Krystal Ball is my hero

[surrealestate]

Krystal Ball is running for Congress in VA. The opposition dug up some photos of her with then-husband at a party engaged in sexy, non-explicit play. I don't even know why it was an issue, except for, I guess, she's a woman. She released an official response and its awesomeness is beyond my ability to express. I wish I could vote for her.

Here is a summary of the whole situation, with links to the photos, and the complete text of her statement.

Read it, link it, and perhaps have some hope for the future if she wins.

Comments

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

That is beautiful. Thanks for the pointer!

[http://users.livejournal.com/urban_faerie_/]

zomg! thanks for posting this! now she's my hero too!

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Damn. I've never wished I could vote in Virginia before.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

tempted to move to VA for a while just so i can vote for her. how classy is that response? i do hope she wins.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Yes! Me too! SO CLASSY.

[smacaski.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I hope she whomps her opponent. It would be nice to have more reasonable beings in Congress. I wish I could vote for her, too.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

hm. so she is 28? in 6 years there is a presidential election...now I'm wondering if she'll actually be 35 by then.

[joyeous.livejournal.com]

I saw this and am still more amused by the fact that someone's real name is "Krystal Ball." Perhaps she can look into her own future to see if she'll win. :-)

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

There's a special place in hell for people like her father who give children names like that... jeez.

But go her!

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Why assume she minds it so much? She's apparently been married twice and I note she hasn't changed it. Even when jerks make fun of them, a lot of people are really proud of their distinctive, unusual, clever names. Even Ima Hogg, for example.

ETA: That may not have been the best example, actually! From what I recall my dad (who was an admirer of hers) telling me, Ima always graciously defended her father for giving her the name, chose not to use an obscuring nickname throughout her life, and, as a great philanthropist and patron of the arts, ended up with various funds and probably buildings and whatnot named after her -- on the other hand she did deliberately tend to obscure her first name in her signature (though that may have had as much to do with people not believing it was her real name as anything else) or sign herself "I. Hogg" when possible. All in all, as unusual names go, it was undoubtedly not the easiest name to live with. But anyway.

I do remember reading this article that suggested that people with unusual names are generally quite proud of them, like the fact that their names stand out, rarely choose to hide or change them (and that's more true the more unusual the names are), are glad that their parents had given them those names, and often don't even recall getting more than usually teased about them as kids (although they've certainly heard every tired old joke you can think of): A Boy Named Sue, and a Theory of Names

I thought one really interesting fact from the article was that the only evidence that unusual names ever disadvantage anyone comes from the fact that people who are less literate, less educated, or have fewer advantages to begin with, are the parents who are more likely to give their kids unusual names.

[ifotismeni]

that is awesome.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's made of awesome. :)

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

SO AWESOME.

it's called 'slut shaming'

[drwex]

and it's an awful practice. Like bullying and gay-bashing and 'boys will be boys' it's a plague that permeates American society and mostly gets greeted with giggles and winks. One of the most awesome things about her statement is that she calls bullshit on it and the way it's used to keep women politicians (and, frankly, lots of other women) from advancing.

Re: it's called 'slut shaming'

[ifotismeni]

+1

[cos]

I just contributed to her campaign.

Edit: And posted to reddit. Vote that up?

[doeeyedbunny.livejournal.com]

I was so impressed with her statement that I went to her website and made a donation.

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Thanks for the link.

[gruene.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, she's not very likely to win, due the Conservative nature of the district. While Obama did relatively well there, clocking in at 48% of the vote, Bush got over 60% in 2004 and it hasn't elected a Democrat since the mid-70s. I'm happy to see some pushback against this sort of smear politics though. There's a lot of hypocrisy and sexism in our political discourse and hopefully taking a strong stance like Ball is doing here will help push things in the right direction.