Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of War!

No comics today 😦

I figure that having comics every Wednesday for almost two years gets us a little leeway. I’m about to mouth off here, people. You can endure a monologue from me, or you can find yourself another blog to read. This is where we are.

So, first. We’ve not been posting as often as we would like to post lately.

Second, I haven’t been around to answer comments.

Third, this blog is absolutely not going away.

A year ago, more or less, I made this blog a political no-go zone. I am considering lifting that restriction and allowing contributors to speak their political minds on this blog.

Just so you know, this here pop culture blog is supported by a huge gaggle of feminists and other left-leaning people.

What if we decide to bring the politics back onto this blog? Slowly, carefully, and liberally? What about that?

Leave us a comment, if you have an opinion.

And have a video!

 

Weekend Music: Shenandoah

This song haunts me. Sometimes I hear it in my dreams. Roger McGuinn is the real master, but Arlo Guthrie does it better than most. Sadly, I cannot find an adequate live performance to share on the blog, but the art is interesting and the lyrics are mostly intact in this version.

Given the fact that nearly everyone who writes for this blog or otherwise supports it is interested in power relationships, gender issues, and imperialism but we don’t talk about that stuff here any more because 24/7 pop culture geekery just sells better and we are after readers, it seems like the right thing to post today.

Enjoy!

Join us for a Feminist Friday discussion of healthcare.

We’re having an open discussion in four hours at Part Time Monster. We’re talking about how contraceptives are not just for preventing pregnancy and how they benefit women in tons of other ways. And how they are a medical treatment that your employer should not be allowed to deny you.

If you’re just going to bed, or just waking up and have a busy work day ahead of you, no worries. Chime in when you have time, and we’ll answer.

We’ve been doing Feminist Friday discussions since March. We do them because we want people to talk to us about their experiences with sexism. We care about it. Given the fact that our constitutional court just placed contraception in a legal category by itself and made it subject to the whims of religious belief; and that a goodly portion of corporate America is poised to take advantage of the loophole, we are feeling a little beleaguered.

Talk to us about this. We need all the wisdom we can muster.

Lawyers, Guns and Money, is what I am saying. Equal parts honest desperation and  pointing out the ridiculousness of it all. We are just people. We have privileges but no real power. Our legal code is the only thing that prevents us from being ground to a pulp, and the highest court in the land has turned against us.

Talk to us. We’ll talk back.

An Unavoidably Political Post, and Don’t Forget about Feminist Friday!

First things first. Diana will have the Feminist Friday post at Part Time Monster this week. We took last weekend off, so we’re hoping for a good discussion this week.

I haven’t been around on the social media this week very much because I’ve been doing a lot of writing.  I briefed a Supreme Court case that deals with religious liberties and contraception yesterday. I added my opinion at the end. That didn’t get a lot of looks, and it’s not surprising. You can only expect so much out of a legal brief on a pop culture blog, and when that legal brief mentions both religion and politics, well. You know. The number of views doesn’t matter, though. A few people read it. It was something that had to be written and had to be published, by me, this week.

I followed up with a discussion of the consequences of the decision and further developments today. That one did better, and that makes sense, too, because it’s newsy. Newsy posts always do better than legal analysis unless your audience happens to be full of attorneys. Sadly, comments on that post were accidentally disabled all day. So I have no idea whether anyone wanted to comment or not. Comments are enabled now, though.

Even though those aren’t the two most popular posts I’ve ever written, I’m glad I published them, and here’s why. They helped me connect some dots. As many of you know, I’ve been writing about the need for LGBTQ people to have full equality in the U.S. roughly every two weeks now for about 4 months. I’ve also started, with the help of many friends, a Feminist Friday discussion which has been hosted on several blogs and has managed to survive for 13 weeks or so. Both of those issues are issues of inequality. I’ve been trying to find a way to connect them in a way that isn’t forced and doesn’t offend anyone who’s actually with me on the issues. I’ve had a bit of a personal breakthrough on that.

I’ve identified cultural, political, and legal mechanisms that allow people to discriminate against all the groups encompassed by “LGBTQ” and “women.” Even if I haven’t spoken clearly enough for anyone else to see them yet, they exist, and I see them.

Breakthrough.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.