Rotundus.com

How Self-Expression Damaged My Students

"Every decent human impulse we have as teachers shouts in favor of not imposing rules and discipline on students, but liberating them to discover the power of their voice by sharing their stories. ... Grammar? Mechanics? Correcting errors? Please. Great writing is discovery. ... Like so many of our earnest and most deeply humane ideas about educating children in general, and poor, urban children in particular, this impulse toward authenticity is profoundly idealistic, seductive, and wrong. I should know. I used to damage children for a living with that idealism."

Sexism? Policy change at Community Legal Aid favours females, stirs outrage

"Community Legal Aid will no longer represent anyone accused of domestic violence — as long as that person is a man." Community Legal Aid is the student legal aid group run at the University of Windsor so it's somewhat less a "community" group than a university-affiliated one. Given that laws surrounding domestic violence seem to suggest if-male-you're-screwed they might as well be honest about the situation.

Should there be required labeling of GMOs?

"I would in fact be more supportive of the GMO labeling idea if renowned food writers such as Bittman, and many others including left-wing economists, would come out and boldly proclaim the science about GMOs to their readers. ... Overuse of antibiotics and animal treatment (both cruelty and environmental issues) — now those are two very real problems, backed by overwhelming scientific evidence. The fact that the California referendum is instead about GMOs — which have overwhelming scientific evidence for net benefit and minimal risks - is the real scandal."

Why the Death of Mom-and-Pop Pharmacies Has Been Great for Women

The quick version: being a cog in a large chain, working a job with no long projects and no potential for advancement, allows much greater opportunity for part-time work.

Such was the title of a recent article in the Atlantic. An excerpt:

I am going to smack the next idiot who tells me that raising her children full time -- by which she really means going to Jivamukti classes and pedicure appointments while the nanny babysits -- is her feminist choice. Who can possibly take feminism seriously when it allows everything, as long as women choose it? ... Let's please be serious grown-ups: real feminists don't depend on men. Real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own.

In her view financial independence seems to be the essence of feminism. Strange then how not just those in marriage relationships but rather all of society is interdependent in so many ways - not just financially.

Her assertions that housewives never do anything around the house, just living in the lap of luxury reminded me of a quote from Slate that I've cited before:

Despite the popular notion that most mothers who don’t work outside the home are mostly wealthy elites, stay-at-home moms actually tend to be less educated and poorer than the rest of mothers, as we learned from recent census numbers.

Given that Elizabeth Wurtzel seems to think that allowing most women to make their own choices is a bad thing, wouldn't it be fair to make the following assertions? Real feminists are anti-choice. Real feminists believe in ignoring female voices. To quote Simone de Beauvoir:

No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.

That statement was made back in 1975 but the same sentiment lives on today in Wertzel's article. As I mentioned last week, women still seem to want to make such a choice and, thanks to de Beauvoir and Wurztel, society has been structured in such a fashion so as to make that choice less feasible for most women. The end result of having taken feminist's advice that the choices of women are not to be trusted? Not too surprisingly, female happiness is in decline.

Secret revealed: Ohio woman unknowingly married father

Even if you support same-sex marriage, legal surrogacy, sperm/egg donors, or other such things, I'd argue that there's still a good reason to restrict names on birth certificates to biological parents only even if, and when, that might also require paternity testing. (In the case of, e.g., a sperm donor being used in the case of a couple wanting children but involving an infertile male [the adoptive father], the biological father there being the sperm donor). It seems here that the woman in question didn't know, and whether not not her father/husband knew is uncertain, but others were aware.

EEOC says WSSU discriminated against employee

"Shira Hedgepeth, who is white, had been the university's director of academic technology and was let go in 2011. The EEOC ruled that Hedgepeth's race was a factor in her termination." According to the EEOC, "Affirmative action may be required of your company as a condition of entering into a federal contract." How a government can both require affirmative action mandate discrimination on the basis of factors such as race or gender and at the same time have a different branch rule that discrimination against whites is wrong is beyond me.

Restraining Order Helps Mom Murder Children

"Lisa Cochran was a deeply disturbed young woman. Her former boyfriend, Christopher Ehlen, father of Faith, as well as her ex-husband, Vincent Cochran, both say that mental health issues had long plagued her. She had recently talked of suicide. But what she had also recently done was go to court to get a protection order preventing Ehlen from coming near her or the girls. According to Ehlen’s family, the order was issued with no evidence to support it. Because it was, Ehlen could do nothing to intervene to save the children he loved so much. ... Apparently, Cochran is the third mother in the past six months in the St. Louis area to murder her children and then commit suicide."