I try not to judge other people’s parenting choices since I am childless, but I feel like this case is a bit extreme. I can understand using natural products, making baby food, cloth diapers, etc. I also understand not getting medical intervention for every runny nose, but once the kid starts getting worse and the…

How is this a debate? Adults are competent to choose not to be medically treated if they want. They have NO right to push that choice on a defenseless child. I don’t care how nuts a child’s parents are, the child deserves - is ENTITLED to - a decent chance to at least make it to adulthood.

I for one am off of non-’organic’ foods altogether; the toughest thing to cut out of my diet was Styrofoam peanuts

Even their damn naturopath told them to get their asses to the hospital.

So as a scientist-type person who has also worked at a hippy-dippy natural foods store... I don’t actually think naturopathy is the devil. That being said, it is no substitute for Western medicine or your primary care doctor. I believe that it can have a supplementary relationship with those things, if that’s what…

I have a hard time with shit like this. As a parent, who has had to defend many non-traditional parenting choices, there is a line between things that sound o.k. (home-made baby food) and things that sound dangerous to a child’s health and well being (not vaccinating).

“Natural” is such a buzzword; everyone from hippies to strict conservatives love throwing it around. What is “natural.” If you cook a plant, is it still in it’s “natural” state. Is cocaine “natural” because it’s derived from “natural” elements? If humans are innately “natural,” wouldn’t that mean anything we do to…

Sure! Your kid can’t breathe? Bring him over to my place, I’ll stick some needles in him and give him some maple syrup! Being Canadian, you know that maple syrup is, obviously, the cure for all that ails you. And if that doesn’t work I’ll go get some basil and cilantro. That shit cures cancer! /s

That Whitner’s ad is pretty wonderful: “Just because you’re not a size 10 doesn’t mean you can’t wear comfortable panty hose.” Italics mine. These days it would be “not a size 0? U R FATTY LOSER.” I wonder what a 1972 size 10 is now? Sizing seems so variable in 2016.

I read the whole thing. That part about anti-traffickers pulled me out of the essay (it honestly didn’t seem to fit with the rest), but I went back in and finished it. I think she had a lot of interesting things to say that I really didn’t have anything to add to. I think there may be class differences in how people…

I was with you through the critical analysis of voluntourism (and really this could be extended to the executive non-profit realm in general). You lost me in the sex trade bit, though. That you describe your foray into the field as a last resort, and accompany it with a discussion on those who are forced into it,…

I’m tired of the idea that social justice work should be all about altruism. Solidarity is something that benefits everyone who engages in it: in lifting up others and joining their fight, you lift yourself, and THAT’S OK. Voluntourism, of course, does not fit into this model, but using your platform as a well-known…

There’s this weird preoccupation on the left that the people who are best-equipped to fix a problem are the ones who have been direct victims of it. Which certainly does play a role, but doesn’t always necessarily pan out to positive outcomes in the real- someone who has spent a great deal of time studying and…

This entire article really hit home for me as a first generation college student who very much wanted to be very different from my mother (educated, successful (in work), etc. And now, I would consider myself lucky to end up even half way as decent and understanding and giving as my mother. But, this quote really…

Exactly. One of my very cynical great aunts used to always say that everything is selfish, including charitable work/giving. Her line of thinking was that even if we aren’t lauded or otherwise compensated for it, we do it out of an innate, insidious need to feel good about ourselves. When I was young, that was a huge…

Yeah, I mean, I get her point, and yes, plenty of people’s version of helping is “replace your actual life with my version of ‘better,’” but I can’t believe kidnapped/sold twelve year olds being passed around to hundreds of clients are feeling “empowered” by their lives.

This essay is amazing!

Which is why I think the ultimate cure for this is anonymity. Divorce one’s self entirely from the process of doing good. Remain unknown. Serve others and offer aid and do not allow your personality to intrude. I make my donations anonymously, I refuse all awards, decline interviews. If the work is paid work, I’ve…

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

There is a lot I can agree with here, on the subject of doing good and do-gooders. (And coincidently I have a cousin who’s worked with Engineers Without Borders in Malawi - he’s blogged about some of this.) But the part where “anti-traffickers” are all clueless do-gooders? No. Some of those anti-traffickers are people…