the Science Ethicist

Women Deserve Better

2008-08-01T00:19:00.001-05:00

Culturally-diversified bi-racial girl,
with a small diamond nose-ring
and a pretty smile
poses beside the words: "Women deserve better".
And I almost let her non-threatening grin begin to
infiltrate my psyche-
till I read the unlikely small-print at the bottom of the ad.
'Sponsored by the US Secretariate for Pro Life Activities
and the Knights of Columbus'
on a bus, in a city with a population of 563,000.
Four teenage mothers on the bus with me.
One latino woman with three children under three,
and no signs of a daddy.
One sixteen year old black girl,
standing in twenty two degree weather
with only a sweater,
and a bookbag,
and a bassinet, with an infant that ain't even four weeks yet-
Tell me that yes: Women do deserve better.
Women deserve better
than public transportation rhetoric
from the same people who won't give that teenage mother
a ride to the next tranist.
Won't let you talk to their kids about safer sex,
and never had to listen as the door slams
behind the man
who adamantly says "that SHIT ain't his"-
leaving her to wonder how she'll raise this kid.
Women deserve better than the three hundred dollars
TANF and AFDC will provide that family of three.
Or the six dollar an hour job at KFC
with no benefits for her new baby-
or the college degree she'll never see,
because you can't have infants at the university.
Women deserve better
than lip-service paid for by politicians
who have no alternatives to abortion.
Though I'm sure right now
one of their seventeen year old daughters
is sitting in a clinic lobby, sobbing quietly
and anonymously,
praying parents don't find out-
Or is waiting for mom to pick her up because
research shows that out-of-wedlock childbirth
don't look good on political polls.
And Bush ain't having that.
Women deserve better
than backward governmental policies
that don't want to pay for welfare for kids,
or healthcare for kids,
or childcare for kids.
Don't want to pay living wages to working mothers.
Don't want to make men who only want to be
last night's lovers
responsible for the semen they lay.
Just like [they] don't want to pay for shit,
but want to control the woman who's having it.
Acting outraged at abortion,
when I'm outraged that they want us to believe
that they believe
"Women deserve better".
The Vatican won't prosecute pedophile priests,
but I decide I'm not ready for motherhood
and it's condemnation for me.
These are the same people
who won't support national condom distribution
to prevent teenage pregnancy--
But women deserve better.
Women deserve better than back-alley surgeries
that leave our wombs barren and empty.
Deserve better than organizations bearing the name
of land-stealing, racist, rapists
funding million dollar campaigns on subway trains
with no money to give these women--
While balding, middle-aged white men
tell us what to do with our bodies,
while they wage wars and kill other people's babies.
So maybe,
Women deserve better than propaganda and lies
to get into office.
Propaganda and lies
to get into panties,
to get out of court,
to get out of paying child-support.
Get the fuck out of our decisions
and give us back our VOICE.
Women do deserve better.
Women deserve choice.

-Sonya "The Drama" Boom Renee
Individual World Poetry Slam Finals 2006

Midwifery, sexism, woo-woo: a Tangled mess of pseudoscience and bigotry

2008-06-22T18:34:00.003-05:00

I've thoroughly enjoyed several blog posts in my time since I embraced skepticism and feminism, and the changes they spurred within me. My favorites are usually those that discuss the intersections of different bigotries, such as My System of Oppression Has a Bigger Cock Than Your System of Oppression, There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions, and On the Culpability of Moderates. Religious, sexual, and racial bigotries are all cut from the same cloth.

In the skeptic, atheist, and scientific blogosphere there is often talk of bigotries on behalf of both pseudoscientists and real scientists, and I've begun explicitly combating the misogyny of their online fora. But one thing I don't think I've seen much of at all, is discussions of when these subjects intersect in such a way so as that somebody mistakes one bigotry for another. This afternoon I found a big box of it.

I've never been sure how to approach it, but some of the feminists I admire have a penchant for Alternative Medicine — or as I like to (correctly) call it, pseudoscientific bullshit that robs people of money, time, and often enough, their very lives.

I was reading a post at Shakesville today, discussing midwifery. Midwifery is an interesting subject to me nonetheleast because Missouri is embroiled in legal and legislative battles at the moment. It looked like Juliemania was going to discuss misogynistic arguments against midwifery but, much to my disappointment, it became apparent that Julie has a problem separating the scientific battle against pseudo–science with misogyny.

There's no doubt that many — most, even — doctors are sexist. So much so that comedy shows such as Scrubs think they can get a free pass for misogyny simply by pointing out every six episodes or so that surgical residency is a boys club, and misognist researchers and statisticians have recently finding ways to make the excuse "But golly gee, women just aren't interested in science, so it's OK for me to tell them they're a bunch of uppity bitches if we tell them not to be interested to begin with!"

No doubt that part of the AMA's push to outlaw midwifery comes from many of it's leading members think women shouldn't be in medicine at all. One cannot even deny that, considering that women are simultaneously credited with being more skilled at sewing and crafts — finger skill centric activities — yet accomplished surgeons are mostly men.

I certainly can't blame julie for her confusion, though. Over at the Skeptic Dictionary, which I link to, see here the definition of woo–woo:

adj. concerned with emotions, mysticism, or spiritualism; other than rational or scientific; mysterious; new agey. Also n., a person who has mystical or new age beliefs.

Compare this to all the accusations of women being too emotional, totally emotion–driven... Yeah. Not julie's fault. It's our fault. That word has been misogynistically defined here by omitting the qualifiers that actually make it a word worth using. It should read more like this:

adj. concerned with appeals to emotion and spirituality pertaining to scientific claims, so as that the appeal is taken to override facts and scientific method when determining reality.

On the crux of it, Juliemania is right. There is no merit to the AMA's push to go after midwifery by giving it's own edict in their manifesto, when the arguments presented against it apply equally to any instance of performing medical procedures without the aid or presence of medically–trained individuals.

At least there would not be had this push be pre–emptive. But it's not. It's reactionary, brought on by some attempts at legislation and voter–initiated ballots in Missouri which would take rights to midwifery too far into dangerous territory, medically.

Conversely, many attacks on the medical establishment apply equally to childbirth and other areas of medicine, yet some have taken up the childbirth and midwifery battle as a front to wedge a foothold into the whole of the medical community. This is why julie was brought 3 reports on AMA's battle with midwiferey that were only done because Ricki Lake is involved. Ricki Lake, as a talk show host I haven't even heard of in a long time, is the kind who will go only so far with this childbirth thing and move on to advocating dangerous forms of alternative medicine, such as bad cancer treatments (chelation therapy, vitamin C) or the anti–vaccination woo going on right now, in a similar fashion to Opera and "the Secret," or even Montel's obsession with making himself look like he cares for US troops by subjecting their families to the cruelty of Sylvia Browne.

Anyhoo, back onto the post at Shakesville. Julie is inspired to write the post because she recently attended a midwife convention spured on by this example of when midwifery goes bad (which also, I will argue, is an example of exactly why it should be outlawed outside of hospitals).

It begins with this paragraph.

Shakesville: Doctor Knows Best

Sadly, as powerful as that meeting was, the only area that could be addressed was when a mom becomes a "patient". And through this process of understanding I realized the very dangerous paradigm under which much of the American medical community operates.

That first sentence reveals the very first thing that julie, and the vast majority of midwives, are mistaken of. A woman becomes a patient, in the sense of needing medical supervision, the second labor begins, not when something goes wrong. Often enough that's exactly when the trouble begins.

From this fallacious idea comes a tirade full of undefended slurs.

Much of the American medical community operates under a "Doctor Knows Best" paradigm. Only their scientific methods are considered factual. Only their knowledge and expertise can be used to make decisions on our behalf. This paradigm is frequently used across the board for every issue, even herbal or holistic.

So of course, the AMA "knows better" than midwives about childbirth and pregnancy, dismissing the fact that from the beginning of time midwives (not doctors) have been helping women give birth at home. Hell, they even co-opted the latin word for midwife — obstetricis. It doesn't matter that there is plenty of evidence to prove that homebirth and midwifery is safe and sound; unless the evidence comes from the American medical community it is false!

Many doctors don't believe homebirth is safe at all, and I suspect that many don't believe vaginal births are safe, either. How can they, when they are so grounded in the "doctor knows best" paradigm? One doctor told me that he "would try to honor her request to have a vaginal birth"; he admitted that if he perceived the slightest risk, he would not.

Emphasis in original.

It's not really a "doctor knows best" paradigm. It's a paradigm of evidence–based medicine. If something is not shown to be safe, you don't do it. If a group of people trying to perform a medical procedure routinely display incompetence in doing so, you don't let them.

One fallacy juliemania employs is the "from the beginning of time" line. It's an argument from antiquity and argument from tradition; fallacies. As a feminist who often deals with the "but it's tradition" defenses of misogyny, she should know better. History also reflects that the decline of childbirthing by non medically trained personell is the cause of a reduction in childbirth deaths and survival past infancy.

Another misharacterization she preforms is the sarcastic "unless the evidence comes from the American medical community it is false!" Juliemania seems to be under the impression that all medical research done the world over is done by the AMA itself. But that's not the case.

Wanna know the reason most doctors, obsetrician, don't think homebirth is safe? Because it removes the mother and fetus from real medical care. The link julie provides is a clear example of how stupidly fucking dangerous it is to just assume a birth is going to be fine. And then act as if a person "realizing" something is wrong and taking the mother to a hospital is the same as obviating problems. It's not. Most of the time, there is a sign of the problem a midwife realizes is there, that doctors and nurses would have seen much earlier, because they have the tools, cooperation, and most importantly, knowledge to recognize, diagnose, treat and prevent them.

It's just ridiculus to do something like childbirth outside of a hospital. They could push for a midwife program initiative, but apparently that's not magical enough.

You don't assume a major procedure (and something can be both routine and major) is safe until it isn't. You just don't. It's criminally irresponsible. You just don't do it. Whether it's childbirth, brain surgery, an appendectomy, amputation, or removing an internal cyst, or anything of that nature.

So is this an attack on women? Not entirely. Not even majoritively. The sad irony here, it's that it's the midwife community that is hurting women here. They do it by insisting that it's a "spiritual" experience. It's the midwives here that are telling women that they're driven by ineffable an mysterious emotions. I've been in the hospital during both of my sister's childbirthings. Know what's interesting about nursing? It's mostly women, and they're very friendly towards woo. I've heard nurses advocate all sorts of bullshit to their patients. Coffee enemas, herbs that have been proven to be bunk, all sorts of c–r–a–p. So, is it the hospitals that are unfriendly towards putting spirituality and fuzzy feelings? Fuck no. Not in the least.

So are nurses by and large against midwifery? From the midwives' talk, yes. And I wonder why? Simply, it's because their peer-reviewed, scientific, evidence-based education enlightens them to the idea that it's a dangerous idea to do it outside the hospital! Period. Calling it spiritual, saying it feels good, is no excuse.

I doubt if she reads this post it'll convince Julie very much of anything. I think this because she lumps in the midwife issue with "holistic" and "herbal" medicine. She's in a very ignorant place concerning medicine right now.

I've tipped off Orac of Respectful Insolence of julie's post. He has paid subscriptions to medical journals and the experience to draw the relevant citations, so I hope he can shed some additional light on the details of the controversy. I encourage Julie to look into the skeptical community. To read about logical fallacies as they apply to medicine and any other field of science, at Skeptics Dictionary, from James Randi, others at scienceblogs who deal with medicine of some kind, and search for childbirth postings at the Grand Rounds medical blog carnival, etc.

Blog Changes Coming

2008-06-04T03:21:00.001-05:00

I have a few announcements about changes to my blog:

I am turning off individual Blogger comments for each post. The Haloscan comment links will remain.
Strict comment policy.
I am considering a change of domain. I will experiment using a Blogger 2.0 template (I'm using old–style template because I can understand a text/xhtml+xml template better than a heavily XML–based application/xhtml+xml), or move to something like Wordpress, which integrates with Haloscan/CoComment while Blogger does not.

Comment Policy

No anonymous comments.
No bigotry against any group, including:
- Women
- Races
- Lesbian / Bisexual / Gay / Transexual / Transgender / Androgynous
- Obese
- Minorities of any kind
- The weaker.
- The younger.
- The elderly.
- Ideology.
Must be on topic! This includes the prohibition of forum threads, even duplicates of blog entries, from any forum whatsoever, if they are not under discussion by my post.
No Suckpuppeting.
No Concern Trolls.
No doc–dropping.
No violence, or jokes about violence. This includes jokes about lynching, assault, murder of all degrees, vandalism, harassment (yes, online does count), and yes, rape.

A warning: with Haloscan, your IP addresses are fully exposed to me. You get one warning before I IP–ban you. Remember Dan? Yeah. I will publish your IP address if you do anything like he did, or if I suspect you are conspiring to perform first–person wrongdoing of any kind.

It also means I can recommend IP–banning you to other bloggers using Haloscan or another comment services capable of identifying IP's, if your bigotry reaches a certain level at my discretion.

Changes will occur as I accomplish them. This includes modifying my template xHTML some.

Clarification

2008-06-03T11:56:00.001-05:00

Let me make this more explicit.

It's not just that Dillahunty/Loubet think that all strippers are happy. That's stupid enough.

It's the hypocrisy of saying that there's reason to be skeptical about a person's veracity if they believe in god when they're not talking to close personal friends, and then claim we should be absolutely credulous if a stripper says she's perfectly happy if you're not a close personal friend when she says it.

It's the hypocrisy of at one point saying that all strippers and strip clubs are exploiting men and never the women, and then talk about the need to change the way strip clubs are done so that they're not exploitive any more.

It's the hypocrisy of at one minute saying that the strippers are exploiting and indirectly hurting men, then in a contradictory analogy, refer to strippers as not hurting anybody.

And since when does the fact that person A isn't hurting anybody (allegedly) an argument for truthiness when they talk about their own happiness?

And since Dillahunty is sure that all strippers are in the business of exploiting men, which makes their job dishonest, shouldn't that base level of dishonesty make them less trustworthy, including in statements about themselves? So why be credulous, again? Unless Dillahunty is implying that people he sees as skeevy are more likely to be honest because they're more ego–centered. Which is it?

Male Privileged Projecting 101

2008-06-01T13:01:00.008-05:00

"Every stripper I've ever met was happy and she's only doing it to get through college!"

Every single ~~guy~~ person who defends the exploitation of women in some way will say this. Without fail. You'd think that with so many strippers attending our universities and community colleges, conservatives would be all of them as whore schools, talking explicitly about how all the female attendees are strippers. They're not. Which tells me, even the guys in my comments here and everywhere else on the internet, nobody really believes it. Most of them are lying.

Stop it.

Edit 10:05 pm, June 01: In my comment moderation queue was yet another comment about how I should go back tot he forum and answer the thread I started. Richard asked I should find if I have the balls/estrogen to do so.

Way to prove what a misogynist turd you are. Either I'm a man whose lost my balls, or I'm a woman, hence my weakness. You made weakness synonymous with the absence of masculinity.

Also, I've already explained I'm not going to bother because the forum's admins have made it clear they will vandalize my profile because of personal feelings. How ready would you, the readers, be willing to try to reply on that thread knowing that the admin is willing to change your text?

Edit 2: June 3 4:24pm

The comment I just discussed could also be construed to argue that he associates both testosterone and estrogen with courage. If that's the case, what about a person who has both or neither?

Interesting that no matter what, the commenters from the SGU forum and whatnot cannot make a statement that is not bigoted against somebody based on their genetic heritage or lack thereof, in this case the transgendered, hermaphroditic, and hypo–hormonal.

Still, the comment is still sexist against women more, because when a woman attacks feminism, she is rarely accused of being too manly. But if a man makes feminist statements, he is accused of androgyny with regularity. And it's a pattern that's been well established in the fora (that's plural of forum for you noobs). In fact, I've been identified and re–identified and double– checked as a man, with penis, testicles, body hair and all, in the forum and IRC chat a shitload of times now. There can be no doubt of my gender either biologically or personally. It also says as much in my blogger profile, so there can be no doubt that Richard is aware, so his comment obviously has the implication that my sex is called into question by my lack of loyalty to men as he sees it. The insult was that it is supposed to be insulting to call me womanly. That's clearly misogynist.

You might be able to say I committed the fallacy against KT, but I did not check KT's gender in her profile before mistaking her for a man. This is different from Richard, who's read the forum thread and has probably been in the chat at some point by now, and already knew I was a man, and accused me of being womanly as an insult anyways.

Male Privilege In My Podcasts

2008-05-31T00:17:00.001-05:00

Yup. It's not just the forums, or the chat rooms that they claim they aren't really associated with. It's the podcasts themselves, as well.

I was listening to the Non–Prophets podcast last Saturday. One topic, which had swept the internet and cable news channel all last week, was the new alleged letters from Einstein where he said theism was childish. On the podcast, they talked about contradictions where you can find quotes from Einstein where he seems to believe in a god, even a personal one, and you can find quotes where he is atheist. Dillahunty and Shilling and Loubet do a good job pointing out that, as with many atheists in the world, Einstein probably believed in a god in his early life, and did not in the later part of his life.

Even so, they explained, scientists and professionals of all kind can always be found expressing popular opinions as their own, and we shouldn't always take what they say or imply at face value.

Cut to about 23m:30s into the podcast file, they begin talking about pornography, stemming from an aside about a college secular organism offering fellow stuents to trade in their bibles for porn. One of them immediately accuses anybody who finds pornography to be offensive and/or degrading to women a a prude. The other says he doesn't want to go that far, but then talks about how "we" (the Non–Prophets? Just him and the other podcast host?) have had arguments with the ACA (Atheist Community of Austin) about whether or not prostitution should be legal, and the following long quote is the result. I think I have the voices identified correctly. I don't watch the video files for atheist experience often, so I'm not 100% sure on that. One person, Dillahunty I think, does most of the talking, while I thought only Loubet had smaller comments. Maybe Loubet and Shilling were both adding small bits to Dillahunty, but I couldn't tell them apart here. Dillahunty is clear, the others aren't.

Dillahunty: Um, well, I — I don't want to take it that far, because — because I think that some of them have good reasons... you know we've had good arguments before, um, with an ACA group about, you know, whether or not prostitution should be legal, and um, whether establishments of strip clubs or whatever, um, "oh they'r explotings women," Well let me tell ya. I've been to strip clubs, it's not the women who are being exploited in the strip clubs.

Loubet: Ha ha ha ha. Good point.

Dillahunty: Uh, their wallets get fat, they are safe... I think that, if, you know if we end up having the discussion about prostitution, the best argument you could make is that it's going to happen either way, um, we should use strip clubs as an example, and, legal brothels, and, like Vegas and other countries as an example, of how to turn this industry, which is going to happen anyway, into something that is safe and non exploitive. I mean, you can go to, uh ok, what I end up see — uh, somebody will say, "Well, you" — if you go to a brothel and you end up talking to one of the prostitutes, most of them will say "Hey, this is what I wanna do, I mean, I make good money, you blah blah blah" and the answer you get, and this comes from religious people and non–religious people, anyonoe who's opposed, is "well those women are lying, they're so, they're so abused they don't know any better.

How dare you, be so arrogant and condescending, that, a — a person, a free–thinking person, who's — who's not hurting anybody, who's making a living, and tells you that they're happy... How dare you just call them a liar.

Loubet: Just contradict them.

Dillahunty: Because their view, of, of right and wrong, their view of life and happiness doesn't match yours.

You know, if, if somebody tells me they're happy, congratulations. I'm glad your happy. Um, as long as you're not hurting anybody else, cool.

(trying to get off the subject now) But I didn't meant to get off on the whole...

Loubet: If, if if if, you know, if you tell me you believe in god, no matter how difficult I find that, to you know, comprehend... I grand them the same, common courtesy, you know... If they say they're happy, believe 'em.

Dillahunty: The problem is, that there are examples of people who will tell you, "oh I'm happy and this is wonderful," when they aren't. Um, and —

Loubet: What, out of fear?

Dillahunty: yeah, um, and, it's kind of cult–like in training you, so this, with, um, women in abusive relationships, where, you know despite being beaten, they just love them so much that they don't want to turn them in or leave them, uh, But those are types of things I think we can analyze psychologically. Um, and it's not just a simplistic comparison to the norm,

Loubet: And I don't think we're talking about the pimp and his hoes.

Dillahunty: yeah,

Loubet: We're not talking about that kind of situation.

Dillahunty: I mean, you know,

Loubet: That is exploitative.

Dillahunty: yeah...

Loubet: you know, get the girls hooked on drugs, and then use them up. You know that's... that is exploitative.

Dillahunty: Yeah, and I've always... been opposed to that. But anyway, I didn't mean to get this up, and...

And they move on.

What — the — fuck.

At one moment, hey people who aren't hurting anybody and who appear happy (scientists, other professionals) lie about their beliefs and contentment all the time, and we shouldn't be surprised, and can casually skeptical of their veracity on the subject. The next, somebody else who's not hurting anybody and appears happy (a strippper or prostitute) should be believed at face value.

That's pretty fucking contradictory.

Also, he says that strippers — all strippers — are exploiting men, i.e., hurting them. So even turning strippers into "somebody who's not hurting anybody" for his analogy is at best disingenuous.

So let's get this straight. Dillahunty says he doesn't like seeing women exploited. So when he goes to strip clubs, he makes sure to find one that he thinks appears non–exploitive of its women employees. Then he gets on the microphone for the podcast and acts as if all strip clubs are like the one he selects, in spite of the fact that he may be selecting against entering a majority of strip clubs as they fit his criteria for exploitation.

Dillahunty you fucking hypocrite.

Also, notice just a complete false dichotomy in the beginning. It's not the women being exploited in the clubs, he says. Implying it's the men.

As if an industry can't simultaneously exploit both employees and customers, men and women, in different ways. As if exploitation is always one–way.

He also injects a fallacy of excluded middle. He paints a picture in which there's only battered wives and drug–addicted prostitues, then bitches in strip clubs taking all your money. Nothing in between.

Oh, fuck you Matt.

Here's the reality of the situation. Women in strip clubs aren't given insurance, health care, anything like that. It has to come out of their pocket, and that makes the "wallets getting fat" claim pretty stupid, especially when we all know now that insurance companies will find any reason to not give you money. One of those reasons could be your work, which means strippers have to do some fancy footwork to keep health insurance, and all their effort is in vain if they catch an STD from a guy who touches them, and they get labelled with a "pre–existing condition." Especially if they have children, and many do. Additionally, strippers rarely, if ever, get holidays or requested days off in a non–exploitive way, as these businesses are not a meritocracy. They have to personally court for common decency. The relationships are cheapened by both the customers and the bosses.

And then, finally, stripping does not translate into any other career field (it's not even a career). The stripper's life, unless she already has the wit and determination (and you can't act as many strippers have it; remember, that 50% of everybody is below average), is condemned to a life in sex work. It takes extraordinary effort to get out of it. The club owners, customers, the men in their lives, their fellow strippers, and assholes like Dillahunty always shame them when they're outside the club trying to have normal lives, accusing them of leeching off of men and corrupting the child support system. Even their families.

And finally, strippers age out. Yeah, go talk to all the retired strippers in the world who's cash didn't last (because of drug addiction that nobody in the club or family would help with, or supporting children, or some kind of debt they can't handle), who don't have any applicable job skills as the world passed them by while they stripped.

Tell me how not exploited they all are. You piece of shit.

Of course we can say we know better than other people on whether or not they're expoited. Dillahunty and Loubet do it all the time. Day in and day out, they talk with the ACA and each other, and in email replies to fans, about how atheists need help waking up, who need help to stop lying to themselves, who need help to stop being fooled, into thinking that they're being treated right. Dillahunty/Loubet/Shilling constantly exhibit exactly the "arrogance" they denounce when they do not take people's stated beliefs at face value. Much about the persecution we atheists face by this religious country can easily be translted into coherent patterns found in every bigotry, against the poor, against the weak, against non–heterosexuals, against women, against other races.

But it all goes out the window when they talk about women doing sex work. Because they think if they were women, they'd find stripping glamorous.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the worldview of somebody drenched in male privilege.

And they get support for this worldview. Most of the fans of the Non–Prophets and the Atheist Experience are also fans of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. One of it's hosts, Rebecca Watson, is featured on a website called Skepchicks, which spearheaded a calendar for skeptics that features nude women (covered up to be PG-13). That is exploiting women. That they have a skep–dude calendar is also exploitive of those men featured in it hardly compares, as it doesn't have it's own popular website and nobody ever advertises it, much lest hosts a blog on its site. And most of these fans are under the delusion that Rebecca Watson is a feminist. But I have to tell you, she's not. She rarely talks about exploitation of women, of misogyny, of our rape culture. She has nothing to say about the SGU forum/chat's rape jokes. She doesn't discuss or link to any other feminists from the blogosphere, even obvious ones like Amanda Marcotte, Jessica Valenti and Pam Spaulding. And she's never audibly or textually angry about anything she writes concerning sexism.

So what we have is a bunch of white men drenched in male privilege, living in Texas, who are convinced that they've seen all their is to see in the world of sex work, that strippers are bitches, and that since they have this one popular woman friend in the podcast/skeptic world, they can act as if nothing they say goes against women as a gender.

Fuck that.

And a Friday Feminist Fuck–You to male privileged podcasters.

On Personal Agency and Made-Up Areas of Neutrality,

2008-05-19T21:54:00.004-05:00

Let's just get this straight. It is impossible to be a person and not be an active agent. People often misplace action upon passive persons, but that doesn't mean that you can be passive and active at the same time. It just means that the active agency has not properly been identified. Language is elicitation and solicitation. Always. Anybody who ever says "Hey — I'm just sayin'!" is lying, or (and this is unlikely) unaware of the consequences of his words. When you are speaking, you are an active agent. When it comes to the exchange of ideas, you can't elicit a concept and at the same time be passive.

There is ambiguity. But since you have elicited a concept, you have become an active agent about it, and there's no such thing as as passivity.

I present to you 5 examples of common bullshit defensive of bigotries or criminal behavior, in no partcular order:

"What did he expect, this is the internet!"
"Come on, this is business, people!
"Internet: serious business!"
"It's just a game, don't let the smack talk get to you."
"I'm just sayin'."

I recently confronted a chatroom — and this is the third one — about their rampant misogyny, and just like the first two times, I've found the group to be so defensive, so obsessed, so pathological in their rape–centric clique that I'm too disgusted to ever go back.

What I did a few days ago, I did in the name of justice. When people are discussing behavior that is simultaneously a crime in the legal sense and in the sense of human rights — in thise case rape — there is no such thing as a person positing a neutral position. The fact of the matter is, if you have no position, and you're of capable psychological condition, you are still an enabler, and that puts you on the criminal side. Making fun of victims is even worse.

Sorry to break it to you, but it's the truth. And it's true no matter what the place or medium of communication, whether it be face to face, on the telephone, snail mail, email, graffiti... or even an internet chatroom.

To cover some of the many defenses of the constant rape jokes and misogyny in the IRC channel for (some) fans of the Skeptic's Guide to to the Universe podcast:

You can say Lzrd didn't mean it all day long, but it still doesn't make it right. And even in context, I know I'm still in the right saying that it was hateful. You act as if you don't mean your rape jokes, but you can only possibly try to argue about it being facetious if you do not approve of directing the jokes towards a victim. Lzrd crossed that line. Then you defended it. You focused more on being positive that he didn't mean it before you could ask his defense, and more on attacking me just for the boot before you even tried to think about why we all have boot powers and when it's OK to use them.

It's clear, even from the context of the whole discussion of that CNN link about the youtube rape girl, that nobody in the room was comfortable talking about it. The best you could say about it was that it was "weird" that the prosecutors dropped the case. Heck it wasn't just the court–appointed attorneys that abandoned her, it was the entire DA office. The best you could say was that it was "weird?"

It was — nay, it IS an injustice. To knowingly remark upon it as anything less is reprehensible. It was not only an injustice for not listening to her and giving more credit to the counter– allegation that she's making it up, it was also contradictory to the mandate of their jobs as the DA and prosecutors. To have nothing to say about these issues when you bring it up, is ridiculous.

Then after failing as human beings to call an injustice when you see it, you tried to change the conversation. Even after I tried to point out that there is a pattern of prosecuting attorneys exhibiting a pattern of bias against rape victims in this manner. No, it was just too awkward for you to have anything meaningful to discuss for once, even when you are the ones to bring it to the table.

And Lzrd hasn't even come into the picture yet. After you successfully quashed the conversation, somebody else came in and asked what's up. Your responses were about your new subject. You tried to evade the subject that you were just on entirely. And then, after a couple minutes, out of nowhere, Lzrd chimes in with his "joke."

So no. It was not innocent. And it was not neutral.

The article goes on to describe how rape victims to speak up about their rapes become futher victims to the hostility of their peers.

This should invoke your sympathy. But instead, you "jokingly" blame her? Call her a whore, say she fails at life and that she's just "whining" on youtube?

FUCK THAT. FUCK THAT, AND FUCK YOU. IT WAS WRONG. FRACTICALLY WRONG, EVEN. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THAT BEHAVIOR.

You actually use one of the main victim–blaming fallacies that all rape educators talk about: you criticize the victim based on what your a priori (i.e., prejudiced) ideas of what a victim should act like, then acted as if she must not be since she didn't 'fit the profile'.

And yes, while some of those listed were away from their keyboards, I can still say you support him. For day after day, you come in, take a couple minutes to read what your IRC client has recorded for you, and you never have anything to say about the rape jokes that have been going on. You always support them. And you supported Lzrd because he had the justified knowledge that you would not criticize or penalize him in any way.

As for LeeTheAgent's constant defense that it's just the internet: I think it's pretty clear that you all do not think of it that way. You have spent hours upon hours, adding up to days, fuming at me, writing about me, insulting me, getting ladyK to follow me on Twitter (Twitter alerts you to everybody who follows you), making pseudonymous comments on my blog, and making an enormous thread on the forum. You clearly have emotional investment in your chat sessions.

Today Marcella Chester posted an article concerning the girl who committed suicide because of online harassment. Everything she had to say is relevant to this incident. I will quote the article in it's entirety (until/unless she asks me to parse it down).

Differentiating Between Jerks And Criminals

Techdirt has a post opposing the federal charges related to the suicide of Megan Meier which takes the position that harassing Megan under a false identity by first working to become her friend and then turning on her was nothing more than being a jerk.

To say that I disagree with this assessment would be an understatement.

The story is, most definitely, sad and tragic -- and it's no surprise that there are people out for vengeance, with the main target being Lori Drew, the adult who participated in some manner in the hoax. However, as we said back when state prosecutors in Missouri couldn't find any law to prosecute, being a total jerk online is not a crime. As stupid as the prank was, it wasn't designed to make the girl commit suicide.

This positioning of someone as merely a jerk is something I see often when people want to stop someone from being held legally accountable for the deliberate and targeted actions they take which cause harm to others.

It is critical to note that this hoax was not stupid as characterized above, it was clever. The hoaxer and those in on the hoax decided not only on a name for the "boy" who would friend Megan, but an entire backstory was created for this "boy." If the stated goal of information gathering used to to create this profile were true then there would have been no sudden turn by this "boy" from someone who liked her to someone who hated her.

Befriending and then attacking someone using a fraudulent identity cannot be done for any purpose other than to inflict emotional pain. That makes it an act of vengeance for the fallout between Megan and Ms. Drew's daughter. But Techdirt overlooks this fact and turns those actions into random jerk behavior.

Not surprisingly, those who want to hold the "jerk" accountable are framed as the "people out for vengeance" and people who "target" someone else. This rhetorical strategy turns those who want accountability into the only people who have crossed an ethical line. Those who want justice for the person harmed become the only people who must be stopped.

Nice trick, but one we cannot fall for.

Many tech people have taken the position that anything goes online and that targeting and harassing others and using false identities to do so are just normal behaviors which say nothing negative about the person or group of people who harasses others. But harassment is harassment. Online communication is only a medium for communication. Ganging up on a 13 year old girl online is no more excusable than ganging up on a 13 year old girl offline.

This framing device is popular with those who refuse to use the label of rapist for a boy who corners his girlfriend and makes it clear that she will be trapped until she gives him the sex he wants. If the girl doesn't try to scratch the boy's eyes out then the boy is a jerk and the girl might feel raped but she choose to give that boy sex. If she feels raped that's a tragedy. If she reports this rape "she is out for vengeance" and has "targeted" this boy.

This framing deliberately and falsely disconnects the boy's action from the girl's decision and turns the girl into the only one who took actions to intentionally harm someone else. Since a boy who uses physical coercion to rape is framed as a non-rapist then those who hold him accountable have -- by this warped logic -- committed the greatest wrong.

Those who use the "jerk" excuse claim to be against the harm done, but their framing directly supports that harm and complete lack of accountability for the harm caused.

A jerk is someone who lets the door slam in your face when you are carrying a heavy box. A jerk is someone who lets a stinky fart rip the second the elevator doors close and then smiles as the others in that elevator car make disgusted faces.

The woman who created a false MySpace profile took actions which cannot accurately be equated to genuine jerk behavior.

What they are doing is deliberately disconnecting cause from effect. Those who intentionally inflict harm on others are excused of all responsibility by labeling the harm their actions caused as a tragedy.

Getting killed by a landslide is a tragedy. Getting swept away in a flood is a tragedy. Being targeted for harassment through fraud is no tragedy. It is malicious injury even if those who inflicted the injury used the Internet as their weapon.

Those who don't acknowledge this cannot be viewed as credible observers.

There are only 3 differences between the criminal in this story, and the members of the SGU–fans IRC channel.

The victim is not aware of this particular incident of ridicule.
The victim is not dead.
The ridiculers made sure to do it in a place where it is not likely to reach the victim.

Beyond these details, people who constantly make rape jokes, like those I listed and even some more that are there every day of the week (not to mention the members that frequented Janice Rael's irc channel wikkedwire # stopperbot when I left it), are not better than the criminal in the preceding case by a high enough degree to warrant sympathy for their exposure or a lack of criticism for their callousness.

I think, justifiably, that they are fully aware that if they did what they do to the girl's face, it would be criminal harassment. That they only do it in an IRC room or somewhere they know that the law will probably treat it as untouchable, speaks not of their insincerity in the hatred/callousness with which they fill their humor, but of their forethought. It's a tactic. Which is why I know their callousness and/or hate is real.

I must also point out that I blog non–anonymously (another detail that these chatters chose to mock) because of my disgust of the internet = unreal mentality.

And finally, the reason why it has taken me several days to elaborate upon my original post. When ducky (or ducky_sgu as he calls himself in SGU's channel as opposed to the JREF channel), took it upon himself to vandalize my profile, writing "16y.o. gothfail girl" in the "custom title" attribute.

Ducky is the techie for the site. He is not an admin or a mod. It is outside his job and permissions to censor or edit other members' posts. He even states as much in a post he made to explain why he's not banning me like you all begged him to.

And he vandalizes my profile. If you want a case of serious hypocrisy and lying, you'll find it in ducky. He even sends me a personal message insulting me some more and defending his actions, and even that was sexist. Because he, like all of you clearly do, believes that activism against the defense or belittling of rape is a female–only endeavor, and that it indicates an emotional volatility found only in women that is to be ridiculed.

You have proven yourselves every bit the misogynists as I have described you.

Ducky said that if I have any problem with it, I should take it up with Rebecca (Watson). The implication being "Hey, I know a woman who's ok with rape jokes, therefore rape isn't bad." Again, hypocritical, a non–argument, and because of the "women can't be misogynist" defense, further proof that you are, exactly as described, rape apologists.

Well you know what? I took it to Dr. Novella. And he made ducky take it down.

At least I have real reasons for taking actions that may "defame" your character. But you... you're another level of cretin. A forum cannot be justly run when somebody with the privileges to alter the very code, takes it upon himself to vandalize. And because he wasn't really punished beyond a reprimand, he knows he can get away with it. To make things worse, he's a volunteer, and he knows that the SGU cast will have an extremely difficult time finding a free replacement, and if they can't, they'll have to pay somebody enough money to grind the podcast to a halt. Basically he's holding them hostage.

On Sunday, May 18, "LeeTheAgent" and "emptiness" tried to harass me in Phil Plait's weekly chat at uStream.tv. Not just me, either. They threatened to hold up the entire chat (bustling with over 100 users) with their harassment. They had to be threatened with kickbanning before they stopped. It was only because I argued explicitly that we were on Phil's time (and everybody else's time) and it was not the time or place to do it, that I was not kicked with them.

When I told them I wouldn't be discussing these issues until my profile vandalism was corrected, they laughed about it. They condone it.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a fascistic attitude. The SGU forums right now, has somebody with the power to manipulate it's code, who, with his supporters, is in the business of harassing others, to the point where he can censor beyond his rights. And because his supporters will do it outside of the forum, and hold up other people's ability to communicate, had intentions of inhibiting freedom of speech by trying that day to control even whom else I can listen and speak to.

So there you have it. Rape, like any other hate crime, is something on which one cannot be neutral. You are either for it or against it. And the members of the SGU forums who I have named are surely on the wrong side, as I have explained.

On top of this, they have chosen to support a fascistic method of suppressing opposing attitudes on the forum of which they are members.

Feminists like myself are not merely better than these assholes. We're fractically better. (Oh, I do just love that meme)

This is as far as I'm going to discuss it with the SGU forum members, as they cannot be trusted to be conversed with on equal grounds. I am turning on comment moderation, and I will forbid/delete anonymous posts.

Misogyny and Rape Jokes in IRC

2008-05-15T21:07:00.001-05:00

I've recently added a link to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast's fan IRC channel, and I'm thinking of removing it. And most of the other chat links as well. The reason is this: I'm tired of being the only one who's not a rape apologist in chat.

If you're at all familiar with lolcats and its general genre, no doubt you've read somebody on the internet say "surprise buttsecks!" Since most nerds are white men, it's of no surprise that the internet is bubbling with misogyny at every corner. But if you don't use IRC, it may surprise you to learn that even in the most allegedly friendly places, you'll hear "surprise buttsecks" and other rape jokes more on an IRC channel than in any other place excepting "mens rights" groups.

Unfortunately, this still applies to every channel that isn't explicitly feminist, including every fucking chat link I've put in my side bar.

Know what? I will be taking those links down.

It's so frustrating. These skeptics/science–enthusiasts will sit there and write on their blogs and forums all day about how one of the biggest problems with religion is its obsession with controlling women. Then they come in to the chat room or IRC channel and do these fucking rape jokes. And just about every time I confront it, I'm told I have no sense of humor, hey it's just a joke, and many will even retort "Of course rape can be funny — think of Elmer Fudd raping Bugs Bunny" (fuck you, George Carlin).

This shit is enexcusable. From anyone.

Tonight I was in the SGU–fans room when <Lzrd> had this to say about This 16yo girl who's rape case was dropped by prosecutors and she had to take her plea for help to youtube.

Fucking 16yo whores who fail and whining about it don't deserve shit.

The creator of the room gave us the option of protecting our usernames by registering our nicks with the server. Your nick is protected because you automatically get operator powers. This means only others of the same rank or above can kick you.

I immediately used my ops to temporarily ban Lzrd. And I know it was the right thing to do. There has to be a point where we stop tolerating victim blaming and rape apologetics even if you don't think that much of it. This should have been it for everybody in the room.

However, as predicted, nobody knew why I banned him, most thought it unnecessary, and one idiot named Joe_Shmoe (who already resents me because I had the "nerve" to notice that his pre–prepared one–liner responses do all his thinking for him) berates me for a few minutes about how it's not my channel to moderate and nobody should eve be banned, before leaving in a fit of repressed anger as a rape apologist who isn't getting hoorah'd for fighting back at me.

mickal555, the creator of the channel, didn't have the guts nor forethought to look into why I was berated for using the mod powers I was given by him, and took them away just because he wants to be a peacekeeper. Nor did he seem to notice that I had unbanned Lzrd by the time he got involved.

When Joe_Shmoe insisted that Lzrd "Certaily didn't mean it," I replied by comparing that to every person who complains about "the niggers" will say they didn't mean it right after words. Joe says that's a non–sequitor. But obiously it's not. What's happened is that a person thought they were safe to be a bigot around everybody in the room, and when it turns out it wasn't safe, they backtrack or somebody tries to do it for them.

I think I drove the point home when I parodied the Shawshank Redemption: "All bigots are innocent, don't you kno_(sic) that?

But when a jab is clearly not really a joke, we all know what really happened.

My message to the SGU forum:

Don't put up with rape jokes and other forms of misogyny. We should all know by now that sexism, as it manifests all sorts of violence, is every bit as big a problem as racism. We shouldn't put up with rape jokes any more than we should jokes about lynching, or the recent ass who made the Obama – Curious George t–shirts.

A list of all those in the room who defended Lzrd or did not protest against him enough:

Joe Shmoe
Black Magic
ChandlerB
ducky_sgu
emptiness
finnland
GlennCuttleFish
Istario
Kikyo
King Arthur
La Palida
mickal555
SkepticsApprentice

Now even though SkepticsApprentice agreed with me that it wasn't funny nor tolerable, he didn't think Lzrd should've been banned, and that attitude supports rape apologetics, because people who make rape jokes deserve to be told in some direct way that it's wrong. If somebody decides they feel comfortable to complain about a black person running for president at your poker table, you kick them out of your house like Ed did.

It's that simple.

On Being a Douchebag Commenter

2008-05-10T15:49:00.001-05:00

Hi folks! It's me, your friendly neighborhood Douchebag Comment^tmer! I'm here to talk to you about the difference between trolling and expressing dissenting views, and commenting ethics.

Apostate has apparently lost her cool and her knowledge of the subject.

It all started when I used to hang out in an IRC channel with a formerly–sane individual known as Janice Rael. There was another person chatting who called himself Barefoot Bum. Hey, I know that guy, I'd seen him quoted or mentioned in another blog I know. I subscribed to his blog. It wasn't long into chatting with him that he mentioned he has a wife, and she has a blog. Her blog is The Apostate. So, I subscribed to her blog without even reading it yet.

One of the first things written by the Apostate that I got to read was a piece concerning the Blog Carnival of Radical Feminists. This is when Apostate started exhibiting some prejudicial behavior for a skeptic. The carnival had barely even begun, and yet Apostate seemed to know everything about the motivations and thinking processes of the bloggers featured within, without even having bothered to read it. Instead, she judged them simply by the description of the carnival. Pretty asinine, eh? Well that exact behavior will be repeated.

According to the Apostate, everybody featured in the Carnival of Radical Feminism is a young woman who's just pissed off at a sexual assault and is blaming all men for all evil everywhere. These past misdeeds just run their life, they're perpetual victims. No need to read what they actually have to say, though, the carnival's description says it all. Naturally just about everything Apostate has to say is patently wrong. The asinine retardery was too much, and so in a Douchebag Comment^tm I responded in kind.

What is the Carnival of Radical Feminists about? According to the home page and the creator's pages:

Description: The Carnival of Radical Feminists is held each month on the Full Moon. Hosted by a different blogger for each edition, it aims to foreground the the finest radical feminist posts from around the blogsphere.

Keywords: adical feminism, separatism, anti-prostitution, anti-pornography, woman-only space, gender, goddess, matriarchal, matrilineal, dykes, lesbian, separatists, anti-bdsm, women's land, women's community, womyn, wimmin, womon, anti-racism, imperialism, coloni

The Carnival of Radical Feminists will be held each month on the full moon. Hosting responsibility will be shared, and at least to begin with, pending additional radfem suggestions and process, our goal will be to foreground posts in the feminist blogosphere which highlight or showcase radical feminist analsis, theorizing, process, events, politics, and ideas, and which celebrate and honor sisterhood as it has been herstorically envisioned by radical feminists.

We hope the Carnival of Radical Feminists will build the profile of radical feminist bloggers, will direct extra traffic to participating bloggers, and particularly newer radical feminist bloggers, and will build radical feminist community worldwide.

All submissions consistent with herstoric radical feminism are welcome, whether they are written by men or women, and even if the blogger does not specifically identify as a radical feminist (yet!).

I'd also quote the first edition of the carnival, but it seems to have been deleted from its host!

But what I do remember that the "Radical" in "Radical Feminists" does not mean extreme, like normal religionists vs extremist religionists — it means root. In short, it is all about patriarchy. It's not whole feminist activism, with trying to dissect each and every individual case of misogyny or a bad handling of a rape report found in the press, or trying to make some women feel better one day at a time, or for holding hands across America, or to chronicle the daily lives of a few select feminists like a blog. It is, as I said, Root, rudimentry, fundamental, basic, the core, foundational, the fountainhead of why feminism exists and how it began. Of course the carnival will feature strong, verbose feminist screeds directed at the patriarchy, unapologetic and bold. It's not there to supplant the original Carnival of the Feminists, it's not a group trying to flex it's proverbial muscles and show everybody up, it's not a hate group. It's not astroturf, or the evangelicals of the Feminist sphere using the no true Scotsman fallacy everywhere it goes (nay, Apostate has cornered that market).

To quote Levar Burton, don't take my word for it. Look at the real home page of the carnival HERE.

Now we can see where Apostate gets the carnival all wrong.

I was best friends with my brother through our teens. We were inseparable, almost incestuously attached to each other. We pledged to never marry, to grow old together in a bookshop we would jointly own. Yet when my very proper and sexually timid brother was wrongfully accused of following around two girls in a supermarket and hauled in by police and slapped around and generally abused, I told him he deserved it as a male, because the collective suffering of billions of women meant random individual men's suffering meant nothing, even if he was innocent. What can I say, I was 16 and Very Angry at men.

So I know all about the rage. I still experience it — at a lesser level because it' exhausting and my life isn't as limited as it used to be — but I also distrust the radical feminist weltanshuaang. Take this little manifesto as an example, from the radical feminist, Heart. It' all about women and sex. It's a pretty narrow view of the world, and it seeks to define and explain the world in a neat little Feminist Theory of Everything. I have a deep intellectual distrust of all Theories of Everything. Usually, they're endeavoring to sell a version of The Truth^tm appealingly simplified and packaged for the consumption of someone desperate for clarity, desperately trying to make sense of stuff that doesn't and never will make sense.

So, we are to understand from Apostate that the Carnival of Radical Feminists is a bunch of 16yo girls who are pissed off at boys like a bunch of pseudo–nostalgic highschool juniors. And notice, she doesn't ever quote a single line from a submission to the carnival.

I wonder if Apostate even understands how a blog carnival works. Anybody can submit a post, even one of their own creation. She could write in about the carnival itself and about radical feminism, and I'm sure the host would feature it. But no, it's much safer to criticize from a distance. Very cliquey that way, as 16yo's are wont to be.

The next time Apostate did something stupid was recently when she didn't understand why some feminists were saying the Sean Bell case was a feminist issue, too. And this was right after she pointed out that Feministe didn't post on the sheriff who turned his prisoners into sex slaves. I remember when they didn't, and I remember why: they were too busy dealing with the Amanda Marcotte & Seal Press fiasco. So that overshadowed anything else for a few days, they missed something, and then Apostate doesn't understand why. I left a comment stating that black women are a subset of black people, and also of women, so naturally feminists should have something to say about blanket racism against black folk. Somehow it went over her head.

And then only days ago, she says she's in the middle of reading Jessica Valenti's book. And she goes on to ask us why Jessica never talks about how women should have to vote for Clinton. Either she writes sarcasm very poorly (debatable), or she doesn't read the blog (it's actually a multi-authored blog and often one of them says something so well they don't re-iterate), or she thinks the book is going to cover it and so far it hasn't. Oh no wait, she actually says she doesn't read up on the blog so much.

It would've been a good post if she asked the question simply as an illicitation of thought, and then answered it. But she didn't. Just left it hanging there as if she made some kind of amazing point.

So what we have here is a person who has a book in front of her face, and instead of just reading the damn thing, she asks commenters on her blog, a blog on which she actually states she doesn't have time to answer individual comments all day long. So why ask? It's like being at a movie with a person who keeps asking "What's going on? Who's he talking to? What's she going to say next?" It's actually worse if it's not a movie but instead a book, and simultaneously in this case, a blog. You want to know if something is going to happen in a book that's right in front of you? Here's an idea: READ IT! I simply cannot believe that if Apostate actually read feminist blogs as much as she says she does, she'd be lacking an answer to her question. There has to be a point in a multi–authored blog domain, where you figure out that if they're not saying they disagree with a fellow author's points, they probably agree.

So now you have context as to why I wrote those Douchebag Comment^tms.

It is still irksome that Apostate doesn't get the reason I've written those comments, and why I say she disappoints me "Kind of often." I've subscribed to her blog for a year now, and I read my feeds every day. 98% of the time, what she has to say fits right in with several other blog feeds I scan. Sometimes I think a post is pretty good, in fact I've bookmarked a few.

So what do I mean when I say she disappoints me? Well first notice I don't say I hate her. I don't think she's genuinely stupid, she just has a prejudicial bias against fellow feminists that gets her into stupid situations. That's why I pointed out what a fucking dolt she can be a dolt, instead of is/are.

So I'm not wasting my time. In high school, even though I thought marijuana was useless, I hung out with stoners every day at lunch simply to practice being in the presence of views I disagree with, and to practice tolerance. I had other routines with other groups I disagreed with on some small or moderate level.

In fact with some blogs I subscribe to it's the same routine.

Am I a troll on Apostate's blog or other blogs? No. I don't say things just to be inflammatory. I don't think that I've jilted her, scored some kind of point for some side, and I don't invest in the responses to my comments until the blogger focuses on my point in a post of its own.

Is reading her blog a waste of my time, then? No. As I said, there are a few posts of hers I've bookmarked so I can read again later.

We come to a question of ethics, or pragmatism, at this point: Should we refuse to read blogs or sites that we sometimes or often disagree with? Not necessarily. It goes back to what I said. I put myself in front of moderately oppositional views to practice tolerance, and in hopes of finding a change of mind.

Is that so bad? To have hope that somebody will get over some obstacle to being better in some area? To listen for it, to wait for it, and to give an occasional kick in the but for a gloriously bad mistake?

And which is worse? To refuse to read somebody with whom you moderately disagree, or to tell somebody who moderately disagrees with you to not even bother listening to you? I think they're both just as bad. And it's another tragically dumb mistake by Apostate, because there's nothing worse than the doctrine of "If you have nothing nice to say, then don't say anything at all."

Off the Easel, KC Star's Racist Cartoon Column

2008-05-06T21:50:00.003-05:00

The Kansas City Star is really pissing me off. Here's why. Political cartoons are most often dumb, late, and inept. But others really take the cake. Sometimes you just want to slap its author right in the face. Here's my letter I have submitted for the opinions section:

Three times in the last week, "Off the Easel" has been blatantly racist, and to continue printing it is egregious.

First, Glenn McCoy makes an Obama pull string doll that strawman's Obama's position in the bitterness controversy and makes it look like Obama was just talking about white redneck hicks on farms or something, by making a racist false dichotonomy between white people who must live in rural or suburban communities, and black people who must be the people in the inner cities that Obama forgot to mention.

Next, Pat Oliphant has Obama saying "He's not heavy, he's my ____ Pastor!"

Yeah, because when black people get real, they always go profane, right? So that was racist, too.

Then today, Lisa Benson has Obama transformed into a container of KoolAid. Why? Because black people, all black people apparently, can't afford milk and juice and always drink koolaid, in Lisa's mind. It might as well have read "Grape Drank".

This is UNACCEPTABLE. "Off the Easel" and all of its artists should be fired, and should issue public apologies.

I've added some bold on "unacceptable," as I'm hoping that's how the editor translates the capitalization. And what goes in the blank is "goddam."

For context, here are the cartoons in question, in order of publication:

April 24, 2008 Glenn Mccoy http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/gm/2008/04/24/
April 28 Pat Oliphant http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20080428/cx_po_uc/po20080428
May 6 Lisa Benson http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/52949/

I really hope it's as obvious to any readers out there as it is to me. Let's put them into further context. Here is the full quote surrounding Obama and bitterness, found HERE at Huffington Post, surprisingly the only damn place I've found so far to put this quote in a whole context:

So, it depends on where you are, but I think it's fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre...I think they're misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class don't wanna work — don't wanna vote for the black guy.' That's...there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by — it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

But — so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is — so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing — close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're doing.

Can somebody please tell me how Obama is talking only about white people? Can somebody tell me, please, how this only speaks about Pennsylvanians, and even then only the white people in Pennsylvania? Mind you, there are plenty of people of all races who have fallen for this anti-immigration thing, and many more who fall for the anti-trade schpiel, either in the face of China, the middle-East, or Cuba.

I didn't think so. Because "blue collar," "small town," and "working class" are not synonymous with "caucasian." The cartoon above is Glenn McCoy's projection of his own prejudices onto Obama's speech.

Fuck Glenn McCoy.

The second example of racism, from Pat Oliphant, is more obvious. Like almost everybody else in the country, he has no interest in criticizing other candidates for their crazy religious leaders, such as John Hagee, the leader of McCain's church. No, only Obama gets this shit. That's racist in and of itself. It's compounded because even when Oliphant is criticizing another politician for being connected to some distasteful personality, he doesn't have them utter what he and others consider a swear.

And of course, the black politican's life is a jungle. Yeah.

Fuck Pat Oliphant.

So the first two I can see getting printed out of sheer laziness on an editor's part, not to moention the paper is probably contracted. But the last one... Holy shit. How the fuck could an editor not censor or disown such a thing?

Mind you, in print this cartoon is monochrome, but even then the racist stereotype is obvious. Obama, as the black guy, can't afford milk, or juice, and likes purple stuff. Such is the mind of Lisa Benson. It was easy finding a colored version of this comic, and whadyaknow, the stuff is purple. Grape/purple for the negro, yessa massa! Like Glenn Beck, Lisa Benson thinks black people only live in the inner city.

Fuck Lisa Benson

And finally, Fuck the Washington Press Writers Group for employing these people..

'Tis the Season For a Little Poem

2007-12-10T18:25:00.000-06:00

I just must pass on this link to a great poem by Possum Momma.

War on Christmas? — by possummomma

"Judgement Day" and My Take

2007-11-14T18:56:00.000-06:00

Last night, PBS's premiere science program NOVA presented a two hour, commercial-free show called "Judgement Day: Intelligent Design On Trial," chronicling the events leading up to, and the duration of Kitzmiller et al. vs. Pennsylvania Board of Eduction, Dover. It's a real hot topic right now.

Overall they did a good job. They had re-enactments of the trial, included many details commonly left out of the story by those not inclined to dive into the situation in minute detail, showed the evidence that proves ID is not science including the Wedge Document and the revisions on Of Pandas and People, and very nicely dismantled Michael Behe's irreducible complexity argument by destroying his example of the bacterial flagellum, and even the discovery of Tiktaalik in the same year as the trial, a piece of evidence that directly contradicted testimony in the trial before it even occurred.

Yes, the show was juicy, but there are a few things that NOVA should have done better, details that are too important to miss, and I hold NOVA responsible for some misrepresentation of what happened.

The show re-enacted Rothchild piling books and papers peer-reviewed by credible scientific journals that discussed, in sophisticated and minute detail, the evolution of the vertebrate immune system upon the witness stand. They had the actor playing Behe say that no, he had not read a single book or paper presented.

But they left out the crucial dialog where Behe said, "I don't have to." Then they cut away to Thomas More dismissing this questioning as "a fancy lawyer trick; of course he hadn't read it all, nobody could have," thus leaving Rothchild look disingenuous, when in reality the opposite is true.

There is a tendency by the Intelligent Design community, the Discovery Institute and their blog-group Uncommon Descent especially, to stick an unrealistic and unfair magnitude in burden of proof upon biologists when it comes to defending evolution. They demand every single hole, every single detail in the billions of years of evolution be shown or else they say we've shown no evidence at all. It's a form of reductio ad absurdum.

The way NOVA treated the event with Behe and the materials, it left the un-informed viewer with the impression that Rothchild was trying to show that Behe hasn't read everything, therefore he may as well have read nothing at all. But this did not happen.

Behe's statement of "I don't have to" [read a single paper or book on vertebrate evolution] makes all the difference. He wasn't just dismissing the need to read all, or even a majority of, the literature on vertebrate immune system evolution. He was dismissing the need or reading any of it. Behe made the that he knows the content of other scientists' work without reading a single letter, to hold an omnipotent view of it, and to dismiss the very existence of success in that area of study as impossible. There is no more arrogant and un-scientific approach to scientific literature or the natural world, and it shows just what kind of folks of which the DI is comprised.

NOVA's omission and subsequent minimalizing of this testimonial event (by allowing Thomas More to dismiss it without criticizing his rebuttal as well) is egregious.
NOVA made sure to note the fact that it was only the proponents of creationism in Dover that took to malice and deceit to achieve their goals. Tammy Kitzmiller was interviewed in person to show the death threats in her hate mail. The program even began with the incident that started it all, the theft and arson of a student's mural depicting the evolution of homo sapiens from a primate ancestor to its current form.

Threats surrounding Judge John E. Jones III were left out. This is wrong.

Within the last couple of years proceeding the Kitzmiller trial, two judges were assassinated either by defendants or sympathizers with defendants, unhappy with rulings with which they disagreed.

NOVA noted that Judge Jones took an unusually long time to deliver a prompt ruling — about a month — but did not discuss why.

Judge Jones E. Jones III and his family were under federal protection by the U.S. Marshalls Service to safeguard against assassination attempts. This is far too big a detail for NOVA to just forget.

What more, fellows at the Discovery Institute have been caught several times dismissing these events, and even ridiculing Judge Jones for it, either at their home site Discovery Institute, the blog-group Uncommon Descent, or their media complaints division Evolution News.

Surely if the death threats by creationists against the plaintiffs were worth mentioning, the scare Judge Jones and his family went through was relevant as well. Don't you think?

Those are my only complaints about the program.

Kansas Warms Up

2007-10-30T00:18:00.001-05:00

What a surprise to get when opening up today's (Monday as of this composition in a notepad) and yesterday's (Sunday) Kansas City Star and looking at the opinions page to find three people defending atheism against a fellow letter-author. What's more, one of them declared himself not an atheist!

It started when on the 24th, and I missed this, a letter to the editor from Theresa Hamilton, , was published as so.

Examining atheism

I admit I am confused by the atheistic view. There seems to be no accountability other than what one chooses to think, which can change constantly with whatever justification is necessary.

With God removed, this view seems to mean that you came from nothing, what you do here means nothing, and you are eventually going nowhere.

To retain this view would certainly involve a strange kind of fatalistic courage.

Who has the courage to be their own god while professing there is no God? Who can believe they alone have the power to dole out goodness or evil to whomever they choose, with no repercussions or accountability except to themselves? Who can believe that when they die they may be remembered but not still united with anyone else because they went nowhere?

I do not see how this brings joy or peace to anyone. And what about this is “good news?”
I am not saying that atheists do nothing good, but where is the capacity for good coming from if you believe you came from nothing? What about what you do here is valuable, if what you do means nothing? Why care about what you do if you are going nowhere?

Teresa Hamilton

Bucyrus, Kan.

Pretty ignorant. Equating atheism with a belief in a clo-causal universe, atheist have no source for morals, same old deal. Luckily, some fellow Kansas stood up for atheists, even one who was not an atheist himself.

Another view of atheism

Teresa Hamilton writes that she is confused by the atheistic view (10/24, Letters). Perhaps that confusion results from her view of the atheist. She describes this person, removed from God, as facing a life of absolute bleakness, accountable to no one, mindlessly doling out goodness and evil without consequence, and vanishing when this joyless existence ends into a lonely nothingness.

May I offer an alternative view?

This person, removed from God, sees a world of infinite possibility and wonder; not satisfied with ancient answers to current questions, but challenged and inspired through reason, evidence and imagination to embrace life with a thirst for knowledge; to treat the earth with respect and responsibility; and finally, to end the brief span of a life having demonstrated its purpose by kindness and compassion.

Jamie Fopeano

Parkville

Examining atheism

Teresa Hamilton (10/24, Letters) thinks that the only reason people do anything good is that a god somewhere is keeping track and holding them “accountable” for their actions.

This leads illogically to the mistaken idea that meaning for our actions is provided to us solely by a god. As far as atheists “dol(ing) out goodness or evil to whomever they choose,” I would suggest that she study the histories of major world religions and see that a belief in god does not exempt one from atrocity.

She questions whether atheists’ actions are “valuable.” Feeding a hungry person, loving one’s children, giving to the poor and fighting injustice are valuable to the hungry, children, poor people and the persecuted. Does it matter that these deeds are done out of compassion rather than divine coercion?

She asks, what is the “good news” of atheism? It is that we can make the world a better place out of our inherent recognition of the worth of humanity and the world around us, and god does not become our enabler in inaction in the process.

Paul Klawinski

A non-atheist in Liberty

Theresa Hamilton asks some questions about atheists that I would like to address.

Her main concern seems to be how we know how to act without some belief in an almighty being telling us what to do.

Personally, I am an atheist who still thinks the teachings of Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed have some validity when not taken to excess.

The ideas of “Love thy neighbor,” “Do unto others…” or treating “the least among you” with kindness are wonderful concepts and much of how I live my life.

I truly believe that most people are good and do not need some vague ominous threat from “God” to do the right thing anymore than kids need the threat of no presents from Santa Claus to behave.

My question for all the professed Christians: If you truly believe in an eternal life, why do you not spend every waking minute of your brief time on earth doing good?

I think the answer to this question is obvious. Deep down most people know these stories are fairy tales.

Theresa Hyde

Overland Park

Wow. Couple this with many letters pointing out the insanity and inanity of Phil Kline, and suddenly I have a little hope for this red state I live in.

A "Militant" Atheist Takes a Dive

2007-10-22T21:01:00.000-05:00

It just never ends. How Sam Harris says that we [atheists] are all doing it wrong and acting like a bunch of doodie heads. Why? Because we call ourselves atheists. Apparently every time I or someone else refers to an atheist as an atheist, we are either admitting defeat, or making atheism into a religion.

Another problem is that in accepting a label, particularly the label of “atheist,” it seems to me that we are consenting to be viewed as a cranky sub-culture. We are consenting to be viewed as a marginal interest group that meets in hotel ballrooms. I’m not saying that meetings like this aren’t important. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think it was important. But I am saying that as a matter of philosophy we are guilty of confusion, and as a matter of strategy, we have walked into a trap. It is a trap that has been, in many cases, deliberately set for us. And we have jumped into it with both feet.

That alone is dumb enough. Of course we can and should use the tearm "atheist." It is an umbrella term. It refers simultaneously to everybody who is harassed, persecuted, assaulted, manipulated, or otherise treated poorly on the basis of not being a theist. We don't have time to deal with mentioning each and every non-theist viewpoint when we talk about such societal bigotry. The central crux of the issue is discrimination against people who are without theism, i.e., atheists. We do not use the word to make a viewpoint out of atheism, but to speak honestly about what is salient.

But no. Sam Harris, it seems, is so desperate to make a display of his advocation of unity that he admonishes honesty in speaking about our individual schemes.

So, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves “atheists.” We should not call ourselves “secularists.” We should not call ourselves “humanists,” or “secular humanists,” or “naturalists,” or “skeptics,” or “anti-theists,” or “rationalists,” or “freethinkers,” or “brights.” We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.

Hey, don't talk about what you're not. But don't talk about what you are, either!

Fuck. That.

Then check out this gem of hypocrisy, in two parts:

Atheism is too blunt an instrument to use at moments like this. It’s as though we have a landscape of human ignorance and bewilderment—with peaks and valleys and local attractors—and the concept of atheism causes us to fixate one part of this landscape, the part related to theistic religion, and then just flattens it.

...

Another problem with calling ourselves “atheists” is that every religious person thinks he has a knockdown argument against atheism. We’ve all heard these arguments, and we are going to keep hearing them as long as we insist upon calling ourselves “atheists."

Oh, we should not blunt ourselves or others because blanket statements and stuff is bad, but you are more than willing to exploit the same fallacy and attack against your fellow atheists in order to browbeat them. I see.

More hypocrisy:

Instead of doing this, consider what would happen if we simply used words like “reason” and “evidence.” What is the argument against reason? It’s true that a few people will bite the bullet here and argue that reason is itself a problem, that the Enlightenment was a failed project, etc. But the truth is that there are very few people, even among religious fundamentalists, who will happily admit to being enemies of reason. In fact, fundamentalists tend to think they are champions of reason and that they have very good reasons for believing in God. Nobody wants to believe things on bad evidence. The desire to know what is actually going on in world is very difficult to argue with. In so far as we represent that desire, we become difficult to argue with. And this desire is not reducible to an interest group. It’s not a club or an affiliation, and I think trying to make it one diminishes its power.

Nobody likes to be called racist either, Sam. But should that prevent us from calling out racist behaviors, words, policies and decisions? NO! I think your justification for not calling out anti-reason memes and culture fails miserably. Either something is reasonable or it is not. To go around saying, "Dude, I'm reasonable, you're reasonable, let's all be reasonable together.. even though our statements of fact contradict one another" and pretend that's unification... Wow.

PZ does a good job talking about the dirty tactic of equating this made-up "new atheism" scphiel with fundamentalism and militarism. It's disappointing that Sam would sink that low. I've spoken about this tactic before, and I need not go on right now.

Sam replies to PZ's criticism, as well as one from Ellen Johnson, and he just gets crazier. He gives two examples of a way to ask the president a question, one that gets right to the meat and one that beins, "As an atheist," and acts as if that's a fair comparison to what PZ Myers, Ellen Johnson, the Rational Response Squad, or anything else does.

Can you say straw-man, kids? Nobody does that. Nobody has ever asked the president a question like that. There's been plenty of opportunity for atheists to do so.

And he says that it's alienating 180 million people. That, my friends, is just fucking stupid. PZ deals with it well in a response to the response.

And it's highly disappointing that he resorts to using a dishonest rhetorical tactic: rather than addressing the issues we brought up, he invents a hypothetical situation — a reporter asking the president a question about stem cells — and then contrives two hypothetical ways the question could be phrased, 1) a good way that emphasizes the rational, scientific reasons for supporting stem cell research, and 2) a bad way that has the reporter declaring his atheism multiple times in a question that has nothing to do with atheism. And then he declares that all of us atheists seem to be preferring the second, bad way of asking the question.

Victory! He doesn't even have to catch us saying something foolish, he just writes stupid words into our mouths, and presto, our arguments are defeated!

And to wit,

One last thing that made me laugh out loud with its lack of reality in his latest reaction is something from his two hypothetical questions — the good one, in fact. In it, he says, as an example of the best way to phrase a disagreement,

Your veto, frankly, seems insane to any educated person, and it is painfully obvious that it was the product of religious metaphysics and superstition--not science or morality.

And then he claims that this phrasing is superior, would not alienate 180 million Americans, and would have the support of those 180 million plus the 20 million overt atheists. Nonsense. This is completely contrary to my experience.

Sam Harris seems to have completely forgotten that most of the time, it is the Christian who will claim to have reason all to himself. You can completely hide the fact that you're an atheist or even that you're not a member of an Abrahamic religion. But defend evolution in any context, and BAM! They see atheism and infidels everywhere. Now, when you go to defend the atheists and infidels who believe in evolution, are you going to hide the fact that you're an atheist? Youcan say it's not irrelevant, but if it's never asked and you know the person believes you're of faith, then guess what: you've just lied by deception.

And that seems to be what Sam is encouraging. He wants us to be dishonest. We should act as if, somehow, the logic we espouse does not eventually lead to atheism.

...

It's just so frustrating. And yet on another hand, it's vindicated some former posts of mine.

Sam Harris has been part of a trio (or sometimes a quartet) of authors who are being blamed for a "New Atheist" movement. I have defended these authors from selfish and superfluous criticisms from the like of DJ Grothe, Matthew Nisbet, and Michael Shermer. And what happens just now? Sam Harris proves he's not so much a part of the problem as they say he is.

A guy who wants other loud atheists to sit down and shut up. Doesn't sound so militant or zealous anymore, does he, Shermer, Nisbet, Grothe?

Links, chronological order (?)

Transcript: Sam Harris, "the Problem With Atheism", speech to Atheist Alliance International Convention 2007, September 28. http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sam_harris/2007/10/the_problem_with_atheism.html
Blog Post: response to Sam Harris, "Cult is the New Fundamentalist" by PZ Myers, October 9, 2007 11:00 AM, http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/cult_is_the_new_fundamentalist.php
Article: "Ellen Johnson Responds to 'The End of Atheism', Guest Column by Ellen Johnson" by Ellen Johnson, via Humanist Studies. http://www.humaniststudies.org/enews/?id=317&article=1
Blog Post: "Response to My Fellow 'Atheists'" by Sam Harris, personal domain, http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-my-fellow-atheists/
Blog Post: "Sam Harris Seems Like a Nice Fellow, But Very Confused" by PZ Myers, October 8, 2007 8:42 PM http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/sam_harris_seems_like_a_nice_f.php

KC Star Re-Distributes Ignorant Nuggets

2007-10-09T01:00:00.000-05:00

Hat-tip to Possum Momma (my guilty interweb crush) for spotting this article in my local newspaper the Kansas City Star. In response, I wrote the following letter to the editor.

An article by Jacqueline L. Salmon and Mary Jordan recently published in the KC Star (10/05/07, "Atheists on the rise") started out well enough, but then it took a severe turn into ignorance.

"Many analysts trace the rise of what some are calling the “nonreligious movement” to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The sight of religious fanatics killing 3,000 people caused many to begin questioning — and rejecting — all religion."

Well, that is certainly new to me. I have been a member of many nontheist / atheist / skeptical / freethinking forums for a couple years now, even listening to nontheist and interfaith "podcasts," and reading books by & listening to inverviews of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Michael Shermer, Phil Plait, Massimo Pigliucci, Steven Pinker, James "The Amazing" Randi, Bertrand Russel, and more. That's not including the huge list of influential internet-based atheist celebs (I'm on a list of nearly 400 atheist bloggers, and that doesn't even include the most influential among us).

That's a lot of dialog (and dialog about other dialog, and so on) with my fellow nontheists in the form of humanists, wiccans, bhuddists, and other freethinkers. Yet never have I heard testimony from a single person that he or she became an atheist or decided to stop putting up with discrimination simply as a reaction to September 11, 2001.

I'm very interested to hear who these analysts are that trace the cause of atheism to that day, and how they calculated that correlation. I am aware of a few atheist organizations and programs that are as loud as they ever were that began as long as ten years ago, such as the official staff of the Rational Response Squad, which became a popular group to criticize because of their "Blasphemy Challenge." There is something clearly flwed about said analysts' analysis. Doubt is a process, not a singularity. For many, September 11, 2001 was the last straw, but not the only one. Those who saw 9/11 as the first draw are a minority in our minority.

I also take issue with the following ignorance:

"The majority of nonbelievers say they are speaking out only because of religious fanatics. But some atheists are also extreme and want, for example, people to blot out the words “In God We Trust” from every dollar bill they carry."

Allow me to teach Jacqueline Salmon, Mary Jordan and man other KC Star readers some history: "In God We Trust" wasn't present on our currency until 1954, and was only put there by Truman to encourage the association of Communism with Atheism and foster bigotry against us. Going against this obvious breach of separation of church and state, we are not extreme. This is just another defense against discrimination, and at the core, a dedication to the United States Constitution. And what is "extreme" about that?

It's nie that Salmon and Jordan are OK with resisting violent fanaticism, but I feel they only give us that because it's obviously good for everybody. But when they get to the part that they see as only a defense of ourselves, we're labeled "extreme.," which I have to say comes off as only an underhanded way of telling us to shut up. That's the kind of prejudice we're rebelling against.

Me Ride Coasters. You Read Carnival.

2007-09-15T02:22:00.000-05:00

Today's carnivalia is another episode of the Carnival Against Sexual Violence, hosted once again at Abyss2Hope. Before clicking on any links, the articles that seem to stand out to me are news on an upcoming conference concerning women's legal history, the consequences of Illinois removing statute of limitations for certain kind of rape, taking on the Onion for rape jokes, a discussion of common dismissal of post traumatic stress disorder when it comes to rape, and the danger of relying on the obvious.

First Link to this Carnivalia

2007-09-14T19:39:00.000-05:00

Four Stone Hearth is up at Hawk's Place. This is my first time linking to it since I added it to my sidebar list of carnivalia, so let me give you the rundown. There are several sub-sections of this carnival this week, so I'll list those headings below.

New World Archaeology
Cognitive anthropology
Paleoanthropology
Anthropological genetics
Political anthropology and science
Anthropology and torture
Zooarchaeology
Paleolithic archaeology
Neolithic archaeology

What a wonderfully full carnival!

Now it's coming true.

2007-09-13T19:44:00.000-05:00

It wasn't happening when DJ Grothe said it was, but it is now. Right now at scienceblogs they're beginning to tackle the question "Are atheists the new gays?"

Alright, Grothe, now you can whine. People are actually making overly strong comparisons now. James Hrynyshyn says he doesn't know enough, so that link is neutral ground.

Skeptic Saloon

2007-09-13T19:25:00.001-05:00

The latest edition of the Skeptics Circle is up at Unscrewing the Unscrutable.. Brent says he's been gone for nearly two years, so give his incredibly long links (text wise, not url wise) some clicks and give him a break for it.

Belated Feminine Carnivalia

2007-09-09T15:58:00.000-05:00

Oops. It looks like I forgot to link to the latest Carnival of the Feminists. This week it's at a different place, the Reproductive Rights Blog, run by Cara. Borishly, we still have to deal with that new "women like pink, science just proved it" crap, but trust me there's lots more to enjoy and think about.

Not Again!

2007-09-07T13:40:00.000-05:00

One more atheist blogger has made another poor equivocation between atheism and another minority. Today that is Memoirs of a Skepchick.

writerdd is talking about a new Gallup poll that shows more atheists are willing to vote for an atheist than the last time we heard about this particular issue that made atheism the most widely discriminated-against minority in America. I just saw it a little while ago at a social networking site, and they said just over a third. writerdd says it's over half. Something fishy is going on.

Nevertheless, the title of the post is stupid. That's all I can really say about it. Just fucking moronic. And I'll stick to that description because that's what it is. One thing people should understand about analogies is that they cannot equivocate. Anybody who thinks that they can is simply wrong. That's why I look down on metaphors and prefer simile. It's blanket statements like "Atheism: it's like being gay in the 80" from Intergalactic Atheist Hussy and now "Atheism is the New Black" from writerdd that are hurting the situation. Not because they're being mean, or because they're seen as mean. Because these statements are simply incorrect.

The TRUTH Shall Set You Free

2007-09-04T18:28:00.001-05:00

Word.

Sunday Carnivalia: Atheism and Humanism

2007-09-02T20:51:00.000-05:00

Today I have two more carnivals, closely related to each other.

First, this week's Carnival of the Godless #. This week's theme is Pulp Fiction. Hebert did an excellent job.

Next is a much younger carnival, the Humanism Symposium at bligbe. HS was started in response to critics and concern trolls who constantly whine about how we atheists don't give people any alternatives to replace religion.

Opus censored again.

2007-09-02T20:38:00.000-05:00

Hat tip to Barefoot Bum. Here's yet another Opus comic censored by newspapers in fear of Muslim retribution.

Bite the other cheek.

Carnivalia: Sexual Violence takes a hit again.

2007-08-31T23:15:00.000-05:00

Marcella is hosting another large and fantastic edition of the Carnival Against Sexual Violence. In it is plenty of discussion of the 'grey rape' excuse that was recently bolstered by an article in Cosmo, some discussion on statistics and logical fallacies, and even the story of an angry commenter who decided to impersonate Marcella in an effort to discredit her.

[LINK]