Marriage and other sex assaults, more on immigration

I relate. “Men don’t look at me and think I’d make good wife material. Maybe because of how much I swear.” As @OMGchronicles put it, such a good read for any woman who is #single. Reminds me of when I sent my dad a video of one of my boyfriends this weekend. After admitting he seemed cool, my dad wrote, “Too bad he’s married :(” This was the first time I’d seen my dad use an emoticon.

“Teresa did not want to be reduced to merely a body, bred and sacrificed for the sake of her husband and children. If she had to choose between being a body and a brain, she would choose to be a brain. So she entered the church — the only way a woman could become a philosopher.” It’s funny that even today women would have women choose between being a body or a brain. “Everything in town is named after her. The plaza, the streets, the schools, the churches, the cafes, the parking facilities. And yet during her life, she did not have an easy time being taken seriously by the church establishment.”

“Yet I also know how infrequently you truly make the choice to sacrifice something you love; it’s more like a slow erosion.” I feel this every time I get emotionally entangled with someone, because my favorite thing to write about is myself. When I am fairly autonomous, I can write about myself without much fear of hurting others. But entwining my life with someone else’s requires writing about them to write about me. It’s not that I write or a don’t write. But it slowly puts a pause between having a thought and broadcasting it. It’s a small hurdle that I can scarcely afford. “We no longer have to choose between being a brain and a body, but I can’t help but think that we lose something when we couple up, and maybe that thing is worth preserving.”

“She wrote volumes, about the role of women, about compassion, about the power of art, about living through dark times. She was a philosopher, and yet even today she is rarely mentioned in philosophy survey classes and rarely listed with her brothers Spinoza, Descartes, Aquinas, Kant and others.” Probably because other women showed their boobs.

Oh, of course I like this. It’s written by someone who’s Twitter handle is @thebookslut. Via @rachel_dry.

Hillary Clinton’s Plan for Paid Family Leave Is Bad Policy Design I’m going to write in-depth about this but suffice it to say for now NOOOOOOO.

Today in drama I’m thankfully not a part of, people are upset about Molly Crabapple doxxing the woman who found Dylann Roof’s racist manifesto and made it public so he couldn’t plead insanity because in doing so Molly put her life in danger. I’m a fan of Molly’s, although I don’t agree with her on everything, namely she’s a communist who advocates for military intervention abroad. While I’m generally not a fan of doxxing as a strategy for disagreeing with someone, I find the person she doxxed pretty reprehensible. Her name is Taryn Fivek, and I believe she is still employed by The International Organization for Migration, an aid org that works closely with the UN. Apparently while working on supporting Syrian refugees resettling in Canada, she was simultaneously writing under the name Emma Quangel and advocating for Hezbollah while denying that the Syrian government was starving its people. She’s also an anti-sex worker bigot.

Perhaps part of the reason Molly is aware of Quangel’s writing is that Quangel wrote a piece which is hilariously in line with the sentiment mentioned above, accusing Molly of only having a career as a writer because she used to get naked for money. Remeber, ladies, you can be serious, or naked, but not both.

The secret is changing gender norms. “It could simply be the case that poor men are poor marriage prospects regardless of the ideological superstructure dominating the marriage culture. But if the core center-right cultural approach to fighting poverty can’t make it out of the gate without collapsing under contradictions, it’s hard to imagine it could ever succeed.” by @rortybomb

Of course they did. “To reflect upon his life and influence, we offer five sources to begin thinking about David Bowie’s place in the history of sexuality of the 1970s and 1980s.”

This is an interesting and heartwarming story about killing yourself.

Quick reminder as Sweden investigates sex assault cover-up. The solution to racism isn’t misogyny. The solution to misogyny isn’t racism.

Speaking of, Alex Nowrasteh explains why immigration isn’t the issue, policy is.

“Many of the problems caused by immigrants in Europe are exacerbated by bad policies that we don’t have in the U.S.

“For instance, most European countries prevent asylum seekers from working for 3-12 months after arrival. Policy in the US geared around getting them into the labor market as fast as possible. Many countries that on paper don’t have restrictions on asylum-work make it harder in other ways – high effective marginal tax rates through welfare, closed shop unionized industries, and other labor market regulations.

“Reforming many of those policies would have a positive effect on migrant integration.”

Related: How to Win Friends and Influence Refugee Policy. “We do a really good job of integrating immigrants. We’ve been doing it for more than 200 years. We have our strains of xenophobia here in the U.S., but we don’t force people to strip off religious and cultural signifiers, as France has with the hijab. We also don’t help them to avoid assimilation. We treat them like Americans, and in the end, they become Americans, or their children or grandchildren do.”

Also keep in mind that an official report says that the influx of refugees in Germany has not led to increased crime rates.

I <3 ENB Homeland-Security Training for Strippers, and Other State Sex-Trafficking Laws Coming This Month

Via @KateDAdamo, Building Bridges: The #SexWorkers’ Rights and #AntiTrafficking Movements, interviews w @megmunoz & @LoriAdorable