Recent reports in the news about people who go on package tours to troubled places in the world:
Foreign tourists attacked in western Afghanistan
Attack on Afghanistan tourists puts spotlight on extreme holidays
Apparently for those who take the risk ‘the rewards are amazing’.
Somehow this makes me think of those people who do 'concern tourism' ( Read more... )

O HAI I HAV NOT RED A THING ENY1 HAZ SED SO FAR, and I assume my experiences and those of my culture are naturally universal.

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Today's question*: Did the groundhog see its shadow? What do you think?

Brought to you from a part of the world in which, groundhogs NO CAN HAZ, even if it is at least in the same hemisphere.

Surely this does not feature on the Russian version of the site?

*(And yesterday's about writing something backwards, WTF? are we 6, and clever as clever, we ( Read more... )

Apparently today is, according to LJ, Women's Equality Day.

Not outside the US of A, it ain't, because the 19th Amendment of the Constitution didn't apply.

InternationalWomen's Day is 8th March.

And as for the Writer's Block prompt:
Do you think women are treated as equals? What changes would you like to see?
Duh. Cringe.

ETA: Even if I would not ( ( Read more... )

Fascinating link to discussion on the question of whether female sexual pleasure is in itself empowering, plus her own longer meditation on the subject on Dr Petra's blog.

For me, this resonated with thoughts evoked by this post on Ambling Along the Aqueduct. I suppose I am a bit leery of attempts to find A New Language For Feminism, since too ( Read more... )

For those of you to whose attention this has not already come, Dr Petra Boynton problematises Clitoraid (and includes some excellent further links on the matter).

Just a few points of my own: I suspect that, awful as FGM is, the women in question probably have other matters that they see as having priority over getting their clitorises restored.

( Read more... )

Interesting and barely reported statistic I came across while reading something in connection with reference/review thinggy I must get out this evening. You know that research that allegedly found that 43% of women had sexual dysfunction (especially if you conflated various distinctly different phenomena) - it also found that over 30% of men were ( Read more... )

I have been more or less silent during the recent RaceFail events for several reasons. Largely because I haven't felt that I had anything particularly substantive to contribute, so why clog up the airwaves with my thoughts and feelings. It is not an area in which I have any confidence that I have anything more than any other middleaged straight ( Read more... )

There was a piece in the most recent Time Out (London edition, not yet online) concerning Peter Manseau, who, though not himself Jewish (agnostic offspring of a former Catholic priest and a nun), won the National Jewish Book Award. (Interview here and guestblogging here). Which, given the debates on cultural appropriation... gave me to ponder.

On ( Read more... )

Further to my snark yesterday I have realised that the article in question manifests a phenomenon (or two related phenomena) which were in play in a couple of my other posts towards the end of last week.

One is the designation of a group which will be the manifestation of certain qualities that we, the privileged and the ones with cultural power, ( Read more... )