As usual, feel free to post whatever you like, including links to your own posts, in the comments. Here’s some of what I’ve read lately:
Mind The Gap!: Excellent link farm of posts and articles regarding Veiling
Republic of T: Return of QueerlyKos
Another excellent link farm, this one focused on lesbian and gay issues.
Brownfemipower: Awesome Photographs of Demonstrations In Support of the People of Oaxaca
Obsidian Wings: Poverty, The Minimum Wage, And The Resources to Survive Bad Luck
This post is kind of “poverty 101,” but that can be useful — and I don’t think the progressive policy blogosphere has a better writer than Hilzoy. Go read.
Feministe: NY Allows Transsexuals – Including Non-Operative Transsexuals – To Change Sex Listed On Their Birth Certificates.
“Applicants would have to have changed their name and shown that they had lived in their adopted gender for at least two years, but there would be no explicit medical requirements.” This makes me happy.
YouTube: Dove Commercial: From model to billboard in a minute and fourteen seconds
I’ve criticized Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign in the past, but this ad is terrific.
Abyss2Hope: Systematic Intimate Abuse Is Like The Stanford Prison Experiment
…it also reminded me of the 1971 Stanford prison experiment where half the students in the study were assigned to be guards and the other half were assigned to be inmates and then the situation was allowed to unfold from there. […] The power imbalance between the assigned roles, the isolation and the lack of ethical guidelines were a toxic mix at Stanford and they are a toxic mix in relationships.
TomPaine.com: Why Bill Cosby Is Wrong (Curtsy: Prometheus 6)
Black poverty fell 10.6 percentage points from 1993 to 2000 (from 33.1 to 22.5 percent) to reach its lowest level on record. Black child poverty fell an unprecedented 10.7 percentage points in five years (from 41.9 percent in 1995 to 31.2 percent in 2000).
The “culture of poverty” argument cannot explain these trends. Poor black people did not develop a “culture of success” in 1993 and then abandon it for a “culture of failure” in 2001.
Creative Destruction: Media Fails To Note Sex Of Victims When Men Are Massacred
The post is written by Daran, and so naturally contains needless feminist-bashing, which (as usual) boils down to Daran being angry that feminists are neglecting to pay enough attention to men. However, I think the point he makes in this and other posts – that men are being singled out for violence and slaughter in Iraq, and that this is unjustly ignored by the media – is true.
Brownfemipower: Response To Daran
Blac(k)ademic: Video of “Sienfeld” co-star Michael Richards’ Racist Diatribe
See also The Moderate Voice for a detailed summary of events, Blackprof.com on Richards’ bizarre denial that he could be a racist, and Prometheus 6 brief quote on free speech.
CBC: The Denial Machine
A Canadian-produced news documentary, documenting the scientists, corporations and politicians behind global warming denial. (You can view the entire 40 minute documentary online; look for the link on the right). Not only a good documentary on the arrogant, money-worshiping liars who have prevented action on global warming; but a documentary in which the voiceover pronounces “out” like “oot.” Always good for a giggle for provincial Americans like me. Curtsy: Deltoid.
Abyss2Hope: Principal Temporarily Suspends Girl From Taking Weightlifting Out Of Fear She’d Be Raped
MSM: Black Teacher Says She Was Fired For Her Hairstyle
Curtsy: Blackfeminism.org
The Gimp Parade: Yes, Disabled Accessibility Is Definitely A Feminist Issue
[Insert Witty Title]: Why Aren’t There More Women In Math And Science? (guest post by Thinking Girl)
Balkinization: Are Same-Sex Schools Constitutional?
The key issue, as I explain below, is whether single-sex education revives old stereotypes about women’s roles, whether single sex education sacrifices girls’ interests to benefit boys, and finally, whether single-sex education is a cheap fix that does little to solve longer term issues of quality education in inner-city schools. These are key questions to consider in assessing whether the new Bush Administration regulations are constitutional. Curtsy: A Bird And A Bottle.
Electric Boogaloo: 22 Reasons To Breastfeed
Warning: Satire. It totally cracked me up, but….
Word Munger: Is Blackface Always Offensive?
While agreeing that blackface in most cases is offensive, Dave argues that the Kate Moss cover is significantly different.
Article: Is Morbid Obesity a Disability?
Curtsy: The Gimp Parade.
PunkAssBlog: The hardcore anti-gay-marriage crowd is settin’ its sights on no fault divorce
Alternet: Good Summary Article Regarding the Lancet Study Of Iraqi Deaths
Abstract Nonsense: Are Religious Beliefs An Excuse For Homophobia?
It’s true that the average Christian homophobe doesn’t hate gays because of Leviticus 18:22 but rather looks up to that verse because of homophobia. But that homophobia developed in a society influenced by religious sermons; and the priests who gave them are sufficiently ideological that they would hate gays because of the Bible. That scripture alone makes hardly anyone a bigot is irrelevant when the people it does turn into bigots are religious leaders who’ll spread their hatred among average believers.
Mr. Sauerkraut’s Sour Blog: Borat Deceived And Exploited Poor Romanians (Curtsy: My Private Casbah).
Hugo Schwyzer: Why Hugo Hated Borat
Debitage: Why White Liberals Get So Defensive About Racism
Pandagon: What a Funny Homophobe Lou Sheldon Is!
No, really, this post – full of “fear the homosexual agenda!” type quotes – cracked me up.
Mixing Memory: Gender, Math, Stereotype Threat, And Testosterone
As of yet, no one has a theory explaining how innate differences account for the fact that gender differences disappear in untimed tests, in numerical problems vs. word problems, and when stereotype threat is alleviated. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t innate differences, but it does mean that for now, the best evidence we have indicates that social factors play a strong role in gender differences in math, and it would be a mistake to overlook them, particularly in the search for innate differences that cannot explain the data.
Balkinization: First-Past-The-Post Versus Other Election Systems
How First-Past-The-Post made Rick Perry Governor of Texas with support from less than 40% of voters.
Thinking Girl: Infinity Is Quite Big (guest post by Craig)
Daily Kos: How The Same-Sex Marriage Ban Lost In Arizona
[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]
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No dice.
It showed no such thing. It showed that when the researcher has primed the subjects of the stereotype threat (again, how exactly this is done is irrelevant), the ones who were primed did worse (almost like I’ve discussed this before in some thread).
This framing by “Mixed Memory” strongly implies that Steele’s research (which is mentioned there) had managed to somehow make some subjects do better than they would normally is incorrect, as Steele measured subjects with similar standardized test scores, and then managed to make stereotyped subjects underperform.
Abstract Nonsense says:
Nobody’s born a racist or a homophobe. It’s true that the average Christian homophobe doesn’t hate gays because of Leviticus 18:22 but rather looks up to that verse because of homophobia. But that homophobia developed in a society influenced by religious sermons; and the priests who gave them are sufficiently ideological that they would hate gays because of the Bible. That scripture alone makes hardly anyone a bigot is irrelevant when the people it does turn into bigots are religious leaders who’ll spread their hatred among average believers.
Well, I’ll say right off that I couldn’t think of a better name for this blog. First, there’s the implicit assertion that people who think there’s a problem with people opposing homosexual behavior hate gays. Then there’s the misappelation of “homophobe”, asserting that people who think that way have an unreasonable fear of homosexuals. Follow that with the assertion that people’s thoughts about homosexual behavior is necessarily not formed by their religious beliefs, but that such people must get those thoughts from somewhere else and then twist religion to fit that. Talk about twisting facts to fit one’s pet theories; this guy has it down pat. And I thought that asserting “Scientific and other intellectual beliefs rarely influence day to day life.” was just amazing; what possible evidence can he muster to support that? Hell, most apologists for homosexual behavior that I’ve talked to have been quick to try to quote science as the one of the major reasons that they changed their attitudes and why I should as well.
The conventional wisdom about parental-notification and consent laws was that they would cut down on abortion, which is why anti-abortion activists loved them. But earlier this year the New York Times ran a jaw-dropping analysis that found the laws had no significant impact on teenage abortion rates.
The conventional wisdom about parental-notification and consent laws is that kids shouldn’t be getting major medical procedures without their parents’ knowing. I’d like to see their source for their assertion.
However, and more importantly, this blows a big hole in the logic of such laws’ opponents; that such notification laws will keep kids from getting abortions because they’ll be afraid to deal with their parents for one reason or another. Seems to me that this study indicates that is not happening.
Much like the hardcore anti-abortion crowd is all geared up to go after contraceptives, the hardcore anti-gay-marriage crowd is settin’ its sights on no fault divorce.
Well, then, they’re being consistent and are answering the criticism raised in places like “The Republic of T: Rights available were he to marry a random woman on the subway, versus those available to him and his husband of six years.” People have been asking, “Why don’t heterosexuals do something about the mess they’ve made of marriage?” – well, here they are.
Balkinization: First-Past-The-Post Versus Other Election Systems
You know, I’m starting to get persuaded that maybe these people have a point; maybe we should go to runoff elections for all our elections. Aren’t there juristictions in the U.S. that have such elections for municipal offices?
RonF:
Exactly. I don’t agree with them on either issue, but they are genuinely traditionalist.
Thanks for the link, Amp, though I think it a bit unfair of you to describe me as ‘angry’ in such a dismissive fashion. I thought BFP and Echinde were both quite angry about the matters they blogged about, but instead of deriding them for it, I went off and spent several hours researching the matters they raised.
I’m also a little puzzled as to why it is “unjust” for the media to ignore the singling out of men, but I’m “bashing” feminists when I point out that they do the same thing.
I’m also a little puzzled as to why it is “unjust” for the media to ignore the singling out of men, but I’m “bashing” feminists when I point out that they do the same thing.
The media, at least those outlets calling themselves news organizations, have a duty to inform us of important facts about important topics. I am not sure why “feminists”, as a group, would have a duty to so, or how they as a group could be expected to even know things you admit the media are ignoring.
Does anyone have a working link for the blog “Molly saves the day”?
As far as I can tell, “Molly Saves The Day” has simply stopped existing over the last few weeks. Which makes me sad; I think the recent inter-blog conflict has overshadowed what a good writer Molly is, especially on abortion issues.
I emailed her a couple of weeks ago – she was scheduled to guest-blog on “Alas” – but she never responded.
Thank you, Amp. I enjoyed her blog. I was hoping it had just moved and my bookmark was old. I hope you can convince her to guest blog here.
RonF,
The argument against parental notification is not that it will successfully prevent a substantial number of teenage girls from having abortions, but rather that it will severely harm a small minority of teenage girls who can’t safely let their parents know that they are pregnant and severely harm a small minority of girls who will choose dangerous self administered abortions instead of risking telling their parents.
We know that girls have died from botched amateur abortions in states with parental notification, so the risk is not an imaginary one..
Have girls died from botched amateur abortions in states without parental notification? Is the reason that these girls got amateur abortions because they were unable to get judicial review/legal help in getting professional medical help?
I’ve been asking for evidence that parental notification laws have led to the kinds of problems that have been predicted by such laws’ opponents. I’m still waiting to see some kind of report on it.
So, I looked at the comments on the one blog about Borat (the Sauerkraut blog gave me a 404). I saw the movie. Some of it was pretty gross, some of it likely exploited people, but I laughed at a lot of it. Have any of you seen it? What do you think?
Regarding the TomPaine article, the “culture of poverty” hypothesis may not explain those trends, but it’s certainly not inconsistent with them, either. The “culture of poverty” hypothesis is intended to explain the poor economic performance of blacks relative to whites and asians. Obviously their absolute performance is a function of other factors, chief among them the general state of the economy. A rising tide really does lift all boats.
However, and more importantly, this blows a big hole in the logic of such laws’ opponents; that such notification laws will keep kids from getting abortions because they’ll be afraid to deal with their parents for one reason or another. Seems to me that this study indicates that is not happening
While I do believe that abusive parents is a Big Deal and a Major Problem, that doesn’t mean that I’m positive that such parents make up a statistically significant percentage of “parents whose daughters get abortions”.
I rather think it’s a significant number the way that “number of wrongful convictions” is significant. Statistics isn’t the only important part of the equation.
And I’m not in complete agreement with the whole “parents get the final say in teens medical decisions” anyway.
Plus, they don’t always get the final say even now. It’s one of those things where it depends on the situation. For example, every single state allows teens of a certain age to consent to certain tests – but won’t let children do the same for obvious reasons. Even states with parental notification laws allow teens access to contraception without parental permission – and none require that doctors inform parents of their teens decisions – except when it comes to abortion.
Honestly, it’s the idea of parental notification laws that I can’t wrap my head around. While I disagree with the attempts to require parental permission, it’s at least consistent. However, I don’t understand the logic of saying, on the one hand, that teens are capable of making medical decisions for themselves, and yet on the other, they don’t have the right to privacy and/or are less capable of understanding their own family than a judge is.
RonF,
Unfortunately, I can’t find the source for the amateur abortion death in a state with parental notification, and I can’t find stats on amateur abortion deaths (teen or adult) in general. So I can’t really clarify the significance of my recollected story.
In response to Kaethe’s comment in one of the feminist-only threads, I think it’s fairly well established that the men are in general much less selective about their sexual partners than women are. For example, this study. 75% of men accepted a sexual proposition from an attractive female stranger, while every single woman rejected the proposition from the attractive male.
Or we could take a look at the personal ads. From the Seattle Craigslist’s “Casual Encounters” section:
Men seeking women: 2657 ads.
Men seeking men: 1101 ads.
Women seeking men: 85 ads.
Or consider prostitution. The vast majority of prostitutes, male or female, cater to men. This is a demand-side issue, not a supply-side issue (and not because of the wage gap).
If a woman at, say, the 50th percentile of attractiveness, she will be able to find a reaonably attractive man to have sex with whenever she wants. The reverse is not true, so Chris is right: Sex is a scarce good for men, but not for women.
Furthermore, I’m quite puzzled by this:
Are you suggested that the only reason a man might prefer sexual intercourse to masturbation is that the former involves control of a female?
And regarding QGrrl’s comment before that, no one said that women are objects or commodities. Chris said that sex was a scarce good (not a “commodity,” which is a term for goods of homogeneous quality) for unattached men, and that women control their access to it. This model doesn’t suggest that women are objects or commodities any more than trading in corn and pork bellies futures suggests that farmers are objects or commodities.
Brandon – first off – please stop with the “females” crap.
If you are actually using it to mean “girls and women”, please do so consistently. Your switching back between “females” and “women” suggests you think they are synonymous when, in fact, “females” is the technically correct, but rarely used (in everyday language), term for both children and adults who are female.
Secondly, your farmer argument only works if the farmer is physically and mentally attached to pig while it’s being slaughtered and eaten. It is, in fact, frighteningly insulting that you would argue that men treating sex as a scarce good does not also mean they treat women’s bodies as a commodity – it’s as if the woman doesn’t exist, only her body or his use of it. Unlike the farmer we are not seperate from the “goods” being sold.
Secondly Kaethe is talking about what we know is innate – you are now talking about how men and women act in this particular place and time – which is subject to all kinds of cultural conditioning. Besides, since it was recently consired bad for women to ask men out (bad manners, bad desires, bad attitude, etc.) – and bestselling publications and popular shows still argue that it is – I don’t see how ads on Craigslist of all places proves jack shit about hormones and desire – irregardless of whether one is talking about innateness or not.
Brandon:
[snerk]”50th percentile of attractiveness ?” WTF is that supposed to mean ?
Uhhh… yeah. Because we all know that if a guy isn’t ugly and doesn’t smell, it automatically follows that he knows how to sexually satisfy a woman, and can be bothered to try and do so.
[shakes head, flees thread in disgust]
Mickle:
I used “female” as an adjective and “woman” as a noun, except in the phrase “control of a female,” which I lifted directly from Kaethe’s comment. If you don’t like that crap, I suggest that you direct your complaint to her.
I don’t see how a purely positive claim about the attitudes of some men can be even moderately insulting (except perhaps to the men in question), much less frighteningly so. In any case, one doesn’t treat something as a scarce good—it either is (if you don’t have as much as you’d like) or it isn’t (if you do).
Nor can the farmer separate himself from the act of raising the pig, but fine—I’ll use a closer analogy. Suppose I want to play checkers, but I can’t find anyone to play with me. In this situation, checkers partners are a scarce good. Does this mean, then, that I treat potential checkers partners’ bodies and/or minds as commodities?
And let’s not forget that neither I nor Chris (AFAIK; some of his comments have gone down the memory hole) endorsed the relentless pursuit of sex wherever one can get it. In fact, the quoted excerpts from Chris’s deleted comments suggest disapproval.
To what do you refer, and how do we know it’s innate?
That might be a plausible reason to discount the Craigslist ads (though not the other pieces of evidence I offered), except for the fact that you don’t see these 30-to-1 ratios in the regular dating ads, where the ratio is about 3-to-1. I would expect women who are interested in casual sex to be less concerned with traditional norms than women who are interested in more traditional dating.
ms_xeno:
I assume you can guess the approximate meaning of “50th percentile of attractiveness.” If you want a strict technical definition, I can give you one, but it’s really not necessary for these purposes.
Are you suggesting that women tend to be more selective about sex partners than men are? I believe that that was the point in dispute.
Maybe that’s your point. Sounds like just one more flavor of victim-blaming to me. “Well, if women weren’t so picky,” or is it “Stingy with the ‘goods,’ men would treat us better.”
Also, it just sounds like one more backhanded way of insisting that men aren’t in full control of their “urges” when they set out on these Darwinian courtship excursions that somehow often end with them forcing sex on a woman who doesn’t want it. “Why, women have the capacity to pick and choose because they don’t have the almighty, all-powerful phallus leading them around. Pity the poor man. He’s starving for sex in a way she can’t imagine and if he doesn’t force her now, who knows the next time he’ll get any nourishment. Poor, poor little man.”
I call bullshit. The same old bullshit men have been using to justify unconscienable behavior for thousands of years.
Several years ago, Amp had a pretty fierce thread about whether or not there were justifiable circumstances for theft. I don’t remember if you were around then. However, I suspect that the argument some folks made of hunger or fear of starvation, exposure, and the like as justification for stealing material goods from a supermarket would not cut any ice with you, Brandon– nor would it cut any ice with a lot of your political allies. Since I doubt you would excuse theft of something that could actually preserve the thief’s life, it’s amusing to watch you and others like you insist that theft of something that doesn’t actually preserve anything –except a selfish male’s vision of himself as center of the universe– is completely understandable and sooooo sympathetic.
Ugh. I feel nauseous. And before you try and set some obvious sand-trap, let me say that, yes, I would steal a loaf of bread if I hadn’t eaten for a week. I would not force myself on anyone sexually no matter how damn horny I felt. I could die without food. I won’t die if I have to orgasm without another person in the room.
Suppose I want to play checkers, but I can’t find anyone to play with me. In this situation, checkers partners are a scarce good. Does this mean, then, that I treat potential checkers partners’ bodies and/or minds as commodities?
Of course not.
But I’m not the one making assumptions about why people on Craigslist are looking for dates. When you jump from date to sexual urges, one has to wonder what you think relationships are for, and consequently, what you think sex is about as well.
I would expect women who are interested in casual sex to be less concerned with traditional norms than women who are interested in more traditional dating.
I’d also expect women who are interested in casual sex to be more likely to skip to methods where one meets one’s potential partner more quickly than through online methods – seeing as how orgasm and safety are not as common occurrances for women when it comes to sex with practically unknown partners as they are for men.
I’m not the one making assumptions about why people on Craigslist are looking for dates. When you jump from date to sexual urges, one has to wonder what you think relationships are for, and consequently, what you think sex is about as well.
Actually, the numbers he quoted were from a section of Craigslist explicitly set aside for seeking casual sexual encounters.
No assumption at play in that case.
Ms_xeno:
I’m not defending or excusing rape, nor can I recall anything I’ve said—in this thread or elsewhere—that would give you license to draw that conclusion. In fact, I don’t really even know what this sub-thread has to do with rape; again, Maia deleted Chris’s comments before I had a chance to read them. I was only responding to Kaethe’s claims.
The thread’s here, and no, I don’t object to people stealing if it’s truly necessary to save their lives (though I do object to Antigone’s policy of stealing from Wal-Mart just because she doesn’t like them).
I hope you feel better now.
If I thought that someday the consciousness of millions like you, Brandon, might be raised to the point where they wouldn’t make these asinine and meaninglessly oversimplified statements about the “scarcity” of willing/desireable women for poor needy men– yeah, maybe I’d feel better. I don’t expect that anytime soon, however.