Quote of the Day

... I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air.  Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

A riot is the language of the unheard.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

If you can only be tall because somebody's on their knees, then you have a serious problem.  And my feeling is white people have a very, very serious problem.  And they should start thinking about what they can do about it.  Take me out of it.

-- Toni Morrison

Quote of the Day

There are no virgin births in music.  Music comes out of other music.

-- Sandy Wilbur, "How Music Copyright Lawsuits Are Scaring Away New Hits"

Quote of the Day

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem.  Frankly, these people frighten me.  Politics and governing demand compromise.  But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise.  I know, I've tried to deal with them.

-- Barry Goldwater

Quote of the Day

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.  In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.  As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death.  It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage.  Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves.  Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions.  They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law.  The Constitution grants them that right.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

It is so ordered.
 
-- United States Supreme Court, Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015

Quote of the Day

When people are attached to positions they believe are their birthright, you get huge amounts of backlash.  When men think women are taking opportunities and privileges away from them, when they think women are challenging male dominance, you get backlash.  But we have to deal with that.  Women cannot -- and should not -- internalize patriarchal values and give and give and give until we're nothing.  What would need to change is for men in positions of power to accept that women can surpass them without having wronged them.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

The good news is it's becoming really obvious that women are not inferior to men in masculine-coded pursuits like math and physics and philosophy.  Women are funny.  Women are writers.  It takes an enormous amount of willful denialism not to see that women are free-minded and creative beings just as much as men are.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

What do we do about misogyny? ... I think one thing that will help is undoing the ties that bind people falsely, the false sense of moral obligation that keeps women with abusers and makes us reluctant to try to educate, to really morally educate young men not to participate in and enact rape culture.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

(What's happened since the Harvey Weinstein story broke) seems to be mostly a good thing.  It's certainly better than the alternative, which is these men getting away with it.  But the thing that bothers me is their age.  These are all men in their 50s, mostly 60s, sometimes 70s, who are being taken down well past the age of commercial viability, so they're not paying the price that they should.  The point is, we have this image of these old, predatory, powerful monsters.  They totally exist, but they didn't start out that way.  They started in adolescence.  We are seeing this reluctance to face up to the fact that young men, even boys, can do the damage of their much older counterparts.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

Since August 2015, my prediction was that Trump would be elected over Clinton, and the reason would be low voter turnout for Clinton, because that's just the way these things work: the lack of enthusiasm for a woman who's up against a male candidate who talks and acts like he's the last hurrah for patriarchy ... On election night, I wasn't shocked, but it hurts to know that the most incompetent, morally bankrupt, and ignorant white man can be elected over a woman about whom reasonable people can disagree but who was obviously more qualified than Trump.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

Misogyny is the law enforcement branch of patriarchy.  If you think about someone like Donald Trump claiming he's the law enforcement president, I think that's right.  It's the law of patriarchy, among other things, that he's enforcing.  It's the law that polices and punishes women who transgress or threaten dominant men.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"