Month: February 2012

Sunday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion

~ Clarissa ~ 26 Comments

Religious fanaticism is defeated in Quebec. Note that the Libertarians, once again, stand on the side of barbarity and religious indoctrination. Because for them, as we well know, it’s all about defending the people’s complete and utter liberty to be bamboozled by fundamentalist brainwashing.

Are you sure you don’t have defiant hair? Because it’s supposed to be a huge danger to your marriage.

Racism hasn’t disappeared and racist terminology still hurts people. And more on the same subject based on the slur that was directed at Jeremy Lin. Two very good posts from different bloggers.

A talented writer and a popular blogger points out the Libertarian hypocrisy on the subject of “rape by the government” legislation. You’d think that Libertarians would rise up in protest when presented with such an egregious violation of individual liberty by the government, right? Well, not really. This is why I insist that North American Libertarians are just religious fundamentalists in a quasi-rational disguise.

The sad reality of women in Japan.

“The mistaken belief that “desire” is “supposed” to be spontaneous – like, you’re walking down the street or having lunch and you go, “Hm! Sex please!” – can cause a person to believe that if they have responsive desire they’re BROKEN. And if people believe they’re broken, then you get into medicalization of what is in fact perfectly normal, healthy, functional sexuality.”

Brilliant insights into writing: “The number of days that you go without actually writing something on your project equals the number of hours (one hour for each skipped day) that it will take you to actually write something once you sit down to do it. Five days = five hours at the desk before my brain really engages.” There is more, so do visit the link.

I missed this post when it first came out on February 10, but I’m very glad I have found it since then. This post on the egregiously stupid attitude of both the Republican and the Democratic governments towards the mortgage market is definitely the post of the week: “In 2004, President George W. Bush led the way with a bid to move four million additional US households into home ownership that they could not remotely afford. In 2012, President Barack Obama leads the way to try to limit the return of some or all of those households back into the US rental market where they truly belong.”

This is the kind of student every prof lives for.

New York Times pretends that fathers do not exist.

“In other words, hegemonic heterosexuality is the vast cultural conspiracy to describe all heterosexual relationships as the unending war between stupid people and crazy people. If that’s really the model of love you want to aspire to, then okay, you have that right. But don’t piss down my neck and tell me it’s raining, and don’t show me toxic relationships and tell me they’re normal.  I reject this model and encourage others to do so as well.” A very impressive post.

The official Spanish-language definition of autism is finally getting changed from its old and egregiously offensive definition to a better one. And who do you think gets all the credit? (Hint: it isn’t autistics.) The post is in English, so click away.

Why creative writing classes are useless.

This post is short but it makes a brilliant observation on what the problem is with the debate on the value of the Humanities education: “It’s missing the distinction between “intellectual pursuits” and “easy majors.” Highly recommended.

“There are people who complain instead about the low quality of the food people buy with their EBT cards, like using it at gas stations to buy Doritos and frozen pizzas.  How dare they? people say.  I don’t give my hard-earned money to them so that they can live off junk food!  People have such an attachment to their tax dollars when they see individuals using them in ways that they don’t specifically approve of, but a significantly smaller number seem anywhere near as angry with the way that governmental institutions use their tax dollars.” How very very true. It’s easier for many people to dump on food stamp recipients than to question the real black holes in the federal budget.

If you are (or are planning to be) on the academic job market, do read this detailed and extremely enlightening post on how to prepare a job talk. I only wish I knew all this when I was on the market. After reading the post, I realized how badly I have messed up some of my job talks.

A Dutchman’s observations on the differences between saying good-bye in his culture and in the US.

If you adore turtles as much as I do, make sure you check out this beautiful post with photos of newborn turtles. They are beyond cute. They have belly buttons!

A great strategy for jump-staring your writing.

A beautiful post on when one becomes on adult.

Research is important but taking care of yourself is even more important. I couldn’t agree more with this great post. Physical and mental health comes first, people.

When your husband can’t put a fire in your belly, maybe his career can. A funny interview with Santorum’s wife who “defended her husband’s performance” while loving a talk show host more than her husband. And I really understand her. With a husband like that, even Glen Beck seems like a sex symbol.

When you start following a blog, do you read its entire archive?

Finally, an intelligent analysis of a situation in Russia. Most Western sources have no idea about what is going on in FSU countries. Instead of researching and analyzing, they just make stuff up by the bucketful. The recent celebration of a musical group that was simply trying to make a quick buck as “feminist” is an example of such shoddy reporting. When it comes to more serious issues, Western media comes up with even more egregious stuff. This is why I’m glad to find a post that addresses the current situation in Russia insightfully and correctly.

Some people have such an unhealthy relationship with food, that even slicing a cucumber is too much work for them. So they dream of, get this, prefabricated salads and sliced cucumbers.

And, last, an observation: my blogroll has been populated by very long, gushy, poorly written and excruciatingly boring posts by male, formerly progressive bloggers who are trying to come up with extremely convoluted scenarios of how “pregnancies should not generally be permitted” or should generally be permitted, or whatever. Which is hilarious, given how pregnancies are not something they are ever likely to experience. So if you think that this unhealthy obsession with female reproductive system is limited to Conservatives, you are wrong. The desire to rummage (or verbally masturbate on the subject of rummaging) in women’s uteri is not about politics. It’s about profound psychological issues of folks who like to mask their problems behind pseudo-political and philosophical concerns.

Religion and Birth Control Coverage

~ Clarissa ~ 19 Comments

We are all, I suppose, aware of the current controversy about the government mandate that religiously affiliated institutions provide birth control coverage:

Seven states asked a federal judge Thursday to block an Obama administration mandate that requires birth control coverage for employees of religious-affiliated hospitals, schools and outreach programs.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court of Nebraska, alleges that the new rule violates the First Amendment rights of groups that object to the use of contraceptives. It marks the first legal challenge filed by states.

I have a complex attitude to this issue, mostly because I don’t understand the logic of the Obama administration in the matter. We are talking not only about religious rights here but also about the rights of employers. And I can’t say that I find it easy to blame the Catholic employers in this situation. A non-Catholic employee has a choice not to work for a religious organization and seek employment elsewhere. Yes, we are in a recession and jobs are hard to come by. I get that. However, a Catholic bishop has absolutely no choice whatsoever in the issue. He cannot, by his nature, be in favor of contraception. I don’t share this belief, I find it egregiously wrong, but there are people who believe that contraception is evil. The government is placing them in a completely untenable position where their only choice is to stop employing altogether. Or sue. Which is what they are doing.

Now, I might be misunderstanding something but there is a variety of alternative solutions to the issue that the government is not even trying to explore. For instance, the very need for employers to provide birth control can be obviated by making contraceptives very cheap and easily obtainable. If the government believes (correctly) that contraception is something everybody should have access to, then it makes sense that the institution that holds this belief should start providing contraception to people instead of forcing institutions that don’t hold it to do so. Why should it necessarily be the reluctant employer and not the willing government?

That, of course, would entail making a hard and probably somewhat unpopular choice on the part of the administration. Why assume this risk when it’s so much easier to shift the burden of the decision onto the already unpopular Catholic leaders?

Nobody is a greater believer in the importance of easy access to good-quality contraception than I am. However, I keep getting the feeling that the current controversy is not really about contraception at all. At least not on the part of the Obama administration. The whole issue could have been resolved without involving the Catholics at all. I, for one, would really like to know why it wasn’t.

Is Playing Outside Important?

~ Clarissa ~ 16 Comments

Isabel left the following comment that I’m putting in a separate post because I don’t want it to be lost:

When we were kids we used to have the run of the whole neighborhood and we took advantage. Empty lots and woods between houses, construction projects, a deserted day camp, old fields of a nearby farm, etc. When my brother visited recently after many years, we took my nieces, who are growing up in the same neighborhood, for a walk through our old haunts, or at least those that remain. They kept saying things like “isn’t this private property?” “are you sure it’s okay to go here” “isn’t this dangerous?” “maybe we should go back home now” “there are ticks in those woods”.

This is really sad, people. I can’t even begin to enumerate all of the ways in which this picture of the world and of nature as horribly dangerous places saddens me. As a kid, I had the best time ever playing with my little friends outside. Since the age of four (I don’t have many earlier memories), I was always playing outside with other kids, both in the city and in the country-side. Those are among my best childhood memories.

I’ve been having this discussion with N. recently, and he sees the idea of kids playing at home with their Playstations instead of running outside with friends as completely normal. Maybe I’m getting old, but it always makes me very happy to see kids of all ages playing outside and it saddens me to imagine them stuck at home with their video games all day long.I’m not against video games per se, but I feel like important aspects of childhood are being lost for the sake of completely imaginary safety concerns.

“Why Doesn’t the Bible Contain Superior Medical Advice?”

~ Clarissa ~ 18 Comments

I understand that the current wave of religious fanaticism is scary and annoying. We are all equally fed up with fanatics trying to destroy the advances of enlightened societies. I get it, people, we all fear that the world will plunge into the depths of barbarity. Practicing complete and utter idiocy, however, is not a good response to that. The attitude of “I’ll combat jerkdom by being the baddest jerk of all bad jerks” will only add to the problem.

I’m saying all this because the proliferation of articles that try to ridicule holy texts is very disturbing to me. Here is the most recent example:

Many will consider the answer to the question posed in the title of this post obvious, as indeed do I: The Bible does not contain superior medical knowledge, or indeed anything that we might consider medical knowledge in the modern sense at all, because it was written before there was any medical knowledge, much less advanced medical knowledge.

I always feel very embarrassed when people are so militant in their stupidity. I see absolutely no difference between the author of this inane post and folks who, instead of saying “My intellectual limitations and lack of knowledge prevent me from understanding evolution”, proudly deliver the “Evolution is just a theory, anyways” line.

If the author of this strange piece took the trouble of chewing before blabbering, he’d very easily find out the following two things:

a) the Bible (whether you believe in its divine nature or consider it simply a work of literature) contains some of the very best practices of psychological hygiene that humanity has been able to come up with. Just a small example among many: have you seen Jews at prayer? How is what they do any different from stimming, an anxiety-reducing practice that helps autistics and non-autistics alike?

b) the very point of practicing a religion (any religion) is to maintain one’s psychological and, consequently, physical health in a way that the pill-popping, “cut it out and then think about it later”, chemically-dependent, “superior” medical knowledge will not be necessary. Don’t practice this approach to life if you don’t feel like it. But, at least, strain your intellect and realize that if a religious text discussed triple bypasses and anti-spasmolytics, it would stop being a religious text.

Religious fanatics annoy us because they allow for no space where people can have alternative worldviews and organize their lives according to different principles. It is sad, indeed, that many non-religious folks also become fanatical to the point where, in their zeal to promote their point of view as the only correct one, they cannot even accept the idea that different value systems can be just as valid as theirs.

A Question for Teachers

~ Clarissa ~ 42 Comments

Dear fellow teachers,

have you ever written the following comments on your students’ work:

“Your writing is dreadful.”

“Gobbledygook.”

“God, your writing is awful.”

“This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read.”

“I’m sure there are people whose writing is worse than yours but I’ve never met them.”

“You seem schizoid.”

“Pathetic writing.” 

“This is garbage.”

Do you feel like there is pedagogic value to this kind of comments?

P.S. I know somebody (khm, khm) who got every single one of these comments from her professor.

Male Identity and Sex

~ Clarissa ~ 11 Comments

One of my favorite bloggers, Danny, wrote a beautiful guest post for Womanist Musings that says, among other things, the following:

The script of being a man says we are supposed to have as much sex as possible, and if we aren’t trying to have sex, or are thinking about having sex, it’s an indicator that something is wrong with us.

I wanted to discuss the issue of how sexual expectations define male identities in negative ways for a while now and this great post reminded me of that.

A very close male friend once said to me, “Clarissa, I’m very worried. I think I have something very wrong with me and I need to see a doctor.”

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“I’ve been hanging out with this woman and she’s great. We have a lot of fun together. But then she wanted to become intimate and I couldn’t get it up. I’m only 29 and I’m already impotent. This must be a sign of major health issues.”

“Have you considered the possibility that you simply feel no desire for this particular woman?” I asked.

“But that isn’t normal,” my friend said. “I’m young. I’m supposed to be able to perform any time.”

This pernicious idea that men are supposed to want sex anywhere, any time and with anybody does untold damage to their health. Sex becomes not something you do because it brings you joy but, rather, a performance you engage in for the benefit of others and to affirm your masculinity. The perfectly normal manifestations of human libido (which include, for example, not wanting to have sex with specific people or during certain periods of time) become a sign that something is deeply wrong with the man in question.

This view of male sexuality is deeply harmful to both men and women. Having sex for any other reason than wanting to have sex with this particular person (or people) causes great damage to a person’s sexual, emotional and physical health.

My friend did not believe me and finally managed to have relations with the woman in question. After a month of a pretty miserable relationship, she confessed to him that she never wanted to have sex with him either but thought that this had to be what he wanted. Why else would he be hanging out with her, anyway?

My Students Rise In Protest

~ Clarissa ~ 29 Comments

Yesterday, I started the class by telling my students the following:

“The mini-quiz we are writing today will be very hard. But the good news is that, to reward ourselves for the hard work we have been doing, we will spend next week watching a movie.”

The reaction of the students can best be described as a mini-riot. I never have any problems establishing and maintaining discipline but this time I just couldn’t get them to calm down and start preparing for the quiz.

For almost 15 minutes, we maintained the following conversation.

“Will there be nudity in the movie?”

“No.”

“Because I had a prof who showed us a movie with nudity.”

“And my prof showed us a movie with full frontal nudity.”

“And I had the worst prof ever! She showed us a movie with full frontal male nudity.”

“Guys, there is no nudity in the movie we will see next week. I promise. None whatsoever. So let’s just settle down and start preparing for the mini-quiz.”

“Are you sure there is no nudity? Or sexual scenes?”

“Yes, I’m very sure. Now let’s go over the conjugations of. . .”

“Because it is stressful to sit there in class and watch sex flicks!”

“Yes! I’m so over that, too!”

“Guys, I promise, no sex flicks are scheduled in this course. Now, back to the conjugations. . .”

“I just think it’s wrong to make people see nudity for a grade!”

And thus it went on.

As an example of a sex flick they saw in class, students named Motorcycle Diaries. I watched this film several years ago and it struck me as anything but erotic. I don’t even remember if there was any nudity there.

This wasn’t a regular discussion of the kind that I always have with students. I described it as a mini-riot at the beginning of the post because it was loud and very highly charged emotionally.

As a result, I have had the very first old-age discussion of the “Kids today!” variety. When I told N. about this, we spent a while talking about how “in our times, kids this age wanted nothing more than look at some nudity for a grade.”

And this is how I became a “when I was your age, things were different” person.

Why Are They So Rabid?

~ Clarissa ~ 16 Comments

Reader Evelina Anville says a propos of my post on Girl Scouts and their vilification by the Catholic Church:

On the one hand, the Catholic Church is one of the major churches in the US (and the world); and, on the other hand, Girl Scouts is so wholesome and so very “establishment.” So it’s not like some fringe church is rejecting a group of radical feminists. It’s a major church with a great deal of clout rejecting a mainstream group (and, from what I understand,continuing to support the Boy Scouts.) So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I am worried what this means in terms of gender and sexual politics when a major Church brands a group that encourages cookie-selling, arts and crafts and camping, as radical or extreme. I agree that it’s the Catholic Church’s right and that the Church shouldn’t be forced to recognize the Girl Scouts or anything. Still, I find the entire thing disturbing.

I agree completely that the Church’s attack on the Girl Scouts is completely out of proportion but I have a different view of what this means. I find that the rejection of such an – as Evelina says – wholesome group and such a vicious backlash against a very non-threatening organization for children signals complete and utter desperation on the Church’s side. They are losing parishioners left and right. There is one scandal after another, they are being slowly squeezed out of contemporary reality, so they flail around like a drowning person.

This is precisely why the Fundamentalists are trying to pass all of these outrageously barbaric measures against contraception and abortion. This is why the Republican primaries have been so bizarre. The Fundamentalist, ultra-religious brand of Conservatism is dying out. These are their final moments, and they know it extremely well. This is the very last opportunity they have to signal their presence. They are so rabid because they are scared. I have a feeling that even among Conservatives there is a growing dissatisfaction with how the Conservative movement has been overrun with shrill religious fanatics, which does great damage to the rational, intelligent Conservatism.

I believe that soon the prolonged agony of fanatisicm will be over. Religious people will give up on trying to make the secular society follow their rules and bow down to their beliefs because very very soon this will become completely untenable. And then, finally, the reasonable, non-fanatical representatives of Conservatism will recover their movement and we will start seeing productive interactions between Liberals and Conservatives.

As stressful and depressing as it is to observe the current developments in the war against secularism, feminism, human rights and choice, the reality that they obscure is very hopeful and positive. The more rabid the fanatics get, the greater is the desperation that they are communicating by their acts.

My Scales Mock Me

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

So I stepped on the scales this morning and instead of giving me a number, the scales showed a word.

“Low,” they said.

Eventually I realized, of course, that the word referred to the low battery charge. At first, however, I felt like the scales were trying to make fun of me by providing a sarcastic response.

Smartest

~ Clarissa ~ 9 Comments

A senior colleague told me that I’m the smartest person she knows. This made me wonder what kind of people she hangs out with.