The Sunday cat is partial to sea creatures

Originally on NPR’s Science Friday:

“Tenor, Tone and Timing of the debate: How the US lost its AAA credit rating

It was the debate that put us over the edge, the head of ratings at S&P says.  No surprise there.

“The best book in ethics in the last two hundred years”

Brian Leiter is running this interesting poll.

Let me add this probably very obvious point:  people who feel outsiders to the profession may be less inclined to participate in something like this poll, but it is important that women’s preferences shape the results too.  That said, of course the candidates, of whom only two are women, reflect the absence of women from the field and/or its canon..

Palin and Bachman: real feminists

Naomi Wolf argues that feminism in North America is associated with the left, but is not necessarily left-wing.  I can agree with that, especially when I think of Women’s Christian Temperance Union activists of the 19^th century (some of whom were lefty, but some of whom would fit well into the Southern Baptist Convention today).

It’s possible to buy Wolf’s argument, though, without necessarily agreeing with her definition of feminism:

The core of feminism is individual choice and freedom, and it’s these strains that are being sounded now more by the Tea Party movement than by the left.

Is this the core?  And even if it’s necessary, is it sufficient?  I know I’m going to sound like a child of the seventies, but I always took seriously the importance of consciousness-raising, and authentically identifying with women, with feminists, and with certain principles as a feminist.  Hence my deep ambivalence about one of Wolf’s last sentences:

But these women are real feminists – even if they don’t share policy preferences with the “sisterhood,” and even if they themselves would reject the feminist label. [my emphasis]

I agree with much of what Wolf says, but here, she loses me.  Can we insist others are feminist who reject “the feminist label”?  What kind of ‘real’ feminist rejects it?  I do not mean to agree with the main thrust of the article, an interesting one that I hope others read.  Palin and Bachmann do have wide appeal in part because of their capacities to speak as women and to women in voter-motivating ways.  I nod my head at Wolf’s last sentence, if only because feminists are wise to attend to the uses of feminism by others, whether or not they really are feminists:

In the case of Ms. Palin – and especially that of Ms. Bachmann – we ignore the wide appeal of right-wing feminism at our peril.

“Feminism is back and it’s time to finish the revolution”

When Kat Banyard held her first feminist event in 2004, she spent months struggling to attract 90 people. For this year’s event, which will take place in Birmingham next weekend, 200 had signed up within 24 hours of it being announced.

“We’ve got this massive resurgence in feminism and the question is not now ‘Does it exist?’ but ‘What can it achieve?’,” said Banyard, founder of campaign group UK Feminista and author of The Equality Illusion.

For more, go here.