Girls in India Unwanted no longer

Via MSNBC, 285 girls have legally changed their names from “Unwanted” to names with a touch more dignity.

In shedding names like “Nakusa” or “Nakushi,” which mean “unwanted” in Hindi, some girls chose to name themselves after Bollywood stars like “Aishwarya” or Hindu goddesses like “Savitri.” Some just wanted traditional names with happier meanings, such as “Vaishali” or “prosperous, beautiful and good.”

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Girls in India Unwanted no longer
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On the Role of the Middle Class in Occupy Wall Street

I’ve been involved in a conversation with Juniper Shoemaker these past few days about the Occupy Wall Street movement, the worry that the middle class will eventually co-opt it, and that the concerns of the less-privileged will be subsumed into returning the middle class to the status quo. It’s also been a conversation largely about language, and it’s covered a good deal of territory that we’ve already been over. At the same time, I think the conversation exposes a lot of nuance that we haven’t discussed, so it’s worth continuing in a new post. I’m answering this comment primarily, but there are other bits of the conversation in the “Clue this dude in” post and it touches on something martha said as well.
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On the Role of the Middle Class in Occupy Wall Street

Donors Choose – Matching Dollars, Today and Tomorrow Only!

Today’s the Rapture Mk. III. What do you need your money for, if you’re going to be bodily swept away to heaven? Leave it to a good cause! For instance, the various causes I’ve added to my Donors Choose challenge. And today and tomorrow only, the good people in charge of the Science Blogs Challenge are matching all donations. That’s right — until Saturday at midnight EST, your dollars will have double impact.

It seems other bloggers have offered real things as incentive, rather than intangibles like the title of “Honorary Canadian”. I don’t have much I could offer you kind folks, though. I mean, I’ve got a dead computer power supply with bad capacitors… some old grocery receipts and other various scraps of paper. Oh, I DO have a can of Campbell’s harvest minestrone with real parmesan(!!), with reduced sodium. I suppose if people really really want the can of soup, I could skip lunch today, if it means some kids in significantly underprivileged areas have a chance to learn how amazing our world is. Would you offer your donations in exchange for a can of soup?
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Donors Choose – Matching Dollars, Today and Tomorrow Only!

Clue this dude in.

I often label myself as a feminist. I have a strong distaste for the patriarchy, and the gender roles today’s society has in place, and I hate all the myriad ways that those gender roles hurt men and women. I’d like to think I’m pretty savvy when it comes to gender issues, and that my approach to achieving egalitarianism is the most rational and achievable course of action — that being, recognizing privilege, owning up to it, and working to break it down and replace it with a better and more equal system.

So with my self-perceptions being what they are, am I wrong in thinking the use of the word “lady” at the end of a suggestion or angry comment has less to do with the gender of the recipient, and more to do with the lack of familiarity between them?
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Clue this dude in.

Science dispels “vagueness” about Occupy Wall Street

One of the claims by the right-wing media about the Occupy movement is that they’re vague, e.g. they don’t know what they’re fighting for. I find this meme interesting in that it attacks the Occupy movement’s strength — the fact that the issues are so widespread and so palpable that you have to be in that 1% of advantaged folks to miss the point.
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Science dispels “vagueness” about Occupy Wall Street

Everywhere a sign

And the sign said “Long-haired freaky people need not apply”
So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said “You look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you’ll do”
So I took off my hat, I said “Imagine that. Huh! Me workin’ for you!”
– Five Man Electrical Band, Signs

Seems rather apropos given the circumstances.

I’ll admit that when I saw how badly Greg Laden had been rankled over this protest sign from a Canadian Occupy Wall Street event, I was a bit confused. What could he possibly be upset about?


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Everywhere a sign

Owning the slur

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you. Well, not physically anyway. Not unless they’re slurs intended only to psychologically abuse a target, when they often accompany acts of violence.

There are a number of words whose only use is to hurt. There are words that once meant something strong and proud but, through repeated historical misuse, have become tainted by every bit of hate and venom that has ever flowed through them in their use. There are words that might, to some people, serve as a mere descriptive, an adjective to be used in daily discourse, but to others inculcate a fear of the types of violence with which the word has so often been used in parallel.

And then, there are the concerted efforts to retake those words, to rebrand them.
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Owning the slur

The 99% flunked econ? Just want to bang bongos?

On the topic of another sort of privilege, Alan Grayson on Occupy Wall Street:

If you don’t know what the movement’s all about, Stephanie Zvan leaves absolutely no room for doubt as to what the participants want. If you click that link and still claim the movement lacks clarity, you probably work for some entity that wants to keep a real grassroots movement from gaining momentum.

The 99% flunked econ? Just want to bang bongos?

RCimT: Further Privilege Readings

One of the best things to have come from my recent Problem with Privilege and Disadvantages of Being a Man posts — I mean, aside from comments covering many of the issues I didn’t touch on in the original posts (and there are quite a number — enough to make a Disadvantages 2: Electric Boogaloo at some point) — is the treasure trove of links that have come from commenters and via email. There’s a ton of worthwhile reading material here, from various diverse sources, and I’m certain there’s even more to be had if you’d like to contribute in the comments.

First, and above the fold, Greta Christina linked the Disadvantages post and doubled my readership pretty much instantly. There’s some more discussion going on at her linking post, so I highly recommend you check it out. For more links, do read on.
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RCimT: Further Privilege Readings