Little problems are big problems

One of the most frustrating aspects of people who aren’t experienced with any type of discrimination is the assumption that small problems don’t matter. Why, goes the refrain, does it matter that people use language like “gay” to mean uncool, or “lame” to mean slow, when there are very real incidents of violence against gays, [...]

You look hilarious

My new passtime: Laughing at guys who queue uncomfortably outside lingerie shops while their friends/partner/relatives are inside. If it bothers you so much, at least arrange to meet her/them somewhere else. Consider my L officially OL-ed.

Why Labour are also fuck-ups

So, seeing I’ve been strongly critical of national on women’s rights, let’s do a retrospective of similar areas where Labour fucked up on identity politics, political freedom and non-discrimination. I have the feeling this is going to make me temporarily popular with certain other Greens who share with me a deep distrust of Labour, and [...]

More philosophy: The Universal Right to Life

So, having been drawn into the topic of abortion lately by the comments, I want to wax philosophical1 about the antecedents to2 my beliefs about abortion.
One of the reasons I turned away from believing that abortion was largely wrong to seeing it as very difficult to understand (and eventually from there to believing that women [...]

Reaction: What isn’t wrong with hate crimes legislation

I picked up on an article in the online edition of the Times by John Cloud this morning on the extension of hate crimes legislation in the USA.
Firstly, let me agree with John Cloud on the critical point here: We can neither police what is in someone’s head, nor can we limit their ability to [...]

Shorter Karl Du Fresne

So, I made the mistake after returning from town today of opening the newspaper, and was within minutes of getting to the B section of the Dominion Post assaulted with the misogyny and rape-apology of a piece from Karl Du Fresne, which fortunately for those of you who haven’t read it, is not online.
Here’s the [...]

The Right Of Reply

One meme I’ve noticed permeating its way through the more conservative parts of society recently (especially in regards to defending homophobia and inequal rights for GLBTQI people) is that freedom of speech means that backlash against what you’ve said is wrong and somehow circumvents your right to free speech.
It’s fundamentally trivial to debunk this: If [...]

In which I reconstruct sexuality

So, one of the really interesting works on sexuality (and more notably bisexuality) is the Kinsey Scale. While being an excellent example of forward-thinking classification that came about from excellent research into homo- and bisexuality in both men and women. However, it’s old- it was first published in 1948, and it doesn’t really delve deep [...]

On “innocence”

There’s a very interesting view in New Zealand that seems to permeate through certain sections of the population.
Namely, it’s the view that children are born innocent and that society corrupts them as they go along. The view that we should all aspire to be like children.
While I agree that there is much to be liked [...]

“I’m a male feminist and…”

So many times I’ve seen the line trumpeted so proudly in discussions related to feminism: “I’m a male feminist and…”
And so many times I’ve rolled my eyes and said/thought: “Here we go again.” Apparently my fellow dudes, some of us need some explaining of what a feminist is, and why men can never be perfect [...]