Archive for the ‘Gender’ Category.

The Unbearable Lightness of Acceptable Bigotry

Returning from the ragged edge — where people become few and trees many — to the urbanscape — where people are many and trees are few — has been a tad jarring. Various good, bad, scary, wonderful, interesting things happen in two months of cruising. I don’t have time even to summarise them right now. [...]

Minor Disappointments

I felt a little frisson of interest and anticipation when I saw an article at Energy Bulletin entitled “Gender Issues”. I thought it might be a long-overdue discussion of gender and technocracy, gender and industrial technology, gender and power and recklessness, risk discounting, and other interesting issues. I thought it might address the dysfunctionality of [...]

In the case of Clueless vs. Clueless … (Sex & Aggression)

By reader request a rant of DeAnander’s from Stan’s Man on Fire review thread has been promoted to a frontpage article. I believe Stan posted this review in headbanging frustration at the liberal idiocy of this recent “fair and balanced” discussion of porn at Alternet. The two “debating opponents” — neither of whom, of course, [...]

Man On Fire: Friday Film Review

(excerpted from Sex & War, 2005 which is slightly cheating, but we haven’t had a FFR for a while) On September 24, 2004, CNN reported charges brought against three US Navy SEALS in the death of an Iraqi detainee, part of a much larger damage control investigation in the wake of the Abu Ghraib photo [...]

Enemy Women, Part 1: Left Behind (by Audrey)

When I was discharged from the army, one of the many things I was relieved about was that I would never again, as the lone female in my unit, have to share transportation with the rest of the guys when we were on travel. I would never again have to listen to Howard Stern on [...]

“Peace is Patriotic”

Dedicated to three American combat veterans: John Brown, Harriet Tubman and Crazy Horse. They disobeyed. When I was approached about doing this commentary, it was because I am a veteran. In fact, I made a career of the military. That career took me from the cynical and genocidal invasion of Vietnam to the equally cynical [...]

Dialiectics of Progress and Retrogression…

…is the opening section of the third chapter of Maria Mies’ canonical Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale – Women in the International Divison of Labor (Zed Books, 1986, 1998). It is a theoretical treatment of the whole business of the male-conquest theme, and how that theme maps onto the “civilized-backward” episteme that comes [...]

Indigenous Women Fight Back

By YIFAT SUSSKIND Indigenous activists are putting up a fight ­ against violence. At the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, activists are focused on passing a declaration that recognizes the right of Indigenous Peoples to their lands, territories, and resources. This organizing drive is seeking international legal protection from the violence done to Indigenous [...]

Dines on Imus

Don Imus and Ron Jeremy Racy Sex, Sexy Racism By GAIL DINES So Don Imus finally pushed the envelope too far by calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy headed hos”. This lethal combination of racism and sexism galvanized African-American and women’s groups, media watch-dog organizations and members of the public into action. His fate [...]

While we’re on Imus…

…here is Black Agenda Report’s Richard Muhammad Enabling Imus American Life – Racism & White Privilege Wednesday, 11 April 2007 by Richard Muhammad In a horrific display of racist solidarity, white media men have circled their wagons around Don Imus, the career broadcast bigot who called the Rutgers women’s basketball team a bunch of “nappy [...]