I’ve been pretty busy elsewhere this week, but I wanted to drop you a line here to keep you updated on goings-on.
Mostly I’ve been doing a lot of writing. And procrastinating by cooking soup and creating salads and new takes on mac & cheese.
A few things to share with you, though.
The first is: I finally wrote a love letter for Ben Moberg’s series over at Registered Runaway. I initially resisted his invitation because I get really fed up with loud LGBTQ allies talking about being allies for the sake of talking about being allies. I want to live that, not talk about it. But something happened this week that pushed me over the edge, so here you are:
My parents used to have a tile they got when we drove through New Mexico on our pilgrimage east, and it hung in our entryway at home for years and years. Mi casa es su casa, it read.
…because invitations are sometimes hard to accept if they aren’t made loudly, let me make it very clear: mi casa es su casa.
This house always belongs to you, too.
Secondly, I’ve accepted an offer to join the blogging team over at The Friendly Atheist. Hemant Mehta reached out to me a couple weeks ago and I think he’s great and I’m excited to be contributing to his Patheos blog as a Christian culture commentator. I’ll still be blogging here, too, so no worries about that!
Also, I don’t think it’s particularly relevant to this whether or not I’m an atheist (this isn’t me coming out as one); my writing and analysis on Christian culture issues fits the tone and themes of his site well. I’m excited for my first post to go up there tomorrow, especially I’ll be talking about the latest updates on SGM “scandal.” (I’ll add a link here when it’s live.) The post is live!
Thirdly, I’m finally posting my explanation of why modesty culture = rape culture, and Convergent Books is kind enough to host it for me. Part 1 is up today!
Fourth: Third: The Swan Children is accepting submissions for our July issue now! Read our latest update here and submit here.
And finally, the YA Wallpaper has a new video up! We’re talking about Meg Wolitzer’s new book (which isn’t out yet), so SPOILER ALERT.
Link seems to be dead.
It should work now.
Found it. Powerfully written.
Read the note, and apart from anyone’s opinions about LGBTQ, it’s worth noting that the “10%” number was discredited back in 1954 by Tukey et al of the American Statistical Association. They looked at Kinsey’s sample and concluded that a random sample of three would have been superior to Kinsey’s sample of 300, which apparently included about 100 people in prison–and unsurprisingly found that people in male-only environments were fairly likely to have male-only sexual relationships.
So you might want to be careful about citing this–it’s been used for decades by advocates who apparently know nothing about what a statistical sample ought to be, and also misrepresents even what Kinsey was trying to say. It’s not an issue of fundamentalism or patriarchy, it’s a matter of basic statistical method.
When more honest methods are used, the LGBTQ percentage for those who actually identify as such is about 2%, and this has been replicated among many studies in Europe and the U.S. So if you want to be credible, you might be very, very careful about citing (explicitly or otherwise) anything by Kinsey, especially is 1948 work.