The Rise of the Ironic Man-Hater, Amanda Hess, Slate, August 8, 2014
“Misandry”—literally, the hatred of men—is an accusation that’s been flung at feminists since the dawn of the women’s movement: By empowering women, critics argue, feminists are really oppressing men. Now, feminists are ironically embracing the man-hating label: The ironic misandrist sips from a mug marked “MALE TEARS,” frosts her cakes with the phrase “KILL ALL MEN,” and affixes “MISANDRY” heart pins to her lapel. Ironic misandry is “a reductio ad absurdum,” explains Jess Zimmerman, an editor at Medium and the proud owner of a “MALE TEARS” mug. (“I drink them to increase my strength,” she notes.) “It’s inhabiting the most exaggerated, implausible distortion of your position, in order to show that it’s ridiculous.”
On its most basic level, ironic misandry functions like a stuck-out tongue pointed at a playground bully: When men’s rights activists hurled insults at feminist writer Jessica Valenti on Twitter last month, she posted a picture of herself grinning in an “I BATHE IN MALE TEARS” T-shirt, and dedicated the message to the “misogynist whiners.” But ironic misandry is more than just a sarcastic retort to the haters; it’s an in-joke that like-minded feminists tell even when their critics aren’t looking, as a way to build solidarity within the group. “A lot of young feminists who I follow on Instagram and love this shit are teenagers,” Valenti says. (Search the tag #maletears and you’ll find dozens of young women—and a few young men—posed with a novelty mug.) “The feminism they grew up with was the feminism of snarky blog posts, and this is a natural extension of that.”
Logic and feeling, Ophelia Benson, Butterflies & Wheels, August 10, 2014
It’s not good epistemology to start with the assumption that “I am flawlessly rational” period. Humans aren’t flawlessly rational; even humans who know all about the ways humans aren’t flawlessly rational can be irrational in the same ways as everyone else, and the best of them know that and point out examples of it. Daniel Kahneman does that in Thinking Fast and Slow, and Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson do it in Mistakes Were Made (but not by me).
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For the other thing, he’s just wrong in this disdain for what he calls “emotional.” Morality is an emotional subject; morality makes no sense without emotion; morality is not like a blueprint or an algorithm or a recipe. You need reason and feeling to be able to talk about it sensibly.
As many many many people have pointed out, he knows that himself – he said he chose a provocative subject on purpose. Well quite! If you’re going to choose a provocative subject, it’s no good then rejecting all the provoked responses on the grounds that they are provoked.
The conservative legal case against ObamaCare keeps getting nuttier, Scott Lemieux, The Week, August 7, 2014
In a preemptive strike, Adam J. White argues in the Wall Street Journal that the case isn’t important enough to merit en banc review. His argument has been endorsed by a key architect of the latest challenge to the ACA, Case Western University law professor Jonathan Adler. According to White and Adler, this case does not meet the standard of “exceptional importance” required by Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure for an en banc rehearing.
To restate these arguments is to refute them. The panel’s holding would throw the American health insurance market into chaos. It would lead to avoidable suffering — and in some cases death — for a significant number of Americans. It would severely damage the most important social welfare legislation passed by Congress in several generations. If that isn’t a case of “exceptional importance,” what is?
The argument is also a monument to bad faith. If the entire D.C. Circuit vacates the Halbig ruling, it is certain that Adler and his colleagues will immediately rediscover the importance of the case, and ask the Supreme Court to review it.
The attempt to deny the importance of Halbig, however, is instructive. The ad hoc legal war against the ACA shows staggering blindness to consequences, treating literally life-or-death issues as if they had no greater import than a high school debate tournament.
