I’ve been reading Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, Lillian Faderman’s sweeping social history of lesbians in 20th century America (this is the sort of thing I do for fun). At the beginning of the chapter on World War II, Faderman makes this insight: If there is one major point to be made in a social history …
Tag Archive: culture
Mar 09 2013
Blaming Everything On Mental Illness
The Associated Press has revised their AP Stylebook, the guide that most journalists use to standardize their writing, to include an entry on mental illness. Among many other important things that the entry includes, which you should read here, it says: Do not describe an individual as mentally ill unless it is clearly pertinent to …
Feb 27 2013
“We Saw Your Boobs” and Distorted Views of Female Sexuality
I’ll leave it to others to thoroughly excoriate Seth MacFarlane’s performance at the Oscars. What I want to address specifically is his gloating “We Saw Your Boobs” video, and the interestingly skewed notion of sexuality that it presents. If you believe MacFarlane, and others who think like him, sex is a sort of competition between …
Feb 14 2013
I Really Strongly Dislike Valentine’s Day!
Hey everyone! I’m going to poop on your parade. Don’t worry, I’ll be cheerful about it. I’m not going to say I hate Valentine’s Day, because hate is a strong word and I reserve it for things I really mean it for, like coffee and misogyny. I was going to just let today go by …
Jan 28 2013
How To Not Be An Asshole To Immigrants
Growing up as a first-generation immigrant in the suburban Midwest is weird. I was often the only person my classmates knew who had been born in another country, who didn’t have American citizenship, who spoke a language other than English or Spanish fluently, who wasn’t a Christian. I think people often unintentionally treated me as …
Jan 08 2013
The Role of Feminist Criticism
In one of my recent pieces, I criticized a particular aspect of the love stories often found in popular books and movies. Whenever someone critiques pop culture–especially from a feminist perspective–it raises a lot of questions for many people. Questions such as: Does it really matter that this work is “problematic”? Can you even have …
Dec 25 2012
Christmas From The Outside
Just some personal reflections on Christmas from an outsider. It is impossible to be a person living in the United States, of any ethnicity, religious affiliation, or national origin, and not understand the meaning and significance of Christmas. It’s a religious observance. It’s a sparkling monument to consumerism. It’s a celebration of family, of charity, …
Dec 16 2012
Stop Comparing the United States to Israel
Among the many insensitive, uninformed, or simply ridiculous responses to Friday’s tragedy that I’ve heard, one that continues to befuddle me is the suggestion, made mostly by Libertarians, that everything would’ve been okay if only the teachers had had guns too–if, in fact, carrying concealed weapons were a standard practice among American citizenry. Leaving aside …
Dec 13 2012
How You Know They’ve Run Out Of Arguments
Steven over at WWJTD informed me of this nonsense: The newest argument against homosexuality has arrived. It turns out it prevents straight dudes from being friends. Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition explains: “But there is no such thing as absolute freedom when it comes to sexuality. The moment we celebrate or endorse certain behaviors, we curtail freedom …
Dec 12 2012
Who Is To Blame For A Suicide?
Yesterday I was driving around in my hometown and listening to the radio. The DJs did a segment on the suicide of Jacintha Saldanha, a nurse in a hospital where Kate Middleton was being treated, who was pranked by some radio DJs and tricked into giving out Middleton’s medical information. The DJs on my hometown …
About the Author
Brute Reason Tumblr
- "But what if our lives could have meaning even if we cannot, or will not, think of ourselves as..."“But what if our lives could have meaning even if we cannot, or will not, think of ourselves as beautiful? What if I look in the mirror and see ugliness, and imperfection, and asymmetry, and I choose to value and love myself anyway, because I’m a valuable human being worth a whole lot more than my externality? This is not to say that those of us who do feel […]
- "I want my feminism to be a feminism of daydreaming. I want my feminism to believe in the..."“I want my feminism to be a feminism of daydreaming. I want my feminism to believe in the transformative power of imagining the impossible. I want my feminism to stop chasing this faux equality that puts us on the race to be better managers of exclusion and, instead, gives us the possibility of re-thinking a future where we no longer have underclasses within […]
- "When it comes to media pushing perfect people, if you’re not skeptical, you’re doing it..."“When it comes to media pushing perfect people, if you’re not skeptical, you’re doing it wrong. The only right way to do it is with deep, trigger-happy skepticism. It’s advertising — which means it’s supposed to make you want something. That alone makes it squirrelly as fuck. If you don’t train your brain to see that first and foremost, and to move cautiousl […]
- "It’s when you’re kickin’ it with your boys and you don’t speak up (or maybe even join in) when the..."“It’s when you’re kickin’ it with your boys and you don’t speak up (or maybe even join in) when the one dude is being called a “bitch” or a “pussy” because he didn’t hit on the girl you saw. It’s knowing street harassment is wrong but also knowing that you let your eyes linger way longer than was comfortable for her when she walked by you in those yoga pants […]
- "What may seem like ‘productive discussion’ or ‘lively debate’ feels like an attack on your identity..."“What may seem like ‘productive discussion’ or ‘lively debate’ feels like an attack on your identity and validity as a human being when it comes from a person in a position of power who is telling you how to react to something that upset you. When a disabled woman, for example, expresses anger about something that is going on in the news and nondisabled peop […]
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Two things to keep in mind:
1. I am bad at answering lengthy emails. Sorry!
2. I may ask you for permission to blog about our correspondence. However, if you are harassing/abusive/trollish, then I no longer have to ask you for permission. Proceed with caution!
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