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Monthly Archives: August 2011

“Elitism:” Now, It Basically Just Means “Not Having Sex With Everybody”

Ladies: Don’t use real names when you write about your bad dates online. I know! I know! The temptation to write about bad dates: It is IRRESISTIBLE! And that is fine. I myself have fallen prey to the temptation of writing about bad dates. It’s fun, it’s easy, it gets the bad taste out of […]

The Madman In the Woods: Mental Illness As Boogeyman

I locked my house last night, for the first time since I moved in. I had to hunt for the key to the back door, because I tossed it in the back of my desk when my landlord handed it to me; ‘I’ll never need this,’ I said. ‘Who locks their doors?’ I checked the […]

CHRONICLES OF MANSPLAINING: Professor Feminism and the Deleted Comments of Doom

It all started because I deleted some link spam. Let me explain. On this site, we sometimes get comments that are designed for no other purpose but to promote a certain blog, website, or blog post. “Spam,” these comments are called. Sometimes, these comments are nobly motivated, yet clearly robotic; a blog post about, say, […]

Like the Sunday style section, only not at all

Here’s some reading suggestions to make your day 20% cooler.

Enter Ye Myne Mystic World of Gayng-Raype: What the “R” Stands for in “George R.R. Martin”

George R.R. Martin is creepy. There! I said it! In days of yore, before the Striding Elves sailed West to Sygmagfhdflkglll, and giants did waylay travelers throwing stones carved from the mighty Tghfarghfr Mountains, and yon Good Queen Sady had not yet been assailed in that great war known as the Rage of Nerds, led […]

KBR to Jamie Leigh Jones: Your Rape Lawsuit Was Frivolous, Give Us Money

The sordid saga of Jamie Leigh Jones, a Halliburton employee who famously highlighted the hostile working environment for women working with US military contractors overseas when she filed a high-profile suit demanding damages from her employer, KBR, after a gang rape, continues. This week, yet another chapter broke in her case, when KBR filed a claim […]

Vulnerable Populations: Agency, Identity, and Incarcerated Women

In nonprofits that provide social services, we like to classify and index groups of people as if we are scientists. There’s at-risk, high need, barrier to whatever, specific needs, people with disabilities, under-represented, and on and on. We might as well just group everyone as people who might need some stuff for some good reasons. But it would […]

Right-wing memes ahoy – “pregnancy is not a disease”

At Religion Dispatches , Sarah Morice-Brubacker traced the emergence of a new right-wing anti-contraception meme, “pregnancy is not a disease” which has recently been deployed in response to the recent announcement that insurance plans in the US will be required to cover contraception without co-pay.  Morice-Brubacker quotes rightwinger Bob Laird,”a fellow at Human Life International […]

The Help is a model of the most unhelpful cinematography

I didn’t want to see it. I knew it would most likely infuriate me and it would make me sad (and I try to avoid sad because sad is an emotion permanently lurking and waiting to make a jump and get hold of me; and then it sends me into this spiral of more sadness […]

The TSA Expands Its Security Theatre Repertory With the Chat-Down

The Transportation Security Administration just keeps getting more creative when it comes to tormenting air travelers in the US. Problems with the approach to security by agencies like the TSA, which tend to focus on a reactive rather than proactive handling of security matters, have been extensively documented by experts like Bruce Schneier, who regularly […]