Violence against women
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On Marlon James’s “A Brief History of Seven Killings.”
James created a striking depiction of some of the brutal homophobic lives eddying near Bob Marley.
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On Eka Kurniawan’s ‘Beauty Is a Wound,’ mythology, and misogyny.
Kurniawan’s interests mirror my own — why wouldn’t I love his book?
Annie Tucker, Beauty is a Wound, David Foster Wallace, Eka Kurniawan, feminism, feminist, Flo the Progressive Insurance girl, Franzen, geek, geek culture, girl, Heartbreak, Kurniawan, Mahabharata, Mark Leyner, misogyny, mythology, neg, Neil Strauss, Purity, repetition, Scott Aaronson, sexual assault, The Game, The Pale King, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, Translation
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On David Lancy’s The Anthropology of Childhood, and violence against women (again!), and proscriptive parenting advice.
The anthropology of what childhood looks like in different cultures does not, in fact, suggest that all children “turn out fine.”
aborting female fetuses, Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory, Andrew Solomon, Anthropology of Childhood, attachment parenting, autism, autism acceptance, Changelings, Chattel, Cherubs, child-rearing, childhood education, childhood nutrition, children, children all turn out fine, cultural relativism, cultural relativity, David Lancy, education spending, Far from the Tree, health spending, Hillary Clinton, India, infant mortality, It Takes a Village, Jean Dreze, medical ethics, medical spending on rare diseases, Michael Erand, misogyny, New York Times, New York Times recommendations, parenting, proscriptive parenting advice, sex-selection, spending on childhood education, stay-at-home father, The Only Baby Book You’ll Ever Need, Uncertain Glory
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On Mat Johnson’s Loving Day and wanting to fit in.
My condolences to those who feel as though it’s their heritage never to fit in. Growing up, I didn’t fit either. But I had no expectation of fitting in. I was an outlier by virtue of who I was, not who my parents were. And presumably I could’ve learned to talk differently, to act differently,…
ancestry, brain imaging, brains, Caitlyn Jenner, choosing our identity, contemporary literary fiction, Danzy Senna, differences between male and female brains, differences between men’s and women’s brains, Elinor Burkett, feminism, feminist, Gina Rippon, identity politics, Loving Day, Mat Johnson, mixed-race, multicultural, nail polish, race, review of Mat Johnson’s Loving Day, rudely claiming that all black art is “urban”, The Mulatto Millennium, The Sympathizer, tribes, urban, urban fiction, urban graphic novels, Viet Nguyen, what does it mean to be black, What Makes a Woman, what should a black man look like, who is black
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On sex work, reparations, a global wealth tax, and the connection between the three.
Many people are upset that Amnesty International finally came out in favor of decriminalizing sex work. Not me. I think decriminalizing sex work is a step in the right direction. Sex workers’ lives are often miserable. Their underground status denies them police protection; instead, they are often actively abused by the police. The philosophical rationale for…
a good idea in theory, abuse of power, Amnesty International, amphetamines, arguments against legalizing drugs, Ayn Rand, Behind every great fortune there is a crime, black market heroin is unsafe, childhood nutrition, communism, cotton, creepy parallel between gene duplication and oppression, decriminalization, decriminalized prostitution, decriminalized sex work, economic reparations, empirical evidence, feminism, feminist, free school breakfasts, free school lunches, global wealth tax, guaranteed income, heroin, heroin overdoses, history of United States, how did the United States become a superpower, how high would the wealth tax need to be to guanantee everyone a subsistence income, how much money do people need to live, human dignity, human rights trading cards, immigration, immigration laws, income inequality, inequality, justice, land entitlement, legalized prostitution, legalized sex work, link between current wealth and slavery, Lydia Cacho, misogynistic culture, misogynists, misogyny, original sin, police abuse, poverty, Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function, price and demand, price equilibrium, prostitution, quality control, racist home loans, racist lending policy, reparations, school funding, selling organs, sex slavery, sex work, slavery, Slavery Inc, supply and demand, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations, United States, violence in Mexico, War on Drugs, War on Drugs harms Mexico, wealth begets wealth, wealth inequality, wealth tax, welfare, where did United States wealth come from, which laws are fair, which laws are just, who should receive reparations, why are drugs illegal
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On child pornography & an odd coincidence in timing.
Reading about the prosecution of a well-known fast food spokesperson has felt unnerving to me. In part because it’s always sad to hear about the type of activity he was convicted of. And in part because that particular well-known fast food spokesperson is featured in my (unpublished) book & is described in dialogue as being…
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On witchcraft and mass psychogenic illness.
Because she is N’s best friend’s grandmother, I recently had the pleasure of meeting the researcher who first proposed that the Salem witchcraft trials were inspired by ergot poisoning of rye crops. And that, of course, is one of the papers I read while researching mass psychogenic illness / conversion disorders / violence against women. Does…
bistable switch, Caporael, conversion disorder, dancing sickness, did drugs cause the Salem witch trials, did PTSD cause the Salem witch trials, ergot, ergot poisoning, history of women not being taken seriously by medical doctors, how to explain complicated mathematics to people without a math background, hysteria, Intoxication, Le Roy, lysergic acid, mass psychogenic illness, oppression, ordinary differential equations, pop psychology, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, Ronald Siegel, Salem witch trials, self-reinforcing behavior, stress, tarantism, the tipping point, tics, witchcraft
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On Jon Krakauer’s Missoula
I am obviously thrilled that Jon Krakauer’s Missoula has been getting so much press. There are still a wide variety of pernicious misperceptions out there, and Krakauer does an excellent job of addressing them in a very accessible format. I hope lots of people read his book, and, like Nicholas Kristof, encourage their friends and…
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On names (specifically, my own).
What’s that thing Shakespeare wrote about roses? Something about thorns, right? Drat those awful thorns! We live in a pretty small town, where there are 30 or so grocery stores, maybe 10 or so “good” ones, and whichever we pick there’s a decent chance somebody shopping or working there will recognize us and stop to…
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On minotaurs (and whether or not mothers are the root of all maladies).
While reading Eula Biss’s On Immunity, I was often reminded of Rebecca Kukla’s Mass Hysteria. Both works analyze the permeability of bodies, especially mothers and children, while drawing from literature, philosophy, and medicine. Their major divergence is in tone; Kukla’s work can veer academic (which I enjoy, being a pedantic fuddyduddy myself); Biss’s writing is…
Frank Brown Cloud 