1. On corrective rape on the radio. This is a response to a radio DJ who told a man concerned that his daughter might be a lesbian to get one of his friends to “screw her straight.” C. Kendrick writes, “Dieter’s vile statement also points to the mythical notion that all a lesbian needs is a man – in this case, one of her father’s friends – to get her ‘on the track to normalcy.’ But not only did he take that myth further by underscoring it with sexual violence, he used it as a simultaneous attack on her queer identity and on her youth – the latter indicating a position which often lacks a voice due to both legal status and parental control.”
2. Why trying to force depressed friends and family members to go enjoy the “lovely weather” can be a bad idea, and other advice. This immediately reminded me of something I wrote about a year ago and still think about all the time.
3. On flirting without being skeezy. This post is specifically about the atheist community and their conferences, but it has a lot of good advice in it.
4. On Rorschach Tests and their continued use by some psychologists. My friend Kate wrote this, so you know it’s good. 🙂
5. On the recent anti-Internet protest by tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews.
6. You should date someone who cares.
7. I can’t stop rereading this hilarious post about online dating gone awry.
8. On the need to speak out for what you believe. This is my friend Derrick Clifton’s last column for the Daily Northwestern.”When voices fueling injustices around us continue modulating as they do, bystanding creates a silence that not only deafens, but destroys. Sitting idly by and remaining quiet while the bullies of the world continue having their way isn’t an endorsement of positive change, rather more of the same.”
9. This letter from a “Mens’ Rights” activist will make you laugh and cry. “Rebecca, I am going to radical alter our society in the next year. I am going to start the greatest hard rock 1986 GNR-esqe band the world has ever seen. There is an army, millions strong, of angry people, and especially young males seething at the lack of justice and outlet for their rage.” Much more where that came from.
10. On why Russians supposedly don’t get depressed. Interesting research; however, even if Russians are less likely to get depressed in the first place than other cultures, the barriers to recovery that they face are much higher because of the extreme stigma that mental illness carries in Russian culture.In my experience, Russians, especially men, rarely talk about their feelings in the open and trusting way that recovery from depression requires. (In fact, when I tried to tell my parents what I was going through, I found that I often lacked the words.) Therapy and medication are considered something for the weak-willed. My guess is that Russians suffer from depression as much as anyone else; they just talk about it less.
11. On ASG, the student government at Northwestern, and how useless it ultimately is. My friend Mauricio wrote this for the Protest, one of our campus publications.
12. On who’s really holding us down as women. “I’m not denying that patriarchally minded men…do a lot to keep the traditional gender structures in place. There is, however, the exact same number of women who benefit greatly from those patriarchal structures….I insist that I have not met a single man who has condemned me and vilified me nearly as much for my professional and financial success and sexual freedom as my female friends, relatives, colleagues, and acquaintances.” This is a worthwhile conversation to have, and we’re not really having it.