times, and emphasized technological outreach.  And I have no problem with people who decided to support one andidate over the other, even if it’s for dumb reasons like “this person is my friend.”  That’s how small scale politics work, and i don’t think wome are any different than other standard-issue humans in that respect.  I am grateful for politcally savvy careerist feminists.  I have a problem with people who then decide that their small loyalties are representitive of some Epic Fucking Struggle between good and evil.  I then especially care when “evil” becomes either a false allegation (the “antichoice” nonsense) or something that’s FUCKING NOT EVIL (age).

Note:  My computer is being slow and I have family in ton this weekend, so I’ll be updating with links and typo checks throughout the night (you guys should see my keyboard, it’s half blank silver squares).  In the meantime, the only really comprehenisive coverage I’ve found is at Reclusive Leftist. If anyone knows anything more about the NOW election, I’d really appreciate dropping a link in the comments.

DH – Briar Rose

My God.  So I did have my mind duly blown this weekend (the few, the proud, the unspoiled!), and I meant to bang out an essay with Serious Thoughts, but it’s still exams, so I’ve been busy, trying to be my best.   (As I write this, I cut myself off almost an hour ago and my sleeping pills are strtingg to kick in, so it’s going to be a sad, sad bullet-list, perhaps with humourous flailings.)

Dollhouse – Needs

• I’m a woman!  I have needs!  Some of which involve not cracking open the outlining just yet.
• first shot blondie and DeWitt, then Sierra and Victor, then Ninja Mellie.  Will this be another Echo less than necesary story?
• Echo and Paul!  Ooooh, is this the personality coming through?  is she yet again a sex worker?  Ohmygod they sent her after him.  No, this must be a dream.  Yawn! No way dreams mean anything in a JW show. Maybe Ballard will walk around naked all the time now that he has no job. I’d be okay with that. “I have a thing she needs” is pretty hilarious; awkward enough to be Mal-worthy, even. Is “how did they know what we shared” Paul working out that the hit man might not necessarily have been after him? Neat look at the inside of Paul’s head – the sexual aspects of the DH are really what freak him out and fascinate him, and Mellie standing there reminds us that he’s unwittingly been a part of that part of it he loathes so much.
• Good morning, Angels! Good morning, Adele!
• Aw, I like that little smile between Echo and November.
• Neat reminder right there at the beginning of Topher’s constant insistence that he’s not responsible; it’s not his fault, he has a Perfectly Good Explanation – maybe he has more of a conscience than he thinks. What’s creepy about Reed is that he’s totally right. Morally, he’s wrong. But they genuinely don’t know if Echo’s about to Alpha out (and, if we get the full five seasons, I suspect she will someday). And they’re now admitting Alpha is alive. Oh lord.  Fucking with the DH software?  HOW COULD THIS GO WRONG. Topher has them all on the same dose of sedatives and antipsychotics? This is not good. This I really, really know. Why is Topher even doing the medications and not Saunders? The DH has an interesting division of labor for an organization that has a doctor and a geeky tech boy. Saunders, I love you right now. That delicious, nasty “to our pets” is perfect. I’m surprised at the amount of dissent Boyd and Saunders feel okay expressing. Ivy continues to be mysteriously not there – so if Paul’s mysterious contact knows about the meeting, it’s not Ivy.
• This is the first time we’ve seen female handlers. In general, a cool little look at the “behind the scenes” for the DH, especially giving us the perspective that really, it’s been at most a couple of months since Alpha. We assume the strangeness is restricted to the star and her nearest circle, but really, DeWitt is right, the whole house is out of balance. Sierra (and, hence, Victor) wouldn’t be out of joint if Alpha hadn’t killed the previous handler; November wouldn’t even be back there if Alpha hadn’t given Paul the lead on Caroline’s identity. So how much does Echo’s situation owe to Alpha?
• Hi, Caroline!  Yes, you really are as totally fucked as you think you are.  Whose voice is telling Caroline to wake up? Doesn’t sound like Caroline, DeWitt or Saunders – necessary for the ep to retain its suspense, but a mystery nonetheless. Then again, that doesn’t even need to be Caroline.  Or whoever the others were. It turns out that it was, but it’s a plot choice, not an assumption we need to make. Funny that her first thought was “lab rats” – the idea of experimenting on people freaks her out even when she has no reason to think it’s happening to anyone, let alone to her.
• So at least one of them might be paranoid or crazy, and thus unable to consent. Sierra wants to run, and her desire to run and theory of a “deranged millionaire serial killer” makes sense by the end of the episode, even if they’re nonsequiturs at the beginning. Victor takes charge. Mellie assumes the best, and both feels as if she should, and knows how to, explain her behavior. She’s emotionally pretty in tune – “I think they like it here.”  In fact, it’s not just Caroline that gets personalities which line up with her own in a handful of ways (adventurous, spunky, hotheaded)  we’ve seen Secret Agent Victor, and Mellie isn’t all that different from November – sensual, confident, emotionally intelligent.  Is this coming from the actors, or is it easier to put certain personalities in certain brains, because the original owners never really leave?
• Does the bug in Paul’s apartment do anything besides throw him off the trail that Mellie may actually be a Doll?  I suspect that thought has never sunk in on a conscious level.
• My first thought on the doctor’s appointment was “Saunders catches on mighty quick to Echo’s new state of affairs” and her first reaction is to hide from the DH, not to do anything. She really does seem to be trying to help Echo get out – gives her the hint about the cameras.
• “Men.  They had guns.  They took me away.”  So some of them might have chosen, but not Sierra. How fucked would it be if a wiped Victor personality had been in charge of getting Sierra?
• Anyone else notice how we cut from Victor and Sierra being all romantic to Echo and November all huddled together?  Actually, there are a few parallels between Echo-November and Victor/Sierra.  Not just the hiding in the clothes, but the way Echo and November look at each other in the morning, and Victor and Sierra look for each other at night.  Maybe Mellie is right and Paul does have a sexual fascination with Caroline, and this is reminding us of Paul’s inner conflict within the Dollhouse?
• Lord, they just put Mellie in the dowdiest dress. The normal sized actress dresses ugly and had a kid – no way anyone young and cute would dare to be less than lithe and sexay. Though, I do like that she’s the one who’s comfortable with the coed shower.
• Who did Dominic call if the handlers don’t know she tried to escape? And really, no way laps and tai chi for six months prep anyone to beat the hell out of a handler. It feels weird to say this…but I want Echo to…..not kick ass sometimes. Again, it’s ass-kicking for the sake of ass-kicking, not because it’s consistent with the character or confounding our expectations.  No reason she couldn’t have slipped through an empty room and grabbed a gun.
• I love that Topher can geek out with a gun pointed at his head. But what the hell possesses him to be honest with her? “It’s like hypnosis.” Or, he could have just told her (possibly truthfully) that he was the only one who could restore her memories and set everyone free instead of giving her the satisfaction of knowing she’d scared him. He’s not good at being challenged, even if the challenge is coming from his overactive imagination (like two episodes ago when he insisted someone else was trying to steal his position).
• Oh my God Sierra.  And ew, he’s been hiring her. This is exactly what I mean about people who hire the Dolls specifically to get around consent – in Nolan’s case the lack of consent is a turn-on (“this’ll make it better”).
• Caroline is dumb! You can’t make a difference just throwing yourself onto a sword. ‘Course, killing or wiping Topher would be the worst thing she could do – but getting in the chair for her memories alone is just as dumb. So really, finding Topher alone was a no-win situation, even more than breaking into Rossum. So she’s been prone to this for a while. As far as she knows he’s the only one who can fix her brain. Shooting the chair? Even dumber.
• “We give them what they need.” Oh, Saunders. Oooh, and she’s the one to stem the awareness. And am I wrong, or did Saunders say she timed the sedative properly? Again. She seems to know more than Topher about psychology and psychiatry, so why is he handling the personalities and prescriptions? Saunders seems to think that she’s really saving them – and she probably is.
• And Caroline is just as selfish as I thought she was. She knew who Paul was – that means she knew she had help, and had plenty of reason to know she’d need it, but she had to be the one to save everyone. She didn’t need everyone else to be free, she needed to be the one who did it. Not that Paul actually could have helped against an army of handlers and Blondie’s security guys, but she must know she can’t, either. And she sets up the worst possible outcome for the other Actives – out there without their memories or personalities, or the protection of the DH.
• This episode does even more to blur the line between the Actives and their real personalities. The most pressing need can belong to the Active construct (Victor), the person before the construct (November and Sierra), or some combination thereof (who knows what Echo’s need would have been if she didn’t try to free everyone? The mountain house – maybe it’s her boyfriend’s place?). And it doesn’t look like Mike is a priority case, he just happened to be sharing a pod with them. That, combined with his odd paranoia, makes it seem like he was just healthy, attractive, and not putting up much of a fight, so they nabbed him.
• Odd, too, Victor’s need isn’t just to get the girl. It’s to help Sierra as much as – no more – than just to get with her. He doesn’t just need closure, he needs her to have closure. Funny, usually the pretty girl is the one doing everything for lurve. In fact, the whole group is a gender inversion – how often do you see three women with vague and intense emotional desires, from revenge to justice to grief, with one man in love? And Sierra doesn’t just find closure when she confronts Nolan, she needs to choose to trust again, though her love is subsumed (to Saunders and Boyd) under her need for vengeance. How sad is it that we see them go to bed without Victor and Sierra looking at each other?
• Funny that DeWitt didn’t even tell Topher what she was doing – he sounds surprised. I get not sharing with the handlers, but all DeWitt was doing here as putting Topher in danger (it’s not like he’d have put up a significant barrier to their escape in any place). It’s like DeWitt wanted to tell Caroline what she was doing. DeWitt seems to love challenging the Actives in any capacity – her face looks almost exactly like it does when she watched Mellie kill Hearn. Experimentation Topher and Saunders don’t know about?  She also seems to be a little bit of a thrill-seeker, to set up this particular test when they’re playing with the electricity.  Dominic hates the uncertainty, but DeWitt seems to need a little bit of it.
• Boyd just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t seem to understand that doing the right thing (or what he conceives of the right thing) himself won’t, now or ever, make the Dollhouse a good, safe place. This starts with ep 3 when he won’t hear of someone else taking Echo out, but it really shows up during Man on the Street when he takes action against Hearn without telling DeWitt – he knows she wants the situation dealt with, since she takes action so quickly against Victor and his handler, he knows she’s duplicitious and would’ve gone along with his plan, but he had to be the only one doing the saving, regardless of if it was going to actually make things work out for the people he’s supposed to be helping (sound like anyone else we know?). Now we see him ragging on Saunders for the plan that probably saved Echo (along with Sierra, Victor, and November) from the Attic. He seems to be thinking he’s pissed that she was manipulative (more manipulative than exposing Sierra to another traumatic attempted rape and getting an innocent and confused Victor accused of rape? Questionable) but actually pissed that someone besides him protected Echo and made her happy. Boyd does not come off in a good light here. At least Saunders knows she’s making ethical compromises.
• I liked this ep a lot – I was consistently guessing and surprised. I enjoyed the setup of finding out what’s going on in reverse. Nicely set up by The Target (and wasn’t that originally supposed to come later?) Potentially neat parallel between Connell/Alpha and DeWitt/Rossum.
• We know more about DeWitt this time too – she’s seriously not fooling herself that she’s protecting people who wanted a break from their lives, or she never would have taken Sierra (unless, of course, Dominic was in charge of getting Sierra in, but I doubt he’s ever gone off on his own until the Echo situation). And we also know Caroline herself didn’t come to the Dollhouse to get away from any particular memories – though some of them, November specifically, may well have. It’s an especially needed jolt for us from last week, when we saw the staff, especially DeWitt and Dominic, being a bit softer and introspective. We know they know they’re wrong, and they’re the coldest bastards they’ve been yet. Dark. I like it. Also a really necessary episode – these actives couldn’t get much more aware without breaking out and ending the storyline. But it leaves us with Echo’s pressing need, whatever it was, unfulfilled.

Deep Thoughts

• “I like pancakes.” “We’re all gonna die.” Heh. I’m liking real Victor.
• Does Echo think Saunders is a friend and a prisoner because of the scars, because of what she says, or because of some instinct that says Saunders is good?
• Who loves that we just heard her talk about her “right to choose”? Love it.
• DeWitt and Caroline are totally right about each other – they make shitty decisions for other people.

poor people totally matter, except when they eat shit we don’t like

Before I start, I want to say that generally, I really recommend Redstar’s (a former H1K compatriot) page at change.org, US Poverty. However, she’s taking some light-posting time, and in her sorta-absence, there have been some guest posts from those along the poverty activism spectrum, including a couple of writers on hunger issues.  Now, I agree with the guest hunger bloggers that the poor should not have to eat unhealthy or less-healthy food.  However, in two articles now, there’ve been some deeply judgmental (and implicitly, though not explicitly, anti-fat) statements about food available to the poor.

Hammond’s article describes a mixed  reaction to seeing food bank employees turning away food.  A mixed reaction.   Now, I shouldn’t say that with such irritation – my reaction was “mixed” too, between fury and disgust.  It’s important to remember, when talking about nutrition for the hungry, that not all the world is on a fucking diet.  People need a certain caloric intake to live healthily – probably around 2000 calories for an adult, but for the working poor, especially those in jobs like retail or food service, where you’re on your feet all day, it could easily be higher – and, though I’m not a hunger expert, I think it’s probably safe to say that many of those depending on food banks don’t get that.  So when we talk approvingly about deciding for the hungry that of course it’s right to substitute an apple which may (around 65 calories) or may not (exactly zero calories) even exist for a cupcake (around 250 calories, less for low-fat or mini cupcakes; more  for larger ones) which definitely exists, it’s not just gallingly condescending, it’s deciding for the poor that they don’t need an entire 10% of their daily calorie intake – excuse me, their optimal intake, which they are almost certainly not getting – because we don’t approve of their sugar choices.  Aside from which, yes, Virginia, there really is nutrutional value to fat.  You need a certain amount of fat.*  Those of us who can afford to choose our food without Very Concerned Helpers parceling it out are likely to get enough, and to be able to choose polyunsaturated veggie-based fat, but if you can’t, you can’t.  To Hammond’s credit, there’s no explicit fat hate in his writing, but there’s plenty floating free in the comments, and you don’t have to be a friggin’ Conan Doyle creation to figure out what was behind the refusal of the pastries.  And there’s absolutely no suggestion of a zero-sum choice given to the food bank workers – it’s not as if they could take, say, 100 items of food and decided that if something had to go, it should be the pastries.  They could have taken more food for the hungry, and they chose not to.  So Hammond’s rosy visions of of “kids munching on apples and carrots” are, almost assuredly, pipe dreams, gross distortions of the actual picture, which is growing children not munching enough, thus also permanently distorting their body chemistry.

This story goes to the RQ’s point about charity – it fuckin’ doesn’t work for long-term solutions.  I’m not saying don’t give to food banks (if you can, totally!  Even if it’s the DREADED CUPCAKES), or that it’s wrong somehow for poor people to take advantage of food banks, but that we won’t solve long-term nutritional issues with individual giving and decisions.  It takes the power away from the individual person choosing her foods for the day, and puts it in the hands of a person who, likely, has never had to make those particular cost-benefit analyses.  It’s not just that it’s offensive to the dignity of individuals, but it’s also perilous because theses decision-makers are a product of our systemically bigoted society.  Poverty, hunger, malnourishment and the resulting health problems are structural issues.  They require serious, structural solutions based on lots of rational thinkers with serious resources.

However, even when we do move up to large-scale policy changes, we still can’t stay away from condescending judgment about the food choices of the poor.  Plotkin’s post, about the expansion in New York and Delaware of the WIC program to include fruits and vegetables, is right on in some instances, and painfully condescending in others.  He talks equally approvingly about “adding fruit and vegetables” and “limiting access to high-calorie, high-fat foods such as processed fruit juice and cheese,” and there he loses me.  If you’re stretching food stamps to feed an entire family, “high calorie” is not necessarily a bad thing.  Again, if this is your only way to get several thousand calories a day on the tightest budget possible, you’re still going to not just want, but need, the option of calorie-dense foods.  Aside from his goofy contention that juice is “high fat” (I realize I’ve spent more time than most people ever will searching for meaning in nutritional labels, but really, not a mistake to make if you want to make while establishing your Superior Nutritional Decisionmaker cred), he ignores some basic realities – if a box of macaroni and cheese feeds your kids for 50 cents, it’s still not an unreasonable choice in the face of the Librul Dood Sanctioned apple (a delicious and healthy snack, but no substitute for an actual dinner).  Juice, even if undesirably HFCS-y, might be a cheap source of vitamins.  Sugar can calm down kids with ADHD – valuable enough for any parent with a child who experiences ADHD, but maybe the only relief for a kid whose family Then, as in the previous article and comments, there’s some very concerned lecturing about how the poor folks need a nice white dude to teach them how to eat properly.  The fact is, until a substantive amount of nutritious food is genuinely affordable, these musings about what the poor should and shouldn’t eat aren’t going to amount to more than privileged moralizing.  He also buys into the panic-mongering about weight.  For the hundred thousandth fucking time, weight and health are not synonymous. Even if they were, the article buys into the idea that poor kids’ weight and health is due just to the damn cheese and juice is simplistic and self-serving.  Quoth Kate:

1. Poor people are a lot more likely to go through cycles of eating too few calories followed by bingeing — which, when it’s known as “dieting,” instead of “only being able to afford enough food sometimes” — has indeed been shown to make people fatter in the long run;
2. Plenty of poor people are getting at least the recommended amount of daily exercise at their jobs, but show up as “sedentary” in surveys that ask about how much people work out in their leisure time — i.e., the kind of time that someone working 2 or 3 physically demanding jobs probably doesn’t have;
3. In this country, African-Americans and Latinos are disproportionately poor, and they also happen to be genetically predisposed to having higher weights than white people.

If you aren’t thinking about those three factors when you think about poverty and fatness — not to mention rigorously asking yourself what else you might be forgetting — you can fuck right off, as far as I’m concerned. But having said that, of course I’m all for making nutritious food and safe exercise opportunities more available to poor people — not to mention, oh, the time to cook fresh foods and exercise (outside of work) that comes with making a living wage while working a reasonable number of hours.

Not to mention the utter cruelty of this to children growing up already pre-disposed to eating disorders.  Contrary to popular opinion, and certainly to the ignorance of the bloggers in question, the girl-children growing up in poverty are still susceptible to eating disorders, and almost definitely do not have access to the mental health resources needed to overcome an ED.  How cruel it is to reinforce unhealthy good food/bad food dichotomies with the stamp of the fucking government, and how thoughtless to praise such an action without even considering this near-guaranteed consequence.

In other words, adding fruit, veggie, whole grain, and soy choices to food assistance programs is surely necessary to making those nutritional benefits available to the poor, but it’s not close to sufficient.  It’s not an equal swap between three apples and one pound of pasta, even though they’ll both cost roughly the same thing.   And making food available to the poor isn’t an either-or, where we get to sit down and decide what they should and shouldn’t eat, so we don’t have to think about poor people daring to eat food of which we disapprove.  There should be more food available to the poor.  Food and poverty is complicated, I’ll give the bloggers that, and everyone deserves all the healthy food they need, and the choice between different degrees of healthy and unhealthy food.  We as a country need to do a lot better on affordable nutrition and adequate living standard for everyone.  What poor folks don’t deserve is  more insult to their dignity and decision making skills by their supposed allies.

• I’ll never forget when #8, in going over my diet for potential sleep problem triggers, told me I probably wasn’t getting enough fat and should eat more potatoes.  I think I stared at her cross-eyed for a few seconds before I started having dreamy fantasies about the french fries I was going to start eating again.  Didn’t help the sleep like they were supposed to, but on the other hand….mmm, fries.  Clearly these men do not approve of #8 and her evil quest to help people sleep.

Dollhouse – True Believer

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• that’s a lot from previous personalities on the “previously on.”  To give us an idea of Echo on the job?  I like Adele’s voiceover better.
• This person seems to be a longstanding client who understands the dollhouse.  Hey, buddy, “family values” and “women’s issues” don’t jibe, ever.  And he’s… a fed?  A federal prosecutor?  No, a SENATOR.  From Arizona?  Heh. So the Dollhouse is at least a regional operation (at least this dollhouse is, there could be more), and at least some influential people know about it.  And of course they can utterly destroy him if he speaks up – they can just whip up a sex worker with an embarassing story.  So is Ballard right in the pilot that someone important is keeping him away from it, or is he stymied by actives and not doing a very good job?  I suppose a bit of both.
• Dr Fred!  Yay!  Surgery?  WTF?  I’d thought the personality would be blind, not Echo herself.  I wonder if they put the visual impairment into the personality as well?  I guess they’d have to, for her to have the childhood backstory.
• Is Helo setting someone up with drugs?  Federal agents know better than to tell people where to bring “the drugs.”  They’ll either say “it” or “the vicoden” or “the sweet, sweet seeds of the flowers of the Lord” or something.  Mellie a) has serious boobs and b) is awfully curious.
• Aww Victor!  Is it wrong that I just think it’s kind of sweet?  How has this not happened before?  Topher can short circuit physiological reactions to sexual stimuli?  (/Brennan.)  My point being, that’s not something that happens from memory or personality.  Love is complicated, but erections come from the bison part of the brain.  Now if Sierra wasn’t his type (if we even have innate types) but he was socialized into thinking she was sexy, that could be different.  And why, why are we conflating “sexuality” with “erections”?  Oh, right, Topher.
• Dr. Fred is just too precious. Sure, we pull people off the street and erase their free will, but nobody here would do anything so evil as to ignore a health and safety memo!  Land sakes!  I am so deeply intrigued by what her motivations are.  She does treat the Dolls ethically and seems like a competent doctor, and with at least some grasp on psychiatry.  Does she have some personal reason to want to be able to experiment on people?  Speaking of, I wonder if the Dollhouse is at the cutting edge of most experimental surgery?
• Repeated imprints are a thing?  If it sinks in to the Doll persona, does it impact the person once memory is restored?  I mean, common experiences, if not actual personae. Kinda goes back to what we were talking about with last week’s ep – but then, this is as much conjecture as anything Topher says or does, since we figure out that it’s Sierra.
• Topher has masculinity issues like whoa.  He can fuck with people’s minds but not look at a woody?  The appeal of science does not go as far as FEAR OF COCK.  You can just see Dr. Fred having a woman-thought about how Topher needs to stop being a man-child.  I wonder if or how it influences his creation of the personalities, if not his treatment of the actives.
• Why does Blondie have the right to deny extraction?  And Boyd can read people, he should have known to call DeWitt directly.  Boyd is loving being around other cops again. In fact, it generally looks like Boyd read the script/took some stupid pills this week.  I wonder if he knows what they did to her; if he did he should be a lot more worried knowing what could happen.  And when he carries her out,Langdon should be avoiding the cameras.  Maybe Caroline can disappear, but a fifty year old cop, not so much.
• How interesting is the Blondie-Madam dynamic?  I feel like they’re not “good versus evil” – they’re both amoral, but one is bloodthirsty.  They’re both pretty pragmatic about opposite things.  And he really does screw with her, both denying extraction (which DeWitt would never do) and going out there without permission.  Plus the attempted murder.  I’d say that he was just a cold dude in it for some money, and maybe it started out that way, but he’s really enjoying his power and not fond of the Dolls.  It’s just plausible enough that he’s actually worried about the Alpha-like signs, but I doubt it, and so does DeWitt.
• The candlestick was cool.  The second slap was ass-kicking for the sake of ass-kicking.  Gratuitous ass-kicking.  This is the difference between a strong woman character and Girl Power (TM).  One uses violence as the character would see necessary or desirable; the other just starts whaling on people regardless of logic or inclination.  Unless this is Caroline coming through and she’s a brawler.
• So did they take the thing out before the wipe?  How could they have talked Esther onto the table?  Is the equipment still rattling around in there?  Because, I’m no Dr. Fred, but that could probably end badly.
• DeWitt’s creepy fixation on “purity” is, well, creepy.  It feels out of character, too, unless her concept of herself as the Dollhouse matron-in-chief is a lot more powerful and personalized than we thought.  It’s the writers going “DO YOU GET IT!?  SHE’S  LIKE THE CULT LEADER.  NO FREE WILL.  OOGA OOGA.”  Yes.  We got it.  Cults bad.  Your audience is not actually comprised of Dolls.  Maybe it’s more of the caretaking stuff – she has to conceptualize the dolls as children?  And what’s the difference between a wipe and a scrub?
• Have the last couple of episodes been underwhelming to anyone else?  Not bad tv at all, just less fun than I’m expecting.  I suppose I’m building it up in my mind because I’m not used to watching TV shows in real time (I tend to wait until they’ve been canceled for a while and then get worked up, and of course I had an extra couple of weeks to look forward to these) but I loved ep 3 and have only liked the last two.  A little birdie told me that Man on the Street was a Joss episode, though…

Deep Thoughts

• I thought the cult was a bunch of damn LaRouchers.
• Why don’t they FINGERPRINT it instead of playing it?  Paul you are a fuck up because you TAMPER WITH EVIDENCE.
• Why does she have perfect hair after every wipe?
• Who the hell does Topher talk to on the phone from the Dollhouse?  I suppose it must be Ivy.
• Was Esther flirting with Sister Annabelle?  I choose to believe she was.
• Between the Dollhouse patron senator, the clueless FBI and the corrupt, clueless ATF, looks like gub’mint  is still gettin’ in a man’s way.
• Someone please tell me the real ATF knows how to search for a trip wire.  Lie to me.
• Really, with the shoes, enough is enough.  There is absolutely no reason for the heels here.

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The Arizona House is right.

It’s absolutely impossible that women in Arizona know the outcomes of their reproductive decisions.

For instance, do they know that their salaries are likely to decrease when they become mothers?  You know, if they keep their jobs at all.  Or that they will be pressured to breastfeed, without regard for the impact on their jobs or quality of live, and without proof of the benefits to their children?  That giving birth could – gasp! – change their bodies permanently?  And that if part of that change is a slight uptick in body weight – well, forget about it.  Do they have ANY IDEA about the impact motherhood will have on their SEXAYNESS?

Do they know that if their child has a particular type of disability, they’ll be shamed for leaving an “unfortunate” child in someone else’s care while they pursue a career?

Do they know their chances of acquiring powerful jobs will drop, while their risk of being murdered by their partner will skyrocket if they choose to continue a pregnancy?

That if they get to the end of their pregnancies and shit goes wrong, the Supreme Court of the United States and the US Congress have decided that her health doesn’t mean shit?  That because of their meddling asses, if she does need to terminate a wanted pregnancy, her doctor will have to run the risk of performing a lethal injection inside her uterus?

Do they know just how painful it is for many birth mothers to have chosen adoption?

That while they may be entitled to child support, it’s going to be awfully difficult to get?

And this is just the tip of the iceburg on the shit these women don’t know!  See, I, in my non-pregnant all-powerful wisdom, clearly have Google skills beyond anything they could POSSIBLY FATHOM.  Silly wimminz.  Can’t be trusted to make these choices for themselves.

See, I am all for nonjudgmental, balanced, respectful maternal and parental counseling when a woman (with or without her partner) is deciding whether to continue a pregnancy.  I think it’s an important reproductive justice issue to support pregnant women, and if the private sector sucks at it, then the public sector should be able to jump in – I’m a dirty pinko hippie like that.  But, if this move were actually about giving women information – not feelings, but cold and all too hard facts measuring the legal, social, and economic impact of pregnancy and motherhood – his list would look a lot more like mine than like his.  I suspect that’s why it will never happen.  Because I don’t believe for a moment they actually think these little lecture sessions will actually decrease abortions.  I think that what this is really about is shaming women, and  in the same stroke, allowing these legislatures to ignore the very real problems of pregnancy and motherhood.  Being a mother is, I am assured, a wonderful, enriching, empowering experience for many women.  But as a sociological phenomenon, being a mother in our society totally whomps – not because motherhood is bad, but because every policy choice these fuckers make is one to make life more difficult for mothers.

Dollhouse – The Target

• I like that they’re going with the “previously, on Dollhouse‘ rather than trying to contain the whole world in a short synopsis at the beginning, simply because we don’t have that kind of mission statement (yet?); that said, it’s too long, there’s a lot we don’t need in there.
• JESUS CHRIST!  Oh, it’s a flashback.  Three months, that’s not long at all.  Turns out Alpha’s a composite who malfunctioned.  Though it doesn’t confirm my “prototype”  theory.  It’s hard seeing the dolls scared.  Like sad puppies.  And “they won’t wake up.”  Jesus Christ alive, Eliza D is thin, remember when she was hot because she looked so strong and healthy?  The nudity in that shot is gratuitous – she’s vulnerable, dude, we get it, but the blood and those huge trusting eyes convey that just fine.  Odd that among ll the bodies I was still thinking ALPHA SLICED UP DR. FRED!  You suck, Alpha, I hate you!  In seriousness, I really thought that was going to be a mystery for a while. But, if they want to make Alpha really unsympathetic, IT WORKED.
• “Guns.  Can I have one.”  Heh.  I still don’t like you, Topher, but heh.  He’s an amoral nerd, but not a wimpy or panicky one.
• This episode feels more pilot-y, except for the total lack of Sierra, who I kind of like.  And it’s kind of heavy-handed, but I like the repetition of the ‘did I fall asleep’ convo.  Well, i did the first time, now enough’s enough, and it’s t the point where it’s goging to be weird if she stops saying it, and annoying if she keeps saying it.  Maybe we’ll stop needing to see every programming and wipe soon.
• “What we offer is truth.”  Interesting.  I mean, I suppose they are, but by stripping away complexity, rather than through honesty.  Also kind of heavy-handed.  This show is starting to feel like a big experiment into “how much philosphy can we pound into their heads in 45 minutes?”
• the idea of a security deposit sounds creepy, like htey’re just putting a price on safety – which in a sense they are – but it also seems like the best and only way to control their clientele, too; it’s not like they could sue or report  the person.
• Are we always going to start out with sex work or sex work parallels?  See, the first time it makes sense.  The second time, it’s, again,  gratuitous, and it feels a little like they’re out of ideas already, which I surely HOPE AND BELIEVE is not the case.
• “My brother’s gonna kill you!”  Confident and trusting.  The rented-for-sex personalities aren’t that different from the mind-wiped Dolls.  They’re the dolls with added skills.
• Hi, Helo!  I mean, Robert.  Hey, why don’t we menacingly threaten each other in gravelly voices?  Oh, and they’re at last week’s crime scene.  Nifty use of the first ep, and it really gives us the sense that he’s right behind them with no clues, and it’s been like this for a while.  How would they have a profile on Dollhouse clients?  Oh, and they’re assuming it’s just a service for johns.  And who the hell is the Russian guy?  I was thinking he would’ve been an Active, who of course woudln’t know anything when questioned, but why would a Doll have a cell phone?
• I keep saying “sex work” but I should really be saying sommething  lot harsher.  “Rape” doesn’t feel right since it is hat the personality wants, but at the sme time, it’s not te personlity, it’s Echo, who will be having the non-consensual sex.  I wonder if there are mandatory blood tests for their clients, or do they just keep the Actives on antibiotics and ARVs?
• “pretty lady” prints – hey, there’s a thought, have they wiped out the Doll’s prints?  Then there’s  permanent change, which could be an interesting contrast with Madam DeWitt’s contention that actions don’t have consequences for the Actives.
• OHMIGOD he’s hunting her.  so he really did just buy her life.  I wonder if he let the madam in on that?  And he’s a serial killer – he’s brought other girls out there.
• Oh, and Langdon was hired because of Alpha.  Was he a forensic expert at some point?  Because his analysis is pretty good, and really fast.  I know they’re trying to get stuff out there quickly, but Dr. Fred is on hand for that.  And was he imprinted with some Navy Seal shit?  Because he’s pretty hardcore in the van there.
• Why didn’t he kill Echo?  Good question, yo.  Maybe he recognized her from before?  Couldn’t kill a fellow Doll?  Come to think of it, why didn’t he kill Dr. Fred?  Maybe he has special plans for her like he does for Echo? He’s weirdly more hostile towards innocents than people responsible – he slaughtered Actives and protectors, but he left the doctor, programmer (who actually is resopnsible for him), and the one with flashes of consciousness.  Was he trying to keep them alive to toy with them more?  He’s not just a fighter, he’s a total sadist.
• ‘Echo will always trust you.’  Wow.  So we’re into what is identity, what is truth, and what is trust.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen something so explicit about what it’s asking us to consider.  I don’t know that we even needed the trust scenes, even when we see it break later.
• She hallucinates herself, that’s a nice touch.  Overall, this is a decent format for the show.  We get a clientof the week and the story is about establishing the overarching plot in the dollhouse.  Echo is almost the least important person here for the first forty minutes.
• Boyd is good at dealing with a confused doll, unlike the staff that have been around longer (Dr. Fred and Topher).  “We met a while back.”  It’s a good answer.  He’s used to real people, so he’s better, or he’s just different and more caring.  He does make the same conflation between deservingness and morality (“he was a good man”/”not good enough”) that Connell does, which is really disquieting.
• Good thing she happened to get perfect markswomanship!  Though, that is a skill that would go well with the other skills, it’s not totally nonsensical.
• I don’t like when people hesitate when they should shoot.  You should kill him nowish.  I would rather have four more minutes of character-building than Dramatic Tension.  If the story’s exciting enough – and overall, this was – it’s not necessary.
• This asshole is the creepiest villain they’ve ever come up with.  Holy shit.  And of course his motivation is….dun dun DUHN….DADDY ISSUES!
• It’s kind of a relief their background checks failed – they didn’t just send her out all que sera, sera – but at the same time, it means we can never trust their screening process.  Would it’ve been more fun for that revelation to wait?
• CONNELL WAS ALPHA?!  No, an Alpha henchman.  I thought about it, and then I said, no, that’s too farfetched and they would recognize him!  No, that’d be too easy, as he’s dead.  the fixation just doesn’t make sense, though.
• Who is Blondie?  Last episode he was some boardroom type and now he’s a bloodthirsty (he hints at wanting two specific kill orders within twenty minutes) badass with command of a bunch of guys with assault weapons?  Speaking of.  Are they all Dolls, too?  Seems weird that people unscrupulous enough to kill for an immoral corporate venture are suddenly the types to be trusted with big, juicy secrets like said corporate ventures – makes more sense they’re all wiped and prorammed to follow instructions.  Then, though, we get two classes of Dolls – the cannnon fodder, who live somewhere else, and the pretty ones, who get to sleep in the shiny bed-holes.

Other thoughts:

• Of course what makes First Date guy unappealing is that he’s a FATTIE!
• What makes Echo so much more frequently requested?  Because she’s pretty?  Because theoretically, it shouldn’t matter.  There’s an actual spark of personality there?
• Kinda problematic that they program male assassins and female prostitutes.