links for 2009-05-02
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"It is easy to make fun of the Keystone Komstocks who write and enforce vice laws. Yet this recent pair of virtue-rescue missions deserves serious attention because the same misguided principle lurks behind both efforts.
That is, anyone who displays her body in a sexual way cannot possibly be doing so on her own volition. Somebody somewhere must be coercing her to remove her clothes, dance around the pole or aim the camera and press 'send.' That the disrober-aimer-sender is usually female only compounds the suspicion that she is not in possession of her own mind and body. "
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"I’ve never mentioned this here before, though you may have seen me mentioning it in passing on other blogs or on Twitter, despite the fact that it would have been exceedingly relevant to do so on more than one occasion. The answer is simple: I’ve seen the reactions to it. I’ve seen that daring to confess any sort of mental illness and/or instability can be used against you, especially in the blogging world where credibility is regularly attacked, and where women are often called irrational just for having an opinion. And that people with anything short of 'normal' mental health are often called irrational just by existing."
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"He cut me off, 'Well, we get caught up in that world of insurance. People think that they have to have insurance. But you don’t have to have insurance to get dental care. You can…'
Me: 'Look. I was poor. Do you understand that? Normally, people who have no benefits from a job, also work in a job that pays pretty crappy, too.'
He just looked at me in disbelief.
And I think I know why that is: people don’t believe it because you don’t 'look the type.'
But the other reason? I have observed that, when you are poor and you are in convo with someone who is fairly well off, making a professional-managerial upper middle class salary for example, they *love* to tell you about how they truly understand how tough it can be.
They have to struggle to make ends meet, too. It’s really hard, this person will tell you. They might even delve into their past as a college student eating ramen noodles, or as newlyweds living in, ugh, an apartment!"
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"using concern about migrant workers as a rationale for growing a garden: total horseshit.
there’s a really important principle about solidarity that seems to be understood when it comes to third word women and colonialism. but it seems to be forgotten when we talk much more specifically about the role of consumers and producers within the context of capitalism.
the solution is pretty simple and is not based on racial or ethnic identity or even location in a hiearchy of social status. Rather, it is solidarity in terms of radical political practice. In this case, there is absolutely NO consumption behavior that is worthy of the concept of solidarity with workers unless it is specifically requested by those workers, as part of their demands for economic justice."
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"I think they call it a pink slip because the form they fill out is pink. It’s a real ego boost to read yours, let me tell you. This is something I try to underscore about the difference between all you sane folk and all us crazy folk out there. Your knowledge of being pink slipped comes from Girl, Interrupted and how sexy Angelina made it."