It's a really, really big "if."
“Give yourself to the Dark Side…yes,your thoughts betray you.” From Opposing Views: On his daily radio broadcast, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins attacked the video game ‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’ for allowing same-sex relationships: “In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists!” Stephen Reid of Bioware, … Read more
A trigger warning is a notice posted at the top of an article that indicates that the subject matter may be disturbing, especially because it may describe abuse, molestation, and/or rape and people who have been victims of such may not want to read or to read with caution, in a place where they won’t … Read more
Zerlina Maxwell, writing for Ebony magazine, thinks so. In the bluntly titled “Stop Telling Women How Not To Get Raped,” she says: New rule for 2012: No more ad campaigns and public service announcements targeted at women to teach them how to avoid rape. It’s not effective, it’s offensive, and it’s also a lie. Telling women … Read more
Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon writes about what she calls “Slut-shaming 2.0,” web sites that exist for the sole purpose of identifying and shaming (mostly) women for their sexual behavior: The content is submitted by scorned exes, former friends and total strangers. A typical post calls out a woman, using her full name and at least … Read more
…as explained quite eloquently by a thirteen-year-old girl. My friend Nick shared this with me, and I’m sharing it with you:
I’m in love with this post by Amanda Marcotte: Smart Girls Wear Short Skirts, Too, or “Why Lisa Belkin is wrong to condemn college girls for dressing sexy.” In it, Marcotte agrees wholeheartedly with some of the concerns Belkin voices in a New York Times article titled “After Class, Skimpy Equality.” Specifically, about the social environment in … Read more
A few months ago I wrote about Freakonomics author Steven Levitt’s “daughter test” for legality. Levitt didn’t invent the test; he just articulated it: “If I wouldn’t want my daughter to do it, I wouldn’t mind the government passing a law against it.” The inanity and offensiveness of this standard should be plain on its face, but … Read more
Ah, the power of Twitter. It can help organize protests, keep people in contact in the midst of tragedy, spread news like wildfire, and allow governors to become aware of the fact that teenagers are saying mean things about them. And then take action! Emma Sullivan is an eighteen year old student at Shawnee Mission East … Read more
. This is University of Nebraska Assistant Coach Ron Brown praying on behalf of his football team and that of Penn State prior to their game on November 12th, in the wake of the latter university’s … Read more
“We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that’s all.” — Andrew, The Breakfast Club The Pervocracy has a great post on the end of “normal” relationships in general, but I particularly liked the part about gender norms: you don’t have to be non-heterosexual to question what gender means to … Read more