The Reason For Liberalism To Exist At All and Why Violent Pornography Should Be Suppressed [Anthony McCarthy]

Two people hearing the same piece of music won’t have the same reaction to it. One person will hate it and the next person will find that it compellingly speaks to their condition. And those aren’t the only two possibilities. The person who finds a piece to be irresistibly absorbing of their attention will have a half-ally in someone who likes to ignore the same piece as background music while they read a book. The first cousin to indifference.

And what is true about different responses to a piece of music is true of books, movies, pictures, and just about anything else. It is also true of ideas. One person who finds an intellectual position to be totally convincing will be matched by many who think it is hogwash. And there are few passionate dislikes quite like colleagues who hold similar but competing positions on a subject within the world of scholarship.

Clearly people react in significantly different, often significantly opposite ways to the same experience. Which will come as a surprise to no one. When it comes to the things above.

A note I had from someone who read the exchange from last weekend provided the same old lines about pornography that can be abbreviated to “there isn’t any proof that pornography leads to violent behavior”, with the obligatory mention of statistics thrown in. While I’m not convinced that the statistical analyses, such as I’ve seen, are convincing, I ‘ve come to be even less convinced that they are relevant to the topic of the damaging effects of pornography. The statistics won’t show us what we need to know about this topic.

For the purposes of thinking about the possible impact of pornography in the actual lives of people, it is the individual people that are important, not the artificial, nonexistent conglomeration that is the focus of statistical analysis. A person isn’t raped by a number, they aren’t strangled or slashed or bludgeoned by a tolerable confidence interval, mode, median or average, they are attacked by one person, or a group of actual, other associated people. I hold that it is a reasonable conclusion, that if those people who attack have been exposed to violent pornography, their actions have been motivated by that pornography. That another person – OK, let’s cut that even handed garbage now — if another man happened to view exactly the same pornography and was entirely unaffected by it, that does nothing to negate the motivating effect it had on the attacker.

When it is a matter of a crime, the events of that crime are more important than a sociological generality. The life events and condition of the individual who commits a crime are more important in understanding that crime than the experience or condition of any or, even, all other individuals. Just as the crime of an unrelated person cannot be justly blamed on another accused person*, the non-response of another person to pornography can’t negate its likely effect on a person who acts in a way that is consistent with it and the ideas it promotes.


An individual perso's experience isn’t watered down by the experience of another person, our lives aren’t neutralized to a tolerable acidity by the introduction of an inert substance. When looking for the possible effects that violent pornography has on the victims of violence, the only relevant subjects for study are those who attacked them. Unfortunately, since we are talking about the internal conditions of peoples’ minds in this, you have no access to that except through their self-reporting. And in the case of the consumption of violent pornography and its effects on those who act violently, I don’t know how you are going to reach a reasonable level of confidence in their testimony about their consumption of it or its place in their motivations. I’d be rather disinclined to view violent rapists and sexual sadists as reliable in matters of self-knowledge and truth.

As I’ve always been stunned to realize, in our society today, words and images are granted a higher level of respect than mere mortals, both human and animal. I strongly suspect that what began as an abstract Jeffersonian ideal that was supposed to allow the best ideas to incubate and naturally rise to prominence, in practice hasn’t worked out with anything like uniform success. I also strongly suspect some of the worst of it, flows from the fact that not all words and ideas are of equal attractiveness to people with the power to change things. The idea that women are inferior to men and so women were subjugated by natural law is an idea that we are still struggling against. It was such an accustomed idea to the late 18th century that women could be left out of the founding documents of this country, its expression isn’t sufficient to disqualify men from holding important public offices now. ** Jefferson’s actions show that he certainly didn’t see women as being the equals of men, certainly not women of color.

Clearly, for most of the history of this country, the idea that women were inferior to men had greater appeal than the idea that women are equal to men and possessed the right to full personhood and equality. It was to the benefit of men to pretend they knew this, it was to their economic benefit and to the gratification of their self-concept to have women subservient to them, their chattels. The struggle of the idea that women had equal rights is an idea that has had a hard time winning out over the traditional viewpoint of patriarchal domination. That the factual case of women’s rights is solid and entirely more credible than the self–interested hunches and habits of patriarchy has not made it strong, politically, and even under the judiciary it is constantly endangered in 2010.

Just think of that. In 2010 women are in danger of losing their right to control the most personal and intimate aspects of their personhood! Despite the centuries of reasoned discussion and proof, we are still struggling against the most primitive and obviously dishonest line of oppression that deprives more than half of the human population of their equal rights. The “more speech” of women’s rights has not yet effectively won over patriarchy despite what must be the daily experience of more than half of the species. And it is the freely spoken lies, the freely presented images and dramatic presentations and Madison Ave. style PR in favor of male domination that are what maintain the oppression. And in no part of the freely spoken, freely expressed discourse of patriarchal oppression is that as obvious as violent pornography.

To grant pornography the legal status where it must be convicted at a standard beyond mere reasonable doubt is one of the absurdities of our times. A standard granted to pornography is well past a standard based on perfect certainty that it is innocent. If there was absolute proof convicting pornography in promoting violence, I would bet you anything that the absolutists would still claim it was the right thing to allow it to live. That is the essential stand that is unstated in free speech absolutism. It is the standard of those who oppose all libel and slander laws which are, obviously, a restriction on speech. That standard makes the most damned lie immune from suppression. The counter-argument that bad speech be answered by “more speech” is made false by the fact that a lie, even countered, generally has a damaging effect on those lied about. There isn’t enough of the distilled water of “more speech” to render the lie of no consequence. Of course, if you have a prominent position in the media or other realm and often according to where you live, those consequences are often of less impact. The effects of many of the worst lies varies by area and economic status.

In Massachusetts on Thursday, a young man was convicted of the stabbing murder of James Alenson, a 15-year-old school mate. The jury didn’t find the psychological mitigation presented by the defense to be convincing. Among other things learned in the trial, the murderer, John Odgren, was obsessed with a series of Stephen King stories. The testimony in the case documented that what he read in those books influenced his behavior to the extent that he called himself by the name of the principle character in them. To assert that his behavior was unaffected by the book is, clearly, to lie. He was, clearly, impressed with the trench coat cult, which I associate with the killers at Columbine High School. He would have had to hear about that from someone, most likely through the media, perhaps through the sick online cult that sees the Columbine killers and their kind as heroes. I don’t know what it was in the mass of psychological jargon presented by either side of the court case that made him attack a randomly chosen student, one who apparently he didn’t know, who was small and gentle and not someone who would have been likely to taunt him. Someone who was probably seen as unlikely to put up an effective defense. I don’t know exactly why Odgren killed, I do know that to discount his media driven obsessions is willful detachment from reality. It is as delusional as the thinking asserted by his defense team as the motivation of the murder. Just as an observation, if I was the author of stories that played a role like this in a murder, I would at least cease from producing similar tales. My right to tell a story can hardly be equal to the right of a 15-year-old to live.

The political impotence of the left is the result of the pseudo-judicial requirement imposed, by us and media coercion, on our public life by the free speech industry.**** That standard of extra-judicial impartiality has been absurdly inserted into our political speech and our lives as political animals. It is a standard of behavior that no other part of the political spectrum feels they must practice. It is seen clearly in the scrupulous observances maintained on the left about speech and expression. When someone can’t object to the word “cunt” or about the business practices of Hooters without being chastised as violating some bizarrely inverted concept of justice, it’s clear that we mere human beings are the vassals of words and images, so much more so when they are the products of commerce. It is time for women and the rest of those struggling for progress to declare we are going to throw off that mind forged manacle that is so notably a benefit to our opponents. The idea that all speech is equal and must be treated impartially will always benefit those with more power and fewer morals.

When you add the mass media to violent words the results can be genocidal. As mentioned in last weeks argument, free speech in the form of lies is the basis of most of the loss of rights due to bigotry and discrimination. Misogyny, racism, ethnic and religious bigotry, hatred of LGBT folks, are, in almost every case today, founded on and fueled by freely expressed speech. Hate talk radio and cabloids are the most prevalent media informing the American People of what their government and others do. Our virtually unrestricted media, just about entirely freed of the obligation to serve the public interest is the product of the free speech industry and the corporate media it so often acts on behalf of***. There has hardly ever been a time in the history of speech, when hate speech by and in the interest of those with power wasn’t given complete freedom, no matter what other speech was suppressed.

Of the many clear examples when speech has a homicidal impact on mere human beings, abridging every right those mere humans have, the Rwandan genocide is a relatively fresh and undeniable example. By the time the “more speech” had time to catch up with the hate speech and incitement to commit genocide that was uninhibitedly broadcast in a way that our shock jocks are quickly catching up to, hundreds of thousands of people were dead. If you think that can’t happen here, it does now. Women, the identifiable class most subject to hate speech, freely expressed, are murdered in the United States every single day because they are women. The slaughter of women is slow motion terrorism that has an inhibiting effect on the freedoms of women and girls. It is a lynching campaign that is the product of words that accumulate into attitudes and social norms. The same can be said to an extent of other groups which are regularly and irregularly the topic of hate speech. As is undeniable during this time of “open carry” rallies, our opponents are showing us that they are armed well past the teeth. Anyone who is willing to bet that they could not be incited to kill with them is an idiot.

In thinking about this and other topics, I’ve come to the conclusion that the way we have been led to think of human behavior is basically wrong. People aren’t atoms and molecules, they don’t behave with reasonable uniformity, there aren’t just a few simple vectors to describe their motion and interaction with their environment. I think much if not all of this statistical activity concerning human behavior might be quite useless. I don’t believe anymore that human behavior is subject to any laws and rules that our science is able to discern with any reliability. It is in determining the actions of any individual. While it might be very desirable to be able to make predictions about future behavior, trying to determine that with statistics is of wildly variable success at the very best. The more complex the behavior, the less likely it is liable to be understood simply. With complexity, given the nature of behaviors and their possible source in unknowable motivations, the complexity of the network of those possible motivations expands very fast. I don’t think behavioral science works even as well as the observations of a good fiction writer. That conclusion is something I didn’t want to be true, I used to believe the opposite, but I think it is true. I would like there to be a reliable science to deal with dangerous mental illnesses, but I don’t believe that, other than administering drugs to prevent some of the adverse behavior, the results are reliable.

We don’t have to like something for it to be true. Nature and science don’t have to conform to what would be most useful to us or most convenient for us. It would be extremely useful if we could predict who will have a bad reaction to violent pornography and use it as a how-to manual. But we can’t. To pretend that inability requires us to accept complete libertarianism, allowing pornography to throw off its chains and to flourish in its infinite depravity, is insane. To ignore that it is at least as effective as Viagra commercials in changing behavior or encouraging behavior that is latent in a potentially dangerous person, is also insane.

* The results of the habit of generalization are on full display in the infamous law recently passed in Arizona. Allow sterotypes and group libel full reign and you get laws like that one.

** When you add the element of ownership, as in slavery, the interests of slave owners asserted themselves and the original Constitution included mention of slaves, conferring extra privileges to slave holders and the states they lived in. The importance of that distinction is seen in the fact that the constitution didn’t give extra weight to the representation of states based on giving unenslaved women a fractional value, the infamous 3/5ths person value. Of course, that added representation wasn’t given to slaves, it was given to their enslavers.

*** If you want to know why our government doesn’t work, despite the majority that was elected with Barack Obama, our media is the foremost part of that. The impotence of Democrats in the congress and the administration is inflicted by the free media, exercising their unrestricted free speech in the absence of the onerous burden of risking an accurately informed electorate voting in an effectively beneficial way.

**** It was exactly that media coercion that fueled my first blog post.

Note: In the end, you have to stand for what you stand for.

I would have risked making this post of even more unreadable length if I’d gone into the all important issue of what the values of liberalism are for, in the end. To hold that governments and societies should treat people equally, to allow them to practice the control of their bodies and lives, isn’t an isolated end in itself. It has a goal, that of allowing people to live peaceful, happy lives, to not be harmed by other people with the ability to suppress and harm them. I don’t think it’s wrong to point out that much of speech and expression is an attack on that goal, it isn’t of innocuous intent. The goal of many people is to hurt people and animals, some people are gratified by hurting other people, they want to steal the product of their work, up to and including the most basic sustenance. There are people who like to hurt and kill other people. To deny that is to deny the reasons that liberalism and democracy are necessary in the first place. To deny that it is necessary to prevent that harm is to deny the only legitimate reason that laws and government exist.

There are also people who are so enamored of their self-righteousness that they will preen in a posture of scrupulosity in the matter of free speech even as they wash their hands of the results of the malignant speech they champion. “More speech” is the water that is held to clean up the blood. Only it doesn’t clean up the blood. It does, however, mask the indifference to it.

Happy Birthday, Gerda!

Gerda Lerner turns ninety today! Her Creation of Patriarchy is interesting reading.

You can read her marvelous recent essay on aging here (Scroll down the page until you see the cover of the book and then click "View Inside." This will let you read the chapter on aging).

Return of the Lilith Fair (by Suzie)

I was excited this week to hear that the Lilith Fair is coming to town. I caught all three tours 1997-1999. This puts me at odds with feminist bloggers who are considered hip. (I hate hip, but that’s a topic for another Friday.) Sacha Whitmarsh defends the tours, but I imagine no one will take her seriously because she’s a fan of Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, and OMG, that’s lesbians with acoustic guitars, how boring can you get? We want Lady Gaga!

In 1996, Lollapalooza had no female acts. Rarely did two women tour together. A female star had to be balanced out with a male opening act. In 1997, I wrote that the Lilith Fair was bound to change things. I wonder how much it did. It’s still common for mega tours to have few, if any, women. I rarely listen to the radio, but when I do, it’s still one male artist after another on most stations.

While home for my 20-year high-school reunion, I caught the first Lilith Fair in Dallas with one of my sisters. Next to us were a straight couple next to a dad and his daughter next to four frat boys next to a lesbian couple. A man in a Texas A&M cap sat behind a woman with a Celtic triskelion tattoo. With men outnumbered 4-1, they either respected music by women or they kept their mouths shut. It felt so different from other outside tours where men dominate.

In 1998, I caught the tour in Orlando with three lesbians active in the struggle for LGBT rights. For a break from the sweltering heat, we ducked into misting tents and then walked around in wet T-shirts free from harassment. In 1999, I went to Atlanta with a boyfriend who couldn’t handle the crowds, and I ended up hearing some great acts from the parking lot. Each time, I felt like I was in a world of women.

Did any of you see the Lilith Fair?
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I'm sparing y'all a Miranda Lambert video of "I'm Texas as Hell." Instead, the video above is from the Court Yard Hounds, which consists of Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, the two sisters who formed the Dixie Chicks. The third member, Natalie Maines, is taking a break. Lambert and the Hounds are on the tour, along with many others who are not from Texas.

Friday critter blogging (by Suzie)

This is Pudge in a photo that his mistress, Mary Hestand, titled "dog tired." She got him because he matched her sofa. Just kidding, she likes boxers.

Dorothy Height RIP

Dorothy Height has died at the age of 98. Her funeral was today. She was a Civil Rights warrior and a fighter for women's rights:

Though not nearly as well known as her male contemporaries, Height was a steadfast presence in the civil rights movement. Often the only woman at strategy meetings with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders, she was a determined voice pressing the importance of issues affecting women and children, such as child care and education.

President Obama called Height "the godmother of the civil rights movement and a hero to so many Americans."

"Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality … and served as the only woman at the highest level of the civil rights movement — witnessing every march and milestone along the way," Obama said in a statement.

...

Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, told The Times in an interview, "Dorothy understood from the beginning the importance of both the civil rights movement and the women's rights movement and how they're intertwined. She's always tried to keep people together and united."

Drill, Baby, Drill!

I can't help hearing that wingnut chant in my ears every time I tune in to the news and learn that the oil leak catastrophe is even bigger than already anticipated.
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Added later: I hear that people in New Orleans can now smell the oil. The wetlands...But then some still worry about money-making activities and the loss of money-making activities.

Awesome

You really must read this article in the U.K. Guardian by Bidisha, because it faintly links to our recent knitting conversations:

Somehow, a decision is being made, probably subconsciously, about what is worthwhile and what is worthless. When I was judging the Orange prize last year we all noticed how major bookshops consistently stacked 10 men's books to every one woman's book on its "recommended read" tables – in whatever genre. In one bookshop, fellow judge Martha Lane Fox was told barefacedly by the sales guy that this was because men published 10 times as much fiction as women. But as everyone knows, chaps are heavyweight colossal conceptual geniuses of quite massive greatness and literary ladies are clever little fairies, handstitching our charmingly personal tiny tales out of skirting-board dust and featherweight neuroses.

But mostly I call Bidisha's piece awesome because that's what its tone is. She takes no prisoners, doesn't mumble, doesn't apologize for pointing out the invisible women.

We see far too little of that these days.

Let's Not Have Feelings!

While writing about the Harvard racist e-mails thing, one editor of Above The Law says this:

Here at ATL, we're actually very pleased by the fantastic traffic frank and robust discussion that this email controversy has sparked. But we — okay, I'm shifting to "I," since your three ATL editors have rather divergent views on this episode — actually wish that DNA's email wasn't so controversial.

In an academic setting, it should be possible to put any proposition on the table for debate. No position should lie beyond the pale. Some — in fact, many — such positions will be stupid or wrong. But we should be able to debate all issues rationally, vigorously and openly, without having to worry about offending anyone.

Set aside the question whether e-mails are part of an academic setting. The fact still remains that debating any issue, "vigorously and openly, without having to worry about offending anyone" is impossible for mere humans to do. Unless those mere humans happen to belong to a group which is obviously assumed to be capable of intellectual thought, leadership and the creation of civilizations.

It's that imbalance which makes me very scornful of urgings to debate everything vigorously and openly, without any repercussions that might come from offending a person. If this editor has routinely debated his/her own value and worthiness openly, vigorously, robustly and in all those other wonderful ways, my hat goes up to him or her. But I suspect that is not the case, simply because of that initial assertion that one should not be offended by having one's own humanity subjected to a robust debate.

Here's the important point: I am NOT arguing that we shouldn't debate anything and everything. I'm just pointing out that if I'm put on a panel as the only woman and the topic is "Can Women Think?" I will certainly be angry, I will feel pressured to put on my best and brightest arguments and I know that many in the audience want me to make a mess of it. Whether all this will affect my performance is an important question (stereotype threat comes to mind here), and one men on that hypothetical panel would not have to think about when deciding on their own arguments. So such debates are never really on an even ground.

To ask that one should have no feelings when under attack is idiotic.

The Girls Protection Act

Do you know what it is? Nope, it's not about abortion though it sounds like one of those "blue skies" initiatives which meant the exact reverse during the Bush era. This actually tries to protect girls from being transported outside the U.S. for the purpose of FGM:

A piece written for Salon by longtime contributor Lynn Harris has inspired Reps. Joseph Crowley and Mary Bono Mack to introduce legislation to combat the practice.

The procedure, which includes partial or complete removal of the external female genitalia, is already illegal stateside, but the Girls Protection Act "would make it a federal crime to transport a minor outside the United States for the purpose of female genital mutilation," explains a press release.

Call your congress critters and ask them to support this Act. Similar ones are already used in many other countries.

And no, such laws are no substitute for changing minds about girls and women in general.

How It Is Done. The Separation Of State And Church.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision breaking on the obvious conservative-liberal lines, has decided that a Christian cross on public land is A-OK:

To Kennedy, the cross "is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs" but a symbol "often used to honor and respect" heroism.

He added: "Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten."

My hat goes off for Justice Kennedy, because he is excellent in his slipperiness. Note that by stating that the cross is a general symbol for past sacrifices he preempts the argument that we can now put, say, a pentagram up on public land. Only the cross has those historical associations in the United States! Well, with the possible exceptions of Native American symbols.

So which Native American religious symbol should we put up on public land?

Diversity, Diversity, Tra LALALAla LAAAH

I have this inner song in my head, about diversity, and I tried to express it in the title. Doesn't work. You are supposed to sing higher with the capitalized LAs.

I don't like diversity that much. I bet that came as a surprise to you! The reason I don't like diversity is that it has superseded fairness in our debates about gender, ethnicity and race. And I like fairness a lot.

Let me explain: Diversity dispenses with any attempt to match representation of a group to its actual size and replaces it with an attempt to have one or two faces from each group. Thus, diversity might be satisfied by, say, a Supreme Court which has eight men and one woman, as long as each of the men comes from a different ethnic background. Or more realistically, a firm might feel satisfied with its diversity if it has a few people of color/women/both scattered here and there in the organization and a few of them in some visible position.

Diversity explicitly rejects any whiff of quotas. But by doing that, it also forgets about fairness. If half of Americans are women, not having roughly 50% of power in the hands of women requires a long and careful explanation. In a fair system the Supreme Court should have four or five women. But a system emphasizing diversity doesn't aim at that kind of fairness.

So I'm exaggerating here a bit. But it is required, because we are so immersed in the diversity thinking and in a focus on the benefits of diversity. And those benefits do exist, of course. It's important to have minorities represented and it's important to have people with different life experiences contribute to public decision-making. But an excessive focus on diversity can be used to avoid actually being fair.

All this is hidden when we begin with a system which is all male and pale. Any move towards greater diversity also serves the goal of greater fairness. But if I had to pick between the two concepts I would pick fairness with proper safeguards for very small minorities to be also represented. A compromise, if you will.

What caused these musings? Monica Pott's TAP post on the Washington Post columnists. It's not the post that I criticize. It makes excellent points about what is wrong at the Post, starting with its title (But What About The Menz) and including this:

Out of 27 total columnists and reporters, three are black men and three are white women. The rest are white men.

Compare those figures to population statistics and what do you find? White men are very well represented. Black men are also well represented. White women are poorly represented. Black women? Latinos and latinas?

My point is not to demand quotas for all the different ethnic and gender groups, not at all. But a focus on diversity as opposed to fairness hides the fact that the main problem at the Post is about the lack of women.

Diversity doesn't necessarily address that, because three (white) women might look like a good representation for the category "women" in general if you forget that women are the numerical majority. A fairness approach reveals the flaws in that way of looking at the problem.

Diversity also has an additional problem. The TAP post discusses George Will's recent column and in particular this from Will on the Arizona immigration law:

Non-Hispanic Arizonans of all sorts live congenially with all sorts of persons of Hispanic descent. These include some whose ancestors got to Arizona before statehood -- some even before it was a territory. They were in America before most Americans' ancestors arrived. Arizonans should not be judged disdainfully and from a distance by people whose closest contacts with Hispanics are with fine men and women who trim their lawns and put plates in front of them at restaurants, not with illegal immigrants passing through their back yards at 3 a.m.

Monica notes:

I shouldn't even have to make the case here for why diversity is important. Today's George Will column, which suggests that liberals only contact with Latinos involves their gardeners and waiters, would have only been more egregious if it included the line, "Hey, some of my best friends are Hispanic!" Yglesias points out that there are few voices at the Post to challenge Will on his views and assumptions. And now, that's more noticeable than ever:

Anyways, the Post has a snazzy new PostPolitics page that helps you swiftly summarize the fact that there don't appear to be any Hispanic opinion writers at the paper who might be able to have a word or two with Will about this.

That is indeed one of the reasons why diversity matters: The different life experiences and opinions it offers. But what if all those life experiences and opinions were so commonly appreciated that it was no longer important to bring them into the public debate? Then diversity would lose some of its teeth as an argument for a more representative set of columnists at the Post, say. But fairness would not.

And Even More on Knitting

The picture is made by me. It's reverse applique and applique and embroidery. Click on it to see the details.


What a wonderful discussion below in my first knitting post! Thank you, all. Just when I think I can't take the arguing anymore something like that happens and blogging is, once again, fun.

Reading the comments, while keeping in mind that 'knitting' here means any pink-smelling handicraft, I noticed one reason why I have ambiguous feelings about the idea of reclaiming them:

Feminists are not reclaiming something like a dead language here, but reclaiming something which is still very much a living language (in some cultures in the U.S. and in many cultures abroad), and often one forced on little girls, whether they wish to learn it or not, because doing certain crafts is part and parcel of the female gender role. That the reclaiming and this no-choice-world are taking place at the same time is what causes my worry.

The analogy might be to the use of the slur "cunt." Some feminists have tried to reclaim the word, to use it in a different and positive meaning. But given the widespread use of the term in the general society, that reclaiming really does not work. Instead, it may give "cunt" more power as an insult, because even feminists use it!

Using that analogy, reclaiming knitting and other crafts might be used to support patriarchal gender roles in general. I don't think that is actually going to happen, mostly because feminists are not powerful enough to have that effect in the groups which bring up girls all ready for an inferior life as women. But this is the theoretical aspect which sticks in my craw.

But note that all of this has to do with the question: "Is knitting feminist?" It has nothing to do with related questions of whether knitting is fun and creative and useful and psychologically helpful and so on. Of course knitting and other similar crafts are awesome! So is cabinet-making, book-binding, pottery and so on.

I guess the real question I'm asking, once again, is about how to define feminism. How wide is the definition? How specific? What is it that drives it? Do we start from concepts or from women or both?
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Added later: Lindsay's take on this topic is a good one.

Is Knitting Feminist?

(Sweater designed and made by me with lots of credit to Kaffe Fasset for the general style)



What do you think? If lots of women reclaim knitting, a traditionally female craft, will knitting be more esteemed? Will it improve women's lives or make men interested in taking up knitting?

Or is reclaiming knitting a bit like reclaiming the competition between 1950s housewives about who has the whitest laundry hanging on the line? After all, knitting is not something little girls reallyreally wanted to do, in most cases.

It was something girls were made to learn so that they could knit socks and mittens for their husbands and children. We have to go pretty far in the history to find women who could have supported themselves with just knitting. Or with crocheting or many other feminine crafts.

I am really writing about crafts here, and about very specific kinds of crafts, the pink-smelling ones. Oddly enough, many of the traditionally male crafts (carpentry and furniture-making) have a higher general reputation. Women wanting to take up those are usually admired. Men wanting to take up knitting... Are they admired?

How does reclaiming work? I'm not quite sure about the basic rules. Does it matter what the past generations thought or does it not matter? Does it matter if feminists now pick up only rudiments of knitting, for example?

And where is the line between art and craft? I have always felt angry about the dismissal of textile arts in general and women's textile arts in particular. All those anonymous women, stitching away, and what did they get for it? Not even their names written down anywhere. Yes, fabric preserves poorly, and, yes, it's difficult to exhibit. But it's still true that traditional women's arts have been allowed to molder down the memory hole.

But not all embroidery, knitting or crocheting is art. A small fraction qualifies, and it's not that small fraction the reclaiming is all about but something else altogether. What is that "else"?

I can knit, by the way, and I can also crochet, embroider and quilt. I like doing things with my hands. But I'm not an artist and my crafts are not feminist ones (except in the choice of topics).

Where the feminism enters is perhaps in my desire to cast more light on the art that women have created throughout the centuries: the embroideries of India, the carpets of the Middle east, the molas of South America, the altar clothes, the stuffed work, the blackwork, the Amish quilts, the lace and on and on.

Meanwhile, in Arizona

Everyone knows about Arizona's horrible new immigration laws. But not everyone knows that Arizona is the first to enact a Stupak provision in health care:

The new Arizona law is a radical mini Stupak. It prevents insurers from offering abortion services, except under the most extreme circumstances, even if only private money were used to pay for those services.

...

Many other states are considering similar bans, but only Arizona has the distinction of leading the nation in adopting the most conservative social policies. Earlier this month, Brewer also signed a measure requiring abortion providers "to report on the individual abortions they perform. Though the names of the women would remain confidential, the bill would also require statistics on how many times courts bypassed parental consent laws, among other things."

It's the Hyde amendment expanded into private money. Just as Stupak and the bishops wanted!

Meanwhile, in Nebraska and Oklahoma

In Nebraska, almost all abortions will be illegal after twenty weeks:

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman signed two abortion-related bills into law April 13. One requires screening of women seeking abortions. The other bans most abortions after 20 weeks because they cause pain to fetuses.

What provoked the Abortion Pain Prevention Act's introduction two months ago was the stated intention of Nebraska abortionist Leroy Carhart to step into the role of Dr. George Tiller, the late-term abortion specialist murdered last year, and serve the national market for late-term abortions from his clinic in Bellevue, Neb.

The Nebraska Legislature's speaker, Mike Flood, got the ball rolling when he learned of Carhart's plans, says Julie Schmit-Albin, executive director of Nebraska Right to Life. Flood approached Nebraska Right to Life looking for draft legislation.

The Nebraska Catholic Conference provided Flood support for the second bill, which requires physicians to screen women seeking an abortion to help avoid any post-abortion complications — mental or physical. Both bills passed by a 44-5 margin.

Note that the above quote is from a Catholic source.

What is the new evidence concerning fetal pain? I'm not sure if there is any:

What new scientific evidence did Nebraska's legislature look to? In accordance with regular legislative practice, all testimony on the bill was heard by a small fraction of the 44 lawmakers who ultimately voted for it. Two witnesses testified on the topic of fetal pain. One was an expert in pain management and anesthesiology who admitted he had no personal experience treating or studying fetuses. The second was a pain expert who had administered fetal anesthesia in a neonatal intensive care unit, but only starting at 23 weeks. He also asserted that "life begins at conception" according to his "religious viewpoint" and his "maker." (This same doctor, venturing far beyond his apparent medical expertise, spontaneously volunteered that electroshock therapy to induce a grand mal seizure should be the preferred treatment over abortion for a suicidal woman 20 or more weeks pregnant.) It can hardly be said that Nebraska lawmakers learned of some new and authoritative evidence on fetal pain.

Reading about forced birth laws does make me see how very apt that term I prefer: "forced birth" is. Note that a woman's mental health will be screened for abortion but not for going on with the pregnancy. She might be out of her mind but nobody cares about that as long as there is no abortion.

And in Oklahoma the forced birthers have also been active:

The Oklahoma House voted overwhelmingly Monday to override vetoes of two restrictive abortion measures Gov. Brad Henry has called unconstitutional intrusions into citizens' private lives and decisions.

The Senate was expected to follow suit Tuesday, after which the bills would become law.

One of the measures requires women to undergo an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus before getting an abortion. The other prohibits pregnant women from seeking damages if physicians withhold information or provide inaccurate information about their pregnancy.

Supporters said the second measure was aimed at preventing women from discriminating against fetuses with disabilities. The votes were 81-14 and 84-12.

You can now lie to pregnant women in Oklahoma! They are unimportant in the scale of things. In fact, they are mere vessels and vessels don't have to be told the truth.

I understand that all these examples are part of the current forced-birth approach: Make abortion impossible to obtain everywhere even if it is still theoretically legal. But they also tell us how women are viewed in Nebraska and Oklahoma and that is with contempt.

Män som hatar kvinnor

It translates into "men who hate women" and appears to be the original title of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It is also the name of the film based on that book.

I have just read the first two books in the series but not the third one. Neither have I seen the film, but I plan to write about the series later. From a Nordic angle, if you like.

Did you see the film? Did you read the books?*
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*Forgot to ask what your thoughts are if the answer is yes.

Have You Got A Plan B?

A long time ago when I was but a tiny goddess one kid in the neighborhood got a scooter. Everyone gathered around, wanting to test it. Someone (my brother? my cousin? can't remember) got on it, started it and off he went, yelling all the time: "How do you turn this thing off?"

I always remember that when I read about grown-ups acting in the exact same way. George Bush goes to Iraq with no plan on how to get out of there! How do you turn this thing off, indeed.

Anyway, I believe that some humans, if not all, have this design flaw. The urge to jump into something brand new with great optimism and no backup plans. That we let this happen on the level of societies is a disgrace. Honest.

Political opposition and public debates and other similar arrangements should take care of that problem but they do not. The conservative opposition in the U.S. right now is not about asking careful questions about some backup plan but about charging ahead, fast and without any backup plans, into a world of gated communities and great general poverty. Or the mythical middle ages of theocracy.

This was the impetus for writing on the general topic today, and yes, I know that Plan B has a slightly different meaning for feminists.

The Boobquake

I honestly tried not to write about it. The story begins in Iran:

A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.

Iran is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric's unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Women in the Islamic Republic are required by law to cover from head to toe, but many, especially the young, ignore some of the more strict codes and wear tight coats and scarves pulled back that show much of the hair. "What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon last week. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes."

Women are to blame for earthquakes. But then feminists were to blame for the 911 atrocities, too, according to American fundies.

The next stage of the story happened today in Washington, D.C.:

Today, women gathered in Washington's Dupont Circle for a protest. There weren't typo-ridden signs or rallying cries to pass legislation. Instead, there were just a lot of low-cut shirts.

Jen McCreight came up with the idea for the protest and proposed a tongue-in-cheek experiment to test this claim by Iranian Cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi: "Women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes."

So McCreight encouraged women to join her at "Boobquake" and "embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. ... With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake." As of today, Boobquake had over 53,000 fans on Facebook.

Amanda at Pandagon wrote about the boobquake before, pointing out several problems with it if it was supposed to give support to women in Iran. But it doesn't sound as if that was its intention. Instead, it's a way to make fun of anti-woman clerics and to point out that earthquakes are not caused by titties and such.

With earthquakes being what they are, we just might have one tomorrow somewhere on the earth and then the joke is ruined, of course.

The deeper layers in all this are about the dangerous women's bodies and who owns the right to look at them or to stop others from looking at them. The Iranian cleric wants to have that control! Lots of hetero guys in the west want to have their pron! Women want to have a say in it all, too! But until we really, really understand that this is all about the ownership of the Body (and who has the right to look at it or to cover it) we are not going to get anywhere much.

That comment is separate from all the cultural commentary I could write in this context. It is indeed very true that the boobquake probably feeds the anti-Western thinking in Iran because it suggests that it's just one big chaos over here and it is that very chaos which the Iranian cleric fears late at night, tossing and turning in his bed.

The one who rides the tiger cannot get off.

Courting

I saw wild turkeys courting the other night. The boy turkey made sounds which sounded like a dog with laryngitis and that's what made me go and look out the window.

They were slowly ambling down the street (on the sidewalk!). The girl turkey was walking away, but not very fast. In fact, she stopped once in a while (looking at the trees and such) when it looked like he wouldn't be able to keep up.

The reason for his slowness was a wardrobe malfunctioning. He tried to show his plumage but only one side rose. Pretty iridescent colors, though.

Sorry, I have no idea of the ending as they disappeared behind a neighbor's house.

Author's Query [Anthony McCarthy]

Are the music posts something you like? Do you try the pieces linked to?

I will continue with posts on Carla Bley, I'd written a review of her Christmas album, unfortunately my brother didn't turn me on till the middle of January. I might post that as part of it.

And Even More On Sizing

Ms Fahrenheit has spent some time studying the average men's and women's sizes in the United States, and how they compare to what is shown on television and in magazines. It's tricky to get good information on the average sizes but you might be astonished by some of her findings.

Carla Bley A Very Very Short Introduction To One of the Most Significant Living Composers [Anthony McCarthy]

She is one of the most important living composers, a jazz composer, performer, arranger, distributor, etc. Carla Bley has been working many of the finest musicians and singers of the past fifty years and is one of the all round good musical citizens of the world.

There are so many ways into her music, the Very Big Band, smaller big bands, various smaller groups, her mind-blowing opera, Escalator Over The Hill, other land marks in recent music such as Genuine Tong Funeral. And then there are the duets, especially those which she has been playing with her long-term companion, the bass player Steve Swallow. They are some of the most moving and intimate pieces imaginable. That’s where I’ll start


Houses and People

Lawns

Reactionary Tango

Ups and Downs, with Andy Sheppard on Saxophone

A Very Very Simple Melody

Carla Bley has produced some of the funniest songs and pieces in recent times as well as pieces that are profoundly absorbing, passionate and deep. She has also written some of the best work in what would usually be considered the avant garde, about which I’ll post later.

I am also deeply grateful to her and her associates for The New Music Distribution Service, the source for much ear extending, mind altering music.

You might want to check out her Watt World Headquarters, a fun website, with many features including a goldmine of lead sheets of many of her pieces.

Remember

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma

The "meanwhile" series is something I do when I read really horrible things concerning women. May that stand as a general warning.

Here's the Oklahoma news. They are not ultimately horrible because the governor vetoed the bill (for the time being). But check out what was proposed:

Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry vetoed two abortion bills that he said are an unconstitutional attempt by the Legislature to insert government into the private lives and decisions of citizens.

One measure would have required women to undergo an intrusive ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus before getting abortions. Henry said Friday that legislation is flawed because it does not allow rape and incest victims to be exempted.

Lawmakers who supported the vetoed measures promised an override vote in the House and Senate as early as next week. A national abortion rights group has said the ultrasound bill would have been among the strictest anti-abortion measures in the United States if it had been signed into law.

Henry said "it would be unconscionable to subject rape and incest victims to such treatment" because it would victimize a victim a second time.

"State policymakers should never mandate that a citizen be forced to undergo any medical procedure against his or her will, especially when such a procedure could cause physical or mental trauma. To do so amounts to an unconstitutional invasion of privacy," he said.

Under the ultrasound legislation, doctors would have been required to use a vaginal probe in cases where it would provide a clearer picture of the fetus than a regular ultrasound. Doctors have said this is usually the case early in pregnancies, when most abortions are done.

Let's recap: First, a rapist rapes you and impregnates you. Then you cannot have an abortion without a vaginal probe being inserted to take ultrasound pictures which you then must look at. Yeah, it does sound like a second rape, because you couldn't have opted out of the procedure.

And what does the head of the forced-birth people in Oklahoma say?

Tony Lauinger, state chairman of the anti-abortion group Oklahomans for Life and vice president of the National Right to Life Committee, said each of the measures are designed to protect the unborn as well as pregnant women.

"It is just as important for a woman who is pregnant as a result of rape or incest as it is for any other woman to have the benefit of full and complete information prior to taking the irrevocable step of having her baby [sic] aborted," Lauinger said.

Note that the proposed law didn't just offer a rape victim this option. It required her to be subjected to it. Lauinger is an evil asshole.

Crush Porn Has More Rights Than Mere Humans [Anthony McCarthy]

The 8-1 decision in the Supreme Court this week, striking down the prohibition against selling videos that show illegal dog fights and women in high heels crushing small rodents - one suspects both for the sexual gratification of an audience comprised of degenerate men - was a useful illustration of the irrationality of free speech absolutism.

The judges on the Court, and a “justice” is, least anyone forget, actually a judge, seem to have a pathological fear of doing their job in this area. Which is to JUDGE. Throw in the words “speech” and “expression” and these folks who have no problem with judging cases ranging from petty theft up to capital murder, hold themselves and their colleagues as not to be trusted to JUDGE. The same folks who have no problem with throwing out the votes of tens of thousands of voters on a flimsy technicality, the ones who have held that it is legal for a local government to take property and hand it to developers, who have declared not only that innocence isn’t enough to override filing deadlines in the matter of merely executing someone, can’t be trusted with distinguishing speech important to our freedom from an industry that painfully kills hamsters with high heals so some pathetic losers can masturbate to climax.

Someone who objected to one of my recent posts on the out of wack status of “speech” displayed the same refusal to think. They held that if someone recognizes the difference between advocating a living wage and the Phelps abuse of the survivors of service members in their sickest of publicity stunts, they are some mixture of a Nazi and Stalinist.

Of course, this is absurd. We make judgments every single day about speech, judges do it continually and often on behalf of the exact same people who promote the speech libertarian wackiness that we live under. Judges enforce copyright laws, often having to decide if the one being accused of copying is a copycat or not. They enforce libel and slander laws, deciding if the words used fulfilled the legal definitions included in those laws. Since the 1970s the Supreme Court put judges and juries in the mind reading business, determining if the “intent” of the accused defamer was “malicious”. All of these and other laws that are adjudicated in the courts every week constitute a restriction by the laws enacted by congress and state legislatures regulating speech.

I'll bet you that most of even the most ardent of "free speech champions" would see it differently if someone was freely copying their speech for profit, and without citation.

The absurdity, no, insanity, that a large majority of the Supreme Court refuses to acknowledge that dog-fight and crush porn are “expression” which could be banned with absolutely no harm to The Peoples’ ability to govern ourselves and to enjoy the benefits of liberty, is a symptom of how insulated that least democratic branch of our government is from reality*. The Court’s complete willingness to steal elections for the candidates of their choice, their willingness to allow corporations to deceive The People for the purpose of destroying our ability to have an informed vote** and a myriad of other actions that end up in elections being stolen and people being killed, makes their scrupulous refusal to judge words and images grants corporations, words and videos more rights than mere humans. And among mere humans, it grants those with more money more power and more rights than those of us who don’t want to lord it over our fellow human beings and helpless, tiny, animals.

In the process, elevating that one right over all others endangers all other rights. The legal fad of free speech absolutism, pretending that judges aren’t in the business of judging, that any discretion in this matter given to juries and judges will result in totalitarian suppression of speech is completely absurd and disproved by our history before smut and most classes of media lies were given a free hand.

The far right, has obviously decided to de-emphasize the restriction of the very lucrative pornography industry, perhaps, at least in part, as a favor to their most powerful patron, the emperor of soft-porn, Rupert Murdoch. But it could be for it’s more obvious use to the far right. In giving up that traditional stand for sexual propriety, they have bought themselves a tool with which they can free the rest of the corporate elite to lie themselves into absolute control, as the line of decisions from Buckley v. Veleo to the recent “Citizens” decision show beyond a reasonable doubt. It is merely self-government which they are in the process of destroying with the slogan of “free speech”, with the acquiescence of the moderate right, what is called the “liberal” wing of the court.

Liberals who choose to ignore all of this are fools. It’s been going on long enough right before our eyes so the intention of the right on the Court is as clear as could be. It turns out, you can have free speech absolutism or you can have self-government, you can’t have both That is what we face. A people who don’t know the truth can’t govern themselves. Judges who give up their chosen responsibility to exercise judgement in a rote and automatic response are leading the way, in association with other judges who have a clear malicious intent to institute one-corporate-party government under the slogan of “free speech”. It’s the results of a principle that govern its validity, despotism will be the result of free speech absolutism.

* Rachel Maddow’s finger puppet demonstration of Supreme Court hearings is one of the most brilliant uses of free speech and free expression I’ve seen in a long time. The one I heard the other night about texting and e-mail ranks with George Bush I marveling over a supermarket scanner as revelations of our detached elites.

** If there is a clear cut of a “public interest” it is that for which the system of government set up in the Constitution to be possible. Self-government is the right that is most endangered by the recent string of “free speech” rulings. Without that right, all of the others are weakened, endangered and, when desired by the actual rulers, destroyed.

I will have more to say about the guarantee of a right to a fair trial and how it is undermined by the media in the future.

Watching Sinead With My Catholic Mother [Anthony McCarthy]

It was quite uncomfortable to be sitting up with my mother while she watched Rachel Maddow last night. Since her operation last December we’ve been taking turns staying with her until she goes to bed at 10:00. She can’t wait until it’s warm enough to not have a fire at night and she can “have some solitude again”.

Anyway, when Rachel said that her interview was going to be with Sinead O’Connor and they were going to talk about the sex abuse scandal I thought, “Oh, oh. She’s not going to like this.” As it turned out my mother knew who Sinead O’Connor was, she remembered the famous incident where she ripped up the picture of JPII, for which Sinead was, if not black listed, somewhat disappeared from American media. Subsequent events vindicate what Sinead said then, you don't generally expect popular singers on SNL as voices of prophesy.

I kept looking at my mother as she watched the interview, as the now all too familiar crimes and sins of Catholic priests, bishops, cardinals and, now, popes were listed. She’d heard all of those already and certainly wasn’t happy about them, but she wasn’t in denial that they’d happened*.

As it went on and O’Connor said that the problem wasn’t Catholics, it was the clique that had stolen The Church from them. Her declaration that she was a Catholic “in love with the Holy Spirit” and that she thought it was high time that Catholics took ownership of their church was nothing my mother hadn’t said in some form, though less passionately. O’Connor’s recognition of the many women and men who used their religion to serve humanity was totally in accord with my mother’s view of religion.

After the segment was over, I asked her if it had upset her too much. My mother looked at me with surprise and said, “I agree with her.”

I don’t think it’s just because Sinead is Irish.

* My mother was a bit annoyed by the “Infallible” subtitle. Being an Irish Catholic my mother can’t abide the common misunderstanding of that doctrine, which she has little enthusiasm for. It’s a bit odd but it’s really not that incomprehensible, in theory. Most of what the Pope says isn’t held to be “infallible”. I believe it has been invoked twice in the relatively short time it’s been official teaching.

Though it certainly has more than a bit of historical proof of its falsity, which even an Irish Catholic, if they are liberal enough, will acknowledge. As James Carroll, one of my mother’s favorite Catholic columnists (Richard McBrien is another) recently noted the doctrine is the illogical result of Cardinals giving it to Pius IX as a consolation prize when the former Papal States were removed from him. To have “infallibility” dependent on a vote by the First Vatican Council is quite a logical disconnect. I believe the sometimes mentioned quote by John XXIII, that he knew he wasn’t infallible, is authentic. I hope it is. If it is, that would present a bit of a problem to the biggest fans of that most famous of recent innovations, flying in the face of many centuries of tradition.

'Little Sadie'/'Cocaine Blues'/'Bad Lee Brown' (by Suzie)

The post below has a video of Adrienne Young, when she sang with the Big White Undies. Above is her bluegrass "Sadie's Song," sung from the perspective of the murdered woman in ballad "Little Sadie." Many men have sung this song, changing lyrics here and there. Johnny Cash sang of "Cocaine Blues," with the killer ending up in Folsom Prison. Woody Guthrie called it "Bad Lee Brown," and tacked on a traditional ending: "I'll be here fer the rest of my life,/ All I done was kill my wife." Some think it inspired Jimi Hendrix's "Hey, Joe," in which he shoots "his woman" down for being unfaithful, and the listener is sympathetic.

Music critic Lyle Lofgren recognizes the "outlaw as folk hero," but says "Little Sadie" depicts a psychopath, not someone whom listeners would like. But a lot of listeners like outlaws and gangsters who have no redeemable qualities. Perhaps it ties into masculinity: I'm a bad man -- don't mess with me.

Some men may identify with a man who gets so angry that he shoots his wife or girlfriend. I enjoy songs in which women strike back at violent men. I shouldn't have to point this out, but the difference is that men around the world are much more likely to kill women than vice versa. In the songs about a man killing a woman, the woman usually has cheated on the man, or has rejected or dishonored him in some way. I can't think of any song in which a man kills a woman because she has abused him physically.

I'm ending with another singer who brings the victim into focus, this time using the song's exact words. The video for Tori Amos' cover of an Eminem song shows a woman full of fear and worry, before the killer comes through the door.

My freak flag (by Suzie)

Mama's got a brand-new bag.

As a new ostomate, I have learned ways to protect and hide my urostomy bag, or pee pouch, as one friend dubbed it. It can feel like a little hot-water bottle, warming my crotch. At first, however, it felt more like male genitalia, flopping against my body when I walked, and when I sat, the tap might pop up like a little penis. Fascinated, I kept touching it.

“Welcome to our world!” said male friends.

When I release the urine, even if I squeeze out the last drops, there often are some more last drops. Why don’t men use toilet paper when they pee?

“Appliance” is the technical term for the plastic disk and bag glued to the abdomen. My nurse suggested sticking Press’n Seal over it if I worried about getting it wet in the shower. My skin didn’t react well, and so, the plastic wrap moved to a kitchen drawer, next to the Saran Wrap, which I had also bought for a non-food use.

My nurse suggested tying a terry-cloth baby bib under it to absorb the sweat from skin next to plastic. She showed me a calico bag that I could sew to slip over the plastic bag, like a slipcover for my appliance, or a toaster cover. Female ostomates also can buy silky pouch covers for “times of intimacy.”

A veteran ostomate told me to get big white undies and pull them up over the appliance to keep it from swinging like a big … bag. The underwear also makes the bag less noticeable under clothing. Even better, for people who can afford them, are underwear from Ostomysecrets, which have a marsupial-like pouch sewn into big undies.

This is all well and good, but I’m hardly keeping my urostomy a secret. I whip out the bag if anyone shows the least bit of curiosity. I want clothes redesigned to let the pouch hang on the outside. Gorgeous fabrics could cover it, like yet another accessory. Fashionistas would say, "OMG, did you see her Gucci bag?!" Knockoffs would be sold on street corners next to large hospitals.

Let my freak flag fly!
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Notes on the linked music: The first line links to Joss Stone's update of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" by James Brown. The last links to Laura Love’s “Freak Flag,” which I love. I'm pointing this out in case you had passed up my linky goodness.

Back To The Kitchen

An apparent newsletter of the Republican Party in Ohio tells this to its readers:

" Let's take Betty Sutton out of the House and put her back in the kitchen."

You can contribute to Sutton's candidacy here.

No Breast Cancer Coverage

You may have seen this already:

One after another, shortly after a diagnosis of breast cancer, each of the women learned that her health insurance had been canceled. First there was Yenny Hsu, who lived and worked in Los Angeles. Later, Robin Beaton, a registered nurse from Texas. And then, most recently, there was Patricia Relling, a successful art gallery owner and interior designer from Louisville, Kentucky.

None of the women knew about the others. But besides their similar narratives, they had something else in common: Their health insurance carriers were subsidiaries of WellPoint, which has 33.7 million policyholders -- more than any other health insurance company in the United States.

The women all paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, none had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake.

They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.

Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women's specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.

The whole article is worth reading. It also discusses whether this practice can be ended in the health care reform bill. But the gist of the piece is in the above quote. Note, in particular, the bit I have bolded.

This computer algorithm was used only to weed expensive customers out. It was NOT used to detect fraud in the application forms of those who were not claiming much. Indeed, low claimers could be as fraudulent as they wished because they were bringing money in! That is a biased practice. The company should screen for fraud among all its customers if it wishes to screen for fraud.

Once people learn of practices like this one they may choose not to be covered by this insurer. After all, you may not be covered when you really need to be! As one of the women discussed in the article points out:

Relling adds: "I laud people who give money to charity -- but not at the expense of cancer patients and people who have paid health insurance premiums for 20 years and never missed a payment -- and then get canceled when they most need their coverage. What about the thousands of people who have their policies canceled by their company for no good reason? When are they going to make that right?"

Indeed.
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Thanks to res ipsa for the link.

Thursday Fluff Post

Picture of cat trying to get comfortable by hmj.


As is the custom, this post is all about me.

I'm growing the finger nail on my right pinkie, to see how long I can get it. Right now it's about 0.8cm (measured from behind the nail where the finger tip ends), and beginning to curve!

In other news, I sometimes feel a bit like a participant in a three-front war. On one side are the misogynists, on the other side are the Real Feminists, and people like me are in the middle, getting shot at by both sides. There should be a proper arena for these kinds of battles.* A better solution would be to wave a white flag and leave.

You could also read my post on sex and older people if you didn't catch it earlier. Or the one about single mothers and unemployment.

Or think about "hand some leg ends."
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*This topic would require a proper post but I don't feel up to it right now. Too much anger.

The Sex Partners of Our Ancestors!

An interesting speculation about our roots:

Human evolution is looking more tangled than ever. A new genetic study of nearly two thousand people from around the world suggests that some of our ancestors bred with other species of humans, such as Neanderthals, at least twice.

"The researchers suggest the interbreeding happened about 60,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean and, more recently, about 45,000 years ago in eastern Asia," Nature News reports from the annual meeting of the American Society of Physical Anthropologists in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

That conclusion is based on a study of over 600 genetic markers, called microsatellites, sequenced in nearly 100 different populations.

This is the bit I found very funny, though:

True, Neanderthals are the likeliest contenders for our ancestors' sexual partners, but they aren't the only ones.

What do you usually call the sexual partner of your grandmother? Your grandfather, right? Sure, she could have had other sexual partners, but the article talks about the ones which left genetic markers.

That means our ancestors, too, you know, not just the sexual partners of our ancestors.

The reason for the funny framing there is that the Neanderthals have had very bad press and nobody really wants to have them among the ancestors. Though I quite like the idea.

News From The Other Dimension

The birther one:

The so-called "birther bill" won initial approval from the House of Representatives on Monday, advancing legislation that would require presidential candidates to produce a birth certificate before they can make the ballot in Arizona.

The legislation originated from a fringe group that believes President Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and therefore ineligible to be president.

Rep. Judy Burges amended Senate Bill 1024 to include a requirement that Arizona's Secretary of State inspect a presidential candidate's birth certificate before that candidate could qualify for the ballot.

Similar laws have been proposed in Oklahoma, Florida and Missouri. None have been signed into law.

It's an interesting place, that Other Dimension. Could be even fun to watch if one was safely on another planet. With popcorn and beer (Well, not if you are a hypothetical grandmother. Celery sticks for you.)

I have gotten on a mailing list from that fringe dimension. An example:

With President Obama and leaders in Washington pushing the country toward socialism, experts on the April 25 Coral Ridge Hour television broadcast discuss the roots of the ideology and the destructive and deadly path it has cut through history. For listings and to preview, visit www.coralridge.org.

...

“The collapse of the Berlin Wall should have been the end of socialism,” says Dr. Jerry Newcombe, host and senior producer of The Coral Ridge Hour. “But unbelievably, liberals in our own government, however well intentioned they may be, have enacted a federal takeover of health care and have big plans for an all-controlling, all-consuming federal government. This deadly course can and must be reversed.

It sounds like Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

Nice

President Obama when asked about the replacement for Justice Stevens:

THE PRESIDENT: You know, I am somebody who believes that women should have the ability to make often very difficult decisions about their own bodies and issues of reproduction. Obviously this has been a hugely contentious issue in our country for a very long time. I will say the same thing that every President has said since this issue came up, which is I don't have litmus tests around any of these issues.

But I will say that I want somebody who is going to be interpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights, and that includes women's rights. And that's going to be something that's very important to me, because I think part of what our core Constitution -- constitutional values promote is the notion that individuals are protected in their privacy and their bodily integrity, and women are not exempt from that.

I also think we could do with a third woman justice. It would still leave the boyz the majority and all.

Meanwhile, in Mexico. Trigger Warning!

A ten-year old rape victim will have to give birth:

A pregnant 10-year-old, allegedly raped by her stepfather, has become the latest lightning rod in the country's heated abortion debate.

The girl's stepfather has been arrested. But advocates on both sides of the issue say their battle is just beginning.

"This girl is much more than an isolated case," said Adriana Ortiz-Ortega, a researcher at Mexico's National Autonomous University who has written two books on abortion in Mexico, "and there is much more influence now from conservative groups that are trying to prevent the legalization of abortion."

Abortion is legal in Mexico's capital city, but prohibited or significantly restricted in most of the country's states. The girl's home state of Quintana Roo, on the Yucatan peninsula, allows abortion in cases of rape during the first 90 days of the pregnancy. But the 10-year-old girl is at 17½ weeks, nearly a month past that limit.

Advocacy groups are calling for federal officials and the United Nations to investigate Quintana Roo's handling of the matter, claiming officials did not inform her of her abortion rights.

The Catholic church is a vocal opponent of abortion in Mexico...
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Via Shakesville.

You Are To Blame For Your Grandkids' Cancer!

Don't believe me? Check out this headline:

Grandmother's diet influences grandchildren's breast cancer risk

I read the title and knew right away it couldn't be based on humans. We don't have food surveys for what our grandmothers ate when pregnant.

And indeed, the study was about rats. But that didn't cause any hesitation for this popularization to conclude:

Researchers say they're not sure why the increased risk is based on at least two generations but they know how to prevent it. Eat good fats and fresh, whole foods while pregnant.

I hope all rats listen to that good advice.

More seriously, not all rodent studies carry over to humans. Many do not. We are able to cure all sorts of stuff in mice that we still cannot cure in humans. But if we are interested in the well-being of rats, how about also studying grandfather rats? Give them lots of fat before they get grandmother rats pregnant and follow up.
Who knows, maybe the grand-rats get even more cancers then?

Gah.
----
Addendum: I clicked on the link this popularization gave for the study. It didn't take me to the study but to something called Medical News Today.

The site smells off to me. Too many stories about 100% cure rates and clearly non-neutral treatments of topics such as abortion and breast cancer. The summary of this study has impossible-to-believe numbers:

The researchers also found that the risk appears to not only extend from mother to daughter and granddaughter, but also from mother to son to granddaughter. For example, the daughters of male and female rats born from mother rats that ate a lot of fat had an 80 percent chance of developing breast cancer, but the risk was about 69 percent if the granddaughter's mother or father was born from a rat that ate normally and the other parent came from a high-fat-consuming parent. By contrast, granddaughters of grandmother rats who ate a normal chow had a 50 percent chance of developing breast cancer.

Half of all female rats develop breast cancer? Without even having that evil fat-gorging granny? I don't think that can be true.

In any case, wasn't the risk supposed to be an 80% increase? For instance, if the initial rate of breast cancer in female rats was, say, 10%, and if the fat-gorging-granny effect was an 80% increase, then the granddaughters of those evil creatures would have a rate of 18%.

To Date Or To Hook Up?

You may have seen references to a new study about which heterosexual college students prefer and how gender enters into that. The conclusions of the study include:

Even though men initiated significantly more first dates than women, there was no gender difference in the number of first dates or number of hook-ups. For both men and women, the number of hook ups was nearly double the number of first dates.

Overall, both genders showed a preference for traditional dating over hooking up. However, of those students who strongly preferred traditional dating, there were significantly more women than men (41 percent versus 20 percent). Of those who showed a strong preference for hooking up, there were far fewer women than men (2 percent versus 17 percent). However, context mattered: when considering the possibility of a long-term relationship, both women and men preferred dating over hooking up; however, when the possibility of a relationship was not mentioned, men preferred hooking up and women preferred dating.

On the whole, men and women agreed on the benefits and risks of dating and hooking up.

However, there were some notable differences:

* Women more than men seem to want a relationship. They fear, both in dating and hooking up, that they will become emotionally attached to a partner who is not interested in them.
* Men more than women seem to value independence. They fear that even in hooking up relationships, which are supposed to be free of commitments, a woman might seek to establish a relationship.

That's not a bad summary of the findings, actually. Yup. I went and read the study! Before you run with its results, have a look at the following list of problems:

1. The study is based on a convenience sample. Convenience samples are just that: convenient. But they are not based on random sampling.

Why would this matter? Because:

Convenience sampling (sometimes known as grab or opportunity sampling) is a type of nonprobability sampling which involves the sample being drawn from that part of the population which is close to hand. That is, a sample population selected because it is readily available and convenient. The researcher using such a sample cannot scientifically make generalizations about the total population from this sample because it would not be representative enough.

It's unclear how the sample was selected, except that it consists of students who got course credit for their participation from the psychology department. This is probably also the reason why the study has twice as many female as male participants (women take more psychology courses). If you keep in mind that men and women of the chosen age group are roughly the same in numbers in the general population the unequal sample sizes come across as odd.

2. The sample consists of mostly first-year undergraduate students. The average age of the study subjects was 18.72 years. We are talking about very young men and women here. Teenagers, in fact. Teenagers may not have the same dating or hooking-up patterns as older college students.

3. The study defines dating as a traditional male-initiated process: The man invites the woman, he picks her up, he treats her, he takes her back home. He can ask for sex and she can refuse it. Hooking-up, on the other hand, is defined as a fairly egalitarian process about necking or kissing or intercourse or whatever. Either party can initiate it.

Note that there is no third alternative, such as some kind of egalitarian dating with going Dutch. It's important to keep that in mind in evaluating the study findings. We have no idea how the study participants would have ranked egalitarian dating.

4. The checklists of items the study used (for the subjects to agree or disagree about) were not identical for men and women. An example about the possible benefits of traditional dating:

For the benefits of traditional dating, we listed 36 possible benefits for men and 34 possible benefits for women. Twenty-seven of these benefits were identical for both genders (e.g., "Traditional dating is romantic"), with the remaining possible benefits gender specific (e.g., for men, "You can ask anyone you are interested in on a date"; for women, "You have the power to reject a date").

Similar gender differences were applied to the checklist covering the possible risks of traditional dating. The checklists for the benefits of hooking-up were identical for both sexes but the checklists for the risks of hooking-up were not:

Two items were gender specific. ("Risk getting pregnant" vs. "Risk of getting partner pregnant" and "Can get a bad reputation for being 'easy' or a whore" vs. "Can get a bad reputation of using women").

Why would such differences matter if they are not about the questions discussed in the above summary? Because the overall experience might affect the answers one gives. For instance, men get reminded about their responsibility in the concept of traditional dating this study used, and that reminder is different from the reminders women get.

That's why my point about the two choices is an important one. The study did not ask how students would have felt about egalitarian dating.

Title IX

The Obama administration is cleaning some brush left by the Bush administration. As you may remember, Bush The Son really launched a wholesale attack against Title IX, the law which bans gender discrimination in education. This is what Title IX sounds like:

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance..."

That it became something only about college sports in the American collective mind is frightening and instructive.

Anyway, Vice-President Biden is going to make an announcement about how colleges can prove that they are in compliance with Title IX when it comes to college sports. The option Bush added to the older ways of proving compliance will be adjusted:

In 2005, the administration of former President George W. Bush changed the third requirement, allowing the university to prove it was meeting the athletic interests of women by carrying out surveys of students' interest in sports. The NCAA and women's sports advocates said a low response to such surveys could be interpreted as indicating a lack of interest in sports when actually it could indicate a lack of availability of sports activities.

Under the new policy, universities will no longer be able to claim that a low response to surveys means a low interest in sports, the official said. The new rules still will allow the use of surveys, but universities will have to go further to prove they are complying.

A book could be written (even by me) on the reasons why Title IX became all about sports, but a very tight summary of that book would state that the reasons would include a) the belief that men and women are inherently different and that men need sports, women not and b) the belief that men are discriminated against when male sports are cut to benefit women (who don't even want sports).

Of course nobody asks why something that is supposed to be only for men is offered by coed colleges and paid for by the tuition of everyone. Neither does anyone ask what women are offered if men get sports as an extra, or why offering men more athletic scholarships wouldn't discriminate against women in colleges.

I'm still much more concerned about Title IX in general, not its athletic applications. I always feared that the Bush administration would start something which could be used to deny girls places in shop or boys places in home economics.

A Problem With Global Markets

From the U.K. Daily Mail:

This photo and others like it were smuggled out of the KYE Systems factory at Dongguan, China, as part of a three-year investigation by the National Labour Committee, a human rights organisation which campaigns for workers across the globe.

The mostly female workers, aged 18 to 25, work from 7.45am to 10.55pm, sometimes with 1,000 workers crammed into one 105ft by 105ft room.

They are not allowed to talk or listen to music, are forced to eat substandard meals from the factory cafeterias, have no bathroom breaks during their shifts and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.

The workers also sleep on site, in factory dormitories, with 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28in-wide plywood boards. They 'shower' with a sponge and a bucket.

And many of the workers, because they are young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC claimed.

The organisation said that one worker was even fined for losing his finger while operating a hole punch press.

And what is it that they are so busily manufacturing? Goods outsourced by Microsoft and other global companies.

We Need More Right-Wing Television

If you believe that you will be glad to hear that more will soon be in the offing. Something called RightNetwork. It sounds like Tea Party Central. What other American group amounting to at most 18% gets as much attention from the media? I cannot think of any at all.

This casts serious doubt on the idea, the old-and-smudged-and-ripped idea that the media is left-wing. Actually, Americans wouldn't recognize a left wing if it flapped right in their faces, given all the comments about Obama being a socialist and such.

A real left wing is something quite different from pointing out that perhaps we should have universal health coverage such as is available in many other capitalist countries. Even that remark is cause enough to suggest that your collar looks Maoist and that you probably pray to the Devil at night. You commie goddess!

What frightens me about yet another wingnut television option is this: How are we going to discuss shared matters in this country if people choose to hear only their own interpretations of events? If people even decide on their own sets of facts? Aren't we going to drift further and further apart until staying one nation becomes impossible?

Comcast is a partner in this new endeavor. I'm quite certain that Comcast will soon launch a left-wing television choice, too! Any day now! After all, Comcast is a business, not a political operation? Or is it?

So Much Stuff, So Little Time

Some weeks are like that. I have to cram lots of material into one post to cover it. Luckily, the topic for this one is religion so there's an underlying framework. Of sorts.

First, The National Prayer Day:

A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled Thursday that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional.

National Day of Prayer "goes beyond mere 'acknowledgment' of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function in this context," U.S. District Judge Barbara B. Crabb wrote. "In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience. . . .

And the floodgates open: You are leaving out God! Obama has canceled the National Prayer Day!

Nobody minds if goddesses are left out. Or atheists.

Second, the Catholic church is telling nuns who supported the health care reform bill that rebellion will be punished, at least in Greensburg:

Bishop Lawrence Brandt of the Catholic Diocese of Greensburg has declared that religious sisters from communities whose leaders endorsed the final version of the national health care reform bill can no longer promote their recruitment events in his parishes or in the diocesan newspaper.

"He has the right to disapprove a request from a religious community that wants to host a recruitment event when that community has taken a public stance in opposition to the Church's teaching on human life," said diocesan spokesman Jerry Zufelt.

...

The sisters are welcome to continue working in the diocese, and the bishop is in dialogue with them about resolving the recruitment problem, Mr. Zufelt said.

I like that very much, because it tells us how the church deals with the difficult Woman Question: They cannot recruit but they can still do the chores!

Third, there's the question of the head scarf:

College sophomore Hani Khan had worked for three months as a stockroom clerk at a Hollister Co. clothing store in San Francisco when she was told the head scarf she wears in observance of Islam violated the company's "look policy."

The policy instructs employees on clothing, hairstyles, makeup and accessories they may wear to work. When supervisors told Khan she had to remove the scarf, known as a hijab, to work at the store, she refused on religious grounds. A week later, she says, she was fired.

This is an example of religious discrimination. Sikh men face similar problems with the turbans their religion requires them to wear. The feminist questions go to a deeper levels and ask why religions assign women and men different rights and responsibilities:

Khan says there is a lot of misunderstanding about the hijab. She and others say they wear it for modesty.

A Short Post On Health Information

I have noticed recently how very many headlines about health studies are on women's health: Teenage girls shouldn't drink because of later benign breast disease risk, women should walk more, drinking wine might keep women slimmer in later life and so on.

All this could be a sign of the medical industry trying to be fairer. After all, it has a rather dubious past of ignoring women in large trials (aspirin and heart health, for example) altogether or of seeing women as only a walking uterus when it comes to health. That may be a good thing, that recalibration.

On the other hand, I suspect that those topics are picked because women are the major consumers of health news. If that's the case, we are short-changing men. After all, I'm pretty sure that drinking heavily while your body is developing cannot be good for boys, either, and it would be important to know what the dire consequences might be. Likewise, perhaps wine keeps men slim, too, and perhaps walking is great for them, too?

Why can't these types of studies look at both men and women?

Har De Har! Let's Repeal the 19th Amendment!

I have always wanted to name a blog post "har de har", because I think it would sound like someone throwing up a load of phlegm in a smoky saloon and it sounds like a very masculine thing to do. Thomas Mitchell probably laughs like that because he's a guy editor. Girl editors can only faintly guess on the awesomeness of har-de-har.

No, I haven't gone any crazier than usual. I'm writing about Thomas Mitchell's very funny blog post in which he advocates removing women's write to vote in elections on the grounds that gals simply are not unbiased and rational enough to vote:

Bias is not a good thing. Right? We all agree on that, don't we?

People and candidates for public office should be judged on the basis of their ideas, stance on the issues, character, experience and integrity, not on the basis of age, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion or disability.

Therefore, we must repeal the 19th Amendment. Yes, the one granting suffrage to women. Because? Well, women are biased.

Just look at the poll results in today's newspaper.

Men favored the attractive former beauty queen Sue Lowden over the graying Harry Reid by 22 points, while women shunned their gender mate, choosing Reid by a 2-point margin. Which proves women favor Democrats.

It's satire, see! Like Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal that the Irish eat their own children, and anyone who can't get that is biased, fickle and irrational. It's har-de-har satire!

Lots of people seem to be biased, fickle and irrational (I suspect women!), and so poor Mr. Mitchell had to write a follow-up post to explain how he gotcha! and how horrible people (I suspect women!) were to him:

Just as I had anticipated, and in fact spelled out in a veiled reference in the second paragraph, my posting was judged by almost every commenter and e-mailer, not on any merits or demerits of facts in evidence or syllogism used, but on the basis of my age, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability, weight, sartorial choices, facial hair, writing ability, mental capacity, sobriety, sanity, political leanings and perversity — the very appellations the politically correct find so jaw-droppingly offensive.

...

Without once addressing the fundamental postulate that men and women are delightfully different, I was called an idiot, an (expletive deleted) moron, an ignorant redneck male chauvinist, a racist, a sexist, a narrow minded and crude douchebag, unsophisticated, ignorant, a flat earther, a fool, a Neanderthal and a misogynist.

But maybe those were just satire, all those "redneck male chauvinist" thingies?

I have bolded the relevant words above, to point out that "delightfully different" doesn't sound exactly the same as

Men are consistent. Women are fickle and biased.

Har de har indeed.

Moms, politics and the NYT (by Suzie)

Click on the NYT today, and what you may notice first is the photo of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman. Author Liesl Schillinger starts by making fun of what they were wearing in a joint appearance. Even if you dislike them, remember that focusing on their appearance hurts other women, too.

Schillinger notes that they have something in common with Nancy Pelosi: All have given birth to five children.

What does it say about this country at this moment that, of the small handful of women who have achieved highly visible political roles, three are matriarchs of such very large families? Could it be that the skills of managing sprawling households translate well into holding office? Or that such a remarkable glut of mom cred makes a woman’s bid for external power more palatable to voters? Or are they just related to more voters, which translates into a mysterious edge at the polls?

Whatever forces may be at play, taking a look at present dynamics, any American woman with long-range political ambitions might do well to also look to her nursery.

At what income do people have "nurseries"? By saying that no men need apply to this "clique," Schillinger equates giving birth to raising children. She doesn't ask if male politicians benefit from having a lot of kids. She doesn't look at the norm for female politicians, or question whether attitudes about moms-in-office have changed. She assumes that Palin, Bachmann and Pelosi ran their own households, without asking how much their husbands and other family members helped, or whether they had paid help.

Some of you may say: Lighten up! This is just a fun story. And I would say: Yeah, I figured that out when I saw that it ran in the print edition's Fashion & Style, the section where women make light of issues affecting other women.

Flora Purim

I Feel You

Posted by Anthony McCarthy