Tag Archives: reality

Polygraphs and Monotheism: More Complex Than Expected

I am a Christian.

That’s more or less exactly how I began a blog post way back in 2013, when I attempted to combat a very prevalent and largely Christian argument against gay marriage. While it’s rarely ever stated as explicitly I also like to think that this fact isn’t something I’ve obscured or tried to keep secret.

On that note, the topic of Christianity also isn’t anything new here at Culture War Reporters. While the majority of these posts have focused on art that willingly bears that descriptor, my co-writers have also delved a little deeper into that belief system and morality. While the former may seem more at home given what we typically cover, a review of our About page readily sums up why the latter is just as appropriate as anything else.

In it we touch on culture wars as a “a conflict between societies with different ideas, philosophies, beliefs, and behaviours,” as well as how we are both individually and collectively wrestling with them. It’s the concept of two vastly differing perspectives that solidified whether or not I should do a brief write-up on my recent experience with a polygraph test. Continue reading

3 Questions We Need to Ask about FHRITP and Internet Justice

You may have seen the following video circulating on the internet. For those of you who haven’t seen it, I should warn you that it contains coarse language.

I absolutely love how CityNews reporter Shauna Hunt manages to professionally undermine this popular joke. She is bang on in identifying the blatant sexism of the comment, and the way it exudes disrespect for all female news anchors. This phrase, and the trend of harassing female reporters, is particularly frustrating because it falls into “legal no man’s land” and would be very difficult to prosecute. However, shortly after this video aired, one of the men who defends the FHRITP trend was fired from his high-paying engineering job for violating their code of conduct.

While I am frankly quite ecstatic that we no longer live in the era of “boys will be boys”, there are certain aspects of this case that have also raised up questions for me. I’ve shared those questions with you below.

At what point does internet justice become cyber-bullying?

The internet has been a major catalyst for feminist activism. For example, a wide variety of feminist issues that are not usually discussed by mainstream media have been able to gain traction on social media. As a woman, I’m so thankful for that. I’m also a big believer in creating stigma around certain behaviours, since it often seems far more effective than banning them altogether. However, I have noticed some instances where public shaming has become an unnecessary contest between shamers. Evan has touched on this in the past, but I also found some prime examples of this on the “Help Shawn Simoes get his Job Back” Facebook page. It seems that instead of liking it in order to actually support the FHRITP scapegoat, people have been liking it so that they can one up each other with their witty comments.

Screen Shot 2015-05-19 at 9.59.41 PM Continue reading

Culture War Correspondence: Minority Representation

EVAN: Gordon’s always been better at the fancy introductions, so I’m going to start by saying that this all began with this image-

See the rest of the image here.

– in which trans women [as well as a few others, I’m sure] tear Joss Whedon apart for answering a question about writing strong female leads with a joke. The problem being, of course, that the joke was trans-exclusionary.

This of course could be expanded into all jokes being trans-inclusionary, at which point Gordon had something to say about the number of trans men and women out there-

GORDON: Current estimates, for the US anyways, are holding at roughly 700,000, give or take, making up just about %0.3 of the population.

As Evan and I discussed in our first reaction to the outcry surrounding Whedon, this places people identifying as transgendered at somewhere above the number of folks hit by lightning and lower than the number of people born with more than five fingers on a hand.

Point being- it’s a very, very small group. Continue reading

Culture War Correspondence: Sitcom Absurdity

GORDON: We have been graced, dearly beloved, by a topic recommendation from our ever-faithful reader Ben, who asked that we “address the absurd and current culture’s take on reality.”

To which I say, “pink octopus comb.”

And apparently, that’s a real thing, and not just some facetious absurd phrase I made up…

EVAN: To be a tad more specific, the way our culture presents that reality via television, which is something that I very definitely have opinions about. I have opinions about television, everyone.

GORDON: He really does. You should ask him about them. Continue reading