The cocktail waitresses of Star Trek (2009) So I was watching the 2009 film Star Trek, which annoyingly has no subtitle. No Nemesis, no Insurrection, no Into Darkness, no Into the Woods, nothing. So it will forever be known, to me at least, as “the 2009 Star Trek,” which is unfortunate […]
Read MoreA-baby-ist.
Niall Ferguson So, just as I’m finishing reading comedian Jen Kirkman’s book I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids, historian Niall Ferguson goes and claims that people who don’t have children don’t care about society or the future. Or at least, he claims […]
Read MoreWhy do we laugh at sexist jokes?
Post about stereotyping, clichethinking gets stereotyped,cliched image Let’s say you view love as a battlefield. Okay, more like a football field. Dating, sex, relationships, marriage– they’re all a series of skirmishes against the other team, aka the opposite sex. You compete with others on your own team as well, fellow […]
Read MoreAmerica: lousiest host ever
Okay, here’s the deal. How it should be. If you’re in the United States for reasons beyond your control– that is, you didn’t decide to come here on your own, pay for it on your own, and physically get yourself here on your own– you’re entitled to the rights and […]
Read MoreA bit of mulling over
Following up on Sunday’s post, I can’t help but keep returning mentally to Dr. Darrel Ray’s talk at Skeptics of Oz last month, which you can see and hear (both are important in this case) here. In a nutshell, the thesis of Ray’s talk (and, I assume, of his book Sex […]
Read MoreThe miseducation of Katelyn Campbell
Katelyn Campbell Recently in West Virginia, a teenager objected to a particularly obviously problematic form of abstinence-only education. Wait, let me rephrase that– “Lying, slut-shaming diatribe” would be a better name for it. And the teenager in question, Katelyn Campbell, knew that’s what it was. She even used the word “slut-shaming,” […]
Read MoreRepost: cultural relativism
Cultural relativism: a moral standard that which maintains that cultural norms are good simply because they are cultural norms, and a person cannot judge the norms of one culture by the standards of another. A standard that is, in my view, complete bullshit. And if you thought a little more […]
Read MoreWill the real Islamophobes please stand up?
Richard Dawkins in a still from The Root of All Evil? No, you don’t have to have read the Qur’an to have opinions about Islam.Legitimate opinions.Even scientific opinions.There, I said it. Look, I understand that there’s this common assumption that a religion can be summed up in its text. That all believers […]
Read MoreThe most concise explanation of how marriage equality threatens the institution of marriage
…comes from James Sweet, in a comment on Dispatches: For some people, marriage is still an institution that is defined by proscribed roles. The man has certain rights and responsibilities (mostly the former), and the woman has certain rights and responsibilities (mostly the latter), and these are handed down by […]
Read More10 ways the opposition to gay marriage insults all of us
What I didn’t mention in the previous post about the purpose of marriage, because I intended to discuss it in this post, is that marriage currently serves– for many people, at least– the purpose of cementing gender roles. The single biggest fear of gay marriage opponents honestly seems to be […]
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