The Good, the Bad, and the Curious (Links for the Week)

Here's what I've been reading for the past week (or two--I think I might have missed one) that made me smile (The Good) cry (The Bad) and think (The Curious). What about you?

The Good

Fox News, trying to be horrible bigots, accidentally ran a picture of a same-sex couple as an accompany to their article on why traditional gender roles are necessary. And it was hilarious. (Links to Feministing, not Fox News, in case you want to avoid giving them pageviews). 

Girl on Saturday joined the roller derby! I read her updates about this journey with equal parts awe and jealousy. 

This pit bull saved everyone in the family (even the other dogs) from a fire. 

Our Feminist {Play} School has a great list of books about feminist parenting. What would you add? 

"Carpe diem." "Curiosity killed the cat." You're doing it wrong. 

The Bad

Chris Brown. 

Slactivist's post about the three-fifths voting proposal out of Virginia is well-written and insightful, but the fact that this was even a possible party "strategy" makes me so sad I can barely even read it. 

Before you judge yourself against pictures of celebrities, you should watch these Photoshop before and after GIFs. You're a real person; what you see usually isn't. 

Author Terry Deary thinks that libraries are "no longer relevant" and that they need to stop stealing all his hard-earned money. The internet was not amused. 

A white man on a plane in Atlanta slapped a 19-month-old baby while calling him "that n****r baby" and only one passenger stepped in to help the mom. Sickening. 

The Curious

This Racilicious post about the author's changing views on Beyonce and a discussion of intersectionality is really good:

Such doubting of the Knowles-Carters’ decision in configuring their family as they see fit from a white woman reminds me of white feminist Jaclyn Friedman’s now-notorious (and since apologized-for) unsolicited advice to them: it’s the racialized position of white people outside of the Black familial unit perceiving themselves to know “better” than the Black parents who are handling the child-rearing decisions. I call it The White Social Worker Syndrome.
And that syndrome dovetails into respectability politics–and the latter definitely showed itself when some people of color I know on Facebook started mom-shaming Beyoncé for wearing her Super Bowl costume, stating that “she’s a mother now!” and–like taking on her married name–she shouldn’t sport such an thing.

Ozy Frantz's discussion of choice feminism left me thinking:

My feminism is about people having freedom from the constraints of gender norms. Freedom means that no choices are off-limits. Freedom means that my wife can stay home with the kids, or we both can work, or I can stay home with the kids. Freedom means that I may choose to wear natural lipstick or no lipstick or bright purple lipstick. Freedom means I can have kinky sex or vanilla sex or no sex. Freedom means I can change my name to my husband’s name, or his to mine, or we can invent our own surname.

All Things Beautiful post about being married to an introvert is great, and it's part of a larger series about marriage that I'm really looking forward to reading.

Both the post and the discussion in the comments of this piece about objective morality are thought provoking. 

Photo: 4nitsirk