Posts Tagged ‘Politics’
Steve Harvey:
Take my advice and don’t buy Steve Harvey’s new relationship/self-help book: “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man”. You’re asking me, why should I condemn a man and his book when I’ve not taken the time to read it. Let me share some of his so called advice, and these are quotations and clips from interviews on Oprah and selections from his book. (Warning: May cause nausea.)
“I think lists are great. You’ve got to have them. You’ve got to know what you’re looking for. Without standards, you settle for stuff.”
“You’ve got to wait on this guy to come along. He’s coming. He’s out there. He’s already created. God has already made him,”
“He has a job. He’s wearing the clothes you like. He’s walking around. You’re not waiting on him to be born. He exists today. All you’ve got to do is stay patient.”
“You don’t know the DNA of a good man,”
“We profess, we provide and we protect,” he says. “A man has got to see where he fits into the providing and protecting role. If you’ve got everything, you can do everything, you’ve got your own car … you’ve got a guard dog and a handgun. The guy is thinking, ‘Where do I fit in here?’
“You’ve got to make a space for him to fit in so he can come in and do what men do.”
“You can’t let your independence and your ability to take care of yourself be the dominant factor of who you are,” he says. “You know how many times I hear women say: ‘I don’t need a man. I’ve got this. Why don’t a man just come to me?’ Just like you’re saying it, you’re projecting it. If you’re projecting it, where does a man fit in there? Just relax.” [!!!!]
“Ladies, you’re not going to get closure from a man,” he says. “We don’t do closure. And you know why? Because we don’t even know you’re having an issue. We’re stupid.”
“We’re not courteous. Listen, it’s not in our DNA as great communicators anyway,” he says. “See women keep waiting on closure. Bring it on. If you want closure, close. Move on with your life.”
Sex, or “the cookie” as Steve calls it in his book: It’s critical,” he says. “It’s one of the three things that a man has to have. A man has to have love, support and the cookie. [If] anyone of those three things is missing in the relationship, he’s going to go get it somewhere else.”
“A man having sex outside of his relationship is very different from [a woman],” he says. “Once we shower and wash off, we cool.
“Please know that about a man. If he’s going to cheat, it has nothing to do with his emotional attachment to you or his feelings for you.”
So yeah….that’s Steve Harvey and his philosophy for relationships. It’s nice to see that arguments that were being made in the 1950’s about the roles of women and men are still being used today. Essentialist arguments that root these socially constructed patriarchal ideologies in DNA.
I placed some exclamatory marks in the one selection that I think deserves the most attention.
“You can’t let your independence and your ability to take care of yourself be the dominant factor of who you are,” he says. “You know how many times I hear women say: ‘I don’t need a man. I’ve got this. Why don’t a man just come to me?’ Just like you’re saying it, you’re projecting it. If you’re projecting it, where does a man fit in there? Just relax.”
So if you’re a woman and you’re independent and strong and motivated, Steve’s advice to you is to not let these attributes define you as a woman. Good to know.
His “3 p’s” garbage is also quite disturbing. I also enjoy that as a man I am also being defined and constricted into a very particular role. I am unable to process emotions and think or communicate with a woman, because as Harvey says: “it’s not in our DNA as great communicators anyway,” and I’m also only good at grunting and lifting things and protecting women from large beasts that live in the wild.
It’s not just the hate speech that Mr. Steve Harvey preaches that upsets me, it is the way that he attempts to naturalize roles for men and women and the notion that all men are like this. Mr. Steve Harvey makes all of us look bad and sets things back, back into the 50’s and beyond.
I don’t think that I’m over-reacting or reading too much into this type of ideological hate-talk.
Please share your own thoughts and I urge you to go to oprah.com [ something I thought I’d never say on this blog ] and watch the clips. You’ll also notice how silent Oprah is, which I guess is in keeping with Steve’s advice. It is amazing that one of the most independent and strong females on television brings on a guest that gives advice of how wrong and hurtful this way of living is for relationships.
The clips are from about a week ago. Mr. Harvey has been making the rounds on television and radio promoting his new book. Aside from talking about the ills of strong women and the dangers of this for a relationship he’s recently given his advice on religion, specifically those who do not have faith, atheists:
It seems that for Mr. Steve Harvey the world is a horrible place, full of strong minded women, men who communicate well with women, and atheists who shake the foundations of religion, such a horrid world we live in, thinking and acting, what the fuck were we thinking.
XX
I just updated some of the “Sites I Frequent” located on the lower right of this page and I thought I’d push a site/blog that I’ve been reading recently that I’ve enjoyed quite a bit.
DoubleX – a spin-off site from the Double X Factor, a blog on slate.com that focuses: conversation among women—about politics, sex, and culture—that both men and women listen in on. Double X takes the Slate and XX Factor sensibility and applies it to sexual politics, fashion, parenting, health, science, sex, friendship, work-life balance, and anything else you might talk about with your friends over coffee. We tackle subjects high and low with an approach that’s unabashedly intellectual but not dry or condescending. The blog is at the heart of the site, but we also publish essays, reporting, and other features.
The site is amazing in that it actively engages in intelligent conversation about culture, politics, and art and examines the ways that these issues impact people (men and women of all sexes and orientation). My only complaint is not with the site but an effect of the articles presented on the site, more often than not I find myself outraged at the idiocy of society.
As long as you’re prepared to be shocked and dismayed at the civil injustices and trampling of rights that occurs so frequently on women and men of all sexes and orientations, it’s something worth reading and exploring.
Recent Articles of Interest:
Hypocrite? Pardon, that’s Mr. Hypocrite President?
The power of President Obama’s pen is $8,605,429, and counting.
Four years ago, Mr. Obama became a millionaire through the popularity of his autobiography, which was quickly followed by a second book, “The Audacity of Hope.” It is a gift that keeps on giving: $3.89 in royalties for Mr. Obama for each hardcover, $1.03 per paperback and $4.50 for an audiobook.
In a week when Mr. Obama scolded business executives for creating a culture of runaway salaries and bonuses, a disclosure form filed Tuesday showed that he signed a new $500,000 book agreement five days before taking office in January. – NYTIMES.COM
It’s very easy to point fingers, except when those fingers start to point back. [ I realize the irony of my pointing a finger at Mr. Obama, but then again I’m not trying to fix an economy or publicly chastising CEO’s for their wasteful spending and greed while making deals on the side for my own wealth. ]
Guy Delisle’s Graphic (Travel-Narrative) Comic
Guy Delisle is a Québécois animator and has documented in spare, whimsical black-and-white line drawings his visits to North Korea and China. See example below.
I find that the graphic novel is a very interesting form for Mr. Delisle to make use of. Delisle from the two prior graphic novels I’ve read, visits places that are considered by most countries in the world to be unstable and politically dangerous: North Korea, China, and his latest collection, chronicles Burma (Myanmanr). Delisle is fair and balanced in his critique of how these nations operate. Considering the fact that I am a poor university student and lack the funds to visit many of these places, this is a wonderful way to view these nations. I would reccomend these books to anyone who is interested in foreign countries and anyone who wants an inside look at a different way of living in political states that by western democratic standards are cruel or harsh and uncivil. Worth the time and the money.
Uncritical Exuberance? by Judith Butler
Judith Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She ist he Maxine Elliot professor in the Departs of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Butler received her PH.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1984, and her dissertation was subsequently published as Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France. In the late-1980s, different teaching/research appointments (such as at the Humanities Center at John Hopkins University), she was involved in “post-structuralist” efforts within Western feminist theory to question the “presuppositional terms” of feminism. Her most recent work focuses on Jewish philosophy, engaging in particular with “pre-zionist criticisms of state violence.”
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Now that you have a proper biography of who and where Butler is writing from, I urge you to please check out the following link. This essay/e-mail has been floating around the net through various Academic circles the past week or so. It offers a very critical analysis of what the current U.S. Election signifies about our society and the many implications of how people voted: their theologies, politics, etc.
Enjoy.
Banned Book Week
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Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2008, marks BBW’s 27th anniversary (September 27 through October 4).
BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.
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All this week I’ll be randomly selecting books that have been “challenged” or “banned” and then sharing some of my own experiences with various “banned” reads. Check out this list of the most frequently “banned” books.
For a list of specific Canadian Books/Magazines that have been “challenged” or “banned”, check out this link.(PDF)
— Here is an article selected from the PDF link above. —
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
2000—The Durham (ON) Board of Education received numerous complaints about the
immensely popular Harry Potter books being read in classrooms throughout the board’s
schools. A school board official said that the complaints came from fundamentalist
Christian parents.
Cause of objection—As is the case in at least 19 states of the U.S. and other parts of
Canada, parents were concerned that Harry Potter is engaged in wizardry, witchcraft, and
magic-making, and that these activities are inappropriate for young readers.
Update—After listening to the complaints, the administration decided to withdraw the
books from classroom use but left them in school libraries where they would be available
for book reports. One board member said she had wanted the books to be withdrawn
completely from the schools; another member said the board had never been asked to
decide the issue, so the books’ withdrawal amounted to censorship. Several months later,
after a raucous public meeting, the board rescinded its decision to remove the books.
However, in other jurisdictions teachers have been asked not to use the books in the
classroom. This is said to have occurred in a school in Corner Brook (NF) and in
Rockwood Public School in Pembroke (ON). In 2002, the Niagara (ON) District School
Board turned down a parent’s request for the removal of the books from area schools.
The parent said the books contained violence and promoted a religion (Wicca) which is
against the law in Ontario schools. She said that she had not read the books.
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Huzzah for books!
“As a Canadian Citizen who are you voting for: Obama or McCain?”
I wonder how many Canadians are aware that a Canadian Election is immenent. You would be hard pressed to know this fact by glancing at the front cover of today’s Globe & Mail. It makes sense that I know more about the current U.S. Presidential Election than most, I grew up in the U.S., but the majority of my friends who were raised Canadian, are also more informed about this current Presidential Race than they do about the current goings on of their own political system, and that to me is a sad fact.
Let me be clear, I fully admit and accept that this particular election is quite historic. The first female contender for a Democratic nomination, and the first nomination of an African American for the potential Presidency, these are indeed amazing times for the U.S.
When is the last time you heard someone discuss Canadian soldiers fighting over in Afghanistan, or the ebbing economy? I’m willing to bet that if you were to walk into any Tim Hortons, you are more likely to hear people discussing Barak Obama’s latest speech or Michael Phelps’s Olympic feats.
I’m just as guilty as you, my blog reader. I too, as a Canadian Citizen should be more aware of the politics, and cultural events of my country, yet too often I am distracted by the sparkle of the U.S.
It just seems to me that a Canadian newspaper should lead with Canadian headlines. I am sure that there is something of concern to Canadians that affects Canadians. I am pretty sure that the Globe & Mail has a section devoted to WORLD NEWS and that U.S. issues are discussed there amongst other nations.
The Toronto Star was a bit better than the Globe & Mail, as it’s secondary story on their main page was devoted to the recent Maple Leaf Foods lysteria outbreak, with the Canadian Election a third.
While Canadian Politics are for the most part dull and banal affairs for my own tastes, and I am sure the same feeling for most of you my fellow Canadian readers, it’s still sad that we promote a U.S. Election over our Canadian.
I guess all I can do is try to pay attention a bit more to the politics of my own country and be a more informed citizen.
Vote Green. j/k. Seriously though, vote however you wish, just vote.
'ahems and ahahs' 