The Outlaw Josie Brown

mohandasgandhi:

Eltahawy made it a point to over generalize, perhaps to provoke. She made all Arab men hate all Arab women. But as an Arab man, I was not offended. When I read Mona’s beautiful treatise on women, I immediately understood what she meant. Her ranting against the “toxic mix” of religion and tradition and those newly elected officials who have just jumped out of the seventh century stood out.

As an Arab man, I’ve had endless arguments with my peers over the necessity to recognize the urgency of “women emancipation” in Arab countries. And as an Arab man, I can say with certainty that the majority of Arab men enjoy their privileges over women and plan to keep them. Their reasons might go beyond simple misogyny and be more connected to the nature of patriarchal societies where violence is practiced to establish the chain of authority, regardless of gender. This means that those Arab men who beat their wives are themselves oppressed by other men outside the household. Yet this does not put the suffering of both genders on par. In America, the latest census showed that women are paid 77 percent of what men are paid for similar jobs. In Arab countries, women are nobodies compared to men.

Don’t read this if you get nauseous easily.

I only had one response to this article:

DON’T WORRY LAYYYYDIES I AM SUPERDUDE HERE TO TELL YOU HOW TO FEEL.

kohenari:

Yesterday, a video of a woman testifying against the anti-discrimination ordinance in Lincoln swept across the internet. She said a serious of awful and incomprehensible things about LGBTQ individuals in the five minutes alloted to her.

Given how much I’ve written about these anti-discrimination ordinances of late and given that this is the city I’ve called home for half a decade now, a number of people asked why I didn’t post the video and make some snarky comment.

And my response was that, when I first saw it, it seemed clear to me that the woman had some mental health issues. As I wrote when a friend posted the story from Wonkette on my Facebook timeline, there’s obviously “a mental health issue here about which I felt I shouldn’t be laughing or encouraging others to laugh.”

Here’s a bit more of the story behind the video:

The Huffington Post, MSNBC and popular sites such as Gawker and Reddit published the video and stories Friday with little context and Svoboda’s name misspelled. The stories garnered more than 100,000 views.

The HuffPo’s post got more than 1,000 comments, many responding to what viewers saw as hate speech. Many seemed to not recognize Svoboda’s mental illness.

Svoboda lives at an assisted-living facility in Lincoln and is listed as a protected person, according to court documents. Her brother, Patrick Svoboda of Ogallala, is her conservator because she is incompetent, the documents say.

He was unaware of the video’s popularity, but wasn’t surprised — he knew it would be a matter of time before she got in trouble somewhere.

He said he’s disappointed the video garnered such attention and jokes without the whole story.

“To me, it shows how little society really cares about people with mental health issues,” Patrick Svoboda said. “She does have a very tender heart … but anything she says is certifiably schizophrenic … she’s not some crazy conservative.”

Earlier today, I posted a video of Rand Paul talking about the gay-ness of Obama’s position on marriage equality. He receives an impressive round of applause. If we want to talk badly about, laugh at, or (better yet) organize against someone for anti-gay rhetoric, my sense is that we still have plenty of elected officials to choose from. I recommend starting there.

More on the story about the woman from Lincoln, Nebraska is here.

pinknarc:

“When expectations are low but effort is high, you’d be surprised what you might come up with. So, are you a writer or an artist and do you want to be prolific, too? Oh, good. Sit down on my couch. I’ll tell you what to do: Go back to a learner mentality, as often as possible; read ravenously and…

lyssamae:

My friend Josie wrote this piece about civil discourse on the Internet, sparked by my recent random encounter with unwarranted hostility and vitriol. She did a great job, and raised some really good points. Read it!

Das me, yo!