Women Are Better Than Men?
That’s Roger Ebert’s argument. And listen, I love me some Roger Ebert, but this is a big piece of crap. His point basically comes down to, “Women are nurturing and wonderful and non-violent, men are competitive and want to see boobs, because Evolution.” And ugh I don’t even have the time to pick through this mess, but y’all should go for it in the comments. I’ll start: Most people have the capacity to be wonderful, non-violent, nurturing and loving. Most people also have the capacity to be competitive, driven, aggressive and ruthless. Most people are capable of great kindness; most people are capable of being total assholes. The degree to which any of us displays any of these traits depends largely on circumstance and partly on individual personality and temperment. Those things are certainly influenced by gender, but our gender does not in fact hard-wire us to be nice or awful.
...read moreWould you like a racist boyfriend?
Because there are so many racist boyfriends to choose from! (“I’m not racist! I just appreciate ethnic women!” -all of the boyfriends).
...read moreFamily values: Staying together for the kids (I just fathered in New Zealand)
Give Alabama politician Bill Johnson an award for combining two of the Republican party’s favorite family values: traditional families, and being fruitful and multiplying. Wanting to keep his family together, Johnson invited his wife of eight years and her three children to come with him as he moved to New Zealand to be with the numerous babies conceived of his sperm.
...read morePolicing Native Identity
Apparently there’s been a big to-do over the fact that Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat vying for Scott Brown’s U.S. Senate seat, has Cherokee and Delaware Indian ancestry, and that ancestry was reflected in her listing as a minority law professor. People are mad! People are mad because Warren isn’t “really” Native American — she’s only 1/32, which is not enough Native American blood to count as “real,” I guess. Of course, as Sarah Burris points out, white-lady clubs like the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Colonial Dames of America don’t have percentage rules for their bloodlines — you’ve just gotta have one relative who fit the bill. And if being 1/32 Native American isn’t enough to make you “really” Native American, someone should probably tell the current chief of the Cherokee Tribe.
...read moreHey girl.
Single PUAs are on the prowl, and they would like you to know that they like your headband. Bitch.
...read moreProsecuting “Bad” Mothers
A must-read in this week’s New York Times Sunday Magazine about over-zealous Alabama prosecutors bringing charges against drug-addicted mothers. It’s a troubling and complex issue. Obviously no one thinks that using drugs during pregnancy is a good idea. Obviously it is a tragedy when a baby is stillborn, or born with drugs in its system. But many of these cases involve stillbirths which cannot be clearly tied to drug use — all the prosecutors know is that the pregnant woman used drugs (even one time) and the baby was stillborn, and so they assume (and argue, with little to no evidence) causation. And because most folks don’t understand just how complicated pregnancy actually is — and after the 80s “crack baby” hysteria, don’t understand that drug use during pregnancy actually doesn’t usually cause long-term problems in the child — people hear “drug-using mom” and “stillborn baby” and it’s easy to conclude that A led to B, even though that’s not actually how it works.
...read moreNuns should stop helping the poor so much and focus more on taking away women’s rights
So says the Catholic church hierarchy, which is also mad that nuns — who are mere women — have the nerve to hold opinions of their own:
...read moreBrave Indiana lawmaker faces down Girl Scouts
How did I miss this? Back in February, Indiana state Rep. Bob Morris took a stand against the slutification of our daughters by a radical left-wing sex cult with ties to unrepentant baby-killers: He alone opposed the House’s resolution honoring the Girl Scouts on their 100th birthday, because of their “radical policies” and “liberal progressive politics” and promotion of “homosexual lifestyles.”
...read moreMotherhood is THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB IN THE WORLD (unless you are poor)
A brief addition to yesterday’s post, where I speculated that for all their blustering about how Ann Romney made a choice to stay home and raise her five boys and that’s a wonderful choice because motherhood is THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB IN THE WORLD and Democrats hate stay-at-home moms, Mitt Romney (and Republicans generally) only think you’re a stay-at-home mom if you’re white and wealthy and heterosexual: Well look at that.
...read moreA few thoughts on Hilary Rosen, moms and work
I’m generally with Linda Hirshman on this one: Hilary Rosen was right that Ann Romney does not speak for women in the workforce. And the whole controversy is entirely manufactured. For those just tuning in, here’s what Hilary Rosen said on Anderson Cooper, in response to a question about women and the economy:
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