Thursday, January 29, 2009

all stories are true. even the ones that shouldn't be.

okay, i'm really excited about this article. but you all know how i get excited about myth and fact. i've written about judith warner's stuff on this before, and again, it's very, very cool.
In each of these examples, real problems – that some girls are engaging in too-young, risky and degrading sex, that some children are being stressed excessively and stifled by nonstop structure, that some boys (poor and minority boys) are doing badly in school, that some children are getting really reckless mental health services – are grossly simplified and, via the magical thinking of dogma and ideology, are elevated to the level of myth.
and then, the magic psycho-analysis. what's this really about? oh, judith warner knows.
All the examples of child myth-making that I’ve mentioned here have to do, at base, with the perceived corruption of childhood, the loss of some kind of “natural” innocence. When they depart from kernels of reality to the level of myth, they are, I believe, largely projections that enable adults to evade things. Specifically, the overblown focus on messed-up kids affords us the possibility of avoiding looking inward and taking responsibility for the highly complex problems of everyday life.
what do you think? i'll buy it.

here's a thing on peta and "intersectional exploitation," which i didn't even know was a term. but it's definitely a thing that peta doesn't seem to get [or care about]. and, below it, a cool piece on how the patriarchy hurts men. this one's for all my male friends who don't think it's cool to be all genderized, either.

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