Thursday roundup

Another must-read dispatch from the mens-rights conference.

Some guys are really threatened by the concept of sex without consequences, and those guys are pretty vocal about it.

Women’s rights activists point out that opposition to contraception access is fundamentally about control and brings us back half a century to when women were less able to control the number and spacing of their children — and, as a result, significantly less equal.

Demanding that women close our legs and calling us whores for planning our pregnancies confirms the feminist suspicion that opposition to contraception and abortion is less about “life” than it is about a sense that sexually active women are doing something wrong and should be chastened for it.

and

Many of the rights we take for granted — having our own credit cards and checking accounts, divorcing an abusive partner, being able to report domestic violence to the police — were hard-won feminist victories that went hand in hand with the rights to bodily autonomy and sexual privacy.

And that’s exactly why far-right conservatives are so opposed to contraception: They correctly realize that it allows women freedoms that were once nearly impossible but for a privileged few. And their ideal society hinges on a family with the husband as head and the wife as a "helpmeet." Contraception inches her closer to being an equal player.

Steve Coll on how Hobby Lobby is not unlike the Taliban.

By the way, I don't shop at Hobby Lobby anyway because crafts are not my thing, but I also will not be buying Eden Foods from now on. Could someone else please start making mochi? And, yes, organics do matter.



Here's a very good, comprehensive but concise explanation of why you can stop asking me where I get my protein (and stop worrying about yours).