You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August 2015.
“Advertisers must convince young women that they are in need of constant improvement—largely to get and keep boys’ attention—without threatening young women’s views of themselves as intelligent, self-directed, and equal. Buzz words like “empowerment,” “self-determination,” and “independence” are sprinkled liberally across their pages. But this seemingly progressive rhetoric is used to sell products and ideas that keep girls doing gender in appropriately feminine ways, leading them to reproduce, rather than challenge, gender hierarchies. An ad for a depilatory cream, for instance, tells girls that they are “unique, determined, and unstoppable,” so they should not “settle… for sandpaper skin.” Feminist demands for political and economic equality—and the refusal to settle for low-wages, violence, and second-class citizenship—morph into a refusal to settle for less than silky skin. Pseudo-feminist language allows young women to believe that they can “empower” themselves at the checkout counter by buying the accoutrements of traditional femininity.”
— Amanda M. Gengler, Selling Feminism, Consuming Femininity.
Rick Mercer reports on our Canadian para-Panam/para-Olympic athletes with a vivacious gusto and aplomb that leaves one smiling and quite pleased to be Canadian. I am very glad the CBC exists and can provide a platform for the likes of Mercer and the good, often funny, work that he does.
We’ll just leave this here…
Science fiction is one of those genres that can inspire genuine hope for the future. Gene Roddenberry’s idea was well ahead of its time, let’s hope we can live up to some of the ideals he put forward as to how 23rd century life would be like.
Also, I had no idea about the significance of the surname Sulu – what a great symbolic name. :)
“Emotional labor is often invisible to men because a lot of it happens out of their sight. Emotional labor is when my friends and I carefully coordinate to make sure that nobody who’s invited to the party has drama with anyone else at the party, and then everyone comes and has a great time and has no idea how much thought went into it.Emotional labor is when I have to cope, again, with the distress I feel at having to clean myself in a dirty bathroom or cook my food in a dirty kitchen because my male roommate didn’t think it was important to clean up his messes. Emotional labor is having to start the 100th conversation with my male roommate about how I need my living space to be cleaner. Emotional labor is reminding my male roommate the next day that he agreed to clean up his mess but still hasn’t. Emotional labor is reassuring him that it’s okay, I’m not mad, I understand that he’s had a very busy stressful week. Emotional labor is not telling him that I’ve had a very busy stressful week, too, and his fucking mess made it even worse.
Emotional labor is reassuring my partner over and over that yes, I love him, yes, I find him attractive, yes, I truly want to be with him, because he will not do the work of developing his self-esteem and relies on me to bandage those constantly-reopening wounds. Emotional labor is letting my partner know that I didn’t like what he did sexually last night, because he never asked me first if I wanted to do that. Emotional labor is reassuring him that, no, it’s okay, I’m not mad, I just wanted him to know for next time, yes, of course I love him, no, this doesn’t mean I’m not attracted to him, I’m just not interested in that sort of sex. Emotional labor is not being able to rely on him to reassure me that it’s not my fault that I didn’t like the sex, because this conversation has turned into my reassuring him, again.
Emotional labor is when my friend messages me once every few weeks with multiple paragraphs about his life, which I listen to and empathize with. Afterwards, he thanks me for being “such a good listener.” He asks how my life has been, and I say, “Well, not bad, but school has been so stressful lately…” He says, “Oh, that sucks! Well, anyway, I’d better get to bed, but thanks again for listening!”
Emotional labor is when my friend messages me and, with no trigger warning and barely any greeting, launches into a story involving self-harm or suicide or something else of that sort because “you know about this stuff.”
Emotional labor was almost all of my male friends in high school IMing me to talk about how the girls all go for the assholes.
Emotional labor is when my partners decide they don’t want to be in a relationship with me anymore, but rather than directly communicating this to me, they start ignoring me or being mean for weeks until I have to ask what’s going on, hear that “I guess I’m just not into you anymore,” and then have to be the one to suggest breaking up. For extra points, then I have to comfort them about the breakup.
Emotional labor is setting the same boundary over and over, and every time he says, “I’m sorry, I know you already told me this, I guess I’d just forgotten.”
Emotional labor is being asked to completely explain and justify my boundaries. “I mean, that’s totally valid and I will obviously respect that, I just really want to understand, you know?”
Emotional labor is hiding the symptoms of mental illness, pretending my tears are from allergies, laughing too loudly at his jokes, not because I’m just in principle unwilling to open up about it, but because I know that he can’t deal with my mental illness and that I’ll just end up having to comfort him because my pain is too much for him to bear.
Emotional labor is managing my male partners’ feelings around how often we have sex, and soothing their disappointment when they expected to have sex (even though I never said we would) and then didn’t, and explaining why I didn’t want to have sex this time, and making sure we “at least cuddle a little before bed” even though after all of this, to be quite honest, the last thing I fucking want is to touch him.
”
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Religion treats people like shit, the further away you are from the white male ideal, the shittier your deal will be. The recent anti-choice propaganda wave in the US caused enough whinging in wordpress blogosphere that I felt compelled to wrestle with the full-blown stupid that is the anti-choice position. .
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I went to this saintly dudes page and left my usual inflamatory comments – women are people, they have rights et cetera – the mind-blowing stuff that makes the zealots wail and froth.
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But rather than approve my comment, this dipstick emails a response to me because apparently, tainting his blog with reality is just a touch beyond the pale for his religiously addled sensibilities.
We’ll spend some time going over this condescending POS’s response.
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“I offer a few responses (with the disclaimer that my words are not at all said with malice or ill-will, but with blunt plainness) to your comments, particularly the ones, that to me, seem to be emitting an abundance of hypocrisy:”
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Oh you just know this is going to be good and chock-full of projection, and of course, Full Bonus Points for a mansplination of why teh abortion is the evils for the womenz.
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“Any sex men or women engage in should be within the bounds of husband and wife, legally and lawfully married.”
LoL-forever. And all time spent by teenage boys on the internet is time spent listening to the heavenly music of the spheres and praying to god. Are there any other idealized states you’d like to discuss as if they were relevant to the topic at hand?
“Obviously there are additional purposes of sex than procreation alone, such as strengthening the relationship of husband of wife and expressing love within that marriage; however, procreation is certainly one of the main purposes of sex and that should not be taken lightly.”..
Ah yes, and in this ideal world men only wish to engage in sex to make babies. Why not? Unicorns also exist in this world, and fairies too!
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“You seem to think people should be allowed to kill children that are unwanted simply because it is easier to let people do that than to teach them proper moral and values; I think you should put a little more effort into seeking the moral option and not the easy way out.”
Ah, there we go. Let the anti-choice false equivalency begin. It is so typical of the pro-slavery crowed to make this fundamental error and then proceed to base their entire ‘argument’ on it.
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A fetus is a fetus, not a child. It has none of the rights we give to born children. So, let’s not go into hypotheticals because you are really terrible at making them jive with reality. (He will, of course, but first we need to be offended about his sky-daddy not being afforded the proper respect.)
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Predictably, whiny-pissbaby gets all up in arms because I dismiss the patriarchal religious bullshite angle he goes for in his post. My comment first, then his.
[Me] “LOL. Religion has been oppressing women since its inception. Maybe citing a book that is famous for its murder, rape, and genocides isn’t the best source to strengthen your case?
Cherry picking your favourite bible verses to make a ‘point’ is about as useful as spitting into the wind, or pissing up a rope. Your choice.”
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“Again, I find it very hypocritical that you dare say I am ‘cherry-picking’ bible verses when you scoff and ‘lol’ at the very idea of religion. It couldn’t be more obvious that you haven’t read the bible or other religious text in any recent time, if ever at all; so you have no ground to stand on in saying I ‘cherry-pick’ verses”
Oh hey there cherry picking is what you fucking zealots do to justify your shitty claims about reality.
Ah, christianity, so moral, so ethical. Thank god for the bible…
Let’s take a peek at what the bible says:
“The God of the Bible also allows slavery, including selling your own daughter as a sex slave (Exodus 21:1-11), child abuse (Judges 11:29-40 and Isaiah 13:16), and bashing babies against rocks (Hosea 13:16 & Psalms 137:9).”
Daaaaaamn son. You step back now and think about owning up to the bullshit in your magic book before you get all out of sorts about being called on your cherry-picking. Of course being held to a truthful standard is going to get more painful as this email continues…
“Also, try to remember that America is a Christian nation.”
Holy LoL-copters Batman! America is a secular nation and is founded on the belief that church and state should be two separate entities, although do feel free to keep pining for theocracy.
“Over 80% of Americans identify themselves as Christian, so the scripture verses I quote mean a great deal to most people and greatly affects their decision-making processes.”
Billions of horseflies love eating shit, should we also embrace the luscious poo-banquet ideal just because so many do it? Bad ideas are bad ideas – how many people that endorse said (bad) ideas is irrelevant.
“It would be an extremely arrogant prospect to think that you are personally wiser than 86% of the world’s current inhabitants, as well as the billions of people who lived before now, that all came to the conclusion that there is most certainly a God.”
Most thought the earth was flat, the earth was the centre of the universe and knew fuck all about germ theory. Why I’m not accepting their ‘wisdom’ shouldn’t be that hard to piece together. What is more troublesome and more pertinent to the discussion is the fact that *you* do and you seem to be proud of that fact. This is officially Scary-Unhinged-Stuff to those of us who inhabit rational land.
“You appear to identify with the 2.4% of Americans who don’t believe in a God, or the 14% of the world who don’t believe in a God, and that is your choice, but don’t for a second assume that because you personally do not or have not found the value that scriptures hold or found a relationship with God, that others are also unable to find those things.”
Less than two-shits, I say, is all I care about identifying with other people when it comes to living a world based on rationality and evidence rather than superstition and myth. Hey it’s great you have a relationship with your sky-daddy, I hope he tucks you in and changes your nappy at night and gets you warm fucking milk – but believing in bronze age mysticism in the 21st century is no badge of honour. It is about as noble as admitting that yes indeed, you have fart-beans for brains and any coherence you manage to display is just a sad accident.
Dude finally gets back to why autonomy and women shouldn’t mix. Thank you, kind readership, for not glazing over yet the sheer amount of religious-wordfap is positively stultifying.
“According to bodily autonomy, a mother could not be judged harshly for smoking, drinking, doing coke, and going skydiving (hopefully not all in the same day) while 6 months pregnant. If you really believe that a woman’s body is autonomous — that she has absolute jurisdiction over it — then you must defend a mother who does things that could seriously harm her unborn child, even if she hasn’t chosen to abort it.”
Why yes. That thing with breasts and arms and a brain and stuff is not just a walking womb. It is almost like she is human being deserving full human rights and autonomy. But we should get on with your important reasons on why women should be brood-slaves.
“Most pro-aborts will not (vocally) defend abortion at 8 or 9 months. But — if bodily autonomy is your claim — you must. Is a woman’s body less autonomous when she’s been pregnant for 35 weeks? There is no way around it: bodily autonomy means that it is moral to kill a fully formed baby, at seven months, or eight months, or nine months. You say that our bodies cannot be ‘used’ without our ‘consent.’ “
If you believe that women are people then yes, it is her choice whether to remain pregnant or not. You may begin to clutch your pearls now.
“Why should this apply only to pregnancy and organ donations? Children, at any age, create profound demands on their parents’ bodies. Whether it’s waking up in the middle of the night for the crying baby, working long hours to pay for their food and clothing, carrying them around when they cannot walk, staying home when you’d like to go out, going out (to bring them to the doctor, or school, or soccer practice) when you’d like to stay in, etc, etc, etc, and so forth. “
Hmmm…well this might be a complicated answer for you, but when the fetus is in the woman’s body it is her choice whether to keep it or not. Once born, the exclusive use of a mother’s body is over and thus other external actors can care for the child. So yah, I hope you’re not going the false equivalence on top of a false equivalency argument. Let me review your first fail and append the second that I just bet you’re going for – because this is a long article –
1. A fetus is not a child
2. Before birth and after birth are functionally different states.
“An argument for absolute bodily autonomy means that it can’t be illegal, or considered immoral, for a parent to decline to do any of these things, so long as their decision was made in the name of bodily autonomy.”
Game, set and Match?? Hmmm… Apparently you are that fucking dense. Way to try and compare apples to octopuses. Parental responsibilities to their children (because they are born now, separate entities) are not the same as a woman’s pregnancy. [meta thought: The fact that this needs to explained is troubling.] [meta-meta thought: Arguing with the religiously deluded is like trying get a close shave with a banana.]
“If I can ‘do what I want with my body,’ then it becomes very difficult to launch a salient moral or legal attack against a man who chooses to sit in a playground in front of children and pleasure his own body. I’m often accused of oversimplifying, but I’ve never oversimplified to the extent of you bodily autonomy proponents.”
This shit is rock-solid argumentative GOLD! If you ignore context. And reality. And the structure of good arguments…
“Once we’ve considered every complexity and nuance, we can rightly say that our bodies are autonomous in some ways, and in some circumstances, but not in others. We cannot say that they are absolutely autonomous, and I find it hard to believe that anyone truly thinks that.”
Because apparently fapping in public is the same issue as whether a woman is a incubator slave or not. OH religion! You are sooo silly when you try and talk all rational and stuff.
Here comes some amazing reasoning. Just let it wash over you, like toddler up-chuck.
“Any claim or responsibility placed on me, automatically includes a claim and responsibility on my body. Everything I do involves my body. I am my body. CS Lewis would say that I am my soul and I have a body. I agree with him, but for our purposes in this discussion, leaving souls and spirits aside, we are our bodies. Whether we are expected to pay taxes or drive the speed limit or provide a safe and sanitary home for our children, we are using our bodies to meet these expectations. We experience and participate in life with our bodies. Absolute bodily autonomy is inexorably linked with personal autonomy. If my body is autonomous, my person must be autonomous, and if my person is autonomous, then my very existence is autonomous, and if my very existence is autonomous, then it is simply unacceptable and (by your logic) immoral for anyone to expect me to do anything for anyone at any point for any reason.”
1.*Le Sigh* – CS Lewis.
2. Taxes and driving the speed limit – social constructs not autonomous obligations.
3. “ it is simply unacceptable and (by your logic) immoral for anyone to expect me to do anything for anyone at any point for any reason.” – Free will; what the fuck is it?!?!?
This argument seems a little to pat to be coming from your typical anti-choice zealot. The ‘gotcha’ at the end is, on the surface, compelling, but only if don’t worry about the little things – burden of proof, arguing charitably, et cetra.
“If you concede that we ought to be expected or even required to do certain things, then you are placing limits on our bodily autonomy. If you place limits on our bodily autonomy, then you are admitting that limits can be placed on our bodily autonomy. If you are admitting that limits can be placed on our bodily autonomy, then you must consider whether abortion falls within or outside of those limits. And here’s the rub: if you contend that abortion falls within the limits on bodily autonomy, you must justify that belief beyond simply reasserting our right to bodily autonomy.”
Wow. The knock down argument of the day….*sigh* This ‘argument’ was lifted from another anti-choice douche – Matt Walsh. Of course, it is bullshit and refuted in full here. I’ll reproduce the conclusion – meeting copypasta with copypasta. The next quote from the Daily Kos article:
“And again, Matt’s got his burden of proof all wrong. It’s not up to pro-choicers to prove that a woman should be able to decide when and if she will be pregnant. It’s up to pro-lifers to prove that she shouldn’t – because that’s their position. When people say that a person’s right to free speech should be curbed in relation to inciting mass panics, we can (and have) present(ed) good reasons as to why this is the case. When we say that a person’s right to bear arms can be curbed if that person is a violent felon, good reasons have been provided. When we tell Matt’s masturbating man to stay away from playgrounds, we have good reasons for limiting that use of bodily autonomy or expression. But Matt is alleging that a woman’s right to bodily autonomy should be limited inside of pregnancy; and every bit of evidence he provided for that is nonsense that crumbles under the slightest honest scrutiny.
I don’t have to prove that it’s wrong to limit my free speech; the person trying to do the limiting has to prove why it’s right. I don’t have to prove that it’s wrong to take away my ability to make my own medical decisions; the person trying to take that power from me has to prove that it’s right. I don’t have to prove that it’s wrong to incarcerate me; the person attempting to do so has to prove that it’s the right choice. And I don’t have to prove that it’s wrong to limit my choice to be pregnant or not; that falls to the person trying to do the limiting.
Though the burden of proof is on him, Matt didn’t prove his case.”
So, my religiously-deluded-christian-pro-patriarchy-hack, funtime is almost over. The christian fart-beans you shat out – cheekily masquarading as arguments – have been humanely put down and thus, the religious shit-show is concluding…
“I mean you no ill-will and I fully support your right to an opinion, I simply hope that my comments have shed some light on the weak foundation your current opinion stands. I wish you the best and hope you will come to see truth in its proper light.”
Umm…your comments had shed light on where your arguments are coming from: straight out of your ass.
Huffpo occasionally publishes an interesting article, this would be one of them.
“What I want to point out here is how the category of “young white men” has emerged from all of these horrible incidents unscathed as a group – and how this is one of the starkest examples of white male privilege imaginable (or another term I use, “unearned advantage”). Unearned advantage is how we
describe the fact, for example, that virtually all of the culprits on Wall Street who were responsible for bringing our economy to its knees in 2008, the politicians and corporate figures found guilty of premeditated, injurious and heedlessly greedy crimes are white men, but white men are not condemned as a group for their behavior. In fact, some part of us thinks that would be silly.
However, whenever a black man appears on the nightly news or in the newspaper having committed a crime, the automatic association, the schema or framework that most people default to renders black men (as a group) as mostly dangerous, menacing and scary. I believe it is even worse for young black men. In fact, in 2014 the American Psychological Association released a study found that, “Black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime…”
short answer: White Men control the discourse. Our failure to properly evaluate white male criminality is a side effect of the privilege, entitlement and institutional protection that create the environment for these crimes to thrive.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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