2009-10-01 10:22 | Your links for the hour.

I have a backlog.

*) Alternet: 40 Books About Sexuality That You Have to Read

Some are articles, instead of books, but hey.  Nice to print out and save somewhere.

*) Rebel Raising: Is that child crazy?

If you lived in a world where you were constantly confronted by new things, which you were expected to assimilate and understand quickly and without showing concern? If you pretty much never got to choose your own activities? If you were regularly touched, lifted and restrained without your permission? If you lived at the mercy of, however loving, people who were in total charge of your comings and goings, your access to food and drink, your access to activities you enjoy?

I'm not trying to say that we all traumatise our children horribly for no reason. This is not mother-blaming central. But too often we don't see children as people; we don't think, hey, if I were taken from something I was absorbed in, strapped into a pushchair and hurried down the road without anyone checking I understood what was going on, would I scream and struggle? Probably.

*) Raising My Boychick: What is appropriate parenting advice?

I don't think there is no place for parenting advice; that is, to unwind that double negative, I do think parenting advice has its place. The point of the previous post was that while it's sometimes tempting to dismiss parenting advice from someone solely because of their child-less/free status, that's not actually a good enough (or good at all) reason.

So what is appropriate parenting advice? It certainly is not "unsolicited… not-so-masked criticism of [one's] parenting." That's inappropriate at any time, from any source, yet is one of the most common — and most infuriating — types of "advice" parents get, and why we get so defensive on the topic in general.

Advice on parenting is least likely to be received as an attack — or to phrase positively, is most likely to be listened to and reflected on, whether adopted or not — when it is: solicited; humble; experiential; and in line with the receiver's own basic parenting philosophy.

*) Fugitivus: Not a real post

I'm a pretty big believer that wherever you are, that's where you need to be. I don't want to say that's where you "deserve" to be, because that drags in ideas of entitlement and punishment that are really arrogant and cruel. But I do believe that individuals only stay in a place as long as that place is meeting their needs. Not all their needs, and maybe not always the good ones, but people don't stick around for free; there's got to be some return investment, even if that return investment is only "staying here helps me avoid something I perceive to be worse."

*) Fugitivus: Stuff What Boys Can Do

[...] asking men to be allies isn't really a cut and dry case. Privilege is its own kind of oppression; to maintain privilege, one must maintain a very specific and strict mode of behavior. Stepping out of that behavior strips you of your privilege, and leaves you vulnerable for a pretty significant degree of attack. There are times when an ally can pull an Afterschool Special, and there are times where even deigning to disagree could get a guy beat to within an inch of his life. I'd like to see, and hear, more ways that men can be allies in all the different contexts they find themselves in.

2009-08-25 09:55 | Linkdump ahoy.

These have been in my Google Reader for approx. forever, so I linkdump them for you.

• Conscience in a bottle:
  

  …Nowhere in Fiji Water's glossy marketing materials will you find reference to the typhoid outbreaks that plague Fijians because of the island's faulty water supplies; the corporate entities that Fiji Water has — despite the owners' talk of financial transparency — set up in tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg; or the fact that its signature bottle is made from Chinese plastic in a diesel-fueled plant and hauled thousands of miles to its ecoconscious consumers. And, of course, you won't find mention of the military junta for which Fiji Water is a major source of global recognition and legitimacy. (Gilmour has described the square bottles as "little ambassadors" for the poverty-stricken nation.)…

  [h/t Hoyden About Town]

• Unsolicited career advice:

The approach to What To Do After School is based on social expectations and some vague nod to the subjects kids like at school. Oh, and a goodly helping of What The Parents Do, or possibly Not What The Parents Do. None of this is particularly useful – except conceivably Not What The Parents Do.

So this is my advice to teens considering what next.

The very first thing to consider is that what you choose now is highly unlikely to determine the rest of your life, despite what the Powers That Be would have you believe. I know you've been told this before, but seriously, I hardly know anyone who didn't have some change of tack post-school and I know lots who have had several (like me, for instance).

This post is also useful for those who, like me, have never really or seriously considered the questions this blogger puts forth.

[h/t Hoyden About Town]

• At Raising My Boychick, Arwyn compares childbirth to athletics, in a wonderful fashion:
  

  I am not here trying to say that all natural birth advocacy = feminist = good, nor all medicalized birth advocacy = misogynist = bad, which would be as ridiculous as it would be fallacious. Rather, I am saying that kyriarchy's construction of labor and birth as unbearably painful, as unworthy (as opposed to war games or athletics), and women as either too weak or too "advanced" to tolerate it, is inherently misogynistic. Whether an individual woman follows the biological default and has (or pursues) unhindered birth, or elects to make use of the medical interventions available to most of us in developed nations, does not reflect on her moral standing, any more than participating in, or not participating in, athletic events does. But the current cultural construction of birth must change: not by moving backward to a time when women had no options in childbirth, and were expected — even encouraged — to suffer, and in which there were no medical interventions for when they were truly needed; but forward, to a time when our bodies are valued, our spirits are supported, and the work of birth is seen as hard, yes, and even sometimes painful, but within reach of most of us, and oh so worth it: just like athletics.

• M. LeBlanc writes at Bitch Ph.D. on the concept of "the best revenge is living well":
  

  Last night, I was relaying all this to The Bear, and he said something I've heard many times before, that beating them, being better than them, is the best revenge. And I must confess that I've taken great pleasure in winning cases over counsel who have slighted me in the past. But I don't want "revenge." [...] I hate the burden of feeling that any mistake I make, any omission or error, any time when I don't perform not only well, but stunningly, I am confirming their racist, sexist, and ageist opinion of me as incompetent. I do not want to "prove" myself to them, because they will never reconsider their initial opinion of me just because I happen to beat them. My stellar performance will never mean, to them, that they were wrong to disregard me because I'm a young brown-looking woman. It will only mean that I am an exception, that I am an oddity, that I am "special." Or perhaps it will mean that there was some other reason I bested them, that it was that I had a better case, or the jury was biased, or the laws were unfair or the judge was against them. It will never vindicate me.

  I don't want revenge. I want respect.

I do believe that is enough for one post.

2009-02-16 10:25 | Today's links for today.

Things that have made me sit up and take notes.

1. Spinster aunt eradicates male viewpoint at I Blame The Patriarchy:
   

   Hear me, O afflicted dudes: If you truly do "get" feminism, you know that, like all oppressed classes, women, as a matter of survival, are intimate to the point of exhaustion with the drives, appetites, illnesses, angsts, yearnings, hopes, dreams, great works, and bodily functions of the oppressor. We grasp these things utterly and without omission because we do not live in a cave; they are the default subjects of all art, literature, music, science, film, blogs, dinner conversation, science fiction, advertising, journalism, legislation, TV, the Internet, religion, technology, sport, and miscellaneous culture both low and high. The minute some dude tells me something I don't already know about dudeliness, I'll eat a bonobo.

2. the_red_shoes reviews Dollhouse – be sure to read the comments.  I didn't much want to watch it even before I read reviews.
3. Why sleep with a boy? Oh goodness, see the comments again.

2008-10-30 10:23 | More on Prop. 8, and some on Florida's Amendment 2 and Arizona's Prop. 108.

John Scalzi has two terrific posts up about California's Proposition 8:

1) What? Prop 8 Threatens Existing Marriages? You Don't Say:

This is why every single potential supporter of Proposition 8 should be looked square in the eye and asked if they are truly and seriously ready to say that that they personally are prepared to destroy already existing, already legal marriages — if they are truly and seriously ready to say that they know better than the people in a marriage whether that marriage should be allowed to exist — if they are truly and seriously ready to say to two married people, "you two don't deserve to be married, and I intend to kill your marriage now."

2) Something Worth Noting, Re: People Who Vote For Prop 8:

I think there are good, decent, kind and loving people who will vote for a proposition that is fundamentally bigoted and wrong and hurtful, and that they will do it out of the best of intentions, motivated by a belief in a particular religion, or fear of a changing world, or a perceived conflict in moral system, or because they want to plant a flag about the encroaching power of governments, some combination of any or all of the above, or for some other reason entirely.

---

Florida and Arizona have similar items.

* Florida's Amendment 2 will amend the Florida Constitution to add: "Inasmuch as a marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."

* Arizona's Proposition 102 "will amend the Arizona Constitution by adding the following article related to marriage: "Marriage – Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state.""

The Florida one may be getting less press because they aren't actively ending marriages, and the Arizona one might be because the proposition will only strengthen what's already there, so I hear.

Still.  If you are in one of those states, vote no.

2008-10-22 09:06 | Aha!

I mentioned that I wanted a factcheck.org for non-national voting things – nothing against national voting things, just there's already factcheck.org, you know – and a friend pointed me to SmartVoter.org:

Smart Voter (http://www.smartvoter.org) is produced by the League of Women Voters of California Education Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, to:

• Provide voters with comprehensive nonpartisan information about the contests on their ballot in an easy-to-use presentation.
• Provide a means for candidates to publish information about themselves and their candidacy directly to voters.

The only downside is, it's only for a handful of states, and Oregon isn't one of them.  I plugged in my address and ZIP code anyhow, figuring they'd've made provisions for out-of-bounders like myself.

And, yep, they suggested I go to Vote411.org: "Launched by the League of Women Voters Education Fund (LWVEF) in October of 2006, VOTE411.org is a "one-stop-shop" for election related information."

Fantastic!

For Oregon specifically, also, see here.

[eta] Amusingly enough, Willamette Week has a better voter's guide than any other I've seen, in the sense that it actually has all of the items in one place.

2008-09-16 15:26 |

A small handful of links.

* "I'd hit that."

* Men Explain Things To Me

* Because You Have a Belly-Button

2008-03-30 11:39 | Eh?

I haven't been here much.  Life got in my way, and I forgot.  So, in lieu of content today, go check out the 12th Carnival of Radical Feminists.

2008-03-07 09:39 | SF.

The dangers of using Google Reader to read a slew of feminist blogs is it recommends new time sinks for me.  Today's blog find: Feminist SF – The Blog!.

This blog will likely have me wincing, because I love science fiction and don't really want to see the ways in which misogyny is a part of it.  But, ignoring things has never made anything better.

A sample post is New Amsterdam, Old Tune:

There's a guy. And he has this manpain owing to some gimmick or special character trait or WHATEVER. He's got a Quest or a Past or a Special Ability. Or he's just the Senior Officer around, even though he's not too old to do some Dashing Heroics, or too Othered to be privileged by default. And he's usually a cop or an investigator of some sort. To ground him, to stabilise him? (To give him someone to Talk Exposition At?) They give him a female partner, who may or may not also be of a different ethnic background to make up for his being white.

And she's all, You're weird, dude. How do you know so much? Let me learn at your feet and ask you what's going on and get involved in your Issues. Or maybe, I don't like you, or I wouldn't ask you for advice but I need you or you've strung me along and now I'm stuck with your Issues.

2008-02-21 17:32 | Can't write funny subject, too busy reading.

I am cracking up at this new-to-me blog Stuff White People Like.  It's more like upper-middle-class liberal white people, from what I can tell, but it's funny as shit.

Via Amanda at Pandagon.

2008-01-22 14:20 |

* Jessica at Feministing posts a YouTube link: Practical joke show "rapes" mom to terrorize daughter.  As someone said at Feministing, "Oh good. I think rape hasn't been funny enough in the past. This sort of humor is just what we need."  This is truly vile, and is not helping humanity's case any.

* Jill writes: 10 Reasons to Support Reproductive Justice on Roe Day.  Her post is full of excellent points and linkage.

* PortlyDyke writes about Christianity and the US.

2008-01-21 15:10 | Related items.

Awesome linkage.

• Amanda Marcotte talks about decreasing the risks of pregnancy, and just how full of shit that is.  bean comments in a way that sums this up well: "With regard to my stance, I agree that women should have as much information as is out there so they can make informed choices during their pregnancies. What I disagree with is the tone in which the information is usually presented: panic! You women must be perfect during pregnancy or ELSE!"
• Selling Anxiety: How the News Media Scare Women, by Caryl Rivers.  "Selling Anxiety does a great service to public debate by debunking the erroneous data upon which such shoddy journalism is based, and providing accurate information to counter sexist narratives. To wit: Workplace discrimination (not "women's choices") causes pay disparities, science doesn't prove men are biologically smarter, and research shows mothers with rewarding jobs have the hottest sex! The news just got a little less gloomy."
• How to support someone with an eating disorder?

2008-01-20 11:46 | Review sites.

Today's slew of links are about reviewing companies.  I'm always happy to leave positive reviews for companies and such – lets them know they're doing well, and encourages others to use their services.

Yelp: "Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what's great (and not so great) in your world. You already know that asking friends is the best way to find restaurants, dentists, hairstylists, and anything local. Yelp makes it fast and easy by collecting and organizing your friends' recommendations in one convenient place."This started out in San Francisco, and has expanded to other US cities.  They're looking into cities in other countries, so far as I know.  I like this because you can also add pesky things like a business's operating hours.  Dude.

Angie's List: "Angie's List is a growing collection of homeowners' real-life experiences with local service companies. The people who join Angie's List are like you — looking for a way to find trustworthy companies that perform high-quality work."

RateMDs.com: "RateMDs.com allows patients to rate and read about their doctors and dentists."This is fantastic.  I want everybody to write reviews in here, because I love the idea of being able to have a good idea of whether your doctor is a douche, before you waste your time and money.

2007-12-31 00:47 | Clearing out the notepad.

A couple of links, again.

* New Gay Stereotype

* Signs and symptoms of abusive relationships.

* I know that there's more than one way to get fucked. And I only hope there will be a time when feminists fight for thirty years about the best way to end violence against farmworkers.

* "Check my what?" On privilege and what we can do about it

---

In other news, now I've a moral imperative to see how one would create a Facebook app, so I can get this randomly generating Bingo cards thing up and running.

*is v. distracted again*

2007-12-14 00:08 | I had too many tabs open.

It's links o'clock again.

* The Just World Theory: "According to the hypothesis, people have a strong desire or need to believe that the world is an orderly, predictable, and just place, where people get what they deserve."

* brownfemipower writes on domestic violence in movies: "What would happen if we decided that there were no 'winners' (those who do the culturally acceptable thing and do what we all hope *we* would do in a similar situation) or 'losers' (those who still love the person who is abusing them, or chose to stay for whatever reason, or are killed before they can escape)-just people who have the right to live and love and grow and change?"

* Shauna writes on learned helplessness and political apathy.  As I'm squarely in the camp of largely depressedly apathetic, this post hit me hard, and I plan to let this sit in the mental crockpot for a while.

* In an LJ thread, hotcoffeems makes an awesome statement: "I get irked by this notion that there is a tiny amount of compassion available to us as humans, and therefore it must only be meted out in tiny dribbles to those some tiny-minded individual arbitrarily decides is "deserving enough." I don't care if someone "made their bed", they shouldn't be abandoned to it when things go horribly south."

* In a post about mix-and-match minorities, Katie comments on something interesting – being part of the LGBTI community and being deaf.  And now I want to go be That Person who transcribes YouTube posts.  Goodness.

2007-10-15 09:37 | All about the environment.

Today is Blog Action Day:

On October 15th – Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone's mind.

In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment.

I like it.  I've registered my blog for it, even.  My contribution is a series of links that are mostly about saving energy and saving money, because I like efficiency.

* GreenDimes – "Reduce your junk mail by up to 90% and we'll plant 10 trees on your behalf!"

* An eHow page on how to get good gas mileage with your car.  This is good for saving the amount you spend on gas and cutting down on how much gas you use.

* A wikiHow page on how to save the environment at home.  A list of 27 different ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle, all in the comfort of your own home.  A lot of these tips are also good for reducing your energy bills.

* 100 ways to save the environment.  I'm sure that there's some overlap between the prior link and this one, but you know, thoroughness is good.

* A Time special: 51 Things We Can Do to Save the Environment.  These 51 pages have a good range of green things we can do, from simple (change your light bulbs) to advanced (build a skyscraper).

* If you're in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, or Washington state, switch to using green energy.  My partner and I switched to this about a year ago.  The cost increase is slight, and is totally worth it.

For more links and resources and happy things like that, check out Blog Action Day's list.

–

And a final note: I don't know about yall, but it's really easy for me to get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff to do – to feel like there's too much.  What's helped me is remembering that doing one thing better is better than nothing.  As an example, I switched out three incandescents yesterday with CFLs.  In the grand scheme of things that's pretty tiny, but it's better than the day before.

Every little bit counts.  Pass it on.

2007-09-14 11:00 | This *is* what I do in my spare time.

In arguing with someone about abortion statistics, I found a million useful links.  I am reposting them here for future use.

* Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States (05/2006)

* "Expenditures on Children by Families provides estimates of the cost of raising children from birth through age 17 for major budgetary components."

* Volume 3 – Federal Pell Grant Program of the 2003-2004 FSA Handbook

This one is for the argument that there is a grant available for students who need assistance, such as, oh, pregnant college students.  Combine the grant with the costs of raising a child…

* 2006-07 College Costs

So what you do is, you take the average yearly college costs, add in the average Pell Grant amount, and subtract the costs of having a kid.  Factor in things like the Pell Grant amount is based on a full academic year; the amount goes down based on the level of attendance.  And then add the part where you're pregnant, dealing with college, filling out scads of paperwork, and assuming that everything comes out aces.

* Get "In the Know": 20 Questions About Pregnancy, Contraception and Abortion

* The Effects of Early Childbearing On Schooling over Time (Nov/Dec 2001)

* Poorest U.S. Women Increasingly Likely To Face Unintended Pregnancies (5/4/2006)

* Abortion in the US Fact Sheet (.pdf)

* Domestic violence against women in pregnancy

2007-08-27 09:58 | I swear to you, I have a post with real words in it coming up soon.

Moar bingos while this sql query runs.

- Burning Man bingo.
- Geek girl stereotype bingo.
- Credit card industry reform bingo.
- Dysfunctional family bingo, via.
- Bad meeting bingo; good meeting bingo.  Via.
- Poly bingo!

Aaand a pile of bingo cards.

2007-04-24 08:22 | Privilege, MRAs, the sandwich generation, and emotions v. logic.

* Where's My Extra Piece of the Pie? Wherein which Anna at Feminists Don't Bake Bread defines privilege in a clear, easy-to-understand method.  Specifically, she discusses the difference between privilege and rewards, since people tend to confuse the two.  She does not, however, have pie.

* Twisty at I Blame The Patriarchy has a new FAQ about MRAs.  (I still want to know why bitter men can generalise about all Feminists, but god help me if I talk about statistical things regarding men.  I doubt I'll ever get a good answer to that.)

* Hugo discusses the pressure between advertising's take on feminism and the patriarchy.

* Lauredhel posts about attacks, emotions, and logic.  I say now that, naturally, logic isn't the sole province of men, just as emotion isn't for women.  By which I mean to say, duh.

2007-04-23 13:24 | "Let's not teach them, then hold them accountable for their mistakes! That's S-M-R-T!"

I haven't posted much of anything on the recent partial-birth abortion ban because it's hard to get my thoughts straight, and it's hard to get my thoughts straight because I'm torn between wanting to understand the other side and wanting to throttle them all.  So again, I collect links that appear to be useful.

* Kenyan hospitals overwhelmed by women injured by illegal abortion. Thank a "pro-lifer."

* "Pro-Life" Mississippi Has Highest Infant Mortality Rate in the Nation

* [LJ] "I wish more pro-life people saw the irony in the fact that I am working to preserve their freedom and their daughters' freedom, even as they try to take mine from me. I wish they could understand how much good birth control and legal abortion have done in the short time we have had both available to us. I wish they could see how much harm withholding them again would do."

* The fact that abortion is even a debate in this country demonstrates that we do not trust women.

I get so enraged by the anti- arguments.  Where by "arguments", I usually mean "casually tossed-off phrases".  This enragement is primarily why I don't get into arguments about this kind of thing.  I don't always feel like pushing potential listeners away by getting too out of control.  (Not like "I am angry at all", though I do have problems with that, but rather "I am rending garments and turning green".)

* "I just don't like the idea of slutty-slut-sluts using abortion as birth control."

Several responses to this:

1) As someone else astutely pointed out, technically, abortion is birth control.
2) If the idea-misliking is a personal opinion, then no worries.  I dislike all sorts of things.  Once you start trying to pass it into law, that's when I get pissed.
3) Do I want to get into the entire issue of women are sluts and men are virile, or do I want to throw my hands in the air and stomp away?  Hmm, decisions.
4) You know what would help more than banning abortion?  Proper sex education.  That makes this all worse – that many pro-lifers are pushing abstinence education, then go and push anti-abortion laws.  What even the hell?
5) And, you've seen the rampant hypocrisy of anti-abortion crusaders getting abortions, right?  Right?

* "Well, if everyone just used [the most perfect birth control], then where would be the problem?"

The problem is in focusing not on reality, but on what it should be.  In an ideal universe, all people would precisely know how to use all forms of birth control (in the event that one form doesn't work for a person).  Condoms would never break.  The Pill would never decrease in efficacy due to other medication (like antibiotics).  Men would have their own Pill to take.  We would all have perfect memories, all the time in the world to do research, free internet access at all times, and perfect knowledge of how to find all this information.  Rape would never ever occur.  And all of this birth control would TOTALLY grow on trees.

Pause whilst I contemplate a condom tree.

Tossing off "Just look it up on the internet, it's easy to find! Tcha!" comes off as blaming the hell out of the victim, not to mention not paying even a bit of attention.  Dear yall: where the hell do you think this knowledge comes from, the sky?  You're not allowing for things like people getting discouraged by how hard it is to find doctors to dispense birth control that doesn't infinitely suck, or not having the time or energy to do a bunch of research on this stuff, or not being able to take a lot of forms of birth control, or not speaking English well, or not using the internet well, or being Catholic, or living in a country that even allows birth control at all (see the first link), or being able to afford leaving the city/county/state to find an affordable Planned Parenthood (what, you think they are all exactly the same?), or running afoul of physicians/pharmacists/&c who won't do their goddamn job, or or or…

Basically, it comes down to everybody should have perfect knowledge, both abstract and concrete, and if they don't, then it's THEIR FAULT for having sex.  They should have accepted the consequences, or they should have been 100% perfect!  Reality, culture, education – no excuses!

* "But that means you're not holding them to any standards!"

We're not even on the same planet at this point.  EDUCATION HELPS, you know.  Teaching people about sex – about good relationships, about birth control, about their own bodies – is a good thing.  It helps people make more informed decisions.  What I see the majority of pro-lifers doing is the equivalent of never teaching kids about finances, throwing them at the NYSE, then castigating them for ever making a financial transaction.  (The analogy fails because so far as I know, making financial transactions is not nearly as strong a biological urge as having sex is.)

How does this even make sense to anybody?

In conclusion, hey lookee, a bunch more links, just for yall.

2007-04-13 22:30 | Unloading some linkage onto you.

I wanted to worry that I'm using this journal just as a repository for links… but then I stopped.  Because they're good goddamn links.

First, the fat-related links.

* [LJ] A friend sent me this link, about what being fat means to this one woman.

I take pleasure. I don't exist for the pleasure of others, I don't deny myself pleasure to please anybody. I give pleasure, when it pleases me to do so, but I am not taken. When a lover said, "Wow, I can't believe you let me do that to you, and I didn't even have to buy you jewelry," I snapped, "I didn't let you do that to me. I made you do that to me." When I'm hungry, I eat; if it's in public, it's not a performance of ordering half-helpings and the sauce on the side to show off that feminine denial of desire. I eat what I want. I eat like a man. And it's fucking ridiculous that eating is gendered in this culture, but it's a fucking ridiculous culture, okay?

I am a mover. I am not moved.

I am an agent. I am not an object.

* She who sent me the previous link runs The Rotund, a "Body Acceptance and Politics Blog".  I absolutely highly recommend this blog.

* Junk Food Science – a terrific blog about "the truth about food, fat and health".

Next, a feminism-related link.

* At Pandagon, Chris Clarke writes How not to be an asshole: a guide for men.  I can't single out a line or three that I love; I love it all.