Misogyny isn’t new; consent shouldn’t be confusing

Helen Lewis at the New Statesmen shows us “What online harassment looks like.” It’s an awful, potentially triggering, collection of “Obscene images, hate sites, and a game where people are invited to beat you up.” This is disturbing and disturbed. It’s hateful, hate-filled stuff posted by boys who simply hate women. These boys hate women [...]

Mutuality Week (and toothbrushing horror)

I would like to say that Rachel Held Evans’ remarkable Mutuality Week series is what made her the Slacktivixen’s new favorite blogger, but actually it was something more recent. Specifically, it was this passage from Evans’ recent post on “Exercising in public and other methods of sanctification“: Now, there are three things that I feel [...]

Vagina? Vagina. Vagina vagina vagina.

“I’m flattered that you’re all so concerned about my vagina.” “If I can’t say the word vagina, why are we legislating vaginas?” “At least nine female legislators, Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler and actresses from across the state will be assembling to perform Ensler’s play on Monday, June 18, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. [...]

Mutuality Week and the burden of proof

I go to check out at the library and the library clerk asks to see my card. Fair demand. Am I or am I not a member in good standing entitled to check out these books? Here we have a controversy, a dispute, an unsettled question in need of settling. The clerk has asked a [...]

‘Eve-teasers’ inside and outside the church

In Bangladesh, apparently, the sexual harassment of women is called “Eve teasing.” This social problem exists everywhere be it in rural or in urban areas. One of the main reasons of girls being married off at an early age or them dropping out of school is “eve teasing.” Many times these incidents lead to violence [...]

Fundie Catholic school forfeits to avoid shame of third loss

Here’s the thing: Mesa Prep’s high school baseball team went undefeated. That’s the high school team in the Arizona Charter Athletic Association for which Paige Sultzbach plays second base. Mesa Prep won the charter league state championship by forfeit after Our Lady of Sorrows — a fundamentalist Catholic school — refused to play in the [...]

Tribalism and the cruelly weird idea of zero-sum human rights

Anti-gay activist Peter LaBarbera said this recently on a conservative radio show: All of a sudden Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have turned the United States into a pro-homosexual regime and it’s just despicable. That’s as clear an expression as you’ll find of the zero-sum notion of human rights that underlies so much of the [...]