Items of interest found recently in my RSS feed. What did I miss? Please share what you've been reading (and writing!) in the comments.
- Sex makes babies?! zomg.
- Reaction Part 2
- Black Female Athlete Dominates Competition-Gets Gender Identity Questioned
- Where are all the men bloggers?
- Quick hit: Anna Martelli Ravenscroft on neurodiversity 101 and feminism 101
- When sexism really hits home
- 19% premiums – a postscript
- Greer shows her transphobic colours
- Boy or girl?
- Talking it without walking it
- What those guns signify
- Yep, You’re A Racist
– “In sunny old Melbourne town a wealthy man procured the services of a prostitute. The prostitute became pregnant and had a baby. The wealthy man and the prostitute had an informal arrangement where he paid her $100 a week child support.
Then he became less wealthy, and decided he didn’t want to keep paying.
Complications ensued. Court happened.”
– “We can’t teach women to fight off rapists unless we teach them to fight off you every time you interrupt them, and unless we teach you to graciously accept that as an appropriate reaction.”
– “One of the depressingly tired memes of elite level athletic competition is that almost every time a Black woman rises to become the best at her sport, she is either dissed, suspected of cheating or has her gender identity questioned.”
– “Is it just that they aren’t interested? Do they not have time what with all the sports and drinking and porn? Maybe they don’t feel up to handling tough subjects, or perhaps the conversational style is offputting to them?”
– “Because the neurotypical has no idea how many assumptions they are making about everyone – and when they refuse to explain in response to an honest query – they’re doing no one any good.”
– social expectations run amok
– “Because, despite the fact that I’ve been doing this blogging thing for a long time, I forget – seriously, I do! – that there are readers out there so crippled by their own moral bankruptcy that they are not able to extrapolate to such a conclusion.”
– “Germaine Greer has written a lot of intelligent, genuinely radical and helpful work, but that does not give her a pass to perpetuate hateful stereotypes of trans women, reinforce cissexist values and deny trans people’s identities and experiences, and I think it’s important that we counteract this rubbish whenever she’s given a platform – as a feminist – to spout it.”
– “I’ve had a great deal of trouble with this instant reaction. Is that really the most important thing you could think of to ask?”
– “I would really like to hear from men on this. Can you see what I’m saying? Can you think of good ways to make the point without demonising guys who are, after all, just doing what everyone else does and have probably never even considered that there might be unintended consequences? Surely you blokes can help a little? Would any of you ever consider responding to other guys saying this stuff? Would women around you doing it help, or make it harder?”
– Renee reprints (with permission) an item from Worker’s World about the health care protesters in the USA who are turning up with guns
– “Ignorance is no excuse when we live in a world with 24 hour access to information and have libraries filled with books.”
Categories: linkfest
The 109th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up! 
The 105th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up! 
Renee has a powerful piece called “Thomas Jefferson: The Face of a Rapist” posted at both Womanist Musings and Feministe (warning; the Feministe thread is stuffed with a staggering amount of rape-apologism, mainly by scared white people).
The last piece really bothers me for some reason. I think it’s the classist assumption that everyone, everywhere, has access to this 24 hour information stream and libraries full of the right kind of books. Or, for that matter, the time to sit and read and the education to contextualize and process that reading. I’m not saying that these problems release a person from an obligation to educate herself or to examine her own privilege; I’m not saying any of this in defense of racist speech and actions. But “go get on the internet/get to the library” as if everyone has the spare cash and leisure time just rubs me the wrong way, somehow.
I do see your point, although the quote that I chose to highlight probably doesn’t do justice to Renee’s post in full.
I was thinking specifically of internet apologists who very obviously have plenty of access to the necessary information and time to absorb it, but they’re very far from everybody out there who says racist stuff, they’re just the ones who use the most annoying excuses.
This is pretty awful: police brutality against a disabled woman and her service dog.
http://justicefordunkin.blogspot.com/2009/07/tragedy.html
Great set of links as usual, I really love these posts because they give me lots of awesome new things to read, and I almost always discover new blogs to add to my feed reader along the way!
I’ve been writing a little recently, but the post I really want to promote is the Third Carnival of Feminist Parenting. 🙂