Posts tagged YES THIS
Inept
who has too many thoughts
Brute Reason: I keep hearing all this stuff about how secularism/atheism has nothing...
I keep hearing all this stuff about how secularism/atheism has nothing to do with feminism and blahblah. Here’s the interesting thing. For me, my journeys to each of those identities were deeply intertwined with one another. Although I haven’t believed in god for a really long time, what really…
I bet you did.
Did you estimate what mpg your car is getting? Did you figure out how many hamburgers you could get for six bucks? Did you think about how long it would take you to get somewhere given the speed and distance? Did you plan a meal so all the components would be done at the same time? Did you encounter anything on sale? Did you figure out how many groceries you could get for how much money you had?
There are about a million other daily, unconscious tasks that use algebra or at least algebraic thinking. Just because you weren’t writing out an equation or employing variables doesn’t mean you weren’t using the skills that algebra and other math courses taught you.
Science and math aren’t important because you’re going to need to know the exact steps of photosynthesis or the quadratic formula. They’re important because they teach you scientific and mathematical literacy and rational thinking, and that is sorely needed in a world where charlatans and cheats or people with a political or religious agenda can get away with all manner of pseudoscience and bullshit because people don’t have enough scientific literacy or critical thinking skills to accurately weigh the arguments or even discern where they fail logically.
So study math and science, and art, and literature, and history, and politics, not because you’re going to need it or it’s going to do something specific for you, but because an uninformed populace is bad for the world.
Bless this commentary.
I’m a lit/history teacher. I calculate percentages and averages ALL THE TIME.
(Source: n3on-nov3mb3rs, via wiwaxia)
The standard liberal feminist or egalitarian stance here is that it is patriarchy that genders war. Sexism decrees that women are too weak, too delicate for the battlefield so it must be left to the bigger, stronger, braver men. The solution, they argue, is for equal combat roles, equal conscription, equal numbers of women and men doing the killing and dying. I find that obscene. In what moral universe is it a better to have as many women slaughtered on the front line as men? As a culture we have always tended towards casual indifference to the deaths of ordinary men, and been comparatively sensitive to the loss of ‘innocent’ women and children. It’s the first value that needs changing, not the second.
(via brute-reason)
The food movement has been slow to recognise the fact that worker rights and working conditions should be a key part of any discussion about the ethics of food. Reforms to the food system need to incorporate workers and their welfare, not just better farming practices, more humane treatment of animals, and other measures focusing on food as an end product. Food is also a process, and the people involved in that process have a right to fair treatment, something they don’t have currently. The continued marginalisation of farmworkers and the focus on other issues in the food movement speaks poorly of the movement overall, and reveals some telling attitudes about labour, race, and entitlement.
(via peroxidepirate)
This actually bothers me much more than the arguments against self-diagnosis coming from professionals. Why?
Because the claim that people who self-diagnose are just “doing it for attention” or because they think it’s “cool” is the exact same claim frequently made about people who get diagnosed professionally.
…
However, there’s a difference between someone who’s feeling sad for a few days and refer to themselves as “depressed,” and someone who’s been struggling for weeks, months, or years, and who has read books and articles on the subject and studied the DSM definition of the illness. The former may not even count as “self-diagnosis,” but rather as using a clinical term colloquially–just like everyone who says “oh god this is so OCD of me” or “she’s totally schizo.” (This, by the way, is wrong; please don’t do it.)
(It’s also likely the case that some people self-diagnose because they havehypochondria. However, the problem is not that they are self-diagnosing. The problem is that they have untreated hypochondria. Maybe diagnosing themselves with something else will get them into treatment, where a perceptive psychologist will diagnose them with hypochondria and treat them for it.)
Even if some people who self-diagnose are wrong, I still think that we should refrain from judging people who self-diagnose and take their claims seriously. Here’s why.
YES TO ALL OF THIS
People tend to discount mental illness, and one case where this really comes up is with anxiety disorders, which are often written off as being, well, all in the patient’s head. The seriousness of anxiety disorders isn’t understood, and they’re viewed as something that people get over or are capable of suppressing; observers don’t understand what it’s like to have severe phobias, social anxiety, or other conditions associated with severe anxiety. They don’t accept the fact that for some people, these conditions can cause severe impairment.
(via brute-reason)
When someone says something like what Frog Naveen did, our first reaction is often to re-assert to them the ways in which we identify with what they accept as normal and “correct”: “I’m straight, I shave, I’m thin, look at my face, I would be considered attractive by society’s standards.”
Instead of just this knee-jerk reaction, turn the spotlight back on the individual by asking why these things matter in the first place: Would feminism be less “valid” if the movement was completely comprised of queer, hairy ugly girls? Why do they encourage us to differentiate ourselves from our feminist sisters?
Their assumption thatthese identities are less worthy feminist voices, and that we would implicitly agree by choosing to distance ourselves from “the unideal feminist,” highlights the work feminism still needs to do.
YES. This reminds me of when Rush Limbaugh said “feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.” Aside from the fact that it wasn’t, why the fuck shouldn’t ugly women have access to mainstream society? Ugly men sure do.
(via sexxxisbeautiful)
: Ask a man to explain his success and he will typically credit his own...
Ask a man to explain his success and he will typically credit his own innate qualities and skills. Ask a woman the same question and she will attribute her success to external factors, insisting she did well because she “worked really hard,” or “got lucky,” or “had help from others.” Men and…
(Source: pollums)
It’s Not Just About Delaying Gratification | Geek Feminism Blog
So in fact, the marshmallow task isn’t necessarily a measure of willpower, but also a measure of environmental stability, which ties into socioeconomical status, parenting type, and many other things, and it may be these variables that are contributing to success later in life. Hopefully this message about the inherent classism of the earlier interpretations filters through to psychology popularizers as well as the scientific community.
A perfect example of how the results of scientific research are not “objective” but rather filtered through existing biases and misconceptions. This is an experiment that basically everyone who studies psychology should be familiar with, but its socioeconomic implications have gone unquestioned until recently.
STAAAAAAANDPOINT THEORY
What I Mean When I Say I’m Sex-Positive
- I think freedom of sexuality is something that we all need and very few of us have
- I think sexual pleasure is a legitimate thing to want and ethically pursue
- I do not judge people for the (consensual) sex that they have or want
- I will not tolerate slut-shaming
- I will not tolerate hatred of people based on gender or orientation (including asexual)
- I will not tolerate hatred of sex workers
- I believe comprehensive, honest, non-judgmental sex education is necessary for public health and happiness
- I think understanding of sexual consent—what it is, why it matters—is sorely lacking in society and crucially important
- I reject preconceptions of what kind of sexuality a person should have, whether these preconceptions are based on gender, age, culture, disability, survivor status, or basically anything else
- I value people’s individual freedom of choice in determining their sex lives (including the choices not to have sex)
What I Don’t Mean
- Everyone should have sex
- Everyone should have kinky, non-monogamous, exhibitionistic, pansexual sex
- Accepting someone’s sexuality means you have to participate in it, watch them engage in it, or hear about it in detail
- Nothing related to sex is ever hurtful for anyone
- Feminism should be all about sex
- Sex fixes everything