Dear Reader,Regarding my last two columns, this one and this one, I seem to have made an error that was offensive to many people who identify as bisexual, and I apologize. I do. I really do. I can really fall in love with my own nonsense sometimes. And to those who have written agreeing with me, I appreciate it, but I think I was wrong.Here is the flaw in my thinking, courtesy of a kindly scholar of argument:”Logically, your position relies on a fallacy of amphiboly that confuses two different uses of the term ‘two.’ Being attracted to ‘two’ sexes is not the same thing as wanting ‘two’ partners. Could a bisexual person be polyamorous? Sure. But so could a heterosexual person. You say that being lesbian means one wants to be partners with women (etc). Does that mean that being a lesbian means that one wants to be partners with ALL women? More than one woman? By extension, does being heterosexual (man wants to be partners with women) mean that a man wants to be partners with ALL women? More than one? Besides, being bisexual doesn’t mean that one has ‘two’ attractions. It means that one’s preferences don’t necessarily depend on sex. It’s not that you want to have sex with ‘both’ men and women. It’s just as easily that you want to have sex with either a man or a woman.”Continue Reading… … Read More
DC Reasonoids: Check Out Silver Circle, an Animated Movie About the Fed And More, Tonight!
If you’re in the DC
area, check out Silver Circle, an animated movie about anti-Federal
Reserve activists.
At the center of corruption is the Federal Reserve who has
gained enormous amounts of control over America’s economy, with
disastrous effects beginning to show.
Standing opposite, is the band of Rebels who have vowed to take
back the freedom they once knew…and they won’t go down without a
fight.
Monetary mayhem. Explosions. Romance. Silver Circle plans to
take indie animation to a whole other level.
More info
here.
The movie is debuting in the DC area at the Regal Ballston and
will be playing over the next week.
Go
here for details. … Read More
My Chemical Romance announced split after 12 years making music
US alternative rock band My Chemical Romance have split up after 12 years together, the group confirmed on their website Saturday. The band was founded in New Jersey in 2001, comprising members Gerard Way, Ray Toro, Mikey Way and Frank Iero. “Being in this band for the past 12 years has been…
“Girls” recap: Good-bye cruel “Girls”
I don’t know how I feel about the new Hannah-in-crisis. One of the great joys of Hannah was that even — especially — in her blundering, raw, ineptitude, she was a force that, nonetheless, moved forward. Unlike the rest of us, with our piddling one step forward, two steps back, her massive jumps of misplaced courage — “I am the voice — or at least, a voice — of my generation” — were decimated by steady, incremental self-sabotage. The best part was that, unlike us, she would have been hard-pressed to differentiate the two.So how can we make peace with this Hannah, who, after finally getting what she wants — a good (enough) job and a nice(ish) boy — gets overcome by OCD, a terribly crippling condition in real life, and possibly so in drama. A very smart commenter on Facebook recently noted that the ear-poking seems almost an act of desperation, as if Hannah were trying to dig out her neurosis with a Q-tip. It certainly does, but what about losing Adam has caused this syndrome? Is it stopping her from writing the book? Is the book stopping her from writing Adam? Was the plot stopping Dunham from writing an explanation for either of these? Hannah is poking around for answers, lost and alone. As are we.Continue Reading… … Read More
Stephenie Meyer says “traditional romance” books are “too smutty”
“Twilight” author Stephenie Meyer may have spawned a culture of mommy porn and subculture of vampire fetishism with her trilogy about Bella Swan and vampire lover Edward Cullen, but that was never her intention. The Mormon mother of three told The Guardian’s Kira Cochrane recently that she has not read E.L. James’s erotic “Twilight” fan-fiction,”Fifty Shades of Grey”–or even most romance books–because they are “too smutty”:”When I ask Meyer whether she’s read Fifty Shades, she quickly, emphatically, says no. She doesn’t wish James ill at all, she says, but ‘it’s so not my genre. Erotica is not something I read. I don’t even read traditional romance.’ Why not? ‘It’s too smutty. There’s a reason my books have a lot of innocence. That’s the sort of world I live in.’ “Her own “less-traditional” romance has been just as polarizing, though, with detractors labeling it as “abstinence porn.” (Meyer was taken aback by the “the massive amount of fans that I hadn’t expected, and the massive amount of people who hated it, which I also didn’t expect”). She insists, however, that “Twilight” is about “true love”:Continue Reading… … Read More
Can religion support feminism?
Just about everyone is piling on Facebook-COO Sheryl Sandberg, who aims to launch not only Lean In the book on March 11 but a slickly-designed national Lean In movement to propel more ambitious women up the ladder.“I always thought I’d run a social movement,” Sandberg has said.“People come to a social movement from the bottom up, not the top down,” replied Maureen Dowd on Sunday. “Sandberg has co-opted the vocabulary and romance of a social movement not to sell a cause, but herself.”Details, details, details.I for one am not complaining that the Sandberg hype is helping rebuild feminist buzz. I like hearing those syllables—feminism—sounded out proudly to the world, especially by people who are making off like bandits with its benefits.Continue Reading… … Read More
