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Weekend Reads

Lauren

BABIES’ BABIES: A controversy is raging in the UK over a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old having a baby together, mostly because the 13-year-old father looks like a doe-eyed baby himself. Even I, with my own sexual history and statistical and academic knowledge of sexual relationships, had a hard time with this one because of the family history and assumption that there is more going on here than a couple of horny teenagers going at it. Thoughts welcome in the comments.

DOUBT: A review of the Oscar-nominated movie “Doubt” that presents the barriers of fear and self-interest when it comes to challenging patriarchal norms. A fair and challenging review, but, warning! Lots of spoilers.

COOKIE CUTTER LIVES: Thinking beyond the mom/dad/kid/dog family formation patterns.

NAKED AMBITION: PETA has long made the assertion that nude protests are a necessary and radical component to their activism. But why aren’t more men getting naked?

VICTIMHOOD: If being a victim is living with what someone else has done to you, why is “victim” such a dirty word?

TALES FROM A SURVIVOR: Why didn’t she just leave? Because she couldn’t until she did. See also, other things that let abusers off the hook.

OH BABY: If you aren’t having an orgasm during your delivery, as in, while you’re pushing a baby out your vaginal canal, ur doin it wrong.

LADY MUSIC: The folks at Post-Bourgie debate whether female rappers have “credibility,” or whether they are/were another “gimmick thunk up as yet another money-making angle for catering to men.”

THE OTHER MOTHER: Exploring race and gender in the new film Coraline. (Name drop: One of my awesomely creative friends from high school is an animator on this movie! I will not actually drop her name as to preserve her privacy.)

TEACHING MOMENTS: How to persuade your students that gender justice might be relevant for them, now or later.

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7 thoughts on Weekend Reads

  1. Okay, totally weird coincidence. One of MY awesomely creative friends from high school is an animator on Coraline. Different person (mine’s male) but how weird to see the heading about Coraline, think that thought, and then read the exact same thought.

  3. OMFG, Taken pissed me off so, so much. I felt dirty afterwards (and pissed that I’d spent money on it). That review touches on…about half of what infuriated me.

    (Although I didn’t realize the Albanians were supposed to be Muslim.)

  4. Pingback: The Heretic Loremaster » The Coraline Grab Bag!

  5. The Teaching Moments idea in the last link didn’t really resonate with me, just because in high school I was always really put off by heteronormative assumptions like that. I would immediately tune out whatever the teacher was saying, even if they did have a relatively progressive message like the one this teacher seemed to be trying to get across. I realize I’m not exactly the target audience for this exercise, though.

  6. Sigh. The stuff I’ve seen from the natural birth community about orgasmic birth has NOT been this weird “validating Freud” thing–the only midwives I’ve ever heard talk about witnessing it made it clear that they thought it was pressure on the clitoris (sometimes by the mother using her hand) that probably would account for any pleasurable feelings during birth. Being that every woman’s genitals are somewhat differently shaped and that babies can present and descend in different ways, or be of different sizes, it’s not unthinkable that some lucky women have an ideal combination (plus, a relaxed enough atmosphere) that allows them to access those nerve endings in that way. How many women have the possibility of doing birth that way is unknown. Certainly would be interesting to see if the number could be increased; orgasm beats anesthetic any day.

    But most people talk about it just to laugh at it or be shocked (as so many always are) that a woman dares to use her body for her own pleasure even in birth, because that’s icky and weird.

    Whoever’s discussing it, though, Freud’s opinion on orgasm should be entirely irrelevant.

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