A post in which I show nothing but blind patriotism for my country

After all, which Singaporean couldn’t be prouder when our country takes the basic tenants of human rights and democracy and flushes it right down the drain, right?

First reason to be proud of my country:
A case in which we think the death penalty should be a right of a country, and actually lead the battle against suspending it.

Second reason to be proud of my country:
We invite the Burmese junta to the ASEAN meeting, and then reject applications for people to stage a Myanmar pro-democracy protest.

Yup. It’s good to be a Singaporean.

/snark

OH MY GOD! They Killed God! Those Bastards!

Well, that’s it then. We should all gather in the town square to burn the books as we dance naked around the flames. Information is dangerous! If people have information, then they might start to think, and to question and then HOLY SHIT PEOPLE! Are you even remotely aware of what would happen if everyone were an independent thinker? If everyone was given all the information they needed to make decisions FOR THEMSELVES (and not as part of some collective hive-mind)? It’s getting harder and harder to oppress the unwashed masses as it is!

You know what’s worse than a book with information that endangers the world as we know it? A MOVIE BASED ON THAT BOOK. You know what’s even worse? If the people who made the movie TONED DOWN some of the book’s heretical messages so that people will be TRICKED INTO BUYING AND POSSIBLY READING THE BOOK. The world as we know it could end on or around December 7^th 2007 (depending on how long it will take the unwashed masses to read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Personally, it took me 4 days, but I’m a pretty fast reader. I wouldn’t seriously worry until at least a week later).

Christians like feeling persecuted. Trust me, we do. It makes us feel better that there are a great many forces out there that disadvantage us. Plus, there is a certain romantic passion that comes with facing down our enemies as a united mass. That universal yearn to be martyred (without the attendant inconvenience of death) is fuelling an email campaign against Nicole Kidman’s latest outing to the silver screen. The two emails (sourced from snopes.com[1]) currently making the rounds are below the cut.

Why can’t those damn gays just be happy with what little rights they have?

marriedtothesea.com

Singapore is currently in the midst of a debate on whether we should repeal an antiquated law titled Section 377a of the Penal Code. The law which was passed by down the British colonial masters (we declared independence in 1963, for a sense of a timeline) makes criminals out of gays for merely having sex.

Yes, two consensual men who fuck each other in private are considered criminals in the eyes of the law. Can we be any more progressive?

In April early this year, Minister Mentor Lee assured the gay community that S337a would not be enforced by the police, but the law would not be repealed so that the government would not “upset their [the religious conservatives] sense of propriety and right and wrong.”

Since then, we’ve been barraged with the cries of homophobes, bigots and fundamentalists who fear that their world would stop spinning in its axis if we let gays have the rights of a full human being.

Some of their poorly formed arguments against the repeal of 377a were:
1) It is against the good of society. Soon, we’d be like those damn Europeans, and gays will be having sex with boys as young as 14.
2) Those damn gays will start flocking to our island! And we’d have to see them kiss in public!
3) Schools will soon teach my children how to be gay! And churches will have gay ministers!
4) Those gays throw kinky sex orgies which leads to AIDs! AIDs is baddd!

But these aren’t the people whose heads I want to smack - for now. At least these people are honest and upfront about wanting to deny gays their rights.

It’s those pseudo gay-sympathizers whom I have no patience for.

Jesus wants you back in the kitchen, bitch!

It’s awesome that Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has found itself a time machine to transform itself back in the heydays of 1950’s. After all, why else would they offer a course that teaches you how to sew, cook and “the value of a child” only for those who own vaginas? (Penises not allowed.)

According to the Washington Post:

Southwestern Baptist, one of the nation’s largest Southern Baptist seminaries, is introducing a new academic program in homemaking as part of an effort to establish what its president calls biblical family and gender roles.

It will offer a bachelor of arts in humanities degree with a 23-hour concentration in homemaking. The program is only open to women.

Coursework will include seven hours of nutrition and meal preparation, seven hours of textile design and “clothing construction,” three hours of general homemaking, three hours on “the value of a child,” and three hours on the “biblical model for the home and family.”

Seminary officials say the main focus of the courses is on hospitality in the home - teaching women interior design as well as how to sew and cook. Women also study children’s spiritual, physical and emotional development.

Seminary President Paige Patterson, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has its executive committee headquarters in Nashville, said wives of seminary students asked for the homemaking courses. The program was approved by seminary trustees in the fall.

“We are moving against the tide in order to establish family and gender roles as described in God’s word for the home and the family,” Patterson said at the denomination’s annual meeting in June. “If we do not do something to salvage the future of the home, both our denomination and our nation will be destroyed.”

How nice knowing that women’s liberation and the right to choose to go out to work is actually destroying America! The terrorists would be so happy if they knew that it was this easy.

In all seriousness, I love everything to do with sewing and cooking – for fuck’s sakes – we have craft and cooking tags on this blog itself. Between the two of us who blog here, we can sew, crochet, knit, spin, bake and cook up a storm.

What I deeply resent is when these gender roles are foisted upon us by those who demand that women should learn how to pick up domestic skills for the family and the men. Domestic skills are awesome for either gender, but no one should say that women should be expected to learn how to cook and clean by default of having vaginas.

This move by the seminary is only engineered to keep women in the kitchen like a maid so that she can keep worshipping her man who brings home the bacon.

Terri Stovall, dean of women’s programs at Southwestern, which has its main campus in Fort Worth, Texas, said the purpose of the program is to strengthen families.

“Whether a woman works outside or strictly in the home, her first priority is her family and home,” she said. “We just really want to step up and provide some of these skills.”

Shorter Terri Stovall: Even if you make money to provide for the family, you’re still expected to clean and cook like a maid! Don’t expect your husband to chip in with the household chores because mops weren’t made for those with dicks!

And these assholes are keeping true to their word. In 2002, the seminary having terminated a contract of Hebrew professor, Sheri Klouda, for being a woman and even going so far as to call her position a “mistake that the trustees needed to fix”.

So remember kids, when you step into Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, don’t be surprised to find that it’s just like the good ole 1950’s with a good dose of misogyny!

News you should read about, the July 27th edition

(Via Boingboing) Senior Girl guides above 16 want to learn how to ‘manage their money’ and how to ‘practice safe sex’. Younger Girl Guides, on the other hand, want to learn how to ‘cook a healthy meal’ and how to ‘pitch a tent’.

(Via Feministing) A South African woman saw her house burn down earlier this week after she committed the grevious offence of wearing pants. Shit.

Over at Nerd World, Lev Gossman wonders how Harry and Ron eventually end up working as Aurors, seeing how they never really completed the school curriculum.

(Via Feministe) Drinking Aquafina and wondering why it tastes like tap water? Well, probably because it is tap water!

In Fast Company, it reports that one in six people in the world, or 1 billion people, have no safe portable water to drink, yet Americans move around 1 billion bottles of water across the country every week.

How do you read something like this..

and not want to take your proverbial hammer and smash the patriarchy with it?

Via MSNBC

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Unable to scrounge together the $165 he needed to repay a loan to buy sheep, Nazir Ahmad made good on his debt by selling his 16-year-old daughter to marry the lender’s son.

“He gave me nine sheep,” Ahmad said, describing his family’s woes since taking the loan. “Because of nine sheep, I gave away my daughter.”

Seated beside him in the cramped compound, his daughter Malia’s eyes filled with tears. She used a black scarf to wipe them away.

How do you sleep knowing that somewhere out there, a father is trading his daughter away — her life only worth a grand total of 9 sheep. 9 sheep!

Despite advances in women’s rights and at least one tribe’s move to outlaw the practice, girls are traded like currency in Afghanistan and forced marriages are common. Antiquated tribal laws authorize the practice known as “bad” in the Afghan language Dari — and girls are used to settle disputes ranging from debts to murder..

…

They insisted that women given away for such marriages — including those to settle blood feuds — were treated well in their new families. But the elders declined requests to meet any of the women or their families.

“Nobody treats them badly,” Malik Niaz said confidently, stroking his long white beard. “Everyone respects women.”

Oh, because I feel so relieved now that I know everybody respects women, nevermind the fact that these teenage girls have no agency of their own. These girls see their lives sold into strange and hostile households as payment for the debts of their family.

How do you read this and equate this to a person in the first-world who takes up a student bond that will tie him or her to an employer for a certain period of time?

How do you read this and still think that there isn’t a need for feminism anymore?

How will you sleep at night? I need answers, because stories like this just make me want to crawl in bed and cry.

News you should read about, the June 28th edition

Via Boingboing. From a letter in 1938, it seems as though Disney didn’t want girls to become cartoon animators. In a rejection letter, it states: “Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as the work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason, girls are not considered for [animation] training school.” Disney’s logic is perfectly understandable. Afterall, if girls are going to spend their lives hunched over a table and drawing pictures, the Prince Charmings won’t be able to do their job of rescuing these dainty princesses from evil stepmothers and talking animals! Won’t someone think of the Prince Charmings who might be made redundant? They might have to end up working in a factory or something!

Starbucks has unveiled plans to promote “An Artic Tale”, a documentary about a polar bear and a walrus whose habitats are under siege. But wouldn’t it be better if Starbucks focused on its in-house policies instead? How about doing away with coffee sleeves, or actually paying the producers of their coffee beans enough money to sustain their families?

It was possibly the shittest flight for 200 Continental Airline passengers who had human sewage flowing out of the airplane toilets during their 7-hour long flight. However, Samuel L Jackson has refrained from commenting on whether this incident would inspire his next blockbuster hit, “Shit on a Plane”.

Fixed and unrealistic images in the media hurt men too

Over at MightyPonyGirl, there’s a post about a study that showed boys suffering from poor self-esteem after being prolonged to video gaming magazines.

“First, gaming magazines’ illustrations of exaggeratedly muscular bodies encourage young readers to take notice of the male form. They catch the eye because they depart so drastically from the typical male body.”

In contrast, models in fitness and fashion magazines and athletes in sports magazines, “although fit and well formed, do not look much different from the real men encountered by boys in their everyday lives.”

The second reason why the gaming genre may play a more prominent role in boys’ developing drive for muscularity is that “male video game characters are frequently cast as superheroes, thereby promoting an association between hyper-muscularity and the power, control and agency that superheroes symbolize to children.”

“In a nutshell, we found that exposure to video gaming magazines, which are immensely popular, increased boys’ subsequent drive for muscularity, more than exposure to other, more realistic ‘ideal-body’ magazines like sports, fashion and fitness,” Harrison said. This effect, she said, “was significant regardless of how thin or fat boys perceived themselves to be.”

But that’s not all. In a different twist, the June issue of Pyschology Today has an article about how lad magazines (Maxim, FHM and the like) affect.. *drum roll*.. the male self-esteem too!

According to the study, self-esteem erodes the fastest when males are shown pictures of hot women in wet tshirts.

“But when looking at objectified women, they may be imagining what women want, thinking that if they were more muscular, women would like them,” researcher Jennifer Aubrey said.

So what’s the lesson for today? Fixed and unrealistic media messages pretty much suck all around. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether these images depict men or women - it all adds up to a deflated sense of self worth.

News you should read about, the June 25th edition

The Vatican has warned that buying a car as “means for outshining other people and arousing a feeling of envy” is bad. Very very bad indeed. But don’t worry! Ferrari’s general manager Amedo Felisa wants you to know that people generally buy Ferraris for the love of driving and not because, yknow, it’s flashy, a status symbol and an overall chick magnet. No siree! People buy it because they love to drive! “But you should commit at least one [sin] from time to time,” Felisa said. Oh, he’s the devil’s advocate, that one!

A film about India’s child prostitutes will be screened in New York and released in India later in September. Titled “Rivaaz”, meaning tradition, the movie depicts an age-old tradition practiced by a few underprivileged communities where women dress their daughters -some as young as 12- up for her first client, while her father and brothers solicit for customers. Reasons for the prostitution are varied; while some see it as ‘god’s will’, others merely do so as a way to earn money to repay their debts. Director, Ashok Nanda, says, “Family-based prostitution exists in more than 300 districts in India.It is so incredible that I did not believe this is true. Then I saw a UNICEF report and read up on this.” And there isn’t a happy ending, as many teenage girls end up with STDs and AIDS.

It seems that honesty isn’t really the best policy. An employee at Pizza Hut in North Carolina was fired by her employers after she notified the health authorities of rodents in the eatery. I guess that’s just even more reason to make your own pizza.

Not all booksellers are excited over the highly anticipated finale to the Harry Potter series - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. According to Forbes, small-time booksellers are feeling the pinch as their competitors are slashing prices and outdoing each other in discounts as a way to woo customers into their bookstores. Their biggest rival? Amazon. And Amazon isn’t even making a profit off the books. Jeff Bezos had to reassure shareholders that the company has more than 1 million books ordered to far, and hopes that their customers will place more orders to be sent alongside the Boy who Lived.

After 35, it’s all downhill for you baby.

It seems that once you hit 35, being a woman with the right genitalia isn’t enough to get free drinks on ‘Ladies Night’. In the Sunday issue of The Straits Times, it reported that women over the age of 35 were asked to pay for drinks on Ladies Night at one of Singapore’s biggest clubs - The Power House.