This blogger has summed up my disappointment with both presidential election campaigns. Both campaigns have turned into senseless reality TV shows. As for the crucial issues, I’m still not sure where either candidate stands. This will be yet another “anybody but. . .” round of voting.
Politicians’ genitals: private or public parts?
If you are an academic, here are some great suggestions on how to have a productive summer.
“Quebec’s New Anti-Protest Law Could Shut Down Campus Student Associations for Years.”
Internal time: debunking the myth that early risers are more virtuous than late risers.
Crazed, sex-deprived Mommies assault teenagers for having fun. Talk about going mad with envy!
“I’ve been hanging out on the Twitter and just saw the most terrifying thing someone retweeted: a woman praising her husband for doing the dishes “the first time since we were married.” But before that? She said, “I caved.”” Women who tweet their coy pride in this type of husband are a mystery to me. It’s like they are proud to serve as maids to overgrown infantile idiots.
Urban decay in Tel Aviv. Very good photos.
No vile woman-hating macho pig is capable of insulting and degrading women as much as this sort of pseudo-feminist. Some people seem to confuse hatred of women with feminism. I believe it’s some form of a psychiatric disorder where people mask their own vicious self-hatred as political activism. And if you believe it’s wrong to diagnose, take into account that the vile thing who wrote this nasty piece of trash insulted me and every woman as well, so it deserves whatever I wish to call it in return.
The government of Quebec hastily takes away the civil liberties of the Quebecois people. The people themselves continue snoozing in a contented stupor.
Religious barbarity in Romania: “The top priority of the Orthodox Church right now is building a cathedral called Romanian People’s Salvation Cathedral — placed in Bucharest in the courtyard of Ceausescu’s enormous House of the People. Building the cathedral is estimated to cost something between 200 and 400 million Euros. It is hard to understand why this is top priority in a poor country with some 20,000 churches already but with less than 5,000 schools and less than 500 hospitals.” This is happening in many post-Soviet countries where the Church that collaborated gleefully with the secret service during the Communist era is now stinky rich. This must be some sort of a compensation for victimizing the religious people of these countries for decades.
On Christian patriarchy and body ownership.
Informed consumerism while femme. A lovely post.
And the post of the week by an academic writer who always manages to write exactly the post I need to read at each given moment.
Clarissa's Blog 
Thank you for the link! 😀
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I wrote It’s Just Me as a bit of a rant for when people assume that because I’m not losing weight, it’s because I’m doing something “wrong.” Complete with requisite amounts of sarcasm.
Also, for anyone who likes yoga and free stuff, I am starting a Summer DVD Review Series and Giveaway.
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The pseudo-feminist article confuses me. A long time ago, I used to think that 60 — 70 percent of anything I read on the web was ironic. Actually, it does make a lot of sense to speak of women being treated as sub-humans if you realize that we are very often, as has been my experience, not expected to freely express the full range of human emotions. I’m sure this is an issue of status, and not just concerning women, but you are supposed to suck it in a lot and not show that you are angry. If you’re angry, then you have a pathology that has to be squeezed out of you, so that you become blithely cheery and unobservant. I was exposed to this very logic, pretty much systematically, for a period of time, when I tried turning to others for help with my father’s rage and aggression at me. I always had the response: “You shouldn’t be angry at anything. Angry is pathological.” I also got the response: “Men don’t behave emotionally. You must be projecting.”
From this, I made the rational analysis that I was expected to accept a status as a sub-human — to accept any sort of situation that came about, without expressing any objection or “emotion”.
Consequently, I can very much understand someone making an ironic critique of women’s “sub-human” status. I’m not sure if there is a way to take such an article more seriously.
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I’d love to think this is ironic but I’ve seen enough rants of this type to realize that this person is completely serious in their hatred of women.
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Oh dear, I think my tone isn’t being read properly.
Sub-human comes from the de Beauvoir analysis that there are men (the normals) and women (the other, the non-normals, the sub-human, the unmen), who are a lesser class of beings under patriarchy.
The article is an analysis of how patriarchy works on different elements of sex, gender, relationships and sexuality to uphold a notion of women as owned producers of units of labour while men are their owners – working to eradicate any devience from that strict binary.
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De Bouvoir was born in 1908 and published The Second Sex in 1949. Your reading of her brilliant work is plodding, pedestrian, uninsightful, and unintelligent. It’s a disgrace that this profound feminist philosopher would be used by woman-haters to justify their contempt of women.I guess you need to pretend that this is still 1940s because otherwise you can’t justify your dislike of women.
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Re: Christian Patriarchy
I tried to imagine how some men can just position themselves as ‘head’ of a family so easily. I mean it must take a grandious amount of ego to think you and you alone are not only capable of directing the life of other people, but also be confident that you know best and better than them!
And what about the responsibility this position comes with? I mean if you are the sole decision maker then all responsibility for your family lies with you. I find it hard enough to care for (and about) me half the time, but just image how it must feel to be responsible for the financial, physical and emotional wellbeing of an entire family!
If I would ever come into a position like this, I would probably be have panic attacks by week 2. Seriously, the idea alone scares the fuck out of me.
Also: I read that pseudo-feminist post and I don’t understand a word. Like none of it. Aside from ‘heterosexuality does not challenge patriarchy’, I did not take anything home from that site.
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“If I would ever come into a position like this, I would probably be have panic attacks by week 2. Seriously, the idea alone scares the fuck out of me.”
– This is probably where those “family annihilators” come from. The guys who crack under the pressure and just kill off the entire family. I agree that it must be terrifying to have all that responsibility.
“Also: I read that pseudo-feminist post and I don’t understand a word. Like none of it.”
– I discovered from it that I have an owner. We can all imagine how angry that suggestion made me.
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Thanks for the links! I especially liked the link and your comments on the Orthodox churches in former Warsaw Pact countries.
That said: I’m surprised you haven’t said anything so far re: the passing of Carlos Fuentes.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/05/15/mexican-writer-carlos-fuentes-dies-at-83/
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I know, it’s like the passing of an epoch. I’m using his textbook in class this semester, and now I have to tell students he just died. 😦
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“The government of Quebec hastily takes away the civil liberties of the Quebecois people. The people themselves continue snoozing in a contented stupor.”
Perhaps in some circles, but do not buy what traditional media purport. I will be protesting this afternoon at 2, like thousand of people.That will not change the sad fact that democracy has been baffled in our province AND that Charest will win the next election, regardless…
One question: can you explain to me why anglophone cegeps and anglophone or bilingual universities never went on strike this academic year? You went to McGill so you know the student culture. At your alma mater I believe that the Queer Studies programme and… the French dept. went/are on strike. Besides that it is a complete and embarassing silence.
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I don’t know what’s happening to McGill. I’m completely mystified by the transformations it’s been suffering recently. the university was never super engaged politically but it was never all that passive either. Concordia is protesting, though, isn’t it?
And you think Charest will WIN next elections? After all this? Ay yay yay yay yay. What do people need to stop supporting him? To find out he had fried Christian babies for breakfast?
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am not completely aware of what has been going on because I was not in Montreal just a week ago, but Concordia is not on strike, and I think it has never been throughout the entire strike. Dawson is not on strike. CONCORDIA! DAWSON!
Charest will win. Again.
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