Labyrinth – Prince Charming as Abusive Control Freak

I fear I’m not quite smart or well-versed enough to quite wrap my mind around the layers that bellatrys is unpacking in this essay (partially) on Labyrinth. But as I’ve been thinking more and more about some of the things I loved when I was young, how well they hold up now, and the ways [...]

Fellow Language Lover Does Not Find This Appreciable

This link was posted by somebody on my Facebook friends list with the comment “Appreciable by my fellow language lovers”. I would consider myself quite the language lover, and would cite the letters after my name accompanying the word “Linguistics” as evidence of that. I would also note that as a language lover, I find [...]

Work Ethics

Meryl Streep makes a speech in The Devil Wears Prada tearing apart the young, naive, recently hired Anne Hathaway for looking down on the fashion industry. In it, she outlines the trail between the presumed department store/bargain bin sweater Hathaway is wearing and the fashion industry decision three years earlier to market the colour “cerulean”. [...]

200 lashes

This whole story out of Saudi Arabia about a rape victim who was sentenced to 200 lashes for being out in public without a male escort (the original sentence of 90 lashes was raised when she appealed, because, of course, the message that it is not okay to protest this kind of horrifying treatment must [...]

Electoral Structures and Media Narratives

In an abstract academic sense, I’m fascinated by the election process in the US (in a human sense, I’m horrified and depressed by it, so I suspect that the academic distance aspect is a defense mechanism). Leading up to the Ontario election, I realized how the whole show seemed somewhat diminished to me. Part of [...]

Wherefore Art Thou…

Feministing tells me that Sarah Michelle Gellar has announced that she’s changing her last name to Prinze after five years of marriage to Freddie Prinze, Jr. As an anniversary gift.
Sigh. Name changing. This is an issue that a lot of people want to simplify in order to dismiss it. They tell us that it’s an [...]

Action Barriers Part 4: The Good Person

Part 1: Defensiveness
Part 2: Guilt
Part 3: Blame
All of the barriers to action I’ve talked about so far—defensiveness, guilt, blame—hinge on the essential idea that P is a Good Person and that P’s Good Person-ness is the central fact that needs to be discussed. P can’t be Racist/Sexist/Classist/participate in the patriarchy/oppression because P is a [...]

Action Barriers Part 3: Blame

Part 2: Guilt
Part 1: Defensiveness
(I do still exist, I just moved in to a new apartment last week and have been busily doing many things that are not writing)
In the trifecta of reasons why our friend P doesn’t have to do anything about sexism, racism, homophobia and oppression, though he knows they exist, recasting blame [...]