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Rape, domination and sexuality

  By Love and Sex, Sexual and gender equality

Matt Ruben wrote a good op-ed in the Daily News today that points out that rape is a crime of violence against women and that calls for making the hate crimes law apply to such violence.   I agree with this conclusion.   But in the course of making the argument, Matt repeats a staple of feminist thought when he says that “research has demolished the myth that rape is a crime of lust or passion. It’s a crime of power: Men rape women because they seek to dominate and brutalize them.” That I don’t think is quite right. Rape is a sexual act as well as an act of domination. And we won’t understand rape, or the other ways both vile and much more innocuous, in which men dominate women unless we grasp that. Continue reading

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Those who can teach, can do

  By Education, Philosophy

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Nothing infuriates us teachers more than this saying. And with good reason, because both indirectly and directly, teachers are far more influential in practical life, than most of us realize. Continue reading

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Montco citizens call on Tom Corbett to resign

  By Health Care, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Yesterday, on the steps of the Montgomery County Court House health care advocates from Health Care for America Now, the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, Pennsylvania Communities Organizing for Change and Penn Action calling on Attorney General Tom Corbett to resign his office. Montgomery County Times-Herald coverage of the action, including video footage, can be found here. We took this action because Corbett has politicized an office that should be entirely above politics. Continue reading

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Delaware County citizens call for Tom Corbett to resign

  By Health Care

Residents say that Corbett has compromised the integrity of the Office of Attorney General by politicizing the office Media, Pennsylvania—Outsidethe Delaware County Court House today, local health care activists called for Attorney General Tom Corbett to drop his participation in a lawsuit against the health care reform law recently enacted in Washington and then resign from office. Members of Health Care For America Now, the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, and Pennsylvania Communities Organizing for Change claimed that Corbett’s lawsuit against health care reform, and other actions he had taken, had so politicized the Attorney General’s office that the integrity of Mr. Corbett and his entire staff were now in question. “At a time when Pennsylvanians, including small businesses, people with serious pre-existing medical conditions, and young people under 26 are seeing immediate benefits from the health care reform legislation, it is deeply troubling that our Attorney General is using taxpayer funds… Continue reading

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Delco and Montco citizens tell Tom Corbett to resign

  By Health Care

Residents say that Corbett has compromised the integrity of the Office of Attorney General by politicizing the office Media, Pennsylvania—Outside the Delaware County and Montgomery County Court Houses today, local health care activists called for Attorney General Tom Corbett to drop his participation in a lawsuit against the health care reform law recently enacted in Washington and then resign from office. Members of Health Care For America Now, the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, and Pennsylvania Communities Organizing for Change claimed that Corbett’s lawsuit against health care reform, and other actions he had taken, had so politicized the Attorney General’s office that the integrity of Mr. Corbett and his entire staff were now in question. “At a time when Pennsylvanians, including small businesses, people with serious pre-existing medical conditions, and young people under 26 are seeing immediate benefits from the health care reform legislation, it is deeply troubling that our Attorney… Continue reading

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Dreaming the city of our lives; finding the city of our dreams

  By Love and Sex, Philosophy

Here is a problem for the 21st century: how do you live a life that is changing and flexible and that requires constantly reinventing oneself when there are things in life—family, bodies of knowledge and work, the soul of a person you love—that require long term commitments. Maybe forging a soul of any depth, or getting to know one, is like getting to know a city with broad avenues, narrow alleys, and everything in between; one that holds surprises around almost every corner. You can get to know it only if you can travel back and forth in it from every direction. Not systematically, not with a plan in mind but serendipitously. Eventually, you learn how to make your way through it almost instinctively, knowing at each corner how to get to where else you want to go. That’s Wittgenstein’s understanding of learning your way around a city–and of doing… Continue reading

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Memorial Day, the old-fashioned way

  By A political memoir, About me, Civic virtue

Memorial Day was a big deal in the village in which I grew up, Liberty, NY. And thinking about the difference between the Memorial Day celebrations of my youth, and the non-celebration of this holiday today, makes me not so much nostalgic for the past but concerned about our future. Continue reading

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-30

  By Twitter feed

@fivethirtyeight make sure fan is going on when laptop heats up in reply to fivethirtyeight # @fivethirtyeight check vents and gently blow them out if blocked in reply to fivethirtyeight # Powered by Twitter Tools Continue reading

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Charlton Heston, Touch of Evil and "the method"

  By Film

I’ve never been a fan of Charlton Heston. He was never a very good actor. And his macho gun-toting politics represents all that is worst inAmerica. But I do have a funny story about him. The Welles film, Touch of Evil, is one of my favorite films. I taught it for a number of years in my Politics and Film class at UNC Charlotte. Heston gave one of his best performances as Miguel “Mike” Sanchez, the presumed hero of the film. Sanchez, it turns, is a far more morally ambiguous character than one recognizes at first. Indeed, the one of the charms of the film is that one’ judgments of both Heston’s character and and the one played by Welles himself as well as one’s view of ethnic conflict itself are called into question in the film, One year, one of my best and favorite students in the class was… Continue reading