(by Winslow Robertson, and x-posted from The Monkey Steals The Peaches) This is both a crass attempt to get you guys to check out my blog and also to make a larger point about life. Thanks to PB for letting me do this, and G.D. in particular. On May 12th, 2008, around 2:30 in the Read More
(x-posted at U.S. of J.) At Secular Right, Heather Mac Donald tries to argue in support of one of the most common objections to same-sex marriage: the fear that legitimizing same-sex marriages would come at the cost of sullying the institution of “traditional marriage.” Interestingly, she doesn’t focus on marriage as an institution so much as Read More
Filthy is trying to plan a nice feminist, secular wedding ceremony, and is looking for suggestions. I want my wedding to be special for the both of us, not just a celebration that I got me a man; but I don’t want it to be a five-minute secular deal. I have agreed to let my Read More
Mark Regnerus, a professor at UT-Austin, argues that Americans should be marrying younger. He tries to make the case for this even after offering that “getting married at a young age remains the No. 1 predictor of divorce.” First, what is considered “early marriage” by social scientists is commonly misunderstood by the public. The best Read More
I’ve long suspected that part of the reason that aspirational Negroes rail against ghetto folks is actually to reify that stereotype, and consequently give relatively banal middle class lifestyle choices the weight of much-needed social uplift. (It’s why you see portrayals in the media of professional black folks with traditional nuclear families reflexively celebrated as Read More
This unsettling and thought-provoking story from the Washington Post has been all over the Internet recently. The charge in the courtroom was manslaughter, brought by the Commonwealth of Virginia. No significant facts were in dispute. Miles Harrison, 49, was an amiable person, a diligent businessman and a doting, conscientious father until the day last summer Read More
A couple of years ago, after my dad died, my mom started to get calls from the last of his remaining credit cards about his unresolved debt. They had declared bankruptcy a few years before, but apparently he still had a card from a home shopping network with a $500 limit. My mom, being Read More
When the family planning spending package was jettisoned from the stimulus bill, feminists were varying degrees of upset. I don’t remember who said it where, but at least one person argued that it should be part of the bill because bad economic times are bad times to have children, and therefore good times to encourage Read More
slb wrote an essay on what being raised by a single mother (mis)taught her about the male-female dynamic. Matriarchy, she said, taught her not to invest fully in men. Conversely, a matriarchal upbringing taught one of the men she dated to rely too heavily on her. Her piece read like a blanket statement with which Read More
We’ve touched on the idea (and the holes in it) before, but the meme — the Obamas as an aspirational model for black families — has really started gaining steam. America has often viewed the black family through the prism of its pathologies: single-family homes, absentee fathers, out of wedlock children, they say. Or they’ve Read More
