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Hi ho blog friends. Just another quick look into our patriarchal rape culture, yes our culture, the one we inflict on the female folk.
“Sam Smethers says that the minority of people who hold these views have “a drag effect on our society, [and] are holding us all back with their hostile, negative attitudes”.
She adds that blame culture prevails because “it’s what’s been normalised in our culture: that women fundamentally are the ones responsible”.
She says people have got to “understand that it’s nothing to do with what the woman wears or how she behaves – it’s all about what the perpetrator does”.
Yeah. Bald faced injustice like this has been going on for years and is certainly seems like we’re still in the naming the problem phase. So much more work is required to de-normalize this mode of thinking in our society. Fix your family first then your friends, the transmission of patriarchal norms stops with you.
“Straighten Up and Fly Right” is a 1943 song written by Nat King Cole and Irving Mills and performed by The King Cole Trio. The single was the trio’s most popular single reaching number one on the Harlem Hit Parade for ten nonconsecutive weeks. The single also peaked at number nine on the pop charts.[1] “Straighten Up and Fly Right” also reached number one for six nonconsecutive weeks on the Most Played Jukebox Hillbilly Records.[2]
The song was based on a black folk tale that Cole’s father had used as a theme for one of his sermons. In the tale, a buzzard takes different animals for a joy ride. When he gets hungry, he throws them off on a dive and eats them for dinner. A monkey who had observed this trick goes for a ride; he wraps his tail around the buzzard’s neck and gives the buzzard a big surprise by nearly choking him to death.
The New York Times has featured Lindy West writing on the free speech conundrum on how entitled white dudes are getting their knickers in a knot because minorities and non white dudes dare to criticize features of society that make dudes happy.
See the flaming mound of poo that is “Gamer Gate” or any forum in which a feminist view/critique of society is presented. Good times. Today’s lesson is that criticism is not anti-free speech and conflating the two ideas because your pet notions don’t stand up to analysis is toddler level defence of your position.
There is a frighteningly large segment of the population of Alberta that thinks that what the Republican Administration down south is gang-busterly-amazing-awesome-fantastic (full disclosure – by exhibiting knowledge of uncommon adjectives I disqualify myself from said group).
The Republicans, led by Trump, are merrily deconstructing American civil society; whether through willful action or diligent buffoonery, it matters not, as the end result is the same. The glimpses I’ve seen of the full throtle shit show going on in the USA should be serving as a cautionary tale writ large for the gentle-folk of Alberta.
The Republicans and Trump’s toxic corporatism burnished with a faux veneer of populism is poison toward the idea that society should be a place for everyone and that caring for your fellow human being is a good thing.
2020 isn’t coming fast enough for America and the rest of the world.
Apparently though, here in my home province of Alberta, Jason Kenny and the possibly united right wing parties have seen the dumpster fire that is the Republican administration and have decided – “Wow, we should do that in Canada! Stat!”
*blinks*
Finding words to describe the incredulity I’m experiencing is difficult. Here in Alberta, we’ve just come out from some 40 years of right/centre right governance. The people of Alberta decided to vote in a centre-left party (led by a woman, no less) and have given Rachel Notley and the New Democratic Party a five year term to run the province not explicitly beholden to business and the corporate class.
It’s been a bit of a bumpy ride, but things are going fairly well. Rather than imposing austerity on the people of Alberta, the NDP government is running deficits to keep education and healthcare funded and spur employment in the public sector by encouraging civic projects and the like. The last government of Alberta talked a mean game about diversifying Alberta’s economy, the NDP is making a bit of headway in that area introducing a carbon tax and providing incentives for businesses to get into the renewable resource sectors and technology. The price of oil has for much too long dictated the overall welfare of the province.
A return to right-wing policies would be detrimental to the welfare of the policies. The same could be said and more for the antediluvian, obtuse, and generally batshite-crazy that is currently passing for policy in the US. We need less of this, not more.
I can only hope that the people of Alberta are more astute than our southern brethren.
I’ve only shot a bow a couple of times, but I do remember that hitting anything consistently was quite challenging. Physics, and of course long hours of practice come to the rescue.
Oh Christianity, so funny and as usual, always just plain wrong.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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