Pandagon

1. Ban abortion

When I did a stock image search for "bossy", images of women dominating men were the major theme, also neatly disproving the claim that it's a gender-neutral word. 

I'm happy to admit I was wrong: In the end, True Detective was a show that invoked the tired old cliche that any woman who had the temerity to grow past the idealized age of innocence ended up on screen as flat, barely characterized stereotype: As Janet Turley put it, they are all "spiteful jezebels, scorned wives, or dead whores". Worse, the character growth exhibited by the two men at the end of the series is illustrated by using the women as props. In the end, daughters (both dead and alive) and ex-wives exist mainly to bathe the errant men in their forgiveness, and not much else. I predicted, "The solution will be right under their noses, but they missed it because they don’t really see women." I was wrong. In the world of True Detective, it's unfortunate that men don't really see women, but it was ultimately no big deal and men would be forgiven for it anyway.

"Nuh-uh" is a standard reply conservatives make to accusations of bigotry, and it's surprisingly effective, for one simple reason: Conservatives want to drag the debate over to the topic of what's in their hearts instead of what's in their actions, because they know that no matter how hateful and bigoted they may be on the inside, as long as they carefully parse their words to outsiders, they can claim to be loving and generous in spirit. It's migraine-inducing. You're seeing it happen with the whole gay marriage thing, where the new line is, "We're not bigoted, we just have sincere religious beliefs that are indistinguishable from bigotry!" It's the descendent of the mid-20th century claim from racists that they aren't racist, they just have a strong religious belief that the races should be separate. It's transparent horseshit, but unfortunately there are some people who are eager to eat piles and piles of horseshit. Like Conor Friedersdorf, who is trying to argue that refusing to photograph same-sex weddings is not bigotry:

I can't recommend enough Mark Joseph Stern's dismantling of Ross Douthat's whiny, dishonest column about the collapse of the latest round of anti-gay bills in various state legislatures. So read it, and come back here, because I have a few thoughts on the broader discourse about religion, bigotry, and homophobia. As Stern points out, Douthat dismisses but doesn't really grapple with the people who point out that laws allowing the refusal to serve people has a whiff of Jim Crow to it. (Though the two laws are not exactly analogous, since Jim Crow required many businesses and accommodations to segregate, whereas this would be a case-by-case thing. But the general principle is unavoidably similar.) Indeed, Douthat is simply resting his argument on the assumption that sexual orientation shouldn't count as a protected class like race does. Stern: "At the core of Douthat’s argument is a tacit shrug that, well, obviously anti-gay discrimination isn’t as bad as racism: The Bible’s hostility toward gays is a good deal clearer than its distaste for blacks." But, as he points out, the arguments in favor of racial discrimination in the 20th century were largely religious, as well. Indeed, growing up in rural West Texas in the 90s, I definitely heard people trot out breathless claims that racism had biblical origins and justifications. I hesitate to even repeat them, they are so gross and offensive, but suffice it to say, the arguments didn't just disappear when Jim Crow did. They went underground.