{"id":5899,"date":"2012-01-24T10:50:11","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T16:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/xblog\/?p=2062"},"modified":"2012-01-24T10:50:11","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T16:50:11","slug":"catching-up-on-your-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/24\/catching-up-on-your-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Catching up on your reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sea Monkeys Made of Straw <\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

So, you\u2019ve got what you think is a problem in your community. You know you\u2019ve got a bunch of arguing happening, and you observe what you believe to be fallacies mixed in, probably due to the strong feelings the topic brings u. You have some strong feelings yourself, whether about the community or the subject or about the behavior you witness. Your SIWOTI meter is pegged. What do you do?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Defending Our Mother\u2019s Gardens: In Observance of Roe v. Wade<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

In her landmark work In Search of Our Mother\u2019s Gardens, Alice Walker wrote: \u201cWhat did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmother\u2019s time? Our great-grandmothers\u2019 day? Did you have a genius of a great-great-grandmother who died under some ignorant and depraved white overseer\u2019s lash? Or was her body broken and forced to bear children (who were more often than not sold away from her)\u2014eight, ten, fifteen, twenty children\u2014when her one joy was the thought of modeling heroic figures of rebellion?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is feminism skeptical? (or: are ninjas awesome?)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Every damn conversation we\u2019ve had over the past several years in our respective atheist\/skeptic communities that even approaches the topic of feminism, or discusses women in any way, seems to attract the sort of person in our communities who demands that we prove that feminism \u2014 the idea that women are human beings and should be treated with basic human dignity \u2014 is skeptical. Who evidently believes that the natural overlap between skepticism and feminism is insufficient for the topic to be broached. That the feminists in the skepticism community are not turning a skeptical eye to their dogmatically held beliefs that women shouldn\u2019t be systematically mistreated or disadvantaged by any social structure that we humans have built.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The remarkable adaptability of \u2018family values\u2019 voters<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The Republican party likes to portray itself as defenders of \u2018traditional family values\u2019, which seem to many of us to be synonymous with narrow-minded, bigoted, and religiously-motivated ones. But that\u2019s fine. People have their own moral standards and need some measures by which to evaluate candidates and they have every right to expect the candidates they support to have the same values that they do.<\/p>\n

But what is odd is that rather than letting the values determine who their candidate should be, many of those voters seem to reverse the process and let the candidate determine their values at any given moment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Islamophobia is used to scaremonger people into silence<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian has published a letter calling for an inquiry into the \u2018anti-Islam\u2019 press.<\/p>\n

Whilst racism must be unequivocally condemned, the signatories \u2013 like the Guardian, confuse racism with a criticism of Islam. They are not one and the same no matter how many letters and articles the Guardian publishes.<\/p>\n

Islamophobia is nothing but a political term …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hello, Hello Again!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Hi everyone!<\/p>\n

My name is Natalie Reed, and I\u2019m newly arrived here to Freethought Blogs. Before this move, I was a writer for the Skepchick network, and managing editor for sister site Queereka. I\u2019m young and grossly unqualified, but people seem to enjoy what I do. \u201cWhat I do\u201d generally being posts on trans and queer issues, gender, sexuality and so on from a skeptical, secular perspective.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sea Monkeys Made of Straw So, you\u2019ve got what you think is a problem in your community. You know you\u2019ve got a bunch of arguing happening, and you observe what you believe to be fallacies mixed in, probably due to the strong feelings the topic brings u. You have some strong feelings yourself, whether about … Continue reading Catching up on your reading<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-1x9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5899"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}