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.

• Just in Case You Don’t Quite Understand the Gender Binary Yet

– "screenshots of two sets of books she saw for sale online at Barnes & Noble. They provide us with some very important information about how men and women differ, as well as the types of things/activities/emotions that have been masculinized or feminized"

• Mostly Manly SF by Mostly Manly Men

– “The usual meme is: bold those you read, bold/italicize those you own, italicize those you own and haven’t read yet.

Here’s my version of it:”

• Putting the “Ground Zero Mosque” in Perspective

– A particularly effective pictures-paint-a-thousand-words post

• Oppression olympics: the privilege paradox?

– “All this (and more) means it specifically matters to feminism that we address all intersecting oppressions on a feminist website. As Pippa’s recent post and the subsequent discussion indicate, many of us experience different forms of oppression. (Some of you will already be familiar with Fatshionista’s excellent piece on why intersectionality matters but if you aren’t, it’s definitely well worth a read.) However, it still remains that the first comment on Pippa’s thread asks what the post is doing on a feminist website.”

• "I would have been the last to know had my partner been killed"

– “The military is known for how it pulls together and helps people; we talk of the “military family,” which is a way of saying we always look after each other, especially in times of need. But, none of that support would have been available for me, because under DADT, I didn’t exist.

In fact, I would have been one of the last people to know had Joan been killed, because nowhere in her paperwork or emergency contact information had Joan dared to list my name.

Whenever I hear Joan recount the events of that day, I relive it and realize all over again how devastated I would have been had she been killed. I also think of the partners of service members injured or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are unable to get any support from the military and they must be careful about the amount of support they offer to their closeted service member loved ones. “

• Today in Rape Culture

– “[Trigger warning for sexual violence on a mass scale.]

One of the most heinous expressions of a rape culture is the use of rape as a weapon of war—and, as has been previously discussed here, the prevalence and intensity of ongoing, endemic sexual violence against women in Congo has been described as the worst in the world.” – Links for donations to groups working to end sexual violence in Congo and provide aftercare for survivors.

• Dr. Laura and the Rhetorical Strategies of Color-Blind Racism (Trigger Warning)

– “So there you have it: a round-up of ways to frame non-Whites as overly sensitive and unilaterally responsible for improving race relations.”

• Libertarianism is fundamentally anti-human

– “Rights exist because of people. Government exists because of people. Markets exist because of people, and if those markets stop working for people, they should be modified until they do. Libertarians take an opposite view, which is that their institutions—free markets for seculars, free markets plus the patriarchy plus the church for Christian libertarians—have the right of way when they come into conflict with the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of The People. Pollution is no reason, in their view, to introduce environmental regulation. Economic crashes shouldn’t result in economic regulation. We’re all supposed to just see that as the way the cookie crumbles.”

Categories: linkfest

Tags: Read-ems