-
We teach sexuality from the cradle, from the very second they open their eyes we force these lessons on our children. But for some of our kids, those lessons are just plain wrong, and for the rest they just teach them that we don't exist.
You already teach kids sexuality – but you don't tell them the whole story and that ignorance can hurt all of them – and it certainly hurts us.
-
After the awesome London tube map in Maori art work, here is another fine example of what people do with the London tube map – rename the stations with food names!!
-
The short term result of this debate would seem to be that Ethan Bronner will continue in his post. There is, however, no doubt that some readers will be unhappy about this and will look for evidence to back their case. As Hoyt points out, this was the case even before his son joined the Isreali military:
-
While the price to pay for existential debate is a migraine, the efforts of Crown Hills to introduce atheism and humanism into the classroom has nonetheless earned it a place on an awards shortlist. The inaugural Accord prize celebrates diversity of not only religious but also non-religious beliefs. The award, launched last November by a coalition of religious groups, humanists, trade unions and human rights campaigners, is open to all state-funded schools and is judged by a panel led by Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain. He says Accord, which campaigns against the expansion of state-funded faith schools and challenges discrimination, is seeking out and rewarding schools that are "inclusive, tolerant and transparent".
-
On the surface, the Vatican's objective is to protect the sacrament of the confession. In reality, however, it is trying to uphold the Catholic Church's claim to being a superior moral authority.
Nothing can be allowed to besmirch this authority: not the sexual abuse of children and adolescents, committed by thousands of Catholic priests worldwide; not the secret relationships between pastor and their housekeepers; not the covering-up of priests' children; and not the love affairs between gay clerics. They are all cases of a double standard that arose because it is difficult for people — even priests — to subordinate their human desires to a papal encyclical.
-
Humu Tavawallie went to school for an education, but was forced into sex with her teacher to pay for her exams. This is an all too common problem in Sierra Leone, and entrenched social attitudes make it difficult to tackle, writes Annabel Symington
-
This story is a self-insert story. The starship U Thant is the Mary Sue. I did not write the story wearing the grim face of avenging social justice, all
. I wrote it with the feeling of putting one over on the Westerners, with the cheeky delight of being able to sneak nasi lemak on board a Starfleet ship…I liked thinking of people who spoke like me in Starfleet. It made Star Trek a little more real to me. -
The five-member crew is made up entirely of United States Air Force officers and includes Maj. Tom Louis, Maj. Tom Greely, Maj. Tom Ohweiler, Maj. Thomas Sinclair, and Maj. Tom Keenan.
links for 2010-02-09
February 9, 2010links for 2010-02-08
February 8, 2010-
I know we're supposed to be rooting for Taylor, because GLASSES, but this whole thing whereby girls who do not conceive of themselves as traditionally attractive deal with this by hating on girls who they think are prettier is just really repulsive to me, and I can't stand it, especially when it's framed as "empowering" rather than just insecure and gross. You have a problem with how limiting the mainstream beauty standard is? Fine. TALK ABOUT THAT. I will agree with you. But slamming "ugly" girls and slamming "pretty" girls both amount to slamming girls. So, you know. Less of that, please.
-
Has anyone else noticed that a staple of many a vegan cookbook is a recipe for African Peanut Stew or African Yam Stew or something similar? I’ve also seen (though less frequently) recipes for, say, Asian-Style Tofu or whatever. I cannot recall ever seeing a cookbook featuring anything like European Bean Soup. Is it because to most vegan cookbook authors/food bloggers, it would be preposterous to assume that there is anything universal or overarching about the many countries that make up Europe, or their cuisines? And yet we don’t often see the same distinction granted to countries in Africa.
links for 2010-02-06
February 6, 2010-
What are the chances that CNN will show the broken bodies of the 22 people killed in twisters that plowed across the central United States this weekend, y'know so we get "the enormity of the story?" We did not need to see graphic footage of victims to understand the enormity of Oklahoma City or 9/11. I do remember seeing some footage of Hurricane Katrina's dead–not as graphic as the Myanmar coverage–but we all know those folks in New Orleans weren't American anyway, they were "refugees." (Tongue firmly in cheek, here.)
-
Between the mancession, the network news anchors, and running only 485 of the Fortune 500 companies, it's hard out there for a dude.
-
AMANDA: It’s a can of worms. I do find it interesting that Sarah Palin, Republican darling, has taken it upon herself to become the queen of “PC” now, even though complaining about liberals forcing political correctness on the world is a treasured Republican pastime. And I think Sarah Palin does represent the worst kind of “PC,” which is to be only “politically” correct, and not correct in your social policies, or the way you live your life, or your expectations of all people, but “correct” only in a way that sticks it to people you don’t like.
-
Wanting to hear what someone who is regarded as being vocally transphobic has to say, in a nominally trans-positive space, over the protests of the actual people who are affected by the hatred she helps to stir up when you are not personally affected by transphobia is not only intellectually lazy, it's a really, really fucked-up way to behave.
It is my view that Bindel encourages the attitudes which lead to trans people getting beaten and murdered. I regard her as having the blood of trans people on her hands. I regard those who give her a column in the national press to evangelise her message of hate as having the blood of trans people on their hands.
If you "want to hear what she has to say" in a trans and queer-centric space, over the protests of the people affected by what she has to say, then you have our blood on your hands.
-
January 26th, 2010 marked the 60th anniversary of India's adoption of the Constitution of India, and the 80th anniversary of its original 1930 Declaration of Independence from British rule. The annual holiday is celebrated as Republic Day, with a grand parade held in the capital, New Delhi, and many other celebrations across the diverse nation.
links for 2010-02-05
February 5, 2010-
Although Black women make up less than one percent of servicemembers, they comprise 3.3% of those discharged under the policy.
But wait, it gets better. The same report notes people can be discharged under DADT even if they are not gay or lesbian, apparently there are cases where men have accused women who refuse unwanted sexual advances of being lesbians, or because the women are successful and some men do not want to serve under them.
-
In opposing Julia Neuberger's amendment, the Anglican bishops revealed that they are not democrats. They do not believe in the equality of all believers – and non-believers – in the eyes of the state. They do want the state to play favourites. They want the state to exempt them from uniform laws that oppress their religious liberty (not necessarily an unreasonable demand) – but they also want the state to impose a uniform law that accords with their religious views even though this will oppress the religious liberty of others.
-
Explaining Gordon Brown's mysterious new enthusiasm for electoral reform
-
Less crime, less killing, fewer teenage mums, far fewer fags, perhaps a bit less drink and drugs: why is it that the idea of “broken Britain” rings true with so many, when it seems far from reality? Partly, it is because people’s ideas about the state of society are simply inaccurate: the average voter reckons that four out of ten teenagers have children, for instance, whereas in fact perhaps three in a hundred do.
-
Stepping back from the glare of the latest appalling tale, it is clear that by most measures things have been getting better for a good decade and a half. In suggesting that the rot runs right through society, the Tories fail to pinpoint the areas where genuine crises persist. The broken-Britain myth is worse than scaremongering—it glosses over those who need help most.
-
Students would be charged a professional lecture fee for every class they attended along, of course, with another facilities fee, like an operating-room charge in a hospital. Every time a student sought out a teaching assistant during office hours a charge would be incurred. Thus, muddled lectures by the professor actually might yield additional revenue.
Students would pay rentals for dormitory rooms categorized by different levels of comfort and rentals. They would also pay a monthly fee for being connected to the university’s server, along with a separate fee for every piece of e-mail processed by that server.
-
In a sane, modern system, I wouldn't have to arrange each leg of my flight myself. I wouldn't have to fax documents around, find and juggle multiple providers, fill out again and again what are essentially the same forms every time I use a provider.
links for 2010-02-04
February 4, 2010-
As all good Asian-American Studies minors know, the roots of Asiaphilia are planted in the soil of colonialism. Our European forefathers, viewing any foreign culture as backward, erased what they could of indigenous custom and inscribed upon the people their own authority. Thus did bloom the stereotype of Asian docility, submissiveness and lotus blossom beauty.
It's arguable that Asiaphilia, ironically, stems from legal attempts to exclude Asian Americans from the United States. The criteria by which many Asian women were permitted to enter the U.S. were not exactly morally sound: prostitutes, picture brides, war brides, mail-order brides. Sexuality was a prerequisite for refuge in the United States.
-
Until 2005, David Cameron was a conventional anti-gay Tory. He attacked Tony Blair for “moving Heaven and Earth to allow the promotion of homosexuality in our schools”. He mocked Labour for supporting the “fringe agenda” of equality for gay people. He supported the homophobic law Section 28 until its dying breath. But since he became Conservative leader, he has dramatically changed his position. He apologised for Section 28, got a Tory conference to applaud the principle of gay marriage, and has moved a flotilla of gay candidates into winnable seats. It seems at first glance like an amazing starburst of progress – making it possible at last for gay people to pick political parties from anywhere on the spectrum. The party of Norman Tebbit is now led by a man who poses for photographers outside a screening of Brokeback Mountain.
-
There is no purpose, behind her Facebook post and her call-out of Emanuel, beyond continuing a program of obstructing a Democratic agenda and the current President. It’s precisely as duplicitous as the cries of “sexism” in the right during the primaries. Is there sexism in the Democratic Party, and in the treatment of Sarah Palin? Fuck yes, there is. Was Rahm’s use of the term ableist? Is there ableism in the left? Was the response to the ableism handled poorly? Fuck yes, to every single one of those questions. But pointing that out when you know that your own party and/or political agenda isn’t going to prioritize social welfare programs which would help the disabled, when they’re trying to make universal access to healthcare impossible, when you don’t have a compassionate stance on the issues of unemployment and poverty to which disability is inexorably linked… is just about the most disgusting corruption of these legitimate issues that I can imagine.
-
Having done time in hospital with depression, I can't help feeling that anyone with the energy to switch on a computer and even care what's happening on Facebook is showing a level of engagement with the world well beyond the catatonic. So it may not be quite as healthy as actually chatting to someone, but it's a vast improvement on staring at the wall. My shrink would certainly have taken it as a positive sign.
-
Aww, it's like something out of TWW.
links for 2010-02-03
February 3, 2010-
Intent is so unbelievably epic that it doesn’t just cover slurs. No, it covers actions as well! Because you see, the very threads of fate are not immune to this otherworldly flow of what you meant to do or say. So if you kick a trans woman out of a homeless shelter into the cold because she didn’t fit your views of what a woman should be and she didn’t want to be put in with the menz (where she faces a risk of rape and murder for her, or at least harassment), your Intent literally changes the tapestry of fate so that instead of freezing to death in the cold, she actually is heated by an unexpected fire, lit by a lightning strike from clear skies, onto a pile of garbage that can’t spread the fire to anything else, right next to where she just happened to fall in exhaustion!
-
I haven't seen this anywhere yet, and linkspam has a tag but the links are mixed in with other stuff, so I figure I'll just gather them all here. It might take me a while to update links as I find/am pointed towards them, but I'll try to track down everything eventually.
-
My little run-in with some junior misogynists today illustrates perfectly that rape culture is nothing to do with sex. Its about power, and control. Those boys weren't hoping that I'd turn around and affirm their attractiveness, or fuck it, their existence. They weren't doing it because I'm a clone of Megan Fox and was wearing a skintight Lady GaGa inspired catsuit (For the record, I was wearing hockey bottoms, a ski-jacket, running shoes and no make-up and am extremely average looking). They weren't expecting me to turn around and offer to perform oral sex on them, because fuck it, their penises don't function in that way yet, them being children and all. They wanted to be in control. They tried to get it by catcalling, as they've seen (some) older boys do. They didn't get it, so they used abusive language and misogynist slurs, just as (some) older boys do.
-
So do you see how this works? Create a circumstance that is supposedly accessible and then grumble grumble when it turns out that its not and you have to wait for the differently abled person to find a way to negotiate it. I tried not to feel the eyes that looked at me with impatience and condescension. I tried not to feel embarrassed and ashamed but it was unavoidable. In that moment, I knew that I had made a big mistake in the eyes of the able bodied, I dared to take up space. My being was impacting the speed at which they were able to traverse through this world and this is the point at which most people suddenly lose patience with the differently abled.
-
Let me try another analogy. Let’s say you live with your child in a house that burns down. You’re dazed, confused, and burned. Your neighbor says, “I think I should take care of your child”. You say, “Thanks for your offer. But my child really needs me now, and I think they wouldn’t sleep well in a strange house. If you could just give us a tent and some food and some bandages so we can camp out while I get better and look into rebuilding, we’ll be OK.” Your neighbor says, “that’s too logistically complicated and I’m concerned about the security situation. I just want your child.” You say, “Thanks again for your concern and I’m grateful for any help you can give me. If you’re so worried about my child, maybe you could let both of us stay in your guestroom for a while? That way my child could be safe and would sleep well too.” Your neighbor says, “No, we have an interdiction-at-sea policy and visa restrictions will not be relaxed. Just give me your child.
-
"I think World War II was justified, and I got behind the first Gulf War [in 1990]," said the bird, who has served as the national symbol of the United States since 1782. "But the recent war in Iraq, with its shifting rationale and poor planning, was clearly a huge mistake. Personally, I believe that these crucial, life-and-death matters deserve more honest and less politicized discussion than they get."
"I'm not a hawk or a dove," he added. "I'm an eagle."
-
ndeed, what is astonishing about Bindel's writing on transsexuals, which has been published in the Guardian, is how often it resembles the diatribes of anti-gay bigots: the disregard of our own voices, the disbelief that transness is anything but a degeneracy, and the general air of condescension and paternalism.
Gays and lesbians have long known that such diatribes are not merely "offensive," but dangerous – as is transphobic writing like Bindel's, and for the same reason: they support social attitudes that have often proven deadly for trans people.
links for 2010-02-02
February 2, 2010-
Pro-lifers have always struggled with the invisibility of unborn life: millions of babies aborted every year, concealed in wombs behind closed doors. How do you open the world's eyes to what it can't see? In Tim Tebow, they see the invisible made visible: a child who has lived to tell his story because an abortion didn't happen. "If his mother had followed her doctor's advice," notes LifeSiteNews, "he would be just another abortion statistic."
But what's true of abortion is also true of pregnancy complications. If Pam Tebow's abruption had taken a different turn, her son would be just another perinatal mortality statistic, and she might be just another maternal mortality statistic. And you would know nothing of her story, just as you know nothing of the women who have died carrying pregnancies like hers.
-
The purpose of this investigation was to find out how conversion therapists operate. What I didn't expect was that I would learn how their patients feel: confused and damaged.
I began to constantly analyse why I found particular men attractive. Does that man represent something that's lacking in me? Do I want him because he looks strong which must mean I feel weak? Did something happen in my childhood? The therapists planted doubt and worry where there was none.
-
If you did not know there was anything wrong with me, you would not know there is anything wrong with me. The disease moves slowly, but you know it's there. Imagine a very, very slow-motion car crash. Nothing much seems to be happening. There's an occasional little bang, a crunch, a screw pops out and spins across the dashboard as if we're in Apollo 13. But the radio is still playing, the heater is on and it doesn't seem all that bad, except for the certain knowledge that sooner or later you will definitely be going headfirst through the windscreen.
-
In each circumstance, the question that reverberates down the years, growing louder rather than dimmer, is: why? Why were they in thrall to a system based on mass extermination? It's estimated that around two million Cambodians, more than a quarter of the population, lost their lives during the four catastrophic years of Khmer Rouge rule. What could have led these two individuals, worlds apart, to embrace a regime that has persuasive claim, in a viciously competitive field, to be the most monstrous of the 20th century?
-
When the UK government ploughs more than £4m of taxpayers' money into homeopathy annually, and leading pharmacists stock their magic potions, it serves to legitimise the industry, to suggest that somehow homeopaths are on a par with real doctors.
The consequences of that can be disastrous, whether it's the suicide of a patient who should be taking antidepressants, delayed treatment for a serious illness, or a traveller packing "anti-malarial" pills that don't actually work.
-
Ratzinger, who uses the stage name 'Pope Benedict XVI', said: "Gravity does not exist. I proved this last year with some spaghetti and a paperweight. Things either go up or down based on a combination of prayer beads and Jesus particles.
links for 2010-02-01
February 1, 2010-
There is simply no justification for treating unconscious patients like plastic models or cadavers. And I can't help wondering: Is this how Canadian medical students learn to do rectal exams as well? How about dental training — do they figure it's best to practice wielding all those pointy instruments on people who are knocked out before graduating to conscious patients? Or is it only women's bodies that are considered property of the medical facility once the anesthesia kicks in?
links for 2010-01-31
January 31, 2010-
With all that in mind, which is the hardest language? On balance The Economist would go for Tuyuca, of the eastern Amazon. It has a sound system with simple consonants and a few nasal vowels, so is not as hard to speak as Ubykh or !Xóõ. Like Turkish, it is heavily agglutinating, so that one word, hóabãsiriga means “I do not know how to write.” Like Kwaio, it has two words for “we”, inclusive and exclusive. The noun classes (genders) in Tuyuca’s language family (including close relatives) have been estimated at between 50 and 140. Some are rare, such as “bark that does not cling closely to a tree”, which can be extended to things such as baggy trousers, or wet plywood that has begun to peel apart.
Most fascinating is a feature that would make any journalist tremble. Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)”, while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)”.
-
lovely counter-protest signs XD
links for 2010-01-30
January 30, 2010-
Mansplaining isn't just the act of explaining while male, of course; many men manage to explain things every day without in the least insulting their listeners.
Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate "facts" about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does.
