In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Selfless Signal-Boosting Wednesday

tigtog

A complement to our long-standing Shameless Self-Promotion Sundays, this thread is for links to pieces on other people’s blogs that you have found delightful memorable/provoking recently.  Please save the self-promotion links for this Sunday – use this thread to let Feministe readers know about the other blogs you love to read.

Guidelines:

  1. Ensure other readers have enough information about the post to make an informed choice on whether to click on your link. Content notes are advised for posts discussing problematic issues/incidents that might be NSFW or potentially distressing/triggering.
  2. Keep this thread focussed on the linking – the idea is to make your comments on the other blogs being linked! If you feel you must discuss it here, please take it to the Open or Spillover threads, depending on your assessment of its zombie stoush potential.

19 thoughts on Selfless Signal-Boosting Wednesday

    2. Oh, god. I’m not even surprised. Just sickened. Fucking nauseating. I’m surprised I didn’t happen on any of this while researching the residential schools, but I suppose the survivors wouldn’t really have known this was going on. How could this have been buried so long?

      What fucking people think to do this? Heinous enough to do it to adults, but kids. Kids. Fuck. Fuck. How could they?

      I can’t even begin to comprehend what could make someone think up this kind of shit. I don’t even want to comprehend it, I don’t want to immerse myself enough in that kind of thinking long enough to.

      1. Yep. Let’s starve the shit out of little NDN kids and see if we can learn something that will help white kids!

    3. What the fucking fuck.

      And this is a disgusting quotation that shows that Mosby doesn’t really get it:

      “I think they really did think they were helping people. Whether they thought they were helping the people that were actually involved in the studies, that’s a different question.”

    4. This story is a kick to the gut. The residential schools were horrific in and of themselves, and to know that some of the children were kept hungry and malnourished for the sake of “science” is just too much for me.

    5. I think about shit like this whenever someone shares something from ‘i fucking love science’ on FB

        1. IDK, I think Computer Soldier Porygon has a point–Science is often hailed as a truly objective, methodologically pure Force For Good and Life Improvement, often in contrast to religion, and yet Science has also been (and is) the cause of some truly horrific human rights abuses and was and is still mired in a number of -ist issues. But because it’s Science! and Good! and Objective! (and quite a lot of ‘New Atheists’ get really obnoxiously smug about this point) in many liberal circles, you’re not allowed to criticize anything related to it. One of the reasons I quit the secular society at my uni.

          In any case, while I’m horrified that this happened, I’m glad that it’s finally coming to light in mainstream press.

  2. There’s a petition for Governor Rick Perry to pardon Marissa Alexander, the Florida woman who got 20 years in prison because she fired warning shots at her abusive ex in defense of herself and her children, that I would like more people to sign. Over 68 thousand signatures so far. I don’t think much of Governor Perry, but if enough people sign on to it and petitions like it, who knows. Please sign if you have a moment.

    http://www.thepetitionsite.com/503/600/056/dont-imprison-marissa-alexander-for-standing-her-ground/

  3. It just blew my mind when I read about that case and the Florida law. How could you have a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years for such a wide category of crimes? It is beyond me how anyone could think that law was a good idea.

  4. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-17/federal-reserve-succession-clouded-by-sexism.html

    Here is a good article on sexism by Ezra Klein on the seemingly distant subject of Federal Reserve Chair appointment. But it’s a good article for several reasons.

    First, the Federal Reserve Chair is one of the powerful posts in the world, arguably even more powerful than president of the US. One word from the Fed chief and benchmark interest rates in countries as diverse as South Africa, Latvia and Japan go into a synchronized tailspin. The housing market is upended. Millions of Americans either refinance or don’t. Thousands of companies either invest or don’t. The prospect that an eminently qualified woman – Janet Yellen – may be tapped for the spot would be a giant leap for women in a field (monetary economics) where they’re barely represented above the token level.

    Secondly, Ezra gets into what I consider as the extremely evasive and vague nature of modern sexism. Just as anti-choicers would like to have us all believe that they’re motivated by secular (and not religious) reasons, sexists of today can’t just come out and say “we’re not comfortable with a woman in this spot.” Instead they beat around the bush in a million ways, blow up things beyond proportion, and generally pick until they find some excuse to oppose her that seems neutral. Klein’s got a good discussion of the dynamics playing out in Yellen’s case.

    Thirdly, and related to the first- in case nobody is noticed, but there are two overarching facts in the US political landscape today- one is that the middle class has not recovered from the financial crisis that started in 2007, underemployment is abysmal, income is down, and secondly is that Congress has long since given up attempting to tackle the problem. That leaves only one institution – the Federal Reserve, which can give us either stimulative monetary policy or reinforce austerity. And while the Federal Reserve’s instruments of stimulus are limited and not at all to my liking, they’re the only federal institution with even a hope of implementing an effacious, systematic policy response to unemployment.

    And Yellen, as Klein has pointed out, has always been (correctly so) an inflation ‘dove’, which means that she accepts the fact that core inflation is under control and that unemployment is the main problem facing the country right now. It’s important that Obama nominate her and that she is accepted as the next Fed Chair.

  6. http://titsandsass.com/the-bloody-state-gave-him-the-power-a-swedish-sex-workers-murder/

    Interview with Pye Jakobsson about the murder of her colleague Eve-Marree Smith Kullander, a Swedish sex worker who lost custody of her children to a violent and abusive ex-partner. Because of Sweden’s official policy of pathologising sex workers who refuse to quit, he was seen as the better parent and she was not given support when she complained about his abuse. Last week he murdered her.

Comments are currently closed.