Posts in: Race, Gender & Identity
- On Reproductive Justice and Women of Color
- But what we know is that reproductive justice isn’t just about freedom from coercive sterilization. It’s also about access to a full range of reproductive technologies, whether that’s birth control, sterilization, abortion or even childbirth. From Worried About Women of Color? Thanks, But No Thanks, Anti-Choicers. We’ve Got It Covered. by the kick-ass Miriam Pérez on [...] [3 Mar 2010]
- Immigrant crime is B.S.
- The evidence presented here powerfully refutes the widespread popular belief that America’s Hispanics have high crime rates. Instead, their criminality seems to fall near the center of the white national distribution, being somewhat higher than white New Englanders but somewhat lower than white Southerners. Taken as a whole, the mass of statistical evidence constitutes strong [...] [24 Feb 2010]
- Oppression renames its victims
- Oppression renames its victims, brands them as a farmer brands his cattle with a common signature. It always aims to subvert the individual spirit and the humanity of the victim; and the victim will more or less struggle to remove oppression and be free. Nigerian author Chinua Achebe in his essay “Spelling Our Proper Name,” in [...] [23 Feb 2010]
- On class and marriage
- And in the absence of alternative models of masculinity, many low-income men will compensate for their lack of respect and resources by cultivating a hypermasculine identity that scorns traditional definitions of responsible manhood. Stephanie Coontz, in “For Women, Redefining Marriage Material: The Good and the Bad” on the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog. [22 Feb 2010]
- On the internet as surrogate meeting place
- From Saudi women revel in online lives on GlobalPost: In a country where about one-third of the population regularly goes online, the internet gives women “a place to vent out our frustrations and our dreams,“ said Reem Asaad, 37, a professor of banking and finance in the Saudi port city of Jeddah who blogs at reemasaad.blogspot.com. This [...] [4 Feb 2010]
- On pornography and objectification — but not the way you think
- “Good sex”, for most of these men, starts with a striptease, moves on to oral, then to vaginal and concludes with anal or oral, together with a face shot or with swallowed ejaculate (the woman, it goes without saying, is the “catcher” for all this activity). There are no descriptions of feelings of pleasure in [...] [24 Jan 2010]
- On Haiti, Part 3 and Post-Katrina New Orleans, Part 1
- Regarding the U. S. Marines’ presence is Haiti, holding M-16s, no less: Here is — they had no business being there. Sure, if there’s some way where you have an army of bandits, which we haven’t seen, on any mass scale going and attacking, maybe you might bring in some guys like that. But right now, [...] [21 Jan 2010]
- On Westernized institutionalized sexism
- Westerners are quick to denounce customs in, say, the Muslim world that they perceive as limiting women. But in Germany, despite its vaunted modernity, a traditional perception of motherhood lingers. The half-day school system survived feudalism, the rise and demise of Hitler’s mother cult, the women’s movement of the 1970s and reunification with East Germany. Now, [...] [18 Jan 2010]
- On whiteness
- “Are Lebanese white people?” we asked the 71-year-old gentleman who considered himself white. “Yes,” he said, “although they’re real dark.” How about Italian Catholics; are they white? Sure. And Jews? Yes. What about the Chinese? “Yes,” he said, “they go to the white schools.” And Mexicans? “They’re becoming more white,” he said. “More of them [...] [29 Dec 2009]
- Africa(n movie roles) for Africans
- Now, let’s start by saying that Jennifer Hudson is a capable actress. She blew Beyoncé out the water in Dreamgirls and by all accounts she did her thing in The Secret Life of Bees. But like all outfits aren’t for all weather conditions, all parts aren’t for all people. It was an outright shock to [...] [21 Dec 2009]