Culture Warriors category archive

An Anglican priest speaks:

Via Delaware Liberal.

State rape remains a favorite fantasy of old white men.

Many years ago, I sat in the bar of the Midland Hotel in Chicago, which was my preferred roost in Chicago back when I was a road warrior. Near me, two Sears employees (the Sears Tower was about two blocks away) were talking about rumors of lay-offs.

As they paid their tab, one of them said, “No matter what, I won’t go back to Indiana.”

As near as I can tell, this sort of stuff explains why.

Chauncey Devega considers how a white university president could consider the “three-fiths” compromise (PDF) to be a model for our political discourse.

A nugget:

Here is the painful reality that many of those in the out-group, the less than privileged, the Other, the marginalized, and the like have not yet figured out: James Wagner does not care about you. His comments on slavery were not a personal dig, stab, or barb. Black folks, our legacy, personhood, and the like are quite simply not choices on the cognitive decision tree of men like him.

You/we/us are footnotes and outliers.

People of color–and likely women, gays and lesbians, the “disabled”, and other folks who are not “normal” by the narrow definitions of hetero-normative, able-bodied, Whiteness–are also non-factors in the worlds of the truly race and class privileged in American society.

Read the rest. It is one of Devega’s typically tightly-reasoned, lengthy, ascerbic posts.

Sign the petition.

Some of the language is a little strong.

Impolitic. Off-putting. Invective-like.

But not necessarily inaccurate.

State rape returns.

Republicans are trying again to feel up women vicariously.

Michigan Republicans have introduced a bill requiring all women to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound before obtaining an abortion, a move that rekindles last year’s firestorm when other GOP-led states were considering similar measures.

Read more »

Really, now, it’s about time, isn’t it?

Also, too.

Mark Morfords thinks that the divisive Republican electoral strategy of the “Culture Wars” is over, though he recognizes that there are still large enclaves of resistance and a long mopping-up process to come. A nugget:

Perhaps you’ve heard? Perhaps you’ve noticed? The infamous “culture wars” officially declared in the Reagan era and then hissed forth through the years by everyone from George W. Bush to Rick Warren, the Tea Party to groupthink megachurches, Rush Limbaugh’s giant mouth to Bill O’Reilly’s sad little book, Palin and Bachmann and Karl Rove, too, all ultimately landing with an inglorious splat on poor Rick “please don’t Google my last name” Santorum’s head, the culture wars of yore are essentially over.

And the Republicans lost.

We shall see.

Contraception, n.: Something right-wingers need to take to avoid having so many misconceptions.

H/T Susan for giving me permission to post this.

It’s not “black” history. It’s American history, as the Fayetteville Observer points out, after listing events scheduled in its area.

The list (of events–ed.) is long. Eventually, though, it comes back to a history stolen from us – all of us, of all colors – by antebellum shibboleths and Reconstruction-era revisionism, much of it still uncorrected because of a fear: Young minds can’t handle detailed discussion of U.S. history the way it actually happened.

That fiction has survived too long already. It isn’t “the children” who are being protected.

Thom wonders about the paradox.

When Maryland merchants talk about the recent legalization of same-sex marriage, they sometimes talk of broad, lofty themes: Equality. Justice. Civil rights.

But there’s another practical concept at work: Dollar signs.

The financial motivation was on display Sunday at the second annual Gay and Lesbian Wedding Expo at the Tremont Suites Hotel & Grand Historic Venue in downtown Baltimore, where dozens of vendors competed for the attention of dozens of couples whose weddings now carry the official blessing of the state of Maryland.

How long until the “reality” show? Tentative title, “My Big Fat Gay Wedding.”

This one:

(New Mexico–ed.) House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R), would charge a rape victim who ended her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for “tampering with evidence.”

“Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime,” the bill says.

(snip(

“The bill turns victims of rape and incest into felons and forces them to become incubators of evidence for the state,” he said. “According to Republican philosophy, victims who are ‘legitimately raped’ will now have to carry the fetus to term in order to prove their case.“

The bill is considered unlikely to pass, but it serves well to illustrated the perverse and perverted view that some Republicans have of women: that they are good for only one thing.

This reduces the human victim of the crime to an evidence incubator.

Philip Roth wouldn’t have made this up and Krafft-Ebing (we’re back in that territory again) would not have believed it.

Via Balloon Juice.

Among other details, she is an American citizen, daughter of American citizens. But, apparently, she didn’t look like one to the cops.

Born in Mexico but living in America since age 2, Angelica Davila said she was shocked in 2011 to find herself in the Allegheny County Jail, on suspicion of being an illegal alien.

“I had never been in trouble,” Ms. Davila said in an interview. Her thoughts, as she tried to sleep on a holding cell floor: “Am I going to be taken back to Mexico? Is my car going to be taken away from me?”

(snip)

Reggie Shuford, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which is providing the legal muscle for the lawsuit, called her case “a blatant example of ethnic profiling. … The police questioned her status only because of her ethnicity and that of her passenger.”

Details at the link.

Show your spirit of kindness.

Harass someone for being different today.

It fits right in with what Paul Thagard says about “motivated ignorance.” A nugget:

In addition to this individual impact, motivated inference also operates systematically at the social level. The book Merchants of Doubt (by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway) describes how some businesses, governments, and even scientists have worked to maintain ignorance about strategic defense, acid rain, the ozone hole, the risks of tobacco and secondhand smoke, global warming, and pesticides. The study of culturally induced doubt or ignorance has been dubbed “agnotology”. The philosophy book Race and the Epistemologies of Ignorance (edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana) explores how different forms of ignorance linked to race are produced and sustained.

Read the rest.

Use text messages.

Last month, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia expanded a system in which it sends Saudi men text messages, known as SMS, to notify them when their wives or other “dependents” leave the country, as part of its regulations requiring women to obtain permission from their guardians to travel. In a twist that proves technology’s power, Manal al-Sharif, the woman who in 2010 launched a campaign to obtain for women the right to drive, used Twitter to inform the world of the story.

A San Diego-area school system has made yoga sessions available for students, with a goal of mild exercise, stress relief, and relaxation.

Some parents aren’t happy.

A small but vocal group of parents, spurred on by the head of a local conservative advocacy group, has likened these 30-minute yoga classes to religious indoctrination.

They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.

After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.

If doing the plough is enough to undermine the faith of the children, that faith is as sad and puny as the parents’ fearfulness is great.