While I know that my voice is small and insignificant, while I know very few care about my thoughts, I feel the need to speak on this. I feel the need if for no other reason than to simply add one more spit of fuel to a fire that desperately needs to grow. I speak in the hope that this fire may engulf the nation and burn away that which needs to burn.
I never had hope. I never expected change. I never expected this. I never expected a president who, time and again, has proven himself the equal of George W. Bush in almost all matters. His failure has been spectacular. And while he has had some high-profile successes, such as Obamacare, and for these many of my progressive friends have given him props, I was reading about his constant and persistent failures in the journals and articles on civil rights, copyright, freedom of speech, and equal rights. I was reading about the small, operational decisions that most people don't care about. For me, this blowup over the NSA was, for lack of a better word, expected.
Osama Bin Laden should be proud. He didn't destroy the U.S. like he, for some reason, thought he would. Instead, thanks to fear mongering politicians, an idiotic populace, and two presidencies headed by men without scruples, he has managed to cause us to build what is perhaps the infrastructure to the greatest police state the world has ever known.
The U.S. is obviously not currently a police state. Progressive activists will point to certain elements of it that are similar to it -- be it police abuse, overreaching government, the TSA, or institutional bigotry -- but on the whole, the U.S. is decently free. But we are on a precipice. The slope is not nearly as slippery as conservative wingnuts would have you believe, but we have spent the past thirteen years, slowly but surely, walking down that slope. And now, here we are, further down that slope that many probably suspected we were.
It was an overused phrase during Bush's reign, and perhaps we are all still weary of it, but I will repeat it anyhow, in its non-paraphrased form. They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
If so, perhaps this will make us finally, FINALLY, FINALLY, realize that our drug laws are mind-meltingly stupid.
Do you want to know who killed that tribe? We did. Because we're trying to stop something that will never be stopped, and in doing so have created a massive, multi-billion-dollar market for drugs that makes these barbarous monsters unbelievably wealthy. We make the game so profitable for them that we have whole towns being wiped out in Mexico, and people who aren't even aware of the outside world are being killed for something that they can't possibly understand.
WE KILLED THEM. Legalize drugs! Legalize all of them! Pull the rug out from under this ridiculous industry! Don't do it for taxes, or because you simply can't afford the police anymore. Legalize the drugs because it's everyone's right to ingest whatever they damn well feel like! The pursuit of happiness does not restrict chemical happiness! And it never will, whether we try to do that or not.
People do drugs. We love nicotine, and caffeine, and alcohol just as we love cocaine, meth, and heroin. People will always do them whether we want them to or not. We will not stop them. Ever. Are the people that do drugs stupid? You're darn-tootin' they are! But that doesn't matter. I think people who drink are stupid, and smoke, and eat McDonalds. But that doesn't stop them from having every right to continue on drinkin', smokin', and gettin' fat.
Legalize drugs. Stop the bloodshed that is happening on our streets between drug gangs. Stop the wholesale slaughter of people in Mexico, and stop the deaths of people who are about as innocent as can be found on planet Earth. This is in the power of the Western World. No one else.
I just received a call, 1:20pm, from the National Organization for Marriage... again. In my first post on the subject, I commented on how suspicious the wording of the question was and the timing of the call. First off, if the name wasn't a hint, the National Organization for Marriage is a right-wing, religious organization that is of course against gay marriage, because letting two gay people do what they want will bring about the apocalypse or something. That bias in the polling makes me more circumspect of the actual poll.
My first call, on January 26th, was received at 2:00pm. They also asked whether I was 50-years of age or older. What demographic is at home at 2:00pm? Old people. And what do old people hate more than any other age bracket? Gays! This is in contrast to polling calls that I've received from Gallup, The New York Times, CNN, CBS, and other, I dunno' respectable organizations. I usually receive the calls after 5:00pm.
This successful call was actually the third. The first was successfully answered back in January, I then got a second which was answered by my machine at about 2:00pm yesterday. That's three calls, all around the same time, 1:45pm. Highly irregular.
Wal-Mart censors CD's. Did you know that? They will not carry CD's with parental warnings on them for naughty words. To be carried by Wal-Mart a band must release a version of the CD with all of said naughty words bleeped out or changed. This wouldn't have been an issue if Wal-Mart hadn't been the largest music seller on the planet. As such, their requirements was tantamount of large-scale censorship. For a long time, if you lived in a rural area, the only place where you could easily purchase music might have been the local Wally World. This is a textbook example of why monopolies are against the law. They are anti-consumer.
Apple finally passed Wal-Mart as the largest retailer of music in mid-2008, striking a blow for the easy dissemination of information, unadulterated by the ideology of one, retarded company. But, oh right! If we're to believe the record companies, MP3's and digital music are inherently evil! They've tried to tax blank CD's, iPods, and online music. They've sued file-sharers and companies trying to distribute digital technology legitimately. They forced digital resellers into restrictive Digital Rights Management, and had to be dragged kicking and screaming, into the 21st century by Apple and iTunes.
But! You might say, what I'm actually arguing for is digital selling, not piracy. Piracy is still bad! I would counter, telling you to think back to the late 1990's, when the nascent market of MP3 players was driven because of piracy. The only people buying those crap players were geeks known as alpha consumers. They drove adoption of the format because of services like Napster and Morpheus (remember them?!) making it easy to access music. For most people, it was a pain in the ass to rip CD's and then transfer the music to a player. Apple realized this. Why do you think that they released iTunes and iPods concomitantly? The integrated, easy access to already digital music was the key element of the player.
But that disregards the fact that the MP3 industry was at the point that it was because of piracy. It's a perfect example of how it wasn't bad. It was simply the advancement of technology and the market. Trying to fight it was blatantly wrong even back in the early 2000's, and the rash of bankruptcies in the record industry, while companies like Apple continue their meteoric rise, is proof of that.
Do you like George Wendt? Five points to Gryffindor if you know where that's from.
I just received a call with an automated survey from the National Organization for Marriage. If you can't tell just by the name, this is a right-wing, Christian organization that of course believes gay marriage is evil and, somehow, a threat. I'm getting the call because Lincoln Chafee, Rhode Island's governor-elect, has made it clear that he supports gay marriage, so there's a lot of attention being paid by American religious groups to our tiny, little nugget of the union. It doesn't help that Rhode Island is so damned Catholic.
Regardless, there's a fantastic episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit called Numbers, you can watch it here. It's a Hong Kong site called Megavideo, which is a little scummy, but it's at least safe. The important part comes in at about 12:20, if you want to fast forward.
The survey that I answered, and I'll try to be as accurate as I can, opened the survey, opened the survey, with the statement "This survey involves one of the most important subjects of our time: the institution of marriage." Nice primer, there, assholes. Look at what they said. This is IMPORTANT. We're talking about an INSTITUTION.
Then, the money question "Do you believe that marriage should be legal only between a man and a woman?" It's worded juuuust funny enough to possibly elicit a particular answer. Why not just ask the most straightforward question? "Do you believe that gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry?"
Because asking that question emphasizes that we are not allowing a group of people to do something. We have a rather strong freedom streak running through us, and pollsters want to avoid asking questions that collide with it. They phrase the question not in a way that makes it sound like we're preventing people from doing something, but that we are protecting something. That we are, in that protecting, preventing people from doing something is glossed over.
If you've watched the episode of P&T, you'll understand that this is not a merely semantic issue. It is a fundamental issue in the posing of the question. By phrasing it as though we are defending something and not as though we are oppressing a group, and priming people with the concept of "the institution of marriage" beforehand, the pollsters can easily shift the results of the survey in the direction that they want.
They then asked whether I was male or female, and whether I was over the age of fifty. This is likely important because men are shifting towards a pro-GLBT position faster than women, and there is a startling opinion shift in the mid-40's. People younger than 45 are strongly pro-gay, and people older than 45 are strongly anti-gay. Damned old people. Just die.
This also makes me question the timing of the call. I work out of my home, so I'm here, but calling on a weekday, at 2pm, when most people are at work; the pollsters are likely to get a disproportionate number of women and old people answering. Miiiiighty suspicious. It reminds us that the sample quality is important for any survey. Is it actually random? Or is there some other variable that can be affecting the qualities of the sample? And, even more perniciously, are the pollsters well aware of this and using it to their advantage? Judging from the wording of the actual survey, I'm quite sure that they know what they're doing in calling at 2pm.
Apparently, Julian Assange's OKCupid profile from four years ago has been identified. He sounds like the self-righteous, politically charged super-geek that everyone suspects that he is/was. My god. The sheer number of people I've met with this personality profile is shocking. It's also a bit of a conflict, for me, because while I think that what Assange is doing is of great value and importance, I'm utterly sure that I would hate him if I ever met him. I have hated everyone I've ever met like him. How can you not? Kudos to him, though. Most guys like him become young Republicans. So that's something.
There's an article over at The Register asking whether American prudishness is ruining the internet. The author's thesis is, essentially, that most of the internet is dominated by American companies, American companies are beholden to American advertisers, and American advertisers are beholden to the American people, who are morons who hate naughty words and naked bodies.
I do not take a pessimistic perspective on this. In fact, my perspective is downright Pollyanna. Even though major corporations rule the web and, in many ways, force American cultural norms onto their users, this sort of restriction is almost always fleeting. The internet has shown that it is repulsed by censorship and restriction, and while a system or company that advocates and/or uses those two tools may succeed in the short term, in the long term it crumbles. I can think of no better example than AOL.
In comparison to AOL's sleek interface, the internet of the late 1990's and early 2000's was a no-man's-land, but it won out. Not only did it win out, but by the end of the conflict, one of the world's biggest corporations had been reduced to a website. Apple is a good example that is playing out right now. Apple won over users and got them to buy into Apple's ecosystem of products with sleek design, wonderful user interfaces, and great advertising.
This had s snowball effect, where users bought one or two Apple products, but eventually bought more and more, until a god chunk of their digital life revolved around Apple products and services. But see what is happening, now. The flagship of the closed Apple system, the iPhone, is seeing its market share and dominance give way to the inherently open Android OS. Whether Android is actually open or not is open for debate, but it's certainly far more open than Apple. Once people buy one or two products outside of the ecosystem, they're far less likely to buy back in (I actually have data to back that statement up... just wish I could find it).
We can also look at cultural movements over the course of the past ten years. Remember when the Paris Hilton sex tape came out? Remember the controversy? The news coverage? We now have sex tapes released almost every month... and no one cares anymore. Or for examples more quantifiable, look at acceptance of homosexuality in America. Five years ago, a majority of Americans did not support gay marriage. Now, less than half a decade later, even in the face of ceaseless attacks from the religious right, a majority do. Staggeringly, men also now outnumber women in their support of gay marriage. Cultural shifts of this speed and magnitude have never happened before. Why did it happen? The only variable I can see that didn't exist before is the internet.
It is perhaps the "wild west" nature of the web that has made the major companies act the way that they do. The internet at large is free and uninhibited. To differentiate themselves, they hew closely to the tactful ideal, with no naughty words, nudity, or raunchiness. While I understand this strategy, I think that it's dangerous. They risk damaging their brand when cultural norms begin to accept the very activities that the big companies now censor. When that shift happens, people won't want to be associated with the companies that now represent the censorship they are escaping. Why do you think that CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and every other old-world news service have demographics with an average age in their 60's?
So while I think that major American companies are stupid to try and censor, because of the damage it can do to their brand, I don't think that it's a problem for the rest of the world. The internet is free and freedom is better than no freedom --people like the ability to do things-- so any shift towards censorship will be isolated both in time and digital space. It is this seemingly inherent mechanism to the internet, perhaps because it's as direct an extension of the human psyche as is technologically possible, that will keep it free and will continue to have an increasingly large effect on society at large. I think that the greatest decades of cultural change are in front of us.
Scientific American has a great article about free will. Basically, most researchers generally lean towards a formulation that we do not have free will in the classic sense. Frequently, the argument that we "could have acted differently" is not true.
Unfortunately, these crude descriptions of complex freedom concepts have a strongly negative effect on people. Basically, they can't handle the truth. Nietzsche would be so happy.
Don't worry, everyone. Free will exists. The problem that we have is where the concept of "free will" exists. It exists above the underlying causes that result in "me." We can take this example to an atomic level and argue that everything that will happen is predetermined in the giant billiards game that is atomic interaction because causes and effects have predetermined courses of action. That still doesn't negate free will. Free will exists above atoms. It is a product of those atoms. On a human level, I do have free will to act however I choose to what I encounter. The fact that previous variables have an effect on that choice does not negate free will.
I am the culmination of every moment, both internal and external, in my life. Those moments must have an effect on future moments. I might choose to murder someone, say a black man, because I'm racist. That racism was caused by my family environment to a great degree, but just because it was the primary influence on my decision to hate black people and thus murder one does negate my choice at that time. Morals, much like free will, exists above the underlying variables that define a human. It was still morally wrong for me to kill the man. Having influences on my choice does not make the choice any less a choice.
Looking at humans as the culmination of everything that had come before also negates the Hitler experiment. If we define "Adolph Hitler," simply saying "the German fuhrer during World War II" is inadequate. We would have to define Hitler as "the man who existed who underwent every event as the entity labeled 'Adolph Hitler' by other people." That means that ANY change in his past destroys what we call Adolph Hitler and creates a new one. The new Hitler may be very similar to what we call Hitler, but it would be different. For example, our Hitler took a poop at 3:32pm, on October 22nd, 1933. If we go back in time and clog the toilet, thus preventing him from pooping at that time, we have destroyed Hitler.
Also, saying that killing Hitler would have stopped WWII is entirely wrong. Hitler got many of his ideas from the Thule Society, and Germany was filled with anger and poverty after WWI. In much the same way that a person is a conglomeration of variables, as is a group of people. Germany very likely would have gone to war, anyhow, just with a different leader. WWII would have been entirely different.
We are what we were. Choices are essentially comprised of things that have gone by, because what is a choice but the application of the past on an unknown future?
The words "free will" are nonsensical. What we want free will to mean is beyond the limits of language and understanding.
Choice and free will are necessarily above the underlying concepts that comprise a human. Interaction, past events, and neurophysiology are all parts of free will. We cannot apply it to its own underlying principles. For example, we describe things as "smooth" or "rough." We cannot use those words to describe the atoms that make up materials that we then describe as smooth or rough. Those words require atoms to exist.
In my view, the ONLY important element of society with which government should fanatically concern itself is the stewardship of freedom. People have a tendency to willingly give up freedom, even though the freedom of a populace is the lifeblood of a nation. All actions of a government must be taken with freedom in mind, and all declarations of a government must increase freedom. It may decrease freedom in some ways, but the net result is an increase. For example, government health care decreases financial freedom, namely, higher taxes, but it increases overall freedom because I no longer have the fear of injury or illness and being unable to pay.
Obama has been given a single test of our freedom in this country: telecom immunity. Instead of concentrating on this, his most important job, he has fucked up the financial bailout and tried to push through medical change that was doomed from the beginning. Great job!
Well, in a few short days, the Rhode Island state assembly will vote to criminalize prostitution. They will vote to make it wrong to do something people have been doing for all of human history. They will vote to eliminate a fundamental freedom: the freedom to do as you wish with your own body. They will vote to eliminate one of the few things that made Rhode Island at all special or progressive, and replace it with the same moralistic claptrap that dominates the rest of the country. Such garbage. All I can say is that I am disgusted with my state.
Prostitutes should be very happy, though. When prostitution is criminalized, its value goes up.
I love economics. It's the best way to win arguments that really shouldn't be winnable.
I guess I should say I like econometrics, as opposed to economics. Economics includes groups like the Austrian and Chicago schools, which rely very heavily on intuition, which is no way to win an argument. Your intuition is just as good as mine, and it's very easy to point that out. But for example, the argument of prostitution. Is it right or wrong?
Correct answer: it doesn't matter. We cannot stop it. It has existed since the beginning of time, and exists even in countries where prostitution is punishable by death. So, if it cannot be stopped, why have laws against it? People still kill, regardless of laws. So why bother outlawing that? But, then, we're comparing prostitution to murder, which is pretty stupid.
Moreover, countries without laws against murder are usually on the edge of coherency, and as such, the lack of the law isn't really what is causing murder; it's the lack of social order. Laws against murder and stealing sprout spontaneously from a social order because they're fundamentally necessary for that order to exist. Laws against prostitution hold no such honor.
Truly, prostitution frequently held the opposite stature in past civilizations. Frequently, prostitution was seen as a necessity for grown men, and that prostitutes did a public good. Even in modern times, during periods of war, the military tolerated and understood the job that nearby brothels performed.
Economics gives us the ability to develop a scenario and then seek out data. Just find the data and make your argument with that. Freakonomics had it right. Trying to argue right and wrong, or develop models to determine things gets you nowhere. Just find the data.
I generally avoid thinking about politics too much. I find it to be entertainment more than anything else for people who need to feel important. Reading things like old issues of Time magazine cements this perspective.
I do talk about economics a lot, though, because it ties in directly to the only thing I think is of any importance in politics: freedom. That's all politics should be generally concerned with, and economic policy is where that most frequently comes to a head.
Understandably so, since economics is all about trying to balance my ability to fuck other people while not letting me fuck them too much. It's a recognition that the entire system is driven by some very nasty human emotions, and that it's likely best to keep those emotions at least somewhat in check.
I also know that raving conservatives are out and about talking about Herr Obama, and how we're charging wildly towards the next Soviet Union, which is obviously not true, but under Clinton, Bush, and now Obama, we have been moving away from economic freedom. And it's interesting how some of those moves away have proven, beyond contention, to be really bad ideas.
I think expressly of Sarbanes-Oxley, which is proving to be a nightmare. Supporters say the law reinforced people's confidence in the markets, which is silly. Most people don't even know it exists, and the people that do know, banks and whatnot, hate it. People have also proven in the past to regain confidence simply because bad shit doesn't happen for a period of time. Government actions do nothing more than convince angry people that the government is doing something to stop the bad guys, which is all Sarbox did.
But by the same token, I don't think Sarbox has had the enormously negative effects that its opponents think. Government action has proven throughout history to have very little effect on what the people are doing. We have countries with high taxes that do well, countries with low taxes that do well. Countries with lots of cops, and countries with next to no cops. Only movements in the extreme have a serious effect on people's lives.
But what worries me is that countries are clubs. We, like any club, want members. As so many countries are starting to adopt similar governmental policies, and as more people move up the socioeconomic ranks, the differences between the clubs get smaller, and those small effects that government action can have become, comparatively, very large. The government has to look at this as a contest. We are a club competing for the best members from other clubs.
We want low taxes, high services, high freedom, and systems in place to help all of this happen. Government can have an effect on that, and it should work towards it.
Red light cameras cause more accidents. Speed cameras do the same. They are not about helping you. They are about revenue generation. The police and government are NOT your friends. They might not necessarily be your enemies, but they are certainly not your friends.
We're not supposed to do this! This crap is done by the side with the crazies on it. There is some information that makes it sound like the guy who did the shooting was more pissed about the graphic images the victim had on his signs, so it may have little to do with actual pro-life/choice debate. I certainly hope that's the case.
That still doesn't excuse the death threats received by the pro-life group. Nasty letters? Fine. Your mother wears army boots? Great! I'm going to kill you? No! It doesn't work. You can't call them retarded extremists if you go and do the same thing!
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is all up in arms about a photo of a dying marine that was published by the AP, gasp, even after the family asked the photo not be published.
First off, two things. Whether the family wants news published or not is of no importance. He was a soldier representing the entire country, not just one family.
Second off, this smacks of the same garbage about which the government complained during the vietnam war. That publishing photos of war, and blood, and dying soldiers helped those damned commies. This isn't new behavior from our "free" government, either. Freedom of press and speech is absolute. News is news is news. Facts can, should, and must be disseminated. I'm also not the only one to make the Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan connection.
The government has always been desperate to hide images of war from the masses. As though some mass delusion about war being not so bad will allow them to continue willy-nilly sending soldiers off to die in far-flung hell holes. Just keep the American populace ignorant of the real damage. American consumerism will take care of the rest (note: I love American consumerism, but it can be used as a tool).
Gates “was greatly disappointed they had not done the right thing." BAH! The right thing. He wouldn't know the right thing if it bit him in the face. He's a an ex-CIA, Air Force, and National Security Councel. They have never cared about what is right. They care about minding America's interests and keeping us safe. A noble goal? Perhaps. I think it is. But has nothing to do with what is right. He started work at the CIA in 1966, left in 1974, then came back in 1979. Let's see, during that time the CIA did... too many bad things to list. And what about now? Secret prisons? Black helicopters? Ringing any bells?
Gates' life has never, ever been about doing what's right. And the fact that he would be presumptuous enough to talk about right and wrong is not just infuriating, it's fucking disgusting. He should just crawl into a cave and die.
I just discovered a new blog. It's called Jezebel and I have no idea how I didn't know about it before. It's run by Gawker media, the same company that runs Gizmodo, Jalopnik, io9, Lifehacker, and seemingly every other blog I read, so I don't know where I was.
It's a fantastic example of what I see as true feminism. Doing whatever the fuck you want and feeling good about it. Girl power. They're not my ideal feminist state, which requires non-self-awareness. If you are aware of your state of being liberated, then you aren't perfectly liberated, since your thoughts and perceptions are colored by an antagonistic environment. My ideal is a woman who does whatever she wants, loves it, and doesn't realize that it's special.
Finally, the court has instituted some limits on American schools' crapping all over the Constitution.
By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press Writer – 51 mins ago
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a school's strip search of an Arizona teenage girl accused of having prescription-strength ibuprofen was illegal.
In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said school officials violated the law with their search of Savana Redding in the rural eastern Arizona town of Safford.
Redding, who now attends college, was 13 when officials at Safford Middle School ordered her to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear because they were looking for pills — the equivalent of two Advils. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the school was acting on a tip from another student.
"What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear," Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion. "We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable."
In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas found the search legal and said the court previously had given school officials "considerable leeway" under the Fourth Amendment in school settings.
Officials had searched the girl's backpack and found nothing, Thomas said. "It was eminently reasonable to conclude the backpack was empty because Redding was secreting the pills in a place should thought no one would look," Thomas said.
Thomas warned that the majority's decision could backfire. "Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments," he said. "Nor will she be the last after today's decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school."
The court also ruled the officials cannot be held liable in a lawsuit for the search. Different judges around the nation have come to different conclusions about immunity for school officials in strip searches, which leads the Supreme Court to "counsel doubt that we were sufficiently clear in the prior statement of law," Souter said.
"We think these differences of opinion from our own are substantial enough to require immunity for the school officials in this case," Souter said.
The justices also said the lower courts would have to determine whether the Safford United School District No. 1 could be held liable.
A schoolmate had accused Redding, then an eighth-grade student, of giving her pills.
The school's vice principal, Kerry Wilson, took Redding to his office to search her backpack. When nothing was found, Redding was taken to a nurse's office where she says she was ordered to take off her shirt and pants. Redding said they then told her to move her bra to the side and to stretch her underwear waistband, exposing her breasts and pelvic area. No pills were found.
A federal magistrate dismissed a suit by Redding and her mother, April. An appeals panel agreed that the search didn't violate her rights. But last July, a full panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the search was "an invasion of constitutional rights" and that Wilson could be found personally liable.
Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented from the portion of the ruling saying that Wilson could not be held financially liable.
"Wilson's treatment of Redding was abusive and it was not reasonable for him to believe that the law permitted it," Ginsburg said.
The Constitution does not end at school grounds. In ANY way shape and form. Justice Thomas can go screw.
I've said before how I consider myself a practical feminist. I have always said that the more militant feminists actually do a greater disservice to the cause of female equality than they do good. For a historical precedent, I look to Martin Luther King and his peaceful approach, basically revealing the racist whites to be the barbarians that they were, as opposed to the angry blacks which contributed to the Great White Flight.
I also decry modern racism as "fake" racism. It's not real racism that has a significant effect on the lives of otherwise upstanding blacks. We have black men in all echelons of power and prestige in various industries. Real racism has nothing to do with cops racially profiling, it has to do with the subtle, underlying assumptions that people don't usually think about.
This applies to sexism, as well. The feminist straw man of a belligerent, overtly-sexist asshole ranting about how women are all alike doesn't exist in any significant way. Sure, those men run gas stations across the country, but they don't exist for the most part. Instead, we have subtle assumptions that result in the treatment of women in a different way. This can sometimes result in ostensibly positive behavior, whereby women are gauged with less rigor than men.
For example, sports. Yes, it could be argued that men are better at many sports simply because they can get stronger more easily. But what about snowboarding or skiing? There is nothing different between men and women that should result in the wide difference in stunts, times, and successful moves seen during the winter Olympics. It has entirely to do with the men being treated differently. They're judged more harshly. The stakes are higher. The competition is fiercer. This is real, damaging sexism.
One area that's sticky, though, is sex. I consider men and women, as far as non-social programming goes, to be effectively identical. Social programming, though, is different. There is an undeniable difference socially and sexually.
For example, I present the case of Valeria K., aka The Black Widow;
A young Russian woman, a devoted collector of horror films and spiders, is on trial for sedating and raping ten men.
The police were shocked that 32-year-old Valeria K., a quiet good-looking woman from the city of Tambov, was the mysterious rapist who abused ten local men after poisoning them with clonidine, Life.ru reports.
Valeria, who has already been nicknamed the Black Widow for her love of spiders, would get acquainted with men and invite them to her place.
She gave them drinks with clonidine, which almost immediately sent them to sleep for almost 24 hours.
After that, she undressed her victims and raped them, tightening a rope on their male organs to kep them erect.
Waking up in hospital with clonidine poisoning and penis trauma, all the victims could remember was a friendly brunette who gave them drinks.
Finally, local police identified the offender and arrested her.
At present, the police know about ten of Valeria’s victims, although one of them refused to file a complaint against her.
“It was great,” the unnamed man said.
“I like hot women. I only wish she hadn't use the clonidine on me.”
The most interesting aspect is the thing I can't copy: the comments. Comment after comment on all the blogs is the same thing, where can I find this woman?! I want to be raped! The difference is so staggering. And even in myself, I'd be fine with it. I would love to be raped by a woman. I guess that means it can't possibly be rape, but still.
I don't believe this difference is cultural/social. The thought of a woman being raped is repulsive down to my very core, but the idea of me being raped? That's fine. I guess if I change the staging of the hypothetical rape, a woman forcibly penetrating a man anally sounds worse perhaps, but even then, it's kind of kinky/cool.
It just doesn't seem possible that it's cultural. Rape has been a blight on society in multiple cultures for thousands of years. When ravaging packs of women roam around (the few times it's happened), they just kill and steal. When men do it, they kill, steal, and rape. I even think that the psychological damage done to boys by priests has more to do with culture than sex with boys causing any fundamental harm. Why? Men and boy sexual relations has happened in multiple cultures in many areas on the planet. Homosexuality among young soldiers and older soldiers was common. There is a precedent to indicate that it may be cultural that the event was harmful to the boys. Rape of women has no such precedent.
So, for me, rape is a difficult point. I have become convinced that a militant attitude is in fact necessary to sort of punch out latent prejudice when it comes to rape allegations.
I was doing random research on sex and rape and came across this text book, first published in 2000, for college classrooms. Just Sex discusses sort of the history of student activism in the march towards equal rights for women.
The story of Brown University really drives home how far we have to go.
This was 1990, people! The Sega Genesis was out! It's stunning to think that a highly liberal area such as Rhode Island would be at the center of such a controversy.
Rape and sex are part of the animal human, which I separate to a degree from the higher-functioning aspects of the human. As a species that considers itself advanced, we must push aside some aspects of animalism in favor of a recognition that all of us, men and women alike, are merely thinking entities. To look at one another as people as opposed to a man or a woman. Rape cannot be allowed in that world.
I must say the determining if rape has occurred or not is difficult. Most of the time, all that can be determined is that sex has occurred. So we are left with a he-said she-said. But even here, in court, a woman's life can be brought into consideration, but the man's past history, unless a pattern can be identified, is out of bounds. There's something fundamentally wrong with that.
I default to believing women who say that they have been raped. Unfortunately, every case I've encountered, it's been eventually revealed that either the woman lied or exaggerated. That's very depressing. I want to believe. I must believe since any logical, caring person would err on the side of caution, but I've been proven wrong in all cases.
Still, it doesn't matter. In the same way that racial profiling is idiotic, sexual profiling is just as dumb. To take my experiences with previous women and then project their actions into this new person is laughably wrong. To do otherwise is sexist, and it is here, perhaps, that militant feminism is needed.
For example, one of the girls I knew who went to a New England university claimed rape. The case was handled aggressively by the University police, the local police, and the boy was brought in, fingerprinted, and questioned. He was suspended from school for the duration of the investigation. That didn't last long, because it was revealed two days later that the girl had lied. She told the story to friends, didn't expect them to call the cops for her, then kept the story going. The innocent boy's life was turned upside down, he now has a criminal record, and resources were wasted.
It was an injustice, to be sure, but perhaps a necessary one. If men the world over know that pendulum has swung very far in the opposite direction, and that their life could be ruined for even a minor misunderstanding, it will force men to be cautious when entering into sexual relations. We could go as far as Antioch College's famous manual to consensual sex, and while that's pretty stupid, again it may be necessary. I think that goes a bit too far. Rape is pretty easy. If she says "no," and you keep going, congratulations, you're raping her. It's not hard to avoid this.
This article from Newsweek in 1993 decries what it sees as the overswing of feminism and injustice against men. It's startling to read the barely concealed venom and condescension by the author. It's also startling that all of the authors are women. They lament the loss of sexual surprise and unexpectedness if these rules are followed. Yeah? Well too bad. When you're stupid and drunk, like most college students are, I'm completely behind strict, no-nonsense, unromantic rules.
It may seem to you that I'm about a decade late in writing about this, but I don't think so. These issues still exist. Sexism is still rampant. I don't even want to think about the number of men I heard who voted for McCain-Palin because they thought Palin was "hot." Gah. The pendulum is again swinging back towards center, and hopefully it won't overshoot it by too much.
I mentioned a belief that militant feminism does more damage than good, and also that hidden 'isms are what are truly dangerous. The Newsweek article makes an excellent point in this regard.
This defensive mind-set is at the heart of the escalating battle over date rape. Critics charge feminists with hyping the statistics and so broadening the definition of rape that sex roles are becoming positively Victorian. Women are passive vessels with no responsibility for what happens; men are domineering brutes with just one thing on their minds. "People have asked me if I have ever been date-raped," writes Katie Roiphe in "The Morning After." "And thinking back on complicated nights, on too many glasses of wine, on strange and familiar beds, I would have to say yes. With such a sweeping definition of rape, I wonder how many people there are, male or female, who haven't been date-raped at one point or another . . . If verbal coercion constitutes rape, then the word "rape" itself expands to include any kind of sex a woman experiences as negative."
Roiphe, 25, a Harvard graduate and now a doctoral candidate it Princeton, argues that a hysteria has gripped college campuses, fomented by "rape-crisis feminists." "The image that emerges from feminist preoccupations with rape and sexual harassment is that of women as victims, offended by a professor's dirty joke, verbally pressured into sex by peers. This image of a delicate woman bears a striking resemblance to that "50s ideal my mother and the other women of her generation fought so hard to get away from. They didn't like her passivity . . . her excessive need for protection . . . But here she is again, with her pure intentions and her wide eyes. Only this time it is the feminists themselves who are breathing new life into her."
The hidden 'ism that is doing actual damage. Still, that strong pendulum swing was needed. Humans as a whole never work in fine details. We don't deal with gray areas. We only move and change when REALLY big things happen. Look at school segregation. It took small wars to break out. I think that continued militant behavior is the only way through. Yes, it's overblown. Yes, it's paranoid. But I think that a fear that at any moment, a woman can totally ruin a man's life with a single word is what's needed to permanently banish this behavior from society.
If that destroys romance, at least for a time, so be it. Men and women will be forced to treat each other as people, as opposed to the opposite sex. Sex will simply be off the menu. Hmmm. Perhaps a university that's free and liberal in every way except not allowing sex between students. Have sex, get kicked out. Interesting idea. Would never work. Interesting, though.
UPDATE 6/24/2009: I was thinking about the Newsweek article and its assertion that we are reverting back to a more Victorian form of sexual identity, whereby women are pure and helpless and men are horrid brutes. I don't fully agree that women are being portrayed as pure and helpless, but men are being portrayed as brutes. But I see that as the point. Humans operate best on primary drivers. I think the biggest of those drivers is fear. If men are literally fearful of talking, touching, looking at, or otherwise interacting with women, that is the kind of circumstance that results in psychosocial change.
