You folks know the drill… go ahead and use the comments to post whatever you want, including links to your own stuff that we should see. Meanwhile, here’s some of what I’ve been reading:
Figure presents: The 19th Carnival of the Feminists!
NY Review of Books: Excellent Primer on Global Warming
Readable even for us non-science types, but without insulting readers’ intelligence. Curtsy: Majikthise.
Slant Truth: The Politics of Hair
Vietnam Vet Arrested for Wearing “Veterans For Peace” T-Shirt At VA Center
Curtsy: Green Gabbro.
The Countess: Legal Experts Reject “Parental Alienation Syndrome”
Mixing Memory: Partianship, emotions, and political judgement
But the relationship between emotion and reasoning, and therefore emotion and political judgment, is much more complex than the common view that emotion is detrimental to reasoning. As neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have shown, individuals with damage in the emotional centers of their brains have a very difficult time making rational choices, largely because they don’t have emotions to make sure they make choices that aren’t harmful.
Feministing: Interview with Blac(k)ademic
TruthDig: Two Weeks in Iraq
One incident described: An innocent family man arrested by the U.S. because he has the same name as the intended target. When we discovered their mistake, they left him in prison for several more days. The actual target? A teenager US intelligence thought was a terrorist because they had evesdropped on him discussing his favorite video games.
Feminist Law Professors: Excerpts from Judge Kent’s opinion in Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corp., 147 F. Supp. 2d 668
It’s not a hoax, and trust me, this is the funniest thing you’ll read this week.
Granny Gets a Vibrator: The Night-Blooming Cirris Blooms Only One Night A Year
And she’s got photos! Curtsy: Feminist Law Profs.
Listening For Change: Raising Baby Boys to be Nonsexist Men
Washington Post: Somali Women Gave Crucial Support for Islamic Militias
An epidemic of sexual violence during 15 years of lawlessness in Somalia was among the factors that strengthened opposition to this city’s notorious warlords, residents said. The Islamic militias who drove them out in months of recent fighting were embraced as keepers of public order, as a force strong enough and pious enough to keep Mogadishu’s daughters safe.
Super Babymama: Being White and Learning to Deal with People of Color Spaces
Green Gabbro: Yami reads Wifework So We Don’t Have To
Wifework explains the two trends of happily submissive wives, and embittered divorced MRAs, with one fell swoop. Maushart’s crucial observation is that even though most marriages aren’t really very egalitarian, we have a lot invested in the illusion of equality. Actively maintaining the illusion of an equal, happy marriage is part of wifework. If a wife does a good job, her husband has absolutely no idea that their marriage is unequal or unhappy – which means that many men are completely blindsided when their wives decide to stop doing the wifework and get a divorce. Male privilege plays a role in this blindness, of course, but this is one of many cases where women collude in their own oppression.
Pharyngula: Awww! Photo of baby octopus and mother.
Crooked Timber: Is Opposition to Marriage Equality Driven By Homophobia Or By Traditional Sex Roles?
Interesting attempt to look at the question through exit poll data.
Cognitive Daily: Obesity and Discrimination
A much more detailed account of the study which sent women, with and without fat suits, into retail stores and found that they were treated much less well as “fat women.”
Culture Kitchen: Racism at Frontier Airlines
The Use and Abuse of Doctrine
It’s useful to read something like this once in a while, to be reminded that not all evangelical Christians are right-wing poopyheads (no insult to any r.w.p.s who happen to be reading this post). Thanks to “Alas” reader Lee for the tip.
Feminist Law Profs: Critique of anti-equality ruling in NY gay marriage case
Hugo Schwyzer: Male Entitlement, Male Despair, and Mail-Order Brides
Shrub.com: How To Be A Real Nice Guy
This should be xeroxed and handed out to every white person and every man in the world. I’ve linked to it before, but it’s been improved and expanded.
Fanatical Apathy: How Letting Homosexuals Marry Ruined My Marriage
Feministe: Interesting Article about Pros and Cons of Women-Only Subway Cars in Cairo
WaPo: White Candidacy in Black District Sets Off Debate On Race
Thanks to “Alas” reader Lee for the link.
New York Times: Here Illegally, Working Hard and Paying Taxes
Mimi Smartypants: On Hairstyling, Feminism, and Concrete Blocks Wrapped in Colored Foil
Curtsy: Feminist Law Profs.
Cognitive Daily: Chimp Trained To Play Ms. Pac-Man
What an odd thing to train a chimp to do. I wonder if it’s having fun, or just trying to placate a meaningless/bizarre desire of its trainer?
Animation vs. Animator
This flash animation piece is just a load of fun.
Mixing Memories: Gender Essentialism
…People are perfectly willing to make generalizations about an entire gender based on one individual if they believe that a characteristic is associated with a person’s gender. Furthermore, and perhaps most strikingly, they’re willing to believe that a characteristic is associated with a person’s gender simply by learning that one male and one female differ in that characteristic.
Mixing Memories: Homosexuality, Essentialism, and Politics
They found that individuals who believed that homosexuality (male or female) was biologically based, immutable, and fixed early in life were the most “pro-gay,” while those who saw homosexuality as a discrete category with defining characteristics were the most “anti-gay.” This was particularly true of males, and Haslam and Levy argue that males may try to distance themselves from homosexuality by making it a discrete category of which you are either a member or not (with no fuzzy area in the middle).
Pandagon: Why is your femininity fighting with your womanhood?
To keep it simple, it seems to me the conservative notion that the two genders are essentially different and even our best efforts otherwise are betrayed by girls wanting Barbies and boys wanting trucks hits a direct stumbling block when they have to consider the unavoidable reality of homosexuality. On the subject of the color pink and the longing to wash dishes vs. go to a job every day, conservatives argue that men and women have fixed tendencies and there’s nothing we liberals can do about it. But on something so big as your very sexual orientation, all of a sudden they’re swearing it’s a choice, a lifestyle tendency and not fixed at all.
[Cross posted at Creative Destruction, where the days are long and the moderation is easy.].
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Your first Feminist Law Profs link goes to the wrong post. Here’s the right one.
Thanks, dude. Correction made.
Thanks for the link, Amp, except I spell the name Super Babymama, not momma. Thanks for correcting that.
I’m going to take the opportunity to link myself. I’ve been away a while, and now that I’m back, it feels like few people are visiting anymore!
I’ve been thinking and writing, in a roundabout way, about fearfulness in women – is it healthy or obsessive – in On Bears, Men, and Fear.
Thanks Amp!
The NYT article about illegal alien employment made for interesting reading.
First, a major corporation that employs many of the minority of illegal aliens that actually do work claims that they do a top job in screening out illegal aliens:
“Mr. Mitchell said ABM had ‘put in place policies, procedures and ongoing managerial training for compliance with immigration law.’ Harvard Maintenance’s statement added that ‘we believe our screening programs currently in place are among the best in the building services industry.'”
It’s a common claim that employers have a hard time doing this because of the prevalance of fake documents (hm – so should we call them ‘illegally documented workers’, rather than ‘undocumented workers’?)
“For all these efforts, however, it is remarkably easy for illegal immigrants to get a regular, above-board job. The law requires employers to make workers fill out I-9 “employment eligibility” forms and provide documents to prove they are legally entitled to work. But the employers benefit from one large loophole: they are not expected to distinguish between a fake ID and the real thing. To work, illegal immigrants do not need to come up with masterpieces of ID fraud, only something that looks plausible. ‘To bring a criminal prosecution we need to show an employer knowingly hired an illegal immigrant,” said Dean Boyd, a spokesman at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the branch of the Department of Homeland Security that enforces immigration rules.’ ”
But it seems that Mr. Mitchell is wrong; there’s much better practices than his company uses, and one of his competitors has figured them out.
“Mr. Mahdesian said Servicon was more careful than other contractors — forced by the nature of its clients in the military industry to make more rigorous checks to keep illegal immigrants out. But he said that each time Servicon took over a cleaning contract in a new office building, it found that 25 percent to 30 percent of the workers it inherited from the previous contractor were working illegally, and had to let them go.”
So if it’s that hard, how come Mr. Mahdesian can do it?
“Most companies in this industry doing commercial office buildings take the view that it is not their job to be the immigration service,” Mr. Mahdesian said. Companies have little to fear. The penalty for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants includes up to six months in jail — or up to five years in particularly egregious cases — and fines that range from $275 to $11,000 for each worker. Yet fines are typically negotiated down, and employers are almost always let off the hook. Only 46 people were convicted in 2004 for hiring illegal immigrants; the annual number has been roughly the same for the last decade.”
Seems to me that one way to solve this problem, then, is to increase the penalties (perhaps to include jail time for repeated offenses), and to have the rest of the industry adopt the practices that Mr. Mahdesian uses. Because right now, what we see are American companies that (surprise, surprise) place profit over obeying American law.
From the White Person in Black District article, I was confused by the following paragraph. It refers to the greatly increased number of black legislators serving in Congress.
“But they are all serving in the Democratic minority. ‘Remember, the [Voting Rights Act] is about black voters, not black elected officials,’ Bositis said. ‘And black voters are not having their interests represented, although there are more black members of Congress.'”
What do you think the author means by this? That someone who is represented by a member of the minority party in Congress is not actually being represented because, being in a minority, their viewpoint does not result in legislation that favors them or their viewpoints being passed?
Here is a link to my blog on the impeachment of the first female president of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe in South Dakota because she spoke out against a new state law that outlaws abortions even in the case of incest and rape. Male tribal council members impeached President Cecelia Fire Thunder citing traditional Lakota values that opposed abortion. The tribe went one step further than the state in not only outlawing abortion on the reservation (even in the cases of incest and rape), but also passing a law that would banish any woman attempting to obtain an abortion or any person helping her to obtain an abortion. My response is from a Lakota/Nakota Sioux perspective and addresses whether cultural traditions should be used today to limit the rights of women and children on the reservation.
TiyospayeNow: Fire Thunder Impeachment and the Rights of Women
What do you think the author means by this? That someone who is represented by a member of the minority party in Congress is not actually being represented because, being in a minority, their viewpoint does not result in legislation that favors them or their viewpoints being passed?
I think the meaning is pretty clear. If you asked the members a 75% black district, “would you rather stay like this and elect a black Democrat every two years in a single District (while 2 Republicans are elected next door), or would you rather be broken up into three 25% black/75% white districts, where you could probably help elect a (probably white, probably more moderate) Democrat in each district?” it is not necessarily obvious which the members would chose. They may be happier trading their black Rep for three white ones.
Or maybe not. The point is that the Voting Rights Act shouldn’t be judged solely by how many Black reps are elected. If black voters have more say, more in fewer districts, then it is not clear whether their voting rights have been increased or decreased.
Sorry, I’m still not clear. What does the concept “represented in Congress” mean? It could mean, “I had a vote in who represents our Congressional district”. The fact that you are a minority in your district (politically, at least) and thus your district’s representative isn’t of the same political persuasions as you means that your representative may not voice your opinions in Congress, but you had a vote and your district is represented. That’s the same deal everyone gets.
You can also take the meaning to be “My district has a majority of people who think the same way I do, and we were able to elect someone who will voice my views and opinions in Congress, even though those views are shared by only a minority in Congress.” This presumes that members of Congress are there to represent specific racial/ethnic/economic/religious/etc. interests, and that districts should be gerrymandered to anticipate what those interests are and to ensure that someone who shares them gets elected. The gerrymandering that the Voting Rights Act has been used to justify can get pretty blatant at times (check out Illinois Congressional District #4 from this list for an egregious example). I know that there was gerrymandering before the VRA in order to make sure that no minorities were elected in some states, but at some point we need to get back to compact districts made up of contiguous geographical areas while still enabling the election of minorities.
Finally, and this is the meaning that I take the author to have, “Congress has a majority of members who share my views and they are able to enact legislation I agree with.” But to say that you are not represented in Congress unless your interests have a majority there is absurd. Everyone in the U.S (D.C. and some territories excepted) is represented in the House and Senate. Just because you’re on the losing side of votes doesn’t mean you’re not represented. Representation is being heard; it doesn’t mean winning.