Most commented posts
- Short Men — 64 comments
- Bare Breasts: Objections and Replies — 27 comments
- Why Do Men Spit? (and women don’t) — 26 comments
- Short Men — 19 comments
- Walking Alone in a Park at Night — 11 comments
Peg Tittle
Author's posts
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,
Jun 30 2013
This is your brain. This is your brain on oxytocin: Mom.
I think many women realize that their children make them vulnerable; their love for them holds them hostage. So many things they would do (leave?)—but for the children. I wonder how many realize that their imprisonment is physiological. And, in most cases, as voluntary as that first hit of heroin, cocaine, whatever. ‘But I love …
Jun 27 2013
Canada Day – Are you sure you want to celebrate?
Before you get all patriotic and fly your little Canadian flags in celebration of Canada Day and, presumably, of being Canadian, think about it. Are you really proud to be:
Jun 23 2013
PTSD and Ethics
[an excerpt from The Blasphemy Tour, written as Jass Richards] “We hope you’re enjoying Texas?” the show’s host said, after he introduced Dylan and Rev as his first guests of the day. “Well, we’re a little puzzled by all the American flags. Outside on people’s houses and their lawns—we’ve even been seeing them sticking …
Jun 22 2013
Every Man, Woman, and Child
There’s an interesting phrase. Man, woman, and child: those are my options, are they? Identifying oneself by one’s sex is a prerequisite for adulthood: if I don’t want to identify myself by my sex, as either a man or a woman, I’m left with identifying myself as a child. How interesting. Actually, it explains a …
Jun 11 2013
Air Bands and Power Point
I still remember the feeling I had when I saw my first air band performance. It was a sick kind of feeling. I hadn’t known what an air band was. The announcement came over the p.a. at my school-for-the-day, and I dutifully shepherded the class to the gym. Then I watched, incredulous, as group after …
Jun 11 2013
Short Men
I recently watched, with horrified amusement, a tv program about short men who choose to undergo excruciatingly painful surgical procedures (which basically involve breaking their legs and then keeping the bones slightly apart while they mend) in order to become a few inches taller. Asked why they would choose to undergo such a drastic, and …
Jun 02 2013
The Futility of Teaching Business Ethics or Why Our World Will End
There are four reasons why teaching ethics to business students is an exercise in futility. 1. The profit motive trumps everything. As long as this is the case, there’s no point in teaching students the intricacies of determining right and wrong. Whether something is morally acceptable or not is simply irrelevant to them. It might …
fiction
