Items of interest come across recently in my feed-reader. Lots of reaction to the Arizona shootings. What did I miss? Leave your own interesting links in comments.

• Shed a Tear for Good Reporting

– “How did we move from a study analyzing the impact of tears on arousal levels to the idea that women manufacture tears as a weapon in the battle of the sexes? That women cry on demand, for nefarious reasons of their own?”

• Why the Right has to run from its rhetoric

– “As I noted earlier, one has to ask why all the site scrubbing if the right wing thinks the shooter isn’t one of “their own?” “

• A Joke, A Guy, A Gun, Six Bodies: Why We’re Careful.

– “And here, kids, is why we are CAREFUL ABOUT VILIFYING PEOPLE AND RECOMMENDING OR INCITING VIOLENCE — EVEN IF JOKINGLY OR METAPHORICALLY — IN PUBLIC.”

• On mental illness and crime

– “this article in Slate is a good look at the connection between mental illness and crime — that is, that people with mental illnesses are much more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators, and our culture so thoroughly ties mental illness to criminality that we have created an environment of intellectual laziness when it comes to looking at the actual causes of crime.”

• On Giffords, “Crazy” “Loners” and the Public Discourse

– “Third: Amid news stories that are only just starting to figure out what happened (after, among other things, insisting that Rep. Giffords had died) are two major strands of discourse that need serious consideration. One, writing off those who commit violent crimes as “crazy” does everyone a serious disservice, and two, this, kids, is why we don’t joke about killing people.”

• Thoughts on the inevitable right wing deflection campaign

– “That there is a well-honed, well-practiced script that the right whips out in response to these events should give us pause. Contrary to what Jack Shafer says, the reason their response is so automatic, so well-honed is they’ve had lots and lots of practice. “

• Disgruntled Adolescent Complaint Department

– “I thought maybe I was over-reacting. Maybe that I should have just kept my mouth shut. But, I can’t stop thinking about it. So here it goes:

I do not want to be a part of a feminist movement that conflates youth with a lack of intelligence.”

• The (Nonexistent) Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Consequences of Enthusiastic Consent

– “All this sturm und drang about the women, won’t someone think of the women is so transparent as to be laughable. Those of you espousing this argument tend to fall into three camps:

* You like the rapey status quo in which men have free access to women’s bodies and the cops and the courts almost never do a thing about it, and you want to keep it that way;
* You’ve been sexually violated in some way but it’s too painful to deal with it, so you’re invested in minimizing it.
* You like having access to power, and the dudes in power (even on the left, esp. when it involves a lefty hero) don’t often take rape seriously, so you’re not going to either.

(Two things should be obvious here: 1) I’ve got more sympathy for the middle motive than the other two and 2) these three motives aren’t mutually exclusive.)

There is a fourth camp, though: folks for whom this discussion is new and/or confusing. And it’s for y’all fourth-campers that I’m writing this post, to expose the mythmaking that’s been perpetrated by the folks in the first three.”

• Combat And The Politics Of Masculinity

– how will the sexuality policing conservatives keep control of the narratives once special forces personnel come out as gay and their colleagues realise that it’s not so terrible after all?

• Today in Feminist Rape Apologia

– Naomi Wolf is keeping on digging that hole.

• Kathy Bates Stars in New NBC Show – Harry’s Law

– swoonsquee!

• Rape is not your analogy even when you don’t know what “analogy” means

– This one brought out the STNG double facepalm macro. Yep, that bad.

• The Decline Effect

– “This means that even the correction of incorrect results may not be enough, because the very idea of simple genetic explanations for complicated phenomena is so immensely appealing.”

Categories: linkfest

Tags: Read-ems