claire's

More importantly, NAFTA revealed the fundamental contradiction of the drug war: The goal of NAFTA (and the U.S. banking deregulation that came with it) was to free the market and minimize state control. The goal of the drug war is to restrict the market and maximize state control. The result? Over 30,000 murdered in four years in Mexico alone, with all the grief and suffering that follows for each of those 30,000 families.

this is a sad, sad article, but definitely worth reading. it proposes that the US legalize narcotics like coke and heroin so that we can regulate them more safely and destabilize the cartels in Columbia and Mexico. both governments are so heavily impacted and infiltrated by the cocaine industry—tbh I don’t know if eliminating the cartels would cause them to strengthen or collapse. it’s unlikely to happen, in any case.

genderqueer:

Submitted by sebastian

Yesterday I came out to my kids as genderqueer. It wasn’t a big deal. The topic of gender just came up in conversation. I said, “Gender is not just boy or girl. That’s what a lot of people think.”

I told them what genderqueer meant. I said, “It’s basically how I see myself.” 

It opened up a really cool conversation. They all said that it didn’t matter. That they just see me as their mom. 

A little later in the night, my eight year old son came up to me. He asked, “Mom, do you want me to see you as a boy or a girl”?

I answered him.

 I don’t sit my kids down and go over this stuff like gender or sexuality very often. It does come up, but mostly we talk about homework and dinner and the everyday things. 

This is the new generation here. Things are changing.

:’) kids are awesome.

JK Rowling self-defines as a Christian. More specifically, she was apparently raised Church of Scotland which, the internet reliably informs me, has strong Calvinist influences. If this is true, then it seems that Rowling has allowed her faith to strongly influence her work. Unfortunately she has also allowed it to become so decontextualised as to be unrecognisable.

from Ferretbrain

My two favorite things…Harry Potter and Calvinism. jk, probably not Calvinism. but this article and the comments on it are actually pretty interesting if you’re bored enough. Which I am.

Regarding the language used to describe virginity and having sex, both “giving” and “losing” imply that virginity is the state of having something, and being sexually active is the state of being without something. While some might argue that this applies to the hymen, that’s not even true. Not all virgins have hymens, and not all sexually active people are lacking hymens. The language here, to me, implies a value judgement. One that has been especially damaging to women.

from It’s Just Sex