Items of interest found recently in my RSS feed. Please share what you've been reading (and writing!) in the comments.
- An Open Letter to Frightened Parents
- Skepchick Quickies, 5.25
- The Minimal Group Paradigm
– Bookmark this to recommend to any parents you know who are nervous about vaccination
– Skeptical links
– In-grouping, out-grouping and weirdness
see more Political Pictures
- Call me a humorless feminist, but
- Oral Sex and Reciprocity
- Read These Now Before The Olden Days Destroy Tiki Life
- The Master's Tools, Pt. 2 of 2
- Drop It Like It’s Hot
- The Rainbow Fish – an alternative reading
- Why would they believe what we work so hard to sell them?
– Me too, Tracey
– damn right
– Links from Petulant at Shakesville
– The second part of TerranceDC’s exploration of the collision between marriage equality and the homophobia of some African-Americans.
– Renee’s weekly linkfest
– Does this book really celebrate sharing? Or something else?
– headdesk
Categories: linkfest
The 109th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up! 
The 105th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up! 
Hoyden About Town 
I really can’t agree with you about Renee’s piece. It’s actually been driving me nuts since I first read it, but I’ve only now had access to my regular computer to comment over there. I feel like it could be a good piece, but instead feels like fluff from a “health” magazine. What motivated you to link to it?
I linked to it because it is a frank discussion of women, orgasm and sexual desire. It’s an opinion piece, and not everybody has to agree with every line of it, but frank discussions of female sexuality are always good, IMO.
Wow. That Family Guy clip made me gasp out loud!
I don’t see anything wrong with a feminist writing something about sex and about some men’s attitude to going down on a woman. Is it perhaps perceived *as* a fluff piece *because* she is writing from a woman’s point of view about frustration with some men and their attitudes to oral sex?
Is it perhaps perceived *as* a fluff piece *because* she is writing from a woman’s point of view about frustration with some men and their attitudes to oral sex?
Not from my perspective. It feels like fluff because it’s reductionist: “No man is ever to shy to say suck my dick and often fellatio is perceived as a necessary prerequisite to copulation,” and positions cunnilingus as the one true solution.
I’m normally a fan of Renee’s writing, but the whole piece irritated me. I have no objection to her frankness or choice of subject matter. It’s just incredibly annoying that it only seems to take the conversation from “all women really want is cock” to “all women really want is oral sex.” Maybe that’s an improvement, but it doesn’t really address the line that I feel really has merit in the post: don’t be a selfish lover.
I don’t have any particular problem with Renee’s writing here, but I do think that the broader problem is something she touches on only briefly– that is, the dominant paradigm that het sex begins with a man getting an erection and it ends with his ejaculation. If a woman happens to experience pleasure, or better yet, have an orgasm within this framework it’s considered to be a good thing, but it’s not a defining feature of the sex itself. And that sucks.
H/T to Helen (Cast Iron Balcony)
Sometimes we all need one of these
(Note this is a link provided for the general amusement of readers, not a comment on any of the above comments)
Thanks for all the link love, tigtog! And it’s nice to hear some agreement about the misogyny in that clip. The commenters at Sociological Images are not as convinced about Family Guy’s suck-osity.