Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - Posts
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A post from DoubleX Desire Lab blogger Daniel Bergner:
There’s a theory that has some currency among sex researchers and
therapists: that, over time in monogamous relationships, women lose
desire more than men do. Not much data exists; I’m aware of only one
large study on this subject. But the thought is that women’s libidos
need more spark in order to ignite, and so women are particularly
susceptible to losing desire as they remain with the same partner. It’s
an idea that runs somewhat counter to the assumption that female desire
tends to depend a great deal on the depth of relationships, on intimacy ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).
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Amanda,
Before I begin, I want to clarify something. I’m not “anti-choice.”
I am anti-abortion. That might sound like semantics, but I think it’s a
sign of the gulf between abortion-rights supporters and abortion foes.
“Anti-choice” has a connotation of “anti-woman,” that being against
abortion means you think women shouldn’t have control over their
bodies. I will defend until my dying day a woman’s right to choose
whether to have sex. I think the pill might have been the greatest
invention of the 20th century. I’m all for passing out condoms in high
schools. Adoption should be easy, and birth mothers should be able to
have open or closed adoptions. Women who choose to keep their children
and who need help should have access to financial assistance and other
support programs that will enable them to be productive and gain
employment and raise their children. I just can’t support abortion. And
frankly, I can’t think of many pro-lifers I know who feel differently.
Yes, there are some who think sex is strictly for marriage and
procreation. But you’re not going to make any headway with them. If the
pro-choice and pro-life sides are to have any hope of working together
to reduce the number of abortions, which should everyone’s goal, we
need to try to understand one another and stop what’s essentially
name-calling ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).
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Dan Halloran is the next City Council Representative for New York’s
19th district. He is a Republican. Also, he is the "First Atheling," or
prince, among members of a local pagan group that worships Norse gods.
"It is our hope," he explained on his now-missing website, "to
reconstruct the pre-Christian religion of the Germanic branch of the
Indo-European peoples, within a cultural framework and community
environment." Excellent ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).
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The turning point for the Virginia governor’s race came in August, when the Washington Post published a copy of Republican Robert McDonnell’s master's thesis,
in which he argued that working women were detrimental to America,
among other retrograde points. McDonnell’s genius in the campaign was
to instantly focus the debate on whether or not he thinks women should
be able to work (which, of course, he does) and thus obscure every
other way in which his policies are, in fact, retrograde and bad for
women.
McDonnell quickly quashed worries about him with these two videos, one of his daughter, who had served in Iraq, and the other of women state officials who had worked for him
or were appointed by him. Unlike in the attack videos made by his
opponent Creigh Deeds, these women were actual people who gave their
names and occupations. The point conveyed, effectively, was that of
course McDonnell appreciates working women. But it’s a pretty fringe
right-wing minority these days who doesn’t. Among even the most
conservative Christians, the argument is over whether women should work
when their children are very young, not whether they should work at all ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).
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A post from DoubleX writer K.J. Dell'Antonia:
Supreme Court followers (and NPR listeners) heard an outrageous story
today—that of an innocent man who spent more than two decades in prison
for a murder he didn't commit before evidence of the apparent gross
racism and misconduct of the police and prosecutors who put him there
was uncovered. It's hard not to crave justice for this man—but what
seems just for him will make justice less likely for everyone else.
Lawyers for Terry Harrison have argued that although it's long been
clear that prosecutors cannot be sued for doing their job—for actually
prosecuting a defendant for a crime—there is no immunity for
investigative activity. Harrison claims he can sue his prosecutors for
their participation in what was at best a botched investigation and at
worst an outright conspiracy to arrest the wrong person for the crime.
In other words, he's not suing them for prosecuting his trial, he's
suing them for helping to put him in a position to be tried in the
first place ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).
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A post from DoubleX writer Beth Fertig:
In the new movie Precious, Clareece Precious Jones is
beaten by her mother and raped so often by her father that she’s
pregnant with his second child. She’s also illiterate.
I’ve spent the past three years profiling illiterate young adults, and I decided to take two of them to a preview screening.
Yamilka and her brother, Alejandro, now 26 and 24, are Dominican
immigrants. They’d gotten all the way to high school without learning
to read. After a hearing officer ruled in 2005 that New York City had
violated a federal law that’s supposed to protect them because they are
students with disabilities, the siblings received a combined total of
more than $250,000 in private tutoring.
Yamilka and Alejandro expected the movie to get the Hollywood
treatment. And they were fine with some of that, so long as they found
it generally believable. Yamilka—who was overweight and self-conscious
in school—related to the way Precious sat in the back of her class in
junior high. “I didn’t want people to notice me, to notice something
was wrong.” When she saw Precious guessing her way through a multiple
choice test, Yamilka said she had done the same thing ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).
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