Some dumbfuck police officer has sex with prostitutes while on duty. People are concerned that he may be a rapist[have sex with me so I won't arrest you is also rape, dudes]

I get the feeling this article might be classist.

Can flu shots prevent premature babies?

Kai Chang's PC essay has become popular again in recent days.

I find that I am unable to write lately.

Now crazies are spreading insanity by car flyers!

The sex industry is depressing, white feminists learn.

The struggles of a mom struggling with a child with cancer and the silly practices of woo woos.

Not vaxing your kids can cause outbreaks of disease. Guy hated for saying the obvious.

This lady had a point until she got to the prostitution part. THE MALE ORGASM ISN'T THAT IMPORTANT, DUDES. Many women aren't getting laid, but do we see oh, it's necessary to have a class of folks taking care of the need of women to orgasm? NOOO. For some reason, prostitution as a vaguely unpleasant job makes me imagine hundreds of women clenching their teeth and imagining themselves a world away as some dude pumps away, and that image disturbs me. It seems like the image of rape for me, and I can't make the two be different in my head.

Sexist jerks try to use 'prude' to silence, but geek girl sees through that mess. The reason they use 'prude' is that they know it's effective. In this society, women are supposed to be 'fun' and 'sexy' with a 'sense of humor'. Strangely, men aren't expected to have a sense of humor about pictures of extremely hung men in speedos in unrelated presentations. And no, the answer isn't to put more inappropriate pictures of men everywhere- it's to put sex in proper perspective.

There's a time for near nudes and crude jokes and there's a time for getting down to business. A professional conference is the time for getting down to business.

Hey, annoying Memphis flyer guy, get a clue! 1st, what's with this 'trannies' mess? Thanks for the offensive language. And what's with the wah, a rapper mentioned white cops beating down black dudes? Dude dude dude. Mentioning this isn't what is preventing racial reconciliation- it's worrying about some rapper mentioning reality over the problem of the police being poorly trained!

But I guess the gulf between us can't be bridged. Even though I'm middle class, our experiences are too different. It's quite a tragedy.

The fire that killed those children was a tragedy, and you should never leave two year olds alone. But the comments here, I think are wrong. For example, I don't think people are OMG HAVING BABIES FOR THE WELFARE. Note that the MAXIMUM cash benefit for a family of three is $185. Parents, and those who know parents compare that with the expense of raising *one* child for a month. Even using food stamps as a medium of exchange, a family of three would 'earn' $300 from those food stamps. In comparison, if you worked 20 hours a week at MCDonalds for a month, you would earn $580[gross.] and that is less work than having two kids.

Also, I am sort of wonky about the OMG, THEY SHOULD BE STERILIZED posse. That reminds me too much of the involuntary sterilizations of the past. I believe that not having a baby is fine and having babies is good too. A woman can use her fertility if she wants to. I say this because it's so easy to be a 'bad mother' nowadays. If you're single, poor, are black, according to a lot of people, the joy of motherhood should elude you forever. Bumpkis to that.

and on an unrelated note:
I think we get ourselves into the 7 year degree trap with our own work ethic. We should give our students the ability to really focus on school itself, instead of YOU SHOULD BE WORKING 5 JOBS, BEING IN TWO COMMITTEES, AND PARTYING EVERY NIGHT sort of attitude we have.

CA talks about crime. In comments we get a bunch of stereotypes and failed policies.

In other news, it seems that social work programs have been cut.

I learned that Alexis Pauline Gumbs is in Utne's visionaries. I thought that poem she read on the SPEAK! CD should be handed out to every middle schooler on the planet. I'm so envious. She and bint are people who I love, but make me sad because I'm the opposite. Their love is truly radical, and heals others and gives them courage. I used to be the human bomb- tearing into others without remorse, but now I'm just a slacker. They say that to encourage others gives them courage, and that's what they do. People who can connect to others are special.

Unrelated, I'd like to upgrade a comment I made to this blog:

Yea, as an evil rad fem, I'd like to be like consent is important because of bodily integrity, not because it's 'sexy'. Consent isn't a performance of the feminine role as the provider of 'sex', it's an affirmation of our own integrity!

I learn that Rainbow Brite is now 'a slut'. Now, there's a critque to be made about how girl's characters now have to be 'fashionable', but this whole slutty thing is too far.

We probably will never be able to move forward, I think. Note this article. Apparently, the whole problem with Memphis AND Detriot is not anything crazy like economic issues, infrastructure or education. It's black mayors not being nice enough to white folks. I guess that's convenient for all of us. We don't have to do anything if that's the problem. We'll elect a new mayor, and if he's not all we desire, it'll be his problem.

That reminds me- a man from Chicago was talking about reducing violence against children in the school system.

But in many neighborhood high schools, adults add to a culture of aggression. Security guards holler, teachers curse. Kids get physical and adults do to.

A year ago this week I was at Robeson High School reporting another story. Robeson is now one of the 38 schools targeted for a culture makeover.

It was October 16, about 3 PM, sunny…Students were leaving school. I was driving out of the parking lot when I saw one of Robeson’s assigned police officers grab a boy and slam him against a police car.

The officer raised his arm and hammered the side of the boy’s head, smashing it into the car. Another officer held the boy, even though he wasn’t putting up a fight. The first officer punched him in the face again.

I stopped my car and scrambled to turn on my tape recorder…This is all I got—the police sending away the crowd of kids who'd gathered.

POLICE: Get the f*** away now! Get this motherf***** in the back of your car! I headed for a group of kids who saw the beating.
UTTON: Did you see it?

GIRL: Yes I did. OK. The little boy was walking he looked like he was on his way home. The police just ran up on him, grabbed him from behind, boom boom boom—started punching him all in his face

GIRL2: And then the other police officer… In the past four years, CPS says there have been more than 400 cases of district employees physically abusing students. That includes everything from coaches paddling athletes to kids being hit with staplers. Huberman says he wants to re-train security guards as part of his culture of calm—he’s even suggested a security guard academy.


That sort of chaos where the adults are useless or may even be contributing to the violence... I don't think children can learn much in that environment. Instead of us believing our children[the children of the city are the children of all the city, I say] are always chaotic evil maybe a more nuanced understanding of the world would help our cities?

Hey, random, dude, I don't know you, but I'd shut up about what Egyptian women want to wear right about now. I'd like us all to live in an amazing feminist utopia, but if women want to work with their religious beliefs and cultural values, I'm not sure I should just go and say they are all subjugating themselves.

Horoscopes:

Aquarius: You will swim through sea loogies today.
Pisces: Have you ever been a vegan French-African fusion chef? You might want to look into that. Yes, no exceptions.
Aries: You're an asshole.
Taurus: Tea is unlucky.
Gemini: Three words: quarters in socks.
Cancer: You have too many shoes.
Leo: Your room is a mess. Therefore, no booty for you.
Virgo: Fish will feature much in your future.
Libra: You can't fight the power with haricot vert.
Scorpio: You're doomed. Go back to bed.
Sagittarius: Your head will become pointier.
Capricorn: They won't get your Greek soul today.

Today's Horoscopes:

Aries: Your plans will fail.

Taurus: Your plans will succeed.

Gemini: You will do something helpful.

Cancer: You will bake lasagna. Yes, even if you don't know what it is.

Leo: Eat something sweet.

Virgo: Eat something salty. Remember everyone is having a good time, but you.

Libra: Today is a good day for art.

Scorpio: You will contribute greatly to a wiki. Yes, even if you don't know what a wiki is.

Sagittarius: You will have an awesome time in New York. NO EXCEPTIONS!

Capricorn: Your secret swiss bank account is not so secret anymore.

Aquarius: Your secret kink is not so secret anymore.

Pisces: Fanfiction will figure greatly into your day.

Lucky Color: Red

Lucky Food: Sausage

Lucky Item: Bologna.

South Korean mothers fight for their right to raise their own children, wed or unwed. Personally, I think single moms aren't pathological. Doing your best to raise a child is a good thing, and slamming single moms is just cruel.

Oh, this is a good one. First it accuses feminists of being 'crazy', which is all fun what with the sexist bit about women speaking their mind=insanity, and the ableist assumption that the mentally ill don't have valid opinions. We also have the great use of 'retarded', because nobody on the net is disabled, or knows any disabled people,and BUT SOMETHING ELSE IS WORSE, and also, if we don't like porn, we're dumb.

Why don't you just stick to 'you hate sex, and are ugly?' pro porners. [edit: they took this down, after much twitter complaint.]

A JAM? I laugh and WTF. I hear that transfolks are full of rage over folks going around saying 'hey, let's name people's genitalia!'

Conspiracy theory monday! I think a lack of health care aggravates underlying conditions, leading to flu deaths.

Do you live in Hernando? They are looking for two stupid white males who didn't have the sense not to shoot at people on the road.

The reason people react so negatively to scorn on single parents, etc, is that it's not very useful. If scorning women for having kids worked, then we wouldn't be talking about this. It's all talking about the morals of other people's children- unless you're down in the trenches working to make things better, you just seem like some random classist.

In other news, doing girly stuff continues to baffle me.

People in other countries don't understand how an ER visit can put you in debt. They think you only wait 2 hours and spend $200 dollars. LOLOLOL!

Assholes with strange fixations on barely teen girls and who are rapists apparently get less time than folks who are drug addicts

It seems that whiny and homophobic emails get you fired from black colleges. A lot better than republican parties in which they can put racist emails everywhere and get away with a fake apology.

Well...old maid for lyfe!

Well...here's some waste, fraud and abuse we can cut out of our healthcare system.

Overall good article, but what's with the 'bad sex' thing?

I bet the 'I was helping the poor' excuse wouldn't fly if a woman was buying shoes online during work.

BfP makes arching connections in the case of Roman Polanski. I think it is psychological, but I think everything is. If we like Polanski, we try to make up reasons why he is justified, even in monstrosity. Then the comments get into self hating folks. Well, I think most of us have a need to be one up. This is why 'solutions' in the complaining about the morals of other people's children genre are so popular. "Man', we say, 'if only those other people taught their children to not have sex/study/to get JAYSUS, we'd all be fine'. We don't have to do anything, since it's all the fault of those other people, with their terrible ways, and we get to feel great about ourselves! Anyway, I think that even though sometimes folks do say fuck you, I choose my choice! the critique that people internalize negative standards is still valid.

This is getting rambly, so hey, let's go and slap the author of a triggery fanfic in the face.