Occasional Link Roundup

So, I think that at this point I can officially stop pretending that I do my link roundups on Sundays, or that I do them weekly. So this will now be rebranded the Occasional Link Roundup(tm) and I will do it whenever the hell I please.

Also, feel free to self-promote in the comments!

Here we go!

1. Why you should talk about going to therapy. I love this post so much. “If you broke your leg, you’d go to an orthopedist to get it put into a cast. If you needed a root canal, you’d see a dentist. So why if your brain is not doing what it’s supposed to are you chastised for seeking professional help? And for casually talking about doing so?”

2. A female Olympic weightlifter responds to men who bash her appearance and her choice of sport. “[W]e don’t lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that. What makes them think that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we’re flattered. But if you don’t, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive?”

3. Tumblr, a blogging platform that I otherwise really like, has allegedly been ignoring instances of racial hate speech–but not other kinds.

4. You know those terrible man-hating quotes that feminists are always purported to have said? Well, many of them are completely fake.

5. On threats against women online, and why they’re misogynistic.

6. Why “tolerance” doesn’t have to mean tolerating hate and bigotry. “‘Toleration’ is not a principle of universal acceptance of all thought and conduct, but rather a restriction on which thought and conduct will be accepted in any given sphere of debate, whether it be in the public forum of the United States or in the high school classroom….Toleration is merely the principle that, in civilized discourse, neither speakers nor states can silence, disregard, or punish speakers based on arbitrary criteria or life circumstances.

7. Advice for people who don’t drink. I do drink, actually, but little enough compared to most college students that this still applies to me very well.

8. An analysis of a pro-skinniness forum’s attacks on model Kate Upton. Incidentally, this forum links to this blog, because someone posted a link to it there. I hope they stick around, by the way. Maybe they’ll learn something about not letting your weight and appearance dictate your sense of self-worth.

9. A great post about how people come to social justice blogs just to rant about how offensive and terrible they find our ideas. Why not just move along?

10. This is my favorite: how a middle-aged white guy became a feminist.

11. No, just kidding, this is my favorite. Calling someone a bigot does not make you a bigot.

Occasional Link Roundup
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Sunday Link Roundup

I haven’t been doing much reading lately because I’ve had no internet in my apartment. But it’s back! And so’s my weekly link roundup.

1. Clarisse Thorn writes about an example of rape in the pickup artist community. Pretty harrowing.

2. Turns out Amelia Earhart had an open marriage! Here’s a letter she wrote to her husband, George Putnam, about it.

3. Of course some idiot has to blame the Aurora shootings on the fact that Americans should “place a higher value on God.”

4. Zinnia Jones, on people who claim to support gay rights but insist on eating at Chick-Fil-A anyway. (I also wrote about this a little while ago.)

5. Natalie Reed wrote this lengthy (but worthwhile) post on trigger warnings. I haven’t used one on this blog until my most recent post, but I may reconsider.

6. On labels. This blog is about demisexuality specifically, but the points this post makes apply to any “nonstandard” label that someone may choose to describe themselves with.

7. How to learn not to be a racist. Required reading, this.

8. You don’t have to understand someone and their experience in order to be respectful. It’s similar to this piece that I wrote a while back, but takes a slightly different angle.

Sunday Link Roundup

Sunday Link Roundup

Hey people! Once again I’m pretending that it is still, in fact, Sunday. (Maybe I should just change this to the “Monday Link Roundup”…)

1. “Times When I Feel Jewish.” This is the story of my life.

2. On anti-science and why it fails.This article especially makes a brilliant critique of liberals who claim that science is “Western” and therefore “oppressive.”

3. My friend Kate takes down that ridiculous book The Secret that was all the rage a few years back. No, just because you wish really really hard for something to happen does not mean that it will. How was this ever a bestseller?

4. On things no one will ever say to a man. “Men will never be asked the question, “Can you have it all?” because it’s implied that they already do. Their penis entitles them to the life cake and eating it too. They have a monopoly on “All.”  They invented “All.””

5. I must confess I did not have the energy to read all the responses to the by-now-infamous Atlantic “Can Women Have it All” piece, but here’s the one I did read. It’s about federally mandated paid maternity leave, and how women in 178 countries–but not the United States–have it.

6. On how our political discourse promotes fear-mongering.

7. On the stereotype of Asians as the “model minority” and why it’s wrong despite being “positive.”

8. Most people involved in social justice are familiar with what’s known as the “tone argument.” Here’s an interesting and nuanced view of it.

9. How fashion “rules” encourage hiding bodies that fall outside of our standards for beauty.

10. On Alice Walker’s refusal to publish her book about racism in Israel because of Israeli “apartheid.” “If Walker were really interested in battling the alleged racist tendencies among the Israelis, one would think that she’d want her anti-racist book to become as widely known among the people of Israel as possible. I have to wonder how barring access to an anti-racist piece of fiction is supposed to stop people from racist practices.”

11. And, finally, the best webcomic about depression you will ever read.

And the Crap Post of the Week Award goes to this gem from College Candy. (Really, Psychology Today and College Candy) should probably be off-limits for this award since that makes it too easy.) The writer has been taking advice from her friends about dating and one of them told her a little-known Rule: you can only text a guy once for every two texts he sends you, and call him once for every three times he calls you.

She writes, “Correct me if I’m wrong (which I know you guys will!), but the air of mystery disappears if I’m doing all of the texting and calling, right? He’s not worried about what I’m doing or how my day went or if he’s on my mind, because I’m basically telling him.”

Naturally, it didn’t work. Despite all the fairly sexist babble about men being “clueless” and “oblivious,” trust me, they can tell girls who play these inane games and follow “Rules” apart from those who don’t, and they stay away.

Also, as a side note, unless your friend is Marilyn Monroe, I’d take her dating advice with a grain of salt. This includes me, folks.

Have a lovely week!

Sunday Link Roundup

Sunday Link Roundup

Soooo I haven’t done one of these for a while because I’ve been lazy. Just kidding, it’s because I’ve been busy interning for a mental health advocacy organization and suntanning and reading Anna Karenina. So there may be a lot of links here. And now that I’ve recovered from Pride weekend, here it is. Enjoy!

1. This week the European Union released a snazzy video full of pink and high heels and men staring lustfully at women, for the purpose of…encouraging women to pursue scientific careers. After the Internet exploded, the video was taken down, but here’s a great blog post over at Teen Skepchick that explains why this was so gross and inappropriate.

2. At In Our Words, a beautiful post on what depression has taught one writer. “Depression has taught me quality over quantity.  I am a very busy, sometimes self involved, flighty person.  The handful of people I consider good friends know these things about me.  What’s really crazy is that they also love me in spite of them.”

3. On the challenges of disclosing mental illness.

4. On loving your parents even though they can’t accept you for who they are. “I know this isn’t social justice orthodoxy. Social justice orthodoxy is, as Andrew Ti from Yo Is This Racist, would say, “Yo, you tell them they’re fucking racists and then you don’t talk to them. You really need someone that fucking awful in your life?” But the thing is…I kind of do.”

5. Margarita Tartakovsky, one of my favorite mental health writers, explains how not dieting is a sort of freedom.

6. How academic grades become a measure of self-worth, and all the problems inherent in that. As someone who has literally bawled on many occasions because of a random letter that was written on something I produced, I loved this.

7. More on talking about mental health. “I inevitably start to feel like I’m throwing a woe-is-me, isn’t-life-awful, tell-me-about-how-damaged-you-are-so-we-can-cry-together Pity Party. It’s embarrassing….But you know what? I think it’s time for us to have a Pity Party. We need to air our dirty mental health laundry and get a real dialogue going. Because truly, when I started actually acknowledging my depression, letting others in on how much I was struggling, and looking for a reason and a cure, a whole world of compassion opened itself to me.”

8. You don’t need to be in a relationship in order to live romantically. “I enjoy long walks on the beach as much as anyone else; I just like to do them alone.”

9. A friend of mine wrote about how we alternatively demonize and glorify technology. It sounded a lot like a post I’d written once, except better. 🙂

10. You don’t have to be thankful for your mental illness. You don’t have to see “the good” in it. Sometimes there isn’t any.

11. People are more likely to compromise with groups they disagree with if they believe those groups are capable of changing their views. Not a huge surprise, but it’s nice to see research confirm these things.

12. Some really helpful advice on how to flirt with people without making them uncomfortable, as per the recent atheist con controversy.

13. On crying in public, and the sense of shame and embarrassment many of us feel when we cry.

14. What it’s like in a mental hospital, from someone who’s been there. Read it and lay the stereotypes to rest.

15. On the myth of the “good old days.” “But my question is this: if morals have been declining in this day and age, when was it ever higher? Can we really name a time when there was less injustice, criminality, and corruption?” Nope!

16. And my favorite post ever: on self-disclosure and genuineness as a mental health professional who is also a writer. “They told me to lie to you, but I knew you could handle the truth.

Finally, the Crap Post of the Week Award goes to this article from Psychology Today, which attempts to justify cheating on your spouse because good things can apparently come of it. Such as…you’ll talk about the state of your marriage! You’ll spice up your sex life! You’ll get your needs met if your spouse is disabled and physically cannot meet them! Yes, that’s in there. And worse yet, the author calls this a “healthy affair.”

Also, a bit of news–my short-form blog, on which I write and post stuff about basically the same subjects I cover here, has recently received its 500th follower! That must mean it’s good, so go check it out.

Have a good week!

Sunday Link Roundup

Sunday Link Roundup

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.

Sunday Link Roundup

Sunday Link Roundup

So I’ve decided to dedicate one post each week to sharing all the awesome things I read elsewhere on the Internet. Hopefully I actually remember to do this each week. 🙂

1. On the benefits of psychiatric labels. I’ve written about this before, but this blogger says it beautifully: “My labels have freed me to live in better harmony with the person I wish to be.”

2. On sexual harassment as an exercise of power.

3. On casual sex and how, for some people, it’s just not that great. I can really relate to this.

4. On “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting in life. This super-controversial post uses video games as a metaphor for privilege. It’s been accused of ignoring issues like class, but I think we can all agree that Metaphors Are Imperfect.

5. On the (in)visibility of bisexuality. Also, everything else on this blog is fantastic.

6. On Mitt Romney as a bully. I wrote about this too, but this post explores more facets of the story. “The fact that so many responses to Romney’s abuse categorise it as pranking or fun rather than bullying says a lot about why this country has such a big bullying problem. The refusal to identify what he did as wrong, and to connect the dots on what it means politically, speaks to dangerous social attitudes.”

7. Last but not least, this blogger dedicated an entire post to why my blog is awesome. Needless to say, I feel really really special. 😀

Sunday Link Roundup