skeptifem

short post and an update

2012-01-24T12:29:00.003-07:00

I had some computer problems recently which made it difficult for me to get to the blog and moderate comments. A lot of the old half-written blog posts I had in the works were deleted as a result of harddrive problems.

In the mean time Craven has had some excellent posts at her blog, showcasing what dog owners have to lose by ignoring pit bulls as a safety issue. The first very graphic video shows what non-pit owners have to lose by highlighting the difference in attacks from regular dogs and gripping dogs (like pitbulls). The amount of effort needed to deter a pitbull attack, and the nonchalance of the dogs in violently attacking others, is a lesson in the unique threat that these dogs pose. A second even more graphic video shows a pitbull owner being attacked by his dog, who silently chows down on his owners arm, wagging his tail the whole time, while his owner fails to get him to let go with commands and physical force. He appears to get very tired after losing so much blood, however. The police had to kill the dog and it is not known if the owner lived through his injuries. The dog looks well cared for (well fed, certainly) and happy doing what his genetic heritage predisposes him for. Almost all the available videos and accounts of pitbull attacks follow this abnormal pattern, where a pitbull will strut up to a person or animal and maul them violently, wagging their tail like its playtime, and are extremely difficult to dislodge, even by multiple adults. This is, again, a very sharp contrast to the behavior of non-gripping dogs when they become aggressive. Regular dogs warn people extensively before attacking and attempt to avoid actual violence, and usually fail to kill anyone except for the elderly, sick, and children/infants.

Gender Traitor Theory in Action

2012-01-06T10:48:00.004-07:00

I wrote a post awhile back that generated a lot of controversy. It was about women who sold the rest of us out in order to have a special place amongst the dudes of any specific movement or group. I wish that I had a better name than Gender Traitor at the time, but that is what stuck. I think "Gender Token" may be a better term to use in the future. The examples I could give were usually smaller groups and therefore hard to cite, but thankfully the sexism problem in skepticism has made a big public example available for you, the reader.

Some background: there is a problem with sexism in skepticism. One woman even made a blog to complete the (thankless) task of educating men on how to stop being sexist and include more women in skepticism. A lot has been written on the problem by prominent people within skepticism, although the most famous/powerful in skepticism have not taken it so seriously. Richard Dawkin's reaction to sexism in our community is still fresh in the minds of many, and so is the unapologetic sexism of the late christopher hitchens.

This time a new skeptic celebrity is displaying his true colors: Magician Penn Jillette. He's a chest thumping porn and prostitution supporter, which falls in line with his ron paul supporting libertarian bullshit. He is famous for a non-magic tv show where he tells everyone his opinion (how they got people to pay to watch a dude to yell opinions is beyond me, plenty of dudes seem to do it for free even when asked to stop). I remember an episode about prostitution that concluded industrializing (legalizing) it was for the benefit of everyone, while avoiding talking about the typical experience of a prostitute (starting prostitution before turning 18, being abused as children, having little other resources, drug addiction, pimping, etc) at all costs. Even when I happen to agree with something on their show, I find that they support it with the weakest possible argument available, and there are always telling omissions from the opposition. He cannot seem to reason his way out of a paper bag, and I have concluded that his popularity in skepticism is a result of him parroting the existing party line rather than having anything to contribute to it.

Anyway, as of January 2nd, you can add "condescending head patter"to Jillette's resume as a sexist piece of shit. He doled out a head pat to a woman who wrote an open letter about how she doesn't mind all the sexist behavior in the skeptic movement, so dudes shouldn't fret over their behavior too much. The dudes seem to be reading: She likes it, why can't you? When other women called out Jillette on his sexist behavior he simply told them that they were wrong, and didn't engage in any more conversation beyond that. Malorie Nasrallah authored the patriarchy affirming screed, and in the aftermath seems to be incapable of understanding how her letter will be perceived as a thumbs up to rape culture fans everywhere. I am not going to go into detail about the content of the letter, others have done a wonderful job of this already, and its specific claims are in sync with the article I previously wrote about this social dynamic.

I wonder if Malorie understands that countless men have written the same opinion piece as she had, but weren't given any special recognition from above for reinforcing the status quo. The reason Jillette and his ilk think the letter is so great is that they don't have to think hard about what other women are saying if they listen to the one woman willing to say that there isn't a problem at all. They can still say they listen to women, and I suppose technically they do, but only if women are saying what men want to hear.

What becomes of the sexism problem if we listen to Malorie, and the men who agree with her? The problem becomes the attitude of women, the nerve they have to speak up about it. The problem becomes an invention, imaginary, ridiculous. That mindset can be extremely appealing to men who may otherwise have to feel bad about how they have behaved in the past. It is an easy out for those who lack integrity, or who want their dominance over women (as a class) to continue. Jillette most definitely falls into the second group (not that they are mutually exclusive), having spent a lot of time defending the idea that his money entitles him to the bodies of women, expressing pleasure in being a "harmless" john.

Malorie Nasrallah is just a woman sharing an opinion. The way that men have exploited that for personal gain is where the real ugliness lies. Mallorie will figure out what it means to be a woman in patriarchy eventually (or at least suffer for it in some way), but the Penn Jillette's of the world can go their whole lives without understanding what their behavior does to women or feeling one quantum of shame over it. Men like that need to be the focus of our most biting criticism. There are countless opinion pieces out there about sexism in skepticism, but (to my knowledge) the highest level of recognition afforded to pieces critical of sexism in skepticism is a link on scienceblogs. Pieces that are critical of women who write pieces critical on sexism seem to get more attention from internationally known people like Jillette and Dawkins. It is easy for anyone to criticize other communities (like islamic communities or fundamentalist christian groups), but it takes no real moral conviction or integrity. I would like to ask why the men in skepticism who are so eager to promote the Malories of the world never seem to find a critique of sexism in their communities worth promoting. If more skeptics walked the walk, they would examine the actions of their leaders for bias and call them out on it, but I am not holding my breath.

2011 dog bite fatality statistics

2012-01-06T08:56:00.002-07:00

Dogsbite.org fatality statistics from 2011 are up!

Once again, pit bull attacks made up the majority of dog fatalities this year (over 70%), despite being less than 5% of the dog population. This has been true for the past 6 years, with the exception of 2009 (where they made up 44% of the fatalities). Almost all the other fatal attacks were from rottweilers (13%).

Another strong trend is adults, not children, being killed by pit bull type dogs in great numbers (more than half of victims). Full grown adults have difficulty defending themselves from these attacks.

This Week In Misogyny

2011-12-29T10:49:00.004-07:00

Apparently women are just asking to be called cunts and threatened with rape all over the net this week. Can you believe that some women have the nerve to criticize Ron Paul or post a picture of themselves with a book on reddit? They should know better than to have opinions while female.

The Difference

2011-12-29T10:12:00.006-07:00

"Isn't sex work just like any other job?"

It is a question that is asked often on the internet when discussions of pornography or sex work occur. There are plenty of arguments rooted in philosophy floating around, many of them hinge on hypothetical future situations. I wanted to take a more practical approach to the question.

One huge practical difference between sex work and most other forms of labor is the astronomical rate of infectious disease transmission. Legal sex work, such as work in pornography, offers workers damage control rather than prevention of sexually transmitted infections. Those are the best case scenarios; workers who have actual rights as workers in the sex trade. The majority of pro-sex work people I run into argue about how to improve the lot of sex workers so that they are protected from diseases and stigma. Those are both worthy goals.

However, even in the ideal situation (free mandated condoms, no prejudice against sex workers) I do not see how it could come close to being satisfactory.

As someone who works in the medical industry I know that sex workers aren't the only people who routinely handle bodily fluids that pose infectious disease risk. Laboratory workers, surgeons, nurses, etc handle them all day long. The difference is the level of protection afforded to workers; there isn't an acceptable level of disease infection of medical workers.

It means that if a lab worker was to open a container of bodily fluid (which is housed in a primary and secondary container for worker protection) they would need to wear a lab coat, gloves, closed toe shoes,and use a splash shield or face shield before opening the sample. This is done to reduce the chances of a splash or aerosol exposure.

If a worker was splashed with a potentially infectious substance they would be promptly tested, so would the source patient, and they would be tested again at various intervals for diseases. The worker is usually offered counseling for the emotional problems that can come from awaiting the test results. Generally the rest of the department is given a refresher on PPE (personal protective equipment) if the accident was caused by failure to use proper PPE. Sometimes workers are fired for failing to use PPE (the exact opposite of what sex workers go through). If the problem was with the equipment then an investigation is launched into if the equipment is faulty or if there is some better way to protect workers. It is a big deal because exposure to diseases is not considered acceptable within the health care industry, the standard is to perform a job thousands of times without ever being exposed by using engineering controls and extensive training.

These guidelines seem, to me, like the baseline of humane treatment for workers who can get infectious diseases from their occupation. They are afforded reasonable protection against disease and taken care of if they do have an accident. If sex work is to be treated like "any other job" these are major practical problems to contend with. Very few kinds of sex work could exist if equal standards were in place.

you must now sign in to comment

2011-12-15T10:31:00.002-07:00

As of today commenting on Skeptifem will require users to sign into a valid account. This is because the creeper mentioned in this post keeps submitting comments with increasingly horrible content. I cannot ban him because he does not sign in to submit comments. He is asking about my personal whereabouts and questions about my job. This dude doesn't understand that he isn't entitled to information about my personal life or a say on someone else's blog. Telling him to fuck off and not post comments here anymore results in him gaslighting me, which is sort of hilarious in an all-text format. My first reaction was shock horror.

This is in addition to continuous violation of the comments policy and just generally being a myopic douchebag. I delete shit from this dudebro almost daily, and I am sick of it. I quit reading it a long time ago because he is the one commenter that has so far, without exception, never said anything of worth. This is a huge pain for me, and hopefully singing in to comment won't be too much of a pain for all of the people gracious enough to regularly read my blog.

I am not a fan of one person ruining things for everyone else, but I don't know of another solution to the problem.

Commenters who want to remain anonymous for valid reasons may email me their comment. An example of a valid reason would be fearing retaliation from misogynists or wishing to remain anonymous in calling out someone else's bigotry. Confidentiality will always be respected when discussing issues of abuse or harassment. Asking for help from commenters is another good example of a valid reason for confidentiality. These are not strict guidelines and I won't post any information or comments emailed to me without getting permission first. Abusive people will get a rule that chucks their correspondence directly into the trash.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation

would you know?

2011-12-13T10:16:00.004-07:00

A new video from Shelly Lubben, of the Pink Cross Foundation has surfaced on youtube. It is footage of multiple women on multiple pornography sets breaking down because of the pain of being in pornography. In one case the men mock the woman for grimacing with pain. In another the man just keeps fucking the woman. In a third case a woman seems to be gearing up to finish her scene, as soon as she can stop crying because of the hateful shit being said and done to her. She "isn't used to" people being mean to her. The video is very graphic and difficult to watch.

Here is a link to the video.

The fact that this happens probably isn't a huge surprise to anyone who watches pornography. They might say that it is probably a minority of women, and that getting paid makes it all okay somehow. I doubt that a minority of women dislike cruelty or painful sex, but that is beside the point. I want pornography viewers to ask themselves what the final cut of those porn shoots look like; the final product sells the idea that these women "love" being in porn. Everything is edited together to give that appearance, even when it is a nightmare for the performers. The pink cross foundation is full of women who echo each others experiences in pornography; they were coerced, pimped, and usually sexually abused as children. Many had substance abuse problems that could not reasonably be financed by means other than sex work. None of them enjoyed the sex, and were more often hurt by it. The majority of performers contracted at least one sexually transmitted disease. When viewing pornography it is impossible to tell, from the product, if you are contributing to the sexual abuse of vulnerable women or watching someone who is having a "good time". People say pornography is a fantasy, but it is reality for women who usually have no other options.

I am proud to be an atheist

2011-11-26T10:44:00.002-07:00

Sometimes I really tire of discussions about religion and atheism. It was a topic of intense interest to me as a young person, but it becomes apparent that there hasn't been an original argument made in the debate for a very long time. I have recently forgotten the negative impact that religious beliefs can have on the world, and I get a culture shock every time I encounter an abhorrent manifestation of religious thinking. I literally forget that most people I encounter believe in magic and a host of bizarre beliefs about the nature of the world that flow from magical thinking.

There is a certain level of death-worship among people who believe in an afterlife. I recently heard a religious person announce that there isn't much use in getting riled up about how unfair life is because in the afterlife things will be all better. This argument disgusts me, completely.

I understand why a religious person would draw such a conclusion; it is much more comfortable than the reality that such a thing can only be said from a position of relative comfort in the world, and that the comfortable are the ones who can more easily work to affect change. It is easy for white americans in utah to make these arguments; they aren't being trafficked or enslaved or dying of preventable diseases. When I hear someone say something about the worthlessness of caring about the world I always wish that the person saying it would be forced to say it to someone who is directly involved in the hardship being discussed. I doubt that most people who think such rubbish are heartless enough to do it, they are just avoiding uncomfortable conclusions to enhance their own well being. Many people would rather feel good than see things for what they are.

What I don't understand, however, is how a pleasant conclusion is supposed to undo the injustice of needless suffering. By that logic no one should be upset about torture because torture ends eventually, after all.

Knowing how the majority of religious people think has made me proud to be an atheist. I know this is the only life I will get and that I have to do as much as I can to improve the world for others. There is no grand purpose in suffering, and no one will fix the problems of the human race for us. It takes integrity to take responsibility for our actions (or lack of action); the majority of atheists seem to take it to heart that what they do is important to other human beings.

pornography and respect

2011-11-14T07:36:00.003-07:00

I am compelled to write about a post on free thought blogs by Greta Christina. She is angry that she cannot do pornography and still be taken seriously as a female intellectual.

To which I say HA! Women aren't taken seriously to begin with. Participation in pornography (or not) is just makes it a tiny bit easier for sexist men to dismiss women. Women who want serious roles in society- like intellectuals or political candidates, are degraded based on their sexual worth OR lack of it. I will use my favorite example once again: Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin- one was berated non-stop for being unattractive and lacking sexuality, the other (who never made porn) had porn and blow-up dolls made of her to ridicule her because of her perceived sexual worth. Dudes will make their own reel of pornography of you in their minds, and then blame you for the quality of it, no matter what choices you make as a woman. This is the meaning of being of the sex class- men assume women exist for sexual usage.

Greta acknowledges that in her post, but seems to be confused about the purpose of pornography from the users point of view. She peppers her post with assertions about pornography representing sexual freedom, but doesn't seem to examine it from the average pornography viewer's point of view. There are many more viewers of pornography than makers of it, so examining the practical impact of pornography means looking at viewers. The mainstream of pornography promotes a sexist and rape culture compatible view of sexuality, and the social benefit of such a system is exclusive to men.

A woman can think she is doing something transformative or feminist when she does pornography or stripping or burlesque or whateverthefuck, but the real-life impact of the act is always the same: men feel that their view of women has been confirmed. Sexual submission to male fantasies won't get men to rethink their sexism, it will only reinforce what they already believed about women in general. It is another painful illustration that intent isn't magic, and that no matter how much any woman wants pornography to mean something different, she cannot change an entire social order by participating in dominant social institutions while calling it something else. Other collectively shared social institutions work in a similar fashion; the idea that a piece of paper with specific markings is worth one dollar of spending power cannot be changed by any individual asserting otherwise.

I also find it off-putting that Greta's post doesn't discuss her privilege in being able to choose to be a sex worker or not. I often find that discussions about sex work that chiefly focus on sexual freedom and expression are from people who do not realize that the common sex worker isn't there because she prefers being a sex worker. She is usually there because someone made her into one via pimping, poverty, drug addiction, or abuse. It is impossible to separate words like pornography and prostitution from their practical impact on the majority of women within those systems. Trying to separate the words from the women who are harmed within the system disgusts me; it makes the reality prettier for men who want to believe that their pornography or prostitute consumption is morally acceptable. Any discussion of choosing to do sex work or not should come with a disclaimer of privilege in that regard, the same way that posts about race or sexism from privileged people (white people, men) should come with a disclaimer of their position in society. Most sex workers with the privilege to choose just lament the way that there is stigma attached to their careers (or hobby in this case), as if that is the most important issue to discuss instead of the slavery and abuse going on within the sex industry right now. It may be an important issue to discuss when, at a minimum, the majority of sex workers actually choose their profession. For now, using words like sex work, prostitution, pornography, etc without making any distinction between women forced into it as slaves and women like Greta makes it difficult to discuss coherently. I generally picture the common person within those systems when they are mentioned, but the great PR campaign by "sex positive" feminists means twisting the practical definition to mean someone who is statistically exceptional. It is bullshit. These words should conjure up the ugliness that they represent (99% of the time).

PZ myers made a post asking what is especially bad about being in porn, compared to other occupations. The assumption in that common question is puzzling to me- they seem to be saying that all work is exploitative, so why care? When really it points out a lot of problems with work within capitalist systems- there are alternatives to explore.

Anyway, he seems to think that it is like flipping burgers or any other occupation, but it isn't. For one thing, workers who are in pornography are not protected by OSHA and are routinely exposed to diseases. They are screened for them (as damage control) when prevention (via condoms and exposure limiting sexual practices) is easily available. Then there is the matter of the service provided- theft of services at any other job may be unpleasant, but it isn't rape. The documentary The Price of Pleasure (available on netflix instant download) also illustrates other differences between pornography and typical employment. Even if a woman isn't exposed to diseases she is often asked to do extremely uncomfortable things. Towards the end of a movie a woman on a pornography set who has been talked into ATM (ass to mouth) after hesitating initially walks of set to vomit. There isn't an equivalent in other lines of work; no one is coerced into tasting their own shit for money outside of pornography.

Why I Hate Conference Week

2011-10-03T06:27:00.005-06:00

General conference week is a week of conferences (duh) for the LDS church in Utah. It happens twice a year. People dress up in their Sunday Best and flood the conference to watch a bunch of old dudes talk jesus. Lots of folks come from out of state to see it.

Outside of the annoying traffic and tourists, there is the problem of the sexism of the conference. The messages given to women are recycled every couple of years. The message seems to either be how to stay pure and chaste or how to make a better wife/mother/help meet. The talks that are aimed towards men are not much better, but their recycled messages have a little bit more variety, at least. Most of the conference can be viewed by anyone, but there are sessions aimed at women and teenage girls, and one aimed at priesthood holders (men). Women are not supposed to watch the talks aimed at men, but men can watch the talks intended for women. The dire consequences of a woman witnessing a priesthood talk hasn't been fully explained to me, but I am betting our tiny lady brains would be damaged from the awesome power of dude knowledge. God works in mysterious ways, truly.

Anyway, the men who speak at the conference (general authorities) are full of shit. I don't know if the bullshitting is a group effort or the result of single speech writers making stuff up, but either way it is easy to spot the less-than-likely stories spun at the conference each year. There is an old, unlikely, and really ridiculous sounding story about one of the General Authorities meeting Mick Jagger on an airplane and learning that rock and roll music is designed to drive young people to sex. Also, Mick Jagger was incapable of finding a problem with the book of mormon, because there isn't one. Yeah, sure. The story has been told a million times, long after young people started saying "mick who? the rolling what?" to themselves upon hearing it. I wish snopes would pick it up to try and verify it with mick jagger, but they have not. There is a certain lack of self-awareness that exists in talks that impress no one outside of those severely brainwashed into the religion already. That proud tradition continues on at the current conference week.

The Prophet of the church, Thomas S Monson, who supposedly speaks directly to god, told a story about the power of prayer. The story starts with him saying how he traded his change in to his dad for a five dollar bill as a child. See how many problems you can spot in this story:

He was a boy during the Great Depression. "I had tucked my five dollar bill into the pocket of my jeans and, as you can probably guess, my jeans were sent to the laundry with the money still in the pocket," said President Thomas S. Monson.

From time to time he would pause and make a facial expression to help communicate his story with the audience. It would often respond with a hushed laughter.

"I wanted that money, I needed that money," President Monson said emphatically. He told the 21,000 audience in the Conference Center and the millions of other viewers across the world via satellite transmission that he prayed the 5 dollar bill would still be in his pocket after it returned from the laundry two days later.

"I reached into the pocket with trembling hands. When I didn't find anything immediately, I thought all was lost. And then my fingers touched that wet five dollar bill," said President Monson.

Renna responded to the story, "I think we all have tender mercies, like when the Lord really looks out for us. I will definitely turn to the Lord when things like that happen to me."

Give up?

1. The money is "needed", it is a "mercy", they mention the depression to make it seem like he is poor. If that wasn't the intent, it was the effect of the way the story was framed. It doesn't make sense because his family could afford to pay others to launder all their clothes. Another glaring problem is that 5$ in 1930 is the equivalent of about 65$ now, which he (as a boy) had lying around in change. We might as well be cheering that Montgomery Burns got his 5$ back, when the people working at the laundry place probably needed it more.

2. Prayer to get a 5$ bill back to a privileged rich kid works, while god let the prayers of starving and diseased people go unanswered. Thinking that god would interfere on his behalf instead of helping people with real problems is the height of narcissism, it is the kind of entitled narcissism involved in all manner of praying.

3. This is the best that the prophet of god could do. A story where he got 5$ back was not put on the back burner in favor of more important messages. Conference goers are truly supposed to be inspired at a really inconsequential miracle. You would think someone in direct communication with god could manage to tell an interesting story or reveal secret knowledge from god during the conference, but he does not. Another speaker told a story about god making a quarter materialize so he could buy some fried chicken. God sure does seem to care about money- that must be why the church requires 10% of your income for life in order to fully include anyone in the church.

People eat this crap up, year after year. That is why I hate conference week.

Occupy Wall Street protestors maced, beaten

2011-09-26T05:05:00.003-06:00

A couple thousand people have assembled at a plaza near the NY stock exchange with the group Occupy Wall Street. They plan to occupy the space indefinitely, and have been there for nine days. Here is a quote from their website:

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.

Videos have surfaced of protestors being beaten, arrested, and maced without provocation or warning. A lot has been said about the impact of cellular phones and youtube in combating police violence, most people become optimistic about how police won't get away with it so much anymore. However, if the videos aren't widely circulated it is difficult to know if anything will come of it. Many comparisons have been made between the lack of coverage of thousands at Occupy Wall Street to the seemingly instant coverage hundreds of people get when they are marching under a Tea Party banner instead of an anti-corporate one. This is despite celebrities like Roseanne Barr showing up to the protest. There is always more coverage of "lifestyle" sections about celebrities or consumerism in MSM, but even in terms of political news the wall street protests have not gotten much attention. Most of the coverage comes from outside the mainstream, the coverage that does come from the mainstream isn't comprehensive or ongoing. Very little effort has been made to find out who these people are. Democracy Now! is reporting that the majority are young people who are college educated but cannot find any employment. They are right to march out into the streets, their opportunities have been gambled away by financial and political leadership.

It seems that the best way to support the protestors (if you cannot directly participate) is to donate here, as well as covering the news on your corner of the net or spreading the word IRL. You can read local news, even the "national" sections all day and not get wind of the protests or the police violence. It seems as though this is the beginning of something important.

Typical Dude Behavior

2011-09-25T11:23:00.009-06:00

Some douche canoe keeps leaving comments on my blog. They would be worthless if they weren't such great illustrations of Typical Dude Behavior. Witness typical dude's mistaken belief that what he has to say about this post is original, and/or important:

this is a disturbing article. First you have a fantasy that there's a bunch of people out to get you. Men. They all hate you and wish you ill for some reason- I guess just because. But I guess that's just feminism for you. I wish I could persuade you otherwise. I'm a man. I think feminism is shit. You're probably an insane man-hating bitch. But I don't hate you. I don't even know you. And if I did, I still wouldn't hate you. I'd probably quite like you through your flaws. I rather like outspoken women. I think you even say on the web site that you actually do hate men which is refreshingly honest btw (another reason I'd like you, maybe).

For the record, my FAQ says I hate most men, because of their behavior. Typical Dude thinks that I could not possibly be referring to him, or the kind of behavior he is displaying right now. Oh, Typical dude, when will you learn?

Anyway, the assumptions in the quoted passage above are as follows:
1. I care if this guy likes me
2. I care if this guy likes/understands feminism
3. I desperately need to hear his opinion on my worth as a human being
4. I desperately need to hear his opinion on feminism
5. He can call me a "bitch" without it being hateful (he probably thinks his intent is magic)

ALL of these are totally fucking wrong. If you are out there, Typical Dude, pick up a fucking sociology text book sometime, or you know, READ about feminism before you come to a feminist blog and make an ass out of yourself. The post in question was about real examples of shitty behavior from men in public and at my place of employment, but Typical Dude knows how I should really act in the face of it, despite never having been subject to sexism himself. How silly of me to formulate my own response based on my experience and knowledge! He wants me to behave in a way that is pleasing to him, and is so fake as to be detrimental to me, but he doesn't hate me, see?

Witness Typical Dude's complete inability to add to the conversation on this post:

I have to say that this whole fetish with pretending that being hugely overweight is not a health risk is one of the most insane things about feminism.

Yep, the dude keeps showing up only to repeat ideas that I argued against extensively in my post, I spent hours gathering information to link to and to make sure that my conclusion was correct before posting. But guess what? He had a relative whose diabetes went away after Weight Loss Surgery, so all my evidence is invalid somehow. Do you see a pattern yet? Typical Dude's experiences are always more valid than mine, and is even better than actual research on the subject. But he doesn't hate me, see?

Then he shows up on this post, and has even more to say:

Well this thread makes you sound quite human (and humane) which is certainly different for a feminist.

You certainly have no problem with the sexism of banning them (men) from these feminist web sites. (he goes on to accuse me of gender essentialism)

Typical Dude feels he has a pretty good grasp on the situation, even when he clearly does not. He believes his few minutes of browsing on my website are a good enough reason to let loose all kinds of irrelevant, weird shit from his psyche that AGAIN hinges on the assumption that we are all dying to hear what he has to say. It reminds me a lot of when creationist debate boils down to biologists vs a washed up actor from a sitcom, or the anti vaccine debates boil down to doctors vs model actresses. Typical Dudes figure that there isn't a lot to actually know about feminism, so why look it up? He is an expert because he feels like one. He shows zero respect for me by failing to read my website and insults me constantly, but he doesn't hate me, right?

He also equates the oppression of marginalized people to his lack of access (to SPEAK, not to LOOK) at spaces where those people talk. They are the only spaces where people are free of bullshit like Typical Dude's rantings above, and he is pissed that women have the nerve to want that for themselves. He believes that the pain of being told to shut the fuck up on one tiny corner of the net is equivalent to knowing that if you are a woman and discuss sexism, the Typical Dudes of the world will never leave you alone. It isn't. The reason a Typical Dude can call that kind of shit "sexism" is because that is what he imagines sexism to be for women. It is just a fleeting sense of unfairness that is a mild irritant. There is that kind of sexism, but it is constant, and grating, and always on top of some other huge thing that makes the small annoyances that much more painful. With a straight face he equates his paper cut with my missing arm, but its not hate, right?

It is hate. People think that you have to be violent or outright state your hatred for women for it to count as "hate", but you don't. What women experience as sexism or hatred is what counts, not what some sexist asshat intended when he said something sexist. I experience Typical Dude's bullshit as hatred. He is someone who assumes that I exist to absorb his bullshit, someone who calls me slurs rather than my blogger name, who talks down to me without even a basic understanding of the subject matter, who tells me that I am judged worthy/not when I never fucking asked, and who seems to think he is much more important than I am (on MY blog). Someone who does that sure as fuck seems to hate me, right? Imagine striding into someone's home and behaving that way, and then whining when they (rightly) notice the aggression seething out all over the place. I think we all know why he expects me to post his comments and take all this bullshit in good humor. They are all going in the trash, now that I have extracted the educationally valuable materials for you, the reader. You're welcome.

UPDATE 09/26/2011

Dude left 9 (NINE) comments on various posts as of now, as to cement his not-getting-it-ness in the minds of readers. Did you know he is actually an expert of feminism, who has researched it for years? Ha.
I wonder why he doesn't understand the difference between two directly opposing philosophies like radical feminism and gender essentialism then?

PETA Update

2011-08-26T15:18:00.001-06:00

I got a form letter back from PETA for writing them with my concerns, which is to be expected, but I also got signed up for their fucking "action alerts" despite carefully reading the form and making sure not to check the boxes for that. God damn them.

PETA launches a pornography site

2011-08-23T11:04:00.004-06:00

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has announced they are launching a pornography site. This is after they have had many proto-porn campaigns that supposedly benefit animals. The article states:

Even though PETA's intention is to improve animal welfare, some argue that the move to protect animals comes at the cost of exploiting women. A Facebook group, Real Women Against PETA, was created after the organization posted a billboard of an obese woman that read, "Save the Whales, Lose the Blubber, Go Vegetarian." A headline for The Sydney Morning Herald once read, "Pro-vegetarian group treats women like meat."

But Rajt explains the motives behind these tactics are cleverly thought out and ensure they get results: "We try to use absolutely every outlet to stick up for animals ... We are careful about what we do and wouldn't use nudity or some of our flashier tactics if we didn't know they worked. We also track the effectiveness of our actions very closely and see if we get visitors checking out other features on our site."

PETA is controversial as a group and I will make no claims about the value of their goals or actions, I will assume that animal rights are important and worth pursuing, and (for the purposes of this article) assume that it is PETA's goal to further animal rights. PETA is a utilitarian organization (meaning they believe that the positive outcome of activism is more important than being principled about the means of obtaining the positive outcome). They don't care if you quit eating meat because of health or empathy or because you think aliens contaminate animal flesh with space bacteria. Any reason, so long as it is combined with action, is a win in their view. This is very important when understanding how to get groups like PETA to stop exploiting the position of women in society to sell their message. They don't care about the well thought-out arguments of feminists regarding how pornography harms women. If it gets people to stop eating meat, they will continue with their porn campaign.

I want to make a brief point about their using pornography and naked women to sell animal rights: it doesn't fucking work. It has not been demonstrated to work, and I have serious doubts about it working even in theory. Women who want to know more about animal rights are unlikely to go to a pornography site (and being half of the god damn population, they should be marketed to), and will likely be turned off to materials from PETA after learning that they run a pornographic website, or that they will be encouraged to get naked if they join PETA to protest animal rights abuses. PETA doesn't think women matter, as a group, to talk to, despite their being more likely to become vegetarians and become animal rights activists. If they want to convert the most people within our current social climate they should be focusing on attracting women. Vegetarians are still very much the minority in the US, there are plenty of would-be vegan women out there right now who have personal objections to pornography.

That isn't to say that no resources should be put towards attracting men, but the way they are going about it is unlikely to work. Men easily watch and consume pornography without thinking for a second about the feelings of the women in the pornography. Men watch things like Max Hardcore and don't feel a shred of empathy for the person they are watching being hurt. Somehow pornography is supposed to inspire men to think about the effect of their actions in other parts of their life, unrelated to what they are looking at right now, despite the level of self-centeredness needed to use pornography in the first place. It seems like the form of media least likely to produce introspection of any sort. The men who go to the site will probably just be masturbating, and thinking about that until they log off. Thinking about animals being tortured or switching to veganism is more likely to hinder the porn-viewers goal, and will probably be ignored as a result. They aren't just treating women like shit, they are doing it without helping any animals at all.

This is all speculation on the effects of porn (the site could prove me wrong, with the right information gathered). However, there is no evidence that supports PETA's claim that "it works". I am guessing that they measure success in the attention paid to their websites rather than in an actual reduction in harm for animals. PETA's claims to be utilitarians is important, I believe that challenging them on what these campaigns actually accomplish would be most effective in convincing them to stop it. Whatever your opinion, let PETA know what you think of their campaign.

Weight Loss Surgery: A Feminist Issue

2011-08-20T08:13:00.006-06:00

Every so often I get totally immersed in a subject and try to read everything I can about it. My most recent subject of interest is weight loss surgery (WLS), which is becoming more popular each year in the US. About 80% of weight loss surgeries are performed on women.

There are many different weight loss surgeries available. Many people are aware of stomach stapling and lap banding procedures that reduce the size or capacity of the stomach (either temporarily or permanently). Fewer people are aware of the intestinal bypass portion of some weight loss surgeries. The small intestine, which is instrumental in absorbing nutrients (such as carbohydrates, fats, protein, vitamins, and minerals) is also altered in various weight loss surgeries. Surgeons can make the stomach contents of a patient empty into the small intestine further down the line than it normally would, the intent is to prevent the patient from absorbing as many nutrients as they would otherwise. Patients who have WLS that includes shortening or bypassing of the small intestine have to take regular supplements (and at a much higher dose than people who have not had WLS). Roux-en-y, the most common type of weight loss surgery, both makes the stomach smaller and shortens the small intestine.

The main claim behind the surgeries is that it improves the health of patients by causing weight loss. The claim seems to rest on the idea that drastic weight loss has health benefits that outweigh the cost- not a very well established claim, which I will return to later.

There are also claims that it can reverse diabetes in some patients, as well as other problems correlated with obesity. Being obese and having diabetes, for instance, can be seen as a reason for a patient to be approved for surgery. I found this troubling for reasons that the American Diabetes Association covers quite nicely:

Myth: If you are overweight or obese, you will eventually develop type 2 diabetes.

Fact: Being overweight is a risk factor for developing this disease, but other risk factors such as family history, ethnicity and age also play a role. Unfortunately, too many people disregard the other risk factors for diabetes and think that weight is the only risk factor for type 2 diabetes. Most overweight people never develop type 2 diabetes, and many people with type 2 diabetes are at a normal weight or only moderately overweight.

There is no real way to tell if an overweight person with diabetes is someone who would have the disease at an average weight. Diabetes can increase the rate of complications in any surgery, so there should be a damn good reason for subjecting a diabetic patient to it. There is also no real way to tell if the surgery will actually cause long term weight loss in any specific patient. It seems that most patients who get WLS are still obese after losing weight.

Researching WLS becomes troubling very quickly. Anyone who undertakes the task will repeatedly be told that there are no long-term studies documenting the health outcomes of the surgeries. It is hard to understand why, when it is easy to find stories from people who had their surgeries in the 1970's and 1980's. These are surgeries that permanently alter vital organs, and the surgeries are still being performed despite the lack of important information.

The studies that claim a benefit typically do not follow the patients for more than a year or two, despite the pitch for the surgery typically saying that there is a "honeymoon period" of massive weight loss for a few years, and then some weight will come back later. It seems as though it would be important to follow up on the patients after they stop losing. There are two reasons for some of the weight to return. First, the stomach expands over time and allows for more food (ideally). Second, the honeymoon phase is a period of forced starvation, where the body is forced to burn tissues other than fat to survive, and the muscle that gets eaten away during starvation returns eventually. Some patients find that they hold onto weight more stubbornly and gain weight on much less food after surgery, due to their bodies adjusting to long term starvation conditions. Patients often adhere to a starvation level diet for life in order to avoid weight gain.

Studies that talk about resolving diabetes or obesity via WLS rarely discuss if the patients developed other problems as a result of the surgery (trading one set of problems for another). It can be very misleading.

For instance- statistics about patients who lost weight and kept it off include people who vomit chronically, have severe nutrient deficiencies, or who die years later from problems related to the WLS. These women are considered success stories and could be included as patients who kept the weight off or got rid of diabetes or heart problems as a result of the surgery. The links provided are stories of people who are either dead or disabled from their complications; there are many more who have the same problems and did not keep the weight off (or lose it in the first place).

This may not be a problem within a society that doesn't stigmatize people for obesity, but ours does and it complicates the ethical problems associated with allowing WLS on such a scale. Weighty Secrets is full of stories of women who faked their way through their psych examinations or lied about their height in order to get surgery. Some women put weights in their pockets to qualify. The outrageous thing about it is that the lap band procedure has been approved for people who are barely obese. There are people who admit to having the surgery out of vanity or as an extension of their eating disorder, they are not being filtered out by the procedures in place.

The stigma put on fat people often makes them less likely to raise hell when their WLS fails or causes them severe problems. Doctors can insist that the patient is at fault rather than the surgery because information about a pattern of problems associated with WLS (like auto-immune disorders, neurological problems, hernias, anemia, osteoporosis, beriberi, etc) is not readily available to most patients. If a doctor tells a patient they are at fault, most are willing to believe them. A physician notes how post op patients who are less healthy, but more thin, will advertise the surgery to anyone who will listen:

Several of my patients have had bariatric surgery, two of them over thirty years ago when it was a rarity. Some of them sailed through splendidly and are living happily ever after as thin people. Some of them are not doing so plendidly, even though they had the same surgeons and the same procedure. One lady passes kidney stones every couple of weeks. Another regurgitates anything solid that she tries to eat and yet has only lost 20 pounds in six months. She says she makes up the calories in liquid. Another can not eat more than one slice of toast at a time without getting sick. Some have chronic diarrhea. Many have nutritional deficiencies. A couple have gained their weight back after 10 or 20 years. And yet, not one of them says they regret having the surgery, such is the praise they get from others for losing weight. If asked, every single one of them would call themselves healthier, but from my perspective their health is worse. They all require more monitoring and more interventions than they did before having the surgery.

I believe the problem is made worse by the patient demographics- the majority of patients are women who have been socially programmed to be polite and self sacrificing. It is hard to know how many stories of weight loss success turned out less than wonderfully over time, but were never updated online or in surgeon's offices.

Junk Food Science points out that there is a debate within the AMA about the ethics of performing the surgery. The idea of weight loss as a goal in and of itself is scientifically controversial. Obesity has only been correlated with health conditions, not identified as a sole cause of any condition. Lifestyle and genetics play a role in the conditions typically associated with obesity. There is also controversy over the danger associated with the surgery itself (the junk food science series is well documented and thorough). There is some difficulty in calculating the death toll because deaths related to WLS may be ruled as a different cause, depending on the patient's weight, though the official numbers show that it is a high-risk surgery when compared to procedures like hysterectomy or appendectomy. One telling detail is that there had to be a campaign on behalf of WLS companies/surgeons in order to get bariatric surgeries covered by insurance companies, who have very little reason to reject procedures that would actually prevent health problems in the majority of patients.

The surgery is certainly sold like a cosmetic procedure, with before and afters being used to attract potential patients. Free seminars are used to tell patients about the surgery, often implying that patients will die from death fat if they don't get surgery soon (which is pretty unlikely). Combining the fat-shaming beauty mandate with the fear mongering Obesity Epidemic language is a powerful mix of rhetoric, which appeals to many women who have accepted that fat bodies (including their own) are evidence of inferiority.

Other increased risks for post ops are suicide, alcoholism, and cross addictive behaviors. These things are not typically mentioned by surgeons trying to sell weight loss. Starving yourself has long been known to alter the mood and psychological health of humans.

Additionally, these surgeries require lots of follow up from medical professionals permanently. Blood tests are needed to check for malnourishment, supplements need to be calculated to fit those needs, complications need immediate medical intervention and may arise years after the surgery, etc. In the US women need a degree of economic privilege in order to get health insurance, so they may be dependent upon husbands or corporations which exploit them for life as a result of the one time decision to have WLS. Younger people are being encouraged to have the surgery, including some teenagers, who don't have the means as adults to monitor their post-surgery health.

This isn't to say that no one should have these surgeries, I am sure it is medically necessary and makes sense against other risks for a small number of patients. However, it is also clear that there are many women who have no medical reason to get the procedure and were allowed to anyway. Many of those women now have psychological or physical problems permanently, or are dead. Some have difficulty with pregnancies afterwards because of the strain of providing nutrients to the fetus. Physicians are supposed to prevent harm from coming to anyone, and I very much consider this harm. I am fairly sure that the reason women get this surgery so much more often than men is that the pressure to be thin impacts us much more. The harm brought to women from diet pills, eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, crippling contraptions (corseting, foot binding, high heeled shoes, etc) are mainstream feminist issues. I had difficulty finding any information about WLS from feminists, though fat activists have discussed the issue quite a bit through a feminist perspective. The deaths and pain of women who felt their perfectly healthy organs needed to be sliced up in the name of beauty are hidden too far from the view of feminists. Empowering women who had negative experiences with WLS to speak up and update any testimonials they gave for surgeons would be a great start in bringing this issue to the mainstream of feminist discourse. For many women WLS is a socially approved, surgically enforced eating disorder. Women have their bodies operated on instead of having their heads examined when they pay thousands for someone to physically force starvation on them. Not only that, but other people congratulate them for it.

BADRAP member killed by her pit bull

2011-08-18T13:35:00.003-06:00

Darla Napora was killed in her home by one of her dogs and found hours later by her husband. She was killed by her pet pit bull. Darla and her husband supported BADRAP, a pit bull advocacy group. BADRAP has declined any interviews about the incident, but they have made a post on their blog regarding the incident, which looks pretty awful for them. They claim responsible ownership makes the dogs harmless; if their own members cannot manage it then it is difficult to know how members of the general public should be trusted with that task. Darla's husband has made some chilling statements (which I will return to), but I want to address the intellectual sloppiness that BADRAP tackled the incident with. The response is difficult to dissect, it contradicts itself over and over and in multiple ways. It is almost as if they generated every possible response (outside of admitting that there could be a genetic problem with pit bulls) and put them all in the same post in the hope that one would stick. They must think the audience is too stupid to compare the argument of one paragraph to the next, because none of them agree.
The whole thing is totally incoherent. I don't envy Donna Reynolds in having to respond to the incident, but I don't pity her for displaying such a glaring lack of integrity.

They open with a story about the Donna Reynold's (non-pit) dog and how it gave her cues to stop messing around instead of just snapping unexpectedly. She continues:

Reality check: My dog is an animal, not a little person. I mean, I know he's not a little person, but his teeth in that moment offered the full reality that - Oh yeah - I'm getting an 85 pound dog super amped and the only way he can tell me to stop would be to correct me, much like a dog would correct another dog who was being overbearing. "Stop!" Elliot showed considerable restraint by pulling short of a stronger correction, but what I really wanted to thank him for was revealing the blessed beast that lives inside every house pet dog. I wasn't with my house pet in that nano-second; I was with the primordial wolf who knows his strength and his boundaries. Elliot is most decidedly an animal before he's a dog, and he's a dog before he's a house pet. Yep - Got it.

I've fallen back on that lesson several times this past week as the media prodded at the dog related fatality in Pacifica. He's an animal before he's a dog, and a dog before he's a pet.

Keep the italicized portions in mind when you read the next bit, which appears later in the same article:

The week before Ms. Napora died, a pregnant woman in Milwaukee, Sharon Staples, was shot to death in the street, in the presence of her 13 year-old son. Police arrested three teenaged boys in connection with her death. There are over 20 million teenagers in the United States. What will the investigation into the death of Sharon Staples tell us about teenagers?

Are teenagers animals first? If not, why bring them up? The article compares pit bulls to humans right after saying that they are animals first and not at all like little people. BADRAP and other pit nutters will say the dogs are a lot like humans or not at all like humans, depending on what serves them best at the time.

I want to return briefly to the first portion I quoted- if you read it again, you notice that it implies that there was probably something that Darla did (or did not do) that caused the attack, hinting that she probably loved the dogs too much and treated them like little people instead of animals. Donna once again changes gears and instead of dogs being animals first and unpredictable as being a reasonable explanation for the attack, she begins to speculate that it is really a freak accident that cannot be comprehended or explained, as if nothing like this has ever happened before with pit bulls:

This particular case is making investigators and onlookers absolutely crazy because no one can figure out what really happened.

Yes, the dog (Gunner) was a large unneutered male, but that alone does not give us the answer. In nearly all of dog related fatalities, we get a roadmap of several messed up circumstances that typically lead straight back to the whys of each tragedy. (KC Dog Blog's Road Map) Not in the Pacifica case however. Final forensics reports may or may not reveal the key to the incident ...Was there a physical abnormality such as a brain tumor in the dog? A pregnancy related fainting spell? (Darla was pregnant) ... but at the end of the day we have to accept that we may never know what triggered the incident.

We can add "fainting" to the list of pit bull attack triggers, and if that it isn't it I guess living in your home or being pregnant count. They pretend a dog needs a brain tumor in order to display aggression, or some other far flung theory to explain the accident. This directly contradicts the point in the first paragraph about the nature of dogs as animals. BADRAP and other pit nutters will say that all dogs are animals and can attack OR you have to do something to make them attack, depending on what serves them best at the time.

All the arguments that are mentioned depending only on what serves them best at the time are very telling. You can be sure that you are dealing with liars or fanatics when they cannot admit any flaw in their position and decide to lie to avoid addressing any hard questions; there is no such thing as a problem-free political position. Being able to admit problems that make a solution imperfect (as all political solutions are) is a mark of honesty and integrity. The message is less attractive to people more invested in their feelings than facts, which explains pit bull advocates and their behavior (in general) very nicely.

The article tries to downplay the death of Darla as irrelevant due to its rarity, which can be illustrated in the following quote from the post:

Even as we share the grief of Ms. Napora's family, we do well to keep two things in mind. First, serious incidents involving dogs have always been exceedingly rare, though they generate news coverage that creates an impression they are more prevalent than they actually are. There are roughly 78 million dogs in the U.S., and 308 million human beings. Annually, there is one dog bite-related fatality for every 10 million human beings, and every 2.5 million dogs. Second, official reports may shed some light on the unique calculus of an incident; but they are never a basis for generalizations about all dogs, or even one kind of dog.

Unfortunately for BADRAP, none of the critics of pit bull advocacy really care about the rarity of these incidents. They care that the incidents are PREVENTABLE. Deaths that cannot reasonably be prevented by legislative or social measures are of little concern to anyone as a political cause. Knowing your loved one died and did not have to, that someone could have prevented it and did not, is the problem that people have with groups like BADRAP giving the impression that there is not any added danger to any kind of dog in particular.

The post compares the deaths to random acts of violence (and puzzlingly suggests that there isn't anything that can be done socially or culturally about the violence), when there is a much more apt and understandable comparison available to them. The instant that a product for consumption is shown to cause sickness, injury, or death a massive recall effort is put into place to prevent death. When hamburger patties infected with e. coli were recalled there was no need to assume that every single piece of recalled meat was infected (the equivalent of thinking every pit bull is dangerous or will kill). What people actually assumed, rightly assumed, was that the safety of the product was questionable. There was not a practical way to tell who would be safe and who would not. Precautions can be taken by consumers, and should be, but that is not a good reason to release tainted products without warning. Someone could die who did not have to, so the only moral thing to do was to pull the product from the shelves. The logic behind this is difficult to attack- when children and baby products kill someone due to a defect (even one that isn't likely in the rest of the released product), no one argues against recalls. Unfortunately the pit bull factory is pumping out way more units than anyone can reasonably care for, and groups like BADRAP are against any legislation to restrict the breeding of the dog. Groups like BADRAP also fight against any warning to potential dog owners that there may be special risks or precautions associated with certain breeds of dog, for fear that pit bulls will be even less adoptable and more of them will die (which is tragic, but their solution to the problem seems to be making things worse rather than better).

If you were Darla's husband, wouldn't you be angry at the way they have talked about the death? Even if you didn't blame the dogs or think BADRAP was lying, you may get peeved at their insinuations about the fault of humans in attacks or their failure to neuter the dog. Her husband seems a lot more concerned about the image of the breed than anything else. Instead of the standard plea for privacy during a media-circus death, he pleads for something different:

Greg Napora and his family have asked that people please avoid implicating a breed type in this incident. After all, Tazi is a pit bull. He told me by phone: "I really wish I knew what happened, but at the end of the day, Gunner was an animal." There it is again. The fact that he still loves his dogs is probably the greatest but hardest to understand lesson of all.

The ashes of the dog that killed Darla will be buried with her, and the dog that did not kill Darla will return home soon. This is what fanaticism looks like.

Sorry for the delays

2011-08-11T18:00:00.002-06:00

I have done a horrible job of approving comments in a timely manner. I have a disclaimer in my FAQ about delays, but the time taken to approve comments in the past couple of weeks has been truly egregious. To people kind enough to thoughtfully comment on what I have written: I am very sorry. I will do better in the future.

inside the mind of a gender traitor

2011-07-27T15:41:00.007-06:00

What is a gender-traitor, you ask? I am sure you all know a few of them. When you tell your co-worker to knock it off with the stupid sexist jokes, she is the one who leans over to exclaim "No, its really true. Women really are crazy drivers!" The dude bro you were talking to is now smugly satisfied that a woman defended his sexist bullshit, and she has earned herself a new friend as a result. I was that woman for a little while, and a lot of other women have been too.

She "doesn't get along with women". She watches porn. She calls men pussies as an insult. She gets to be the cool chick. Guys will say she isn't like other chicks, who act so fucking stupid and girly all the time. Nope, she is different. She isn't always whining or talking about boring girly crap like jewelery or babies. The gender traitor usually bonds with men over some typically masculine hobby like video games, guns, violent movies, drinking, etc. She gets to be an honorary dude, as long as she shrugs off sexism and helps dudes feel better about themselves. That is her job inside the group of friends.

She usually takes the job because she has very astutely noticed that things associated with women in our society are not as valued as the stuff associated with men. She has absorbed the belief that things like dominance (as in winning), violence, concealing feelings, and "toughness" are virtues from the culture. She usually doesn't identify with females in shows and books. She is spunky and doesn't want to resign herself to a woman's place, the way most women she knows will do at some point. Just being around feminine women kind of sucks, because they don't seem to understand how cool guy stuff is and how stupid girl stuff is. She doesn't seem to notice that none of the prized dude stuff is ever really available to her, not the way it is to fellow dudes. Dudes don't have to prove that they are the exception to the rule the way a woman does, nor are they treated as the representative of their sex at all times. A taste of dudely awesomeness is conditionally available to her if she continually denounces women in general. Her compliance to their ideas about female experience is the criteria used to judge if she gets to be an honorary dude. She won't ever really be one of the guys, and if asked directly they will probably tell her that. Her status as a potential sex dispenser makes it impossible for them to consider her a full member of the group the way a dude is. If she complains about sexism, they won't have to tell her, they can just ridicule her or shun her. Dudes will drop the cool chick from their group quickly if she makes them ask difficult questions about their behavior or attitudes. Allegiance to some feminine behaviors is acceptable as long as it proves something negative about women as a whole, or if it makes the cool chick more fuckable to her circle of dude friends.

These women show up to defend sexist men when other women have a problem with it. This piece from ERV is a nice illustration. She praises Dawkins for overcoming elevatorgate by providing childcare for a skeptic conference (something that men should do anyway), while deriding what skepchick does as worthless. He "won", unless you are too stupid to see that he totally won, because all interactions are considered a contest to a person who has internalized misogyny to this extent. I guess causing people to think and talk about their behaviors isn't worthwhile when you could be spending money? It is as though doing one thing to help women negates all bad behavior if you are richard dawkins, but if you are a woman who does something else you don't count at all. It may seem harsh to label ERV based on one event, but I am not. She consistently shows up to pharyngula or posts blogs to ridicule the idea that sexism exists and harms women, or that the actions of any specific man count as sexism. An army of dude bros show up to her blog to flatter her as a result or make comments about how she is the only woman with any sense in the debate.

The gender traitor, having prized toughness and dude defined coolness her whole life, has decided she is too cool or tough for sexism. She will overcome it and not even complain, its no big deal. If you complain about sexism around her she will tell you to just be like her and tough it out, and men tell women to be more like the cool chick when life is unfairly sexist. Sexism isn't a bigger deal than any other issue to overcome, right? Most women run into a really shitty sexist situation sometime in their life that they can't "win" at, it proves the gender traitor wrong through direct experience, and that is when things get complicated.

If she gets hit with an insurmountable sexist obstacle things can go one of two ways. She can either deny that anything is wrong or that sexism was involved (and her dude friends will enthusiastically help her find an excuse as to why it had nothing to do with sexism). Alternately, she can realize that things really are fucked up and no amount of any personality attribute will allow a woman totally overcome sexism. The latter requires that a woman tears down her whole identity. She invested it completely in masculinity as a virtue, and it didn't help at all when she was faced with an actual problem.

The way I am saying all this may make it seem as though the gender traitor is self-aware of what is going on, as if she says to herself "I will trade friendship for my respect of other women", but that isn't what is going on at all. She believes everything she says, she just doesn't pause to examine the troubling aspects of her behavior, or her "friends", long enough to notice the dynamic at work. That is why so many women do end up drawing the more difficult conclusion when being egregiously oppressed- they honestly talk about it with the dudes, and find out they will drop her in favor of some other more pleasing cool chick the second it becomes possible or just make fun of her until she shuts up. Some get weirdly angry over the mere suggestion of being wronged in a sexist fashion. She thought they were friends, but she was "the chick", not a friend the way the rest of the guys were. Bros before hos.

Feminist opposition to porn v. religious opposition to porn

2011-07-27T12:21:00.006-06:00

The only real anti-pornography voice allowed in the mainstream media comes from the religious right. For years this was the only anti-pornography position that I was familiar with. It was so laughably easy to refute that it was hard for me to take anything except for the pro-pornography position of most liberal thinkers. When feminists against porn became visible to me I couldn't figure out what they were against exactly. I felt it would be worthwhile to make a handy guide that readers can link to whenever they encounter someone who is confused about the difference in the two groups. There are some good religious opposition groups that do not fit the characterizations here (like the pink cross foundation) which are worthwhile, but I am attempting to address the mainstream form of anti-pornography thought in society. I will demonstrate the difference by asking key questions about each movement's goals and philosophy. I will use the terms "feminists" and "anti-pornography feminists" interchangeably for the duration of the post for brevity.

Who is hurt by pornography?

According to religious opposition groups, men are the primary victims of pornography. If they consider women victims, it is only in their capacity as wives of addicted men. Women in pornography are perpetrators rather than victims, they are to be shamed into repentance for failing to stay pure.

Feminists against pornography recognize that women in pornography are the direct victims of the pornography industry. Women outside of pornography are affected as well, and men (as pornography users) come in last as a concern because they suffer the least and are actually creating the problem.

What kind of harm does pornography cause?

Religious groups will say that pornography causes harm by making people less pure spiritually, they may call it adultery. The main message is that god doesn't approve of sex outside of the PIV marriage arrangement, the sort that results in children. Pornography shows sex that is "wrong" according to their exclusive source on what is right in the universe (aka God). Pornography is so great that it might make a man not want to have sex with his wife and then god will be mad about deviation from his plan (its the one with fruitfulness and multiplication).

Feminists see the harm of pornography as the harm it causes directly to women in the pornography. Women are infected with diseases and can be otherwise harmed by the sex acts in mainstream pornography. Others are pressured into doing things they don't want to do or pimped out to make pornography. Many have drug problems, mental illnesses, or abuse history that makes it impossible to ethically hire them for sex work. Feminists also recognize harm done to women not-in-porn by the way pornography has dominated thought about sexuality. The vast majority of pornography shows only one kind of sexuality, the kind where men call the shots and women are totally receptive of whatever men want to do to her. Communication is abusive or non-existent. This portrait of human sexuality makes it very easy to justify rape or not notice rape. Women who have boyfriends or husbands who watch porn are pressured into porn sexuality in their relationships. The majority of men watching pornography means that this is a very widespread issue, one that women my age all seem to be aware of. No one gets to figure out what sex means for them personally when pornography is such a huge influence on sexuality.

What is wrong with men who watch pornography?

Religious thought dictates that these men have sinned because they have been led astray by satan. The images of pornography have a natural appeal that is difficult to resist. A mans sex drive, combined with spiritual weakness, is to blame for his failing.

Feminists don't think that that men are full of uncontrollable lust, they choose to watch it. Many men have internalized the ideas in pornography and enjoy the hurt of the women in the pornography. Studies about the attitudes of johns show that they use pornography at a rate that is much higher than most other men, and that they have deluded themselves into thinking that some women are" made for" prostitution or pornography, that they are inherently different than women not-in-pornography.

What should men do about pornography?

Religious groups think men should quit looking at porn. They encourage prayer and psychological help, sometimes 12 step programs.

Anti-pornography feminists believe that men have a duty to speak up against pornography when possible. Silence gives other men the impression that you approve of their behavior.

What is the ultimate goal of the anti-pornography movement?

Mainstream religious anti-porn groups typically want a homogenous population of christians (or muslims or mormons etc) that have heterosexual sex inside marriage only. Many seem to think that obscenity laws are a sensible way to accomplish this. They believe that pornography is so alluring that it acts like an addictive drug and should be banned. It appeals to some inherent desire in men so it needs to be controlled.

Anti-porn feminists want the abuse of women in pornography to end. The legislation introduced by radical feminists in the 80's tried to make it possible for women damaged by pornography to sue pornographers for damages. Other groups want OSHA to regulate pornography like they would any other occupation, and introduce things like mandatory condoms and the banning of practices that cause disease transmission. Most of us want the demand to vanish by helping women and men develop genuine sexuality that involves caring and communication, and want women to have enough economic and social resources so that it becomes difficult to coerce or force women into pornography. Most think that pornography becomes less appealing as society becomes more empathetic towards the people in the films. There is not an appeal inherent in pornography, the society that we live in (which elevates values like dominance, violence, and masculinity over cooperation & caring) is what makes pornography appealing to men.

As I was writing this it struck me that these issues are related to how these two groups view rape. Religious groups view the problem with rape as one of purity- a woman is made impure by the rape, and she can't get it back so the crime is really awful. If a woman is married or a minor and raped, it is a crime against the husband/father since he didn't approve of the use of her person. Feminists see the harm of rape as an assault on psychological welfare, a form of domestic terrorism against women to keep us in line, as something that harms all women not just "pure" women. The religious groups see rapists as men succumbing to their natural base urges, while feminists believe that rape has more to do with power over others rather than actually wanting sex.

Time and time again feminists are hit with the accusation that they are prudish or just don't like sex, equating them with the religious right in their opposition to pornography on the grounds of "dirtiness". The truth is that pornography feeds right into the religious ideas about sexuality presented here. Look at the names of the moves and the names of the acts and what the prostituted women are called in the pornography. They aren't called by respectable names, they are called dirty, whore, bitch, slut, cunt. The pro-pornography left doesn't differ at all from the religious right in the framework of discussing pornography and human sexuality. The left only differs in that they believe there isn't anything wrong with the pleasure derived from women via pornography. Feminist opposition to pornography is based on a foundation that is completely different from the two mainstream viewpoints, and makes it hard to understand at first as a result. People are so used to seeing this issue as one about freedom of speech for pornographers or sexual freedom for pornography viewers that they have difficulty stopping and thinking about it as an issue of concrete consequences for women as a class.

VERY NO: Baby Sitters Club The Movie

2011-07-18T07:06:00.005-06:00

The nigel and I have a cheap way of making entertainment and also funneling our dollars into charity. After getting hooked on Everything Is Terrible, we decided to go to charity thriftstores (NOT deseret industries) and purchase VHS tapes. We make fun of em for our own amusement.

I expect to be offended a certain amount of the time, especially when I purchase Seminary tapes or Family Home Evening activity tapes. It turns out none of them were as fucked up as Baby Sitters Club: The Movie. My sister had a shit ton of BSC books growing up, and I remember how ridiculous the plots were from reading the backs of the books. It was mostly about rich kids with stupid rich kid problems, and horrifically stereotypical girls as the main characters.

The girls in BSC: the movie weren't much better. The only tomgirl in the group sells out and wears a dress when her shitbag of a dad shows back up to secretly meet with her. He buys her the dress because he doesn't know anything about his kid but she wears it anyway. He doesn't want his daughter's mom to know he is in town because he doesn't have a job yet and he is scared that he will look like a loser, so naturally he makes his daughter lie to everyone about where she is and what she is doing. I made a shitload of "living in a van down by the river" jokes when the character first enters the movie in a van, but he actually DOES live in a van down by the river. His daughter sneaks him FOOD sometimes. He ends up ditching his daughter on her fucking BIRTHDAY because his job offer in town didn't work out. When the character's mom finds out about all this she shows a little frustration and then talks about how he is "a dreamer" and so is the daughter, and "don't give up on your dreams" instead of explaining that putting up with that kind of bullshit from a man isn't her job, even if he is her dad, or about how maybe dreams need to be balanced with realism so you don't end up living in a van down by the river.

Most of the characters have a superficial gimmick like the tomgirl, with one notable exception: the black girl in the baby sitters club has no personality at all. As a clueless honky, this only struck me right before the credit sequence when one of the girls was talking about how they all had challenges over the summer, and flashed each character's face over the screen. The black girl was just kinda there and echoed what the other people were thinking at any given time and there was not any plot specific to her at all. There were almost no other black kids in the movie...except for the scene where the baby sitters club performs a rap. A shitload of black kids showed up for that scene only, as the audience. No crappy 90's movie is complete without an absurd rap performed by a bunch of white people, and this movie is no different. The rap is to help the other non-white BSC member pass a science test for summer school. They rap about anatomy and dance.

There is an "environmentalist" girl in the baby sitters club who doesn't talk a lot about the environment at all, she just mostly eats a bunch of weird shit (like bowls of seeds and raw tahini).

This is all fairly stupid but pretty standard, just about what I expected, until.... wtf, some foreign dude who is 17 shows up and keeps hitting on one of the girls. She likes him back, for a reason that is never explained. He literally never shows any redeemable personality characteristic. I guess she just likes the way he looks? She talks about how he doesn't know she is only 13. During this scene I exclaimed "WHAT? VERY NO. "

It seemed like that dude disappeared and I was relieved, but it got way fucking worse in later scenes. The object of his affection and one of the other young members of the babysitters club want to go to newyork with this dude bro, and their parents fucking let them. She gets outed as a 13 year old (instead of 16 like she claimed) when they try to go to a club and she cannot produce an ID that shows she is over 16. In the cab the scumbag keeps calling her "little girl" and "cannot believe" what happened. He also says "I didn't think you were quite 16...but 13???" yep. He knew she was lying about her age and didn't care. What an asshole.

They arrive back home to their crappy suburb and all the other girls in the club "feel so bad for her". The underlying assumption is that she should be embarrassed that some pervy older dude went after her despite knowing she was underage. What the fuck. Pervy older dude ends up calling her for like a month but she is too embarrassed to talk to him. The girls MOM encourages her to TALK TO THIS GUY AGAIN, making me wonder what the fuck is wrong with everyone in the movie once more. He shows up at the end of the movie and this is the scene:

pervy highschooler: You know, I am coming back next summer.

middle school girl: And I'll be fourteen!

*kiss*

me: But....then he will be EIGHTEEN, wtf did that solve??

Their fictional town is apparently in Conneticuit, where the age of consent is 16, unless the person trying to bang you is over 20, in which case it becomes 18. She should be off-limits completely until she is 18, but we are supposed to feel that this is a sweet ending to their trouble. As an 18 year old that dude would have even more power over her because of his legal adult standing. He already has a car and bails out the club before the creepy kiss scene. I felt horror at imagining how many young girls got the idea that they could have a "sweet" relationship with a dude that age without sex being an issue at all. I also wondered how many dudes have seen this movie and got an idea about how acceptable it was to behave that way towards 13 year olds (probably not many, but one is too many).

I was fooled into thinking a movie made for girls about girls would be free of this kind of shit. The movie ended up being more about dudes and how females have to adjust to the constant barrage of bullshit from them. It is more of an instructional tape than an actual movie.

I've been interviewed by Teen Skepchick

2011-07-15T12:23:00.001-06:00

I let the youngins know whats up in this interview from Teen Skepchick.

How not to attract feminist allies

2011-07-13T17:35:00.004-06:00

I just finished my last post about Jen Mccreight's reaction to ElevatorGate '11, and another problematic post about the incident has landed in my lap. Enter Greta Christina's post about the problem. Her post is a ministry to men about why women are bitching so much, and I am sure you'll be as shocked as I am to know that:

To the men who have been resisting and pushing back against the feminists on this issue, there's a very important thing I want to say to you:

We are trying to help you get laid.

Maybe you are, I sure as fuck am not. I don't care if men never "get laid" again. The sort of dude who reads the italicized sentence and decides to read on because of it is a fucking tool, and is more invested in himself than half of the human population. There are men who get in feminist groups to learn the lingo and standards for less than savory reasons. I would like to repel as many of those dudes as possible so that women don't find out their feminist ally boyfriend dude is really an asshole in disguise.

Christina goes on to say that in addition to helping men get laid, we are doing other stuff, for women. But wait theres more about helping men obtain more sex!

But we are also trying to help you get laid. (Many of us, anyway.) We are trying to show you the context into which your flirtations and advances and comments about our appearance are falling. We are trying to show you what it's like to be a woman: what it's like to try to be flirtatious and sex-positive and still be realistic about the no-joke threats we face every day to our safety and our lives. And we're doing this, in part, to give you a better shot with us.

Hell no. Speak for yourself. I don't want a dude I have to train first, and lesbians/asexual women/celibate women don't want men at all. Men who are lacking empathy for women are quite possibly the least fuckable people on the planet, and although it is important to have materials available for men who show some interest in becoming decent human beings, using our cunts as a carrot for their personal growth kinda defeats the purpose. Good people want to not harm others instead of deciding a course of moral action based on the probability of getting laid.

What Greta does not seem to realize is that in terms of getting men laid feminists cannot compete with a capitalist patriarchy. Women are seen as a commodity in this system, and their primary value is sex. That means there is a huge global market place that makes sure any man can have sexual ownership over a woman to some extent. All they need is some money. The really privileged ones can simply get away with violent stranger rape because of their social standing. Some men with money can afford to do sex tourism and fuck any sort of woman they want any way they want for the right dollar amount, and not feel a twinge of guilt about the circumstances of the average sex tourism prostitute. The poor or less privileged can buy women to own sexually via pornography, strippers, local prostituted women, etc. Some men can save up for a couple years and buy a hot subservient wife from a poorer country. Many less privileged men can still get away with raping women they know or women in their families. I refuse to bullshit anyone about this. Feminism might result in some men getting laid more than others normally would, but I am pretty certain that the net amount of sex a dude would get would decrease. More men getting laid more is not necessarily a good thing. It has been turning out pretty horribly for women as a whole. If men don't understand why they don't deserve more sex they aren't going to be feminist allies, they are going to be our enemies. Once they get in and find out the truth about feminism they are going to feel betrayed and angry.

Greta Christina also goes to great lengths to assure men that the women complaining aren't ball busters or man haters, and that when women explain something about sexism in a calm way (as was done in this case) men should really listen. They are being sex-positive, after all!

She seems to miss how this same shit happens whenever Skepchick posts something mildly feminist, and that if women are angry about something they should say so. They shouldn't hide it in order to make men feel better about the subject matter, or make them more accepting of it. Men who refuse to listen to women because they don't like their tone don't give a shit about what women have to say in the first place, they primarily care about their own precious feelings. Women should express their thoughts in a way that feels authentic to them.

Most of all, women shouldn't jump to defend themselves against the charge that they just hate men or hate sex. Women who hate sex have a preference and it is just as valid as the one of liking sex. If, during an argument about something else, a person exclaimed "well you just hate ____!" a skeptic would point out how fallacious the argument is, and move on. They would not spend a bunch of time assuring the exclaimer that they are wrong and that we really actually like the thing they said we didn't. Its fucking absurd, and it makes it seem as though we should spend a whole lot of time fretting about men feeling threatened. This lets men completely dominate the discussion, it becomes about their feelings about something that doesn't fucking happen to them. What bothers me the most about reading sexism posts on skeptic blogs is the way that the normal rules of examining an issue fly out the window when it comes to this shit. We should call these bullshit debating tactics what they are: logical fallacies, and the person who says it should cut it out.

Feminist allied men don't worry about man haters or ball busters because they empathize with women and believe them. They see the ridiculousness of the accusation and most honestly wouldn't blame women for having animosity towards the majority of men. Most actually express that they hate most men, too, because of the behavior of most men. Look how they act when they are politely asked to stop acting sexually entitled- they shit their pants and throw a temper tantrum. What the fuck is to like about a group that does that regularly (and for the most part)? I assume a man is an asshole until he proves otherwise, and it has improved my life immensely.

Greta Christina's post does have a lot of good material and points, but the way that she appealed to men irritated the shit out of me and is an annoying aspect of fun-feminism (and 'sex positivity') that is increasingly harder to ignore.

Misogyny and expectations

2011-07-13T16:12:00.004-06:00

The recent incident with Richard Dawkins has received a lot of deserved criticism, but there has been a second wave of reactions where bloggers defend him as a person. Jen McCreight has made a point of saying that he isn't misogynist. Her post (titled Dawkins is Not a Misogynist) is shameful. The main points are:

1. Privilege is hard to figure out and we shouldn't expect him to figure it out and wise up right away

2. Dawkins has his heart in the right place and fights for the rights of women in other ways

3. We shouldn't boycott him until after an unspecified period of time to give him to figure out everything (implying that he will come around eventually)

4. He isn't exactly a feminist author or anything so perhaps our standards are too high (sorta clashes with 2, but whatever)

What McCreight seems to be doing here is worrying a lot about Richard Dawkin's feelings instead of what he made women feel like with his letters. It is bullshit. Why does he get more consideration than all the women he shit on with his letter? She even relates to him via her white privilege, which I also share, but I would never say that the people of color who I acted shitty towards in the past owe me anything, including time or understanding. I was getting a constant benefit from their disadvantages, and I am completely responsible for all the stupid shit I have ever said as a clueless honky. It was hard and I felt awful about myself when I wised up, but the most powerful part of that pain was realizing how insignificant it was compared to the pain of people who had been oppressed by people like me. The amount of courage it takes to face your own privilege is miniscule compared to the amount it takes to live in a world as a marginalized person.

I agree with Jen that doing something shitty doesn't make someone a shitty person. Being unable to make amends for it once it has been extensively explained to you...kinda does.

Perhaps she also doesn't realize that this dude, like most, probably won't come around. If all it took was calling a dude out on something politely there wouldn't be any sexist men left in the world. Unfortunately, the typical reaction of a dude to privilege challenging women ranges from a dawkins snub all the way up to murder. I don't see a reason to hold out hope just for it to be crushed repeatedly. He will probably continue to think he knows better than actual women about our lives. This is why the way that women express their expectations of their leaders is so important. Men should not continue to get our patronage and respect despite disrespecting women as people. Women must ask themselves this question:

What do you expect from male leaders?

My absolute bare minimum expectation from a male leader hearing Rebecca Watson's story is to not say anything. It isn't exactly moral, but at least damage wasn't done. If a man wants to speak about the topic as a leader of the movement with a well documented sexism problem he needs to do so out of support for the woman who was brave enough to speak up about it in the first place.

One you figure out what you expect from male leaders you have to ask yourself what you are willing to do to make sure that it happens.

There is nothing unreasonable about my expectations, or boycotting a dude who is too anti-woman to comply with it. He can either get with the program or deal with the consequences of his actions, waiting around for a dude to change only enables sexist men to keep avoiding serious introspection. We all have to back each other up in a unified force in order to have any serious pull within the community. Men have an automatic advantage and an automatic sense of solidarity with other men- the centers of cultural opinion making are male dominated, as are most of our personal and professional spaces. I have had a shitload of negative things to say about skepchick, but I believe that any woman that goes through this deserves a lot of support from other women. Her struggle is our struggle too- if you get to the top of this movement, it will be you receiving rape threats and being told to STFU about objectification. If we don't all work together (by voicing how COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE the behavior is) then it will get worse and the next woman on top in the skeptical world will have it no better than Rebecca Watson. Women deserve better.

The very last issue to tackle is the use of the word misogyny. It literally means the hatred of women, but people seem a bit confused about the usage of it towards a person. Many people think that unless one admits to actually hating women the word is not appropriate, though very few people who actively hate women would ever say it in those terms. They would say that women are inherently X, and that they hate X, but usually will put up with women as baby factories or sex dispensers. That is the most common way that I experience misogyny day to day- disdain for all things feminine, combined with a disbelief that women could be something other than feminine. Every man who expresses this sentiment also says that women really have it easier than men, they are just too dumb/hysterical to know it. The hate that seethed out of Dawkins letter was certainly present- the attitude behind it was clear. To me it boiled down to this:

Don't these stupid bitches know how good they have it? Women are so fucking clueless that I have to step in and remind them how awesome their lives really are, and then they aren't even grateful that I dispensed my Fresh! Manly! Wisdom! for them all to see. They must be the crazy ones, because I certainly couldn't be wrong about women's lives.

I have heard this message so many times about so many different women. Men who talk about how their wives (who raise children and run the house) aren't really doing a "real" job, they don't know how hard their husbands have it at actual work. One man I know tried to say that the fact that she could wear pajamas at home made it a non-job. Women are too stupid to know if they should have abortions or not, too. Women are too stupid to know when they have been raped or when they just regret the night before, so other people should judge for them. No matter what the problem stupid woman brains cause, it isn't as bad as what those other guys are doing to women over there, don't you feel better knowing how much good you have it? We could be doing that to you too, you know, but we are so nice we chose not to, so what is the problem? Women who are prostituted chose to do it, even if they are poor or drug addicted or pimped out they could have picked something else, and if they complain about their treatment its because they are too stupid to know when they are being treated badly. Maybe they were too dumb to quit when they should have, too bad I wasn't there to tell her before she got roughed up. but they are getting paid, aren't they? What is the problem? I wish I could have sex for a living! Doesn't everyone?

The moral I outlined isn't just confined to conventional political issues, it is in most forms of mass media. This powerpuff girls episode has the same moral, and so do most fiction shows that tackle women's rights. The point is that women really have nothing to complain about, so there must be something wrong with them if they can't tell and refuse to shut the fuck up about their "problems". If this shit isn't misogyny, I don't know what would count.

Any attempt at being genuinely sorry would make it a lot less egregious, but that hasn't happened. There is a total lack of remorse over something Dawkins truly thinks is an imagined outrage, a non-event, that women should just shut up about. Letting him stay an esteemed leader that women respect is not an option for me, and I hope McCreight realizes what she is supporting when she pampers a dude who doesn't think twice about mansplaining the world to women.

Dawkins is officially a knob

2011-07-03T19:50:00.003-06:00

I was a fence sitter for a long time on the issue of Richard Dawkins being a misogynist. There were things that vaguely seemed to support the idea, and others that contradicted it, etc but today you can all be assured that its absolutely true. He thinks that the sexual harassment women face in the world is not a big deal because women in other countries are suffering from more egregious oppression. He got pissy that Rebecca Watson of skepchick had the nerve to complain about a dude creeping her out in an elevator while other women are being beaten by their husbands. I guess if her man asked her not to persue a career, you know, so she could stay home and take care of the children, that wouldn't be a big deal either. Anything up to (but not including) the plight of islamic women is not worth complaining about anymore apparently. Is your boyfriend pressuring you to get breast implants to resemble his porn? Is he calling you fat so you don't have the confidence to leave? Did you ever need an abortion but couldn't afford one? Did you ever want to keep a kid but couldn't afford it? Did a man ever slip you a roofie? Are random men on the subway fondling you? Did your doctor molest you? Does your boss stare at your tits? Are you making less than men at the same job? Did your lawsuit to remedy that situation get rejected on dubious grounds? Oops! Too bad for you, it just isn't worth complaining about. Thank god we have MEN around to tell us silly ladies what is worth complaining about, eh?

Guess what Dawkins- women still get raped, all the time, here in America and the rest of the "civilized" world. Not only that, but law enforcement doesn't care a lot, and neither does society in general. It is likely that a woman who reports it will be blamed for it and will almost never get a conviction. In fact, a man who brutally raped a maid got away with it because of his social standing this very week. Imagine being a woman in that reality, and then tell me that creepy men aren't a big deal anymore, and that it has nothing to do with sexism. It is a safety issue. It is a respect issue. It is a bodily autonomy issue. I have personally seen the swarm of dudes that surrounds Rebecca Watson when she goes to skeptic events, and if she is creeped out by any of them she should say so and be heard and respected.

Cesar Millan is an asshole

2011-07-03T11:43:00.006-06:00

Cesar Millan, also known as The Dog Whisperer has a show on National Geographic Channel about dog training. A warning pops up on the screen continually stressing that you do not try what he does at home, or in the absence of training professionals. If one takes a look at any dog forums it will become obvious that people try his methods at home all the time, and swear by them.

Watching the show is a bit painful at times. There are episodes about dogs with serious aggression problems, some of which may be caused by brain abnormalities or some other medically treatable problem. The dog whisperer will come in and try to wear the dog out by letting it flip out for minutes at a time. The show is edited so it is impossible to know exactly how long the dogs are allowed to thrash about and get agitated. Millan has been criticized for his use of choke collars for correction on his show, and sometimes he seems to use it until the dog becomes immobile. He also does what are called "alpha rolls" to roll the dogs over to make them immobile.

In this clip, Cesar instructs two women on how to correct their pit bull (which keeps lunging at the face of any visitor and must be in a muzzle all the time as a result). They do exactly what Cesar says, and he makes up some bullshit about their body language being wrong. Cesar says they need to do a kind of push against the dog with their foot when he starts to act up. Cesar demonstrates, they copy, and it doesn't work. He says this to them afterwards about why:

When you ladies were touching... you were in a lower intensity level. He was at a 7, you were at a 3. When he is at a 7, you have to come out with a 7 or an 8.

What the hell does that even mean? If pushing the dog with your foot in a certain manner works, then it should work. Why would owner have to worry about their "intensity level" if the method was sound? Shouldn't he have told them ahead of time about intensity levels instead of springing it on them after it failed? Later in the clip they try again, and it doesn't work, AGAIN. Cesar then tells them that the way their torso was facing when they did it was wrong. These methods suck if you have to be told what way every part of your body should be facing, but only AFTER it fails, rather than beforehand. It is more likely that he has to invent reasons that things went wrong.

If you watch the show with an ounce of skepticism, it becomes clear that he just makes shit up as the show goes on. What he says to do doesn't work quite a bit of the time, and he finds some nit-pick about the way that a person imitated him. He cloaks how clearly he is making it up in jargon. You can see the frustration on people's faces often when they do exactly what Millan did and do not get the desired result. The heavy editing of the show makes it seem likely that Millan did not always get the desired result either, he just tried until it may have worked for an unrelated reason, and then that take is used to make it seem like he is an expert. He seems to work a lot like a cold reader, just making up what people want to hear. He takes advantage of Confirmation Bias the same way a psychic would, too.

Confirmation Bias is the tendency of people to remember "hits" rather than "misses". This means that they will pay attention to and remember things that confirm their previously held beliefs, and forget or discard things that do not. It is the way that psychics, who cold read and cannot improve upon chance in guessing things, gain believers. Anything the person does get right is what a psychic believer remembers, not the amount of stuff that the psychic said that did not make sense. Cesar Millan has a great advantage over his audience in this regard, because misses do not have to make it to the final cut, and the premise of the show plants the ideas in viewers heads that he has some kind of mysterious dog power.

The main thrust of Millan's philosophy is that dogs are pack animals (like their relative the wolf), and that someone has to be "the alpha" and lead the pack. It is your job to be the alpha so that your dog obeys you and behaves. This would make sense if dogs and wolves were interchangeable, but they aren't. In Nova's Dogs: Decoded, a wolf is raised alongside domesticated dogs and other dogs are raised amongst wolves. Wolves do not behave at all like domesticated dogs despite the change of environment. The behavioral aspect of dogs is exactly what was modified to make them different than wolves. Looking back to wolves in order to learn how to take care of your dog has little merit as an idea in light of this. The worst part is that the research on wolves that Millan appears to be basing his philosophy off of was extremely flawed to begin with.

The entire idea behind the show The Dog Whisperer is that a man with a certain kind of knowledge can have an almost supernatural control over the behavior of animals. He can fix almost any problem and can know exactly how to deal with any situation. He can keep the animals in his pack under control all the time. The fact that animals are unpredictable and that their behavior problems are complex is erased on the show by the mystique of Millan.

Cesar Millan is also a big advocate of pit bull ownership. He had an ambassadog (which was old and fat, like most pit bull ambassadogs are) that died recently. The pit nutters eat up the things he has to say about how to train your animals as a result. If you needed proof that pit nutters talk amongst themselves differently than they do to you and me, here is a thread about how you should always expect your pit bulls to fight, and take measures to keep them from killing each other while you are away. Some of the nutters say that the dogs were bred to fight and will kill each other if they are left alone too much, often along with stories about how their dogs unpredictably got in an awful fight. Others say that they are "an alpha" and train their dogs well enough so that they won't ever do that. This is rhetoric directly from The Dog Whisperer. Listening to this brand of crap also means that some folks will have dead or injured dogs.

Another troubling effect of The Dog Whisperer is that he is proof anyone can become a "dog behavior expert". He has absolutely no formal training. If you were working as a behaviorist, or considering it, you would have to be stupid not to adapt some of his rhetoric or methods. His popularity, as the only real source of animal behavior information in popular culture, makes it hard for other methods to be visible. When I go to pit nutter websites and read about aggression, they all say the same thing: visit a reputable animal behavior expert to get your pet straightened out. There does not seem to be much licensing of animal behavior experts at all, so after a pit bull attacks someone it may be taken to a Cesar Millan impersonator for treatment that doesn't work. Instead of common sense precautions, a person may just try to be the alpha of their household and feel assured that no further problems will occur.

You can see a trend in the pit bull chat thread; folks who buy into the "alpha" BS are likely to think that pit bulls are not more likely than any other breed to fight, or that you can love/socialize the fight out of them. When these folks find out that they are wrong, you better believe they are the first ones to dump their dog at the animal shelter (possibly after breeding a litter or two of them). As terrierman says, its the people who love pits that are killing them, not the haters.

Prominent animal behaviorists (from academic backgrounds) have written letters to National Geographic about what a travesty this show is, and also publicly criticize his methods. Cesar Millan does not have formal training in changing the behavior of animals, and his methods do not seem to work. After watching several episodes of the show, it seems as though many people are still scared shitless of their aggressive animals after Cesar is done "rehabilitating" them. Millan also gives the impression that almost any dog can be rehabilitated. In his book, Cesar's Way, he says he only met two dogs he couldn't rehabilitate. This is dangerous to inject into the already crazy pit nutter community. You can start to understand why a dog that attacked three people will be "rehabilitated", renamed, sent across a state line and adopted out to an unsuspecting family like Patron was.

The truth is that in dogs, aggressive behavior appears to be a mostly genetic issue. All current evidence concludes that the genetics of canines is a much stronger predictor of aggression than training or upbringing. As I mentioned before, Dogs: Decoded is a nifty summary of information and research about the behavior of dogs. They go into depth about an experiment with foxes (closely related to dogs) in russia. Foxes were bred for aggression, or lack of it, exclusively. They picked out the trait by placing a hand near a fox's cage. The ones that bit and postured were bred together, as were ones who were not at all aggressive towards a human hand. The experimenters also switched fox's at birth to see if the mother or family had any affect. It didn't. They went as far as to implant aggressive fox fetuses into the wombs of non-aggressive foxes, and vice versa. The results were still the same. The most interesting part of this experiment was that the foxes bred to be non-aggressive began to look very different from the aggressive foxes. Their ears, tails, coloring, and fur changed. Like pit bulls, these animals were bred only for performance, not looks. If you tried to breed the aggression out of pit bulls (if it were possible to while dog fighters selectively breed for it), it is likely that you wouldn't have pit bulls anymore. Craven has an in-depth post about this issue exactly, it is well worth reading.

I am not saying The Dog Whisperer has only bad advice to offer. There are good suggestions sprinkled in with the crazy nonsense. Not treating animals like children and making sure that they get adequate exercise are pieces of sound advice that Millan regularly dispenses. All of the positive info is available from other sources, so it seems unwise to get the info from someone like Millan who lacks credentials and honesty in giving advice.

Choice Feminism

2011-06-20T11:00:00.004-06:00

Polygamist cults exist in the US and Canada. Typically, the cult will consist of a man declaring himself a religious prophet, and also declaring that it is god's will that the young women of the cult get married to old geezers as soon as pregnancy is possible. These groups create cities in remote areas or live in shadowy networks to evade authorities, and collect a lot of government assistance for their children. The surplus of men often means that some younger men are expelled for flimsy reasons, and never see their families again. Women in polygamist cults are groomed their entire lives to be baby machines for old men, often among more than thirty other wives. They aren't given an alternative that their culture approves of at all.

As a result of this, sending in child protective services or breaking up the community in some other way is only salvation to a minority of women in the cults. Most have accepted and internalized their oppression to such an extent that they will actively defend the polygamist life style that denies them any power. They will ask that no one break up their family or their way of life. In some of these communities, wives and children are considered property of all the men collectively, so that if a man disobeys the prophet he can be punished by having his family transferred to a different home. Women in these communities defend this practice. There are groups like the Kingstons of Utah, where women are made to marry blood relatives exclusively. The resulting miscarriages and deformities are always blamed on the pregnant woman for not being righteous enough. Only a small amount of women attempt to escape the cults. Almost none who have had government interference stay away from the cult when offered assistance, and it is extremely difficult to find women to help with prosecutions. Some girls initiate marriages with elderly men when they are still very young, and defend the decision after becoming adults. Most of these women are not allowed much of an education at all, and most will say they don't want one. These women understand that the daughters they have will be married at the sole discretion of a family or community patriarch, who will likely match them with someone at least twice their age. They will tell you it is the way things should be. Sexual abuse is rampant (outside the marriages as well as inside) and blamed on the victims. Other religious cultures with similar practices (such as Islam) also have their female defenders of the patriarchal social order.

Most people understand that in a culture that teaches girls from their first day that their destiny is to be permanently pregnant by an elderly man, where almost all women choose to do exactly that, it becomes hard to call the choice one that is freely made. The option to escape is technically present, but seems unlikely to the women in the cult, and a whole lot buy into the cult to such an extent that they wouldn't want to leave. It is evident that if these women had not been raised in that cultural environment, they would most likely find the idea to be totally repugnant and abusive. We know that because women with other options in life generally think that way. There is very little reason to believe that women in abusive cults are inherently different than the women who aren't. It is more likely that women of any background would probably behave similarly to FLDS women, if placed in the same situation from birth. Most people understand that if given a real choice in the manner, if given other actual opportunities in life, almost no woman would choose to give all their autonomy to a bunch of old perverted authoritarians. These women technically have options, but they do not in any practical sense of the word. As a result, most people find FLDS and other polygamist cults appalling as institutions, and want to do as much as possible to help the people inside.

Cultural analysis of this sort is always easier when you are looking at a culture other than your own. In our culture, most people see no problem at all with similar institutions which also feature constant grooming of younger people to join up. Within that majority, there are people who rush in to say that feminism is about choice, and that you must respect any choice a woman makes as being a feminist action.

For the record: feminism is about ending the oppression of women by men. Choosing to assist with the oppression of women by endorsing the practice is not a feminist action. Women do not need to only perform feminist actions in order to be considered feminists.

The idea that women should make their own choices is not what I am taking issue with. I am annoyed that liberal dudes and pornofied fun feminists feel just fine making judgments about how meaningful a FLDS woman's "choice" to marry a guy who, as far as she knows, is the only way to salvation. Even conservative people feel comfortable drawing these obvious conclusions about fundamentalist islamic cultures. Many liberals I know do not feel any different about leveling the critique at the military, which grooms young men from childhood to want to kill for uncle sam, while being denied education about relevant military history. These same liberal people cannot seem to fathom why a radical feminist might have questions about how meaningful a woman's consent to be a sex object is in our culture, despite the problems being so similar, or her choice to be sexually dominated (like in BDSM). The media pushing women as submissive sex objects isn't as urgent as that of the religious cults (unless there is some kind of salvation-porn I am unaware of), but it is just as ubiquitous. There is also a lack of education for young women in this country that states any clear alternatives to being sex objects (outside of the outright misogynist "sexual purity" movements of religious people). What kind of sexuality is a woman allowed in this culture, outside of slut or prude?

Young girls receive non-stop cultural instruction in American society that says they exist for male pleasure. Even lesbianism exists for male pleasure in this dude-centric world. When a girl grows up in a culture with beauty salons, ass toning shoes, push up bras in swim suits, all marketed and made for girls in elementary school no one seems to find it problematic when she grows up and regurgitates the same message by starring in pornography (or stripping, etc). When society pushes so hard to get girls to seek male approval via sexual display, it is hard to say how freely anyone really chose to do it. Just like when discussing women trapped in other systems of male dominance, no one is attempting to deride the women inside for what they have done. They are in a situation where it makes sense for them, and they cannot reasonably live their lives in a way that makes sense for someone else. Discussions questioning personal choice are important for women who are living in a socially approved manner that doesn't make sense to them personally. Critique of the deeply personal can lead to more honest living for some. I personally benefited from hearing the viewpoints of radical feminists against things that I still practice today (such as heterosexuality), because it caused me to realize that nothing about my life is so sacred that it cannot be seriously analyzed.

Discussions of sex work often focus on the very real problems of coercion and force used on workers. Fun Feminists typically retort with answers about choices made by the most privileged women in our society to do sex work. We all know the refrain, "They CHOSE to do porn, you need to respect that." I find the repeated tendency of fun feminists to focus on the most privileged women offensive, but even sex work within that group of people is not what I would consider totally unproblematic. Cultural ideas of what women are and what they are for impact the lives of all women, they strongly influence how we can see ourselves and what we value about our lives. It seems unlikely to me that girls raised in a culture that does not put undue value on sexually pleasing men would be less likely to waste so much time and effort into doing so when they grow up.

All women make bargains in a patriarchy. All of us collaborate with our oppressors to a certain extent, and no women are to blame for having to make choices inside a system with such crappy options. The argument against participating in sex work, bdsm, and other forms of man pleasin' isn't that everyone should immediately stop what they are doing because We Say So. Some women do not realistically have that option, and that is fine. Women who can do something else, should. That is the (very weak) moral imperative laid out by radical feminists regarding these sexual choices of women. The women who are privileged enough to be able to make those choices can be inspirations to other women, and hopefully create a society that is more accepting of all choices made by women.

Evolutionary psychology mimics porn, once again

2011-06-09T07:11:00.002-06:00

This week I completed a book by Robert Jensen titled Getting off: Pornography and the end of masculinity. It is an excellent book for men about pornography and also feminism in general, with tons of information on what men have to lose by supporting patriarchy, and contains enough feminism 101 information to make it distributable to dudes who are new to feminism. One critique that Jensen brought up was about the racism involved in pornography. I realized how I had totally failed to critique this aspect of pornography on my blog during my previous posts on the subject. As a person with white privilege it is important that I discuss the horrendous racism involved with mainstream pornography. It is extremely blatant racism, and based on historically oppressive stereotypes about the sexuality of non-white people. The racism that goes unmentioned in pornography would spark outrage if it were in non pornographic movies or publications. For example:

The pornography industry remains a bastion of explicit anti-Black stereotyping – raw, obscene, and increasing mainstreamed. Many of the heterosexual themed movies in the American pornographic market have White actresses; however, there are hundreds of pornographic movies that also depict Black women as "sexual things" – and as "sexual animals." Internet "stores" sell videos with titles like Black Chicks in Heat, Black Bitches, Hoochie Mamas, Video Sto' Ho, Black and Nasty, South Central Hookers, and Git Yo' Ass On Da Bus!

In this system of stereotyping, black men as well as black women are assumed to have an uncontrollable, animal like sexuality (movies featuring black men have titles like Big Black Pimps). Latina women are stereotyped as hyper sexual, but also as being sassier than white women. Titles like Sassy Latinas, Spicy Latinas, etc. Black and latina women are prominent in pornography with titles like Ghetto Hoes, which sexualizes the inferior economic position of many women of color in addition to their race. These moves trivialize street prostitution and the actions of pimps. Asian women are valued in terms of their subservience, with titles such as Asian Sex Dolls. Many titles sexualize the prostitution of asian women, using titles like Miso Horny, Me So Asian, Love You Long Time, etc. In many cases, people of color are referred to directly by slurs (squaw, chink, nigger, paki, etc) either in the titles or in descriptions, as are women in general (slut, whore, bitch, cunt, etc).

A major aspect of most racist pornography is that viewers are assumed to be "slumming it" for awhile via their pornography. Pornography viewers can select from a wide array of pornography, and must be looking for something different in selecting movies with non-white performers. It is a fun adventure with an erotic Other, much like the enjoyment suburban white teenagers gain from violent ganster rap. A racist imagination that sees people of color as inferior is satisfied through the illusion of voyeurism. The people of color are shown as being different and inferior, it seems as though the white viewer is seeing people of color in their natural habitat. The racial hierarchy of desirability is apparent in the volume of pornography made with various races of women. White women are considered the default, the most desirable. Every other kind of woman is considered a fetish, as are black and hispanic men.

It may seem as though I am focusing too much on titles, but the truth is that the women in the vast majority of porn are portrayed as wanting any sex that they are given by any available man, so there is little distinction in the content of the acts performed in the movies. Phrases about race are uttered by performers in addition to the regular misogynistic content, or there may be sets designed to refer to a specific race (such as tipis) or outfits made for the same purpose (such as kimonos) . The titles are also a way to attract consumers based on the racial gimmick- it is difficult to advertise something as a racially themed pornography without the title. It also highlights a big difference in the level of racism compared with other mainstream media. Subtler forms of racism, and systems of white supremacist power, persist. Overt racism is frowned upon in society in general, often sparking outrage from the public.

The overt racism in an Evolutionary Psychology paper from the Psychology Today website sparked that kind of outrage. It has since been removed from that website, though it is available elsewhere. The paper was about how to "objectively" determine attractiveness. Objectively determining beauty isn't currently possible, and may not ever be possible. The reality of beauty is subjective. It makes as much sense as trying to objectively determine deliciousness and quantify it in different foods. The author of the paper decided to measure the attractiveness of different races. Unsurprisingly, the results are that white women are superior to black women in terms of attractiveness. The study has the flaws that most EP studies have, and then some, so the results are pretty meaningless. The study seems to lack that certain level of cave-dude story telling that I have come to expect from EP, it just asserts the stereotypes.

What I find most interesting in the reaction to the story is that over and over again, men simply argue about if black women are actually attractive instead of discussing the racism of the whole idea that races can be ranked in this fashion. In Getting Off, Robert Jensen interviews a black pornography performer and asks him if people object to the racism in the films very often. The performer was confused, because he had not been asked that question before, and eventually answers that no, he hadn't heard anyone complain that the movies were racist before. I believe it, after all, people still purchase these movies and use them all the time. The majority of men in this country watch pornographic movies. They are consuming these racist fantasies and probably have difficulty in seeing the issue with the study as a result. I am sure some of the men outraged by the racism see no problem in using racial pornography (most view the movies of what happens to real women in pornography as "fantasy", after all). Men talk about liking black skin (or hating it) as if skin exists independent of the rest of a person; it is the same way that men talk about boobs or lips or asses like they can be separated from the rest of the woman, as if we are parts rather than people. Many men, liberal men, think that there is nothing wrong with pornography. They can easily tell you about how racism is awful, but not object to it in pornography at all. It would be one thing if there was some level of outcry about the content from pornography users, but there isn't. Even men who do not use racist pornography are supporting an industry that uses images of white supremacy to make money, and it is completely unacceptable. It is clear from the content and the titles of the movies that the pornography isn't produced so that people of color can have their own porn, it is produced specifically to support the ideas of racist men, and it sells. It puts money into the pockets of racist men who create these movies, who usually produce other kinds of porn as well.

The racist scenarios in the movies happened to real people, and continue to affect other people who aren't in porn. The way that women of color are sexualized, and also considered inferior to white women, causes problems every single day. Men absorb ideas about non-white women from pornography and other sources of cultural stereotypes, and it causes disparity in their treatment of non-white women. Many of the stereotypes also feed into the acceptability of sex tourism, trafficking, and mail order brides. The idea that non-white women are inherently different means that treating them differently is justified. It is about thinking that cruelty is okay when leveled at certain kinds of people. It is an extremely dangerous idea that pornography continues to promote.

what to remember about Osama Bin Laden

2011-05-10T16:30:00.003-06:00

There isn't a whole lot of evidence that he masterminded the 9/11 attacks the way our government has stressed. In fact, Osama denied being responsible for several years after the attacks. The only evidence given to the american public about his involvement is a tape of him talking about it after the attacks occurred, where he said he had prior knowledge of them. US intelligence has claimed some mysterious source of certainty about his direct responsibility for the attacks, but hasn't released it. Bin Laden's family denied the attacks for a long time, also, and aren't terrorists. When he did take responsibility, he did nothing to address his previous denials. It may have become apparent that he was going to be credited with 9/11 no matter what, and could use the fame for further recruitment for the organization. Osama bin laden seems to have been valuable to terrorism in that he had a lot of money and connections.

Khalid Sheik Muhammed seemed to be the real mastermind behind the attacks, considering that he had planned very similar operations before, and appears to have planned the 9/11 attacks based off of the previous plan. He was in US custody during the bush administration and was tortured rather than put on trial. Osama bin laden was killed instead of being put on trial. It seems as though perpetuating the war in Afghanistan was a large part of why the media focused so heavily on Osama rather than the likely suspect that had already been taken into custody.

This is not to say that any of the terrorist funders/terrorists are good people (they aren't). They also aren't magically worse than terrorists or criminals who are americans either, and the treatment of them shouldn't suggest something else. This event illustrates how uncivilized our country is, when assasination of a person who will be viewed as a martyr is considered a really great thing, or a terrible atrocity, depending on the nationality of the terrorist. The actions of the US in the middle east exasperate the problem of terrorism. The attempts to make bombing seem "precise" or targeted have been around as long as bombs and planes, and the descriptions of technology do nothing to erase the fact that a shitload of innocent people die when bombs are dropped. Countless bombs were dropped on innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those innocent people have family and friends who have few options for doing anything about the situation, and groups like al-queda provide an answer for them. What has been fixed by killing Osama Bin Laden this way?

Noam Chomsky's article on this is a must-read.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

woo groups and pit bulls- part 4

2011-04-20T18:18:00.002-06:00

Figuring out what any advocacy group is really about can be difficult. Every source of official literature is clouded by nice sounding language, engineered by PR industry terms and strategies. When trying to accurately gauge the priorities of the group, it is often much easier to observe what the people in the group are actually doing with their time.

For instance, it may shock you to know that age of autism, a group which says that vaccines are responsible for autism and other medical problems, are not "anti-vaccine". Neither is Jenny mccarthy- they all say they are pro safe vaccine, they sometimes post themselves as "watchdogs", and so on. Investigation into what Age of Autism decides to protest, and what they allow users to say on their website unchallenged, paints a very different picture of their views. The consequences of their actions is the most important consideration when investigating what the group is actually about. There are many examples of woos saying one thing and doing another.

Creationists and global warming deniers aren't anti-science, either, they will tell you. They just want "good" science, while supporting efforts that threaten scientific progress. Almost all religions claim to be instruments of peace in the world, even while initiating war against unbelievers. Holocaust deniers and 911 truthers are generally not what they claim to be, either. The double-speak concept of Orwell's 1984 is very useful when discussing irrational belief; it always rears its ugly head. There should not be a disconnect between the actions and words of any advocacy group when it comes to their fundamental message.

This is a big reason why I have been so hard on Bad Rap. Their visibility and disciples are annoying, but I am not crazy about being harsh to people who have a utilitarian goal and try to achieve it with integrity. This doesn't seem to be the case with them at all, however. Remember the facebook action alert that all the pit nutters flocked to, the one that entailed defending Jonny Justice against the mean librarian for being asked to leave? According to Bad Rap's own advice on raising pitbulls, the librarian was right. They have a not-so-crazy bit of advice on keeping a dog with such a high potential for damage, including never taking them to a dog park or an area where they will be introduced to many new dogs at once- you know, like the program at the library that the pit bull was kicked out of, the one this group protested. They have step by step instructions to introducing a pit bull to another dog in the home to ensure violence does not occur between them, and actually advocate separating the dogs when no one is home to supervise. They tell people to be understanding of the fear other people have of their dogs- they may be victims or know one, after all. It is extremely reasonable advice, but it isn't what they follow at all when the reputation of a dog is at stake. Integrity and consistency are never first priorities in woo groups, it isn't possible when there isn't any effort to verify or discover the truth. Their efforts all revolve around supporting what they have already decided. It is difficult to avoid when strong beliefs are involved. Constant vigilance is required to overcome it.

It isn't that every kind of woo has a legal cause the way pit bull advocates or anti-vaccine people do, but all are disingenuous in one specific way. They are disingenuous about the importance of evidence in general. They don't ponder what kind of evidence would be needed in order to prove their idea wrong, or how to go about finding it. They will try to tell you that evidence isn't important because they simply know they are correct for whatever reason, usually anecdotes, but will also jump at any opportunity to look scientifically credible.

Jenny Mccarthy says that she isn't concerned with the studies because she saw the difference in her son before and after the vaccine. Also, before and after some diet she claims cures autism. She also thinks that there need to be studies that meet her specifications (mainly that a person of her choosing performs them). The importance of studies in general are dependent on her feelings about the results. Alternative medicine people suffer the problem of cognitive dissonance when discussing the importance of evidence in general as well. It isn't important, and when a study may point towards a pro-alternative medicine conclusion they won't hesitate to tell you all about it. Religous people will often say that god is beyond understanding, cannot be detected by scientific means, but also feel comfortable believing studies that conclude that prayer can help situations as evidence for god's existence. It is the same way that creationists will discuss how modern science is evil for ignoring god, but also attempt to have scientific cred of their own by going on expeditions to find Noah's ark or build ridiculous "museums", publish books on how intelligent design is really actually science. It is a serious philosophical problem for anyone who is actually trying to determine the truth of the statements being made. People who are perfectly content with their cognitive dissonance don't see any problem at all.

In this same way the pit bull advocates have difficulty deciding if science can answer questions about the violence potential of their chosen breed. Studies about fatalities are turned down. As are relevant studies of animal behavior from ethologists.Yet advocates feel comfortable trotting out the ATTS temperment test as "scientific" evidence that their dogs are the best (despite the pit bull not ranking the highest or being recommended by the ATTS for comparing breeds to each other, in addition to the fact that the test hasn't been shown to be proof of any particular thing). They will talk derisively about smaller dogs who bite more often (which clashes with their hatred of "breedism" in addition to their talk about how these studies do not matter).

The increased potential for visciousness against other animals has supporting evidence, but isn't really the heart of the issue. The critical issue is the potential for damage that these dogs pose, and that other dogs typically do not. Advocates do not argue that part of the problem very often because it is so difficult to refute, there are so many real damages available for comparison and other breeds of dog simply are not typically capable of creating so much damage when they attack. When pit bull advocates start genuinely addressing that problem they will gain some credibility, but I'm not counting on it happening any time soon.

attention dudes

2011-04-07T01:22:00.003-06:00

In the past couple of months I have had more than one dude try to insult me by saying I resemble a dude. This is supposed to be a serious blow to my sense of self. It is meant in the same way that "you are fat" is. There seems to be a serious problem with these dudes and their ability to process what is going on, so I guess I will spell out what my appearance failed to:

I cut my hair short and don't wear make up and don't shave because I don't care what you think. I am unconcerned with if you want to do me, and it is pretty unlikely I will start caring ever again. The realm of dudely experience is something I don't care much about in general. That is most of the reason why I look this way. Pointing it out doesn't make me want to cry, it just makes you look stupid for pointing out the obvious as if it was actually a clever observation.

Every time it happens I don't really know what to say- it is infuriating for a very different reason than the name caller would imagine. It is the same way that intelligent people can often recall being ridiculed by their moronic peers for "being stupid", when really they grasped something the other people could not. Those who have escaped serious faiths know exactly what I mean.

The idea that a woman who fails at performing femininity does so on purpose rather than because she is tragically unable to isn't something that most people seem to have thought possible. So many adorable lady co-workers have offered up their tips, their "you would look so cute if" talks, as if I could remain unaware of all the stupid shit most women waste their time on daily in order to look feminine enough. As if any of it were really as complicated as ads try to make it seem.

So many dudes cannot imagine a reality that contains women who don't put Dude Approval at the top of their priority list each day. I had a hard time imagining it as a young proto feminist. When a dude would call me fat or ugly, my mind would spring into action trying to argue my way out of the ambiguous definition of "fat" or "ugly", to try and prove to myself that I wasn't. The implication behind gendered appearance based insults is that men are owed some kind of visual pleasure by all women, and that humiliation is what women who fail at it deserve. Women who succeed are humiliated too, just in a different way. I did not think about how silly it was to act as though random wankers who insulted me were worth pleasing. Was I supposed to worry that I would be deprived the opportunity to date such a colossal asshole? If we weren't going to go out, why would it matter that he wasn't attracted to me? What other reason would there be for me to care except a total obligation to please men?

Tons of dudes are eager to discuss women who "ruined their bodies" in the same manner (usually they are "ruined" by childbirth, weight gain, aging, or tattoos). Ruined got a new patriarchal definition: "not what I would prefer it to look like, though perfectly functional, and perhaps even preferable to the person who owns it". Hm. The problems involved with speaking as if you are (and always should be) the primary consideration in another person's decisions about their body are obvious when the veneer of privilege is removed.

In light of the entitled jackassery of people who say this kind of shit to women, I am glad that I gross out that sort of man, that I have made them uncomfortable. They deserve every little bit of discomfort.

Mormons inadvertently show off how weird they are, again

2011-03-31T10:01:00.003-06:00

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of south park and excellent song writers, have produced a broadway musical titled "The Book of Mormon", about missionaries in Uganda and the origin of the church. I wish with everything I have that it could be broadcast on television or go on tour or something, but it probably won't be available where it is really needed for quite some time. This is a PR mess for the LDS church, the way that prop 8, public discussion of the white horse prophecy, and Mitt Romney all were before.

The PR campaign made in response to these problems was a total disaster. The "...and I'm a mormon" campaign was designed to make mormons look normal, by saying "hey, here I am, doing normal things, and I am a mormon." Most actually normal people know that they don't have to, you know, advertise their normality. It made them look weirder, if anything, because of the time and money put into their campaign.

This time, the message from the church is pretty clear: STFU. A piece in The Mormon Times section of the Deseret News informs mormons that they "may want to consider" their reaction to the play, then notes the non-reaction of mormon leaders so far. The only groups I know of that make members alter their personal reaction to public events to fit the group's agenda have something to hide. I don't know of any other church that is this transparently image-oriented. When "framers" tried to do this within the atheist/skeptic movement they mostly got told to fuck off, and at least there was debate about the value of the idea. Mormons are expected to be commercials for their faith instead of what they really are. The total lack of emotional boundaries involved in mainstream church practices (having missionaires and local church members badger you if you stray, having bishops badger you over your tithing and make decisions about your personal life, having family make decisions about your personal life, the loveless marriages caused by the idea that any church worthy man will be a good match for any church worthy woman, church flip-flopping on what sexual practices are okay within marriage, etc etc). Here is a talk from the exmormon foundation, from an ex-church education leader, about the routine use of deception by the church agaisnt its members. It wears down the self esteem of members to an absurd degree to be bombarded by that kind of behavior, all while everyone in their social circle talks about how good and right it is for the church to treat them that way.

Anyway, the best part of the piece is when the author tries to act discriminated against, in a Utah newspaper, by citing stereotyping against them by others:

A New York Post blogger reports: "'I've never met a Mormon I didn't like. They're really nice people.They're so Disney. They're so Rodgers and Hammerstein,' Parker says."

Gee, thanks for the stereotypes guys. So how many Mormons do you know who are just ready to break out in song? Try getting everyone to sing the hymns at church.

The reason that this is so funny is that I have literally witnessed mormons breaking out in song on more than one occasion since I have moved here. It is common to be crazy for musicals, to know the words to les mislerables, but to also disapprove of the lifestyle of many of the people responsible for the musicals. Strange.

The not-so-funny side of their image obsession issue is the message put forth in the young women's conference this year. It was about keeping your virtue. Here is a relevant quote:

"Being a guardian of virtue means that you will never text words or images to young men that may cause them to lose the Spirit, lose their priesthood power or lose their virtue. It means that you understand the importance of chastity because you also understand that your body is a temple."

The church tries hard to look as separate as possible from the FLDS, but I am pretty damn sure that the reasoning cited above is the same reason that FLDS women wear the clothes that they do. This is the exact same reasoning behind the burka in islamic cultures as well. The hardcore prairie gear of polygamists is a mormon burka. It is not practical (especially considering the weather in Arizona, southern Utah, and Texas) and covers most of the skin. The church talks about making sure men don't lose their priesthood power while women suffer under these men in real polygamist sects right now, while the church stands by and does nothing to stop it. Women who are in the regular LDS church aren't granted any power at all, but are made to fret about what the priesthood holders would go through.

The message next year will be how to be a good wife. In the years I have lived in Utah, there hasn't been any LDS message directed towards women that was not about being a good wife and mother OR keeping your virtue. it is all women are here for.

woo groups and pit bulls-part 3

2011-03-30T10:48:00.006-06:00

You've heard the rallying cry of pit bull advocates- if there are responsible pet owners, then there would not be a problem. All pit bull owners should be like them- responsible, and they are there to show off their "ambassadogs" as proof of how the dogs can be guaranteed for public safety. What happens when a founder of one of these groups has a dog that attacks?

Will the other people in these groups decry her as irresponsible, like they do the average people whose pit bulls attack? Of course not. What they did instead was to send emails threatening legal action to the Stranger, advising them not to run the story, in addition to trying to downplay the irony of it in public or to call the owner of the attacked dog a liar. This was after a group wanting to collect signatures for a BSL petition decided to stop after the threatening emails they received became so numerous that it seemed dangerous to continue with the petitioning. This is remarkably similar to when Andrew Wakefield, the anti-vaccine movements go-to doctor, was found to be doing extremely unethical things in his research. The anti-vaccine people had been saying things about how they wanted him to a study on a possible disease connection to vaccines because the other people who had found no connection were unethical. Their research being of financial interest to pharmaceutical companies invalidated the research of those people, according to the advocates, but completely fabricating numbers (in such an obvious fashion that the report contradicts itself) wasn't reason enough to kick him out of the group. The anti-vaccine people flocked to support wakefield and cry "conspiracy!" once again.

The co-founder of FAAB (families against breed bans), whose dog attacked another dog in public, did step down after The Stranger wrote about the attack. They didn't change anything about their message or call the co-founder an irresponsible owner, despite their party line about the dogs being safe and good, or safe and good with the right owners.

Is it any wonder that Dog men, who run dog fighting circles, can easily infiltrate and use people this deep in denial to their own advantage? The people who run dog fighting rings have renamed some of the telltale signs of fighting dogs (layers of fighting scars, low body fat/emaciation) to be things that threaten responsible pit bull owners. It is a running joke over at craven desires to call wounds "yard accidents" instead of fighting scars because of the excuses provided. Pet owners are told that if their dog has one scar they can be charged with animal cruelty for having fighting dogs, or if animal control thinks their dog is too skinny they will also be charged and have their animals seized. Sometimes these sick fucks get all the way to the top of groups that are on a mission to rescue pitbulls.

Jere Alexender is another pit bull advocate who lobbies against BSL. She was a shelter director for a time. One of her pet pit bulls attacked 5 school children. She used her position to make the ticket go away, and was later found to be illegally tethering her pit bulls at her home. The same link shows her connections to people convicted of animal cruelty and dog fighting. The local fox affiliate began doing some investigative journalism, including inquiring about a pit bull at the shelter while dropping tons of hints that the potential owner was engaged in illegal dog fighting. Questions weren't asked, and the dog could easily be adopted out dog fighters. She refused to euthanize pit bulls at the shelter, including (or according to a worker there, especially) the most aggressive dogs. A lot of her activism was about how dogs deemed aggressive simply aren't. The aggressive dogs were scaring workers and other animals in the shelter.

Another disturbing element of Jere's activities came to light, when she had signed out a whopping 83 cats from the animal shelter. She signed out 19 in one day, and an employee confronted her about what is happening to the cats. Jere claimed they were being put into a cat shelter with a catch, neuter, release program. There aren't records of what happened to the cats there, because Jere ran that shelter as well. Normal people might wonder what dog fighters would want with a shit load of cats; the answer is pretty awful, click if you dare.

One of Jere's staffing choices was a woman who is a pit bull breeder, and a formal president of the Georgia American Pit Bull Terrier Association. Her husband has been charged with dog fighting. Jere also has been said to have taken a dog from the shelter that was being held as evidence in a dog fighting case.

This is a lot of evidence that Jere Alexander and her friends were involved in dog fighting. There are few alternate explanations for the individual behaviors, and virtually none for the pattern of these behaviors. She also spent a lot of time writing about how good these dogs are, and pit bull advocates took notice. I didn't find a lot of info about her from advocate groups, but what I did find was a serious white washing of the problems that occurred. Here are mushy blog posts about how much good she has done. I got the link from a pit bull forum, where members were pleased about seeing the "other side" of the story. The blog posts themselves say that negative comments about pit bull owners (presumably including Jere) won't be published. I guess it didn't cross anyones mind that the pit bull advocate's message helps people who engage in dog fighting to keep their business under the radar. It seems pretty bleeding obvious to everyone else who is looking from the outside- the less legislation that exists, the less time there is spent on concealing the crimes. This isn't the first animal shelter to be accused, and then there are people who are only interested in dog fighting and pose as rescues, animal welfare groups are aware of it. Now anyone who wants to have tons of pit bulls can call themselves a rescue and have a crowd of rabid pit bull advocates defend them against criminal charges. There are also lobbying groups who have been caught having financial ties to dog fighting groups.

Taking info from these groups about the dogs is like taking info about tobacco from phillip morris. There are people actively churning out propaganda to keep their supply of criminally acquired money flowing as easily as possible, and a bunch of naive family pit bull owners are being suckered in to pimping out their dogs as absolutely harmless.

This isn't to say that everyone who is anti-bsl or a protester is okay with or involved in dog fighting, most will express that they hate dog fighting and people who abuse pit bulls. I believe them. What I am trying to say is that they are helping dog fighters and are doing nothing to flush them out of their own ranks, as well as responding in a very strange manner to group leaders behaving in a way that contradicts the groups message. BSL can include things that make it difficult for dog fighting to continue, like limits on how many can be owned and standards for containment. The divide between what dog men derisively refer to as "fur mommies" and dog men isn't that clear cut, however; there are dog men who keep pit bulls as family pets and parrot the same advocate lines, despite picking pit bulls to fight over any other breed. This report on the psychology of dog men, how they justify their socially deviant behavior, is a must read. The truth is that they don't think they are being cruel at all, so being "against animal cruelty" isn't hard for them to support. Another characteristic is their need to feel masculine, and the use of dog fighting to achieve that end. Thanks, patriarchy.

There are also other groups that seem to capitalize off of the phenomenon of pit bull popularity, such as Best Friends Animal Shelter in Utah. They received the fighting dogs from the Michael Vick bust, along with a sweet $18,275 per dog. They got twenty-two of them, ringing up to over four hundred thousand dollars. That didn't stop best friends from fund raising based on the financial needs of those specific dogs, or turning away more than 40 pit bulls a short while before accepting the "Vicktory" dogs, and the shelter that received them were shocked by how help was not offered by best friends after giving the dogs to a smaller, less funded animal shelter for care. There is a pit bull advocacy/education group based in utah that works with Best Friends. Other dogs who weren't cared for include the 28 given to a fraudulent kennel owner by Best Friends who neglected the animals to the point of death in most cases. On best friend's webpage, they claim they will go as far as calling your landlord to make sure you are really allowed to have pets, but they did nothing to make sure that the money and dogs went to someone who was not abusing them. Then there are dogs hurt inside the shelter because management didn't heed the warnings of employees-the shelter didn't want to spend money on it.

Most of the problems involved with pit bulls and shelters stem from the fact that there are too damn many of them being bred, it is where dog fighters really make their money and also a way for others to make tax-free money from time to time. The advocates are not protesting breeders, they are supporting breeding groups like kennel clubs and breed associations. What woos don't get is that their actions speak louder than words, and that people with an ounce of curiosity can see that the massive amount of information about being a Responsible Owner is just a bunch of disingenuous bullshit. Part four will be about the disconnect between what advocate groups say owners should do and what they practically endorse.

woo groups and pit bulls- part 2

2011-03-23T10:42:00.010-06:00

The first post has been up for less than 24 hours, and already a couple of posters have likened concern about pit bulls to sexist biological determinism and sterilizing mentally handicapped people. This is a common reaction you will see over and over within pit bull groups, and other woo groups as well. They will coat their cause with words borrowed from the civil rights struggles- intolerance, ignorance, hate, and yes, even the word racism. None of them seem to see any problem with comparing animals to racial minorities or women. It is pretty fucking ridiculous that I need to explain why what happens to people has more moral dimensions to what happens to dogs, and that human actions also have more moral dimensions than dog actions, but this is a major point of confusion for pit bull advocates. It is a recurring theme that animals, who have not been demonstrated to live lives that they view biographically, and who can not choose different courses of action based on moral imperatives, are compared to humans who DO have those extremely relevant mental attributes. Humans are animals, and all animals deserve equal consideration based on their ability to experience different things. This is why research on mice isn't treated the same as research on primates; what animals are rationally capable of matters when discussing how to treat them. The disparity between humans and dogs is large, but that doesn't stop pit bull groups from flooding the opposition with harassment and bullshit whenever someone "discriminates".

It feeds directly into the persecution complex that all woos seem to share. They need to feel like they are doing something really important and fighting against some huge force that is trying to push their precious cause down. Being worried that someone else will be mangled by a dog isn't considered a legitimate reason; I really must be a bigot deep down inside, instead of having a genuine concern about public health. If advocates admitted that there is a genuine concern about public health (as expressed by journals such as Injury Prevention and Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery) they would have to address it as such, but the refrain of "my dog is perfectly safe" is all that can be heard. Advocates are so desperate to prove it to you and me that they do things like flood youtube with videos of their pit bulls being friendly with their kids, titling them things like "pit bull attacks child" or "vicious pit bull" so that it is difficult to find videos about actual attacks that occurred. Some even put very small children and babies near the dogs and take pictures, for the good publicity. it strikes me as an amazingly stupid thing to do with any animal, and "I'll show those fuckers they are wrong!!" is quite possibly the worst reason to do this. Animals that can kill babies shouldn't be put anywhere near babies. Groups like Bad Rap say to never leave kids alone or unsupervised with the animals, and then link to this website, which features pictures of pit bulls doing things like licking sleeping babies. I don't know what this is supposed to prove exactly, considering that many families could have taken years of pictures of this sort before their pit bull killed one of the children. I would say that keeping these dogs away from children is important because of how difficult it is to dislodge the dogs once they bite. A special breed specific tool for bites called a "break stick" exists to try and dislodge pit bulls who bite, but if you really believe your dog is "perfectly safe" it is hard to imagine why you would be compelled to buy one or supervise your children around the dog.

One pit bull, Jonny Justice, has been on national TV to push the pictures with kids thing. Jonny the publicity dog has been discriminated against recently, and it started an especially ridiculous round of this "we shall overcome" type of nonsense.
A library in California had a program where children read to dogs. Jonny's owner wanted in on the pictures-of-kids-with-dogs action, but he was asked to leave and not bring the dog back. Some of the parents didn't feel comfortable with their children snuggling with an animal that had the physical capacity to kill or disfigure their kids, or maybe they felt uncomfortable with their children being used to push a political agenda. Instead of accepting that other people do not owe him a sense of comfort around his pet, the dude threatened legal action. The supreme court has held up the right of people and local governments to discriminate against breeds, for the same reasons that people can decide to allow house cats but not mountain lions. Winning the case would involve more bullshit from advocates and wasting a lot of money on legal defense that the library could put to better use. The program was shut down. Take that, children!

Bad rap blogged about the intolerance of it all (towards the dogs, of course), and advocates on face book have attempted to shame the librarian for shutting down the program instead prioritizing dog discrimination concerns over human and child safety concerns. No one involved with the pit bulls seems to understand how strange they look to people who do not place dog stigma at the top of their priorities list. The folks all over facebook and blogs are framing this as the librarian being too racist against dogs (that phrase never ceases to look ridiculous, does it?) to allow the program to continue. The safety and comfort of everyone else is at the bottom of the list of what these folks care about.

A child feeling scared of a dog isn't seen as a legitimate reason for avoiding it according to these folks. Neither is being a victim of a pit bull attack or knowing someone who was. If you have anything negative to say about pit bulls, you can expect a flood of emails to be sent your way that is way crazier than what you would get for insulting any other sort of dog. Michael Felger handled it nicely when it happened to him, and he was given the same line. An advocate told him that he should be educated on how to deal with these dogs. He had this to say:

Kathrin talks about educating herself on how to confront strange dogs. I must have something wrong with me, but I have no interest in “confronting” strange and/or menacing dogs. I avoid them. You talk like we all need to bridge some huge, cultural gap. What is this, a political movement? “Together we can”? Why can’t you dog nuts get this through your head? THEY AREN’T PEOPLE.

It is true, and if the care takers understood that strangers don't owe their dog anything then it would be the same as owning tigers (like sigfried and roy do) or birds of prey. People who own animals capable of killing me generally don't implore me to see how gentle the animals are and don't complain about discrimination. They also don't tend to anthropomorphize the fuck out of their animals, either. I very much doubt that the actual dogs are suffering a whole lot in situations like this one, its the owners projecting all kinds of uniquely human emotion and understanding onto dogs. People feel the stigma is on them for owning that type of pet, and everyone else has to pay for their hurt feelings. if you don't let their dog play with your kids then its intolerance. You can't win. How little it takes to be labeled as a pit bull racist is illustrated in this pit bull chat thread. A vet lectured the owner about the dangers involved in having the breed of dog around children, and made them leave through a side door instead of through the waiting room with all the other animals in it. Later in the thread the original poster reveals that the dog tried to bite one of their kids, and the vet was made aware of that, making the whole incident much more understandable. Awful lot of tough guys who would have beat up the vet (or something??) for talking that way to their wives. Yawn.

A facebook page encouraging a pit bull ban to be lifted states on its main page:

So why ban a breed of dog and not a race of humans? I know why, because banning a race of humans is racism, correct? Which I completely agree that it would be racism and racism sucks balls. So why ban a breed of dog? Isnt that a form of racism?

It has more than 800 members.

Here are an advocate's words about the racism question:

Yes, it is the same if not worse than racism.
It would be like going up to a dark-skinned youth and saying "You're a black teen, so you must be a gangster and you must go and mug people"

All of this constrasts strongly with the face that is put on for the media and strangers about the views of pit bull advocates. This is all in addition to the calloused responses from advocates to victims when they have been attacked by pit bulls that was discussed in the first post.

I wish this was the worst thing they did "for the breed", but it isn't. What happens when the members and leaders of advocacy groups have dogs that attack? It isn't pretty, and I will explore it in part three.

woo groups and pit bulls- part 1

2011-03-22T07:14:00.007-06:00

The word "woo" is thrown around in skeptic circles often, it means a belief in some unsupported idea like that vaccines cause autism, or that an ingredient becomes more potent the more it is diluted (homeopathy), or that ghosts visit us and psychics can talk with them. There are always groups of people willing to support the nonsense, and they all seem to have many shared characteristics despite having very different claims. The labeling of a woo group is usually based on their claim, and while this makes sense, there should also be some time devoted to noting red flags in an organization's behavior; a basic characteristic of woo groups is that they do not outright state their real purpose. It is usually dressed up in PR and vague language, and only nerds who like to dig deep into things (skeptics) will find out the truth. There was an internal woo alarm that lit up for me upon researching pro-pit bull activism, and so they will be used as primary examples in the majority of the posts in this series.

Some background is deserved on the pit bull debate. Pit bulls are a few breeds of dog that are commonly lumped together by most people, they were dogs bred for blood sports and fighting long ago (more on this in later posts). Multiple studies that examined long term data found that pit bulls and rottweilers are responsible for the majority of fatal dog attacks, despite not being even 10% of the dog population they made up more than half of dogs who fatally attacked humans. The CDC study used in part media accounts, which pit bull advocates say are not reliable. I agree, but the figures are supported by other studies which use non-media based methods of gathering data for both serious maulings and fatal attacks. The use of media is not necessarily inaccurate automatically- the support of other studies makes me think that the media is giving proportional attention to fatal dog attacks from different breeds. It would not be such an issue if pit bulls attacked only slightly more, but its a lot more. Even if pit bulls attacked the exact same amount as other dogs, they do so much damage per attack that it would still be a public safety issue. These dogs kill animals much larger than they are, including many horses and cows. Pit bull attacks on humans kill many more adults than most other breeds- even small dogs can kill infants sometimes, but pit bull type dogs are dangerous to animals that are much larger than any human. They can cause severe property damage (click here for a video of a pit bull peeling the bumper off of a cop car with its teeth). Dogsbite.org has a collection of more than 40 known scalping incidents linked to its webpage. The dogs can amputate limbs and digits or damage limbs so severely that amputation is required. This is not typically something dogs in general are capable of.

The advocates are generally against any breed specific laws and for everyone treating their dog exactly like they would any other breed of dog. They often characterize people who oppose them as hating all pit bulls or thinking that they all bit or kill. I haven't seen anyone on dog bite victim advocacy websites pushing that view at all, but I also understand people who were mauled by a dog being angry about it and using angry language. The injuries (and sometimes deaths) are completely preventable.

This brings us to the first characteristic of a woo group- their "position" is made up almost entirely of contradictory memes. They sound good as slogans, but they do not create a coherent point of view that can be argued. This is why a "bingo card" is so popular to ridicule woos with- they really can be counted on to simply repeat things they have heard that sound agreeable instead of presenting any real arguments or data to support a consistent point of view. The pro pit bull set of memes has a few large contradictions.

One big set of memes basically try to state that pit bulls are equally likely to bite/equally as dangerous as any other kind of dog. This ties in with slogans like "punish the deed not the breed" and "its all in how you raise them". Dogs are presented as blank slates that owners can project their intentions on. The exact amount of nature and nurture involved with animal behavior is difficult to calculate, but it certainly cannot be none. Animal domestication is itself a monument to that fact; all the time spent selectively breeding for dependence would not have worked at all if what advocates are saying was actually true, and it would also be likely that *any* animal could be domesticated via training if this were true, but it isn't. It is demonstrably false. This does not mean that owners have no affect on behavior, but it is not a monopoly.

You can often hear the same advocate later noting that their dog is sweet and nice, and that the breed is actually nicer and more gentle than others, with no effort to explain the contradiction. If there was any sort of integrity within the groups there would be debate about which one is true, but there isn't. Anything that casts the dogs in a positive light is acceptable. There is a myth about them being "nanny dogs", which seems to be entirely invented by pit bull advocates since reference of it is absent from any other information source. The idea is that the animals were bred to be aggressive towards other animals only, but not babies and children. You can smell the stink of christianity on that statement, eh? We are animals, and there is nothing magic about man. The principle that "dog aggression" and "human aggression" are different from plain old "aggression" has never been demonstrated by advocates or scientists. Advocates insist on framing the issues that way, inventing phrases about temperament that are intended to make it seem as though some kind of distinction has been established. This doesn't stop advocates from being angry when their dogs are asked to leave dog parks, either.

Depending on what they are arguing against, advocates will claim that NO behavioral traits can be bred into dogs, or that the traits can be "socialized" out of them, OR that a really complex behavior scheme has been bred into the dogs. It doesn't make any fucking sense.

The idea that only bad owners have dogs that bite becomes a no true scotsman fallacy- if an owner has a pit bull that bites, it is automatically because they were a bad owner. Breed identification is also a big deal to the groups. A dog that bites wasn't a pit bull, it was misidentified by the ignorant public. If a pit bull is snuggling with a baby then it really is one. Even if half of the dogs in the statistics above were misidentified there would still be a demonstrated breed specific problem. Whenever stories of violent maulings surface, waves of advocates show up to debate if it really was a pit bull or to bash the owner, lack of condolences for mauling victims is very very common. Part two will be about the concept that woo groups do not seem to understand how bizarre they appear to normal people.

No Portland

2011-03-13T23:30:00.003-06:00

Well, some unexpected stuff came up and it doesn't look like I will be moving to portland as soon as previously hoped. I will be putting it off for at least a year. At least I will get to post more, a post is already in the works.

Posts may be sparse

2011-03-07T19:45:00.005-07:00

I am going to be moving to Portland, Oregon in the near future. Preparations for the move are making it difficult to blog as much as I would like. I also have to deal with the process of selling a house here (it is an inconvenient coincidence that it is all happening at once), which has a lot of damages from the people living in it before. So it has to be fixed, then those damages have to be paid for, then it will be sold. I have all my paperwork in order, but with all this and working a job it is a little tough to write about all the things I want to. The motivation to move is made more urgent by chance sometimes- a newspaper sitting around damaged house, a Salt Lake Tribune, was open to the opinion page. I read it while a contractor did measuring to cook up an estimate for me. The first letter to the editor that popped out was one titled Keep Out Inferior People. Yep, really. Here are the relevant parts:

You would think that a first-class country like America that would like to stay a leading country in innovation, technology and lower taxes would be a little more careful about what type of immigrants it lets in.

...(he denies being racist/xenophobic, and then)...

the fact is, some countries produce a better culture and type of people than others do. Some are much more advanced, while others are still way behind.

Can anyone deny this? Or do I have to cite obvious examples. Should we turn this country over to the Nigerians, Mexicans, Iranians and North Koreans? Would this better our country or make it worse?

John Bigler

Salt Lake City

He felt comfortable signing his real name because its totally cool to say stuff like that around these parts. There isn't a contradiction in most peoples minds between "I am not racist" and "if mexicans ran the country everything would fail". I hear opinion like this walking down the street or while I am working on a regular basis, and it is depressing. It has a real impact on how people are treated by authorities like doctors and police officers. I have seen it at the hospitals in ways that are hard to stomach. Salt Lake Tribune is an independent newspaper- it is more liberal than deseret news. I read on. Decent GOP Candidates was the next piece I read:

In voting to confirm ultra-liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a Supreme Court justice, Hatch said: “If a nominee is experienced in the law, highly intelligent, of good character and temperament, and — most important — gives clear and convincing evidence that he or she understands and respects the proper role of the judiciary in our system of government, the mere fact that I might have selected a different nominee will not lead me to oppose the president’s nominee.” Good heavens! Does Hatch not understand that we are in a culture war with liberalism, that the morality and freedom of our country hangs in the balance? On issues such as abortion, gun control and Obamacare, liberal judges will invariably vote in a destructive manner.

You remember the "obamacare" case that was brought before the supreme court, don't ya?? The supreme court's role is to respect the rights of the people who run the country, meaning the rich elite. Orrin Hatch understands that, and said so to everyone. Too bad his constituents miss the important parts of his statements. It wasn't just letters to the editor on that day, there are letters like this every single day in Utah. You don't wanna know what people think about women or global warming here. I tried to find something this crazy in the Oregon papers for today's date, and failed. There is a lot more concern over practical stuff there, a lot more sanity in the politics. I cannot wait to finally be out of here.

Portland

2011-02-23T09:45:00.003-07:00

I took a trip to Portland last week. I found a truly fantastic bookstore called In Other Words, it is a non-profit feminist book store with community events almost every day. They host all ages events as well, so feminists with children have a safe place to go. There are opportunities to volunteer and they participate in programs to give books to people in prison. They were a lot more appreciative of my patronage than Powell's, and they had a lot of good selections available. They focus on having a diversity of opinion available, so it is inclusive of trans and religious feminists, as well as fun and radical feminism. They have a selection of fiction that isn't full of misogynist bullshit, in addition to their selection of non-fiction books on feminism and related subjects. It is in northern portland, not in downtown, so there is actually a place to park if you drive there. If any of you are in the area, or vacation there, you should check it out.

In Other Words

I also went to the history museum in Portland, and tucked away in a corner there was a children's art display. Kids aged 3-5 were asked to make shoes out of clay and talk about what they thought the shoes were for. All but one girl made high heels (the girl who didn't made silk slippers with glitter all over them). The boys made shoes geared towards activities like boots and sneakers. Most of the girls thought shoes were for being seen in, and boys thought they were for doing stuff. I imagined chinese girls from long ago making tiny lotus shoes out of clay. The messages of a sexist culture sink in so young, it makes places like In Other Words that much more important.

Anarchy and Sociopaths

2011-02-12T11:17:00.006-07:00

"Sociopath" is a word heavy with connotation- people picture psycho killers and criminals, but that isn't normally the case. An alternate term for sociopathy is Antisocial Personality Disorder, which is an incurable personality problem. It is a debate to call it a "disorder" exactly, the person with APD doesn't really suffer or anything from their condition, doesn't feel that the way they are is a problem. Sociopaths are people who simply do not have a conscience or empathy; they would have to want to kill or commit crimes in order to do so, and not everyone does. Some just want to be parents to dominate little versions of themselves, or to get far in their professional life, or get high a lot. Estimates of how much of the population has APD range from about 1-4%, so they are people we all meet at some point in time. Criminal sociopaths are not always exactly dangerous in the way expected, either. In The Sociopath Next Door, author Martha Stout talks about a film that was shown in her college for her training as a psychologist, the film was about a sociopath. A dude dubbed "the stamp man" would steal stamps by breaking into a post office every couple of years, and delighted at watching the excitement of the police and post office workers from afar, even though he paid for the excitement by being arrested for it repeatedly and spending time in prison. Its all he really wanted out of life.

Martha Stout's book is an incredible book that I cannot recommend enough, it is a book that challenges people to emotionally accept the reality of sociopaths instead of simply having knowledge of it. I took to reading the DSM a lot in middle and high school, and have been aware of APD for quite some time, but the book changed my outlook. The Sociopath Next Door challenged me to really imagine what I would do with myself if I felt no real emotional connection to others; its a very difficult task, because my life is driven by my relationships with other people and concern with society in general. Imagining what you would do if you could do anything without guilt or fear added another dimension to the questions the book raised. Sociopaths also feel bored much more often than regular people and need more stimulation to cause any sort of excitement, which explains a lot about the need to dominate that many of them display. Morality seems like a big scam that everyone buys into. People like this will always exist and won't be easy to detect. It seems to be caused by a complex mix of nature and nurture, so prevention strategies are not known currently. It is downright weird to contemplate that someone you know is missing a moral compass and empathy for other people; even when all evidence seems to suggest it people do not generally even consider it to be a possibility. What can be done?

The architecture of our society determines how far people like this can get, how many people they are allowed to hurt. I have heard many people, even good people, advocate for societies that reward self interest and greed. The nicer ones try to argue that such a system increases the wealth of everyone and therefore does a public good. The capitalist system in our country functions in exactly that way. Business is structured around exactly that- assuming the other person is out to get as much as possible all the time, and so you should be, too. Some pose it as being a way to turn an inevitable bad thing into a good thing. I am not so sure.

Despite most people in the US being able to repeat the meme of "good selfishness" by heart, most do not act that way in their day to day lives. Most of us care about our families and other people, and feel bad when they cause each other harm. Most people may not agree about what is ethical, but most people have a sense of ethics to contrast against others, unlike a sociopath. Ideas such as "the golden rule" are nearly universal, and display the common person's understanding of basic ethical behavior. The benefit of it for everyone is pretty obvious- the cooperation and caring that people have for each other makes advanced societies possible, and it makes for lives that are satisfying and worth living for people with meaningful relationships. These relationships are only possible in an atmosphere of trust and empathy for others.

The reality of our system now is that sociopaths excel within it. They behave the way that gets them the furthest, usually doing things that don't even occur to regular people. Most of the normal people trying to succeed in capitalism want to get somewhere based on their own merit (yes, people really believe that things work that way). They don't want to hurt tons of other people to succeed, and would feel guilty if they did that. Sociopaths see it all as a great game that doesn't really have rules, but other pretend that it does, and that makes it very easy for them to "win" at the cost of the rest of us. They can get prestige and authority for behaving that way. They can start calling the shots if they get far enough, and since they live in a society that rewards them for their ruthlessness, they do get to call the shots far more often than normal ethical people. This is true of the vast majority of systems that rule our lives. A sociopath in the former situation would be very limited in how they can operate.

Another notable example outside of the business and political world is organized religion. People who can calmly lie about their sins instead of confessing them can get further in the organization much more easily than a person who genuinely believes and feels a need to confess their wrongdoing It makes sense of things like the opulent vatican preaching about how we should all give to the poor, among other religious hypocrisy.

Perhaps society could be set up in such a way that ruthless behavior would be punished rather than rewarded. For instance, if you don't share what you have, then everyone comes and destroys your stuff. Some might find this system overly harsh, but really- how fair is it that sociopaths ruin the lives of countless people through cruel policy or actions? Innocent people can have their retirement money vanish based on the actions of a few people, and that seems much crueler to me than what I proposed above.

Sociopaths are able to take advantage of the tendency of normal people to obey authorities, even when the consequences are awful. See the Milgram Experiments if you need some proof of people behaving that way. They can be doctors or lawyers or cops or parents and use their authority to make other people do as they are told. It is drilled into the head of every school child that experts are needed to figure things out, and that other people know better than you do. It is a destructive attitude in society that I try to challenge daily. This is a reason why sociopaths enjoy authoritarian systems (where the guys at the top know best, and you should just do what they say because of that). Sociopaths support systems of authoritarian control, and the ones who want to climb the ranks easily. The horrible responsibility of positions of extreme power deter people who have a lot of introspection and care about how their actions impact others. Regular people don't seem to do well with having a huge impact on others, the pressure is incredible.

An example of a normal person's reaction to misuing their power: I remember watching a NOVA special about the intelligence failures of 9/11, about how there was more than enough information to stop the attacks, but a communication break down meant that no one was able to act on it. In the special, the interviewer speaks to a former FBI agent who was high ranking and gave details about the issues, he had tried to solve the problem of communication break down before the attacks. He resigned after 9/11, and the incredible guilt that he felt over not doing more was apparent. I don't know that he will let it go in his lifetime. Most of us are not perfect, and when the weight of one person's actions becomes that far reaching, a normal person will want to let someone more qualified step in when they make a mistake. You can guess that a sociopath would not. Systems of top-down authority inherently select for this sort of behavior. Systems of top down authority increase the scale of influence that sociopaths can have.

You can contrast this with people like Anna Wintour. She is in charge of Vogue magazine. A documentary called "September Issue" follows Wintour around. Designers fear her and ask her advice before doing anything, since she can crush them by keeping them out of Vogue. She sabotages her underling's work, seemingly at random. She is famous for "bringing back fur", making it popular again after many years of fur being ignored, which no doubt caused the death of many animals. She makes derogatory comments about other people's weight all the time. Her magazine is a piece of the global machine of fashion, one that keeps sweat shops in business and encourages everyone, even those who cannot afford designer fashion, to waste more than is necessary and to buy more than is needed for each "season". She may or may not be a sociopath, but she acts like one, or at the least a narcissist (a person who lacks empathy, but not a conscience). Narcissistic behavior is a lot like sociopathy, differing in motivation more than anything else. In individuals, personality disorders often exist blended together or as a combination rather than just one problem. It might be that some of these traits are situational instead of inherited, that the situations that call for this kind of behavior make for normal people who delude themselves into doing horrible things because they are required of the position. That doesn't matter a lot to people who are suffering under one though, does it?

What do sociopaths do when they make horrible mistakes that hurt many other people? They cry or try to get pity. Yep, really. Martha Stout is very reluctant to give out some kind of list for spotting sociopaths, but she says that this maneuver is the number one tip off that you are interacting with one- a person who hurts you repeatedly and wants you to feel sorry for them is probably a sociopath. You can see this going on when politicians make mistakes, over and over again. When you complain about a hurtful action, when there is a lot of evidence of the deed, and the perpetrator's reaction is NOT to be sorry or introspective or try to fix it, but rather to try and get you to feel sorry for THEM it reveals more than the sociopath intended. Most of us, again, would assume anything besides sociopathy when faced with that behavior, when it doesn't make much sense to think that. This isn't to say someone who does that once is one, but someone who makes a pattern of it probably is. Anna Wintour actually does this in September Issue- we are supposed to feel bad for her because her siblings, who do things that are socially important, look down on her work. Boo-hoo. She makes it seem like fashion is not arbitrary in any way and that we should feel bad that other people can't see how *important* it is for her. What she does to other people in the name of fashion isn't supposed to be of concern to us. We are made to pity a perpetually cruel woman. I didn't buy it for a second. It is a lot like the appeals we are fed by politicians to go to war; bombing people is framed as being humanitarian. When a country is destroyed our politicians get to ask for sympathy for their obviously good intentions that were just executed poorly.

Anyway, most systems of power are selecting for this kind of behavior when there is not any rule that they have to. It is up to the rest of us to try and mold our society into one that produces moral behavior, even from the most ruthless of us. Even sociopaths must conform to social norms to a certain extent, work within those structures to play their games. Even if selfishness and self interest were human nature, as proponents like libertarians will claim, the structure of society can negate that part of human nature and make the world a better place for everyone. For instance, there have been many inquiries into what makes the organ donation rates so different in various industrialized nations, and a correlation was found that had nothing to do with the cultures involved, it had to do with how potential donors were asked to participate. Asking people to opt into a donation system yields much lower rates than asking people to opt out (the protocols of family consent after death negate a lot of it, but it still results in more people receiving organs). Psychologists have discovered many ways that human nature can be manipulated to produce more a more humanitarian reality for the rest of us. Authoritarians and sociopaths won't like those things though, because they generally don't do anything to further the influence of the few. Libertarians (arguably a variety of authoritarian) do not like it because the reality of things like the organ donation data clash with their truly extreme view of agency, that we are capable of doing the right thing all the time. They have argued for a free market system of organs, which in practice devastates poverty stricken people among other undesirable outcomes.

Systems of authority seem to call themselves different names while doing essentially the same thing- authoritarian systems have called themselves democratic, socialist, communist, etc. The essential problem in authoritarian systems of dominance is the same; one percent of the population determines the fate of almost everyone else. What appeals to me about anarchy is that most (non-primitivist) anarchists treat society as though it were a science experiment. They know that work needs to be done to find the best outcome. That is how I view the world-as having potential for something different, better, that can probably be found through experiment. Getting rid of authoritarianism is a huge task currently, but the evidence seems to suggest that it needs to be weeded out of social systems everywhere. I don't know if it is actually possible, but the alternatives are not acceptable to me. The alternatives require compliance with systems of dominance that destroy and hurt many many people. Its something worth fighting against.

(please excuse the weird formatting, I had difficulty making paragraph indentations actually appear on the published page. It was either this or wall-of-text)

Whining in Evolutionary Psychology

2011-01-28T15:03:00.003-07:00

During this month there have been many take downs of a really horrendous set of evolutionary psychology studies about rape avoidance. All are worth reading:

Pharyngula
Jerry Coyne
Amanda Schaffer
Emily Yoffe
Amanda Marcotte

I don't really need to do my own take down at this point. The basic problem that everyone had was that the studies were poorly designed and didn't really support the conclusion that they claimed to. The authors correlate grip strength increases during ovulation with being able to over power an attacker. They also correlate avoidance of rapists with ovulation by doing surveys about how likely women are to go into dangerous situations, and also how racist they are. The studies and the original article construct rape as the black-dude-in-the-bushes type of attack that make up a minority of rapes, and they examine rape avoidance as a strategy to avoid pregnancy only- as if there is not any advantage to not being traumatized.

This is pretty standard at this point. It is the same old stuff that has been plaguing evolutionary psychology research for a long time now. There is an extra element of sillyness in the "research" of rape avoidance that was put together in the original article though, check out this experiment:

the original study used dildos inserted into “realistic latex vagina[s] sold as a masturbation pal for lonely straight men” that had been filled with an artificial substance cooked up to mimic sperm.

that supposedly supports the theory that human penises are shaped in such a way to remove competing sperm. I have a feeling, now more than ever, that evolutionary psychologists who do this kind of shit watch a lot of porn. A lot of it. It colors their world view in a way that is hilarious and sad to normal people. Once again a huge fucking gap appears when one realizes that this doesn't really show any evidence that removing someone elses sperm with that method would actually have an effect on whose sperm ends up impregnating the hypothetical woman. Many people pointed out how especially bad this experiment was because of the existence of foreskins, and the lack of foreskin available on dildos.

PZ Myers took a lot of offense at how shitty that experiment was, and the evolutionary psychologist responsible (Jesse Bering) wrote a really whiny response that I cannot quite wrap my head around:

In his post, Myers uses my discussion of the evolution of the human penis as a prime example of the sloppy work being done in the study of evolution and human behavior. He pillories psychologist Gordon Gallup's famous "dildo study," which suggests that the distinctive mushroom-capped shape of the penis might serve to scoop a competitor's semen out of the vagina. (I described this work at long, intimate length in two prior articles in Scientific American.) Myers calls this penis study "tripe" because Gallup and his colleagues failed to show how variations in penis shape within a population--and variations in how the penis is used for coital thrusting--directly affect fertilization rates. Instead, the researchers relied on dildos of different designs, surveys of college students' detailing their sexual behaviors, and a batch of artificial semen.
Now, I can only assume that Myers has not had to face a university human-research ethics committee in the past several decades. If he had, he would realize that his suggested empirical approach would be unilaterally rejected by these conservative bureaucratic gatekeepers. Does Myers really believe that these seasoned investigators wouldn't rather have done the full experiment he describes--if only they lived in a less prudish and libellous university world? The fact of the matter is that research psychologists studying human sexuality are hamstrung by necessary ethical constraints when designing their studies. Perhaps Myers would be happy enough to allow investigators into his bedroom to examine the precise depth and vigor to which he plunges into his wife's vaginal canal after they've been separated for a week, but most couples would be a tad more reticent. Gallup's dildo study, and his related work on penis evolution, offered an ingenious--ingenious--way to get around some very real practical and ethical limitations. Is it perfect? No. Again, the perfect study, conceptually speaking, is often the least ethical one, at least as deemed by research ethics committees. But was it driven by clear, testable, evolutionary hypotheses? Yes. And it offered useful information that was otherwise unknown.

Several of the other points are exactly the same as this one; he whines about how he can't do the experiments needed to actually prove anything, so we are supposed to not be so mean when he conducts experiments that are kind of what is needed to answer the questions, but cannot possibly do so. He doesn't actually get around to arguing against the criticism itself- like saying that the experiment did prove something, just how he is doing the best he can folks- can't you cut him some slack already? I am sure that these things come up a lot during peer review in every kind of science, right? Other evolutionary psychologists flock to the criticisms to defend what they do as being real science, and as always it is hard to take em seriously. I haven't seen any actually condemn the attitude of Bering, which is directly opposed to the idea of valuing truth. You cannot value truth and behave this way. These dudes aren't interested in finding real answers, just feeling like they are right and that the world is how they think it is. Fuck them.

I can expect this kind of whining out of a lay person trying to prove something to a friend, but not from someone who has some kind of training in doing real science.
Even regular psychological studies don't pull this shit, and they have the same ethical limitations that Bering is complaining about in his response.

I picture myself as a scientist, trying to answer the questions that Bering attempted to with his dildo study, and coming up against the limitations of what can be done, I am left with two options:

1. Try to do something anyway, publish the results as support despite the serious problems

2. Don't do the fucking experiment because it doesn't really prove anything and is therefore an enormous waste of time

I picture myself as going with option 2 when faced with such a dilemma. The fact that Bering went with option 1, then proceeds to whine about it as though anyone should feel sorry that he acted so foolishly, makes me wonder if he has even a basic understanding of the scientific method. Harsh criticism is what makes for progress and improvement. If anything was allowed through and called science because, gee golly you guys, he really was trying and all, and they did do this horribly designed and meaningless study inside a real actual lab...then what the fuck would science be for anymore? If you can't provide some kind of meaningful evidence of some sort then don't do it. If you do go through with it don't get mad at people for finding a problem with the research.

The thing that really pisses me off about defenders of this bullshit is that they don't seem to understand that making public statements about the nature of rape isn't a politically neutral act-it has the potential to hurt rape victims, supports rapists, and make people who aren't perpetrators or victims care less about rape. I don't think that science is anywhere near being able to work out the origins of complex psychological behavior, because the mechanisms of it aren't even understood. In the mean time shutting the fuck up or giving support to rape victims seems like a much better goal for these dudes.

the trouble with sarah palin

2011-01-28T15:00:00.001-07:00

I have engaged in my fair share of criticizing sarah palin; I do so with a certain uneasiness.

Sarah Palin consistently says wrong, cruel, crazy, ignorant shit. It is absolutely true. However, talking about her comments will never proceed in the way that discussing say, Rush Limbaugh's comments will. There will be much more attention paid to Palin's comments, and anyone with a passing familiarity to discussions of her will know why- it is a socially acceptable occasion for some folks to vent their misogyny. It is really hard to find a discussion of her that doesn't refer to her with a gendered slur. "Bimbo", "Cunt", "Bitch". The ones that don't do that will just talk about her appearance as a feminine woman with derision or sexual desire. Either way, its more about her being a woman than a moron. I take a lot of precaution when I mention her faults- I am not free of anti-woman bias, no one is. However, putting so much focus on what she thinks doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me anymore. People give less and less of a shit about it- every day people, I mean. Outside of her initial surge of popularity, most people think she doesn't know what she is talking about. Even the ones who like her do not necessarily think she is a good source of information on politics. Noam Chomsky had a perfect response to her bullshit when he was on Democracy Now awhile back:

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Noam Chomsky, world-renowned dissident, author of more than 100 books, speaking to us from Boston. Noam, you wrote a piece after the midterm elections called Outrage Misguided. I want to read for you now what Sarah Palin tweeted Ð the former Alaskan governor, of course, and Republication vice presidential nominee. This is what she tweeted about WikiLeaks. Rather, she put it on Facebook. She said, "First and foremost, what steps were taken to stop WikiLeaks' director Julian Assange from distributing this highly-sensitive classified material, especially after he had already published material not once but twice in the previous months? Assange is not a journalist any more than the editor of the Al Qaeda's new English-language magazine ÒInspire,Ó is a journalist. He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?" Noam Chomsky, your response?
NOAM CHOMSKY: That's pretty much what I would expect Sarah Palin to say. I don't know how much she understands, but I think we should pay attention to what we learn from the leaks.

After that point he just discussed the leaks. This will more or less be my policy from now on- the extent that political coverage has become about personalities is a strategic move on the part of the media and politicians. If people are focusing on how much they like candidates and what they wear and so on, coverage won't be about what anyone is actually doing or what kind of concerns normal people have about the world.

White Privilege to the rescue!

2011-01-10T08:51:00.003-07:00

bell hook's book Killing Rage was my first real open minded step towards trying to understand the experiences of people of color in America, and it really opened my eyes. hooks talked about the fear involved with being surrounded by white people, and how even at left wing gatherings white people would deny that her fear existed. The mainstream commentary on race is that non white people are the ones to fear, that they are criminals that the police catch and punish for the benefit of everyone. The fear of being one of those criminals when you haven't done anything wrong isn't well represented, neither is the fear of having most of society come down against you when you are accused of a crime. It is a very real fear for people of color, and though I cannot understand experiencing it, I can understand how it would be very scary. The lone criminals of mainstream fears have a solution to them- but no one polices the police, judges the judges, and so on. Our jails swell with people who are not likely to have much of a future because of it. Prisoners who are felons cannot vote, and all prisoners have a difficult time getting jobs if/when they get out. This is on top of the disadvantages in employment that people of color face already, which is more of a disadvantage than gender alone. The fear of having your message or actions taken as a declaration of criminality and aggression is something that is difficult for white people to understand as well. Why would we? Most of us don't have the lived experience of police harassment (either personally or from friends/relatives). Once alerted to this reality it is not excusable for white people to deny that it exists.

Black people who decided that perhaps they should defend themselves were systematically targeted by the FBI via COINTELPRO. This includes the political murder of a Black Panther leader by the government. The FBI also harassed black panther members by sending them letters, trying to break up marriages and friendships, and in some cases (like MLK), encouraged suicide and presented veiled threats. There isn't much reason to think the programs are over, when they were originally caught the whole affair was not given the due attention by the media and isn't generally taught in required history classes. People who advocated feminism, socialism, communism, or anarchism were also targets. These were all people who were harassed, imprisoned, and in some cases killed for their political beliefs. Before COINTELPRO there were things like the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, where people were put to death for political beliefs via juries and unfounded charges.

Sarah Palin is a white lady who did a lot of expressing of political views, speaking openly about how real conservatives "reload" and used graphics with cross hairs over politicians she disagreed with. She said that conservatives should target the politicians who supported the health care bill. One of them, a congresswoman, was shot in the head by a dude with a gun at a political rally. Palin is very sorry and is scrubbing her old tweets and websites for rhetoric like that and erasing it, like its possible to shove anything in the memory hole after posting it on the internet. She wasn't arrested though, and I believe that it is because she is white and has quite a bit of money. The establishment doesn't want people like her to be liable for this. People who aren't like her are held accountable for much less all the time. She is very sorry that someone was shot, but not that the shooter, who is clearly mentally ill, had very little chance at getting quality mental health care because of the current system in place. If someone with a serious mental illness can get a job, they may not be able to get a job with insurance, and if they manage a job with insurance the insurance may not cover the treatment (or may only cover a small amount of it). Ironically, nationalized health care may have helped prevent this kind of tragedy.

Anyway- even if COINTELPRO has ended, there is the recent issue of guantanamo bay. People were held in prison without charges and tortured, some killed themselves, for very flimsy reasons. More than 500 people were held there (if you believe the DoD figures), and some were there because of mistaken identity. A quick glance through the list will show how some were jailed for writing satire in a different country, among other silly shit that threatened no one. Where would an american of middle eastern descent be if they had put up a graphic like Palin, and then a politician on the list was shot? Its not hard to guess. Black muslims would most likely go to prison for doing what she did. Inciting violence is supposed to be a crime, and if the government was fair about how they charged people Palin would be in jail. Then again, if perpetrators were charged fairly then the people responsible for guantanamo would be in prison, too. People in power are just as criminal as mafias and gangs, they just get to make rules so they can call it the law when they kidnap and torture and kill people they don't like. The chosen people of the establishment- the rich, the white, the men, are enforcers of culture. They keep things the way they are by using the economic and social power bestowed upon them by business elites. They are a key group for powerful people to control- when they step out of line by betraying the power structure punishment is swift. Within a system of extremely concentrated power allegiance to the system is the only moral that matters. Educated people, engineers and scientists and college professors and doctors and lawyers all have to play ball for any of this to work- if they revolt then perhaps something really important could be accomplished.

Commenting Policy

2011-01-04T15:17:00.002-07:00

I started moderating comments. Until I have a large commentariat to self regulate the comments I will approve comments. The vast majority will get through. The potential for a few dudes to bully or harass me or other posters has made me take this position. My preferred method of comment moderation is to let commentators argue and generally shame out the stupid posters, and ban the undesirables if they become tedious/boring. Arguments against the comment policy are encouraged- convince me if you think something else would be better.

Thanks for reading!
-Skeptifem

MRA rhetoric invades feministing

2011-01-04T13:59:00.003-07:00

I was alerted to a feministing piece via a radical feminist channel on Youtube, and I was fucking floored at what was posted.

The piece on feministing is titled "Their words are killing us": Violent language of anti-sex work groups, which directly compares words to violence. It is a post about how a radical feminist critique of prostitution is wrong. That's fine with me- bring it. I like to hear new viewpoints, but that isn't what is offered here. According to the article, the first "consequence" of radical feminist analysis is:

First, sex workers who are confronted with these opinions are likely to doubt their self-worth and their self-agency, and may put themselves in the position of victim, thus making it more likely they will become victims of violence.

I do not see any way that a sex worker can cause their own rape or beating or murder, the person who kills or rapes or beats them is THE deciding factor in what happens. The attitude of a sex worker can not make violence more likely. They never state HOW that attitude would create more violence. They add another mysterious consequence without explaining the how:

When subjected to violence, they are less likely to make complaints about it

Because complaining about it does so much good for sex workers, right? I don't blame any of them who do not complain. Their lack of complaining is not the problem, its the way that the police treat the person who was abused- they often do very little, or blame the victim and make the situation worse. THAT is the problem. Radical feminists talking about the abuse of prostitutes and how wrong it is does not contribute to that problem.

Secondly, the discourse encourages hatred of sex workers, clients and all who support sex workers in any way.

Talking about the violence that occurs in an industry is bad because the people involved might become less popular? They include johns and pimps in the list (by a different name)- they are the ones who are being violent. I don't understand this shit at all. Am I supposed to worry about the feelings of people who are exploiting and hurting prostitutes? I know not all of them are violent, but christ, the ones that are hurt countless women. They don't have a right to respect OR to the prostitutes.

Thirdly, conflating sex work with trafficking and violence against women has affected the funding of sex worker groups.

Groups that don't address violence in the sex industry shouldn't get any money. Trafficking and violence against women are common things in prostitution. It is like when MRA's bitch about how feminist groups aren't giving equal money and time to men's issues- prioritizing is complex with activism, but not really on this front. When dealing with the sex industry, the violence that happens is widespread and is very urgent compared to the plight of johns who get arrested for hiring a prostitute. Any study of prostitutes shows that the majority want out and started underage-finding a way for them to exit safely is way more important than legalizing prostitution. They give an example:

For example, PEPFAR (the US government AIDS fund) will not fund organisations that support sex workers or promote the decriminalisation of sex work. As a result, this has led to groups that supply sex workers with condoms, or support the rights of sex workers, not receiving funds, thus endangering the lives of sex workers and putting them at risk of HIV infection.

I have never spoken with a radical feminist who didn't believe in decriminalizing prostitution (for the prositutes). Not one. I have spoken to many who think that legalizing prostitution is a bad idea, and which is a very different thing. Decriminalizing what johns do is a different issue, and it is hard to tell what the original authors meant by "decriminalisation of sex work" because they don't elaborate. The way that they defend johns seems to mean that they think that it should be okay for them to exploit a population of (mostly) economically desperate women.

They leave out an important question: Are there other groups out there providing free condoms? Yes. It is kind of besides the point though, this article, like many pro-prostitution pieces, ignores the common experience of prostitutes. Sex workers that have the option to make a john wear a condom are unlikely to need free ones. According to a different group that disperses condoms for sex workers:

“Sex workers have told us that when they ask a client to use a condom, he offers double the price to have sex without the condom. These women are trying to provide for their children and families, so they take the offer.”

even in countries where sex work is legal, such as the Netherlands and Australia, there are still sex workers who do not register with authorities, and operate ‘on the street’, where they cannot be reached by HIV prevention campaigns.

The bottom quote highlights that legal status of prostitution is not the deciding factor in what prevents HIV infection for prostituted people. I stand with many radical feminists in saying that if prostitution was an actual choice- one that people didn't have to choose in order to feed their families, or because of violence or coercion, the problem of AIDS prevention for sex workers would be much easier to manage. If it was not a matter of economics then women who have money and opportunities would choose prostitution as often as women without options, but they don't (even in places where it is legal). The majority of people who have been infected by HIV as a sex worker are in that situation because they are poor and lack other options, not because mean feminists didn't give them condoms. The whole idea that feminists are at fault presupposes that RAPE isn't a huge problem for prostituted women, either. It is the "everyone is totally equal in every economic interaction" fantasy that makes libertarians look like such clueless loonies- the world simply doesn't work that way, and prostitutes are not generally on equal footing with johns. Where did the authors of this piece even come from? How someone could, in public, decide to write an opinion piece while displaying such total ignorance of the average situation of prostitutes is beyond me. I would feel embarrassed to write something without putting a tiny bit of research into it. Here is another "consequence":

Fourthly, male, gay, transgender and gender-fluid sex workers are made invisible. The violence against these groups is ignored, and rarely appears in any of the papers they produce.

Feminists DO talk about gay and transgender prostitutes and violence against GLBTQ people. The fact is that the majority of prostitutes are women and children, so they are discussed the majority of the time. Is there some group of mystery feminists that are against gay rights or ignore GLBTQ people? Outside of the transphobia I have discussed before, I find no basis for the idea that radical feminists leave queers out of their analysis. But lets assume for the sake of argument that the quoted piece is absolutely true- it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the critiques of prostitution against women and children offered by radical feminists. The authors don't say that the critiques of radical feminists aren't applicable to the struggles of queer prostitutes, just that they aren't mentioned enough. That is fine with me.

In fact, male sex workers rarely appear in any of their publications, perhaps, because they assume male sex workers to be gay men.

This is some MRA shit, isn't it? I am surprised the authors aren't bitching about prostate cancer being less popular or how boys are being outpaced by girls in achievement. Hey, why don't they talk about reverse racism next? This article gets harder and harder to read.

Finally, and cumulatively, the discourse actively encourages violence against sex workers. The way something is defined can make a huge difference in how it is perceived and how it is interacted with. When one understands a group of people as ‘other’, different, dirty, filthy, stupid or malevolently manipulative, then one can support or condone the violence that occurs.

So wait, when feminists were saying "sex workers suffer violence and its wrong" it encouraged johns to be violent? The question "how" springs to mind, once again, and goes unanswered. I picture feminists saying all kinds of crazy things in a room together, maybe being repeated later on, and struggle to see their discussion raping anyone. The missing ingredient in the author's world view is rapists. They are required for rape to occur. Once again, the blame for sexual violence has shifted onto women, and words, instead of rapists. Fuck that.

Johns were raping prostitutes long before feminists existed. Feminists are responsible for rape being something other than a property crime in the world. Feminists are the reason we can talk about violence against prostitutes being wrong- the authors act as though feminists are the arbiters of how johns view sex, like johns give a shit about that, or are actually aware of what feminists say about their activities. I doubt all three of those notions. The authors act like the views of feminists could somehow be more harmful than the mainstream construction of sex with a prostitute (he dominates/owns her and its a triumph or that he uses her as a toilet). You know what really makes violence easier? When police don't care about murdered or raped prostitutes. According to the authors mentioning that prostitutes are raped or murdered is the problem, not the lack of investigation. The article goes on to complain about how the terminology is gross and offputting and blah blah blah. If they were able to understand the substance of the arguments the words used would hardly matter.

PZ Myers of pharyngula was once in a similar situation, where some douchebag told him that he should "Lay low and let us do the talking" about a documentary he was in, and I feel compelled to answer the same way he did. Fuck you very much Calum & Jan, you know where you can stick your advice.

what porn is about

2011-01-03T02:57:00.011-07:00

When I discuss pornography with its viewers and fans, there is a really obvious fundamental disconnect between us. The often cited definition of porn, in their view, is "pictures of people having sex, which they enjoy, that are enjoyable to look at". I'll call that the sexy-fun model of pornography for short. I don't know how anyone could define pornography like that, especially considering stories like Nadya Suleman. She is the woman who gave birth to eight babies at once and had a lot of plastic surgery to try and resemble Angelina Jolie. Many people were outraged at her reproductive choice. She is in bad financial shape and some skeevy porn industry dude keeps trying to get her into porn. What is the demand behind this pornography? Why does this experienced porn producer think the porn will sell?

The answer is pretty damn obvious: people hate her, and feel that porn humiliation is a punishment that they would pay to see. It has nothing to do with being attracted to her or wanting nice pictures of sex- between calling her crazy and irresponsible there is a steady flow of insults calling her ugly on most news or blogs about Suleman. She is poor and a man is offering her lots of money to do pornography, offering more each time she turns him down instead of respecting her saying no. Now he is trying to buy her mortgage and shoot porn in her house, as a new way to try and coerce her into doing pornography. Instead of being more proof that pornography isn't about the prostitutes having fun, it is a casual conversation in the national media. It is about her having to make a choice between having a place to live and having sex she really doesn't want to have (if she did, I doubt that money would be needed at all, much less higher and higher monetary offers). Lets say a substantial number of people find her attractive and would like to have sexy fun with suleman, despite the widespread ridicule of her appearance-the desperation for money would kinda get in the way of thinking that she is having any fun at all. She would be paid to fake it, and it should (in theory) bother the sexy-fun model believers a lot.

Some might say that the second condition in my definition of the sexy-fun model is unfair, that it is "work" and that work doesn't have to be fun. I hope that most don't believe that, because I thought most people knew that having sex with someone when you know they really don't want to do it, or when you aren't sure (or cannot be sure) that a person really wants to have sex, you are dealing with rape or sexual assault. There isn't an excuse for it.

If pornography was about fun at all the need for prostitutes in the films to use condoms would be a no-brainer, but it isn't. See, the people who make the films have astutely noticed that skeevy dudes don't like condoms, even when they aren't doing any of the actual fucking. Pornography makers are worried about the bottom line- their profit- and they have to be. It is a requirement of any corporation to worry about that aspect of business the most, people who don't are replaced. As a result, prostituted women and men in pornography end up with HIV and other sexually transmitted infections which are almost completely preventable. If pornography consumers cared about the performers at a basic human level, like they would under the sexy-fun model of pornography, then watching people potentially infect themselves with diseases for money would be really gross to anyone watching. Enjoying something that causes harm to another person is contradictory to the sexy-fun model, and yet there doesn't seem to be any real discussion about the need for condoms from anyone who consumes pornography.

This seems very controversial in our culture, but when other cultures do something equally strange, it is extremely obvious to everyone who sees from the outside. Personal preference for things like fake boobs or shaving are treated like they are untouchable in our culture somehow, that we should all automatically respect any preference another person mentions (even for stuff like BDSM), but won't hesitate to tell you how fucked up foot binding was upon the mention of the practice. Foot binding was a national fetish in china for around 1000 years, with many many women doing it to try and increase their status. Women would break the bones of their feet to meet some weird ideal that didn't really resemble a foot anymore, and it was debilitating. Is the gap between a normal foot and a bound foot that different than between a natural breast and a fake one? Both required painful unnecessary surgery to produce, both have health consequences and secondary beauty standards to accompany the alteration for a complete look. Both bend women's bodies into cartoonish figures that are grotesque when examined by anyone unindoctrinated into the national fetish. What kind of pain and humiliation could have been spared if the chinese of the time had the courage to examine foot binding for what it really was? What kind of suffering can contemporary americans spare women by examining their own preferences? Preferences aren't sacred, and neither is a wank- if you watch pornography you need to think about what your behavior does to other people.

COMMENTS WARNING: Anything about Suleman's attractiveness/not, or about your personal sexual preferences will be deleted because I really don't give a shit about any of that and anyone who does is a tool.

I don't stand with Naomi Wolf

2011-01-03T02:29:00.006-07:00

I understand that human beings are complex (unlike Naomi Wolf and Keith Olberman), and that Julian Assange could totally be a rapist. It doesn't offend me to think that its very possible, and that the women accusing him are not liars or fools, and ALSO think that Assange did something good by starting wikileaks. It is only a contradiction if your mind is so poorly trained at analysis that people can only be funneled into narrow categories of "good" or "bad".

I am also not foolish when it comes to noticing why people get arrested and held for rape- it has less to do with rape and more to do with who the accused is in society. If only Assange had decided on a more popular career (like Roman Polanski, Mike Tyson, or various Priests opted for). At that point he could admit rape and still have a very popular career. Those who were simply accused and not found guilty (like Kobe Byrant, or Larry Flint) don't have a PR problem either. I am sick and tired of the lie that rape accusations ruin lives, it seems to me that no one gives too much of a shit when a famous person is accused of rape. Kobe Bryant still gets to be on commercials, Tyson still gets a cameo in "the hangover" that everyone thinks is so cute. Larry Flint raped his children and got a sappy biographical movie made about him which never mentions the accusations (which came from more than one source about more than one child). He gets called a hero by people, even though he was so callous as to have jokes in Hustler about child molestation after that. Woody Allen can be mentioned for his "genius" in public despite being accused of molesting his kids (including the adopted daughter that he later married). R Kelly doesn't have a PR problem, hell, people think its funny that he treated an underaged girl like a god damned toilet. There are comedy sketches about it. Sexual harassment isn't a big deal in the public eye either- Brett Favre, Clarence Thomas, Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc. Where is the life ruining outrage? Its just jokes, mostly. Only one person mentioned above ever served time for any of this. Meanwhile, I get a nasty grinning Eliot Spitzer on the Colbert Report while the prostituted woman he purchased gets all kinds of shit dumped on her from every direction. Following that trend, the women involved in the cases were harassed and hated for having said anything about it at all. Polanski's victim wanted charges to be dropped so that she wouldn't have to put up with the media calling her "lolita" and blaming her anymore, the strategy of the Kobe Byrant defense was to shame the victim out of the suit (a weird strategy considering that their position was that she was a shameless money hungry liar), the ones that didn't have outright aggression pointed at them were simply ignored.

How relieved would a rape victim feel knowing that officials would find some other reason to put their perpetrator in jail in the absence of rape? I would have to ask the women who accused him, but I doubt that it is very comforting to know that your perp is only in trouble because of the "luck" of their being a nuisance to the powers that be. It has as little to do with justice for rape as possible. It is a government not giving a shit about rape while pretending to do so, meanwhile a bunch of so called liberal people show their true colors while talking about this issue, and encourage fratboy The Daily Show style sexist bs. I am not sure what they are protecting him from- if Assange is given some kind of prison sentence, it certainly won't be for raping anyone. Having said that, why don't pundits leave the victims out of their comments? Naomi Wolf and Keither Olbermann have both opted to make the women the heart of their analysis (saying that the women are in the CIA or are too dumb to see they weren't raped), as if any of the reaction has anything to do with them. What is mostly inaction towards rape accusations could be discussed and brought to light for the tragedy it is, but those two (and many others) chose victim blaming instead. The world is very depressing sometimes.

school

2010-12-24T13:25:00.005-07:00

Its north korea week in unschool- I have been watching documentaries and reading about north korea with the step spawn.

For those who don't know, its a creepy totalitarian state that is almost exactly like what is describedi n 1984. The big brother figure is "The General" Kim Jong Il, and everyone gives him thanks and credit whenever anything good happens, and curses america whenever something bad happens. Well, "everyone" I mean the people who are allowed to be praise-bots because they aren't starving to death or being enslaved in concentration camps. There aren't any internet or cell phones, and pictures of kim jong il riding a horse/being idolized are everywhere. Its fucking frightening.

The kids who get to go to school get to take revolutionary history classes that teach all this garbage about how great the general is, along with some true stuff about how america fucked their country up by leveling half of it with napalm during the korean war.

Kids in korea who were interviewed consistently cited schooling as a reason to agree with the general. They pass tests about that and get A's. People there call it "education". People here can see how that is a problem in a korean revolutionary history class, but not in their own native schools. People who see the wrong in korea still call schooling "education", despite the obvious conflict involved with that. The method of schooling can be used to indoctrinate people into ANY belief system- isn't that the opposite of education? Isn't education a process of gaining authentic knowledge? If the same method that can teach facts can be used with equal effectiveness to teach complete fabrications how can it be called education at all? I recall times when I really learned things, as I am sure all of you have, and found it difficult to draw really erroneous conclusions (like "kim jong il is god" or "the earth is 6000 years old") while exercising curiosity. Real education is the antithesis to schooling, because it is extremely difficult for a person to mislead themselves- reasons that people lie to themselves about knowledge are completely imposed from the outside by authoritarian structures.

When people learn for the sake of it, what they feel comfortable concluding isn't clouded by punishment and reward systems. It is an easy, enjoyable, non-stop process when learning is no longer synonymous with authority. This isn't to say that people who self educate always make the right conclusions or only learn true things, we all make mistakes like anyone else. However, a person who self educates has to think and understand to draw any conclusion, this is already miles ahead of how many people who are well schooled think. A commenter here linked to a book that I have read in full online called The Authoritarians, it is a book of psychological study information about followers of authoritarians. A striking aspect of authoritarian thinking is that they are constantly compartmentalizing knowledge in such a way that they never scan for consistency or see the problem with double think. People are only capable of this feat because they haven't HAD to learn anything, There has always been a whole society of people telling them what to do and when, and what the results will be if they follow the rules.

This view of knowledge and education is apparent whenever a person with a passing interest in biology argues with a creationist- a creationist will act as though people who learned about biology learned about it in the same way that they had learned about creationism. What I mean by that is a creationist will treat you like you read books full of assertions and comforting sentiments and memorized em, and that it was just a different set of ideas from theirs. The idea of books being filled with information that anyone can investigate and verify on their own, and that someone would investigate it, is foreign to them. Many progressives who see the issue with that do not seem to understand that schooling treats knowledge the exact same way the creationists do. Schooling compartmentalizes knowledge into "subjects" in a truly arbitrary fashion, and champions test passing over applied knowledge. I can see why they do- you cannot force a person to actually learn, but you can force them to learn temporarily to pass a test so they don't get in trouble. If applied knowledge was the standard of schooling almost every kid in it would be failing, even the really obedient ones.

The exaltation of compulsory schooling, from progressives and conservatives, makes learning seem like it is far away from every day life. The illusion that learning is in the realm of people in universities and corporations that write text books, instead of all around us, is a very useful facade for people who run things. Authorities can behave incompetently without any threat from their subordinates in those circumstances. The falsehood of it has caused trouble for people in positions of authority countless times. Genius is as common as dirt- people who know how to think know when they are being defrauded. People who don't have instructions and prescribed orders for everything end up having to develop their minds in order to live a good life. Factory workers who lacked formal education came up with the same ideas as Marx without being aware of his work, printed it in their own newspapers, and organized based on it back in the day. People in my generation learned much more about computers from informal experimentation and family/friend interaction than by any mass education program. Everyone I know feels comfortable using one. The computer classes in my district were taught exclusively on macs, for fucks sake.

There were so many days when I studied the oppression of different people and wondered how so many people could be so oblivious to problems all around them- and I believe schooling is the missing piece of the puzzle. It really beats the urge to learn out of people, and they get rewarded for doing mind numbing and nonsensical things so much that they are conditioned for a life of servitude to the privileged classes (you know, the ones who made school what it is and write the textbooks and make the truancy laws). Schooling as a tool of social control has worked out wonderfully- the culture of strikes and labor disputes that were rampant among "uneducated" americans is so foreign to most americans now. They don't know what the hell you are talking about when you talk about the company being unfair, or the bosses being incompetent.

School as social control seems controversial to many people, they immediately say "conspiracy theory", when the people who said so weren't hiding it. It isn't even hidden in the conventional reasons people give for mandatory schooling. Creating "good citizens" is a conventional reason to have mandatory schooling. Who determines what makes for a good citizen? Obviously the government has the main role in determining that, and they would be absolute fools to undermine their own authority. The disdain that powerful people have for democracy is one of the more obvious elements involved with reading the wikileaks cables, and other leaked documents from the past.

A coworker of mine recently expressed why he doesn't care about politics- "you can't tell who is telling you the truth anyway", he says. He is a well schooled person. Many degrees, in difficult subjects. He still cannot figure out why his (completely reasonable, widely supported, zero cost) proposal keeps being rejected by the bosses. He could pass a lot of tests I couldn't, but he has also been prevented from seeing things that are right in front of his face- things that directly affect his condition in day to day life. He was bewildered once when I suggested that the news isn't always factual. He learned the real lessons of schooling.

download your insurance

2010-12-11T10:59:00.003-07:00

If you read my blog and are unaware of the wikileaks insurance packet...... well, go to any news website, christ. Its your chance to use downloading some shit on the internet to help wikileaks stay open. Its encrypted highly sensitive information, the key to it will be released upon something happening to wikileaks or the founder of it. The more people that download it, the less of a chance there is that those who do can be prosecuted for doing so. Last time I checked tens of thousands of people had downloaded it, but hundreds would be even better. I am downloading mine now, heres the link.

Pass it on to your friends!

Authoritarian bullshit

2010-12-01T11:07:00.007-07:00

I've been subject to a lot of authoritarian bullshit in my lifetime, being a worker in a capitalist system, and it amazes me how consistent this form of bullshit is. It is the same set of lies, from political or religious authorities all the way down to a manager at your work. The same line is given to the public, and most are so well trained in following orders (via processing systems like religion, schooling, and consumerist culture) that they just cease to think much at all anymore.

My recent transition from the work force (which earns money) to a more managerial role (of using the money other people earn) has given me a lot of perspective on the matter. The moral opposition I felt to taking the position was complicated by my curiosity about what people who have power do and say when the workers aren't around to hear it. Being in on meetings and interviews with these people was a lot less exciting than I pictured it to be- there is quite literally nothing exceptional about the level of discourse involved with it. Regular working people are exactly as insightful and intelligent, they just aren't allowed to make any decisions (despite being the ones primarily affected by managerial decisions). There isn't any effort to hide the disdain that managers feel towards workers, either. They are trouble, see. If they would just do what they were told instead of having all these troublesome impulses to think and act independently, things would be just peachy! Managers even get mad when these policy violating renegades do something BETTER than the stated policy would have. A lot of projection is also done to workers- for instance, I was told that when more competent workers are saddled with an unfairly large share of work they feel "valued". It was quite clear that no one had asked the workers how they felt, most had expressed quite the opposite to me. I cannot blame them- being paid hourly and earning more than others for the company is a shitty deal. They are right to feel that way, and in order to keep believing in her own authority, that particular manager had to believe something other than the truth. Acknowledging that we are in fact exploiting the workforce would make the exercise of authority over them feel bad for those who do it. I do my best to serve the employees instead of my managers, and though I don't expect it to go well, I also cannot ethically choose to prioritize the needs of those who benefit from unfairly dominating the workers, and take the money the workers have earned.

The need to dominate is built into top down power structures- the behavior is rewarded and selected for. At my work I can no longer read any news web sites. It wasn't that productivity had been demonstrably affected by allowing workers to view news web sites, it was that a supervisor had observed what they considered to be an excessive amount of news reading in our work area during one particular visit. It was completely at their discretion, never justified to anyone, and arbitrary in the most complete sense of the word. Each of us is allotted 15 minutes of time to read whatever we want (as long as it doesn't cause a hostile work environment) on the internet, but news web sites are excluded from this. I objected that people use news sites to get home during bad weather (because they do), and my objection was dismissed immediately. The policy will not be changed. I can look at cake wrecks at work, but I can't see weather.com.

The hostility towards the general population is apparent in all the power structures that dominate our lives. The recent Wikileaks cables show that in great detail, although previous documents that show frank discussions between government officials (like the pentagon papers) have shown the same thing over and over again. There is a very real disdain shown towards democracy of any sort, from those who are in power. I wonder if people who feel this is correct are selected for, or if the need for such a sick mindset evolves out of necessity. The latter is more likely than the former, if you ask me. It seems as though people in power are more or less interchangeable, that the systems they exist within determine their behavior to a much greater extent than any other variable. In order to believe you are qualified to lead others, you must believe you know better than they do, period.

It is sort of remarkable that people in power are freaking out over the wikileaks cables to such a great extent. The conclusions that can be drawn from reading the documents are hardly news at all to privileged people. The audience of wikileaks is much too large, and it subverts authority in going around the prescribed (and less effective) ways to spread word of political assholery. The government responds by saying that being exposed makes people less safe- as though this kind of shit hasn't landed us in countless wars by now. It is hard to argue that this information being kept secret DOESN'T endanger lives. The danger of having the public know how things actually work has been swiftly punished in a way that say, Noam Chomsky is not (which isn't to say that he hasn't been spied on by the government-he has). People are calling for the death of the wikileaks founder, who now has espionage charges filed against him here. The danger of the public knowing is that they might DO something about it, take the power away from the elites.

Just like the secrecy in corporate meetings, the secrecy in government meetings are given a veneer of legitimacy that is completely undeserved. The documents released from the past show consistently that the secretive business was done to protect elite people from the public, generally to further some abhorrent cause- in short, something that people should have known about because their tax dollars funded it. The government insists that the secrecy is for our safety, even when it clearly is not. Meanwhile, they demand that the rest of us surrender any privacy when boarding an airplane, even when the measures involved would not have prevented the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is hard for it to be any clearer that all these measures are about control rather than safety, every step of the way. How to change or destroy systems of domination is a debate that I haven't decided on yet, but it is clear that it must happen if there is to be a real future for humans- for lives lived without oppression. Systems of corporate domination threaten our environment, which at a minimum could ruin the chances for human achievement and meaningful existence.

Cheerleading for Science

2010-11-23T10:41:00.007-07:00

There are science cheerleaders, who wear skimpy outfits and write cheers for science. Scicurious and Zuska blogged their problems with the science cheerleaders, and the posts are worth reading. Andrea Kuszewski blogged her support for science cheerleading, with many points that I find to be rather empty.

As usual, supporters of feminine drag try to boil down the problems with this (or other "sexy" events from women scientists/engineers/skeptics) to proving that women can be sexy AND smart. They say the value of being conventionally sexy and thinking is to prove that it can happen, it hurts stereotypes according to these folks. All the angry feminists seem to just hate sexuality or want to castrate everyone (as usual, amirite??!!).

This is puzzling when one considers what stereotypes are. Stereotypes are not rational conclusions that individuals draw or discredit in the face of evidence. They are socially constructed archetypes that are useful to people in power. Social constructions are ideas that are owned collectively by society, and that are not changed on the basis of individual assertions.
For instance, I have a piece of paper that everyone agrees represents one dollar of spending power. Nothing I do as an individual changes that, I can say that my dollar is really worth 100, but it won't change anything about how my socially constructed dollar is treated in society. Concepts of women and sexuality are not in the hands of individual women. They can assert that they are smart and sexy and therefore powerful, but it won't change how society in general treats them. The original problem of being stereotyped wasn't one based on seeing the lack of porn 2K compliant women in science, and a wealth of porn 2K compliant women in science won't fix it. When stereotypes about women are presented as being fixable by women the onus is put on us to end our own oppression, instead of on men to, you know, stop oppressing us. Stereotypes are a tool used to control other people, and as long as people focus on the stereotype of the day instead of the actual problem of power imbalance then nothing will really change, only tactics. The fact that the stereotypes of women benefit men isn't an issue in the discussion I linked to at all. They get to sit back and judge and pass around their verdict and it affects real womens lives. What smart women should (supposedly) do to fight this is to disprove the stereotype by pleasing those same men (by being sexy and buying stuff and shaving things and acting bubbly). Fuck that, I say. The behavior of asshole men is the problem, one that should be fixed by their cutting it the fuck out, not by women resembling the porn fantasies of their oppressors. I think that if more women were unconcerned with pleasing men, with what they think of women, that they might begin to learn that women aren't there to please them or fix their stupid piggish ideas. Its not our job- so why act like it is? Conforming to what men want doesn't bring that much benefit to individual women anyway (more on that later).

The article refers to people who have a problem with cheeerleading as people who have problem with women showing off their sexuality, trying to make us all seem like repressed prudes. It is a completely unfair way to dismiss the very real points of women like Scicurious and Zuska, and an attitude that I deal with often. I feel tempted to share my slut cred when that happens, but it has nothing to do with my history or me, it has to do with my arguments. Calling feminists prudes is extremely intellectually lazy, but goes on constantly. For people who trumpet the virtue of enjoying sexuality so much, they don't seem to have much respect for sexuality that differs from the mainstream (pornography). Cheerleading isn't sex, and it shouldn't be equated with sex (neither should porn or stripping or women or parts of women). It is as though a sexuality outside of trying to look like a sexbot for men is foreign to fun feminists. Outside of being completely hypocritical, this attitude also ignores gay people completely. It also reeks of white privilege- women of color who blog about sexuality will tell you how not fun it is to be sexualized. They can't choose NOT to be seen that way, while white people argue about if it is fun or not to put on the uniform and take it off at will.

The social construction of cheerleaders isn't represented well in Andrea's article either. I have no doubt at all that cheerleading is very difficult as a sport and requires a lot of talent and that the stated goal is to give support to the main players (a concept worthy of gender analysis by itself), but that doesn't change the function of cheerleaders in society or how they are treated. Many men treat cheerleaders like meat, or like models of femininity that other women are made to aspire to. The article I linked to actually equates it with sexuality, as though sexuality is a thing we can all point to and agree on instead of something that varies wildly and is extremely personal. Any genuine representation of sexuality would never be so narrow and uniform to begin with.

I mentioned cheerleaders as being essentially an advertisement for correct femininity- the implication is that there is some sort of reward, but there isn't. There are countless examples of how women in power get humiliated and derided in a gendered fashion for being too attractive or not attractive enough, but few examples work as well as Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. One had hate porn made of her, one was derided for being unnattractive. There is not any way for women to look "correct", to look or act or speak in a way that causes others to take her seriously. I think women should look and act in a way that is unconcerned with men (unless there is a threat of violence or poverty involved with being unconcerned). Thats what I do. Resembling myself instead of a 2D representation of what "sexy" women are supposed to look like isn't "ignoring my sexuality", as Andrea asserts. Shaving and putting on cosmetics has nothing to do with being a woman or being sexy, it has to do with what we all read in a magazine or saw on television about it for our whole lives. If I had grown up somewhere else or at a different time it would probably involve a bunch of completely different weird and painful rituals. It keeps women busy and hungry and dependent for self worth, and it gives men a way to have power over any woman he encounters. He is the arbiter of her fuckability, and she is supposed to take it pretty seriously no matter how she is rated. It sells a lot of shit as well, which cements the usefulness of beauty stereotypes in our capitalist society. Being conventionally sexy takes a lot of time and money for most people, and there has to be some sort of reward at the end in order to make women want that. There isn't a real one- the ones we are all sold as young women are illusory.There isn't a appearance requirement for finding partners (or not) or having great sex. Wanting to have a bunch of sex isn't even what everyone wants to do with their time. We have been sold that idea, in such a powerful way that the majority of people who analyze the problem don't acknowledge the beliefs- they are supposed to be a given, a foundation that everyone can agree on.

Being smart and conventionally sexy is more about blending existing stereotypes than actually defying any of them, and it sure as fuck helps men more than women. They get more fuck meat to stare at and more reason to give women unwilling to conform more shit. If that is a solution, I want no part in it.

masculinity- its made of double think

2010-11-17T11:05:00.004-07:00

The essence of contemporary masculinity is toughness. The entire point of masculinity seems to be to display how tough one can be (physically, emotionally, sexually, etc). Being dominant over others is key in showing how tough (and therefore masculine) a man is. There are a couple of things that make it internally inconsistent- I have had a difficult time knowing where to start, but this topic has been nagging at me for so long that I simply have to write.

Firstly, what is defined as toughness seems to be the opposite of that. For instance- tough manly men aren't supposed to suffer insults to their masculinity, and the correct response is either to threaten violence against the insulter or actually carry it out. This also goes for slights against property (including wives, girlfriends, or children). That is a hysterical reaction of the worst sort, and signifies a complete lack of ability to deal with inconvenience. That is how very young children act because they don't understand that the world contains other people who matter and feel the way they do. The attitude I refer to can and does get plenty of young men killed. They drive their cars fast and kill each other and beat each other up- there are a lot of young men who end up in trauma bays as a result of needing to live up to masculine ideals.

Insulting a mans masculinity is in itself a bit strange in concept, since it entails feminizing him. That is the ultimate insult to a masculine dude, and they lose their shit when it happens. Men who buy into this shit literally cannot deal with even the suggestion of being feminine, which again smacks of immature bullshit and most of all a weak sense of self. Women walk around actually being women in society all the time, and they deal with it quite well, considering. The real fear involved with being a woman- fearing the violence of men, having no real recourse- is something that women deal with every day, and we are told to quit being so fucking wussy when we dare to complain about it. The tiny insults to our character and minds that we suffer every day in conversations and social interaction is another thing that would drive a privileged man insane if he had to deal with it for even a short period of time. Even the suggestion that women shouldn't have to deal with their sexism makes some of em freak out. Dominance could almost be defined as being unable to accept not getting your way, doing anything to remedy that.

Truth is that no one is as tough as a masculine archetype, and all the dudes pretending need help in order to even come close. Human beings with deficiencies in empathy and who use others as a means to an end have been identified as pathological for a good reason- they fuck up society (despite what fiction books like the fountainhead have to say about it). In order to feel as though they have some claim on exclusive male specialness via dominance, they need the rest of us to prop up their egos, it isn't possible for normal people to feel that way otherwise. What happens when women refuse to do this service is one part sad and one part hilarious- it is the stuff of the meltdowns I witness regularly on various feminist sites. I recently saw a man say "what do you want me to do- cut my goddamn penis off?!?!" in response to an anti porn post, that kind of childish and hysterical response to feminism is pretty standard, online or IRL. It is much like the end of Bruno, where wrestling fans almost start crying after being exposed to queerness, slamming around folding chairs and otherwise having tantrums. The dudes go through life without a constant barrage of shit telling them that they are worthless, so they aren't hardened to that reality the way women are. Men don't work much for how tough they supposedly are, either. Women work for free so much that it doesn't even get called "work" when it happens, and do so for less money when they do get paid. The rituals of beauty that women endure for the status quo are also very painful, time consuming, and something most men would find to be really unbearable; it is in stark contrast to the comfort they are currently allowed as part of being tough. Femininity as a weak emotional nurturey thing doesn't make much sense in light of all this, either. Could the cultural concept of gender roles make less sense? We are all so thoroughly indoctrinated into it that most people adhere to the nonsense concepts as being natural and sensible somehow. There are whole hoardes of dudes who argue about how this bucket of non-sequiturs "evolved" to serve a "purpose".

Masculine men need the rest of the population to at least appear to buy into their superior toughness for it to work at all. Many women do this under the threat of violence or poverty from the perpetual children, so I can't exactly blame em. Women who can refuse to buy into the charade should though, to try and change the social landscape. There are recent movements from within the ranks of dudes to change what masculinity is, and if they get somewhere with it the world will be a better place.

Transphobia

2010-10-28T10:37:00.005-06:00

I have been on the hunt for more feminist blogs to read during the past month or so, and outside of Rage Against The Manchine every blog I come across has some transphobic shit in it.

It breaks my heart. Most of the blogs refer to transpeople as "men" and ridicule them for daring to attempt to pass as women. Some of the women don't count themselves as feminists so much as separatists, but some do. Well known feminists like Germaine Greer and Mary Daly have made transphobic comments before, too.

These are women who know certain things- like that gender is largely a performance in our society, and that living with violence and discrimination is a painful part of every day life for women. Knowing those two things makes it very difficult to know where to start on critiquing transphobic feminists- it seems self explanatory that trans people have to perform femininity well because they are under a much greater threat of violence and discrimination if they do not. Trans people are such a low priority that lawyers can sell juries on the idea that being trans makes for provocation of violence. You can fire someone for being trans and it is completely legal most places. It is so far on the list that places fighting for gay rights in the workplace and housing don't bother to include trans people because they don't want to press their luck. It seems as though every group that trans people might find to include themselves in rejects them or downgrades their concerns, all while they face murder and assault and rape at astronomical rates and really need some fucking support. The fact that trans people make up a relatively small portion of the population makes it difficult as well- though gay rights groups have made a lot of progress with that same hurdle, so perhaps there is still some hope.

A lot of the anger from transphobic feminists is in the perception that these are men who choose to be trans somehow (I am primarily talking about mtf trans people because it is what these cis women take issue with most often). The tiniest amount of research into transsexualism reveals how far from the truth that idea is. Just like with gay people, it seems absurd that anyone would want to endure the social stigma and threat of violence that comes with being trans. It isn't something that people can will themselves out of- it is a matter of identity, which each of us has at their core. It is a consistent feature that the feelings of identifying with a different physical sex emerge in childhood and continue throughout life. I know this because I was once curious about transgender people, and instead of deciding what they were I went and read about it from researchers. In that time I also turned up information on what is now being called the transabled- they are a group of people who have the need to change their body in a fundamental way not related to gender. Commonly it means the wish to amputate a perfectly functional part, like a leg or a foot or a finger. They too feel this way for their whole lives, and feel relief upon getting the limb removed. Other phenomenon like phantom limb syndrome points to a part of the human mind which constructs a deeply meaningful picture of what our bodies *should* be. It seems to me like transsexual folks have the misfortune of having a misogynist society scrutinize their issue in a way a transabled person would not. I have no doubt that in a society free of gender roles and sexualized violence there would still be trans people, who would have more safe options about how to appear and act and speak.

Objections to being trans inclusive ring kinda hollow to me. All of them boil down to the same thing- women won't accept transwomen as authentic women. Some will say they don't want to include male bodied transwomen because of possible safety issues for cis women. If that was the end of it there wouldn't be much of a problem, because cis women could give trans women their own space and RESPECT for their own separate sexuality, but that isn't what happens. Cis women now use the gender binary against trans people in a way that reinforces misogynist ideas about what makes people female or male. Not only does it ignore that sex is a spectrum, but it also shows the hateful nature of these comments from ciswomen.

It never ceases to amaze me that some people can so totally get what is wrong with oppression of one sort, but not another. On the flip side, I recently watched Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda. It is an awful movie, one that was very daring for its time about cross dressing and transgender issues. The director obviously had these issues himself, and risked a lot in making the film. About ten minutes in the narrator talks about "less civilized cultures" and shows footage of a bunch of black people dancing and beating drums in cartoonish masks around a fire on a truly shitty set. I was fucking shocked. It seems like everyone has serious flaws in the ability to perceive wrongs perpetrated against other groups.

UPDATE: There has been a new reason to discriminate against transpeople that I have recently become aware of, and I want to add to this post rather than restating all the stuff in this post.

I Blame The Patriarchy has gone dude free as a policy. An inquisitive poster asked what trans people should do, and the usual shit storm surrounding trans people began. There is a conversation about if radical feminist sites like IBTP should include trans people in the discussions, if they are relevant, and if they can really contribute anything. A few arguments I see over and over:

The first argument is:
They are men. They grew up like males and had male privilege so they don't know what the oppression of women is about.

There isn't a one size fits all oppression of women. Where you grew up, who raised you, what race you are, how much you weigh, how much money you had, how much education you had access to, etc ALL affect the way that women experience oppression. The oppression facing white upper class academic women isn't going to be the same as the kind affecting lower class hispanic immigrant women. Its basic shit that everyone at IBTP knows about, and the intersection of privilege and oppression is often discussed there, but women aren't told to not talk about women's oppression because of how they experienced it.

The idea that the way society treats someone during childhood should be the criteria for real womanhood doesn't have much merit. I spent several years as a child being mistaken for a boy. I dressed that way to increase the frequency of being treated like a boy. It made the realization that I couldn't be one of the guys that much harder when it happened later in my life, but I sorta got a kick out of people thinking I was a boy and persisted with it for at least 3 years, maybe more, if I recall correctly. I was an uncover girl. It gave me a view into what boys, and society in general, thought about my real self from time to time. They didn't like me a whole lot. I couldn't be mistaken for a boy everywhere of course, so it wasn't a complete disguise. Trans people know they are trans from a very early age. They are undercover in a way that is a lot more difficult to deal with, because they cannot just take off a disguise and be accepted for their inside self the way that I could. Then there are people like David Reimer, who was raised as a girl after an accident destroyed most of his male genitalia as a child. The theory at the time was that sex identity could be changed and molded at the convenience of parents, but it didn't work out. David spent his whole childhood having femininity shoved down his throat and it did not take. He grew up and found out about his past and the reassignment surgery and immediately began trying to live as a man. Would David, who always felt that he was a man, be invited to participate in feminist discussions (like the ones on IBTP) by virtue of his childhood experiences? I sorta doubt that someone who is so into being a dude would be welcomed.

The point of going through the mix of sexist oppression isn't to try and equate any of them or to say what is the worst sort of oppression vs others, it is to say that there are a lot of lines being drawn to exclude trans people where they wouldn't be to exclude other people that feminists embrace. No one asked me what I was treated like as a child before deciding I was worth talking to on IBTP. This standard is brand fucking new, and unless some scale is created to measure how much of a say we all get based on how much sexism we experienced as children I find the entire thing to be really useless. Transwomen experience sexism right now- that matters a lot to me. It seems as though that should be the primary consideration when inviting or silencing others in a conversation about feminism. I do not see a reason why the experiences of transwomen cannot be seen as a variety of female experience the way that other intersections of privilege and sex discrimination are.

The anatomy of a rape joke

2010-10-25T17:29:00.003-06:00

Usually, when people hear a rape joke in mixed company, most are reluctant to laugh. A few always do though. I have heard them at work, a couple of times, and people are always very sorry when they are called on it.

Is this a sign of male decency? Fuck no, its not. When you understand what is so damn *funny* to these dudes about a rape joke, you don't really care if they are willing to distance themselves publicly from the more egregious representations of the rape joke- you know that usually the willingness to say or laugh at a rape joke once means a commitment to the ideology of the joke. Its not just rape either- jokes about domestic violence or child abuse fit in with this analysis. The theme of each one is common.

Frat boys at stanford university recently came under scrutiny for chanting, among other things, "no means yes, yes means anal". This was supposed to be a joke- but it isn't. There are women who heard it, women subject to that reality. The point was to make women uncomfortable or to make theoretical women uncomfortable with rape or anal sex. The point is that it is funny to make women feel bad, to invade their space, in order to make a dude feel good. This is a disgustingly common element of "humor" in our society.

There are countless movies with a rape scene as a joke that isn't ever named that (revenge of the nerds, 16 candles, crank, invention of lying etc). It blends into the background because audiences need someone to say "GEE SOUNDS LIKE RAPE" in order to comprehend that fucking someone against their will=rape. Unless a stranger leaps out of a bush it is completely incomprehensible to the average person that rape doesn't necessarily involve weapons or scary black men. The joke is usually made "acceptable" when the woman wakes up the next day deciding she was in love with the rapist or liked it a lot. It is how the humilation is made funny. But guess what- it isn't. If you rape someone and they end up being in love with you afterward its called stockholm syndrome, not comedy. Tricking women into having sex is a standard meme in the comedy world- in real life, fucking someone who would no want to fuck you without coercion or lying or trickery is damaging to people it happens to.

It goes all the way down to when men create practical jokes to make women uncomfortable and laugh at them. This is a milder form of a really horrible rape joke. The punchline is exactly the same. It has happened to me. I don't deal well with loud noises, and working in a place full of dry ice and immature dudes = occasional ice bombs made out of little plastic tubes or bags or whatever. When I expressed my displeasure at the planning of such a device a group of dudes decided to point and laugh, informing that I too would have laughed upon seeing my face- except I wouldn't, because I am not a sick piece of shit who finds amusement in the suffering of others. I look back on days when I could with a severe sense of shame (shows like southpark come to mind).

Because I do not enjoy other people suffering, I am assigned the humorless feminist trope. If that is what constitutes humor, I don't see a point in being involved. I know for a fact that hurting someone else is not the only kind of humor out there- I Blame The Patriarchy is a constant source of amusement, as are non sexist pieces of satire, among other things.

Creationists aren't the only ones who think the Flintstones was a documentary...

2010-09-30T10:33:00.003-06:00

I have been following a debate on youtube lately, and it involves some dudes arguing about feminism and biology. Its right up my alley, but I am not much for video debates.

Mr1001nights bases his views of women on Pick Up Artistry and pop evolutionary psychology. I apparently want a "strong" man to protect me. Am I defective in picking a man who doesn't give a fuck about competing in petty masculinity contests? According to these guys I must be, because my cave woman brain isn't behaving the way it is "wired" to. Anyway, both participants are not fans of science (from what I can tell), so a lot of the language is missing from the debate. RubbleofEmpires tends to take the opposite side from mr1001nights because the outlook of PUA's oppresses women.

The truth is that we have no fucking clue how our brains are "wired" to pick mates or perform any other complex task. IQ tests would be meaningful if the mechanism of learning was known, for instance, because then it could be measured in a way that deals with the process (what learning IS in the brain) rather than trying to take an imperfect measurement of the result (via testing, which may or may not correlate strongly with learning). The same problem arises for choosing mates- you cannot make serious claims about the evolution of the mind regarding mate picking without having some idea of how the process works on a biological level. There are many possibilities out there for explaining why there are trends for picking mates. It could be completely a matter of nurture- where the structures in the brain that contribute to the choosing are formed far after birth and can be altered. It could be completely nature, all of our actions could be. There could be that no structure exists and that the entire thing happens because of something supernatural. It could be that a generation is enough to alter the "hard wired" portions of the brain in charge of mate selection, making the life of cave people irrelevant. Running through all the possibilities is a bit like trying to explain disease before germ theory- we are that far behind understanding any of it, and something fantastic and unknown could be involved, making speculation pretty useless.

Another unknown factor presents itself- the history of the selection pressures. The whole thing assumes a social life that is similar to the way that the Flintstones lived, which is to say that it mirrors a 1950's style relationship between the sexes. Many progressive types are willing to ridicule the creation museum for having a dinosaur with a saddle, but won't laugh at the idea that human history involved motives similar to those on leave it to beaver. The history of man has been complicated and the relationship between the sexes still varies a lot based on location (third genders exist in many places ffs), and it always has been complex and varied. I doubt that most people comfortable generalizing about women in light of evolutionary psychology would feel okay about generalizing about women based on their ethnicity- after all, women of Iroquois descent would be different in mate selection than those of irish descent, if history alters those faculties. The idea seems absurd to some more liberal men when applied to race, but I am unsure why they cannot apply their idea to race as well as sex- it makes about as much sense.

The last ridiculous item is how these EP people seem to assume that there are a set of genes for boys, and a set for girls (if you accept their theory that nature is the primary decider of these things). As in- if women select for strong smart men, because women are gentle and weak, they will have strong male children and weak female children. Reality doesn't work that way. Some genes are expressed differently based on sex, but if that was the case with these traits they wouldn't be passed on to both sexes. The Y chromosome doesn't have much in the way of male only genes, and since girls get the traits in question they are clearly not exclusively in that male specific set. The vast majority of traits are passed on to children of any sex. Women have strong female children, weak boys, girls who are fantastic at math, boys who are awesome empathizers and caregivers, etc. The traits that get passed on that mr1001nights claim are gendered clearly are not- we can see that men and women can both be recipients of the traits he claims to be gendered, which means that its pretty impossible to select for them in a gendered way.

If it really is that hard to let go of the idea that the past must have some major significance on the way that men and women pick mates then the least dudes like mr1001nights could do is pick a model that doesn't totally oppress me. The idea that women need and like to be protected has been the driving force between locking them up in homes or blaming them for rape when they step outside of one. The idea that women are too delicate or inept in any area has been taken to every extreme to oppress women- the intent of dudes who are into EP is meaningless, I don't care if they think that their opinions don't have to end in that or that it shouldn't, IT DOES. It is the real effect on women that is undeniable and makes the sexist speculation so infuriating to me. No one knows this stuff and people who say they do are full of shit, and happen to always pick models that hurt me and other women, and countless men as well. Not to mention that the analysis NEVER shows any respect for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, or trans people. They are real demographics with a consistent percentage of the population throughout time, and they get fucked over by these assumptions too. Gay people are shamed for being divergent from prescribed gender roles, the kind that EP and PUA enforce on the rest of society. Gay people sometimes kill themselves over the shame of it.

The debate starts here, and rubble of empires videos are all worth watching so enjoy.

For people who haven't studied anything about evolution, here is a summary:
*a population of animals is moved away from the original group (they migrate, get stuck in a new area, natural disasters separate them, etc)
*the population has a bunch of babies (evolution happens in populations, not individuals)
*not all of them live, because of selection pressures from the environment (like brown bunnies are spotted more easily in snowy climates and die more)
*sometimes animals mutate, and a small amount of mutations are beneficial in the environment that the animals live in (like if there had only been brown bunnies and a lighter colored mutant emerged in the snowy climate)
*the animals who benefit from the mutation tend to live longer and have more babies that carry the mutation (eventually more and more of the bunnies have lighter fur)
* who survives depends on the environment more than who is "better" or "fittest" (the white bunnies would be easier prey in a non snowy climate)
*evolution has absolutely no end goal in mind, it is just what happened (neither color is better than the other, and there was no choice or intent involved in any of this)
*complex systems can emerge given enough time in this system (like eyes and clotting factors in blood)

What our labor is worth

2010-09-25T11:04:00.005-06:00

In my ethics class long ago, our instructor started talking about the ideas of Marx. It was very hard for me to grasp at first, and I think I figured out why.

Marx said that the value of labor is taken from workers, and passed up the chain to people who own the means of production (like factory owners). We still work in an economy based on ownership, people who own land or corporations make money off of it simply for that reason. They don't do any labor that creates profit or product. The idea that people who don't work shouldn't eat is often repeated, but aimed at the rich (rather than the poor, as is popular now).

This was really obvious in a setting like a factory, where things are produced. Any worker can see their product passing down an assembly line and know roughly how much it will be sold for, and how much they earn of what they produce. It was something that many people who never heard of marx figured out on their own, such as labor rights activists of the industrial revolution. It is impossible to ignore.

I haven't ever made anything for a living in my entire life though (well, besides sandwhiches briefly). Manufacturing jobs got shifted to other countries or to illegal immigrants, who were paid less and didn't have the resources to go on strike or demand better treatment. The most dramatic recent shift of this sort happened around the time that NAFTA was signed by the US, Mexico, and Canada. This bill was signed under president Clinton, whose administration then began Operation Gatekeeper to militarize the border. The massive influx of immigrants was expected, because the signers knew that this measure would shift wealth to the small already wealthy upper classes. Some things allowed under NAFTA included flooding the mexican market with subsidized US corn, putting farmers out of business and destroying options for mexicans to earn money independently. Factory jobs were created in places where populations were desperate, or made desperate, and so they were done for almost no money.

On our side of the border, jobs shifted to the service sector. Reports from the government on NAFTA either report that jobs weren't lost or jobs were gained, but the kind of jobs gained were lower paying service sector jobs. I also believe that service jobs demoralize workers in a very specific way- they do not have a product leaving their hands and no way to easily measure what value the company gains from their labor. It all seems very ambiguous and may be impossible to find out without breaking company rules and digging into financial reports behind management's back. The value of service labor is as a real as the value of manufacturing labor, but it is much easier to obscure the inherent unfairness involved when doing service work. A service worker cannot easily demonstrate the quality of their work either, since what makes quality service is entirely decided by people who don't do the work. We are all judged on this rubric, and it makes it easy to justify mindless obedience. Workers don't have access to figures that can confirm or deny the success of an alternate tactic, only their managers do (and there is no obligation to be honest). When you make something by hand, its utility is much clearer, much harder to lie about. I worked various phone jobs for technical support and customer service, and things like using a customers first name (creepy) or saying you were sorry for the problem (no one is) were ranked higher in importance than resolving the issue. I never upsold anything, despite being commanded to. I was a really shitty employee by the corporate standard of service, but I fixed a lot of problems and didn't lie to people. My job right now is considered service as well, but it is a more skilled profession. There are equally silly demands made of me here. The most egregious is the command that I stop thinking and using my mind, that I turn over all critical thought to someone who is assumed to be better at thinking than I am. I am made to ignore my knowledge and experience in favor of obedience, and it really stinks. Instead of workers hiring their managers, it works the other way around. Managers live off of the money that workers create. Corporations dish out benefits from the profits made by the workers. Our labor is used to make salaries for people whose policies make my job much harder. The absurdity of it all is overwhelming sometimes, especially since it is invisible to most people. Most think that higher ups really are more qualified than they are, and that the deal is fair.

Making things in my home has given me a sense of what was meant by the value of my labor, and has made me able to see it within service work. Such an experience makes renting labor out hourly seem like a travesty-it has no relation to what profit the work produced. I hope I can pass on the message to more people my age, who are unlikely to have produced anything tangible while on the clock.

Also, look at all the stuff I made! (all the paintings are unfinished, as is the cabinet)
paintings
paintings
sewing
sewing

That waste paper basket is made out of old electronics parts (like the casing not the innards). The cabinet is from a habitat for humanity Recycle store, which I painted. The creepy dude in the background is president monson and a zombie missionary.

Differences

2010-09-24T10:57:00.003-06:00

The meme of men and women being inherently different is widespread- our brains are apparently evolved for different things, and that is why women do things like childcare and domestic work and dudes build things and fight wars. At least, according to some people.

The idea seemed pretty internally consistent to me until I started to sew. Sewing, along with knitting and crochet, are considered lady things for lady brains to do. After sewing some somewhat complicated things by hand, making my own patterns, I really fail to see the difference between this and engineering/building anything else at home. It takes a damn lot of that 3D thinking that women are apparently less able to do. This is true of using pre made patterns too- it is really hard to do unless you can picture how everything fits together. There are infinite ways to screw it up. Working a sewing machine can be pretty difficult for the uninitiated.

I am pretty good at this, and I still can't figure out crochet after multiple attempts. People who understand this are really smart about understanding how series of knots can be worked into a strong structure. Look at this crochet diagram. This goes for things like basket weaving as well. If we take the evolutionary psychologist's view of human history then these are the type of tasks that women have always performed. They don't seem all that different from shelter building or weapon making at all.

The only difference between this and when boys play with legos or build forts is that it gets named intelligence. It seems to me as though the same skills are applied to different materials, and that society has clearly been underestimating the capacity of women in this respect.

The worst thing about crafting not being considered a mechanical/engineering sort of skill is that it isn't even really considered an art skill. Our state fair, not exactly the pinnacle of artistic ability, even had separate tents for "creative arts" (meaning crafts- meaning art women make) and "fine arts" (meaning paintings, which men make). This division is clear in the art world as a whole and extremely gendered.

This isn't support

2010-09-22T13:41:00.003-06:00

It seems as though recently I have been exposed to conversations of this sort repeatedly:

Person A: Did you see that story on the news about the dude who _____ (raped/tortured/killed) those (women/children/babies/disabled people)????

Person B: I swear I would _____ (kill, torture, beat) them if I was in a room alone with em! They would be sorry if they messed with anyone I know!

Person A: Yeah I hope they ____ (die in a fire, have what they did to victims done to them, get raped in prison) etc!

This shit really rubs me the wrong way. I know that deep down those sentiments have nothing to do with condemning violence for what it is, because people are condoning violence as long as it is the right kind, lending support to the idea that "good" violence exists. The powerful philosophical indications of the statement will never be part of the conversation- anyone who doesn't feel like enthusiastically agreeing is given the sideways glace for what looks like supporting molestation or cruelty.

But lets say for the sake of argument that some kinds of violence are okay, and that retribution is peachy. The violence is done to make strangers feel better about themselves. It isn't about victims or survivors at all, because people who want to help them out with support tend to ask them what they want instead of deciding for them. Nothing about hurting someone will unrape or untorture anyone, and it can't raise the dead either. What is being solved has nothing to do with the victim's problems.

I am a survivor. What I want for the guy who raped me isn't torture or rape or pain- its genuine understanding of what he did to me and how wrong it was. I want them to be sorry and try to improve themselves. Prison doesn't do that. Prison and violence feed right into the persecution complex of some offenders- if they don't understand what was wrong with the behavior punishment will just seem like a severe social injustice.

What I want from people who overhear cases of violence is to work towards a society where this kind of thing doesn't happen. I want them to challenge rape culture that makes the violence against women and children more pervasive, I want them to work towards providing mental health services to people who need them so that ticking time bomb people don't go off as often when they cannot afford or find help. I want them to quit treating my life like its worth killing over. What I deal with is awful, it is most likely a life long issue and it sucks severely, but I wasn't transformed into a person so broken that I need paternal types to talk about what the correct reaction is on my behalf. It makes me feel like people perceive victims of sexual violence as permanently broken freaks, instead of people that we all see and talk to every single day. I don't give a fuck about what other people want to do to make themselves feel better, I care what they actually do to make the world better and reduce the chances of this happening. Its a way to show superficial support for a really general idea without having to think hard about the conditions that lead to these things happening in the first place or do something about it. I want people to care about all rape and violence, not just the ones that leave people disfigured or dead. I want people to care about everyone who gets raped or tortured, including women of color and prostituted women and drug addict women and everyone else. I don't want people to ask what people were wearing/doing/drinking when they were assaulted or speculate on the victims character. I want them to care enough to do something. Volunteering at a womens shelter (something that actually helps victims of violence) doesn't feel as bad ass as imagining yourself as the punisher though, does it?

Person A and B don't care though. People who talk like that will doubt the stories of other victims or use the word "raped" in the way that means "got a bad deal" instead of, you know, rape. The way that "jewed" is used. These same people will make jokes about whores and quote television shows that do, too. They will recount movies where women get tricked into fucking people, and how funny that was (and that I should totally watch it).

The loud proclamations of violent wishes also serve to make it seem like sexual violence is something that happens Somewhere Else, and that we don't know and talk to perpetrators of it. Most rapes are by men who know their victims, and it doesn't get reported to police. Prostitutes abused or tortured by sadistic johns have very little recourse- those johns are men that we know. Men who molest their children are men we know, men who use child pornography or violent pornography are men we know. This whole charade of pretending it is uncommon is ridiculous.

It also makes it easier for people who rape and beat and torture to think that what they are doing isn't all that extreme, because the focus is put on sensationalized and extreme kinds of violence performed by severely mentally ill people, instead of on the common violence that people suffer each day. I won't pretend to know what kinds of rape hurt people more than others like person A or B, because it really invalidates and hurts people who were raped to hear it. The struggle to believe it wasn't their fault and that what happened was legitimately painful and bad is a constant one, and is almost universal for survivors of abuse. There isn't a way to prove who had it "worse" and it shouldn't really matter- everyone deserves resources to deal with abuse.

The quoted conversation illuminates the hierarchy of victimhood based on what the public thinks- it is what makes people know what really counts rape and violence, vs the vast majority of women who are raped and blamed for it instead. Victims aren't allowed to define it by naming their own lived experience, other people judge it for them and almost without exception declare them liars and sluts unless they suffered in a very specific way. Its fucked.

The "I would do horrible things to your perp" meme is the maximum amount of give a shit that violence against women and children is given in society, and like always race and class issues feed into who counts and who doesn't. It is a really shitty consolation prize compared to social change.

Debunking Dworkin

2010-09-14T09:41:00.006-06:00

I have been itching to make this post ever since I read Intercourse, but I felt like one book wasn't a very good base for a debunking of an author's work. SO I set out to read some of Andrea Dworkin's other books, which were very hard to find- most stores only carry Intercourse. After a trip to Portland I discovered Powell's Bookstore, who had some of her work, and I order all my books from there now (the store is run by the employees AND there isn't a sales tax on the books).

In debates about feminism it is easy for anti-feminists to drop her name as an example of how crazy and horrible some feminists are. It makes many women want to quit defending themselves out of the fear of being shamed by being associated with anything relating to Andrea Dworkin.

The people who mention her by name as an object of derision are rarely people who have actually read her books. Hell, I will admit that I hopped on that train back in the day to show how I was a feminist but not crazy about it or anything. I bought into what other people said about her work instantly, which was a mistake. The myths about what she says are powerful in our culture, and can be debunked in the most obvious way.

First: She never said "all sex is rape", she never even came close.
It is easy for anyone to quote mine Intercourse to make it appear as though she does though.
If it isn't what she said, why is it so easy, you ask?

Well, pretend that YOU want to critique intercourse within a culture context. You would feel really foolish and stupid to say something like "Well, everyone knows the story where ____ (significant event) happens, I mean, its like in a bunch of books and movies." That would make for a pretty shitty book and would not demonstrate that the meme referenced actually exists.. What Dworkin did was literary analysis and critique- she took stories of great cultural relevance that featured the subject matter she was trying to address and analyzed the story. Some of the harsher quotes are completely accurate in reference to the story that she is discussing. In Pornography, Men Posessing Women, she does a analysis of the work of Marquis de Sade (the word "sadism" is based on his work), so any critic could make it seem like she thinks all sex is torture or rape if one was so inclined. It is remarkably hard to imagine writing analytically about things like cultural attitudes towards women and sex any other way.

Another prominent myth is that she hated sex, and men. Again, very obviously false to anyone who bothered to read her book. The chapter "Skinless" in intercourse is about how amazing and intimate sexuality can be. Several times in intercourse, in the parts NOT referencing a particular story of one sort of another, Dworkin shows that she has amazing vision when it comes to imagining a world without patriarchal oppression but with genuinely expressed sexuality between men and women. She obviously wants such a world to exist very badly, and makes a point of how amazing it is that all the battery and rape that exists hasn't killed the hope women have for love with men, how seemingly nothing can stop the hope that exists.

Many people talk about her as if she is a prude because of her anti pornography stance. In her books she takes an in depth look at many types of pornography. She was also a prostitute for a period of time. The idea that she just didn't like sex or was too prudish to enjoy pornography are ways of dismissing her without evidence, and its a crock of shit. What she had to say is thought provoking, even for people who ultimately disagree with her.

I have also heard is that she was a lesbian separatist from people who want to discredit her. In the last book of hers that I read, Right Wing Women, she makes it clear that such an act does not shelter anyone from the danger of patriarchy and that women are bound by a common condition within the culture. It doesn't solve anything in the big picture, though it may make a woman's personal life more bearable, which is a perfectly worthy goal in life for individual women.

People also seem to think that she wanted to Ban Pornography, that she "got in bed with the right" to try and ban pornography. This is false. Her work with Katherine Mckinnon was on a law that allowed women to sue pornography producers for harming them. The law never passed and right now performers are in the same boat as they were then- the appearance of enjoyment in pornography is taken as proof of it, and women forced to do things and act like they are enjoying it cannot do much to their abusers when they are forced or drugged or coerced into pornography. This is very much the same as the accusation of hating sex or being a prude- people try to make it seem like she wanted to ban pornography because she was just too repressed to enjoy it.

Once you decide to read her books, you end up extremely angry about the way she is discussed in the general public. Nothing makes it clearer that she is simply a punching bag for anti feminist men than the mainstream reaction to her claiming to be raped. The way that most people reacted to it was to call her a liar, crazy, or both. This was absolutely the approved way to discuss her rape claim, in newspapers and in the general public. I have a hard time doubting that there were not men itching to sexually humiliate Dworkin after her release of intercourse though, so the instant dismissal of her claim as being completely unbelievable is pretty fucked up. The sexual contempt for women that exists in our culture, to "put them in their place" with forced fucking is nothing new to anyone who pays attention. No one should be treated this way when they talk about being raped, ever.

Instead of her being a total liar, lets say that she is just 'crazy' and imagined it like some people will claim. Some PTSD stuff came back and made her think she had been raped when she hadn't- that would be horribly tragic and painful. To someone experiencing that, it might as well be real, because the pain of it doesn't become imagined. She wouldn't deserve to be treated so harshly even if she had not been raped.

What it really means is a threat- usually this kind of contempt is directed at an underclass of sluts, the women who society says cannot be raped. Women like dworkin cannot be raped because they just say so much crazy stuff all the time, about wanting sexual autonomy and such, she is deemed too crazy to hear out on any matter, including her personal life. This is the degree that women get dismissed when they are outspoken about this whole patriarchy thing. It is supposed to scare women from reading her work or listening to her, none of us want to end up being treated that way. So some women make a deal with their oppresors and decide to play nicely and only listen to approved voices on feminism. I can't blame them, that kind of reputation is scary.

Another thing I want to mention about Dworkin is this: she didn't fuck it up when it came to other kinds of oppression, which is rare. Many feminists from had transphobic, white supremacist, or classist messages. Dworkin did a great job of avoiding that, showing vision beyond what most others were capable of.

In conclusion: GO READ HER BOOKS. She nay sayers don't know what the hell they are talking about, and might shut up with their threatening BS once someone who knows the material calls em on it. Even if you don't agree with her on everything (I certainly don't), it gets you questioning things you never would have thought to. It is what skepticism is all about- aiming critical thinking at things that would otherwise go unexamined.

Neglect

2010-09-10T23:40:00.003-06:00

I have completely neglected my blog as of late.

I keep trying to proof read my economics post, like I promised, and write about 5 or 6 things that keep calling me, but I can't seem to get it done.

What have I been doing instead???

Sewing. Yeah, really. Mostly sewing, stuffed animals and purses. I don't understand, either. Some paintings were made, and jewelery that looks like various molecules, and perhaps me and the step spawn will make an Etsy account sometime soon to get rid of said stuff, since she makes a lot of various crafty things, too. I get home from work and sew feverishly, by hand. I used to hate sewing, so this was entirely unexpected. The crafting has eaten my livingroom, leaving my nigel a bit agitated at the clutter of countless half finished projects.

Once this wave of strange inspiration passes, I will blog more often. I will link my Etsy to here, once created. Thank you for your patience.

Economic Q&a

2010-09-04T13:32:00.002-06:00

My nigel is pretty amazing. He has many years of programming experience in the financial sector, and knows a shit ton of info about the economy, math, and computers. He knows a lot of the stuff they should teach you in school, but no one does. We recently talked about 401(k) funds and what he said made a lot of sense to me. I decided to interview him and pass the info on to readers who might find it useful. Economic issues are often mystified, probably so that people put up with it instead of rebelling against the injustice leveled against them. People who think about these issues, struggle to figure them out, aren't the ones who get op eds or get on television. The news media would have to actively work to undermine itself by providing those sorts of critiques. Fortunately the internet provides a good medium for sharing information that is otherwise hard to come by. Enjoy!

Q: Explain the problem of 401(k) funds for the individual. What are common
expectations that 401(k) owners have, and how do they match up with reality?

A: Traditionally, a 401(k) is aimed at long term investment in the stock
market and other investment options. The problem with this strategy is that
the stock market has been stagnant for the past 10 years and will be in the
foreseeable future. The market has gone sour due to a combination of
overspeculation and dividend underperformance.

The primary issue, however, is the main principle required to see investment
income rise. Perpetual growth. This is infeasible due to the nature of
economics. There is not an unending supply of resources, and therefore there
will come a time when we have exhausted the resources necessary to continue
growing the market.

China also plays a part in how growth cannot be perpetual. China is growing
at a staggering rate, which is slowly draining resources from the US
economy. The effect of this will eventually be that the US will not have the
economic strength to grow and will stagnate. Economic analysts predict that
China will be the number one economy in the world within 20 years. This
means that our economy will probably stagnate 20 years from now, if it even
grows between now and then.

Q: What effect do 401(k) funds have on the financial market as a whole?

A: Funds and other "well balanced" investment options have been completely
overwhelmed with 401(k) investments. Currently, the 401(k) market is
approximately 3 trillion USD. The total stock market is approximately 36
trillion USD. The effect of this is that nearly all funds are geared towards
401(k) investors. They flood the market with money which fund investors
basically can choose at will how to invest, giving fund managers the largest
share of the stock market of any investor group, including CEOs. Fund
managers take a fee of between 2-5% per year regardless of the success of
the stock, therefore they don't have much to lose if their fund goes
tumbling. Fund managers are making a fortune off of this scheme, and 401(k)
investors are seeing literally no return on their investments.

Anyway, to answer your question, the direct effect on the market is that it
inflates the value of the market by approximately 10%. Also, there is a
perpetual source of new money to add to the market in the form of 401(k)
contributions. So no matter how poorly the market is doing, there will
always be fund managers buying stock. This further leads to inflation in the
market. This creates a dangerous perpetual bubble in the market. The market
cannot truly correct itself, and the overall market flattens. You can see
this clearly in the performance of the market since 401(k)s became the norm.
There are other market factors at work here, but this is definitely adding
fuel to the fire.

Also, 401(k) plans tend to require a portion of the contributions be
invested in the shares of the company for which people work. This was a big
part of why the failure of Enron was such a huge issue. People failed to
diversify their investments and ended up inflating the stock of their own
company. This has driven many companies to drop the required investment in
their own stock, but the damage has already been done. Many of these
companies continue to see constant contributions from their own employees,
inflating their stock.

Q: How free are consumers to choose a different option for their retirement
funds?

A: There are basically three options for retirement: IRAs, 401(k)s, and
self-investment strategies. IRAs suffer from exactly the same issues as
401(k)s because they are investments in the stock market via funds. The tax
benefits of both are the primary reasons that people no longer choose to
follow a self-investment strategy. Therefore it is rapidly disappearing as
an option. Also, self-investment strategies tend to include such things as
lottery tickets which suffer from their own issues.

Q: Where do the rules that restrict choice originate?

A: The tax benefits were enacted in 1978 as a way to drive people to invest
in their own retirement. It was originally intended only for executives, but
companies quickly determined that it was a good alternative to pension
plans. In other words, 401(k) investments were a direct result of companies
slashing benefits to their employees.

An interesting thing that I recently learned about is 401(k) automatic
enrollment. Employers are allowed to automatically enroll their employees in
401(k) plans, requiring employees to actively opt-out if they did not want
to participate. Therefore, employers can attempt to enroll non-participants
as often as once per year, requiring those non-participants to opt out each
time if they do not want to participate. Thanks to the Pension Protection
Act (Thanks Bush), the employees have no recourse for forced participation
in their company 401(k). This is a relatively new rule which further feeds
the fund managers and Wall Street.

Q: How much do hedge fund managers make, and where does their money come
from?

Non-hedge fund managers make their money off a percentage of the fund value,
generally on a quarterly basis. They also frequently take a transaction fee
for every time you contribute or take money from a fund. The top 25 fund
managers had an average income of 570 million USD in 2006. I can't find
numbers for 2009, which was a down year, but I am told they are higher.

The other issue here is how does Wall Street make money... They make it per
transaction. Meaning that every time you contribute funds to your various
401(k) funds, you are lining the pockets of Wall Street and your fund
manager. Neither party cares whether the market goes up or down because they
get paid anyway.

Speaking of hedge funds, hedge funds pay a performance fee, which drives
better performance for most such funds. Most major investors have money in a
hedge fund. 401(k) investors are typically not allowed to invest in hedge
funds.

Q: What do you recommend consumers do with their money in 401(k) funds (if
possible)?

A: Get it out of the market! Invest in yourself. Get rid of your debt and
pay off your house. A retirement fund won't do you any good if the market
continues to stagnate like it has, and you continue to be in debt. If you
have anything left over after paying off your debt, put it into a credit
union. Nothing says "Fuck you" to the banks like supporting your local
credit union.

Another benefit of getting out of debt is that you no longer are supporting
the big banks. They don't make much money off of you if you don't owe them
anything.

The one thing I'd like to specifically mention is investment in real estate.
Real estate should not be seen as an investment, unless you are making your
money off someone paying you rent. As we have seen, real estate can and does
lose value, and most real estate markets do not keep up with inflation. That
said, there's almost nothing as good as owning your own home for a
retirement plan. It's not for everyone, but for most people it's the best
single investment they can make.

Q: How did you get so friggin smart about finance?

A: I've spent too much time trying to find an investment strategy that won't
fail. And have been disappointed numerous times. Market volatility aside,
there is no such thing as a safe investment.

Q: Why are so many economists bald?

A: Brain induced electrolysis from knowing too much about how the world
works.

The economic system reflects what he says- I have heard many people cheering on the most successful people so that their retirement will be safe. It smacks of feudalism, where the success of the best off people meant a little less bullshit for the people at the bottom of the social order. Those receiving charity from the top (in this case in the form of their own money and opportunity to earn the money) defend their masters as a matter of self interest. Unlike feudalism, there is SOME chance of upward mobility in our economy, which serves to further justify the inevitable shifting of some people into an economic under class.

I wrote a long post about economics and how important/ignored it is, but I need to proof read it before posting. Any questions about this should be asked in the comments section.

My Secret

2010-09-01T12:20:00.002-06:00

As followers of this blog may know, I recently got promoted. I didn't mention that I had an ace up my sleeve though, and I decided it wasn't fair to keep all the good tips to myself. I owe my promotion to a summer's eve ad, it gives you 8 steps to asking for a raise, I utilized em all to increase my chances of getting ahead in a man's world. I am going to paraphrase the steps, which are probably listed in order of importance. Here is the original ad.

The first and most important step: WASH YOUR VAGINA. I cannot emphasize this enough. Don't worry about washing the rest of you while in the shower. Rewash your vagina at work with cleansing cloths (but not where anyone can see you). Freshness is the real key to economic success.

Step two: Eat breakfast! You should do this because eating breakfast is healthy. Its almost as healthy as obsessively cleaning your vagina with chemical agents throughout the day, painstakingly removing any remnants of humanoid odor.

Step Three: Get to work early. Your bosses won't suspect that you spend so much time on vag cleansing if you show up early.

Step Four: Go through your old calendars and files. Jot down notable accomplishments so you can bring them up when you ask for a raise ("impeccably fresh vagina" counts)

Step Five: Bring quotes from higher ups about how great you are to work with ("wow, it totally doesn't smell like vagina in here", etc)

Step Six: Don't be afraid of silence- you can listen instead of talking. let someone else talk about how fresh your vagina is.

Step Seven: Don't let the conversation stray from what is important about you as a worker (refer to step one)

Step Eight: Focus on things you have done well, like noticing that steps four, five, and eight should really be one step, and that 'freshness' in the crotchal region is never clearly defined.

ground zero

2010-08-30T22:53:00.002-06:00

I wasn't planning on blogging the community center at ground zero story. It seemed to be one of those invented controversies that only exist in far right circles, like the War on Christmas. Things like that aren't even worth talking about, the stupidity of it is so apparent to almost everyone, even to people who watch the programs pushing this kind of garbage. It seemed like anyone who frequents this blog, like skeptics, and feminists, and left leaning folks in general, would find this to be a boring non-issue.

I was wrong. I should have seen this coming, given the brand of anti-muslim sentiment that exists in some skeptics groups. The viewpoint is represented by mainstream skeptical voices, like Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens actually came out in favor of the mosque, because not doing so violates constitutional rights. It seems as though many skeptics grudgingly draw the same conclusion, but wish there was some way to prevent the center from being built.

Center for Inquiry put up a press release against the building of the community center/mosque, and ANY religious building in the area.

Jerry Coyne put up a post about how people who refuse to say that islam is connected to terrorism are "deliberately" ignoring evidence of it.

Sam Harris puts up a post that also throws a lot of criticism at islam that makes it seem especially bad somehow, and very much related to terrorism, and ends with an ambivalent conclusion about the appropriateness of the community center.

There is a lot of woo underlying even *thinking* of opposing the construction.

First of all, there is the belief that because a tragedy happened at ground zero, the land itself is different than it would be otherwise. We are supposed to respect the land in a specific way, much more than any other land in any other place. The death of a lot of people on the soil has made it special in a way that cannot be demonstrated or measured. It seems like powerful woo to me, to accord that level of concern for dirt. Not only that, but it is some mysterious amount of dirt, that no one will define. You would think that in order to assert that the land is sacred they would need to outline where the unsacred land begins, but no one does. Irrational beliefs don't address obvious questions.

The reverence given for a piece of land seems to be very ethnocentric. I wonder why those authors failed to write about how disrespectful thanksgiving celebrations are, considering the land we sit on and how it was acquired. Or how celebrating independance day in land that was violently taken from mexico/native people is wrong. Celebrations virtually anywhere can seem callous, when the history of the land is what is used as the standard.

For the sake of argument I will pretend that there is something factually special about land where tragic events occured, and that the proposed community center is within the bounds of the sacredness. What kinds of buildings are appropriate for the sacred ground? People who are anti-mosque seem to operate under the assumption that businesses opening up there are more ethical than any religious building- or that corporations are responsible for less evil and oppression than islam, or that corporations had less to do with 9/11 than islam. People who believe this have a shitty grasp on history in the middle east.

Support for the underlying assumption of corporate buildings being morally superior is never given. Erecting monuments to consumerism (like chain stores) where the WTC once stood is far from "respect". The corporate interests that rule our society are responsible for much suffering, death, and environmental destruction. Unlike islamic people, corporations are by definition meant to behave in a profit motivated way, unconcerned with public good, and are immortal. The clothing store that some atheists would prefer on the post 9/11 ground isn't a politically neutral entity.

Even if I could accept that stores are a more respectful option than a mosque, there is the insistence of the authors in question that islam is somehow supremely devious as a religion (either technically because of the content of the koran, or practically because of the behavior of people who are muslims). This is ridiculously false, and is obviously so to anyone who has attempted to research religious violence. Most people who are on the pro-war on terror platform almost always make an appeal to the misogyny of islam, like it is special, and never really mention it again as a concern after that. It is a tool that is meant to make non-muslim people feel superior in their treatment of women, not a sign of genuine concern about the well being of women. The concern would last outside of this issue if there was any at all.

Some people find it hard to grasp because most of the comparable groups of non-muslim religious extremists were so long ago (you know, like WWII), but there are plenty of modern examples for anyone interested. The koran isn't unique in the woman hating or violence promoted within it. An attempt to read secular literature on philosophy relating to the same subjects will yield the same hateful stuff from people who didn't need god or the supernatural to cough up a reason to treat women like crap or kill people over trivial things. There were many scientific efforts to prove the inferiority of other races and of women and queers, some of the "evidence" was accepted for a long time. Am I supposed to be more offended at the notion I am only useful as a sex dispenser and baby incubater if god says it rather than scientists or phillosophers claiming that nature makes it so? If anything I am more offended that people who claim reason as their motivation would say such a thing. I am not impressed in the way that other people are with the koran in this respect.

The other claim of extreme danger- that islam in practical terms means a more threatening follower- is not supported either. Part of the reason why it is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking about muslims this way is because of the unfair and racist way that violence is named in our culture. Terrorism is much more a matter of who does it than what is done or why. The exceptions are when white people bomb things without the aid of the US military, or fly a plane into something on purpose. Those things are safely called terrorism, with the modifier "domestic" tacked on in front to differentiate the two. Our military actions are never referred to as invasion or terror, even when they clearly are, even ones so far in the past that they aren't especially relevant. Because of this americans aren't exposed to the idea of comparing violence based on the act or motivation rather than the perpetrator. The meme of non white people being more savage or evil is long standing in American culture, and so is the meme of non christian people being inherently evil in the extreme. Despite being subject to the latter social prejudice, some white atheists seem unable to understand that they do weild some social power via their race (and in the cases I cited, their gender and economic status), and need to work hard to undo the biases that are inherent in having social privilege. The bias of christians being normal or more acceptable than muslims is a pressure that atheists are not immune to. I have yet to meet an atheist who has undone every religious notion that once existed in their psyche. The bigotry of people is not often on the surface, it isn't something people can usually recognize consciously without a lot of research and effort.

Don't worry Jason, you'll die someday!

2010-08-30T12:40:00.004-06:00

I found some for internal use only training tapes for seminary from the LDS church. One is called "easter wish", it is about a boy named jason who is sad because his dad died. He goes to live with his grandpa for awhile. The movie is about a half hour long, and the first twenty minutes or so is Jason acting all angsty and being jealous of other kids who show a creepy level of affection towards their dads in public.

Sometimes I have been an atheist for so long, and have so many other atheists to talk to, that I completely forget that other people believe in magic. It makes me feel scared sometimes. I am surrounded by crazy people. The conclusion of Easter Wish had that effect on me, and I felt re-shocked about what most people around me believe.

Jason's granpa takes him to church to talk about death. They talk about how jesus rose from the dead so death isn't like, permanent or anything. Jason's grandpa informs him that families can be together forever, and that he will see his dad again after Jason dies, if he follows the book of mormon.

"But thats so far away!" Jason exclaims.

"it doesn't have to be, jason." said his grandpa, with a demented grin. Okay, not really- I said that at the TV. Anyway.

Some kid who is like 12 wishes for death, and an old ass man is still completely immature and unable to accept that sometimes people really are *gone* forever. As if loss isn't something that can be endured or that uncomfortable truths should be ignored in favor of fantasy. It makes people long for death, care less about what they do in life. I was never sure how living forever could be anything except unbearably tedious anyway.

Jenny McCarthy

2010-08-22T14:40:00.004-06:00

I am not completely sure that Jenny McCarthy believes her own bullshit anymore. Here is what she claims healed her son's autism:

Evan went through conventional, intensive Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy as well as a host of alternative approaches, including a gluten-free and casein-free (GFCF) diet, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, chelation, aromatherapies, electromagnetics, spoons rubbed on his body, multivitamin therapy, B-12 shots and a range of prescription drugs. McCarthy says she made a deal with God. "Help me fix my boy," she prayed, "and I'll teach the world how I did it."

She noted how doctors had no ideas at all about what to do, and how they failed her. She blames companies and doctors for the medical science not being good enough, not being safe enough. Medical science is apparently really shitty and could be replaced by all the supernatural measures she used on her son.

After that, she decided to pay surgeons to alter her face needlessly and make it more palatable for the masses. How is it that she thinks spoons and b12 can cure autism but she needs a conventionally trained surgeon to make her look younger? What standard is being used to judge medical science as useful vs not? Seems to me like the standard is whatever can get her the most publicity and money.

Perhaps McCarthy is a deeply cynical woman, who once believed her story but doesn't anymore, and is in it for the money. I am not quite sure how else to explain post Evan usage of medical technology on her part. Lets hope that she has compartmentalized these ideas in order to keep going, because believing people are that evil does a number on my faith in humanity.

Getting Promoted

2010-08-21T12:44:00.003-06:00

I got a promotion.

Knowing what I know about capitalism makes this a very strange and surreal experience. I have very mixed emotions about it. First off, there is a lot of promotion discrimination at my company. I did everything you are supposed to, and predictably nothing happened. Interest in outside actions to remedy the problem was very low, so I gave up.

A job with better hours than mine opened up, so I applied. I didn't know that some of the people in charge of filling the position were eager to have me apply, but they were and let me know. I had been picked out ahead of time. Seems to happen a lot.

I attended an extremely short interview. I didn't do a great job because I didn't try very hard. The point was for me to regurgitate basic principles of corporate structures as if I had some kind of respect for them. It felt bad, but I would get fired or outrage my managers by telling the truth. It all boils down to showing your capacity for mindless obedience. That is the most important criteria for promotion in any company, and explains the rampant incompetence of management in general within capitalism. Without this element of authoritarianism, corporations would probably be overtaken by the workers.

The lie that there is merit in moving up the latter, that there is real meritocracy, is what keeps many of the harder workers obedient. They want their piece of the pie and think it is within reach if they just work hard enough. Without the chance for personal gain there isn't much reason for anyone to put up with what corporations demand of labor. They tell us what we can say, wear, and even make demands on our private time. They can demand bodily fluids for drug testing. The low wages of most labor means that deviation from some of these principles means poverty. Corporate managers must give the appearance that they earn their share by being superior to labor in some respect, that they have some kind of knowledge or power that low wage workers cannot possess. Without the illusion being pushed hard, people might get the idea that their work has an actual value that they deserve to earn, and that the people doing the work should be the ones who make the most. They might even get the idea that they should be the ones who hire and fire managers, instead of the other way around. They might just take their work places over and claim it for themselves, as it has happened in the past.

Most of all, management tells labor how to do their job. They make consequences for deviating from procedures made by people who don't actually do the work. The effect of the orders isn't something that management has to suffer through daily, so it doesn't matter to them. Often times they have to mess with something to make it seem as though they are doing something important enough to justify their large paychecks. When meaningless or inconvenient changes in policy fail, labor is blamed for their lack of compliance. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so infuriating to deal with day to day. These are concrete realities of our economy, they cannot be easily escaped by quitting a job and getting a new one. They cannot ever be completely escaped, unless you live completely self sufficiently we line the pockets of these people with every transaction.

One thing that is striking about capitalist rhetoric is the idea that poor people are lazy or just don't want to work, and don't deserve money as a result. The idea that people that don't work don't deserve money is echoed in socialist and communist literature as well, but they generally mean that people such as landlords and company owners shouldn't make money without working. The critique of laziness is aimed at the highest classes of society, rather than the lowest. It seems true to me, that the ones who work the least seem to make the most. People who make money simply by ownership aren't seen as leeches on society, when they very much are. They make important choices without any accountability to the communities they affect. They leech off of the labor who has no real way to get the money they earned for their company, they are forced to rent out their labor hourly at a rate that is an insult to the value of what they produce. The extra gets passed up the latter, essentially stolen with the approval of social convention and law. Labor has no claim to the product or service they produce, and predictably don't give too much of a shit about their company or what they are doing. It results in a lower quality of work in general.

So I got promoted, and was told that I am a "top employee" and why. I was supposed to feel good about it, like I earned something. I will actually be working much less, but have much more money in my pocket. I will have authority over other people without any real reason. I will be expected to enforce pointless rules and counter productive procedures, tell people not to think because it is my job to figure out problems, not theirs. I will assign work because the workers are said to be too incompetent to do it themselves, despite evidence to the contrary. They would be capable if their minds weren't atrophied by dividing the labor to a ludicrous degree.

I felt like a hypocrite for awhile, but now I am less concerned about that and more struck by the feeling of helplessness. I have so little control over my labor, other people decided that I was the best person for the job on behalf of everyone most affected by the decision. I was told to apply. I move through the world being pushed and pulled, never choosing my own direction.

The inefficiencies I outlined here have had dangerous consequences for people in the past. It isn't just a matter of annoyance and unfair economic conditions, it can put whole nations in danger. In Why I Write, George Orwell declares capitalism to be over with. His ultimate proof is how England behaved during WWII. Even when there was clear information about Germany's intent to attack England, there were british arms makers selling to germans. When they finally were involved in the war, England didn't have enough revolvers to arm their military as a result. Other military equipment was also very short. Any democratic decision making about the economic future of a country (socialism), would have prevented this needless destruction.

Why now?

2010-08-20T12:31:00.006-06:00

Writing the Aisha story was difficult for me- there was so much related to this issue that it was hard to know where to start. I decided to make one post about her, and one post about the situation that caused this to become front page news.

The article doesn't exactly hide what the cause is. They note growing disapproval of the war as a reason, but that has been the case for a long time, and so has violence against women via the taliban, so it doesn't really explain why the magazine was so enthused suddenly. Then they note that the wikileaks release of thousands of documents on the war is a contributing factor to the heated debate about leaving. We all know where TIME stands on this issue.

The wikileaks release of documents is a Big Fucking Deal. It should be something news media pounces on when it happens- a lot of classified information about how badly our government screwed up the war. Journalists often like to portray themselves as rebellious truth tellers, people who track down stories for the public good. The reaction of most media to the wikileaks story reveals a very different picture of media.

TIME barely reported the leaks at all. The Aisha cover story and the 6ish page story about taliban violence was in the edition immediately following the leak of the documents. After you finish the article about how not supporting the war means you want women to be disfigured and tortured, you come upon the one page article that is less about wikileaks and more about the only known member- Julian Assange. There is a big picture of him and a lot of shit about his mysteriousness and paranoia. They seriously had the nerve to call him paranoid in the face of republicans here calling for the treason trials/deaths of people involved in the leaks. Anyway, there is very little about what was contained in the documents his group leaked, it is a fluff piece about personalities.

The other article is about moving "beyond" the wikileaks fiasco, opening with this:

The release of 91,000 secret documents about the war in Afghanistan by WikiLeaks turned out to be your classic media bang-fizzle.

They claim that is was over with in 3 days because it was just so darn boring. The author then goes on to tell us the real problems, which are all according to what official sources allow us to see. It has the same range of debate as most media- is the war too expensive? Is it something we can win? They never question anything about war or aggression itself, and you will never see our forces referred to as invaders. Our history books are unlikely to ever frame it that way, though we can read about how Russia invaded the same country previously.

TIME clearly was freaking the fuck out about the wikileaks fiasco and came up with a very jumbled and confused issue to respond to the problem. The messages are all extremely contradictory, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself. A magazine that covers anything should try to show many points of view, but that isn't what happened here exactly. All of opinions ask readers to either condemn or ignore the released documents, but for contradictory reasons. In that aspect the coverage is extremely biased an narrow.

They want us to equate the documents with support for taliban violence and lack of support for the troops. It means the documents are powerful and dangerous, contain information that shouldn't be released.

We are also supposed to think that the documents didn't have anything interesting in them, but were very promising. What a shame. It is probably best not to read them so that we can focus on something else for awhile. Why did anyone release it at all? haha, silly wikileaks.

We are not supposed to want to know about the documents, but rather the spokesperson for the organization that released them. We are supposed to care about his personality and feelings instead of his work. What a weirdo, we are meant to think. Does he not know how evil he is for releasing the documents? Oops, I meant boring. Does he not know how boring and pointless it was?

A better story would be why Wikileaks exists in the first place. It exists because journalists aren't able to do the job that they should be doing. Sending those documents to journalists without the website was unlikely to accomplish anything. Conventional channels of information discourage this kind of whistleblowing, which was obvious enough after wikileaks released a video of innocent people being killed from a helicopter. Reuters journalists were killed in that attack, and they lobbied for months to get it released. It is hard to assume that the government was going to change its mind after refusing to release the video for so long. Wikileaks was needed in that case, and likely this one. The media generally adheres to the party line in the ways I outlined above, obscuring what is actually going on in the real world in a way that makes the public ignorant. The book Manufacturing Consent is a rigorous look into the exact same tactics being used in the past regarding latin america and the invasion of viet nam, for anyone who wants further reading on the subject.

I have seen more in depth coverage from other sources, but I am far from impressed with the reaction in general. The coverage was done almost grudingly in the new york times, and then quickly returned to the same kinds of stories that we are used to. The coverage of how to punish people who contributed to the leaks, or how to change the law to make sites like wikileaks illegal, has been more long lasting than coverage of the info in the documents. 91,000 documents, and we got a few days of half assed coverage from parts of the media deemed "liberal" by so many people.

Aisha

2010-08-15T23:04:00.004-06:00

I have been away from the blog for a little while now, I was doing some seriously soothing art projects that have neared completion. This week at work I found a copy of Time magazine, and I felt compelled to blog.

For those who are somehow unaware, Time decided to put the face of a woman who was disfigured by the violence of the taliban on its cover this month. Her nose and ears are cut off. Her name is Aisha. The caption below her reads "what happens if we leave Afghanistan". Such a statement would end in a question mark if the authors were interested in some kind of inquiry into what happens if we leave Afghanistan, but without one they are asserting that Aisha happens if we leave.
The rest of the article spells out as much in very blatant language.

My knee jerk reaction was "Finally, violence against women made the cover of a widely circulated magazine", but the caption ruined that elation quickly. Violence against women was only important as a way to support a different sort of violence. The value of violence in general was never brought up in the article, despite the obvious conflict that exists. Her tradgedy only matters to Time so that they can convince us that we should be complacent in more murder by supporting the war. In short, she was used as an example to people who think the war should end, used to make us fear the Taliban for its barbarous nature and make us want to kill them.

Aisha's disfigurement was done for much the same reason. The Time article itself says that she had her nose and ears cut off as to "make an example" of her, to scare the women into submission, to make them put up with the violence of husbands beating and raping them whenever it strikes their fancy. Aisha ran away from home and was therefore considered a prostitute, and refused to be married to a man of her fathers choosing. She had her face cut to send a message to other women who perhaps were thinking of doing the same thing. They are settling for less because they don't want to be her.

In that the mainstream media and the Taliban never see Aisha as a human being. Aisha's face was a vehicle for the Taliban to scare people into submission, to make people comply with a social order that opposes us soldiers in Afghanistan. Aisha's face was a vehicle to make americans comply with a social order that causes terrible violence against people living in Afghanistan. The pain and horror of being forcefully disfigured has never been hers, it has always belonged to men with an agenda. She gets used no matter what she does.

The consequences that the mainstream media and the Taliban invent on behalf of Aisha are completely invalid. There is no evidence that the war kills Taliban members at a faster rate than they are recruited- the opposite is more plausible, if anything. No numbers were given in the article to support that vital assumption. Nor does the Taliban have evidence that Aisha's actions are truly dangerous outside of their warped ideology. Both make expressing questions of intent an impossibility in any meaningful way. The Time article portrays the Taliban as the ultimate source of violence against women, instead of one of many, and never mentions the horrors that occur in US friendly places like Saudi Arabia. The violence isn't Taliban specific, but we are made to believe it is.

The icing on the hooray-for-misogyny cake is that they chose Aisha as the representative for violence against women in the middle east because of her lost sexual appeal. There are countless horror stories of violence, disfigurement, and rape that exist for the news media to report on. Taking a picture that could represent the prevalence of rape and domestic violence would never be as compelling to an american audience of men as a woman rendered unfuckable by our enemies. We are made to mourn her loss of beauty, her loss of value as a woman, rather than the trauma she experienced. The article makes such a point of Aisha's "otherwise beautiful face" that it is difficult to draw a different conclusion, as does the wealth of possible victims to highlight.

It doesn't matter if being raped repeatedly, forced to bear children, and beaten up regularly is more or less traumatic than ears and nose being sliced away forcibly. What matters is that they picked the only tragedy that clearly affects men as fans of female objectification. Their give-a-damn was privileged over the more wide spread issues that are relevant to women all over the world, including American women who are still raped and beaten at a staggering rate. The solidarity that could have been inspired by a shared struggle was discarded in favor of a very shallow and male centric view of what constitutes sexism.

Once again it is apparent that women only matter as political tools to further violence, no matter which branch of patriarchy is using them.

More to come out the outrageous propaganda of Time this month in future posts...