What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

- William Shakespeare

A name is very important. There is no doubt about that. After all would you name your child Benjamin Dower when you know his nick name would be Ben? (Ben Dower- say it out loud) Or Mike Hunt? Of course not, well if you didn't want that child to have self esteem or happiness then maybe you would. My dig today is about a society that wanted a rename. I have no problem with a name change. The society argued that they wanted to re-brand and refresh their group. Change is good, I have absolutely no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is when the name they want to change their group to is 'BUST'. This is a media group that want to stand out and shine in its field. The group admitted "it was an unfortunate acronym"; unfortunate! unfortunate doesn't even cover it! In my opinion it is was blatant slap in the face to any woman out there. Personally if my university/union supported a group that insisted on naming itself such a derogatory term I would feel ashamed and un-confident in my institution. Whenever you hear or read the word 'BUST' what do youhonestly think? Do you think a woman's breasts? or by some chance do you think a bust of Julius Caesar?  In all fairness the acronym did stand for the right things, I'll give them that but the acronym brought with it the wrong connotations. I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and decided to see what images or web links I would get if I typed BUST in google. Then I would see what you would see more of and therefore what more people think when they hear that name/word. The image that first came up was this:

Now I might be a bit slow, but this doesn't look like Julius Caesar to me. In fact two things really pop out to me (excuse my phasing). The first is the guy having a hard time not looking at the female character's breasts (because they are made very obvious in this) and the second is the 'ogle meter'. Hmm, I wonder what he is 'ogling', her cracking personality perhaps? I don't think so. I could not stand by and let this happen. Basically if they had let this motion pass then they would basically be saying that they did not care that women were being sexually discriminated against in our union or our university. The union president said earlier that night that she did not want our union to be the platform for homophobia or racism, well I do not want it to be the platform for sexism either! Because if that motion passed then that is what it would have become. The motion, thank god, did not pass. It needed 'absolute majority' to pass, it only achieved simply majority and therefore failed. I do wish the society the best of luck in choosing a new name and with their re-branding, I hope they do well. But without a name that is sexually discriminative towards women.

- Rogue

Seeing America's big McDumbdown in action.  I have a lot of problems with the way the media has tried to shove Hillary Clinton aside.  She is my candidate of choice, not Obama or McCain.  But, because of what the Democratic Party has done to my candidate, I have no choice to become a Republican in the fall.

Nothing is going to heal the split for me, and there is no way that Obama can ever redeem himself in my eyes.  Like many in America, after watching Reverend Wright we were left dazed and confused by the HATE pouring out.  I always had some notion of the Black Church being about the Gospel.  Not anymore.

I watched Obama's glitzy target-marketing in the web.  I watched the biggest web browser in the bunch help him out with a "bubble sort."  I watched his pal David Axelrod use branding techniques to manipulate the American psyche.  I've watched all this happen while the FEC is shutdown in Washington D.C.  I've watched the fundraising, and nobody questions it.  I've seen videos of Obama's Southside Chicago slums.  I've read about his ties to very unsavory types, while the Press is too dumb to unpack it for the American Public.

I've seen the Black Press criticize him, too.

I've seen his propaganda.  HOPE, CHANGE, PROGRESS.  But, I haven't seen ONE speech about what all this means.  Not one.  What I have seen him do is target market to different segments of the American Public in order to get the votes.  I've seen ads from San Francisco where he refused to pose with the gay mayor after raking in the big bucks off that demographic.

I've watched him adapt his posters, logos and slogans to fit the mood of each state, ethnicity, and even gender as he rolls along.  I've seen electioneering happen twice.  Once in Indiana on video, and once in an image from the venerable New York Times, and yet?  Why isn't this an issue?  Why isn't any of this an issue?

I've watched him try and silence Hillary Clinton on television during the debates.

What do I see?  A phony.  A glad handing phony and who knows what his real agenda is?

He has caused nothing but division within the Democratic Party.  And, my question is who can buy him?  Who?  And, what would they need to buy him for?  He's been sold like a McSandwich stuffed down the American throat, except, it makes some of us gag.  It's his associations that we can't understand.  Big names many of us knew nothing about until this election.  Some part of the Democratic Party that is far left of everything we consider American.  It's his arrogance, in light of saying he'd "consider hiring" Al Gore.

It's his non-green "Plastic" lawn signs.  Well, is Gore going to step up to the plate on those?

He's been called the "teflon" candidate.  Isn't styrofoam more like it?

The problem with Barack Obama is that America doesn't know who he is, do they?  For this, we can fault the media and its lack of deep coverage.  Even they appear to be starstruck by glitz.  Except the glitz isn't glamorous.  It looks a hell of a lot like some kind of 30's fascism redux.  To those smart enough, or educated enough to see through it.  Looking around in the web there are all sorts of opinions about this untested newcomer.  Here is a pretty astute little article on the whole fascism gig from NewsBusters.org:

I'm quoting from this interview here, Goldberg has written a book on Liberal Fascism and has said here:

"...To the extent that Barack Obama is running a campaign almost explicitly as a political religion where he's sort of a messiah type, those sorts of themes fit into my argument about what liberalism is and how it sort of has a resemblance to fascism. But whether he's in fact a-I don't think he's a fascist in the way the average person means it but in the way I define liberal fascism in my book, he's probably as good a candidate as anybody is for a liberal fascist...

GOLDBERG: Well, I hear versions of that quite a bit and I think there are a bunch of different things going on there and I think they're all to one extent or another, wrong. First of all, Ronald Reagan which at times does sound superficially like Barack Obama's: Reagan talked about a shining city on a hill, and all that kind of stuff and he had this wonderful rhetoric about patriotism and unity and all these kinds of things. And I'm sure you could find all sorts of other comparisons between Reagan's rhetoric and Obama's. But at the end of the day, Reagan was romanticizing not government but the glories and wonders of the American people and what they can do with God's gift of freedom. Which is an enormous distinction.

Reagan still believed that government wasn't the solution, it was the problem. And Obama's approach is the exact opposite of that. Reagan comes from the National Review tradition of believing that a virtuous, a truly virtuous society can only be the end-product of a free society. For virtue not freely chosen is not virtue as Frank Meyer might say. And Obama's whole shtick is that we must be unified and hopeful for what the government itself can do for us. Michelle Obama says Barack Obama is going to cure and heal our sickened souls. From my perspective, we have a Second Amendment precisely to keep governments who think they are in the soul-fixing business at bay.

I don't want the government to try and fix my soul. When Barack Obama has his door-knocking volunteers go around, they're instructed not to talk about issues but to talk about how they came to Obama in the same way that people talk about coming to Jesus. That scares me. And that's not Reaganesque. Reagan's whole approach-I think Obama's gift for oratory and for seeming like a decent and compelling personality that you'd want to know and you enjoy listening to, that kind of stuff is Reaganesque. His ability to read a script is Reaganesque and I think those comparisons are perfectly legitimate just as I think comparisons between Mike Huckabee and Reagan on that score-his ability to connect with people are fair. But in terms of philosophy, the last thing in the world that Reagan represented was the idea that we should sort of turn politics into this quasi-religious enterprise where a great leader using government can redeem the society and deliver us to some sort of utopian place where we all sort of have to work together, that's not Reaganesque. That's the opposite of Reaganism..."

Yeah, It's a little like that...but there is more interesting stuff this week in the Black Press over at Black Agenda Report like this. Reading it made me sad, especially the piece on House Slaves.  Christ.  But, maybe, we need to understand what is going on post some 70's notion that we were all grooving together ala Martin Luther King.  Because Obama and Wright have really fucked up the notion for me right now that there is ANY lovefest of togetherness racially in this country of mine.  What I see is nothing but VITRIOL.

To tell you the truth?  I don't think Obama gives a fuck about Black People.  Or White People.  Or Brown People.  Or Yellow People.  Or any people.  He sides with whoever he needs to in the moment, doesn't he?  You see, I have concerns about how he can just dump his pastor like snapping his magical little fingers.  If it is true that he has a Black racial agenda, well?

Do you know what Barack Obama has done to me?  He's made me question my loyalty to Dr. King.  Completely. He's made me look twice at all the black homeless people I see.  What kind of HOPE is he going to give them?  Where is the plan?  Why doesn't he put some of that money down Katrina way?  No.  That would be too much to ask.

Who among all these politicians could care for all of the faces that make up AMERICA?  Hillary Clinton.  I'm not seeing any "White Agenda" coming out of her campaign.  She's just a straight up Democrat.  In lieu of her?  The candidate who has faced the MOST VITRIOL EVER?  For no FUCKING REASON FROM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

I'll take McCain, and become a Republican, rather than see my country under Fascism.

Here is a sane editorial letter, from the INDYSTAR.com

Why isn't the DNC thinking about these things?

The last time I saw this kind of fist was in the 70's.  You might want to read this from The Root, in order to get a clearer picture of why Donna Brazile would like Hillary Clinton to step aside.  You know what I have to say to Donna Brazile as a FEMINIST?  Thank you, for letting your Black Nationalism fuck up the Democratic Party and all that it has worked for in my lifetime.  Thank you for your NON-FEMINISM and your penultimate stupidity.

Check this out, if you want to see what high school looked like in the 70's, and again now from the Los Angeles Times.  Have you personally solved anything since Mr. Luther King, Ms. Brazile?  Your division of the Democratic Party will breed more of this, no doubt.  It makes me very sad to realize that HOPE in my country looks like this, right now.

All those so called dumbed-down latte Corporate America big box shopping liberals?

What have you done for your country lately?  The answer?  Nada.

All you Recreate '68 rebellious ones?  What about these kids, in this school?  Who are you helping?

Somehow, I don't think you can solve stuff like this by voting for Obama.

May the best candidate win.  We do vote after all, don't we?

What we need is a candidate who stands for AMERICA as a whole.

Need some more?  Try this from The Stiletto.  My sentiments exactly.

This is the resting place of a great Malamti Sufi Poet Baba Bulleh Shah (1680 to 1790) in Qasur, Pakistan. Every year in August, people come here from all over Punjab and Pakistan to celebrate his work and person. Bulleh Shah is part of the proud tradition of South Asia that nurtures equality and celebrates diversity; that takes a clear stand against discrimination on the basis of religion, sexuality, race and gender.

Bullah in his verses taught us that people who follow different religions or are born into them, are equal; that organized religions are discriminatory idealogies; and through his life, he showed us that the highest form of spirituality may sometimes reveal itself in gay love; that whatever our race, the basic fact that must rule is that we are all human beings; and though he did not preach feminism, i have yet to read a verse written by him that smacks of gender discrimination. Then why, in the name of Bullah, women are not allowed to set foot in his shrine?

The red line on the right highlights the notice that says that women are not allowed to go beyond that point; that means we can not go through the door, can not touch the stone that surrounds Bullah or pick up a couple of flowers from the top; and, we can not receive a rose and jasmine garland from the caretaker inside.

The two lines on the left, frame a part of Bullah's verse now etched in stone but still not heeded. He says, and like most of Bullah's verses, this one is also known to people throughout Punjab by heart, 'Jis tun lugeya ishq kamal, naachay bay sur tay bay taal'. It means a body that has been touched by devotional love, dances without rythm and without beat or out of rythm and out of beat.

The line on the floor shows how far i can go; and, the person standing smack in the middle of the door is there to guard against the possibility that i may try to get in. His fears are not unfounded; this is what i did when i came in the courtyard ten minutes back because I knew that my only chance was to take them by surprise. And so, by the time they stopped me and then pushed me out of the shrine, i had done it. I had gone in, touched the stone, and took a few flowers lying on top of it.

It is important for me to tell you why i did that. I did that to tell myself that Bulleh Shah is as much 'mine' as he is anyone else's in this world, and that i am not going to let Mehkma Auqaaf define Bulleh Shah in terms where the culture of lokai people is again taken over by religious bigots. And the reason i knew that 'surprise' will work, is because i faced the same situation at Jeevay Madhulal Hussain's in Lahore time and again; caretakers at his Durbar would become alert upon seeing me enter the courtyard even when i had only crashed the prohibited door on my first visit.

At the place of Baba Sohna Bulleh Shah, I did not ask for the garland when i went in because the caretaker was busy pushing me out but that is okay because my friend Amarjit Chandan who was welcome inside with Afzal Sahir and Abdullah Malik, was kind enough to give me his garland. Here is this 'privileged' group of people; or should i say here are some of the 'privileged' members of my group; or simply, a group of 'privileged' people flanked by two additional distinctive individuals.

The fourth person from this group, Akram Varraich, though also equally privileged can not be seen in this photo because he was taking it.

Of course, i am lucky to have so many distinctive friends but i want their privileges to increase in quality as i try to expand mine because the advantages granted by the Department of Religious affairs in Pakistan may not be worth enjoying as they exclude over half the population of the Punjab, and Pakistan. And if 'thriving' on the 'culture of exclusion' seems like an exaggeration to you, consider that segregation is or was sanctioned in so many dominant cultures, and humans in power have always created their societies by excluding 'other' peoples and beings.

For now, we know that the 'Religious Affairs and Auqaf' of Punjab Government controls over 37 shrines in the province under the Punjab Waqf Properties Ordinance of 1979. Meanwhile, here is the email address of Lieutenant General (Retired) Khalid Maqbool, Governor of Punjab since 2001: governor.sectt@punjab.gov.pk

Chief Minister Punjab, Dost Muhammad Khosa is here: www.punjab.gov.pk

Photos by Akram Varraich first published at http://www.apna.org/

Well, I say I've decided. What I actually meant was that I won't do that, I just wanted to have a rationale for using Dunar's Day in the title.

Anyway, handpicked by the gods of my ancestors, here are your selected links.

Lottie has an excellent post over at Rambling On about online romantic involvements. As you may know, this is something which has particular relevance to us. It's called Getting to Know You (if you're like me, you'll soon start humming bits of The King and I), and she starts with the biggest question that couples who have met online usually face: How can you fall in love with someone you don't even know?

Gary has a post highlighting the ridiculous, moronic behaviour some right-wing Christians recently embarrassed themselves with. The object of their misguided idiocy? Petrol.

Caitlin May has a post positing the Wizard of Oz as an Atheist film, which is certainly an interesting and overlooked perspective.

PZ spears Michael Medved for a ludicrous jamming together of pseudoscience and right-wing politics. Eugh. It's one step away from advocating forced eugenics...

Mother Jones has Alyssa Quart analysing the new trend for fertility movies coming out of Hollywood. I have to say I don't 100% agree with every syllable, mainly because I liked Juno rather a lot. Other than that, good article.(HT - Feministing)

And finally, in some good news, the California Supreme Court has ruled that the State's Constitution requires equal treatment for homosexual couples in regards to marriage laws. Well done, California (HT - Alas, A Blog).

SPUC, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, compares abortion with eugenics. It believes that to have an abortion is "the deliberate killing of an unborn child". It also claims that contraceptives like the pill are murderous, and that abortion is responsible for doctors who are now committing infanticide.

Here, from the society itself:

The injustice of abortion

Abortion denies the most basic of human rights--the right to life--which is justly due to each member of the human family.

Abortion is not only itself a grave injustice but it also perpetuates other social injustices. Abortion does not solve social problems, such as unstable relationships, poor housing and financial insecurity, which lead women to seek to end their pregnancies. It actually undermines the will of society--at the levels of family, peer group and government--to find humane solutions which do not involve killing a baby.

[...]

Abortion's victims

Abortion is typically carried out by the dismemberment, poisoning and/or premature expulsion of the unborn child. It is usually an invasive procedure for the mother which, even in the best hospital conditions, presents risks to her physical and psychological health. Fathers and other family members may also suffer after an abortion, the ethics of healthcare professionals who take part in abortions are compromised, and society as a whole is harmed by the toleration of violence against the unborn child.

[...]

Early abortifacients

Abortion can be caused in the first two weeks of life by birth-control methods which prevent the implantation of the embryo in the mother's womb. Although many advocates of such techniques refer to this action as contraceptive, it actually involves the death of an embryo in the womb and is therefore abortifacient. Abortion can be caused by:

• birth control implants
• birth control vaccines
• intra-uterine devices (coils)
• the morning-after pill
• other forms of contraceptive pill.

[...]

Population control

The population control movement is the world's largest and most powerful promoter of abortion. Many countries have legalised abortion because of concern at alleged over-population. Population-growth is said to be the cause of poverty, famine and environmental degradation, and governments have used this to justify controlling the sizes of families. Such measures infringe human rights, including unborn children's right to life.

[...]

Infanticide and euthanasia

Legalised abortion has led to increasing contempt for newborn babies who are disabled. Some doctors in Britain have admitted killing disabled babies by methods including sedating and starving them to death; this is still against the law. In some countries, including Britain, courts have approved the starvation of brain-damaged adult patients. The same attitude to human life is apparent in eugenic abortion, infanticide and the pressure to decriminalise euthanasia.

Now, you may have guessed that I have a problem with SPUC. My problem is this: being anti-choice, or 'pro-life', denies a woman's right to autonomy. It denies her power and control over her own body, and turns the process of abortion into murder.

When abortion was illegal, women had to find doctors willing to perform an abortion illegally - some women even resorted to coat hangers to perform the abortion. Today, abortion is legal and available in the UK. There is still social stigma about it, and there are still mental (and yes, I mean mental. Look at the SPUC director's blog for goodness sakes) societies like this around. But at least the days of the coat hanger are gone, for now.

So what has inspired me to write this, you may ask. Well, I discovered recently that the very SPUC that my mother was protesting against when she was my age is coming to my sister's school. To give an assembly. Recently, my sister has been learning about abortion in her religious studies class (I know, good start right? No bias there...) and came home saying that she wasn't sure she agreed with abortion. We had a big family debate and both of us put forward similar points. In fact, she had only meant that she wouldn't want an abortion but that if another woman wanted one, that should be allowed. A woman should be able to choose.

Because her school, which I used to attend, teaches about abortion is such a weighted way (unintentionally, I think. The teacher I had was very religious but tried to be balanced. He failed miserably), she left thinking that she was against abortion without understanding the meaning behind such a belief.

And now, SPUC have been invited to come to the school and talk to a group of teenagers, my sister included. They won't try the balanced approach, and these young people, who are the most in need of a clear understanding of contraception, abortion, and relationships generally, will simply be preached at by a Christian right-wing society.

I am totally furious about this. I think I'd be ok about it if there were a pro-choice group coming in to talk too, but that's not the way the school works. While they may attempt to be balanced in their teaching, they are certainly not when choosing which speakers to host in the chapel. Still, I'm going to try and find out if they'd have me and a friend give a pro-choice chapel, to try to level the field a little.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, and any ideas for how to approach 15 yr olds about abortion (in case we are actually allowed to speak). Also, any idea what my sister should do? She and her friends disagree with SPUC but will be forced to sit through 1/2 an hour of it (there was an opt-out letter, but she forgot about it...), and they say they'll be excluded if they shout FUCK SPUC in the middle of assembly. Which is fair enough.

And on that note - adieu.

Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded Age New York
By Marge Piercy

In Sex Wars Marge Piercy takes on another historical era, once again making me wish they’d teach history this way in school. The time is post-Civil War up to 1915, the place, New York City, and three of the four main characters are real people—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull, and Anthony Comstock. The fourth character, fictional, is Freydeh Levin, a Jewish-Russian immigrant from “The Pale.” (Yes, that’s the origin of the expression beyond The Pale.) In case you’re wondering about the book's unfortunate title, Stanton and Woodhull were women’s rights advocates, working primarily for female suffrage, and Comstock was the head of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, a fanatical crusader who destroyed lives and livelihoods trashing bookstores, saloons, and even condom manufacturing. The Comstock Laws are still on the books in New York.

Several other historical figures appear in Sex Wars: Madame Restell, New York’s premier abortionist of the time, Cornelius Vanderbilt, benefactor to Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Beecher Stowe and her siblings—all drawn with meticulous attention to historical accuracy. Several times I found myself propelled by curiosity to Wikipedia to find out what was real and what was fictional, and found the stories hewing closely to truth. What Piercy makes up, of course, is their inner lives—their thoughts, motivations and feelings as they live through the events unearthed in her research. I wasn’t surprised: Piercy is an avid researcher, and on her website she says she dug up far too much information to include in the novel, and has created a Power Point lecture available for group presentations.

This isn’t the first novel in which Piercy uses historical figures as characters. In City of Darkness, City of Light she took the same approach to the story of the French Revolution. In previous books she often utilized the style of telling stories from various characters’ points of view, most notably in Gone to Soldiers. While I loved both these novels, I was sometimes disappointed when the narrative switched its point of view, as I preferred that of a different character. In Sex Wars this never happened: every character is as compelling as the last, so I was perfectly happy throughout, no matter whose voice predominated—proof that Piercy has attained mastery over this style of storytelling. Other writers who use this method in fiction don’t quite carry it off: Louise Erdrich did it in The Beet Queen, but the voice is the same for every character. In Sex Wars every character is immediately identifiable by speech pattern or sentence structure or techniques I probably can’t even discern.

The era portrayed here bears uncanny similarities to our own time, and Piercy says that’s why she chose to explore it:

“I was attracted to the era after the Civil War because I found it had so many of the same divisions and conflicts as our own time. The role of women in the public sphere and in the family, the degree to which free sexual expression was valuable, permissible, tolerated or condemned, whether Church and State should continue to be separated or whether Christianity should be the official religion.... debates about sexual freedom…censorship and whether the fear that children might view writing, art or entertainment intended for adults that would damage them irreparably was justified or was sufficient reason to ban such adult content. There were similar debates about immigration and whether immigrants from certain countries were dangerous or might contaminate the body politic. There were deep social and political divisions that played out in the media of the time, in elections, in violence in the streets…. There were strong differences of opinion on contraception and abortion—widely practiced but often officially and publicly condemned. The gap between the very rich and the poor was widening, as it is today, and the poor were blamed for being poor, poverty being considered a moral failing – as there is more than a hint of in current rhetoric.”

(Type of French postcard popular at the time, deemed obscene by Comstock)

The event that really blew my mind with its parallel to the present was the Presidential race in which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes stole the election from Democrat Samuel Tilden, with the help of several Supreme Court judges. This passage, of course, sent me scampering to Wikipedia; sure enough, Marge told it true. So how come we didn’t hear about it during the hijacked election of 2000? Or did I just miss it?

I’ve missed so much, and haven’t we all? Some of our woefully lacking education can be blamed on public school methods, with their relentless recitation of history as a series of wars and treaties, crap that bored the hell out of me so much I tuned it out. Piercy, on the other hand, brings (forgive me) her story to these pages, including small and large details of domestic life: the food they cooked and how, the clothes they wore and the tools used to wash and iron them. These details not only fill a gap in American education, they also add spark and color to the narrative.

On its website Harper Collins posts a Sex Wars “reading guide,” of the kind so fashionable in book groups today. One question asks readers their favorite character. My immediate answer was, without hesitation, Victoria Woodhull. All I knew of this women’s rights’ advocate was her name. In Sex Wars I learned she was a sex radical who espoused some of the same beliefs as Carol Queen or Susie Bright; that she and her sister were the first female brokers on Wall Street; and that she was the first woman to address Congress and the first woman to run for President—before women were even granted the vote. Several times in her life (yes, I checked Piercy’s facts) she was broken, spiritually and financially—once when Comstock threw her into prison for writing about sexual issues—but each time she rose up like Lazarus. As the Elizabeth Cady Stanton character says near the end, “Victoria had been forced to retreat from her more radical positions because she actually lived them.”

There are flaws; there are always flaws in a Marge Piercy novel. Too much is repetitive, and some characters feel exaggerated, particularly Anthony Comstock, who comes off like an extreme version of Jerry Falwell (then again, he probably was). As she gallops to a conclusion the writing becomes more news reportage than storytelling, and the end is a bit too neat, with each character’s life summed up tidily. But such minor flaws are tolerable in an otherwise compelling page-turner of such wide perspective. Another era beautifully Pierced! (Sorry, as with her story, I just couldn’t resist.)

2. Think about the editor who emailed your agent a few weeks ago, saying she'd heard about your novel through the grapevine and wanted to see it. Remind yourself that knowing if she's bid or not isn't going to change anything.

3. Your students are doing presentations on the controversies they're writing about in their research papers. You've already sat through two anti-choice presentations that consisted mainly of graphic descriptions of the procedure; sit through another. Restrain yourself when it comes time for questions. Make sure to be just as tough on the pro-choice presentations. Except there are no pro-choice presentations.

4. On your way to your next class, look over your shoulder for David Horowitz, lest he swoop down and pierce you with his talons for liberal indoctrination.

5. Sit through another anti-choice presentation, which also consists mainly of graphic descriptions of the procedure.

6. As you're tuning in and out, fret over the fact that you forgot to list your class preferences when you turned in your schedule request for next year. Assure yourself that the department chair wouldn't cut your pay by assigning you classes worth less than 3 credits. Admit that you never signed any contract guaranteeing a minimum salary, and that, though unlikely, it's certainly possible that you could be assigned Basic Grammar instead of Freshman Comp.

7. During questions, another student asks if the presenter thinks a woman should get an abortion if her life is endangered by the pregnancy. The student says no. If the baby isn't in danger, then the baby should live. Pregnancy is always dangerous, he argues; the mother knew the risks when she had sex.

8. You decide not to ask this question: Does that mean, student, that I, a real, actual woman and not some faceless hypothetical thing, should be forced to die if there are complications in my pregnancy? Do you think I should die, student? Are you telling me I should be forced to die? Yes, I'm real, I'm a person, and I'm asking you if you think I should be killed, and no, it's not relevant that the chances are slim, because probability doesn't mean shit for the person who's being affected. Wonder, as you're not asking that question, how it is that everyone thinks abortion is something that only concerns other people. Wonder how it is that someone can consider or get an abortion and then go back to thinking that it only concerns other people.

9. After the student reiterates that the mother needs to take responsibility for having sex, ask him if the father should be held responsible, too. From the look on his face and the audible murmurs in the audience, conclude that no one else thought of that.

10. Buy a bottle of wine when you get home. Feel sick after a glass and a half. Realize that you've never been "pleasantly" drunk.

11. Lose interest in the novel you're reading because the author blew her wad about a hundred pages too early. Find typos.

12. Wonder where all the goose down in your comforter went. Because it's not on the floor or anything, but it's sure not in the comforter.

Commitment Ceremony on Shakesville

In regards to ANTM winner Whitney:

“They told her that if she went and gained 10-20 pounds they would definitely put her on the show as “the plus-size model”. She’s about a 6 or 8 on the show.”

Damn.

A 6 or 8 and she’s the plus size model?!

I used to think it’d be fun to be a plus size model, but according to Tyra I’d have to be 1 or two sizes smaller than I am now. At a 10/12 I’m too fat to model clothes I’m too thin to wear in most stores.

Can we see the flaw here?

It's bad enough that Hillary Clinton is probably not going to get to break the glass ceiling in the oval office (although, her husband broke a few ceilings in the Presidential oval). But it appears that the next President of the United States is a man who calls women "Sweetie."

Mothers Day has passed, the day when we set aside any differences, wrongs, resentments, and other negatives about our moms across the country, and focus on all the good mothers have accomplished in raising us, the sacrifices, the hardships, the unconditional love, and other benevolent qualities perceived as only coming from moms.
It's wonderful that we have created a day to remember the good things about our moms, as any person in the psychology profession will tell you, harping on the negatives without considering the positives in any given situation in life will only lead to anger and resentment. Even better is that we have actually created a day where society - families, media, politicians, governments - will not dare to venture into, or raise awareness to the number of mothers that have failed miserably at the role of parenthood. This is not the time to dwell on the dark side of mothers in America they will tell you. Instead, it is a day to honor women who have managed the difficult role of motherhood for better and for worse - and I couldn’t agree more. Positive, emotional reinforcement will carry greater benefits for women and their children in the long term rather than berating them for their failures during Mothers Day weekend. We all need to know our efforts are being recognized and appreciated, and that our imperfections are being judged relative to our imperfect humanism.

In a short month, the mood will change. Fathers Day weekend will arrive and society - families, media, politicians, government - will let fathers know they are appreciated, but not without condition. Unlike mothers, fathers will hear every detail of their failures, and unlike mothers, will not have the opportunity to enjoy a weekend of compassionate reminiscing, where society refuses to dwell on the negative, and makes an effort to focus only on the positive results of fatherhood.
Right now, politicians are preparing speeches that will remind us how important a father is in a child’s life. The speeches will be eloquent, dramatic, and condemning, because in the end, these politicians will let fathers know they are failing in this important stabilizing family and societal role.
Police chiefs across the country at this very moment are organizing their usual Fathers Day “deadbeat” dad sting operations, as a way to remind men and fathers of their obligations and responsibilities as a parent. These dark headlines will be splashed across most newspapers and newscast during the weekend and will be a mood altering topic of conversation at most family gatherings.
Media outlets will begin to organize tributes to fathers for Fathers Day, but will also make sure to find room for stories that highlight the failures of fathers in order to bring “perspective” to the present condition of fatherhood in society.

So what’s wrong with reminding fathers of the significance and influential role they play in the lives of their children and society? Nothing, except why aren’t these same pivotal, poignant speeches and actions addressed to mothers around Mothers Day? Isn't the role of a mother just as important as the role of a father, and therefore, a good jolt of reality placed upon them just as important?
The only reason this isn’t done is due to the unjustified discrimination of fathers and men in this country. In the arena of family issues, men and fathers are perceived to be inferior to women, yet this daily discrimination goes unaddressed. In the role of spouse or parent, men are seen as dysfunctional, irresponsible individuals, in need of constant fixing, adjusting, and scolding in order to eradicate and manage their many faults and maintain sensibility. If the genders were reversed, it would be called blatant sexism.
If you think I’m kidding, let me show you why I think this way.

-– Last year presidential contender Barack Obama gave a Fathers Day speech in which he said:

“It’s about to be Father’s Day, let’s admit to ourselves that there are a lot of men out there that need to stop acting like boys; who need to realize that responsibility does not end at conception; who need to know that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise a child.”

When was the last time a politician chose Mothers Day to humiliate irresponsible mothers by calling them little girls that need to grow up? It has never happened and never will. The discrimination of fathers is based on the mythology that mothers are superior to fathers, in spite of evidence that proves otherwise.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the Administration for Children and Families
reported that in 2006, 40 percent (39.9%) of child victims were maltreated by their mothers acting alone; another 17.6 percent were maltreated by their fathers acting alone.
The agency defines maltreatment as: Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation; or An act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.

According to Obama, the reason he felt the need for his Fathers Day speech:

“The key to having this conversation constructively is to realize that there’s really no excuse for not behaving responsibly toward our children.”

If this is true, then why has Obama not chosen to scold or humiliate mothers on Mothers Day for the horrific abuses towards their children which is more that double of that with respect to fathers?
Is he implying that a father who refuses to participate in the raising of his children is not a real man and does not deserve forgiveness, but a mother who abuses her children should be forgiven and honored?

 -– Last year, here in the Chicago area, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart launched a weeklong “deadbeat dad” sting operation that resulted in the arrest of 130 deadbeat dads. Sherriff Dart also arrested four deadbeat moms to show that he was being gender neutral.
However, Dart addressed his reasoning for carrying out the sting around Fathers Day this way:

"For hundreds of thousands of people Father’s Day is just a very, very painful day,” Dart said. "It actually serves as a perverse reminder of just how difficult their life is because there is no father, and not only is there no father there, but there is someone who has walked away from their responsibilities."

Isn’t Mothers Day a very, very painful reminder to all the children that are abused every year by their mothers? And if Sheriff Dart is truly concerned with the difficult lives of children neglected by a parent, why not launch a campaign around Mothers Day touting the many irresponsible and criminal mothers in society that are abusing their children. It can include the little known fact that besides abuse, mothers also lead fathers in failing to pay court ordered child support.
Glenn Sacks and Jeffery Leving wrote an article refuting Sheriff Dart’s claims that all the men arrested were intentionally avoiding their responsibilities. The article also reveals the discrepancies and complexities between society’s perception of the deadbeat dad and the human reality.

 –- Last year for Fathers Day, Time magazine wrote an article called The Psychology of Fatherhood  which questioned whether fathers deserve to be honored with a special day like mothers because of men's alleged undesirable track record concerning parenting.
The two female writers (coincidence?) wrote how the research they uncovered shows that:
– In the U.S., more than half of divorced fathers lose contact with their kids within a few years.
– Men are more likely to default on a child-support payment (49%) than a used-car payment (3%).
– U.S. fathers average less than an hour a day (up from 20 minutes a few decades ago), usually squeezed in after the workday.
The female writers never mentioned what research or sources their information can be referenced to, but men’s writer Glenn Sacks was familiar with the sources. He wrote a response to the article and the research in question, showing how the women used family research from the 1960’s and other sources that were eventually proven to be unreliable.
But the best repudiation of the Time’s article comes from the magazine itself. In 2005 it ran an article about fatherhood called The Missing Father Myth in which it disputed the very claims made by it’s own female writers two years later.
In this article the male writer (coincidence?) claims the perceptions of the irresponsible father is false. His article looks at recent study of teenage fathers which show:
– 82% reported having daily contact with their children
– 74% said they contributed to the child’s financial support
– Almost 90% maintained a relationship with the mother
The findings of this study are very similar to the findings of other studies concerning fathers and families. (An excellent, in-depth look at the reality of fathers and custody issues can be found here.)

– Paul Coughlin, a writer of Christian issues wrote an article titled Pastors, Don’t Use Mother’s Day to Bash Dads in which he writes about the discriminatory practices within churches concerning mothers and fathers. Paul writes,

This Sunday we will extol the value and benefit of motherhood, which is great. But in some churches, this will be done by degrading Christian husbands, which is not great. “Our pastor makes us husbands get on our knees on Mother’s Day and beg for forgiveness. I don’t want to do it again this year,” one reader tells me. Another writes, “Our minister makes husbands write on paper all the things we’ve done wrong. Then we’re suppose to give it to our wives and pledge that we won’t do them anymore.”

A church in my community handed out a flyer to all parishioners this past week which read:

With all respect to fathers, no one influences a child as much as a devoted mother. She passes on her faith in God, her beliefs in all the virtues, patience, kindness, forgiveness. As the growing child follows her about, all the mother’s ways of thinking and doing things, are flowing into the life of the child. One might say, the mother is programming the brain and the heart of the little one on how to live in this world.

Well…if this is true, why does society even bother trying to convince men of their importance in a child’s life? After such an overtly pious description of the dominating influence mothers have on their children, what is left to say to men and fathers on Fathers Day that will convince them fatherhood has any value, or is need at all?
And if the writer of this piece really believes that mothers “program” the brains and hearts of our children, is the writer willing to accept the consequences that he/she is implying that the blame for children who grow up and engage in violence and sin must rest solely on mothers since they - not fathers - are fully responsible for the “programming” of the child?
Of course not. If the individual grows up to be a criminal, it’s because the father wasn’t present. Or if he was present, he taught the wrong set of values and virtues - despite the admission of his limited influence.
And so the cycle of discrimination against fathers continue.

While men are expected to share the responsibilities of raising children; the stress, the frustration, the anxiety, the financial drain, the personal limitations, etc., it becomes clear that when it is time to wallow in the rewards, fathers are told to sit in the corner of the room and wait until they are called - if they are ever called.
Fathers are expected to share all the first class responsibilities and hardships of being a parent, yet are treated as second class parents, or even strangers when the adulations and rewards are handed out.
Mothers are given honor and rewards in spite of their failures. Fathers are given greater scrutiny, humiliation, and shame in spite of their numerous successes.

Is it any wonder there are any good fathers left these days? Despite being vilified, disparaged, and unjustifiably attacked at every turn, including Fathers Day itself, men are consistently making progress at becoming better fathers regardless of the roadblocks so many vindictive people try to place before them. In this environment, it would be much easier for men to walk away and give up, yet many choose not to.

I will be smiling in admiration this Fathers Day.

Contact:           

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Yep, the mighty uni brought him to give me a lecture about "Life and Freedom"...

I don't understand what's the link between 'wives beating' and "life and freedom' ?! The guy was teaching a bunch of sissies how to beat their future wives on TV, now, HOW ON EARTH would he teach me anything about life and freedom?!

Whenever I see this idiot on TV, I remember Rania Al-Baz and I think: wow this woman's husband was definitely inspired by this "good looking shaykh"

Ahhh, my life is fun!

Not that I was planning to go swimsuit shopping in any case, but it's nice to know I could possibly (venture back into the water?) if I really wanted to, without risking a full-color glossy magazine shot of myself as the biggest fashion DON'T ever!

. . .The spotted halter top called up images of Norma Jeane Baker (pre Marilyn Monroe) or Janet Leigh sunning atop a float in the Rose Bowl parade. It was just saying howdy-do to a high-waist black bikini bottom. How civilized.

As swimsuit season approaches, women are discovering that many of this summer’s suits represent a sharp turnaround from the crass arrangement of string and sequins that in recent years has made the Hamptons shore look like a Vegas sideshow.

Probably for the first time since Lindsay Lohan was born, fashion designers, from the high-end likes of Miuccia Prada and Stella McCartney to mainstream classics like Jantzen, have taken a more refined approach to swimwear, emphasizing one-piece looks, halter tops, high-waist boy shorts and ruffles and ruching as camouflaging details.

. . .“The extra coverage feels really right,” said the designer Shoshanna Gruss. “What more people are realizing is that these shapes are beautiful, and more women can wear these. More is more.”

Now one could argue that the covered-up direction in swimwear has something to do with the tanking economy (ahem, tankini), or perhaps it is a precautionary statement against too much sun exposure.
More likely, such looks have come around again for the same reason they were popular a half-century ago.

As the Macy’s window display of historic Jantzen suits would suggest, leaving a little to the imagination imparts a lot of allure.

I've spent the last hour wondering if the searchers are looking for articles with that phrase because they agree with it or because they disagree with it...

Now back to the purpose of this blog/rant:

The world getting fatter!

What I don't understand is why it is so difficult to understand why the world is becoming fatter by the day, especially in North America. Well, its simple to me- TIME!

This day in age you have two working parents for the most part, or a single parent trying to run a household on their own. Who has the ability to spend time cooking three meals a day like we used to??? Years ago, I spent the majority of time in the kitchen; cooking, preparing, freezing, yes even canning. Now I do well to prepare a base meal with the main ingredient consisting of something like canned cream of mushroom soup, and call that a home cooked meal. Gone are the days when I prepared home made cream of mushroom soup the day before to use in the recipe.

Now, I run to McDonald's on my lunch break, throw a frozen pizza in the oven. Rather than preparing a fruit smoothie for my husband and children, I find myself spreading jam on bread or scooping ice cream from the freezer.

To me the "fat epidemic" is a result of an over worked society with no time to cook, prepare and go to the gym, we walk around exhausted and stressed just wondering how we will get from appointment to appointment the following day, what we will actually consume rarely crosses our minds, we just grab and go.

Maybe this sounds pretty backwards to all those feminists (Uh oh there I am using that word!) out there, but I for one miss the days of being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, doing what needs to be done, making a home. I wish sometimes I had the nerve to join an Amish community, since popping my whole family into a time machine is much less likely, so many mock their lifestyle, but maybe, just maybe, they are the ones who really get it.

Alison Rhodes

Continuing on with the Dramafest Interview, here is the portion of the interview where the producers talk about Laremy's "Between You And Me", the first play during Dramafest 2008.

Dramafest is an annual combined inter-hall drama event, where halls of residence at NUS come together to put up six short plays which revolve around a central theme. In this interview, I take a look at the creative thinking processes, the trials and the tribulations that they had to face on the road to Dramafest.

Laremy, introducing his play:

I wrote this play because it's always something I wanted to do, I wrote to be about feminism and femininity in Singapore. Because, as much as I don't want to use the label, but I think I am a feminist, in that sense of the word, and I thought I would like to use art to convey that message. So that's why when Dee asked me to do something like this I was very excited. What I did was to do some surveys, because I'm not a woman, I don't have breasts and I don't know what it feels like. So I got surveys from 30 people.

Danielle, on whether its right for a guy to comment on breasts:

I think you can't really say that his viewpoint was right or not. When we were rehearsing the play, we were also talking about whether there are lines that we agree with, or lines we disagree with. For me, there was one part which was a bit chunky about feminism, which I struggled with -- for one thing I don't have the memory -- but it also it was something that didn't connect with me. When we were doign it there were a lot of issues. The more we rehearsed, the more meaning and links we saw between them [the characters].

Eva, on the Irish drinking song:

If you listen to it, it has a lot of good advice... The support one, and check for lumps.

Laremy:
I wrote this play because it's always something I wanted to do, I wrote to be about feminism and femininity in Singapore. Because, as much as I don't want to use the label, but I think I am a feminist, in that sense of the word, and I thought I would like to use art to convey that message. So that's why when Dee asked me to do something like this I was very excited. What I did was to do some surveys, because I'm not a woman, I don't have breasts and I don't know what it feels like. So I got surveys from 30 people.

Yi Jian:
You did a survey for your play.

Laremy:
Yes, I did.

Eva:
Can you tell him some of the questions?

Laremy:
Some of the questions were, "What would a world without breasts be like?", "Do you like your breasts?"...

Eva:
There was one with the theme song too.

Laremy:
Yeah, "If your breasts had a theme song, what would it be?" And I had many interesting responses which I fed into the play. I had one woman who responded to "do you like your breasts" with a "no, I've been groped enough to hate them more and more each day", and then following on, "what would a world without breasts be like", and she was, "perfect".

Yi Jian:
Is this Cassandra's character?

Laremy:
Yeah, I just fit it in. It may not have been very consistent with her character, but I tried to work it in because I felt that these were women in Singapore speaking. I wanted to distill those voices, but it didn't work for two reasons; I'm not a woman, and it's not right for a man to appropriate a woman's role, as someone pointed out in the survey. and I agree with her, after writing it. The second thing is that I wish there was a bit more time, it was really a first draft, and by the time the rehearsal was done, we realised actually this bit of text seems a bit chunky, we have to improv, then I was like already too late, so we just have to carry on.

Yi Jian:
How did the Irish drinking song get into the play?

Laremy:
As I was writing the play, I felt that the whole thing it was becoming a metafictional, farcical kind of play, so I thought that the Irish drinking song would be a nice way to end with a bang. I needed some kind of climax. It was already bzz bzz bzz bzz, I needed something to end the thing off. But, somehow it came about because of the song and dance thing, and also what was in the text of the song. The lyrics kinda fit it because that was what they were saying like about wearing bras, and checking for breast cancer.

Yi Jian:
Danielle, how do you feel about a guy writing feminist play?

Danielle:
I'm not sure, I think it should be alright. It's just a different viewpoint.

Yi Jian:
Do you feel his viewpoint is right?

Danielle:
I think you can't really say that his viewpoint was right or not. When we were rehearsing the play, we were also talking about whether there are lines that we agree with, or lines we disagree with. For me, there was one part which was a bit chunky about feminism, which I struggled with -- for one thing I don't have the memory -- but it also it was something that didn't connect with me. When we were doign it there were a lot of issues. The more we rehearsed, the more meaning and links we saw between them [the characters]. It also made sense in a few days, so I think it's okay when a guy does it. One thing, before everything came out, Laremy asked me what I wanted to see in the play, and there were a lot of other issues that we wanted to explore, but we didn't manage to, but those were really interesting and make the play a lot deeper.

Yi Jian:
You guys like the play.

Eva:
Yeah, it was very informational.

Yi Jian:
Which part?

Eva:
The Irish song. If you listen to it, it has a lot of good advice.

Yi Jian:
What was the advice again?

Danielle:
Wear bras.

Eva:
The support one, and check for lumps. You probably won't know this because you're a guy, but many women neglect feeling their breasts often enough because they have issues with it, as much as a man has with his penis. The size issue, the stuff like that. Which is something hard enough to express because you don't have boobs. At the same time, I think you [Laremy] did a great job at it, because you did a field survey and stuff, and even maybe a woman wouldn't be able to write what you wrote, because essentially you're writing the opinions of thirty women. And since you wouldn't be biased because your opinion couldn't come first, I don't think it's all that bad.

Chethan:
I must say that Laremy put in a lot of effort for his scripts, and it really shows.

I start scribbling and I don’t stop. I watch as titles and sub-titles are knocked astray by a line of text that has become so much more than a note to be revised and incorporated into summaries.

Women carry the world, their shoulders heaving. They work and work and work. They are starved, raped, caged and abused. The world treats us with a massive yawn.

Even we, the feminists who say women are human. We who scream those words until our throats bleed. A rape here, an honour killing there, we take notes and sigh. A couple tears fall, making the words “oppression”, “patriarchy” and “humanity” indecipherable, except we know them so well, having written them so many times before. Women’s pain has become the norm.

So we scream into the wind as people edge away. Women’s suffering is just background noise, context. Patriarchy is a dominant paradigm, a universal value, isn’t it? So let us talk about how characters in texts were raped or not, because they liked it anyway. Let’s pretend that its open for argument, as rape is just a word, and words have no meaning. The fact that the movie was directed by a man, produced by a man for men has no relevance. The suffering of women becomes background static.

We can marvel (marvel together) at the technical efficiency of the patriarchy. It turns the volume of our screams down until we are mute. We are old movies, our mouths opening and closing on old televisions.  People wander past the Antique Shop, barely stopping to marvel. The noisy advertisements draw them in; our image is sold as we are sold. Objects, defined by men for men.

The Role of Women, the Role of Feminists.

Our role. Our role is simple really, do most world labour for a fraction of world pay. Not only that, do the boring, repetitive bits of the world labour. Sweep the shit and blood. Then pretty yourself up and think of England as you look up at the iron bars of your cage. Stay in poverty; raise the children and sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice.

I will not offer up my sisters on the altar of patriarchy. No more. They are my sisters and I will scream our humanity until my throat evaporates entirely.

Burchill, god love her, gets right to the molar-grinding heart of the matter: “these new ones ... laws, guidelines, suggestions, whatever... portray women as neurotic, looks-obsessed cretins who are likely to collapse in a weeping heap of jelly if they come across proof that any other woman is better-looking than they are... [an] absolute gift to the sort of creepy man who soothes his sad soul by imagining that every woman between the ages of 16 and 61 lives in a permanent self-loathing state.”

The hubbub over “airbrushing” differs only in content – not in character – from arguments stretching back centuries. That women shouldn’t be educated lest the demands of learning prove too much for their tiny minds. That women shouldn’t be encouraged to do exercise because of their delicate constitutions. That women need potions and powders, or hoop skirts and hysterectomies, to alleviate the dangerous burden of femaleness.

This latest twist on the old tale is patently absurd. A media-scourged furore as deeply irrelevant to adult life as are magazine frenzies over such non-issues as celebrity cellulite, streaky fake tans or whether or not so-and-so has worn the same pair of pumps in public twice. Most women have bigger fish to fry; it is anti-feminist to suggest otherwise. And it blossoms into outright misogyny at the point it has reached – where women are presumed to be too soft-headed to read a copy of Glamour without doing themselves serious psychic damage.

Give it a fucking rest. Women’s magazines do have a case to answer, but it’s nothing to do with the quality of Photoshopping on the cover and everything to do with the sexist drivel that riddles their pages. To stop airbrushing but carry on publishing features advising women to "Put A Bun In The Oven"; or to criticise size zero models while running photo spreads whooping about some poor actress’ love handles is beyond hypocrisy. Give me an honest con-artist any day...

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In such a throroughly class-segragated nation as Britain, class has very different meanings to a country like Greece for example. So does 'whiteness', it has very different meanings to countries that never in modern times were colonies or colonized. Gender has also different cultural meanings, a woman is not just a woman in any part of the world and this should not need much explanation.

I thus find the mere term 'white middle-class' reductionist and it says nothing for me, it apparently excludes me because it does not respect my difficulty in communicating through it. I can't be middle class because I have not grown in a country that defined that term, I have not lived in a suburban house and my father was not wearing a suit at work. I cannot be white because racism in my country is performed on other shades of white. And really, I can't just be woman, patriarchy in britain with everyday news of girls and women raped murdered and buried, is not patriarchy with the family as the strongest institution as things are in greece.

I guess I am now only arguing against cultural assimilation and am in a way reducing different understandings to nationality whilst in other posts I have argued against my identification with all things greek. that's not the only thing that burns me but it has in a way been eating me all year round- especially when sitting for example in seminars that are built around a particular theme that I am so not familiar with that I can only be blatantly excluded, and forced to feel inadequate just because of cultural reasons-even when supposedly complying with the rest of the rules of belonging, I can pass for white middle class, maybe not queer enough though- and, yes, it is true, the BBC is not the channell all nations worldwide watch, fucking 'buffy' is not what I've been busy with for the last evenings of my life, 'sopranos' is not what I had in mind about media literacy at all.

so really, it takes more than these three words to define what sort of woman and far more to define what kind of feminist.

[For example right now I am very much nterested in the 'white middle-class' concept-but I ll keep this for the next post]

So soon to announce the research blog.

This is a great example of why in all types of complex systems- from Human Rights laws to the tax code to social progression- ideas that can be elegantly expressed as rules that have no exceptions make the best guidelines to live by. (I should point out that adding just a few "inclusions" to a restrictive rule is effectively the same thing as making a more inclusive rule with lots of exceptions, it just cuts down on admin costs a little more.¹)

Our current tax code is riddled with exceptions and vulnerabilities that allow the wealthy to pay about the same tax as everyone else while we're forking out for the extra administration required by a progressive tax system. I would greatly like to ditch every single exception, and perhaps lower the overall take a little, or pay out some more significant welfare- perhaps even a universal basic income- instead of adding costly exceptions, like the proposal Act has for taxing part-time labour more than full-time. This is typical economics-before-social-concerns thinking that I've lamentably come to expect from act- part-time work enables people to contribute to charities, raise kids, maintain a healthy partnership, work on their own car/computer/hobby, all of which have value that's external to usual economics.

But it's not just tax where this is important. This principle informs so many decisions about progressive policy: Violence is bad- even if it's a parent hurting a kid. Marriage is between two people that love each other- even if they're the same sex. Sex is a choice- for both genders, not just for men. Qualifications and skills should determine pay- even if you're not one of the straight white guys.

I've argued before that exceptions are okay in cases where they combat pervasive, systematic discrimination. I still believe this- but I believe that we can often achieve the aims held by an exception by using a rule, if we're smart enough. For instance, the Waitangi Tribunal in New Zealand helps collect the capital and rights to natural resources that fund business ventures by Maori, for Maori- and the focus on building these resources in the long-term fights inequality in a systemic way that is so much more effective than mere golden handshakes over historical grievances could be. It also builds awareness and importance of New Zealand history, and the role that both colonial and Maori influences played in forming our nation as it is now.

¹ Yes, I'm looking at you, heterosexual-only marriage laws!

Note: My post tommorow is also going to be up late at night, as I have a slightly busier schedule than usual.