Old Feminist

Joe Stack, translated

2010-02-20T15:42:00Z

BELOW IS THE LETTER FOUND ON THE INTERNET, SUPPOSEDLY FROM THE PILOT IN THURSDAY'S CRASH

If you're reading this, you're no doubt asking yourself, "Why did this have to happen?" The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn't enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless& especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I'm not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Nobody listens to me.

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was "no taxation without representation". I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a "crackpot", traitor and worse.

No one can see how special I am.

While very few working people would say they haven't had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

Are you listening? Nobody listens to me.

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it's time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country's leaders don't see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political "representatives" (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the "terrible health care problem". It's clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don't get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

Government is unresponsive.

And justice? You've got to be kidding!
How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system? Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand. Yet, it mercilessly "holds accountable" its victims, claiming that they're responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. The law "requires" a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that's not "duress" than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.

Taxes are so complicated that I can't figure out a way to not pay them. There's something wrong here. I can overcome the law of gravity (yay planes!), why do I still have to pay taxes?

How did I get here?
My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early '80s. Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English. Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having 'tax code' readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful "exemptions" that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the "best", high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the "big boys" were doing (except that we weren't steeling from our congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of God). We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done.

I hooked up with some people who think they are better at interpreting tax law than the lawyers who wrote them. "We" came up with a much more favorable interpretation of tax law and acted accordingly. We were sure they'd realize they'd screwed themselves and not sue us.

The intent of this exercise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed re-evaluation of the laws that allow the monsters of organized religion to make such a mockery of people who earn an honest living. However, this is where I learned that there are two "interpretations" for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us& Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws; the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country.

The lawyers won.

That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0. It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie. It also made me realize, not only how naive I had been, but also the incredible stupidity of the American public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their "freedom"& and that they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence and all that keeps happening in front of them.

We lost. This cost me money.

This means lawyers and government are evil, and anyone who thinks they are not is deluded.

Before even having to make a shaky recovery from the sting of the first lesson on what justice really means in this country (around 1984 after making my way through engineering school and still another five years of "paying my dues"), I felt I finally had to take a chance of launching my dream of becoming an independent engineer.
On the subjects of engineers and dreams of independence, I should digress somewhat to say that I'm sure that I inherited the fascination for creative problem solving from my father. I realized this at a very young age.

Since I was a child, I have been rewarded for finding reductive, almost simplistic solutions to problems. I am naturally talented at this. Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I can move the world.

The significance of independence, however, came much later during my early years of college; at the age of 18 or 19 when I was living on my own as student in an apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My neighbor was an elderly retired woman (80+ seemed ancient to me at that age) who was the widowed wife of a retired steel worker. Her husband had worked all his life in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania with promises from big business and the union that, for his 30 years of service, he would have a pension and medical care to look forward to in his retirement. Instead he was one of the thousands who got nothing because the incompetent mill management and corrupt union (not to mention the government) raided their pension funds and stole their retirement. All she had was social security to live on.

I once knew an old lady who was cheated by corrupt people but fortunately the government safety net was there to provide some support.

In retrospect, the situation was laughable because here I was living on peanut butter and bread (or Ritz crackers when I could afford to splurge) for months at a time. When I got to know this poor figure and heard her story I felt worse for her plight than for my own (I, after all, I thought I had everything to in front of me). I was genuinely appalled at one point, as we exchanged stories and commiserated with each other over our situations, when she in her grandmotherly fashion tried to convince me that I would be "healthier" eating cat food (like her) rather than trying to get all my substance from peanut butter and bread. I couldn't quite go there, but the impression was made. I decided that I didn't trust big business to take care of me, and that I would take responsibility for my own future and myself.
Return to the early '80s, and here I was off to a terrifying start as a 'wet-behind-the-ears' contract software engineer... and two years later, thanks to the fine backroom, midnight effort by the sleazy executives of Arthur Andersen (the very same folks who later brought us Enron and other such calamities) and an equally sleazy New York Senator (Patrick Moynihan), we saw the passage of 1986 tax reform act with its section 1706.
For you who are unfamiliar, here is the core text of the IRS Section 1706, defining the treatment of workers (such as contract engineers) for tax purposes. Visit this link for a conference committee report
(http://www.synergistech.com/1706.shtml#ConferenceCommitteeReport) regarding the intended interpretation of Section 1706 and the relevant parts of Section 530, as amended. For information on how these laws affect technical services workers and their clients, read our discussion here (http://www.synergistech.com/ic-taxlaw.shtml).
SEC. 1706. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN TECHNICAL PERSONNEL. (a) IN GENERAL - Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection:
(d) EXCEPTION. - This section shall not apply in the case of an individual who pursuant to an arrangement between the taxpayer and another person, provides services for such other person as an engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled worker engaged in a similar line of work.
(b) EFFECTIVE DATE. - The amendment made by this section shall apply to remuneration paid and services rendered after December 31, 1986.
Note:
"another person" is the client in the traditional job-shop relationship. "taxpayer" is the recruiter, broker, agency, or job shop. "individual", "employee", or "worker" is you. Admittedly, you need to read the treatment to understand what it is saying but it's not very complicated. The bottom line is that they may as well have put my name right in the text of section (d). Moreover, they could only have been more blunt if they would have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave. Twenty years later, I still can't believe my eyes.

I found out that a piece of legislation made the job I studied for not make quite as much money for me as I had hoped. This is exactly the same as slavery! And you can't tell me they weren't thinking of me personally when they wrote it.

It's just too obvious. They knew they had to hit me, and hit me hard, to get me down, even temporarily.

During 1987, I spent close to $5000 of my 'pocket change', and at least 1000 hours of my time writing, printing, and mailing to any senator, congressman, governor, or slug that might listen; none did, and they universally treated me as if I was wasting their time. I spent countless hours on the L.A. freeways driving to meetings and any and all of the disorganized professional groups who were attempting to mount a campaign against this atrocity. This, only to discover that our efforts were being easily derailed by a few moles from the brokers who were just beginning to enjoy the windfall from the new declaration of their "freedom". Oh, and don't forget, for all of the time I was spending on this, I was loosing income that I couldn't bill clients.

I spent a lot of time fighting this piece of legislature.

After months of struggling it had clearly gotten to be a futile exercise. The best we could get for all of our trouble is a pronouncement from an IRS mouthpiece that they weren't going to enforce that provision (read harass engineers and scientists). This immediately proved to be a lie, and the mere existence of the regulation began to have its impact on my bottom line; this, of course, was the intended effect.

I got nowhere. But the government said they wouldn't target ME ME ME. But then they did.

Again, rewind my retirement plans back to 0 and shift them into idle.
I had spent all my retirement money on this fight and no one wanted to hire me because I wouldn't stop jabbering about how unfairly I was being treated as a newbie engineer making almost double the current average income for a four-person family.
If I had any sense, I clearly should have left abandoned engineering and never looked back.

The problem wasn't me, it was the entire profession. And the government. I can see that now.

Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks. Then came the L.A. depression of the early 1990s. Our leaders decided that they didn't need the all of those extra Air Force bases they had in Southern California, so they were closed; just like that. The result was economic devastation in the region that rivaled the widely publicized Texas S&L fiasco. However, because the government caused it, no one gave a shit about all of the young families who lost their homes or street after street of boarded up houses abandoned to the wealthy loan companies who received government funds to "shore up" their windfall. Again, I lost my retirement.

There was a depression. Government, like everyone else, had to spend less money. Many people lost jobs. Especially the YOUNG MEN WITH FAMILIES LIKE ME WHO GOT USED TO A CERTAIN LEVEL OF INCOME FROM BILLING 100 HOURS A WEEK. I was unwilling to pick up stakes and move because dammit.

Years later, after weathering a divorce and the constant struggle trying to build some momentum with my business, I find myself once again beginning to finally pick up some speed.
After 13 years I was finally back on my feet. My wife left me for unknown reasons.
Then came the .COM bust and the 911 nightmare. Our leaders decided that all aircraft were grounded for what seemed like an eternity; and long after that, 'special' facilities like San Francisco were on security alert for months. This made access to my customers prohibitively expensive. Ironically, after what they had done the Government came to the aid of the airlines with billions of our tax dollars & as usual they left me to rot and die while they bailed out their rich, incompetent cronies WITH MY MONEY! After these events, there went my business but not quite yet all of my retirement and savings.

I like to fly my own plane to jobs and for a couple of months I couldn't do that because they were afraid unhappy people might fly planes into government buildings. That's silly, isn't it? Then they wanted me to wait around for hours at the airport in San Francisco for "security" reasons, costing me huge amounts of money by making those hours unbillable.

They refused to pay me for my time, the cheap cheapskates. I couldn't let that happen, so I refused to go wait and flew back home.

I don't like letting anyone else fly the plane so I stayed home and used up almost all of the money in savings and what I had saved up for retirement.

By this time, I'm thinking that it might be good for a change. Bye to California, I'll try Austin for a while. So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done. I've never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and wages& and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and doesn't give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich buddies.

I moved to Austin. The people here are stupid, but smart enough to be aware of and therefore jealous of my ability. So they insulted me by lowballing my salary and refused to hire me at my true rate. They are stealing their customers blind by charging one-third of the rate I used to charge. My potential customers stupidly thought they were getting a good deal, didn't believe me when I explained it to them, and refused to hire me as an independent to work on projects with the idiots who hate me.

See, I could have watched what those corrupt cheating companies were doing and blown the whistle on them. Halting a project in mid-completion would be well worth it in terms of truth, justice, and the American way.

But those shortsighted potential customers couldn't see that. They are probably in bed with the contract companies.

To survive, I was forced to cannibalize my savings and retirement, the last of which was a small IRA. This came in a year with mammoth expenses and not a single dollar of income. I filed no return that year thinking that because I didn't have any income there was no need. The sleazy government decided that they disagreed. But they didn't notify me in time for me to launch a legal objection so when I attempted to get a protest filed with the court I was told I was no longer entitled to due process because the time to file ran out. Bend over for another $10,000 helping of justice.

I couldn't get a job so I took money out of my IRA prematurely. I refused to pay taxes on this income because NOT FAIR. The government disagreed. Also, they didn't warn me ahead of time other than by putting out IRS memos explaining that you have to pay taxes when you cash in tax-deferred investments before retirement age. They asked me for the taxes and when I didn't pay, added fines and interest. This eventually added up to $10,000, what I normally would make in a week or less in my imaginary highly paid job of king software engineer had the Austin software engineers and the contract agencies just recognized my genius.

So now we come to the present. After my experience with the CPA world, following the business crash I swore that I'd never enter another accountant's office again. But here I am with a new marriage and a boatload of undocumented income, not to mention an expensive new business asset, a piano, which I had no idea how to handle.

As a child, I hated piano lessons.

After considerable thought I decided that it would be irresponsible NOT to get professional help; a very big mistake. When we received the forms back I was very optimistic that they were in order. I had taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very similar to what I was expecting. Except that he had neglected to include the contents of Sheryl's unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross knew all along this was missing and I didn't have a clue until he pointed it out in the middle of the audit. By that time it had become brutally evident that he was representing himself and not me.

Bill Ross, A BIG MEANIE, asked me for a number for my wife's undocumented income in the middle of a tax preparation interview and when it turned out that meant I wasn't going to get a big refund, I freaked out and left his office.

This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions were poorly documented). Things I never knew anything about and things my wife had no clue would ever matter to anyone. The end result is& well, just look around.

I had alienated the only CPA who would talk to me and I realized I still didn't understand the tax code the way an actual trained lawyer or CPA does. Which is silly because I'm way smarter and make a lot more money than they do, I just used them for convenience, but they're just pawns of the IRS who want to punish me for being superior.

I remember reading about the stock market crash before the "great" depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn't it ironic how far we've come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn't have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it's "business-as-usual". Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes& isn't that a clever, tidy solution.

They don't have windows that open in skyscrapers any more.

As government agencies go, the FAA is often justifiably referred to as a tombstone agency, though they are hardly alone. The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings equally true for all of the government. Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough). In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.

The FAA did or said something that pisses me off, but no one can stand to listen to me about it, much less generate any sympathy for a guy who pissed away several incomes tilting at ill-defined windmills. I'm invoking a reflexive TL;DR.

I know I'm hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn't limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at "big brother" while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won't continue; I have just had enough.

Black people and poor people don't know the pain of being a white male engineer whose income isn't being appropriately sheltered. If I make mistakes, I am responsible for them. This is unfair.

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are.

Gosh, I love alliteration. It took me most of a day to come up with these but aren't they pretty?

Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn't so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

It turns out the bullies who beat me up in school had it right. All that time I spent practicing the piano would have been better spent beating up other kids for their lunch money. There is no joy in anything but crushing your opponent. Don't believe your wife when she says different.

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.
The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

I'm not gullible, but they got my money. So they must be extra-super-greedy! Or something. I can't explain where the money went, I'm just going to jump into my private plane and crash into something big and symbolic and who cares if a few "people" get hurt.

Joe Stack (1956-2010) 02/18/2010

No tag backs!

Why is Jenny McCarthy so effective?

2010-01-23T19:33:00Z

A recent discussion on the Skeptical Inquirer page on Facebook got me thinking. Why are celebrities so effective in leading people astray with anti-science and woo?

I think it's because they are good at presenting narrative. That is, after all, their job. So they create a particular narrative, that of the conspiracy-cracker, and everything falls into place for them.

The narrative requires that the conspiracy-breaker be reviled by "the establishment," so any evidence from the medical research community is cast as more conspiracy. It's proof the conspiracy-breaker is right, because otherwise why would the big bad establishment people be so upset?

The narrative requires that others who had that information might come forward but couldn't for some reason. The conspiracy-cracker is lucky enough to both see the conspiracy, and have the ability to tell others about it.

The narrative requires a scene where the big stuffy scientist says "that's impossible" and the scrappy guy who never got past fourth grade proves him wrong. This is very, VERY hard to overcome in the public imagination. Rooting for the underdog is what we do.

So how can we fight it?

I think we have to recast this narrative as something else. Reason is not an effective tool for everyone, never was, never will be.

The problem with creating a different narrative is that one where the conspiracy-cracker is wrong ends badly. It's not a feel-good, overcoming-adversity kind of story. Instead, someone used his or her power to mislead a bunch of people because he or she has been duped. Pain, suffering and even death were caused by this person's weakness. It's a tragedy. And American audiences don't care for tragedy.

ETA: Ooh, just found a nice article in Discover online: Hollywood's Offensive and Deeply Unoriginal "Skeptic Conversion" Narrative, which discusses the popular plotline of skeptic and believer interaction that always seems to end up with the skeptic becoming a believer.

Gifting, crafting, gender and the holidays

2009-12-30T00:13:00Z

This post on Skepchick got me thinking about gifting and how it relates to gender and the holidays (hence my cleverly-worded post title):

Do you get crafty with gifts? Did you receive anything this year that someone made specifically for you? Have you ever given a gift that you’re particularly proud of?

My impression from the comments is that most of those who take the time to handcraft presents for others are female. I can't be sure because not everyone uses a gendered name, and, of course, the gendered name may not match the person's gender orientation anyway.

There is a gendered-male comment about someone who went the extra mile to get individualized presents. He went about buying pens with the person's name on them, having a book made from the person's recipes, giving customized t-shirts and so on. So he didn't actually do the work.

The only one I see from a gendered-male nym about making a present for someone is mrthumbtack, who forged his parents a coat-rack. Oh, and one from a parent of a young woman whose boyfriend made her a pillow, amused at the boy "trying" to sew.

Davew doesn't think shopping is skilled work, and feels mandatory gift-giving is a guilt machine.

Searching the web isn't much better. I had to wade through several blog search pages on Google to find the first one where a man actually did some crafting -- this entry in the blog EmbellishYourself includes an account of the husband of a couple making individualized screen printed t-shirts.

Garrison Keillor, bigot?

2009-12-27T02:17:00Z

Garrison Keillor seems to have generated quite an outrage in his piece, Nonbelievers, please leave Christmas alone:

If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah? No, we didn't.

Christmas is a Christian holiday - if you're not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don't mess with the Messiah.

At first I thought Keillor was only mocking, by exaggeration, the "War On Christmas" hysteria by imitating it.

His piece brought out a lot of comments earnestly explaining things to him that he surely already knows, about the non-Christian origin and ecumenically broad nature of today's Christmas celebrations. Much of it seems to assume that he is the kind of "modern traditionalist" who loves "Frosty the Snowman" and only requires that we say Christmas rather than Holiday and that merriment and niceness and good will toward men is what Christmas is all about. For example:

In all the years I've listened to Prairie Home Companion, and enjoyed Garrison Keillor's folky tales of an almost mythical midwest that I, as a Californian, could only vaguely imagine, I never suspected this streak of mean-spiritedness.

and

Wow, what a diatribe. Doesn't he understand that the "non-religious" bonhomie that is created by the songs, the decorations, the shared sense of frenzy to make OTHERS happy at Christmas probably does more to promote "good will among men" then any church service has ever done.

But if you listen to his show, you notice that he sticks with either the more-traditional Christmas songs, in the original languages, or modern songs that are doctrinally compatible with his beliefs. And it takes a particularly tin ear to think that Keillor's prose unquestioningly endorses the supposed homespun values of the parents and authority figures of his youth.

So "leave my religion alone" is, I think, at core intentional.

However, I'm not sure it should be taken as "don't sing those songs." It's more, "don't tell me what Christmas is to me." His piece actually tells people to go on and have Yule ceremonies or whatever they like; he doesn't seem upset that people with different views would celebrate at this time of year and "ruin" Christmas for anyone else.

He's invested in an internally-defined authenticity. And he's not alone. For many, religion is by its nature personal and irrational, not a social thing. In MBTI terms, think introverted Feeling.

To those people, I as an atheist have no more of a right to tell someone that Christmas is about being loving to others in a time of need than they have to tell me that this season is only about the gift of the Christ child by a loving God and His eventual living sacrifice for my sins. We have our own beliefs and hands off.

The "real spirit of Christmas" arguments can be used to obliterate a lot of what it means to people who really are very religious, just as the commercialization of Christmas can be used to obliterate a lot of what it means to people who aren't religious but are into the spirit of love and sharing, and the "Jesus is the reason for the season" bit can be used to obliterate what it means to people who aren't religious. It goes full circle.

It isn't just Christmas. Non-Christians telling Christians that they should read Matthew 6:5-6 on praying in public are just as annoying as Christians telling non-Christians to read Leviticus on homosexuality. Claiming there's no such thing as a sin or a sinner, just mistakes and people, is literally doctrinally incorrect for many religions.

In short, there is some of the same instinct to totalitarianism in the smiley face as there is in the jackboot.

As an atheist, it seems to me that saying, "Christmas is really about *this* and Jesus would approve," is arrogating the power of religion for one's own beliefs, putting your own words into Jesus' mouth, even if it's to get Jesus to endorse viewpoints I agree with.

I think it's much more honest to just say, "this act is morally bad/wrong because...," or "this act is morally good/right because...." All else is a bullshit wrapper.

(At least, according to my own internally-defined sense of authenticity. It's not restricted to religious people, you know!)

Hitchens' unrequited love for Sarah Palin

2009-12-08T01:24:00Z

Okay, not really, but it's gotta mean something that Chris Hitchens calls her a tease in his Newsweek article:

The Palin problem, then, might be that she cynically incites a crowdthat she has no real intention of pleasing. If she were ever to getherself to the nation's capital, the teabaggers would be just as muchon the outside as they are now, and would simply have been theinstruments that helped get her elected.

and then graduates to explicitly calling her a cock-tease on Slate:

At least Richard Nixon had the ill fortune to look like what he was: ahaunted scoundrel and repressed psychopath. Whereas the usefulness ofSarah Palin to the right-wing party managers is that she combines acertain knowingness with a feigned innocence and a still-palpable blushof sex. But she should take care to read her Alexander Pope: That bloomwill soon enough fade, and it will fade really quickly if she uses itto prostitute herself to the Nixonites on one day and then tocock-tease the rabble on the next.

I don't usually think of Hitchens as one of those entitled MRA gasbags who looks at women as holders of the pussy, though I should have seen it coming when he said women aren't funny because they don't have to be funny because, well, they're the holders of the pussy. But it's not looking good here.

Law & Order Abortion Episode

2009-11-03T22:20:00Z

I finally got around to seeing the Law&Order episode based on the Dr. Tiller abortion killer case. Rather than recap it, I've placed links to articles on other blogs describing it in detail at the end of this article, since it's been covered better already.

Suffice it to say, it didn't fare very well.

What I expected, and was not surprised to see, was the total erasure of the agency of the pregnant woman. It's as if the trial was whether the particular woman in question should have an abortion or not. Not whether the abortion doctor killer killed a man doing something totally legal.

This is common in discussing abortion, to evaluate each abortion as though we have a right to decide for the woman whether this is a "good" or "bad" abortion.

At the end of the trial, the prosecuting attorney says in his closing argument that the decision about where life begins is one we don't all agree upon. Yes. And that different people and religions have different ideas. Yes.

And yet he doesn't go the obvious next step to say, this is why we leave it up to the woman who is pregnant to make the decision. Not someone else. Not a judge, not a jury, not a church, not a government panel, but the woman who's pregnant, advised by her doctor.

A woman who is going to have a disabled fetus can choose to carry it to term. A woman who is going to have a healthy fetus can choose to abort it. A woman who is disabled or has medical issues still has the right to have a baby, or have an abortion. The choice belongs to her.

Not that any of that would be in any way relevant to the case anyway, since the doctor wasn't doing anything illegal.

ETA: And notice at the end, Rubirosa, a prosecuting attorney who was sickened by all the "pro-abortion" posturing, says she wants to leave her position and be transferred to white collar crime. But her boss decides for her that she has to stay and work it out with the other prosecuting attorney. Because what women want to do isn't relevant. It's what is best for the system.

Good relevant articles:

Lauredhel on Hoyden About Town, "Dignity," Worth, and the Medical Model of Disability. Especially recommended as it goes into detail about disability and the just-as-much-not-choice assumption of some doctors that imperfect fetuses should be discarded. "Abortion is seen as a medical imperative, not a decision made by the person hosting the fetus at the time."
Feminist Law Professors, "Law and Order's Shameful Abortion Episode"
Kate Harding on Salon, "Law & Order's Anti-Choice Propaganda"

Feelings are information

2009-10-26T23:13:00Z

So there's this book that's been out for a while, you've probably seen it or even read it. You Just Don't Understand: Women And Men In Conversation, by Deborah Tannen. It is very popular and, like the Venus and Mars books, purports to explain how men and women differ in the way they talk and why.

A lot of people got as their takeaway from the book that men talk to convey information, women talk to share feelings.

I think she's almost right. The things women talk about are counted as feelings [1]. That doesn't mean they aren't information! Nor does it mean that a piece of information that is expressed with feeling is expressed for the sole purpose of getting feelings back.

Supposed "conveying information":

Man: Let's go swimming.
Woman: I don't know how to swim.
Man: I can teach you.
[Woman thinks, who asked you?]

Supposed "sharing emotions":

Man: Let's go swimming.
Woman: I don't know how to swim.
Man: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you.
[Woman thinks, I better not look upset, he doesn't like that. Man thinks, better never talk about swimming again.]

Notice how #2 wasn't actually discussing what she said? It acknowledged she had an emotion but stopped there.

Actual discussion:

Man: Let's go swimming.
Woman: I don't know how to swim.
Man: How did that happen?
Woman: My father tried to drown me when I was six.

Which can go one of a few ways. First, when the man treats the communication of emotions as meaningful information:

Man: That's terrible, I'm sorry to bring it up.
Woman: I was always afraid of him after that.
Man: No wonder.
[further discussion about feelings where they get to know each other better, by, you know, exchanging information]

But if they both feel like discussing it in depth, they can also initiate action or gain understanding from the inclusion of emotion:

Man: That's terrible, I'm sorry to bring it up.
Woman: It really scared me. I would like to enjoy swimming but I don't know if I ever can.
Man: What have you tried?
Woman: I went to lessons but no one really addressed my fear, so I quit.
[further discussion about options, taking her emotions into consideration as valid reasons to do or not do something]

Or, the man could treat the communication as just emotion which is the enemy of truth which should be removed from the discussion:

Man: Are you sure?
Woman: Yes, he held me under until I choked and my mother stopped him.
Man: He was probably just trying to teach you how to swim.
[continued explanation of how she probably just overreacted]

Of course these discussions can happen between any two people of any gender. The fact is, though, Tannen treats "emotion-laden discourse" and "information-laden discourse" as separate, neatly severing emotions from the highly-revered category of information.

Sorta like how rotating 3-D images in space is considered the ultimate in intelligence, because it's one of the "intelligences" that males tend to do better at.

[1] I have to wonder, if we had just a male or female voice saying, "That's not fair!" how many people would count the male voice as saying something factual while the woman is thought to be saying something emotional.

Maria Shriver, where are you?

2009-10-17T22:13:00Z

Maria Shriver (in conjunction with hp) has created a report and set up a related website, A Woman's Nation. It's about the place of women at work, how the US needs to adjust to having so many kids with either a single parent or both parents working yet there's not enough child care, and other implications of women in the workplace that have been underrepresented in politics, social policy, and the media.

There are some good articles there. For example, a quote from "Where Have You Gone, Roseanne Barr?" by Susan J. Douglas:

"Women’s professional success and financial status are significantlyoverrepresented in the mainstream media, suggesting that women indeed“have it all.” Yet in real life, even as most women work, there are fartoo few women among the highest ranks of the professions and millionsof everyday women struggle to make ends meet and to juggle work andfamily....what much of the media give us today are little more than fantasies of power....representations of women as working-class or middle-class breadwinners,such as those we used to see in “Roseanne,” “Grace Under Fire,” “OneDay at a Time,” “Kate & Allie,” and “Cagney & Lacey,” havevirtually vanished from the small screen."

I recommend the website and this article in particular.

But -- look at the image they have at the top of every page!

How much is wrong here? Like, beauty standard much? All young? No one seems to have a disability?

Fixed that for you

2009-10-05T23:19:00Z

The comic xkcd.com put up a comic recently which has excited some discussion in the blogosphere. Here it is:

The comic seems to suggest that the man is worried about saying anything to the woman, when she'd gladly like to have him say something to her.

This is pretty much unrealistic. The average woman-on-the-train isn't hoping the guy next to her will talk to her. She's usually either passively ignoring him and the others on the train, or is hoping he or anyone else won't bother her.

So, xkcd.com, I fixed that for you:

You're welcome.

Justice delayed

2009-09-27T19:20:00Z

So now they've finally arrested Roman Polanski, more than thirty years after he escaped justice for raping a thirteen-year-old girl.

PARIS — After more than 30 years as a fugitive from U.S. justice, Roman Polanski, the director of legendary films including “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” was arrested in Switzerland on an international warrant as he arrived in Zurich for a film festival featuring a retrospective of his work, the Swiss authorities said Sunday.

Of course not everyone is happy:

France's political elite rallied to the defence of Roman Polanski on Sunday, calling on Switzerland to free the 76-year-old film director rather than extradite him to the United States. Artists and film makers also urged the release of Polanski, who faces charges of having sex with a girl of 13 in 1977, accusing Switzerland of being overzealous in pursuing the case.

What reasons do they give?

"I am shocked that any man of 76, whether distinguished or not, should have been treated in such a fashion," he said in a statement, adding that Polanski had often visited Switzerland and even had a house in Gstaad. "It is hard not to believe that this heavy-handed actionmust be in some way politically motivated," he said.

It's political? What particular political motive would the US have in doing this?

And "he's 76." Well, that could have been avoided had he not run the fuck away 31 years ago. I'm reminded of the man who killed his parents and then asked the mercy of the court because he's an orphan.

"Seeing him alone, imprisoned while he was heading to an event that was due to offer him praise and recognition is awful, he was trapped," French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said at a news conference today. "In the same way there is a generous America that we like, there is also a scary America, that has just shown its face."

I think seeing the 13-year-old being raped would probably be more awful. But it didn't get filmed, Mitterand wasn't there, and it was so inconveniently long ago, so you really don't have to think about it.

In my mind, the "generous America" is generous to 13-year-old girls who were drugged and raped. Not so much to the older man who drugged and raped her, and not only didn't get shunned by "polite society," he was getting an award for his lifetime of apparent wonderfulness.

Poland's film-makers' association also rose to his defence.

"We do not understand why the Swiss invited Polanski to a film festival, where he was to have received a life's achievement award, and then arrested him," said association president, Jacek Bromski. "We regard that as a scandalous situation and an example of incomprehensible overzealousness."

Overzealousness? Arresting a rapist? I guess we have different definitions of that word.

And it appears that, in Switzerland, just like in most other countries, the people who give out the film awards don't actually get to tell the police what to do.

You might wonder, too, why this is the first time anyone's tried to arrest him. Surely they should have been trying harder, right?

But this isn't their first try, not by a long shot. He just gets informed about it ahead of time and avoids it:

Los Angeles District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons told ABC News that this is not the first time Polanski has been in this situation, but he typically hears about a possible arrest ahead of time.

So finally he's in the hands of law enforcement. But, as a French citizen, he'll have to be extradited through the French system. I would like to hope he'll arrive in the US and finally serve his time, but I'm afraid it won't happen. It took passing a new law in Pennsylvania to get murderer Ira Einhorn extradited from France.

Good luck with something as "trivial" as rape.

Once again, we visit the stations of the cross of rape denialism

2009-09-25T18:25:00Z

Of course MacKenzie Phillips is lying about her father raping her.

And of course we must visit all the "stations of the cross" that explain how it couldn't possibly have happened.

After all, we only have her word, which isn't really worth anything.

Remember folks we have no proof, just the claims of a disturbed former drug addict. PROOF is what is needed, not hearsay.

After all, her stepmothers both say it couldn't have happened.

Ex-wife Genevieve Waite: "He was incapable, no matter how drunk or drugged he was, of having such a relationship with his own child."
Ex-wife Michelle Phillips: "I have every reason to believe it’s untrue."

After all, she's crazy and a drug addict.

"If she thinks it’s true, why isn’t she with a good psychiatrist on a couch? "

After all, she made the claim before, but then recanted it, says her stepmother.

"Michelle Phillips says that in 1997, Mackenzie told everyone in their extended family that she and her father, Michelle’s famous former husband, had had a sexual relationship. “She told me, then she called me back and said, ‘You know I’m joking,’ ” Michelle told me. “I said it wasn’t funny. Mackenzie said, ‘I guess we have different senses of humor.’ ”"

After all, it's gross, and someone who thinks this happened to her must just have a disgusting imagination.

"after all if it's money or attention she seeks, the only way she can get it now is to write a book and tell stories about her crazy life. If the stories have all been told, and you want to sell a book you have to make up new ones that top all of the old ones and this tops them all."

After all, she's just doing it for attention, publicity, and money.

Mackenzie is jealous of her siblings, who have accomplished a lot and did not become drug addicts."

After all, if it really happened, she should be ashamed, not accusing, because she's just as guilty as he is.

""The thing is, who among us haven't done something that we're highly ashamed of in our lives?" [half-sister Chynna] said to Winfrey."

"I don't understand why Mackenzie wants to tell everyone about something like this anyway. If she wants to help other incest victims deal with their trauma, does it make sense for victims to make their shame public?"

After all, she was acting flirtatious and familiar with him. He's the real victim here.

Ex-wife Genevieve Waite in a statement read by Oprah Winfrey: "...I would often complain to John about her overly familiar attitude toward him and he would tell me that was just her way."

Rape should be kept quiet, especially if it's incestuous because it shames the family.

Michelle Phillips: "Whether her relationship with her father is delusional or not, it is an unfortunate circumstance and very hurtful for our entire family."

Rape isn't committed by famous good-looking people, because they can get "anyone they want." Ugly people can't be raped because they should be grateful to get any sex at all. She enjoyed it and so it's not rape.

"Mackenzie has a great dad who knows that since she isnt that great looking, he helps her with the sex introduction. "
"its not rape if you like it :)"

Rape, especially if you're a child when it happens, never gives you psychological problems. You can't make an accusation if you're "crazy" or even upset, or it must just be your imagination.

Mackenzie has a lot of mental illness.

Rape isn't really the rapist's fault if you and he were high or drunk.

"So now, if she had blackouts from the drugs and he had blackouts from the drugs, is it conceivable that neither she nor her father knew what they were doing?"

Rape accusations, if they're legitimate, are always made immediately, no matter the power imbalance between the rapist and the victim. Delay proves the accusation false. She didn't report it to the police when it happened.

"She could have stopped it at anytime but she chose to do it for 10 years."
"The whole thing is timed...“

Rape only happens when a stranger leaps out of the bushes and attacks a pretty girl. This had to be consensual.

"At 29 years old - her legs were pointed to Jesus, welcoming her father. That is not rape. That is consent. And boy did she ever consent to getting it on with her father, while she was an adult."

Rape is offensive to people and shouldn't be discussed.

i'm fed up hearing about "my rape hell" every other day.
Whether true or not, this revelation is a disgusting level of lurid that should have been kept away from the sensibilities of the public.

Don't intrude on my pleasant memories of the accused rapist.

Now, NO ONE can listen to the Mama's and Papa's without thinking of father/daughter enjoying hot sex. GROSS !!!!
Where is your respect for the dead

-------------------

To be honest, I'm actually pleased how many people come up in defense of MacKenzie Phillips in blogs and in the comments sections of articles about her revelation. For every blameful comment I've quoted above, there are others knocking down the blame.

Like lois:

"We each have to face our OWN Monsters and heal in our OWN way. If THIS is the way she chooses to heal, then more POWER to her! "

Like pb:

"This is not a healthy 18 or 19 year old making healthy decisions. She is an abused child that is drug addicted. Both caused by her clearly unhealthy father. Many people ask why I continued talking to my father after being abused. I don't know - denial? Many assumed he abused me by force. Not true. That is part of the sickness, people. This would not happen to a healthy person - making them incapable of making wise decisions."It seems many people are finally getting the message. Here's hoping the trend continues.

Like Marcella:

I know the meaning of incest, but has never heard or know anyone who has experience this. So to me it a word, but now there are faces to that word. I sincely hope this is a chance to open a dialogue so people who are in this situation may get help to deal with this nightmare.

[apologies for missing links, the blog software kept doing odd things, deleting one link when I added another, and it is hard to search for some of these comments.]

An appropriate apology?

2009-09-23T20:07:00Z

Thanks to my friend Amanda D. for this:

British Fantasy Society admits 'lazy sexism' over male-only horror book

The British Fantasy Society put out a collection of interviews with 16 horror writers which included not one woman:

Authors and commentators were shocked to discover that the BritishFantasy Society's In Conversation: A Writer's Perspective; Volume One:Horror, edited by author James Cooper and out later this year, onlyfeatured interviews with male writers such as Ramsey Campbell andGraham Joyce.
"There are a lot of women who write horror and lovethe genre. Our contribution to the industry deserves as muchrecognition as our male colleagues. That we were treated as if wedidn't even exist was a shocking experience. Ann Radcliffe wrote herfirst Gothic novel in 1789 and Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818,after all," said writer Maura McHugh. McHugh drew attention to the situation late last week on her blog Splinister, where she said there were "no excuses" for the omission.

The society was...actually contrite!

The British Fantasy Society has now apologised for the omission,with its chair, Guy Adams, saying it was "disgustingly simple for a mannot to notice these things, a blindness to the importance of correctgender representation that I feel embarrassed to have fallen into".
"Ican only apologise and hope that the discussion has made other editorsand publishers realise that this kind of lazy sexism is unacceptableand to watch their own lists in future," he said in an apology posted on the BFS website. [link mine, not in the original]

The society indicated they will be aware of this in the future. Because they hadn't really been paying attention up until now (grr).

Adams suggested that they print a new collection of interviews with women horror writers.

The point is, though, that this can still happen so easily. How could anyone not have noticed?

And I wonder if having a "interviews with women in horror" book would just increase the ghettoization of women writers. How many people would just not read the book thinking "I'm not a chick, I don't need to look at it"?

It's buying into the idea of "male as default."

Life expectancy and pregnancy -- a hidden statistic?

2009-09-23T19:50:00Z

So I got a question through Aardvark [1] asking if there's a connection between women's life expectancy and having children.

My automatic respose would be that having children decreases your life expectancy in the immediate range, because it can kill you. Abortion is safer than pregnancy, so it would stand to reason that not even getting an abortion, just never getting pregnant, would be even safer. Short-term, not having a baby is safer.

The long-term effects of having children could be positive, however. If you're never pregnanty, you get more estrogen pumping around so you are more likely to get breast cancer. If you have children, you may have an adult child looking after you when you're older so they might help you catch a problem that would kill you if you ignored it.

I couldn't find any statistics on life expectancy for a woman broken down by number of children. I was surprised -- I expected a chart with columns for "number of children" and rows for age, and the life expectancy for a woman with those characteristics.

After all, we get statistics on how smoking, eating omega-3, even skydiving affects your life expectancy. Yet this very essential and common experience isn't included? Perhaps because it's women doing it, and doctors and epidemiologists assume that women would decide not to have babies if they knew the risks?

The data has to be out there.

[1] you can sign up to answer questions from your friends and from others who have questions in your area of expertise.

UPDATE
A friend found this:

Reproduction and Lifespan: Trade-offs, Overall Energy Budgets,
Intergenerational Costs, and Costs Neglected by Research
GRAZYNA JASIENSKA*

which tells us

In human females allocation of resources to support reproduction may cause their insufficient supply to other metabolic functions, resulting in compromised physiology, increased risks of diseases and, consequently, reduced lifespan. While many studies on both historical and contemporary populations show that women with high fertility indeed have shorter lifespans. This relationship is far from universal: a lack of correlation between fertility and lifespan, or even an increased lifespan of women with high fertility have also been documented. Reduced lifespan in women with high fertility may be undetectable due to methodological weaknesses of research or it may be truly absent, and its absence may be explained from biological principles. I will discuss the following reasons for a lack of the negative relationship, described in some demographic studies, between the number of children and lifespan in women: (1) Number of children is only a proxy of the total costs of reproduction and the cost of breastfeeding is often higher than the pregnancy cost but is often not taken into account. (2) Costs of reproduction can be interpreted in a meaningful way
only when they are analyzed in relation to the overall energy budget of the woman. (3) Trade-offs between risks of different diseases due to reproduction yield different mortality predictions depending on the socio-economic status of the studied populations. (4) Costs of reproduction are related not only to having children but also to having grandchildren. Such intergenerational costs should be included in analysis of trade-offs between costs of reproduction and longevity.

In other words, "it depends." The author goes into good detail on the physical energy cost of childbearing and lactation and child care, hormonal issues which provide some protection against later cancers, personal interactions with children and grandchildren as a positive life extender but the countervailing tendency for grandfathers to be granted more resources out of respect while grandmothers tend to be assigned work and tend to decrease child mortality for their grandchildren. She points out that there is a lack of good historical data on lactation duration. More children tends to correlate with higher rates of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and sometimes obesity.

Though the last is least worrisome it could, of course, cause some women to decide in this thinness obsessed world to avoid pregnancy.

One interesting finding she relates is that short-term partial breastfeeding, as is often done in industrialized societies, doesn't provide as much protection as "full on" breastfeeding. More ammo for the breastfeeding in public crowd -- it's not just a moral right, it's a health benefit.

Another friend found a paper entitled, "LIFE EXPECTANCY AS AN INTEGRATING CONCEPT IN SOCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS AND PLANNING" by Dudley Seers, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. This kind of data structuring is suggested as useful for reports, but it doesn't actually contain any such reports.

More than Large Marge

2009-09-23T00:57:00Z

I don't see women truckers very often. True, I don't actually see truck drivers too often because their rigs are so high up, it can be hard to see them.

But I knew they were more than just "Large Marge."

I discovered a source of information about these women thanks to Feministing -- the website AskATrucker.com. There's a series of articles there by and about women truckers. I recommend.

Women In Trucking: "What motivates these women to leave the general work place? You will find that independence and the irrepressible challenge of truck driving jobs are the two most common motivations given. Another important reason is the wage-earning aspect. Truck driving averages 20-30% higher wages than jobs’ women usually enter into."

A Day in the Life of a Lady Trucker (in the comments) : "My female roomate that was going solo told me that she had haddifficulties when she was teaming with her Brother and Boyfriendbecause they constantly tried to undermine her judgement. She told menot to worry that if I got into a bind just ask someone for help. Itwas great advice because I imagined if I asked someone for help theywould yell at me and say “You dumb girl!, go home and bake cookies, youdon’t belong out here!” but it hasn’t been that way at all. There are only 2 kinds of people to me, helpful people and A-HOLES! unfortunately, I met mostly the latter my first few months on the road."

Lots of interesting material here. You can also follow her (voluminous!) tweets on twitter as TruckerDesiree.

Other sites and pages about women in trucking:

Women In Trucking Association
Layover.com on Women Truck Drivers
Record-setting woman truck driver (two million miles without an accident)

Why people still believe -- religious experience as an optical illusion.

2009-09-19T20:11:00Z

As I've said before, I don't think I ever actually believed in God, so becoming an atheist wasn't hard to do.

A lot of people remain steadfast in a belief in God even if, logically, they know it makes no sense. They call it faith.

I call it brain chemistry.

I've felt it. It feels to me like my head is on fire and flames are coming up through the top of my head. But it's not burning hurting flames, it's sort of hair-raising, it's accompanied by a feeling of excitement and momentousness. It's sort of like falling in love, but different, in that there's no human object of the love, it's just an excited, alive, singing with the universe feeling. It can stay for a few moments or last for days.

I never assumed it was God. But I can imagine if you believe in God and can't imagine that your senses will fool you, that this would be the feeling of being touched by God or spoken to by God. Intensified or prolonged, it would be a vision, a revelation.

Maybe the fact that I learned how to go on an LSD trip without LSD (after having taken it a few times) makes me a bit more accepting of the idea that the brain has the power to do almost whatever it wants in changing your perceptions. Or maybe more precisely, that the brain is your perceptions, and it doesn't follow the straight-line Euclidean universe we might think it does.

It seems many atheists avoid discussing this. The social forces that impel one to claim religious belief are always covered. The logical errors in supposed proofs of God's existence are well-cataloged. The suggestion that we need religion to behave is easily refuted.

But this one thing that impels people to say, "I believe, because I feel it"? Not so much. Because it's hard to argue that someone's feelings aren't real. It's just your brain making a happy, really. But we normally don't have PET scans sitting around to check, so in most cases there's no proof it's a physical brain phenomenon. Even when there is, believers can just say it's proof of God because God made this happen.

Some few atheists mock it. They approach it as if it were a disease, or an anomaly. But it might be better to think of it as like an optical illusion. The way our brains are built, we cannot help having this kind of experience, given the right cues, just like we can't help thinking that these lines are not parallel or squares A and B here are not the same shade of grey.

God is a trick? Religious feeling is a trick? Not exactly. What is happening is real. But the interpretation is the trick. There's some small nugget of truth in the idea that God reveals himself to different people in different ways. The details are different, the aims and precepts of the religions are different, but the feeling is the same. This thing happens in every culture, and to anyone who tries hard enough and gets in the right mindspace, which, surprise surprise, is in places that are big, where people are repeating monotonous phrases, where there are flickering lights, where you're encouraged to think about things bigger than yourself, and unity, and infinity, and love or some other strong emotion. It's just that there's no God behind it.

There's a book newly out called The Third Man Factor, about how people in extremis not uncommonly believe there is another person there with them, helping them, guiding them. Like a guardian angel. Or maybe a brain activity, huh?

I haven't read the book, but, from a Wall Street Journal review:

Ron DiFrancesco, the 9/11 survivor who walked out of the South Tower, is convinced that a divine being was by his side, and indeed a spiritual interpretation is common. Scientists, by contrast, have discovered how to evoke the sensation of a shared presence by stimulating the brain with electricity.

You know where my vote goes.

Granpa Gene, stealth feminist?

2009-09-08T03:21:00Z

If you're following Mad Men but aren't up to date, spoiler alert.

The character of Grandpa Gene, Betty's father and Don's father-in law, had a short but interesting tenure on the show.

He arrived at their household in a swirl of accusations about his incompetence, bolstered by his fits of peeling spuds and hiding all the liquor. Irascible, confused, he seemed nothing but an albatross for the family to handle.

But he made conspiracy with Sally, Betty and Don's daughter. He has her reading The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire at night instead of reading to her. He wants to get her favorite fruit. He says she reminds him of his late wife, who was a draftsman with the boys. He lets her drive the car -- her legs are too short for her feet to reach the pedals, but he works those for her. He tells her she's smart and will amount to something.

Even in conflict, they bond. She steals money from him, and, while he knows it was her, he doesn't rat on her, waiting for her to come up with a pretext for "finding" it.

He focuses on her, and she responds well. She doesn't get enough attention from her own father; he's too busy working or looking for strange. Mom jokingly calls her a little lesbian for using tools. There's an element of the downtrodden banding together -- after all, Gene's no longer a man in charge of his destiny, and she's just a girl.

In contrast, he shows disappointment with his own daughter, Betty. He feels she's too soft. When he tries to discuss final arrangements with her, she complains that he doesn't care how she feels about it -- she's still his little girl and doesn't want to face the fact that he's ill and may not last long. The unspoken part here is, of course, how do you think he feels talking about his death?

And when Grandpa Gene dies, Sally is quite understandably devastated. Her ally, her companion, the one who always has his eye on her, is gone.

At the end of the show we hear the WWI song, "Over There." The forces that allowed Gene's wife to ascend, need in a time of war (though it was WWII), were strongly countered at the end of the war with "go back home" messages to women. The GI bill was actually partly used to quash women's ambition, since they wouldn't get the college degrees that made the returning men "more qualified" for jobs. The Fifties were a time of unabashed constriction of women's roles. Women who had worked hard in business and industry while the men were at war were unceremoniously shoved aside when the men came home.

When it's over, over there, it's over for women, over here. But only temporarily.

When fair is not fair

2009-09-06T18:34:00Z

From the blog Student Activism comes an update on the story about a professor who hired a student for sex through Craigslist, then slapped her and hit her with a belt. He's back in class.

Backstory: In April of 2008, University of Michigan Near Eastern Studies professor Yaron Eliav went to Craigslist looking for sex. He contacted a woman who turned out to be a 22 year old Michigan law student. They met in a hotel room. She agreed to $300.

According to the student, he assaulted her, slapping her without her consent. "[S[he had allowed Eliav to strike her buttocks with a belt, but when heslapped her twice in the face she became upset. The student claimedthat she had suffered temporary vision problems after the event but hadno sustaining injuries." (Mahalo.com).

She had turned to sex work out of desperation, not a little fueled by depression; this sent her into a tailspin of self-mutilation. Not that sex workers who freely choose such a career would not be devastated as well. Hello, it's assault, people.

She reported him and was, as you might predict, not taken seriously. Eventually, both of them were charged with the same offense, using a computer to commit a crime.

He was not charged with assault and battery, or sexual assault.

The sad thing about this is that it's really not an unusual case. If the woman involved had not been a law student, it probably wouldn't have made the papers, because (a) she probably wouldn't have bothered to try to press charges, and (b) if she had tried, she would probably have been ignored and denied.

Of course the full slut-shaming brigade came out for the party. Comments on the story in The Michigan Daily demand to know the name of the woman so that her diseased body can be shunned, take the fact that the accusations of the woman not turning into a criminal charge as proof positive that she's lying, claim "what he does with his personal life is personal and as long he doesn't mix his personal and teaching lives together, I don't care" (assault? really?), and even ignorantly claim that it's always the customers who get in trouble and not the sex worker!

Read the comments about him on RateMyProfessors and you see the kind of teacher most good students would love to have. Funny, smart, engaged, "nerdy," not a hard teacher but so enthusiastic it's hard not to learn from him. This is the kind of guy who hits women for fun. He called the slapping, the part that the woman did not consent to, "like a game."

This is the face of sexual assault. As fun and friendly as this professor is, he still hurts women -- according to reports, this isn't the first time he's done this. And now he's back on campus, back to teaching. Back in the faces of women who, statistically, will face sexual assault sometime in their lives. Maybe by someone just like Eliav.

And before someone comes in trying to defend the kink, do your research. Ethical BDSM does not involve people who don't want to be involved, and it does not escalate without consent. Even if the student was naive in what to expect from someone who says he just wants a little spanking session, that doesn't make her guilty for her own assault when he oversteps the bounds.

Thoughts on Sodini

2009-08-07T05:00:00Z

On August 4, in Pittsburgh, PA, George Sodini, a 48-year-old systems analyst, took a gun into a health club, went to a women's dance exercise class, turned off the lights, and began shooting. He killed three women and injured nine others. He then turned the gun on himself.

Why did he do it? He actually blogged about it. His hostility to women, especially young women, whom he called "hoes," his feeling of entitlement and rage against the women who withheld sex and companionship from him, is obvious, and it's an obvious start.

But lots of men have these attitudes, unfortunately. What made Sodini different?

Lonnie Athens is a criminalist who developed a theory of criminal behavior called Violentization. It requires a series of steps in which a person becomes a violent criminal. It is essentially a process of familiarization, motivation, practice, and success, a general process that results in a lot of behaviors both good and bad, applied to violence.

In looking at the acts of George Sodini, I think I see the same steps.

Violent subjugation. This is where you are compelled to do something you don't want to, or forced not to do something you want to, under force or threat of force by someone who has power over you. In Sodini's case, it's more of a sexual subjugation, not getting laid, not having a girlfriend, not having female attention, with the "someone with power over you" being women. He also mentions his brother being a severe bully, so he's personally familiar with the concept of someone being physically overpowered.
Personal horrification. This is where someone close to you is also subjugated. It's not just you. In Sodini's case, it's reading about other men who don't get laid, don't have a girlfriend, don't have female attention either. Finding the Pickup Artist (PUA) community fulfills this stage. The PUA community has a general mindset of women as a class withholding sex and interest from men because they are either callous or mean.
Violent coaching. This is where you are taught and encouraged to use force to resolve conflict. "it's them or you." The PUA community coaches men in how to overcome women's personal choices with 'tricks'. These tricks are not "be yourself" or "think of interesting things to say." They are couched in adversarial terms, where the man wants to "win" by getting sex and attention from the woman against her will.
Belligerency. This is where you get into a situation where you must take things into your own hands -- literally, a call to war. You find yourself in a situation which is not just unpleasant but intolerable. You may go out of your way to find such a situation, it may be a natural part of your environment. In Sodini's case, it was probably when he decided that he hadn't been rejected by two, or ten, or even a hundred women. It's when he decided that 30 million women had all personally rejected him. The enormity of this crime against him meant he could not fail to respond, and responding in proportion meant it had to be big.
Violent performances. This is where you perform for others to show them how dangerous you are. "Don't fuck with me." It's also where you learn if you have the stomach for violent behavior. It is typical for the experimenter not to do well, or to back out, before having a successful performance. Sodini started but then aborted a few times before carrying through. Eventually he "succeeded."
Virulency. This is where you become famous for your performances, and proud about it, and use your fame for personal gain. In less extreme examples, the perpetrator is known as a person you don't want to fuck with because he will fuck you up. In this case, Sodini is only getting the fame, and he's getting it post-mortem, since he killed himself, the brave little shit.

It's not a perfect parallel, I'll agree. But I think the general pattern is there. Some men would simply turn to rape, but I think Sodini probably had too much invested in himself as a "nice guy" and knew too well that, as a serial rapist, he would be caught and punished, put into prison with Black men (whom he also hated).

Furthermore, he wasn't in a real-life group where such behavior really would be accepted. PUAs have since come out of the closet half-condemning him but excusing him, much as right-to-lifers half-condemned but excused the killing of abortion doctor Tiller. But Sodini wouldn't really find any place in society where his behavior would be protected or allowed to go unpunished. In this sense, anti-woman communities on the internet with their concomitant violent objectification encouraged his behavior but it made it impossible to live with later. There is no real community that would accept Sodini as their own.

I have to wonder what the women he talks about having dated a few times would say about him. Was he threatening in any way? He says that he's been told by over a hundred women that he's a "nice guy." This is sometimes code for "there's something wrong with you but it's not something I can explain directly, and I'm not about to have a discussion about it with you because you might kill me over it."

You can read more about Lonnie Athens and Violentization in the book Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist by Richard Rhodes, and the source book by Athens himself, The Creation of Dangerous Criminals.

I am a racist

2009-08-03T00:30:00Z

This blog post is published in participation with International Blog Against Racism Week, July 27 to August 2. Somehow I missed the beginning of the week, but I still have tonight, so here I go.

Hi all. I'm a racist.

I grew up in a racist country. My parents, their friends, family members, neighbors, the media, the arts, all showed me how to be racist.

I didn't know better. I got it when I was too young to understand.

When I was three, I remember reaching for something on the sidewalk, and my mother telling me, "don't pick that up! What if some old n* had his lips on it?" I don't remember if I recoiled in horror or had to have it explained to me, but from then on, things on the sidewalk were easy to pass up.

When I was a kid, I remember hearing the "some of them are the good ones" discussions, and thinking this was accurate -- that there were some "good ones" among the Black population, but that didn't really mean they were equal.*

My father was a virulent racist, and used the n word relentlessly and with great anger. He was one of those people who talks back to the TV, and we all got a good earful when Black people showed up there doing anything but tap dancing and singing.

Eventually I figured out this was all wrong. And for a while I thought, great, I understand that racism is wrong, and I won't do it any more, and it will be fine. I'm not racist any more.

Unfortunately, while those little racist voices in my head got quieter, they never completely went away. It didn't matter how silly or ugly or irrational they sounded. They were still there.

And unfortunately, they *are* still there.

Walking alone at night, if I see a Black man or a group of young Black men walking towards me, my first reaction is worry. I have to actively say to myself, "they're just people." Then evaluate the situation to decide whether I'm worrying because they're acting in a way that is threatening, or worrying needlessly. Usually it's needless.

I often have to listen past a voice that sounds Black, actively listen past the Blackness, to make sure I'm judging it on what it's saying and not the dialect it's being said in. If I were just to go on my gut instinct, I'd be rejecting or ignoring a lot of smart and insightful things people have said because they're said in the wrong voice.

These prejudices go for other races, too, but where I grew up, it was the Black man or woman who was the threat. It sent my family to the suburbs with all the other white-flighters.

And it even applies in the "false positive" direction -- a nurse with a lovely English accent treated my mother quite badly, and I had to keep telling myself that the nurse was ignorant no matter how much she sounded like Mary Poppins, keep forcing myself to intervene rather than allow my prejudice in favor of her to allow her to slide.

All this is to say that racism won't go away until we acknowledge the racism we carry around with us, and confront it, every time. Actively look for where racism is bending your perspective.

Getting to the point where we know it's wrong is a crucial step, but it is not enough. Most of us have already reached that step, and guess what? Society is still deluged with racism. Some people think it's because Blacks and others are perpetuating some kind of myth, but that's just blaming the victim. Study after study shows that racism is alive and well, even among those who say they've gotten beyond it.

Racism in the individual is like a disease that we cannot really cure. Once we're infected, we must fight it, sometimes daily.

And if we love each other, we have to help each other see it, and fight it.

After all, there's sometimes an expectation that we White people can "let our hair down" and be racist around each other. There's a joke about how all racist jokes begin -- by looking around to make sure no one of that race is around to complain. Because if not, "we" are "safe" in making those jokes, those statements.

I think that such behavior somehow makes racism more delicious, more fun, more "exclusive" and harder to eliminate.

So we have to police ourselves. The place that nonwhite people can't go is those gatherings where there are no nonwhites, and that's where a lot of the bad stuff still exists. We owe it to each other to call it out, to make sure that there is no "safe place" for racist talk.

If we can look at it not as condemning the person, but helping the person clean up her or his act, I think it will go a long way to really getting rid of expressions of racism everywhere. If we can accept the observation not with defensiveness but with recognition and understanding, we can get that much closer to a healthy relationship with other people.

"There's a spot of racism on your tie, let's flood it with light and see if we can get it out."

"I smell something unpleasant --I think you've got some racism on the bottom of your shoe. Let's scrape it off and nottrack it in the house."

And for the world's sake, don't let yourself or anyone else expose children to it. It's got to be better never to have it than to have to fight it your whole life. Like herpes, we're better off never experiencing it first-hand.

So people, acknowledge the racist thoughts and feelings you have, and don't let them go when others expose them to you. Do the same with sexism, with ableism, with ageism, with classism, with any other bigotry or bias you might carry. Don't try to explain to yourself why they're "sensible." Acknowledge that they are an irrational part of you, and vow to be aware of them every time, challenge them every time.

Your life will be better for it. I promise.

* What might blow your mind a little is that I heard the same thingabout women and thought so as well. I actually believed it was areasonable goal to be one of those honorary men. In elementary school I agreed with a boy who was no smarter than me that girls were maybe 3/4 as smart as boys.

Belief in God

2009-07-31T02:22:00Z

I've come to think that believing in God has something in common with smoking. If you do seriously it before a certain age, it's very difficult, almost impossible, to quit later on. It's not a willpower thing. It's because it was ingrained in you before you could effectively question it.

When I look back at my childhood, I don't remember ever having a real sense of God's existence. The idea never fully implanted. I have had superstitious feelings, and numinous feelings, but never any real consciousness of a higher being. I think my atheism was "there" all along.

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