So, Jim and I are not actually dead and are still floating around in cyberspace somewhere… we’re just snowed under with assignments and thesis research right now.

Wanted to do a short post about Chris Brown having abused Rhianna. Really, the most worrying aspect of this case is how it’s been received (victim blaming, excusing Brown, etc) but I found an interesting reconstruction of what happened according to police findings since the start of the investigation:

Having watched that, please go read Open Letter to Chris Brown over on Diary of a Black Male Feminist. And I think perhaps the crux of the argument is this:

I was doing everything backwards. I was trying to teach women how not to get abused instead of teaching young men not to abuse.

Which is a good point to remember everytime you see government poster campaigns with tips for getting home safely or avoiding being drugged by a man. Or again, everytime you hear someone respond to hearing of domestic abuse with, “What did she do to make him so angry?”

I just want to bring a couple of very interesting essays to your attention, both of which serve as useful correctives to the recent news coverage of the ‘financial crisis’.

The first is by one of my favourite people, the late Robert Anton Wilson. (If you haven’t read Prometheus Rising or Quantum Psychology yet, you really should). Here he looks at the relationship between schooling, sexual neuroses and economics, and the social implications thereof.

What I Didn’t Learn at College – Robert Anton Wilson (1961)

The second is from H. L. Mencken, that great repository of witty quotes. He basically takes the probably controversial (but perfectly sensible) approach of looking at the political economy of economics. Thanks to A Tiny Revolution for getting it online.

The Dismal Science – H. L. Mencken (1922) (It’s near the bottom of the page, you’ll have to scroll down)

So I thought I’d post some videos from the protests against Prop 8, passed on Nov. 4th banning gay marriage – because, well, it’s pretty cool to see communities galvanize themselves for justice like this. (Via)

It still boggles my mind that Prop 8 went through. If we ever needed evidence that heteronormativity still dominates life then this is it. As a collective society we seem to make so many fundamentally unsound assumptions. If a newscaster says, “Gender issues” – that’s taken as “Women’s problems”. If they say, “Racial issues” – that’s equated to “Black problem”. And “Sexual orientation” – “Gay”.

This ‘Othering’ of so many people really lays the basis down for hatred. And I’m not sure a lot of people really know why they hate other human beings so much. It’s usually evidenced by falling back on things like, “It’s just not right!”

I think some good (and compulsory) thought exercises would go like this… Contemplate that:

- Male is a gender

- White is a racial category

- Straight is a sexual orientation