Because everyone else has parodied that damn Gotye song. It was really hard not to just keep the verse by Kimbra unaltered ( Read more... )

This one's been floating around for a long, long time. But, as these posts often do, it takes a specific thing to make me point out, once again, that the game is fucking fixed.

So yeah. Makeup. And this damn thing. Ten "scary celebrity closeups" *cue spooky theremin*. All I'm seeing are nine women who adhere to the standards of beauty and Iggy Pop ( Read more... )

So yeah, Naomi Wolf. I know The Beauty Myth rocked a lot of people's worlds back in the day, but it never really rocked mine. It just kind of came off as a restatement of the very obvious that there were already better pieces on, and seemed a bit condescending and reductionist. I spent a few years feeling left out of the Naomi Wolf lovefest. And ( Read more... )

It's the end of November, and that means I've been hearing Christmas music every time I leave my house for about a month already. Of course, that includes the perennially creepy "Baby, It's Cold Outside". I mean, Christmas isn't Christmas without a nice holiday date rape anthem, right? (Here's a link to the lyrics)The thing that really gets me, ( Read more... )

The idea is pretty much everywhere, from the most radical of feminists, to the most superficial ad campaigns put out by companies that also sell skin-bleaching agents in India. "Love Your Body". It's about the only thing most feminists, most mainstream people, and the Empowerment Industry seem to find common ground on. And on its face, it's a ( Read more... )

I was going to write clever things, but there's way too much going on, and besides, I've been reading some really awesome stuff online, and feel like sharing with the class.

Some interesting points on male geeks, and the flaws of evolutionary psychology, care of Restructure:
Evolutionary psychology arguments support white supremacy
Male IT geeks ( Read more... )

There are many persistent memes that just won't die, no matter how much I really, really want them to. It's a special kind of stupid cultural meme that gets help up as a great and wondrous thing by the very people it's insulting, though. Those are the ones that have just enough flattery with some self-fulfilling prophecy sauce that create the real ( Read more... )

Ahh, virginity. One of the most deeply ingrained cultural concepts that carries so much weight that people are still dying for it, devoting their lives to finding it and paying a fortune for it, that happens to be completely bullshit. Like ill-defined enough bullshit that few people can even agree on what the hell it is, yet apparently is something ( Read more... )

Anyone who has ever gotten into the Abortion Argument has seen the anti-choicers start bleating on that a fetus/zygote/blastocyst is a person, or a human if they think they're being very clever. And then much of the time, the conversation then turns to whether or not this is in fact the case ( Read more... )

On January 3rd, Mary Daly died. For those unfamiliar, well, the Wikipedia entry is a decent start. If you hate links, I'll sum things up as best I can. Daly was a Radical Second-Wave feminist, and one of the louder voices in 2nd Wave feminism. And of course, there's a lot of folks arguing as to how awesome her influence actually was with regards ( Read more... )