Pandagon

Hat tip to Atrios for this Bleeding Cool article by Rich Johnston about something that bugs the ever-living shit out of me, too: The crappy girlfriend problem on superhero shows. I haven't watched Gotham yet, but I'm a big fan of both Arrow and The Flash, but for the horrible girlfriend character on those shows, Laurel Lance and Iris West, respectively. These characters are such drags that you resent them every time they show up onscreen. Laurel is an idiot and they shoehorned some implausible alcoholism into her character in a pathetic bid to give her grit. Iris may be an even bigger idiot, a supposed journalist who is too inept to handle even the basics of her job. These characters are in the way more often than not, and you often end up just wanting to shake them. It's really terrible.

Over the summer, Marvel announced that, in the comics at least, the long-running character of Thor was going to be replaced by a woman. The writer, Jason Aaron, made it clear that this woman is not going to be like a She-Hulk or Spider-Woman, both of which are entirely separate characters who co-exist with their male counterparts, but an actual replacement for Thor. ""This is not She-Thor. This is not Lady Thor. This is not Thorita. This is THOR," he wrote in the Marvel press release. "This is the THOR of the Marvel Universe. But it's unlike any Thor we've ever seen before."

I don't know if it's that they're bored or if ISIS has something to do with it or, per Jeb Bush hiring his brother's foreign policy team,* conservatives are interested in starting up another publicity campaign to sell another war in the Middle East the second they secure another Bush in the White House. But for some reason, conservatives have been really turning up the hints that President Obama is a "secret" Muslim, which is, of course, right out of the McCarthy playbook of accusing people of being secret communists.

Quick quiz: What's the first thing you think about when you wake up and the last thing you think about before you go to sleep? For me, it's usually work or stuff about my social life or, if I'm being really honest here, probably something really geeky, like Game of Thrones or my obsessive-compulsive desire to play on my Marvel phone game. But I get the feeling sometimes that for some of our conservative brethren, those thoughts---and all the ones in between---are dominated by the deep and abiding wish to piss off a liberal. Now, some of them may only have the haziest idea what a "liberal" is, though their trolling habits online suggest that the primary image of "liberal" is an attractive, urbane woman that will never even consider fucking them. But nonetheless, there it is: The prime directive of the wingnut is to piss off liberals. And they don't even know how frequently they fail at it, being so insulated from actual liberals that they can't get a good read on the difference between genuine outrage and pointing-and-laughing.

Brandon Ambrosino of Vox, using his review of the Christian film Old-Fashioned as a peg, asks the question of why Christian movies are just so bad. Not movies that incorporate Christian themes or are made by believers, of which there are plenty of good ones, but movies created by the Christian-industrial complex as an explicit counterpart to what is deemed sinful "secular" entertainment. Old-Fashioned is a clear example of this: It's explicitly made and advertised as a kind of "counter-programming" to Fifty Shades of Grey, but instead of the domineering, sexist asshole introducing our heroine to hot sex, he's introducing her to the, um, joys of chastity. Ambrosino goes on a long examination of why these kinds of movies end up being tedious and boring and failures as art, concluding, to paraphrase wildly, that the pathetic knock-off quality is an inevitable result of the motivations of the filmmakers to "send a message" rather than make a piece of art.

The next presidential election isn't for another 21 months, but of course, the potential candidates have started to rally support. And this is the point in the campaign season where Republicans can really fly that asshole flag high to rally the troops with very little concern about the public paying much attention, because there's just a low level of interest in these antics right now. Or, at least that's the explanation I'm settling on for this little stunt of Rand Paul's:

Chris Hedges has a piece up at Truthdig about porn, which is really just about him channeling the arguments of Gail Dines, who is the go-to person when you want to dress up sex-phobic, paternalistic arguments as "feminism". His piece is almost laughably easy to punch holes in, starting with the fact that the peg is Fifty Shades of Grey, an R-rated movie that has little in common with "porn" as most people understand it. Then there's the fact that he zeroes in on some of the most violent porn without noting that most porn most people watch isn't really violent. And, of course, there's the big hole in their arguments that anti-porn feminists like Dines just somehow manage to keep forgetting to address: If porn, as Hedges and Dines argue, creates misogyny, then how is that the oppression of women is on the decline as access to porn is on the rise? We have more access to porn than any other period in history. At the same time, women have more access to power than in history. Any anti-porn argument that tries to yada yada that fact away is dumb and needs to be discarded with haste.

It's one thing to say, as I did yesterday, that atheists need to embrace a philosophy of self-reflection and self-policing that religions sometimes lack. But it's another kettle of fish entirely to use the Chapel Hill murders as an opportunity to take a bunch of potshots at atheists that appear to be rooted in a resentment that has little to do with legitimate concerns about fanaticism, which is what Christian writer Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig did at the New Republic, using this murder to grind the hell out of an anti-atheist ax.

One of the reasons that I was attracted to movement atheism was I believed that, by rejecting the gods-and-masters idea, it was inoculated against that knee-jerk tribalism that characterizes so many religions. Without a supernatural cover story for why we're the chosen people/the righteous/the holy ones, I thought, we would have to rationally accept that we are nothing special. I thought it was protection against the special pleading you often see from people who are wed to conservative movements and institutions and identities. That hope of mine is being sorely tested in the light of Craig Hicks shooting, execution-style, his three Muslim neighbors that witnesses say he had an ongoing bug up his ass about. Hicks was an outspoken and aggressive New Atheist sort, but that's all we really know about him, alongside his apparent gun-loving tendencies.

Steph at Grounded Parents has a great piece addressing some of the problems with people who say, "I'm pro-choice but I don't think women should be allowed to use abortion as birth control." You see this sentiment a lot and it's not so much a coherent policy position as an attempt by the speaker to impress you with how they're a more morally serious person than all those sluts they assume are clogging up the Planned Parenthood. Of course, saying this disproves that one is a morally serious person, because it shows that you don't research your opinions before you form them and that you're more interested in showing off than you are giving a moment's thought to the consequences of your beliefs. Steph debunks this mentality by laying out the substantial evidence that women do not take the abortion decision lightly, do not have "frivolous" reasons for abortion, and generally make some effort at preventing unwanted pregnancy in the first place. It's a good post. You should read it.

I realize this is an "international" story and thus is getting less attention than it really should, but y'all: The Dominique Strauss-Kahn trial is a marvel. Strauss-Kahn was accused of rape in the United States, which means that a lot of sexists automatically flocked to his side to defend him as a good and righteous man, as all men accused of rape are, you know. There was little hope of those charges going anywhere---the alleged victim was a maid, Strauss-Kahn is an incredibly wealthy world leader, so the power differential that exists in every rape case was multiplied many times over----but this case might have more legs.

So Kanye West pulled another stunt at the Grammys, this time chiding Beck for winning a Grammy that West correctly believes belongs to Beyoncé. Setting aside all psychological analysis over why Kanye West thinks of himself as Beyoncé's award show knight in shining armor, I just have to say that I'm so over the official "correct" reaction to West's antics: Eye-rolling at him for caring and shaming him for being rude. I say go with what moves you, Kanye. You make the world a better place for it.

Apologies to Katie Halper, but apparently there's even more rape philosophizing to report on this week than the already stunning amount she touched upon. Because Republicans just can't help themselves when it comes to waxing poetic about how rape is anything but a violent expression of power, rooted in a system of male dominance that allows sexual predators to think it's an expression of manly power to sexually abuse women, other men, and children. So instead, they get to philosophizing.