http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/01/15/parents-furious-after-young-boys-suspended-after-playing-with-imaginary-weapon/ I’d be uncomfortable around any child who enjoyed pretending to kill–anything. Especially if that child was going to grow up to be a man, was going to be flooded with testosterone for several years. I’d also be uncomfortable around any adult who considered that behavior “a game”.
July 2013 archive
Jul 27 2013
Bare Breasts: Objections and Replies
[I wrote this piece back in the early 90s when Gwen Jacobs did her thing (yay, Gwen!), but apparently it all still needs to be said. A couple years ago, I was ‘spoken to’ by a neighbour for taking my shirt off on a hot summer day when I was out kayaking. Most amusingly, I …
Jul 25 2013
Bare Breasts: Objections and Replies
[I wrote this piece back in the early 90s when Gwen Jacobs did her thing (yay, Gwen!), but apparently it all still needs to be said. A couple years ago, I was ‘spoken to’ by a neighbour for taking my shirt off on a hot summer day when I was out kayaking. Most amusingly, I …
Jul 23 2013
“Royal Male”
Noticed the headline while I was standing in the check-out at the grocery store today: “ROYAL MALE”. Right. It could have half a brain, but hey, as long as it’s MALE.
Jul 23 2013
Developing Authority and Being a Parent
I’m wondering whether it’s just me or…whether most women who never become mothers simply never develop an authoritative manner. Men have it from the get go: they are automatically thought, by themselves as well as by others, to be authorities, and early on, they develop both the habit of telling others what to do and …
Jul 20 2013
Impoverished (male) Scientists
To read the science journals, one would think animal life consists of nothing but predation and reproduction, both thoroughly competitive in nature. The absence of any capacity for pleasure, or at least for non-competitive pleasure, is frightening. Lining a nest with warm and soft material is not for comfort, but to “increase the survival rate …
Jul 15 2013
Making Certain Words Illegal
Hate speech. Libel. Slander. Threat. Intimidation. Blasphemy. ‘Making words illegal violates our freedom of speech!’ Of course it does. But that freedom, like many others, isn’t absolute. Our freedoms are limited freedoms. They are limited by several things (Joel Feinberg identifies six liberty-limiting principles), one of which is the harm principle. That is, when our …
Jul 14 2013
Making Kids with AIDS
[I wrote this piece a while ago, but have since then, seen the same sort of denial of male agency. Apparently kids are found in pumpkin patches. Yeah. Or the stork brings them. What are you, six?] [Quite apart from the point about AIDS.] What has been glaringly absent in news stories about children with …
Jul 05 2013
More reasons not to celebrate being Canadian…
We’re barely in the top quarter when it comes to the gender gap in wages (we’re fourth worst). We’re barely in the top quarter when it comes to the gender gap in health (it’s safer to be pregnant in Estonia than in Canada). Speaking of which,
fiction
