Only about a third of sixth- and seventh-graders who completed an abstinence-focused program started having sex within the next two years, researchers found.

THIS IS A JOKE. I wasn’t having sex in eighth or ninth grade either, for the record. I think that if an abstinence-focused program is to be instituted, it absolutely must be combined with safety education, such as condom use. Are those two things mutually exclusive?

Ideas like these – which are more widespread than I would like to believe, and which, sometimes, enveloped in my liberal bubble, I forget exist at all except on the raving crazy edges of society – are the reason that, while feminists have won loads of territory in past decades, we are still watching things creep backwards. Like a rising tide, every advance comes with a matching recession. There are still leagues of rabid anti-feminists out there who can feel their privilege being contested and don’t like it.

But seriously, this does sound like a joke. I find it hard to believe that anyone could write this with any sincerity:

Their professors have argued, with some success, that rights should be granted not to individuals alone, but to whole classes of people, too. This has led to employment equity — hiring quotas based on one’s gender or race rather than on an objective assessment of individual talents.

Mr. Roeder has pleaded not guilty to murder, but defense lawyers had argued that his beliefs about abortion might warrant a voluntary manslaughter conviction if jurors concluded that Mr. Roeder possessed, as Kansas law defines it, “an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force.”

Okay. Fair. But I knew I wasn’t alone. As the movie unfolded in front of me, I found myself growing more and more irritated – by the sudden weakness of the female main as soon as she was pair-bonded with the male main, and with the obvious white-American-colonial role of the humans in the film, and with the anthropologically unrealistic customs of the Na’vi. That’s why I was so glad to find this article – thank you, I’m not alone in being critical of this film! I mean, hell, it wasn’t as bad as Twilight: New Moon (during which I actually laughed out loud at several points, and immediately went into a verbal tirade upon the start of the credits)… but my reaction – my indignance – has similar motivations.

I believe that it is ethically obligatory for big box films – acts of media that reach as many people as both Avatar and Twilight – to be conscious of their reinforcement of racist, sexist, and otherwise ignorant ass-backwards ideas. These are the indoctrinatory systems we, as a culture, use to teach our children about the world. These are very powerful messages. Of course, I’m not about to suggest censorship, either. Maybe I should aim to be an ethical/social justice consultant for big media. Sounds like a great career option.