Suggestion Saturday: October 5, 2013

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, comics, videos, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Meaningless via SMBCComics. Ack, everything I want to say about this comic strip gives away too many spoilers. šŸ™‚

Something Strange Happened at McDonalds. And here I thought I was the only one who tidies up after strangers in public! I’ve never gone this far, though.

Questions for Sighted People. This video was made by a man who was born blind. Among other questions, he wants to know what it’s like to go somewhere alone and how we remember what everyone else’s faces look like. I loved his sense of humour and hope questions for ____ people becomes a meme.

My Gender Identity via tmamone. As someone who has never questioned my gender identity I find Travis’ journey to be really interesting. I hope this is the beginning of a series on the topic.

Love Letters from a Scientist. This particular page is work safe. The rest of the site may not be.

Telescopic DroppingsĀ viaĀ Bluestocking. One of the (dis?)advantages of moving far away from the communities I grew up in is that I rarely hear the latest news about who died, or more likely at this stage in my life who got married or had a baby. While I absolutely relish the privacy of city life I can see the advantages of occasionally popping your head back into the loop to see what the latest community news might be.

From What Boys Become: Modesty Culture and Learned Irresponsibility:

This is the primary sin of modesty culture ā€“ it teaches irresponsibility and blaming others, but masks it as sexual purity.Ā It teaches men to dispose of women who donā€™t fit their mold, under the guise of ā€œkeeping themselves pure.ā€ It teaches men that women exist on a spectrum of worth determined by their clothing and that it is their right as men to determine which women are worth more ā€“ and yet, modesty culture masks it as ā€œkeeping away from sexual sin.ā€ It teaches men irresponsibility and plays it off as ā€œintegrity.ā€


An Intimate Life is the autobiography of a sexual surrogate. The author works with clients who are disabled or who need help with some aspect of their sexual life. She sleeps with some – but not all – of her clients in order to teach them skills that are extremely difficult to learn by reading a book.

I loved the author’s descriptions of the people she has helped over the years, especially the professional relationship she develops with a man named Mark who became severely disabled after contracting polio as a child. Some passages are sexually explicit, but they are in no way intended to be titillating.

This is a book about the importance of connecting with others. As far as I know none of my readers are sexual surrogates ( šŸ˜‰ ), but I think all of us can benefit from slowing down and getting to know people we might ordinarily breeze past without a second thought.

What have you been reading?

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2 Responses to Suggestion Saturday: October 5, 2013

  1. Opa!

    You are the most widely read person I know. Your links are a plethora of depth and range.

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