mmoa_writes

One thing I am fascinated by is the intersection of gender, class, race and religion and how social advocates who specialise in or expertly deal with one area can often downplay of other areas or completely ignore the more complex interplay and thus assign certain trends or features of society incorrectly. ( A Century of Fatherhood: The Good Father )Rude Britannia is still available as well which I urge everyone who can to watch. ( Rude Britannia )

Radical feminists making stupid statements about transfolk

Am currently revising, so rant will come later.

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Later:

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Mind you, I could be wrong. Such wankery could be evidence that the Discworld idea of, say, quantised 'belief' is quite true in our world as well. There's only so liberal a human can be, and thus beyond that point, they're just a close-minded tool and a half.


EDIT: Still revising, but I've just learnt that the disparity in body strength between male and female humans wasn't always so, which is quite interesting.

Feminist on Testosterone

Finally checked out the guardian links on my iGoogle homepage and came up with these tidbits on comment is free (I still haven't learned not to read the actual comments. Why am I such a masochist? It must be the melancholic in me...). We have Will Hutton making the case that Britian's no longer a world power, which makes three of us. Somehow I don't think that's enough to make Britain a better place, but it's reassuring to know there's someone eloquent on this subject out there. Will Hutton for Supreme Mugwump of the UK, anyone?

There's another on the issue of Travellers which is so unconvincing an article I wonder why he has't been stormed by local Travellers. I mean, with friends like these... As ever, try not to read the comments unless, like me, you enjoy being depressed about the state of humanity. In fact, on a similar theme, I dare you to read all 7 pages of comments on Terry Eagleton's article on the (fallacy of) the 'liberal supremacy'. I think his overall point is quite interesting (but a bit tired. I mean, 'what do liberals do about the enemies of liberalism?' has been bandied about since Mills' time, I swear), and he does raise the issue - though like Mr Kuper, in such a way that doesn't really help - of the imperialistic gestures made by the most strident of secular liberals. However, considering his focus on Dawkins, Hitchens etc etc, he doesn't suggest that perhaps the problem with modern liberalism is that 'intolerance' seems to work better in defending the virtues of liberalism than not (as is increasingly learnt by religious liberals). That is part of the problem. It hurts, I know, and there doesn't seem to be an answer to it - it's just a fact of nature, rather than an issue.

Now for something completely different, ( Read more... )

Is it just me, or do most of the ethical arguments against cloning seem more like sensible precautions that ought to be taken, rather than reasons it shouldn't be done at all? If it's just me, then it's probably a good thing I like theoretical physics, where the closest thing to an ethical dilemma I'd ever have is how much I ought to credit my paper of amazingness to the anti-social genius beneath me...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun - What it says on the tin. I honestly can't believe how long it's been since I made a linguistics post. Shameful, really.