An excellent article by Kathy Miriam from The Journal of Social Philosophy In the 1980s, U.S. feminism fractured along political fault-lines defined by conflicting views of prostitution and pornography and related conceptions of power, agency, and sexuality.1 The “sex wars”—as they were unfortunately, popularly labeled—were apparently settled by the end of the decade, with “pro-sex” [...]

“Sexualisation” has become a much-debated issue in recent years, and a noticeable feature is the assumption that feminists who oppose sexual objectification are generating a “moral panic”. Ever since sociologist Stanley Cohen introduced the term in 1972 it has been used as a shorthand way of critiquing conservatives for inventing another “problem” in order to [...]

I Love OWS and the Slogan “99%” It is a great slogan that puts in bold relief the immense power of the one percent of humanity that exists parasitically on the rest.  “We are the 99%.”  It is a declaration that in some significant way, people are more awake to their circumstances than they were.  [...]

In historiography, the Idea of Progress is the theory that advances in technology, science, and social organization inevitably produce an improvement in the human condition. That is, people can become happier in terms of quality of life (social progress) through economic development and the application of science and technology (scientific progress). The assumption is that [...]

Two new pieces from Kathy, with gratitude. Manifest(o)ing Feminism: Occupy Patriarchy! The New Now-Moment of Occupy Wall Street The whole world was erupting as we U.S Americans were watching.  Our noses pressed to the screen-monitors of history we watched as waves of mass rebellion rippled from Greece and Spain to Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria in the [...]

Soldier at 18, baptized when I was 56 years old, and born the day after Veterans Day in 1951, I am on this November 11, 2011, mere hours away from being officially 60 years old.  I was a soldier.  I am a Christian.  I am 60. This day began as a celebration of peace (Armistice [...]

Driving through Adrian today, about 45 degrees with a low gray ceiling and plenty of drizzle.  It’s the county seat in an agricultural region, where manufacturing jobs used to pay the bills alongside monoculture cropping and its federal subsidies.  The jobs are gone now and the ag companies pay the farmers roughly what they’d make [...]

The plague bacteria that swept through medieval Europe had been declared extinct just over a month ago. A quick google search reveals articles with headlines such as ‘Medieval plague bacteria strain probably extinct’ and ‘Black death strain extinct’. Few writers mentioned that the original research on which they reported was a technical paper first and [...]

One of Walter Mosley’s novels begins: Ghetto Humor “Daddy, why do black people kill each other?” “Practicing.” I guess that’s black black-humor.  It also has a big grain of truth. People do most what they practice and practice most what they do… practice here meaning rehearsal or repetition, not a generalization of practical effort.  Hair [...]

Returning from the ragged edge — where people become few and trees many — to the urbanscape — where people are many and trees are few — has been a tad jarring. Various good, bad, scary, wonderful, interesting things happen in two months of cruising. I don’t have time even to summarise them right now. [...]