I want to talk about atheists and anger.

This has been a hard piece to write, and it may be a hard one to read. I’m not going to be as polite and good-tempered as I usually am in this blog; this piece is about anger, and for once I’m going to fucking well let myself be angry.

But I think it’s important. One of the most common criticisms lobbed at the newly-vocal atheist community is, “Why do you have to be so angry?” So I want to talk about:

1. Why atheists are angry;

2. Why our anger is valid, valuable, and necessary;

And 3. Why it’s completely fucked-up to try to take our anger away from us.

• Read the entire blog post at Greta Christina’s Blog
• Download as PDF

BONUS READING: 20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity (PDF backup)

Table of Contents:

1. Christianity is based on fear
2. Christianity preys on the innocent
3. Christianity is based on dishonesty
4. Christianity is extremely egocentric
5. Christianity breeds arrogance, a chosen-people mentality
6. Christianity breeds authoritarianism
7. Christianity is cruel
8. Christianity is anti-intellectual, anti-scientific
9. Christianity has a morbid, unhealthy preoccupation with sex
10. Christianity produces sexual misery
11. Christianity has an exceedingly narrow, legalistic view of morality
12. Christianity encourages acceptance of real evils while focusing on imaginary evils
13. Christianity depreciates the natural world
14. Christianity models hierarchical, authoritarian organization
15. Christianity sanctions slavery
16. Christianity is misogynistic
17. Christianity is homophobic
18. The Bible is not a reliable guide to Christ’s teachings
19. The Bible is riddled with contradictions
20. Christianity borrowed its central myths and ceremonies from other ancient religions

Continue reading – 20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity 

The joy of not being sold anything

There’s further irony in the traditional metaphors. The notion of fiercely battling, competitive sperm suggests that they’re battling each other in a race to the egg. In fact, says Cone, they have a hard time making their way through the mucus glop, and like a team of bicyclists they take turns up front parting strands of mucus. So in a sense sperm are cooperative. The egg, on the other hand, is the real competitive loner. Only one matures each month, and the one out in front suppresses the maturation of all the others. The macho image of sperm not only obscures this reality; it actually reverses what’s been observed.

Continue reading at discovermagazine.com

Based on the forthcoming book by Pepi Leistyna, Class Dismissed navigates the steady stream of narrow working class representations from American television’s beginnings to today’s sitcoms, reality shows, police dramas, and daytime talk shows. Featuring interviews with media analysts and cultural historians, this documentary examines the patterns inherent in TV’s disturbing depictions of working class people as either clowns or social deviants – stereotypical portrayals that reinforce the myth of meritocracy. Class Dismissed breaks important new ground in exploring the ways in which race, gender, and sexuality intersect with class, offering a more complex reading of television’s often one-dimensional representations. The video also links television portrayals to negative cultural attitudes and public policies that directly affect the lives of working class people. Featuring interviews with Stanley Aronowitz…
Written by The Media Education Foundation

Consuming Kids throws desperately needed light on the practices of a relentless multi-billion dollar marketing machine that now sells kids and their parents everything from junk food and violent video games to bogus educational products and the family car. Drawing on the insights of health care professionals, children’s advocates, and industry insiders, the film focuses on the explosive growth of child marketing in the wake of deregulation, showing how youth marketers have used the latest advances in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world. Consuming Kids pushes back against the wholesale commercialization of childhood, raising urgent questions about the ethics of children’s marketing and its impact on the health and well-being of kids.
Written by The Media Education Foundation

It’s obvious to us, today, that pink is for girls. But it wasn’t until about the 1950s that our current gendered color scheme became widely accepted. Before that, the colors were reversed.

Continue reading at thesocietypages.org

The Sunday Sentinel in 1914 told American mothers: “If you like the colour note on the little one’s garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention.” Some sources suggest it wasn’t until the 1940s that the modern gender associations of girly pink became universally accepted. Pink is, therefore, perhaps not biologically girly. Boys who were raised in pink frilly dresses went down mines and fought in the second world war. Clothing conventions change over time.

Continue reading at guardian.co.uk

Argument against sports fandom, not sports.

“The actions of individual heterosexual men are never used against all heterosexuals. One of the central benefits of being part of a privileged social identity group is that your own behavior is never taken as representing that of your entire group. No matter how many stories we hear about heterosexual men committing adultery and destroying their marriages, why is it that we continue to hear that it is LGBT people that are the greatest threat to the institution of marriage?”

-Abby Ferber, Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Ethnic Studies

• Full article on thesocietypages.org
• The Privilege to Ruin A Marriage but Not Marriage (PDF backup)

The diamond invention—the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem—is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade. Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only in a few riverbeds in India and in the jungles of Brazil, and the entire world production of gem diamonds amounted to a few pounds a year. In 1870, however, huge diamond mines were discovered near the Orange River, in South Africa, where diamonds were soon being scooped out by the ton. Suddenly, the market was deluged with diamonds. The British financiers who had organized the South African mines quickly realized that their investment was endangered; diamonds had little intrinsic value—and their price depended almost entirely on their scarcity. The financiers feared that when new mines were developed in South Africa, diamonds would become at best only semiprecious gems.

• Read the article on www.theatlantic.com
• PDF copy of the article