Pat Parker is a particularly awesome poet, although it’s true that we all tend to value most highly those things we can’t do ourselves, and whatever talent I have with language, it certainly doesn’t include a gift for brevity. So maybe I overvalue Parker because she’s able to make a point much more succinctly than I?
Hmm. Let’s see:
Well, I missed it by two days, but let’s do this anyway: Fifty-one years ago on Tuesday, a mere 99 years, 11 months and 3 days after we passed a constitutional amendment requiring states to stop with the racial discrimination already, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that yes, Virginia, there are limits to constitutional violations and stop Freuding persecuting the Lovings already, okay?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the author of the recent book Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions among others, was brought on the Daily Show to be interviewed by host Trevor Noah. It’s a good interview, and you should watch it. Here, let me make it easy for you:
So did you notice the extremist horror about 2/3rds of the way through? That’s right, the part where Noah asks about generous gestures that, through chivalry, have been entwined with sexism and specifies holding open doors as an example? And then Adichie goes completely off the rails, saying
gestures like holding the door shouldn’t be gender-based. I think it’s a lovely thing to hold the door but we should hold the door for everyone. …[T]he idea of someone holding the door for a woman because she’s a woman…I have trouble with it.
I’m quite happy for people to hold the door for me. But I hope they’re not doing it because of this sort of idea of chivalry. Because chivalry is really about the idea that women are somehow weak and need protecting.
Adichie, how could you? Well, at least Fox & Friends had Dana Loesch on hand to nip the budding tip before the petals surrounding the reproductive bits can open:
With all due respect to her [Adichie] — and I’m familiar with her — I think it’s a luxury of third-wave feminism to complain about holding doors open for people where her country, Nigeria, it ranks top in the world for female genital mutilation, which I think if far more of a disservice to women and far more suppressive than someone courteously opening the door for someone else.
Dear Dawkinsima: when Loesch is your fellow traveler, perhaps it’s time to rethink your destination.
So, a couple days ago cops in Portland, Oregon did the right thing in a rare situation. It was immortalized on the PPD twitter feed:
Portland – Police to 2100 block of NW Kearney St – report of suspicious circumstances – male walking down the street pulling a suitcase with a female zipped up inside of it
— Portland OR Alerts (@pdxalerts) June 10, 2018
NW Kearney Update – Officers made contact with the subjects – officers reporting the female is riding around in the suitcase willingly – all units clearing
— Portland OR Alerts (@pdxalerts) June 10, 2018
Now, I’m all for consensual fun, and if you wanna ride around in a suitcase, you do you, right? But I also get why this was reported. If you do a google search for “portland police alert woman suitcase” you get some seriously not okay stuff all over the first page. Worse, it’s not just multiple reports of the same case, you get links to reports of separate, unrelated incidents. (People with multiple treatment resistant faith in humanity can have it cured right there on that google page.)
Oh, my. This really is too much. “Bo Duke” actor John Schneider just served 5 hours in jail for repeatedly failing to pay back alimony and child support. He was scheduled to serve 3 days, but the Los Angeles jails were overcrowded. To what does he attribute his good luck horrible persecution? Fox News will tell ya:
Schneider alleged that his conservative values may have hurt him in court, adding that it’s time for more of his fellow Hollywood stars to “come out of the Republican closet.”
“I do think there’s a bias against conservatives, Republicans, in Hollywood, but I think if you let that alter how you are, then I question how you are,” he said. “If you believe it, speak it, live it.”
Aww. I feel so bad for the 58-year old wealthy white guy. But wait! If that didn’t jerk you around by your heartstrings, check this out:
“Going to jail was nothing like I ever imagined it was going to be,” Schneider told us. “First of all, I was given no preferential treatment at all except they didn’t detain me with the general population.
“I was arrested, I was searched, I was handcuffed, I had my wallet and my phone and they took my belt and shoelaces and it was put into a plastic bag,” the 58-year-old recalled.
“It was totally life-changing,” he added.
What. The. Freud.
Seriously, white conservative guys, you need to catch some clues. As I understand it, there are a bunch of clues running loose in the Antarctic circumpolar current: you should head down there right now.
I’ve been analyzing and critiquing conceptions of free expression since the 1990s when anti-domestic violence shelters started asking me about how it might be possible to construct policies that support trans* participants in shelter programs without punishing non-trans* participants for the everyday anti-trans hostility that most weren’t equipped to recognize. I’ve done it from multiple perspectives – activist, ethicist, and law student – and from a US focus to a Canadian focus to an international comparative frame. So I’ve seen this one coming for a while now. We’ve been close before, but now we’re there. Not just an enemy of the state, but the biggest, most threatening enemy of the state is freedom of expression, especially expression that is distributed through the power of the press.
Donald John Trump tweeted this this morning:
So funny to watch the Fake News, especially NBC and CNN. They are fighting hard to downplay the deal with North Korea. 500 days ago they would have “begged” for this deal-looked like war would break out. Our Country’s biggest enemy is the Fake News so easily promulgated by fools!
Expect the US based Peterson and Harris fanboys and other general Freeze Peaches to celebrate or ignore this statement. For people that care about our rights and freedoms, however, this is the second worst statement the president could issue. For now, he identifies “our country’s biggest enemy” in the context of a call for mockery. The step from there to identifying “our country’s biggest enemy” in the context of a call for punishment is so dangerously small, I think few will recognize it when it happens.
First off, have I mentioned that I love The Root generally, and Michael Harriot specifically? Well, it and he have a new article up about the man republicans have nominated to run for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.
The focus?
The man who could replace Roy Moore as the next chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court is a lot like Moore—only more racist and homophobic.
With another Unity song.
And while we’re at it, one of my favorite covers of all time:
Have a good day folks. Be productive if you can.
While ScienceDaily isn’t a science journalism site (it’s an aggregator for university press releases excited about a faculty member’s latest publication) that doesn’t mean there’s nothing of value there, it just means that the value varies wildly with the priority (and personnel) different universities assign to writing up good press releases.*1
My latest find there not only details a great new Devonian find (if it holds up, as always, IANAB), but it’s also fairly well written in that it details where and how the crucial fossils were found, why the authors believe they are significant, and what they might tell us, all in sentences constructed to be understandable. Joy!
Oh, yeah!
This one’s awesome, evo/devo nerds: in the uppermost Ediacaran Dengying Formation (in the Three Gorges region of China, with the formation apparently centered in or largely in Guizhou province), Phys.org is reporting that researchers from Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Virginia Tech have found footprints arranged in two irregular but separate rows that are almost certainly the result of an ancient bilaterian traveling over the sea floor.