Nourishing Praxis: Environmental Ethics and Activism

This is a guest post from OpenContinuity. OpenContinuity is an environmental ethics theorist and activist who works on questions about the self and the self’s relation to the environment. “Social action without theory is blind, but theory without social action is empty.” -Michael Zimmerman “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is [...]

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Technology Failure and Responsible Consumerism

For me, this week has been one of technological disasters. On Friday, I was having a great writing day, and so I decided to stay home from my usual end-of-week festivities in order to keep writing. Of course, around 10PM my computer crashed. When I first tried to restart it, it would turn on but [...]

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Male Studies and the A/~A Construction of Categories

There has been a lot of buzz about “Male Studies” this week, since the announcement of The Foundation for Male Studies, which won’t get a link from me. Now I am all for studying men and masculinities, but I don’t think it sounds like there is much value to this particular approach. I don’t want [...]

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The Misnomer that is Postfeminism

I find the concept of “postfeminism” to be extremely troubling and confusing. There are many discussions of postfeminism on the web. I highlight a few at the bottom of this post, but I want to look at one particular treatment that sees postfeminism as aligned with postcolonialism or postmodernism. I think this particular way of [...]

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What do Cosmo, Game Design, and Philosophy Have in Common?

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the different ways that we can value things. In particular I have been thinking about intrinsic and extrinsic value and how this relates to Kantian ethics through his views on respect. When we value something extrinsically (or instrumentally) we value that thing for the sake of something [...]

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Killing: the Phallic and the Vulvic

I uploaded this video to my facebook page, and it started quite a discussion. Because the discussion began getting long for a facebook wall, I thought I would continue my thoughts here. The video (originally at Feminist Frequency): The video started a discussion about video games and gendered weaponry. I am “B” in the discussion, [...]

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Why Bakka’s River?

When I was a kid I used to cry a lot when I noticed things I thought were unfair. My parents used to tell me I was a Bakka, which I think was supposed to make me feel strong about my tearfulness. In Fremen legend, Bakka is “the weeper who mourns for all” humankind (from [...]

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