Here’s an open thread for discussing what you’d like, including links to your own stuff if you feel like putting those up.
This is kind of an odd one, because I started it weeks ago, then got tired of working on it so ignored it for a while, and then picked it back up.
Angry Black Woman: May 18th Is The Deadline For The May Erase Racism Festival
The Gimp Parade presents: Blog Against Disabilism Day!
Taking Steps: How Cops Treat Transgendered People
She was brought in after me, stripped down to her long underwear, and as they were throwing her to the ground and removing her piercings, she tried to bring up the local statutes preventing discrimination against the transgendered, the right to self-identification, hell, the right to remain silent. As they had told me, they told her these were “TV rights,” and they knelt on her back and grabbed at her crotch and triumphantly announced that she was a he, and that he was a freak.
Not an easy post to read, but one we should all read anyway. A sure Koufax nominee. ((Why do I mention the “Koufax” thing, when doing so seems, frankly, a little crass and tacky? Because when it comes time to make Koufax nominations for 2007, my means of remembering the posts I liked that much is to search for uses of the word “Koufax” in my posts.))
Ambling Along the Aqueduct: How Political Narratives Shape How We Write Science Fiction
As well as being notable because it’s smart and interesting, this post is written by our own co-moderator Mandolin, on a group feminist sci-fi writers’ blog.
Feminista: How John Gray Taught Me To Love Andrea Dworkin’s Work
Op-Ed Pages Refuse To Publish Pro-Choice Editorial Cartoons
Thanks to Bean for the tip!
The Nation: Things We Could Do If We Rescinded Bush’s Tax Cuts For The Richest 1%
Sanders’ National Priorities Act makes his budgetary priorities crystal clear: providing primary and dental care to millions of Americans and health insurance for children; full funding for veterans health care; increasing access to affordable childcare and fully funding Head Start; lowering property taxes by federally covering 40 percent of special education costs for kids; providing 330,000 additional Pell Grants and doubling the maximum allowable amount; creating 200,000 jobs by investing in renewable energy, public transit, and high speed rail; creating 180,000 jobs by constructing, preserving, and rehabilitating at least 150,000 affordable housing rental units; reducing taxes for 10 million working families by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit; and reducing the deficit by $30 billion.
I think this is the most spectacular (albeit grim) photo of a dead dandelion I’ve ever seen.
Curtsy: DCist.
The Debate Link: The Hate Crimes Law And Terrorism
The Gimp Parade: The Hospital Broke State Law By Performing “Ashley Treatment” Without A Court Order
See Blue’s post for the details, and also for a response from Ashley’s parents.
Blog Of The Moment: The Dumbest Argument In The History Of Argumentation
And it’s a really sexist argument, too!
Amanda Reviews Great Comics
Check out Amanda’s reviews of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby.
Debitage: Why Environmentalists Aren’t Rushing To Buy Post-Global-Warming Beachfront Property
Every time I think there’s a limit on how dumb denialist arguments are, some denialist out there outdoes the previous record.
DovBear: Why We Are Better Off Today, In Handy Tabular Format
Masslibrulgirl: Signs you’ve taken too much sociology
Your Cousin Vito: What Superhero Comics Would Look Like In A Matriarchy.
Curtsy: Charles.
Feministe: Response to Garance’s Proposal To Raise The Consent Age For Participating In Porn
Ilycain: Ponies? I mean, what the fuck. Ponies?
You’ll just have to click through if you want to know what I’m talking about.
Economist’s View: Why Republicans Are Skeptical About Global Warming
Obsidian Wings: Mitt Romney Thinks Science Fiction Novel Is Reality
All in the service of dissing France. As Hilzoy points out, the weird thing is that no one at the Washington Post thought to question Romney’s beliefs that French marriages legally end after seven years.
IrrationalPoint’s Soapbox: Five Things Wrong With The “People Fake Disabilities” Cliche
Google Blogoscoped: Calculate Any Website’s He/She Ratio
The “Alas, a Blog” he/she ratio is 54%/46%. CNN’s is 77%/23%.
The Times: Children’s Activity Levels May Be Determined By Genes, Not By Phys Ed Classes
Thanks to “Alas” reader Original Lee for the tip!
I’ve been randomly dipping into the archives of The Unapologetic Mexican, and what I’ve been finding is spectacularly perceptive writing on race and on whiteness. For instance:
It is not the color of your skin or eyes that will bother me. It is the lenses you may see through. So when I speak of “Whites” and “Non-whites” in this blog, let it be a given that while I do speak of blood (“melanin-lacking race” and “melanin-laden race”) I mostly refer to the lenses that are typically found on each type of person. And if you can take those off for a minute, I think you will see what I mean.
His discussion of lenses reminds me of Sandra Bem’s book The Lenses of Gender, which was an essential book for my own developing feminist thinking way back when.
And, more recently, on the subject of internalized racism (among other things) (in a post that I’m going to try to remember to nominate for a Koufax award):
But I didn’t even let myself think in honest terms anymore. I sublimated the White Supremacist notions that my New Legal Father constantly oozed into other shapes of less-obvious thought. After ten years of his influence (as well as mainstream “universal” (White®) culture), instead of thinking facial hair brings out the Mexican in me (even tho many have said so verbatim) I just thought facial hair looks ugly on me. Because in that strain of White® thought, Mexican=Ugly. And so I avoided facial hair (especially a mustache) at all costs. Instead of thinking taking Spanish in High School will tie me more to my Mexicanness I just thought that French would be more “interesting.” (Also interesting that they were conquerors, for a while, of Mexico). Instead of thinking The sun makes me so dark I stand out as not-White™, I thought to myself as I reached into my late 20s The sun will age my skin, I should start avoiding it.
What reading that post reminded me of is American Born Chinese, a comic book by Gene Yang. Yang’s comic is one of the best treatments of struggling with internalized racism and the desire to match the “default person” I’ve ever read.
Feministing: The Effects Of High Heels
Wife Beating And Fundamentalist Islam Debated On TV
This clip collection of bits from TV talk shows in (I think) various languages is both horrifying (one male taking head pretty much advocates men raping their wives) and inspiring (the women standing up to these fundamentalist fools). Also check out this video at My Private Cashbah, about if women should appear on TV (the woman in the debate kicks serious ass).
Junk Food Science: Risk Factors And Anxiety-Mongering
Washington Post: Female Bloggers Face Sexual Threats
As Original Lee said to me in her email, “Gee, the MSM is paying attention now. Just a flash in the pan that won’t fix anything, I think.”
Sara Speaking: Thinking About Race, Cultural Consciousness, and Eating With Chopsticks
YouTube: Batman and Spiderman Discuss Spiderman 3
Who, me, geeky?
Ilyka on Spiderman 3
“Oh, how I wish I could unsee this movie.”
They said women are closer to monkeys. OMG!!
Oh no, I’m suppose to scratch under my arms and shriek.
Cheers, Amp. You reminded me of a couple of blogs I haven’t been following as closely as I’d like to be.
I’ve been thinking/writing recently about just how ‘inclusive’ feminism (or its mainstream strain, anyway) seems hellbent on remaining, compared to what I’d like my feminism to be: active, community-centered, participatory. Not so focused, on, say, Rosie O’Donnell.
I would love it if people stopped by to share their thoughts on what I’ve said so far and any local stories of activism or upcoming events (I’d like to start posting about grassroots/community action around the US).
Did I miss Monday Baby Blogging? I’d like it please. I look forward to it every Monday :)
Kate, I was short on time so I skipped the baby blogging on Monday. I’m glad you enjoy it, and feel free to remind me again in the future if I skip it.
Did the photo of the Panda do anything to make up for the cuteness you were deprived of by the lack of Baby Blogging this week?
Baby Blogging will be back next Monday, I promise. :-)
Moderately Insane: How to Date a Stripper (courtesy of Wilkihow)
Well, I will forgive you this time. But it better be back next week or else.
Panda is cute and all, but I really appreciate the stories of Sydney’s independence and personality devlopment and Maddox’s laid back happy go lucky life :)
I have a girl who is just between the ages of these two and she appears to be the perfect compliment to both of them. The stories make me smile when so much makes me angry these days. :)
Since this is a link farm, I’m going to plug some of my latest cartoons: Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Abstinence-Only Education and Confessions of a Closet Conservationist. Also, to your NYC-area readers, you are cordially invited to a June 12 cartoon slideshow & book release party.
End shameless self-promotion!
Thanks for the link, Amp.
It’s a little awkward, of course; I can hardly say I’m proud of my piece, if that makes sense, and neither of us can exactly be elated about it. But.
It’s not easy to read for me, either, nor was it easy to write.
Thank you, though, for the confidence and the exposure.
Amp, I’ve mentioned before that I appreciate your “possibly related posts” feature, but the last two “possibly related posts” for “Rape and Abuse at Oregon State Hospital” seem to be pretty wide of the mark.
Edited to add: It must be the word “hospital” that did it.
I’ve been catching up on blog reading the past couple of days and have been to Donna’s site, The Silence of Our Friends which is really a great one and where there are a lot of great posts including a recent one on one of Amp’s comics and a lot of them of them on White feminists not addressing our racial privilege within the movements. The discussions on her blog are really informative as well.
Black Amazon also writes her take on the book “Full Frontal Feminism” by Jessica Valenti. And she’s right, nubian called this one. So did BA.
Brownfemipower’s taking a break as she stated on her site, because of all the difficulties she faces being one of the most amazing bloggers out there. It’s not easy to be as bold and upfront as she is in her passionate postings, especially if you’re a woman, especially if you’re a woman of color but what she does is so important. I think that needs to be recognized in the blogging community and remembered.
Her absence and nubians have really left a huge hole in the blogsphere. And what will the blogsphere do to help her and other women bloggers feel safer?
I’ve been catching up on blog reading the past couple of days and have been to Donna’s site, The Silence of Our Friends which is really a great one and where there are a lot of great posts including a recent one on one of Amp’s comics and a lot of them of them on White feminists not addressing our racial privilege within the movements. The discussions on her blog are really informative as well.
Black Amazon also writes her take on the book “Full Frontal Feminism” by Jessica Valenti. And she’s right, nubian called this one. So did BA.
since this is an open thread, a random blog question:
How does email work here? The “email Amp” and “email Maia” links seems to be broken (and BTW, you need to add rachel and mandolin).
And though I know we’re all supposed to be putting in an email address, there doesn’t seem to be any provision to, well, email people. I assume this is intentional, to fight spam. But it makes contacting people offblog difficult. And in that case why do we need to put in an email?
I’ve seen some sites with a “request email” feature. I.e. those who wanted to contact me** click the right button, which (automatically) shoots me an email saying “______ has requested your email address. Reply with “yes” in the subject line to authorize release” or something like that.
Just a thought.
**I have a blog so it’s moot. But lots of people don’t.
Upgrading to the newest version of WordPress has broken the email links I had set up, for reasons that remain mysterious to me.
My plan is to install an “email bloggers” form which will let people email their choice of Alas bloggers, but that probably won’t happen in the next week, Depends on how things go with my wrist.
In Rachel’s latest post, she mentioned some search queries that brought traffic to her site. Out of curiosity, I entered some of them into Google to see where her site came up.
I didn’t find it (I only checked the first couple of pages for a couple of the queries), but I did find something else that I thought was interesting: A lot of the results were porn ads hosted on .edu accounts, including one at Harvard (e.g., the first query returns a page at harvard.edu on the first page). Does anyone know what that’s about? I assume it’s an SEO thing—but is it a hack, or are university students and/or faculty selling web space to pornographers now? Is this a known issue among the anti-porn crowd?