Here’s an example: Continue reading What to do until abortion ends.
Tag Archives: Feminism
Making sense of our fights on the Internet
After the Big Bang, more or less evenly distributed stuff and energy somehow became slightly unevenly distributed, which caused a kind of Universal Angular Momentum to set in which gave early heterogeneity and structure to everything that existed. The lightest elements formed more or less spontaneously, but in order for heavier elements to form matter had to get sufficiently clumped in stars that massive gravitational forces changed light elements into heavy ones. Perhaps if the initial clumping and spinning of stuff in the very early universe was a little bit different, the whole universe would have come out differently, in detail if not in other more profound ways. Or at least, I’d be wearing a blue tee shirt instead of a black one right now and I’d be using vim instead of emacs to type this blog post.
When Elevatorgate happened, the ensuing Universe Known as Rebeccapocalypse was shaped and determined by a number of early events that have caused the final result … well, not the “final” result, but the result that we are stuck with as of this writing … but had those first few days of Internet activity been a little different things might have come out a different way.
Here I would like to do two things. Continue reading Making sense of our fights on the Internet
Americans For Truth About Homosexuality’s LaBarbera mad at Obama
… and other matters.
You will be stunned to learn that Americans For Truth About Homosexuality president Peter LaBarbera isn’t happy either, asking, “Who knew that when President Ronald Reagan spoke idealistically about America becoming a ‘shining city on the hill,’ that city would turn out to be Sodom?” LaBarbera said that Obama and Clinton are putting America in a position of “defiance toward her Creator to a new level” and endorsing an “affront to our Declaration of Independence”
Meanwhile, Republicans break out the popcorn to watch anti-choice porn:
Mike Huckabee has been making the rounds on right-wing radio promoting a new anti-choice documentary he produced with Citizens United called “The Gift of Life” which profiles anti-choice activists as well as those who were “saved from the abortionist”…Huckabee is scheduled to premier the film in Iowa next week and he invited the candidates seeking the Republican nomination to join him for the event where each would be given five minutes to address the audience and flaunt their anti-choice credentials … and so far, four candidates have accepted the invitation…
Here’s a triler … you could always visit the YouTube site and unlike it!
Continue reading Americans For Truth About Homosexuality’s LaBarbera mad at Obama
Screw this sexism
The following photograph is a Facebook Peme (Pic Meme, sometimes spelled “peem”). In its original form it had a caption that was sexist and offensive, feeding the idea that girls can’t do math (innately) and also suggesting that a good backup plan for a middle schooler frustrated with academics is sexual self-objectivictoin.
I’ve blogged about this at The X Blog. Here, I’d like to ask you to suggest alternative captions for this photograph. And by “alternative” I mean positive. Or funny but not sexist.
Rebecca Watson: I love you, stand by you, and won’t tell mom about the infantile bloggers and commenters
Just go read this. And then do something about it.
Driving The Patriarchy: Demonic Males, Feminism, and Genetic Determinism
Behaviors are not caused by genes. There is not a gene that causes you to be good, or to be bad, or to be smart, or good at accounting, or to like bananas. There are, however, drives. “Drives” is a nicely vague term that we can all understand the meaning of. Thirst and hunger are drives we can all relate to. In fact, these drives are so basic, consistent and powerful that almost everyone has them, we share almost exact experiences in relation to them, and they can drive (as drives are wont to do) us to do extreme things when they are not met for long periods of time. While eating disorders are common enough and these affect a hunger drive, it is very rare to find a person thirst themselves to death.
Continue reading Driving The Patriarchy: Demonic Males, Feminism, and Genetic Determinism
Ladies, Richard Dawkins knows how to protect you from being raped in an elevator
Recently, Richard Dawkins said (full quote below) that a woman should not be concerned about her own safety if she finds herself in an elevator (under some sort of threat, presumably), because it is trivially easy to get out of an elevator if you are under attack. I’m sure Richard is a very smart guy and maybe he’s right, but there is evidence to the contrary that women can just leave the scene if they are uninterested in being raped or groped.
For example:
Continue reading Ladies, Richard Dawkins knows how to protect you from being raped in an elevator
Shut up about everything all the time unless what you have to say is HITLER!!!!
And thus, structurally, Richard Dawkins, or his distant cousin Richard D. Poe (I am still not sure) has shut down the argument that the Elevator Guy acted inappropriately when he asked Rebecca Watson over for a cuppa joe at four O’clock in the AM, in an elevator, while she was on her way to bed.
Continue reading Shut up about everything all the time unless what you have to say is HITLER!!!!
What is Feminism?
Courtney Martin examines the perennially loaded word “feminism” in this personal and heartfelt talk. She talks through the three essential paradoxes of her generation’s quest to define the term for themselves.
Why do women shop and men hunt?
Or, when the hunting season is closed, watch teh game (the guys), or when there are no sales, admire each other’s shoes (the gals)?
This is, of course, a parody of the sociobiological, or in modern parlance, the “evolutionary psychology” argument linking behaviors that evolved in our species during the long slog known as The Pleistocene with today’s behavior in the modern predator-free food-rich world. And, it is a very sound argument. If, by “sound” you mean “sounds good unless you listen really hard.”
I list this argument among the falsehoods, but really, this is a category of argument with numerous little sub-arguments, and one about which I could write as many blog posts as I have fingers and toes, which means, at least twenty. (Apparently there was some pentaldactylsim in my ancestry, and I must admit that I’ll never really know what they cut off when I was born, if anything.)
Before going into this discussion I think it is wise, if against my nature, to tell you what the outcome will be: There is not a good argument to be found in the realm of behavioral biology for why American Women shop while their husbands sit on the bench in the mall outside the women’s fashion store fantasizing about a larger TV on which to watch the game. At the same time, there is a good argument to be made that men and women should have different hard wired behavioral proclivities, if there are any hard wired behavioral proclivities in our species. And, I’m afraid, the validity from an individual’s perspective of the various arguments that men and women are genetically programmed to be different (in ways that make biological sense) is normally determined by the background and politics of the observer and not the science. I am trained in behavioral biology, I was taught by the leading sociobiologists, I’ve carried out research in this area, and I was even present, somewhat admiringly, at the very birth of Evolutionary Psychology, in Room 14A in the Peabody Museum at Harvard, in the 1980s. So, if anyone is going to be a supporter of evolutionary psychology, it’s me.
But I’m not. Let me ‘splain….
Continue reading Why do women shop and men hunt?
It is God’s plan that you bear the child of your rapist
I heard a white male blogger said something, or failed to say something, or whatever. So, let’s pile on and verbally pound him for a while! Because, you know, there is nothing worse going on in the world when it comes to buying and selling (with money or votes) women’s freedoms!!!
Or is there?
Continue reading It is God’s plan that you bear the child of your rapist
A woman in the Sudan has done the absolutely worst thing a woman can do.
The Natural Basis for Inequality of the Sexes
Is the Natural World a valid source of guidance for our behavior, morals, ethics, and other more mundane areas of thought such as how to build an airplane and what to eat for breakfast?1 When it comes to airplanes, you’d better be a servant to the rules of nature (such as gravity) or the airplane will go splat. When it comes to breakfast, it has been shown that knowing about our evolutionary history can be a more efficacious guide to good nutrition than the research employed by the FDA, but you can live without this approach and following FDA guidelines will not do you in. A naturalistic approach can work when it comes to behavior too, but there are consequences. You or someone you love would probably not like the consequences.
Continue reading The Natural Basis for Inequality of the Sexes
Sexism in the lab: Perception and reality mingle
A three part conversation between two women overheard on the University of Minnesota campus.
Continue reading Sexism in the lab: Perception and reality mingle
Observations on sexism in the skeptics movement
… by Skepchick by “carr2d2” … touch on a wide range of topics that make TAM7 seem like a microcosm of the blogosphere, academia, and to some (limited) extent the broader society.
“…a lot of men in the skeptical movement, well intentioned as they may be, have a tendency to look at women as though we are some sort of separate species; monolithic and mysterious…”
Regarding commentary on women’s dress at the conference by Drescher, “I honestly find it difficult to know where to begin here. You want more women in skepticism, but when they show up without properly camouflaging their sexuality you call them out on your blog?..” and “The answer to the larger societal problem at hand – the sexy/smart dichotomy – is not for all of us women to unsex ourselves. As women, we need to move away from the idea that there is only one acceptable way to be taken seriously as a woman in a historically male dominated arena.”
Start with this commentary by Car2d2, then check out subsequent posts on Skepchick for important followups.