• Distorted Dreams suggests an equal opportunity action for lesbian escorts. Factesque posted a related political cartoon.
• Cinnamon writes on gentrification and racism.
Hey, anyone remember when identity politics were regarded as actual politics?
• See Democratic Wings for coverage of stories on women’s rights, foreign policy, civil liberties, and more.
• Ellen Goodman takes on Larry Summers’ teachable moments:
When MIT scientist Nancy Hopkins dropped the dime on Summers, there was a firestorm of criticism. But that was followed by a second round in which he was defended as a victim of political correctness, a poor defenseless seeker of wisdom in the Ivy League madrassas.
George Will tagged professor Hopkins as hysterical, a word which, he failed to note, comes from the Greek root for uterus, thus proving that only women can be hysterical. Other pundits either compared Summers’s opponents to “religious fundamentalists,” accused Harvard of “neo-Stalinist intolerance,” or praised poor Larry for facing down “the gods of political correctness.”
Even The Washington Post editorial page said that if Summers was punished for the “crime of positing a politically incorrect hypothesis” the “chilling effect on free inquiry will harm everyone.” After all, the editorial said, he was “provoking fresh thought on big issues.”
Why didn’t I think of that? The suggestion that women were innately less able to do math and science wasn’t the same old tired stereotype with a sell-by date of 1636, when Harvard was established. It was a cutting-edge fresh thought!
• DED Space takes on the notion that Million Dollar Baby is “an insufferable, manipulative right-to-die movie.” Right.
• Cruella looks at a study that discerns the difference between young women’s and young men’s idea of what makes up a good sense of humor: “for a woman, a Good Sense Of Humor means someone who makes her laugh. For a man, it means someone who laughs at his jokes.”
• Dove’s Eye View points us to Lebanese Politics for Beginners. Also, Leila is a breast cancer survivor. In this post she shows off her beautiful bald head, inspired by Melissa Ethridge’s recent public appearances with no hair. I thought Ethridge looked lovely. Leila does, too.
• At Whirled View, Patricia looks at America, Europe, and the Iranian Question.
• Rowan asks whether rape in the military is a woman’s issue or a man’s issue. I’d posit it a human rights issue.
• Noli Irritare Leones has moved to a new site with WordPress. Welcome Lynn to her new domain.
All this hard politics! I don’t know how the little ladies do it with all the doilies to iron.
UPDATE:
Breaking my goal to only list female bloggers this week (again), this story absolutely cannot be passed up. Lest Blood Be Shed points to a post in which grotesque militarism is showed off in church:
“A guy was asked by his father to attend a ‘father-son’ event and he brought a camera and was really disturbed to see a place of Christian worship being used to promote militarism and warfare. Even though this guy is a Republican and supporter of the war, he was shocked at the visual propagandistic ritual, which reminded him of movies he had seen about Nazi pageantry. Anyway, his account is not the best but check out the photos – you have to see this to believe it.”