Items of interest come across recently in my feed-reader. What did I miss? Leave your own interesting links in comments.
n.b. Comments threads have not necessarily been read. Some may be NSFW or triggering, so please report back any problems you encounter so the post can be marked.
- On the QT: The signs are not good
- A Wednesday Moment Of Zen: Look Who’s Captain America
- Quote of the moment: Goodbye unions, goodbye democracy
- Though I hadn't seen him in over twenty years, I knew I'd miss him forever
- A Thoughtful Response to “Asians in the Library” Rant
- Journalism for dummies – the passive voice
- links for 2011-03-18
– “Now look I don’t care too much about the signs – sure you don’t want to be on the side with the people holding the signs with “bitch” on it, or wearing t-shirts with Hitler – but it’s a free country, so long as the worst they can do is badly written signs with poor grammar, then fine. However, that doesn’t mean you need to associate yourself with them – especially if you are the Leader of the Opposition and it means you will be seen there talking in front of those signs.”
– Beautiful
– “If you look at the last 150 years of history across all nations with a working class of some sort, the maintenance of democracy and the maintenance of a union movement are joined at the hip.”
– A lyrical, touching journal from Wil Wheaton about a 25th anniversary Stand By Me reunion
– A response to UCLA student Alexandra Wallace’s racist rant that manages to NOT be sexist or demeaning towards her while making a powerful point.
– “Now, here’s why it’s important: The passive voice is almost always used when reporting violence against women. So the person who committed the crime – usually, a man – disappears from the story. Violence becomes just something that happens to women, rather than something that violent people do to others.”
– from Racialicious
Categories: linkfest
The 109th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up! 
The 105th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up! 
Hoyden About Town 
Katamari hack!
Turns a webpage into a tiny game of Katamari.
I really like that one.
While I totally agree with the intention of the “journalism for dummies” post by news with nipples, it really, really irritates me when people call this type of reporting “passive voice”. (See Language Log for countless examples.) The first example:
A PROMISING Tasmanian model and university student fought to fend off her ex-boyfriend before he fatally stabbed her and took his own life in suburban Hobart.
does not contain any passive voice anywhere: the student fought her boyfriend; he fatally stabbed her; he took his own life. All perfectly good examples of active, not passive. Some of the later examples are passive, but the problem in the first example is how much detail is supplied about her and how little about him.
The huge problem in the reporting of and general cultural approach to, men being violent to women, is not going to be fixed by pretending it’s about grammar.
Aqua: While that particular quote is not an example of passive voice, I think that “pretending it’s about grammar” is perhaps – understating? – what cultural critics talk about when we talk about journalistic language. I have a piece or two on the use of passive voice with agent deletion as one of many tools for supporting rape culture: not the be-all and end-all, but definitely a part of the picture.
Passive Aggression: Foregrounding the Object
Passive voice watch: invisible rapist in Sussex
and within that tag are plenty of other articles looking at foregrounds/backgrounding language that isn’t specifically about passive voice.
You can see more in the book Gender, power, and communication in human relationships by Pamela J. Kalbfleisch and Michael J. Cody , which contains further references within.