This photo is from a series of French postcards from 1902 illustrating women of the future. My first thought was, “they couldn’t imagine a woman doctor without having her dress like a man?”. But my second thought was that she looks very stylish; I especially like the hat.
I know that Reddit is immensely popular and has some good qualities, but I’ve never been able to get into it, because it invariably happens that anything I read there will be tainted by some hideous commentary. I don’t just mean comments I disagree with; I read creationist sites for entertainment, you know. I mean comments that cause me to despair for humanity.
Jessa Duggar, the 21 year old daughter of fundie parents with an obsession with popping out babies, has been touring museums to broaden her mind, I guess…or more likely, to practice a little motivated reasoning and rationalize her existing ignorance. She toured the Holocaust Museum and figured out what caused it: EVOLUTION.
Unspeakable, soul-shattering sexiness below the fold. Beware — only click through if your mind can resist the madness. Although no mind can.
Oh, so you’re afraid of whites being a minority?
Why? Are minorities treated as second-class citizens or something?
Brilliant.
Do you recognize this description of the American Humanist Association?
The American Humanist Association, which hates all religion with much fire and brimstone, has launched a national campaign to inspire Americans to refuse to say the entire Pledge of Allegiance everywhere, all the time until Congress officially removes the famous phrase “under God” from the patriotic, 31-word oath.
Susan Blackmore always lectures entertainingly — really, if you get a chance to hear her, you should — so I can guess how surprised she was when students claimed offense and walked out on her talk. They were religiously indoctrinated, and simply shut down their brains when the word “evolution” came up, and when she started presenting rational and secular explanations for the existence of religion, just forget it — there were a lot of students who thought you could only quote the Bible and Koran with unstinting reverence, accepting their divine claims at face value.
It is sad to see young people with such closed minds.
But one comment jumped out at me — it was so familiar.
I’m in Oxford, nicely ensconced in as 15th century stone tower, but having great difficulty finding a reliable, easy-to-access wireless signal, so connection is intermittent and usually when I’m trying to have breakfast.
Also, busy.
True confession: my wife has been on a historical feminism kick lately: the other day she forced me to watch Iron Jawed Angels with her. This evening we’ve got the PBS documentary One Woman One Vote on the TV right now. So it was amusing that Vox Day and David Futrelle had a ‘debate’ over whether women should be allowed to vote. Actually, Day proposed a debate on a subject that was settled in the USA about 95 years ago, and Futrelle laughed dismissively, and Vox Day declared himself the winner.
Critics such as Futrelle and Scalzi are of low socio-sexual rank, which means that they have the usual gamma male’s distaste for conflict that has a clear winner. The reason is that as long as they can avoid losing, they can still claim victory in their delusional gamma style.
Wait. But it was Vox Day who threw out a few non sequiturs and declared himself winner…this is confusing.
Anyway, the two movies were pretty good, you can watch them yourselves at the links.
So, we’ve had a weekend of late 19th/early 20th century feminism at my place. Any recommendations for movie/documentary treatments of feminist history in the 1960s onward? I’ve worked my way from beta to the gamma badge, I think, and now I’m looking for credit towards delta-hood, and — dare I aspire so high? — to someday make epsilon.
