Items of interest come across recently in my feed-reader. What did I miss? Leave your own interesting links in comments.

• Quotable: On The Wire and Huckleberry Finn

– “In my dreams, the schools would teach the best that has been known and said in the world.

They cannot do that by bowdlerizing classic literature, by pretending that bad things never happened and that we live in a cotton-candy world. Bad things have happened.”

• The Stereotype Threat. Or Priming Gender

– “this post discusses the consequences of gender stereotypes, both correct ones (in the sense of averages) and incorrect ones, on the actual performance of girls and women in various tests, in schools and colleges and at work. Studies of sex differences have an impact on sex stereotypes, as we all know. Those sex stereotypes, in turn, can affect the ability of a person to perform as well as she or he can. The way this happens is through something called stereotype threats.”

• Pregnancy Policing

– “When something is found in essentially ALL the pregnant women it’s pretty hard to make any other conclusion than that the same chemicals would be found in all of us, right? Which implies that we should do something about our environment and about the food we eat and so on, right?

Nope.”

• “This Is a Maid”: Which Rape Accusers Are Worth Listening To?

– “I also can’t help but notice his syntax. It’s true that when speaking, especially when upset, few of us speak with perfect grammar. I don’t even write with perfect grammar. But in light of the rank misogyny, classism, and racism of his words, I find that it stands out. She is not a maid; this is. The dehumanizing sentiment is furthered by “That’s not even worth commenting on.” Presumably, Dykstra is using “that” to refer to the allegations, but coming right on the heels of “This is a maid,” it is jarring phrasing. If the spite of a dismissal framed as “This is a maid” did not transform the accuser into a thing quite starkly enough, “That’s not even worth commenting on” certainly does.”

• And Never the Twain Shall Meet

– “Abortion opponents hardly need to resort to violent rhetoric when the alleged defenders of choice can’t actually be arsed to defend it.”

• And Never the Twain Shall Meet, Part II

– “By 2000, less than a third of the incorporated counties in the US had abortion clinics.

That’s not just inconvenience—between travel expenses and time off work along, the cost of securing an abortion can become an undue burden.

And instead of the national conversation about abortion access getting louder in the wake of this assault on women’s rights, it has gone virtually silent.

Because violent rhetoric is a successful silencing technique.”

• Leslie Feinberg: While a hostile relative re-writes my life: ‘Who is, and is not, my family’

– Leslie Feinberg’s sister does NOT speak for her.

• Libels (Blood and Otherwise): A Quick Primer

– My only worry is that in all this hubbub, the indexical value of “blood libel” is being overlooked. The reason why we need a special phrase like “blood libel” to denote lies told about what Jews do with the blood of baby Christians is the sheer number of libels which Jews have had to contend over the years.

• Keeping the Internet weird (and pseudonymous)

– “One of the things I dislike about Facebook and similar sites is the expectation that everyone has one true self, and that they always relate to other people in that persona. To me, that feels both false and unpleasant.”

Categories: linkfest

Tags: abortion, classism, othering, propaganda, Read-ems, slurs, social media, stereotypes, trans*