Dimanche! Another assortment of yummy bonbons, and another enthusiastic bonjour! to you all. Before you meander off to your big-hat brunch, here are a few savory morsels from around the internets — each and every last one of them 100% certifiably unmissable.
Austin Cline : Smash the Patriarchy: Gay Equality Means Fighting Patriarchy & Male Privilege
It’s difficult to argue that bans on gay marriage are a form of sex discrimination because no one gender is being singled out for inferior treatment. However, it is a form of discrimination which relies upon the same assumptions about gender and gender roles which also lie behind more common and direct examples of sex discrimination. Attacks are gay marriage are thus an effort to defend traditional heterosexual gender roles and patriarchal conceptions of marriage.
Gays are the latest and most public example of people refusing to abide by traditional norms for gender roles and sexuality. Growing acceptance of homosexuality and homosexual relationships erodes traditional assumptions about male power, male roles, and the male sense of self.
Ann Friedman : The Identity Blame Game
Jonathan Martin at Politico asked, “Does our first African-American president, elected with a rainbow coalition, have more of an imperative to appoint an administration that includes minorities in high-ranking positions?” And The Hill wrote ominously, “Identity politics in the Democratic Party are already presenting challenges to President-elect Barack Obama, who is under pressure to appoint Hispanics and African-Americans to key posts in his administration.”
The subtext? Women, people of color, and gay people are the ones making things difficult for Obama, and if they don’t stop speaking up for their interests, they are poised to screw it all up for the Democratic Party and its all-important straight-white-dude constituency (you know, the constituency that doesn’t have an identity), which clearly knows what’s best for everyone.
Robert Dallek : Barack Obama faces an even heavier burden of hope than John F Kennedy
The historic nature of Barack Obama’s election victory, and of the challenges he faces, means it is only natural that the American political establishment is turning to the past for guidance about the future. In the offices of the presidential transition team, in the media, in the corridors of power, two questions are being asked again and again: which of Obama’s predecessors faced such difficulties, and which offers the best path to guide him, and his country, out of them?
Emily Wax : For Gays in India, Fear Rules
BANGALORE, India — Even with the white horse rented, his gold-speckled turban fitted and the wedding hall lined up, Mahesh did not feel ready to get married, at least not to a woman.
The shy computer engineer is gay.
But Mahesh went ahead with the elaborate ceremony in May because someone he had befriended online blackmailed him — threatening to tell his parents unless he paid $5,500.
Amy Raphael : The coolest quartier in Paris
An American friend of mine recently reminded me that when we first met, a good decade ago, I was very down on Paris. He remembers me clearly informing him before his first visit to the city that ‘it’s always raining and the streets smell of dog shit’. I am now deeply ashamed of such a banal statement. What was I thinking? Perhaps part of my youthful indignation arose from not wanting to appear a tourist in a city swarming with visitors. Or maybe I was grumpy after too many attempts to impress haughty Parisians with my A-level French. Whatever, I didn’t have particularly fond memories of the capital.
From Der Spiegel : ‘There Is No Such Thing as Absolute Evil’
SPIEGEL: You have defended some of the worst mass murderers in recent history, and you have been called the “devil’s advocate.” Why do you feel so drawn to clients like Carlos and Klaus Barbie?
Vergès: I believe that everyone, no matter what he may have done, has the right to a fair trial. The public is always quick to assign the label of “monster.” But monsters do not exist, just as there is no such thing as absolute evil. My clients are human beings, people with two eyes, two hands, a gender and emotions. That’s what makes them so sinister.
(Via Robin Varghese at 3 Quarks Daily)
Andrew Gumbel : White rage: The rednecks out to kill Obama
Shawn Adolf and his cousin Tharin Gartrell fancied that 28 August, 2008 would be a good day for the next president of the United States to die. They had the guns – Gartrell was later caught with a Ruger Model M77 Mark II bolt-action rifle with an attached scope and bipod, and a Remington Model 721, also with a scope. They were believers in a radical white supremacist ideology that gave them the motivation they needed to risk their own lives, if necessary, to prevent a black man from entering the Oval Office. (Or, as a friend reported Adolf as saying: “No nigger should ever live in the White House.”)
