Posted with the kind permission of Kevin Moore. Click on the cartoon to see it bigger, and to see Kevin’s commentary and links.

In addition to Kevin’s comments, I’d point out this post by Ezra, pointing out that (by the weird definition of “subsidize” conservatives are suddenly using), Stupak “did not block the federal government from subsidizing abortion. All it did was block it from subsidizing abortion for poorer women.”

And read as well this piece, pointing out that by the Bishop’s definition of federal funding, the enormous support the Federal government pays to Catholic hospitals and charities must be a subsidization of religion, and is presumably unconstitutional.

As has been noted previously, I love dates like this. (Thanks to Jake Squid for pointing this one out to me!)

Consider this an open thread. Post what you like, with whom you like, for as long as you like. Self-linkage is welcome.

I don’t believe in “natural” rights. Rights are a human institution; those rights that aren’t institutionalized by humans don’t exist. The only rights I, or any of us, have, are the rights that are recognized by the society in which we live.

So I don’t think — for example — that same-sex couples have a right to equal treatment under the law when it comes to marriage, in most US states. They don’t. They should, and I think they will in my lifetime. But we’re not there yet.

When people speak of having rights that aren’t recognized by society, I can’t agree. Where would rights like that come from? From God, I suppose, but I don’t believe in God. From nature, one could say, if one has never ever watched a nature show in one’s life. If you have a right to live, and the government shoots you anyway, and there are no consequences for those who shot you, then in what meaningful sense did the right to live ever exist?

Of course, it can be powerful to speak as if there are rights that exist outside of human institutions. It’s a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy; if you say “I have a right to blah, and that right is being denied to me,” then that use of the rights rhetoric makes it more likely that someday you will have the right to blah. I acknowledge that speaking of rights that way can be useful. But I don’t think it’s accurate.

Illustration via TRG’s Flickr page.

Post what you like, when you like, about what you like, with whatever links (including self-links) you like, for whatever purpose you like, wearing whatever underwear you like, eating whatever food you like, and liking what you like because you like it. Like, wow.

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The first two minutes of this piece are stunning. After that, it turns into a well-done cover of Toto’s “Africa,” which is one of these songs I like for the sound but the lyrics are annoying because they scream exoticization of Africa. And the earworm factor is not to be believed.

1. Wal-Mart Bans Gay Couple For Not Shoplifting
2. The Stupak Amendment might, in effect, make sure that insurance that covers abortion is unavailable to most women - regardless of if they use the public option, or the government exchange, at all. I really hope this shit never becomes law.
3. List of Democrats who voted for Stupak Amendment. They’re not all in very conservative districts, either. Let’s hope for some primary challenges.
4. Whose Health Care Victory Is It? Not Women’s. More on Stupak, from Ann Friedman.
5. GLAAD should lighten up about South Park using the word “fag.”
6. You know, every single chronic pain patient I’ve known in my life has had horrible experiences like this. Is it that way in other countries, or is it just another example of how much the US sucks? It seems to me that we could be doing so much better, be so much more humane.
7. “It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war.” Click through to see who said it.
8. This expectation that “good people” won’t be bigots is rather amazing.
9. It turns out DVR is good for television networks, after all.
10. Very impressive face paintings.
11. Diary of an Anxious Black Women discusses Rhianna, “Precious,” Toni Morrison, the quest for authenticity, and the representation of black women’s pain in media. Really good post.
12. Do Smart, Hard-Working People Really Deserve To Make More Money?
13. Cat and Girl: The Trap. Sometimes I love Cat and Girl.
14. Sex after mastectomy; Why aren’t doctors preparing women? Note: Reading this article will leaved you pissed off more than you might expect. (Via.)
15. On the White Anti-Racist Spokesperson
16. The Obama Administration is secretly pushing an incredibly awful international copyright treaty.
17. Study: The Government is Discriminating Against Asian Business Owners.
18. What if we spent just one year spending as much on internal infrastructure as we do on the Defense Department?
19. Spending $47,000 on dinner for five. Two points. One, that’s the right table to have been serving, as far as the tip goes. Two, couldn’t a restaurant that charges this month spring for a receipt-printer that was designed this century?
20. Why US health care is so expensive: Like the restaurant in the above link, It all comes down to prices. We simply pay more, for everything.
21. Pantshead asks Shoshana Johnson if she’s ever been to Iraq. No, really. Also, the country isn’t 93% white and 63-82% male, so why are MSNBC’s guests? (Via.)

First of all, please check this list of Representatives at RH Reality check. If one of them is your representative, please give them a call right now. They’ll be voting at any time now, so don’t wait.

The news:

House Democratic leaders agreed Friday night to settle an impasse over abortion by letting the entire House vote on a proposed solution, a risky decision that could determine the fate of their trillion-dollar overhaul of the nation’s health care system.

Under the agreement, anti-abortion Democrats will be permitted to offer an amendment on the House floor to the health-care overhaul bill. The amendment would prohibit a new government-run insurance plan created by the health-care bill from offering to cover abortion services, congressional sources said. It would also block people who received federal subsidies for the purchase of health insurance from buying policies that offered coverage for abortions.

The deal clears the way for the dozens of Democratic lawmakers who oppose abortion to lend their support to the health care package, the most dramatic expansion of health coverage in more than 40 years. It also satisfies the demands of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had threatened to oppose the House bill.

If the amendment from Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) passes, said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the bishops conference, “we become enthusiastic advocates for moving forward with health care reform.”

The amendment is expected to pass with the combined support of more than 40 anti-abortion Democrats and virtually every House Republican. That likelihood meant that leaders of the much larger group of Democrats who support abortion rights were not happy to learn of the deal.

“There will be no abortion, not just with public funds, but with private funds under the public option, and that’s not acceptable,” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.).

House leaders met with that bloc of Democrats late Friday to try to quell their frustration., but the agreement makes clear that they believe abortion-rights Democrats will find it difficult to vote against the health-care bill even with such a restriction attached to it.

According to Politico, “Female Democrats on the Rules Committee, including Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter, left the room during consideration of the Stupak amendment and didn’t cast a vote.”

Keep in mind, even before this amendment, the House bill restricted abortion coverage. But it didn’t do enough to punish poor women, so that wasn’t good enough for either the Blue Dogs, the Republicans, or the Catholic Church.

Ezra writes:

If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure. Abortion coverage will not be outlawed in this country. It will simply be tiered, reserved for those rich enough to afford insurance themselves or lucky enough to receive from their employers.

From USA Today (via Jack and Jill Politics):

Nearly 90% of private health insurance policies now offer abortion coverage, and almost half of women with private insurance have it. But women covered under the new system would have to find supplemental insurance or pay out of pocket for an unanticipated procedure that can cost from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on complexity. For anyone unable to afford it, this would amount to a de facto ban.

From Democrasheild:

If the Stupak amendment passes, uninsured women who get health care through the public option will have to pay out-of-pocket to get an abortion. And even if a woman uses her own money to buy an insurance plan from a private company through the exchange, she won’t be able to get a plan that covers abortion. [...]

The “exchanges” discussed there are health insurance exchanges, which are marketplaces where people will be able to purchase insurance. Since insurance companies will have to compete against one another and the public option. the exchanges will provide better insurance plans at lower costs. They’re designed to help those who don’t have insurance or who have inadequate insurance but can’t afford better.

Because many small employers are expected to switch to using the exchanges, this means that women who currently have abortion coverage through their small employer, will have their coverage replaced with insurance that doesn’t cover abortion.

Ezra also points out, even if (as now seems likely) this amendment is part of the bill the House passes, that doesn’t guarantee it’ll be in the final legislation: “Even if it muscles into the House bill, it will also have to pass in the Senate, and then survive conference, before it becomes law.” That seems like a pretty thin reed of hope to me, but better than no hope at all.

I’ve been trying to find out if the Stupak Amendment contains exceptions for abortions necessary to prevent immediate threats to the life or health of the woman. I haven’t been able to find out, so far.

This is a post-election thread; feel free to discuss any of the recent election news, future election trends, etc., here.

Virginia and New Jersey: No surprises here. I don’t think these races indicate national trends, but I can’t blame Conservatives for grabbing on to any hope they can.

In the end, I think the single best thing the Democrats can do for 2010 is to get aggressive and desperate about improving the economic situation; for instance, with a big temporary cut in payroll taxes. But I doubt they’ll do it, since “gutsy” has never in my lifetime been something Democrats do well.

New York: Frankly, the Republican who was pushed out of the race — who was pro-choice and pro-marriage equality — really does seem out of step with the Republican base. For that reason, I think the Republican base in NY did the principled thing by rebelling, just as the Democratic base in Connecticut was right to rebel against being represented by Joe Lieberman.

Will this be really good for the Democrats in the end, as many Democrats are currently crowing? I don’t know.

Washington state: Huzzah for a victory on civil unions. Dammit that it was so close.

Maine

Maine should be the death of the claim that people don’t hate gays, they just hate being told what to do by the Courts. The folks who oppose equality have never cared about that, except as a pretext, so they could oppose equality while pretending not to be bigots.

The folks in Maine did everything the way they’re “supposed” to. They were polite, they were organized. They spent years building up support with face-to-face contacts. They went through the legislature, not the courts.

None of that makes any difference to the people who oppose equality. None of it ever did.

Quoting Andrew Sullivan:

The hard truth is: people are still afraid of this, and our opponents knew how to target their fears very precisely. They have honed it to an art - their prime argument now is that although adults can handle gay equality, children cannot. And so they play straight to heterosexuals whose personal comfort with gay people is fine but who sure don’t want their kids to turn out that way. One way to prevent kids turning out that way, the equality opponents argue, is to ensure that they never hear of gay people, except in a marginalized, scary, alien fashion. And this referendum was clearly a vote in which the desire to keep gay people invisible trumped the urge to treat them equally.[...]

But civil rights victories, the final and enduring ones, are always built on the foundations of defeats. Sometimes, the defeat of a minority’s sincere aspiration to equality helps reveal the injustice of the discrimination and the cruelty of the marginalization. Sometimes, it helps show just how poorly treated we are, and galvanizes a community to fight back more fiercely as we saw in that amazing march on DC last month. That has certainly been true of previous civil rights movements. It is just as true of ours.

So congrats, Maine Equality. You did a fine job. Congrats, HRC. You helped. No congrats to Obama who is treating this civil rights movement the way Kennedy first treated his. But we don’t need Obama.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And we will win in due course, with a good spirit and keen arguments, and with passion and conviction in our hearts. We will win.

Tor.com has just published “The Memory of Wind,” a novelette¹ by Rachel Swirsky, who also contributes to “Alas” as Mandolin. The story is available on Tor’s site as prose, as an audio file (read by Mandolin herself), and in a number of portable-device friendly downloads.

“The Memory of Wind” concerns Iphigenia, the daughter of King Agamemnon, who Agamemnon sacrificed to bring good winds. As you might imagine, the story has feminist themes.

This is almost my favorite of Mandolin’s stories; it’s beautiful and searing and incredibly sad, and I’ve read it a few times. I highly recommend it.

1. ”The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula awards for science fiction define the novelette as having a word count of between 7,500 and 17,499, inclusive.” –Wikipedia (back)

[Visual description:
Panel one: Dude wearing "Uncle Sam" hat and a Hawaiian shirt is walking alongside a cliff, with John Keynes, who has a big mustache.
HAT DUDE: Keynes, you are old-fashioned and useless. Modern economics has transcended you.
Panel 2: Hat Dude teeters on the edge of falling off the cliff.
HAT DUDE: Oh Dear! I am plummeting over a cliff! SAVE ME KEYNES!
Panel 3: Keynes has caught hat dude by the wrist and is pulling him to safety.
KEYNES: It's okay... I've got you!
HAT DUDE: Thank you, Keynes!
Panel 4: The duo resumes their walk.
HAT DUDE: As I was saying, Keynes, you're of no use at all! ]

A cartoon that was inspired by Paul Krugman’s article “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” Click on the cartoon to see a bigger version.

We’ve heard it before, but it’s always neat to see a map:

Via Matt, who got it from Openleft, at a link which is currently dead but which I hope will revive. Matt writes:

…progressive politics is badly disadvantaged by a situation in which the overwhelming majorities of political leaders and prominent media figures are white men. There are plenty of white men with progressive views, but in general the majority of white men are not progressive and the majority of progressives are not white men. Drawing from the relatively small pool of white male progressives means drawing from a shallow talent pool.

From an article entitled “Precarious Manhood,” which was referred to on a guest post yesterday:¹

If manhood is viewed as elusive and tenuous, two implications are that (a) challenges to men’s manhood will provoke anxiety and threat-related emotions among men and (b) men will often feel compelled to demonstrate their manhood through action, particularly when it has been challenged.

There are undoubtedly many actions that men can perform to bolster their status as “real” men and thus assuage their feelings of gender role stress even if these actions provide only temporary relief from masculinity concerns. For example, men  may  display  manhood  by  drinking  heavily,  driving  fast, excelling at sports, making lots of money, bragging about their sexual  exploits,  and  fathering  many children, to name a few.

Indeed, across several empirical demonstrations of responses to gender identity threats, men who underwent challenges to their masculinity showed decreased liking for other nonprototypical members of their gender in-group (Schmitt & Branscombe, 2001), projected assumptions of homosexuality onto a male target (Bramel, 1963), sexually harassed a woman (Maass, Cadinu, Guarnieri, & Grasselli, 2003), took stronger levels of electric shock (Holmes, 1971),  and  overestimated  their  height  and  sexual  experience (Cheryan, Cameron, Katagiri, & Monin, 2008).

1. Vandello, J.A., Bosson, J.K., Cohen, D., Burnaford, R.M. & Weaver, J.R. (2008). Precarious Manhood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95 (6), 1325 – 1339. Pdf link. (back)

This is an open thread. Post what you like, when you like it, and don’t let nobody tell you otherwise. Self-linking is a joy unto the blog.

1. My favorite post this week was the awesome photo gallery, compiled by Liss at Shakesville, of female farmers around the world. Check it out.
2. 25 Key Principles For Immigration Policy Reform
3. What is “disability”?
4. Video of fire-breathing, in slow motion. I eventually got bored, but before I reached that point I was enthralled.
5. Marlee Matlin is creating a well-placed stink about the lack of captioning available for online video. There’s a relevant “Alas” post about this here.
6. Intelligent anti-gay conservatives find discussing gay marriage painful, because they know they have no argument. Somehow, my heart isn’t bleeding for Ross. (Via The American Scene.) Be sure to read David Link’s response, too.
7. Anatomy of a Slur: David Link (again!) on anti-gay ads in Maine.
8. Global warming is a threat to national security
9. Paying attention to how citizens in Muslim countries view the US
10. End Fat Talk. Please, please end it.
11. Amazing images of pollution in China.
12. Graduating during a recession has big, long-lasing negative consequences. “If you’re graduating from college this spring, you’ll be sitting around at the age of thirty-five still suffering from the fact that Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Ben Nelson, and Kent Conrad decided to make the stimulus bill stingier in order to better bolster their credentials as preening centrists.”
13. Video — the biggest gathering of bats in the world.  I loved the final two shots of the bats.
14. A collection of links to scholars arguing for and against smaller class sizes. The upshot seems to be that smaller class sizes make the biggest difference for young kids and in schools serving “underprivileged” populations.
15. Afghanistan is just not that important.
16. FWD/Forward describes a really amazingly offensive episode of Torchwood.
17. FedEx and UPS pay the post office to deliver their packages to rural areas.
18. Whoopsie, we destroyed all hope of a functioning government:
    “The supply-siders are to a large extent responsible for this mess, myself included. We opened Pandora’s Box when we got the Republican Party to abandon the balanced budget as its signature economic policy and adopt tax cuts as its raison d’être. In particular, the idea that tax cuts will “starve the beast” and automatically shrink the size of government is extremely pernicious.

    Indeed, by destroying the balanced budget constraint, starve-the-beast theory actually opened the flood gates of spending. As I explained in a recent column, a key reason why deficits restrained spending in the past is because they led to politically unpopular tax increases. But if, as Republicans now maintain, taxes must never be increased at any time for any reason then there is never any political cost to raising spending and cutting taxes at the same time, as the Bush 43 administration and a Republican Congress did year after year.”

19. Another stunning photo gallery, this time of Diwali celebrations around the world.
20. “I’m so tired of stories that take place in the same three neighborhoods in New York or LA. I’m tired of young white people and their love problems. I’m tired of FBI agents.”
21. Farmer grows pumpkins with human faces. (In 1938.) Creepy.

From The Huffington Post:

An amendment that would prevent the government from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.

Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.[...]

“The defense contractors have been storming his office,” said a source with knowledge of the situation. “Inouye either will get the amendment taken out altogether, or water it down significantly. If they water it down, they will take out the Title VII claims. This means that in discrimination cases, they will still force you into a secret forced arbitration on KBR’s (or other contractors’) own terms — with your chances of prevailing practically zero. The House seems to be very supportive of the original Franken amendment and all in line, but their hands are tied since it originated in the Senate. And since Inouye runs the show on this bill, he can easily take it out to get Republicans and the defense contractors off his back, which looks increasingly likely.”

This is possible because the bill is now in conference committee, where the House and Senate versions of the bill are merged into a single bill.

Kos has lots of contact info for Inouye, and more information (including the claim that various congressional staffers have anonymously accused Inouye of sexual harassment and in one case rape).

This is it! The place! For what you want! How you want! Good linking! Self linking! Crap that’s been moved from other threads where it was off-topic! It’s all here! I’m so excited!

My vacation continues, by the way. It keeps on snowing and looking very pretty, but it isn’t sticking. But the fire is warm and I feel terribly relaxed. Unsurprisingly, there will be fewer links than usual in this link farm.

(Via Womanist Musings:)

1. White people policing young white men who dress “too” “black”
2. Damn, I miss Hilzoy. Read her response to the argument that it’s a good idea for the US to invade other countries to “liberate” the residents. “Saying that the problem is that we lack the wisdom and virtue to do this is like saying that the problem with the USSR in the 30s was that Stalin was not sufficiently wise and virtuous to really make totalitarianism work for the people of Russia.”
3. Gender Presentation, Disability and Intersections
4. A bit of perspective: July 1863 rioting in New York City.
5. What’s wrong with saying that Donny Osmund is Blacker Than Michael Steele. (Click through to Global Comment to read the whole thing.)
6. The increasing meaninglessness of the term “Anti-Israel”
7. Why Huckabee can’t win the Republican primary — and why whoever beats him can’t win the general.
8. On the subject of “useful” advice given to disabled people
9. Reappropriate examines anti-Asian bias in college admissions: Part 1, Part 2. While you’re there, check out the spiffy new superhero-themed blog header.
10. Is getting rid of lead paint empirically the most successful anti-crime policy of all time? (And see here, as well.)
11. Fat people are underrepresented as governors. I liked the word “Flintstonian.”
12. Schrodinger’s Rapist. “When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape.”

Definites:

13 12 Monkeys.

Leading contenders:

Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Time Bandits

The “Future Echos” episode of Red Dwarf.

Groundhog Day

The “Time and Punishment” segment from Treehouse of Horror V

“Blink” from Dr. Who

Maybes:

Primer

Time Crimes

Peggy Sue Got Married

The Terminator (or maybe T2)

Back To The Future

The Prisoner of Azkiban

I’m interested in more suggestions. Eventually, I’ll whittle it down to 4-6 items.

Also, if you’re in Portland and interested in attending, let me know. :-)

What do folks think of the latest suggested compromise for the public option?

This idea — which has a lot of liberals excited — would create a Federal public option. But it would also allow any individual state government to decline making the public option available to their citizens.

The hope is that conservative Democrats like Ben Nelson, who oppose a public option, would be willing to vote for this, since it essentially punts the public option decision to state legislatures. (Both Nelson and Lieberman have said this idea is “worth looking at,” which isn’t a commitment, but it is the most positive comment they’ve said about any public option proposal so far). At the same time, more liberal senators would (one hopes) be able to get a reasonably strong public option for their own constituents.

What’s nice about this policy, I think, is that it’s easily adjustable. If the public option turns out to be a disaster, this would make it relatively easy for states to drop it. But if it is in fact successful, then it would be easy for states without it to change their mind.

Of course, the devil is in the details, and this proposal is so new that there aren’t any details to look at yet. And the conservative Democrats may yet decide to oppose it, or water it down to the point of uselessness.

Another idea being floated that’s gaining a lot of interest — and could possibly get some Republican votes — is a two-year tax break to companies that either hire new workers or bump up their part-time workers to full-time. There seems to be a fair amount of economic evidence that this policy could jump-start hiring, so I’m for it.

I’m thrilled to announce that Friends of Lulu has nominated Hereville for two awards! “The Lulu Awards recognizes the the people and projects that helped to open eyes and minds to the amazing comic and cartooning work by and/or about women.”

Hereville was nominated for the Leah Adezio Award For Best Kid-Friendly Work, and Mirka was nominated for Best Female Character.

To vote for Hereville (or for the other nominees — swell folks, all of them!), go to Friends of Lulu and follow the directions there.

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Hey, speaking of Hereville, whatever happened to it? I’m still working on it, believe it or not. Comics are slow!

The graphic novel will be coming out from Abrams in late 2010 (in time for Hanukkah!). I’m just finishing up the second draft of the pencils now, and I’ll begin work on the final art in a bit over a week.

Meanwhile, just to whet people’s appetites, here’s a penciled page from chapter one:

Krista at Muslimah Media Watch, in the first of a series reviewing the Globe and Mail’s “Behind the Veil” series (about about women in Kandahar, Afghanistan), begins by objecting to the title:

They could not have come up with a more clichéd title if they had tried, and there is absolutely no excuse for such a lack of creativity at such a big newspaper. To illustrate just how overdone this title is, a Google search of “behind the veil” (in quotes) gives about 569,000 results, including articles and books on women in Iran, “Western” journalists’ encounters with “women in conservative Islamic societies”, representations of Muslim women in Indian writings, an Australian woman’s experiences as a nurse in Saudi Arabia, prostitution in Iran, HIV/AIDS in Muslim countries, and even a BBC report from 2001 that also focused on Afghan women. The point is, it’s been done, ad nauseam, especially (but not exclusively) with regards to Muslim women, and “behind the veil” as a name is just plain lazy. Maybe that sounds harsh, but my frustration comes from having seen titles like this time and time again, and the implication that the only reason to pay attention to Muslim women is in order to de-veil them.

In addition to the lack of creativity is the message that this title sends, particularly to Afghan women: “The veil is the only thing that comes to mind when we think of you. It takes us a whole lot of effort to consider that, behind the clothing you wear, there might actually be real people worth talking to.” [...]

Listening to the journalist’s introduction, available in video form from the series’ website, and reading the foreign editor’s note explaining the rationale behind the series, I was struck by just how formulaic it all sounded. Afghan women are to be pitied, and Afghan men and/or culture are at the root of all of their problems. Oppression can be measured by how many layers of clothing women wear. Not that there aren’t problems for Afghan women, but the lack of complexity anywhere in the introduction surprised me.

There’s lots more at Krista’s post (including praising the Globe & Mail for being unusually open about their methodology); I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this series.

This is something I’ve read again and again; women’s activists in Afghanistan, and many other places, are sick of westerners focusing on what women wear as the leading indicator of Muslim women’s oppression. From an article about Sakena Yacoobi, an incredible women’s activist in Afghanistan:

Afghan women “wear hijab because they want to,” she stated. “Yes, there was a time during the Taliban that they had it wear [it], but now if they don’t want to, they don’t have it wear it.” When those outside of Afghanistan see the garb as oppressive and “want to teach us human rights, when they want to teach us democracy, when they want to teach us all these things, [it is] according to Western culture. And that is not right.”

There’s a lot Naomi Wolf says that I disagree with, but this statement (from Wolf’s Facebook) seems on target:

When you travel throughout the Muslim world, listening to women there, you often hear FROM WOMEN THEMSELVES more nuanced views of the headscarf, and of modest clothing, than you hear in the West; and — a point I cannot make often enough — when you actually listen to Muslim feminist or women’s leaders, many of them wish the West, with all its resources and potential for positive dialogue with the Muslim world, would focus its attention more on the life-and-death or survival-level challenges women and girls often face in Muslim countries - and in the developing world generally — from bride killings to legal subjugaton to lack of access to clean water and safety for their kids – than on what women are wearing, as if that is the only possible measure of their wellbeing.

I’m against anyone being forced to dress in a certain way — including using the government to force women and girls not to veil (1 2 3)– but this is not the primary issue facing Muslim women today.

(Many links via Fatemah’s link round-up.)

Say what you want, link what you want. Self-linking is the stuff.

By the way, the bad news is I’ve been posting less often because I’m working hard on the Hereville graphic novel. The good news is, I’m working hard on the Hereville graphic novel.

Via LL, Eugene on My Modern Met writes:

The sculpture “What You see Might Not Be Real,” by Chen Wenling, was displayed at a Beijing gallery Sunday. A bull, meant to represent Wall Street, is seen ramming the biggest con man of all time, Bernie Madoff, into a wall. Totally deserving, if you ask me.

The huge cloud coming out of the bull’s rear not only refers to the end of a greedy era, but also symbolizes the danger of virtual bubbles in international financial markets. In a society based on desire and money, some people choose to create many false impressions, while others sadly fall for them.

* * *

1. A defense of gender-neutrality in early childhood.
2. Tiger Beat Down on Polanski excusers. (Via)
3. Reading about this case of a couple kept apart as one of them died reminds me: People who are against same sex marriage are hateful and cruel. That’s all they are, that’s all they’ve ever been.
4. Oh, and they’re insincere about not being bigots, too.
5. $41,000 to $470,000. That’s the lifetime financial cost of being a same-sex, rather than opposite-sex, couple.
6. Controversial All Black School Opens in Ontario
7. CBS Feeling the Pressure to drop Lou Dobbs. (This alternet story on the same subject is interesting, as well.)
8. The Right’s Smear Campaign Against Kevin Jennings.
9. Life In Four Bottles Bint quotes a correspondent, who says “Damn! I’m already on the third one!” Sometimes I feel like I’m not even at bottle two yet.
10. Racism or Free Speech? Maybe both. An Asian student puts up a racist flyer full of “funny” racist jokes about Asians.
11. Is mandating that Americans buy health insurance Constitutional?
12. Looking at this chart of job loss in this recession, compared to past recessions, may make you weep. And if you’re an elected Democrat, it should definitely make you weep, and perhaps panic.
13. Disclosure is not information.
14. Texas prepares to cover up the execution of an innocent man.
15. Rabbi Brant on the Goldstone Report, and why he finds it trustworthy.
16. Why women have sex, why men have sex, and why the hell is the media so determined to pretend that the reasons are vastly different?
17. How “paper sons” were part of the Chinese American immigration experience. (And by the way, go welcome back Reappropriate to active blogging!)
18. Glenn Sacks, the least horrible MRA, is hosting a debate on his blog between two scholars, one from a feminist perspective, one from an MRA perspective, about domestic violence.

In her review of the second season premiere of “Dollhouse,” Maia wrote “the scene that owned this episode was Fran Kranz and Amy Acker in a room,” but didn’t end up saying that much about the scene. (Which is fine, what Maia wrote about the rest of the episode was great).

PetPluto, in contrast, spent about half of her review discussing The Scene. I especially liked this observation: Read the rest of this entry »

Consider this an open thread. Discuss whatever you like, for as long as you like. Link whatever you like, including yourself. Be free!

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Given Myca’s post, I thought it would be a good time to list some of my favorite right-wing blogs. (There are probably another couple I’m just not thinking of at the moment.)

These are all blogs I can expect to disagree with on a regular basis, and sometimes to be pissed off by. Nonetheless, in most cases, these are conservative dissenters, not mainstream conservatives. I do read some mainstream conservative blogs on a regular basis, because I feel I should, but I can’t honestly claim to admire their thinking.

Eunomia. Daniel Larison is one of the smartest bloggers on foreign policy, period.

Independent Gay Forum. They do tedious partisan comments fairly regularly (trashing the Dems for the many times the Dems aren’t good allies of queer rights — which would be fair if they had one-tenth the passion for trashing the Republican party for its even worse anti-gay bias). But they have great analysis of same-sex marriage issues here. Jonathan Rauch is their most famous writer, but David Link is the blogger who makes this a great blog.

The American Scene. Multiple bloggers here, but Conor Friedersdorf is the one to read. He’s bracing to read because he genuinely wants the right to be intellectually rigorous and honest.

The Volokh Conspiracy features a number of mediocre, paint-by-numbers conservatives, and one (David Bernstein) who is even worse than that. But Eugene Volokh himself is very often worth reading, and Dale Carpenter is one of the best bloggers out there on equal marriage rights and other queer legal issues.

The Agitator. Radley Balko, on 99% of issues, is a generic right-wing libertarian, who worships the market and hates eeevviiiiillll big government. But that’s okay, because he spends 99% of his blogging focusing on documenting how the police and the justice system brutally abuse ordinary Americans, and there’s no blogger out there doing a better job at that.

Marriage Debate Blog. Although run by people who are anti-equality (mostly by Eve, who’s a very nice person) — and the bias does show, in that they’re far more likely to link to a mediocre anti-gay marriage piece than they are to link to an equally mediocre pro-equality piece — this blog does a fairly good job at linking to a lot of interesting news related to marriage, marriage equality, and families and the law in general.