Blogaround

An adorable fluffy white kitten stares at you. Image source.

1. Praying Through The Saints (posted July 1) "For a long time I thought this was true; that Catholics prayed to the saints, but it’s not true."

2. Conservatives Suddenly Discover a Right to Privacy (posted July 1) "For more than 50 years now, the right wing has raged against the idea that there is any such thing as a right to privacy in the Constitution."

3. A note on The Toast (posted July 1) Hillary Clinton wrote a post for The Toast. Cool!

4. Who Blames the Victim? (posted June 24) "Proponents of individualizing values tend to see a dyad of victim and perpetrator (a victim is hurt, a perpetrator does the hurting). Proponents of binding values, however, may see behaviors as immoral even when there is no obvious victim — for example, the “impure” act of premarital sex or the “disloyal” act of flag burning — and may even feel that doing the right thing sometimes requires hurting others (as with honor killings, to pick an extreme example)."

5. This tweet:

Calvinism and Prosperity Gospel are the pessimistic and optimistic sides of the same theological coin.

— Samantha Field (@samanthapfield) 2016年6月20日

6. The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Fetal Imaginings (posted June 30) "But we’re all clear that people don’t just go out and have third trimester abortions, right?"

7. This is why we have women-only spaces, and why I don't want to hear your complaints (posted May 24) "Despite being force-fed the narrative of danger that, for example, warns us against speaking to strange men lest we somehow give them the 'wrong impression', women are also demonised whenever we express concern or caution about being alone with men we don't know. To do so is to express the most violent of misandries against the innocent, unassuming gentlemen who would never, not in a million years, how dare you even suggest it you vile she-beast, ever do anything to harm a woman."

8. Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Dies at 87 (posted July 2)

9. Why Everyone In Aladdin Is Awful - Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder (posted June 27) "When Aladdin shows up at the palace in disguise, unannounced, uninvited, from a country that no one has ever heard of, the sultan, unlike just about any other dad on the planet, opens his home in the hopes that this stranger will hook up with his daughter."

10. After Settlement, Gay Users Will Finally Be Able to Use ChristianMingle.com (posted July 2)

11. Do Progressives Hate American History? (posted July 4) "Now yes, I’d known about slavery, and I’d known it was evil, but I hadn’t realized how deeply it was defended, or how little the Union soldiers and Northern whites I’d been taught to revere as liberators and heroes actually cared about slaves’ wellbeing. I hadn’t realized that our country was literally built on slavery, that the prosperity I’d been taught to admire in our early nation came fundamentally at the price of slaves’ sweat and tears."

12. WATCH: Sir Ian McKellen delivers an inspiring message to ShanghaiPRIDE (posted June 20) Hooray!

13. Everything Wrong With Fox’s ‘X-Men’ Billboard And The Media’s Response To It (posted June 6) "Those unfamiliar with the comics (read: most viewers driving or walking by the posters) didn’t see the culmination of a hard-fought battle between formidable Marvel mutants. They’d be unlikely to wonder if Mystique might give Apocalypse a run for his money before this image, or if she kicks his ass in some subsequent scene. Instead, they just saw a hulking, powerful male figure easily dominating a smaller, strangled female figure—with the reinforcing tagline, “Only the strong will survive.” And in a country where every day three or more women are murdered by their husbands and boyfriends, such copy strongly implies that she’s a goner."

14. 105 Trans Women On American TV: A History and Analysis (posted April 28)

15. The worst ISIS attack in days is the one the world probably cares least about (posted July 4) "For years now, we have become almost numb to the violence in Baghdad: Deadly car bombings there conjure up no hashtags, no Facebook profile pictures with the Iraqi flag, and no Western newspaper front pages of the victims' names and life stories, and they attract only muted global sympathy."

16. Video Shows Grisly Aftermath of Fatal Shooting of Black Man in Minnesota (posted July 7) Oh my god. #BlackLivesMatter