random quotes ... to amuse, inspire, enrage:
   Early this spring I met a musician, the composer Pauline Oliveros, a beautiful woman like a grey rock in a streambed; and to a group of us, women, who were beginning to quarrel over theories in abstract, objective language -- and I with my splendid Eastern-women's-college training in the father tongue was in the thick of the fight and going for the kill -- to us, Pauline, who is sparing with words, said after clearing her throat, 'Offer your experience as your truth.' There was a short silence. When we started talking again, we didn't talk objectively, and we didn't fight. We went back to feeling our way into ideas, using the whole intellect, not half of it, talking with one another, which involves listening. We tried to offer our experience to one another. Not claiming something: offering something.

tagged:
  —Ursula K. Le Guin, Bryn Mawr Commencement Address, 1986, in Dancing at the Edge of the World.

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bad ideas like bad pennies keep turning up

Saturday, September 27th, 2008 8:12 am

A Louisiana state Representative is considering a plan to pay poor women to have their tubes tied, to stave off additional reproduction by undesirables.

One wonders just how bad history classes have to be in Louisiana for John LaBruzzo to have actually failed to learn about the many, many times governments have tried programs like this based on bizarre ideas about biology and economics — and let’s please not forget the unbelievably asinine and heinous beliefs about race and class and gender that underlie such proposals. (My partner points out that actually this history wasn’t in any of our primary school history classes — she learned about Puerto Rico, Native Americans, laws of dozens of American states, and on, and on, from independent reading. “And you too, Laura — you didn’t learn that shit in Alabama.”)

Honestly it just makes me tired. What the fuck is wrong with people? Why do people not have any more self-knowledge and/or humility than to at least understand how pig-ignorant they are, before attempting to set social policy?

seen on broadsheet

algorithmically similar posts:

» Et tu, Louisiana?, 2005-05-24 (score:17)
» gay marriage & Equal Protection jurisprudence, 2008-05-16 (score:14)
» Bush claims we’re a nation of laws …, 2004-06-16 (score:13)
» my own googlegängers, 2008-04-10 (score:13)

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 8:12 am and is tagged racism, science, sexism, state , , , , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 802 views.

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