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.

• Acknowledgement of country ‘culture wars’

– “They’re at it again: …”

• I’m not here to make you feel comfortable

– “To own my own privilege: I realised halfway through posting all these images how few of these women step outside the boundaries of thin, white, cis, TAB and het. (Also, the shamefully heavy emphasis on the sci fi.) I wondered whether to post or not, but then there’s always room for a conversation on the intersections of race, ability and gender portrayal. This is how silencing works. This is how thousands upon millions of people are ignored and sidelined. I know this. As I said, I don’t have anything heartening, incisive or witty to say. “

• Pain is political

– “From The Birth Wars by Mary-Rose MacColl. If you’re interested in birth politics then you really must read this one.”

• Limbaugh tells son of uninsured woman: "Your mom would have still died, because Obamacare doesn't kick in until 2014" | Media Matters for America

– So, because Obamacare would actually save his mom if it was in place now but it won’t be in place until 2014, that’s why Americans should wait even longer instead of getting the reforms started now?

• Inevitability of Rape?

– “ThoughtfulAtheist doesn’t mention talking to any boys or men who exploited her increased alcohol consumption and doesn’t talk about warning other boys and men about the dangers of using what was “known” about this girl to justify their behavior toward her.

This doesn’t sound very thoughtful to me. It certainly doesn’t sound like the response of a friend. He said he knew it was inevitable that she would be raped which means he knew that someone around this girl would rape her yet all he did was focus on her behavior.

Those who? repeated this narrative about her availability, or who let it stand unchallenged, basically helped point rapists in her direction.”

• Five-Song Feminist Playlist

– What’s your five?

• Feederism: A sex kink tabloids won't touch

– “It isn’t just the tremendous health risks of feeder porn that most find unsettling. Several months ago, an excellent Bitch magazine article explained:

Feeders get off on the idea that their feedee might one day become too ‘satisfied’ — and too obese — to move, thus making them completely dependent on their feeder. It’s an extreme manifestation of the idea that masculinity in men involves eroticized dominance over women.

It’s that element of misogyny that makes extreme fat fetishism unpopular in the fat acceptance community.”

• Female athletes can't win for winning

– “So let me get this straight. You’re saying that when men’s college basketball was starting up, at first there were some killer teams and breakout stars — which built excitement and attracted more people to the sport — before things balanced out? Kind of like…? Yeah. “Essentially, there is zero difference in the trajectory of men’s and women’s college basketball,” writes Longman. So why are women “held to a different standard, derided as somehow lesser or undeserving”? Take a wild guess.”

• Portraying Lesbian Parents

– “The FFPC says the use of the wrong image was a mistake. Though it seems they’ve made similar errors before when alerting members about gays and lesbians trying to adopt children.”

• Avoiding soft targets and other thoughts on Atheistcon from afar

– “An astounding comment that I saw on Twitter and in the MSM a number of times was along the lines of “why do atheists need a conference?” I suspect that some were making the mistake of assuming that atheism is a form of solipsism.”

• The co-sleeping writing contest

– Love co-sleeping? Have a go.

• It's only words

– “What floors me is that even people whose stock-in-trade is language seem to feel quite happy about trashing language as essentially worthless. It’s nothing more than intellectual laziness: an acceptance of the notion that words and deeds are somehow the opposite of each other, each with a clear moral value and no prizes for guessing which is which. The lure of the false dichotomy is strong, I know — it makes opining so much easier — but you’d think a Rhodes Scholar would have been taught at some point in his education how to avoid its simplistic snares.”

Categories: culture wars, linkfest

Tags: atheism, music, rape apology, Read-ems