Pvenglishteach's List: ADVLA

• recent sex-selection practices involving new technologies in the United States do mark a significant socio-cultural-technical shift that feminists should be paying attention to- even if they do not portend the hyperbolic "end of men."
• At the same time, prospective customers of sex selection increasingly have found each other on the Internet, developing a collective identity based on their desire for a child of a particular sex.
• Patient/consumer activism via the Internet provides sympathetic, self-help spaces that allow individuals to express their intention to pre-select their offspring's sex or their disappointment at birthing a child of the "wrong sex." Taken together, these developments signal a new era in which there is a potential for the practice of sex selection in the United States to become increasingly normalized.
• second-generation technologies allow for sex "pre-selection," which seems to imply choice in a more positive sense, that is, choice "for" rather than "against." Such positive choice is illusory, as a choice "for" a boy necessarily involves a choice "against" a girl.
• inevitable consequence of "freedom of choice.
• Libertarian feminist perspectives that critique government intrusions into matters considered private reduce the issue to a question of "freedom of choice." Yet we need to look beyond the individual level of consumer choices to grasp more fully the implications of sex selection in the United States.
• • begin here
    
• family balancing" or "gender variety.
• Presumably, as long as no harm is done to anyone else, individuals have the right to alter or enhance themselves or their lifestyles.
• In the case of sex selection, popular media assume that the right to have a particular kind of child simply extends from the right to have children, at least for those who can afford the technologies.
• "Gender Disappointment"
• These women do not question whether the sex of a child should matter. They take it as a given. Just as it is different being a boy than a girl, they say, it is equally different being a parent to a boy than to a girl. Yes, they understand that the health of a child is most important, but that does not mean that everything else is unimportant. They talk about sex selection as if it were the norm, their right. And all their talk goes a long way toward making it so.14
• God has made this technology available and he'd want us to use it.
• "I wanted to have someone to play Barbies with and to go shopping with; I wanted the little girl with long hair and pink and doing fingernails."
• I knew I was in trouble when I bought the pink tutu. This piece of flowery femininity had caught my eye as it hung in the window of a children's clothing store. I thought about it for weeks before buying it for a friend's daughter. But for whom was I really buying it? For my friend's little girl or for myself, to feed an unspoken hunger within? Four years ago, I conceived (naturally) twin sons. Now that they're "big boys," my house has become a shrine to Power Rangers. We have enough Matchbox cars to fill a real garage. When I watch the boys interacting with female playmates, I fantasize about raising a daughter myself."
• Second, Robertson promotes a market approach in which "freedom of choice" is seen to be the ultimate good regardless of the context of the "choices" or the differential way in which women can participate in this "choosing" depending on their social location

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• outright defense of collectivism in the pages of LIBERTY. Nelson recommends legislation that would permit a majority of voters in an inner city neighborhood to force all property owners in the neighborhood to belong to a "homeowners association." The association would be given wide powers to regulate life style and use of property in the neighborhood and to enforce its rules without being subject to due process or any of the protections ordinarily afforded citizens by state or federal constitutions against excesses of local government.
• For the associations are running roughshod over what many residents have assumed is their right to enjoy their property pretty much as they saw fit.
• • can even tell you what kind of christmas lights you can put up or fences in front of your house
• collective private ownership" that we have in "common interest developments," or "CIDs
• "communism" or "collectivism."
  
• If these experiments in collectivism were voluntary, it would be one thing.
• They are now able to make and enforce rules of their own making, without regard for due process. They can be as arbitrary as they wish in the enforcement of those rules. They are empowered to exact fines in any amount for noncompliance and, in the event of nonpayment, to place a lien upon and sell the delinquent resident's home. The resident can appeal to the courts, but in an overwhelming number of cases, the courts have found for the association because, by construction of the courts, it is held to be a private organization acting under the terms of a contract voluntarily--even if ill-advisedly--entered into by the resident.
• • yet funny how it still seems to benefit our big government
• • oh wait, i'm sorry i just that that all poor people were lazy and didn't care about how they lived
• The fed backed the large corporate subdivider/builders in open areas outside the cities to the detriment of the built-up areas, which were deprived of construction financing--one of the reasons for the deplorable condition of many inner cities.
• nprecedented departure from Anglo-American land law, these were given standing in the courts
• • explain what a paradox is
• Catch 22"
• In the more fortunate cases good local leadership goes far toward compensating for the structural deficiency, but in the common run of cases neighbor is pitted against neighbor and litigation is rampant. CIDs represent a serious social dilemma that Americans have walked into unawares, victims of many decades of political opportunism on the part of the FHA and the housing industry. The answer is anything but clear. But what is clear is that the quality of community life in America will not be served by attempting through legislation to propagate this collectivist model throughout our older neighborhoods nationwide
• Tax law gives major advantages to individual home ownership over renting.
• Hence, neighborhoods turn to private regulation to achieve the comprehensive maintenance of the "nice" environment and other neighborhood features they desire.
• MacCallum seems to be joining forces with the collectivists who are always seeking to tell other people how to run their lives.
• Home owners turn to collective ownership arrangements because the local association can do a better job than a municipal government of cleaning streets, picking up the garbage, running common recreational facilities, and other tasks.
  
• • thats true, small, localized groups work better that large groups
• CAN A TRUE BELIEVER IN LIBERTY EVER CONCEIVABLY AGREE TO SELL AWAY OR OTHERWISE GIVE UP SOME OF HIS OR HER LIBERTY?
• • good point here, well-made
•    The main purpose of my original piece was to suggest that the multiple advantages of private associations be extended into inner-city areas. These areas in fact have a much greater need to protect and maintain environmental quality. Inner-city residents often fear for their lives because they have no collective control over entry into the neighborhood. They also share the desire to live in aesthetically pleasing surroundings but lack the institutional mechanisms of the suburbs to achieve this end.
• It is a price that may be worth it as part of a larger goal of the privatization of local government.
• • and who would be the ones who don't want this???

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• Gay Marriage Is Good for Straight America

• But there's the hitch. It's not the U.S. Supreme Court's job to decide what's "appropriate" for kids. That's the responsibility of parents. It's the court's job to decide whether the First Amendment applies to video games.
• Yet over time, industry self-regulation and parental involvement have proved far more effective than censorship.
• If James Madison were around today, he might not enjoy Postal 2, but he certainly would tweet about it, cautioning that giving government too much control over what we see, read or write is a dangerous thing -- regardless of our good motives.

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• Children and teenagers who play violent video games show increased physical aggression months afterward, according to new research that adds another layer of evidence to the continuing debate over the video-game habits of the youngest generation.
• Although the longitudinal studies reported in Anderson's study showed that frequent playing of violent video games leads to greater aggression, Anderson also said this message should be understood in the larger context of a child's life.
• • these are contradictory statements, what about the fact that they are playing this long, prob feel that their parents don't love them so they act out. 

• "A healthy, normal, nonviolent child or adolescent who has no other risk factors for high aggression or violence is not going to become a school shooter simply because they play five hours or 10 hours a week of these violent video games," he said.

  Extreme forms of violence, Anderson said, "almost always occur when there is a convergence of multiple risk factors."

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