Thursday, November 01, 2012

This is not Jewish (but it kinda is. Awesomely)

It's a shame this blog isn't public right now, because I'd love to give a more public shout out to This is Not Jewish. Tagline: "Calling out ignorance, appropriation, stereotyping, and general anti-Semitic bullshit since 5773."

It looks quite good. Every time I see a list titled something like How to Criticize Israel without Being Anti-Semitic my heart skips a beat, because I'm worried I'll get something like "Even though Israel is a raging hellbeast of demonic satanism, referencing the Holocaust is only sometimes permissible." But this one actually seemed to impose serious obligations on people, while not remotely closing the door on legitimate criticism of Israel. So hurray! And hurray for the blog, generally!

Monday, October 29, 2012

Project Lemonade

Sharia law meets abstinence-only education:
. A new study in the American Sociological Review found that evangelical virginity-pledgers could learn a thing or two from Muslims and Hindus, who are the most likely to actually abstain from premarital and extramarital sex instead of just lying about what went down in the basement over the weekend. What's their secret? Really pretty "True Love Waits" t-shirts? Nope: legal and religious coercion, gender segregation, and never showing any lady skin, ever.
[...]
Those looking for casual sex partners online should try "advanced search"ing for Chosen Ones: a whopping 94 percent of Jews who participated in the study reported having premarital sex, followed by 79 percent of Christians, 65 percent of Buddhists, 43 percent of Muslims and 19 percent of Hindus.
So rather than complaining about how Islamic law is taking over, why not get on that action to actually make a tent on premarital sex rates?

(Actually, the study -- at least as reported in Jezebel which, in fairness, is a considerable caveat -- doesn't seem to have a great answer for why the rate for Hindus is so much lower than the rate for Muslims. As for its Jewish findings -- well, it's good to be a Chosen One sometimes).