I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to note that women, from a young age, are required to consider the reality of the opposite gender’s consciousness in a way that men aren’t. This isn’t to say that women don’t often misunderstand, mistreat, and stereotype men, both in literature and in life. But on a basic level, functioning in society requires that women register that men are fully conscious; it is not really possible for a woman to throw up her hands and write men off as eternally unknowable space aliens — and even if she says she has, she cannot really behave as though she has. Every element of her life — from reading books about boys and men to writing papers about the motivations of male characters to being attentive to her own safety to navigating most any institutional or professional or economic sphere — demands an ironclad familiarity with, and belief in, the idea that men really are fully human entities. And no matter how many men come to the same conclusions about women, the structure of society simply does not demand so strenuously that they do so. If you didn’t really deep down believe that women were, in general, exactly as conscious as you, you could probably still get by in life. You could probably still get a book deal. You could probably still get elected to office.
– Jennifer duBois, Writing Across Gender (via florida-uterati) Via new leaf.
That’s about the size of it.
I’ve been raging on Twitter today about how batshit insane it is that Virginia is proposing that uterus-bearers undergo trans-vaginal ultrasounds before being allowed to have abortions. This means that a doctor, even if he or she knows that it is unnecessary, must probe inside the vagina to obtain an image of the fetus. Forcing an object inside someone, even if their pregnancy is a result of sexual assault.
That’s all it is; insane. No man, no person, nobody has the right to tell you what you can or cannot do with your own body. It’s horrific and ugly and I don’t know how else to describe it. Nobody deserves to be raped because of how they were dressed, or shamed because they are unable to or don’t want to give birth, or told on any level by anyone that they are a lesser person for having sex at all.
Winners of the 2012 World Press Photo Contest
In Harlem, New York, a protestor is arrested at a demonstration against police tactics and income inequality. Photo by Tomasz Lazar.
![utnereader:
Playing off of Elizabeth Warren’s widely publicized quote about taxes (see picture above), the editors at The New Republic take the argument one step further, making a moral case for paying them. Their defense of taxation hinges on two arguments. “The first is distributional,” write the editors. “A civilized society recognizes [that capitalism will create losers as well as winners, often because of forces beyond any individual’s control] and vows to mitigate” that problem. “The second reason we need taxes isn’t about the least fortunate; it’s about public goods.” This is the point Warren made, and the editors at TNR make the same point, asking, “Could Bill Gates have made his fortune without government-financed education and technology?”
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Playing off of Elizabeth Warren’s widely publicized quote about taxes (see picture above), the editors at The New Republic take the argument one step further, making a moral case for paying them. Their defense of taxation hinges on two arguments. “The first is distributional,” write the editors. “A civilized society recognizes [that capitalism will create losers as well as winners, often because of forces beyond any individual’s control] and vows to mitigate” that problem. “The second reason we need taxes isn’t about the least fortunate; it’s about public goods.” This is the point Warren made, and the editors at TNR make the same point, asking, “Could Bill Gates have made his fortune without government-financed education and technology?”
