Some Bad Science

Or quasi-science. I came across two examples today. The first was in a Women's Magazine! I bought it for a study I'm doing of magazines intended for women and men, respectively, and tomorrow I'm going to buy some more mags. What should I get, by the way? I have Elle, and I'm planning to buy a few others of similar nature plus something like GQ or Maxim's? I'm a babe in the woods in this field.

Anyway, this study in Elle was about gender differences in people's views about internet sex and pornography. It argued that though the percentage of men who have used internet porn is much higher (around 80% of respondents) the number of women who have also done so is unexpectedly high (around 60% of respondents). The problem with this study is that it is utterly meaningless: it is not based on random sampling. To be admitted into the study, you need to take the initiative. This means that only people who a) care enough to answer and b) have spare time on their hands will participate. Also, one needs to be a reader of the magazines who carried out the study. The results can't be generalized into anything at all, so they're of no real interest. Just as an idea of the problems, note that only 25% of the respondents were female.

Of course, most people probably are aware of the uselessness of these sorts of studies. What is a lot more dangerous is the spread of some factoids from old, poorly done academic studies. I came across one today in an NPR program about the Bush administration Marriage Initiative (not for gays or lesbians, of course). The program described one of the religious courses on marital preparation that we as taxpayers support, and one of the participants in this course stated that she was so worried to find out that people who cohabit before marriage have higher divorce rates, as she and her husband had done so.

I sat there listening to this stuff that my taxes finance, and steam rose out of my ears. I happen to remember the study from which this horrible factoid sprung: it was published in the 1980's and is a very good example of very bad research.
In a nutshell, the study found out that average divorce rates were higher in the group of couples who had cohabited before marriage than in the group of couples who had not done so (or admitted to it). No problem yet. But here comes the problem: the researcher then went on to argue that living together causes higher divorce rates! There is no evidence for this argument, and much evidence against it. The most likely real reason for the observed correlation is that people who are opposed to living together before marriage are also opposed to divorce. The results say nothing about how good or bad these marriages are, and it's inane to argue that knowing your future spouse better before marriage would make you more likely to get divorced than not knowing about the smelly feet or the snoring before you stand in front of the Justice of Peace or priest or minister.

Yet obviously this is what is being fed to prospective marriage partners as 'scientific findings'. And not only fed to them, but at the taxpayers' expense. I shouldn't be surprised by anything this administration does anymore, yet the fact that I do feel some new outrage shows how terribly naive I have been. A naive goddess! Whoever heard of such a thing?

Damn it!

I'm not all sweetness and light. When I get angry, I get very angry and want to call the cause of anger terrible things. Sometimes my anger leaves me speechless, not because I don't have plenty to say, but because the English language doesn't give me the tools for proper wrathful self-expression. Anna in Cairo, an insightful commenter on this blog and elsewhere, complained about the same thing, and provided the idea for this post. We both want to know what to call a man who deserves the worst words can give.

And therein lies the problem: The epiteths and slurs that are supposed to hurt a man the most actually attack him in a roundabout way. Think of calling someone 'the son of bitch' or even a 'motherf**ker' (see, Ashcroft, what you have wrought!). These are insults, yes, but they insult the man's mother every bit as much as the man himself.

Of course we could also call him an idiot or a chimp or a faggot or something else that compares him to a group some hold in contempt. Almost all ways of cursing someone out in English use this comparison-trick; degrade the person by implying that he or she is no better than members of some other, routinely denigrated, group. But these comparisons are quite far-fetched in most cases. Sexual slurs hit much closer to home, especially because they're so much harder to disprove.

Consider 'cocks**ker' and its many variations: hints about needing kneepads and so on. All these are regarded as hateful, because they imply that the person takes a submissive position in sexual encounters. Who usually is viewed as taking such a position? Certain gays and women, that's who. Thus, the denigrating comparison here is to either submissive gays or to women.

The new development of calling men, too, bitches, sluts and whores ties sexuality into insults even more openly. This may or may not be a more egalitarian development, but it's interesting that the sources of slurworthy sexuality are all found in the ways that some women behave. We are poorly provided when it comes to good, juicy insults concerning the male sexuality. Poorly indeed.

Of course, men are routinely denigrated by comparing them to women. Evidently, being a woman or a girl is a really despicable thing to be in some people's minds. Examples of this abound: sissy, 'you throw like a girl', 'make them cry like schoolgirls' are just a few I've heard or read in the last few days, and a good feminist male friend recently accused me of 'thinking like a girl'. Like that would be a bad thing.

On the other side of the fence, the grass is very much greener and lusher: Women can be called whores, bitches, sluts, slits, gashes and so on and so on. Men have very few counterparts for these expressions, even the time-honored prick doesn't let itself for such general indiscriminate use.

A necessary next step in linguistic evolution of the English language is the development of good sexual insults for all those people who deserve to have them flung into their faces, men included. We need to put on our thinking caps and contribute new expressions to this language. Otherwise it will wither away with the withering of the American empire.

Congratulations!

To all those new happy couples in Massachusetts!

Gone to the Dogs

(Editor's commentary: The following post is by a chocolate Labrador retriever called Hank. Her opinions are not necessarily those of the blogowner or the Snakepit Inc.)


Hiya everybody!

Hank here! Good day today, put the fear of God into a lot of squirrels. Them terrarists deserve everything they get if you ask me. Then I had a fight with Her High and Mightiness, Henrietta the Bitch. She's one of them libral elites and she hates Murica! Me, I like it real well! Yessir! Country, God and kitchens! And can openers!

Now, I'm a good-looking God-fearing dog and I know what I know. Nobody can tell me nothing, not Henrietta in any case. She's a dirty commie and the only reason she beats me in fights is because of some horrible terrarist plot somewhere. When Bush gets re-elected me and George will sort her out: all-day squirrel hunting for us and barbeques and we can abuse any cat we want and no Geneevah conventions allowed.

We know what we know, yep. Got any spare biscuits, by chance? I feel kinda peckish.
See ya later!


Yours in Christ
Hank Hankerton the Seventh (put that there to piss off Henrietta!)

Brown vs. Board of Education - Fifty Years Later

Brown vs. Board of Education is the title for the court case which racially desegregated America's public schools. In it, the justices decided that 'separate but equal', the older judicial standard for treating the races 'fairly', can never be truly equal. Never mind the fact that the African-American school districts seldom had the same resources or teacher salaries than the Caucasian ones, the U.S. Supreme Court argued that even if economic equality could have been guaranteed, the very fact of segregation had such harmful psychological effects on minority children that it could not be allowed to continue as government policy.

For fifty years, then, we have had an integrated public school system. At least on paper. In reality, schools are as segregated today as they were in 1971, and Latino students, for example, have become more segregated from white non-Latino students every year from 1970's to 1990's (and possibly even later). In the late 1990's two-thirds of all African-American and Latino children attended schools where the majority of students belong to minority groups.

So what are we to celebrate on the fiftieth anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education? The end of racial segregation? Sure, it is no longer legal to segregate the school systems on purpose, and that's a good thing. But while dejure segregation may be over, defacto segregation is well and thriving. Maybe the two dozen white supremacists who marched near the school featured in the Brown vs.Board of Education are right: maybe the segregationists have indeed won.

And if they have would it matter? The answer depends on what we want from school integration. If it is only better schools for minority children, then racial segregation might not matter that much as long as the schools are getting better. There is a certain comfort in a segregated world: birds of a feather and all that. Shared norms, religions and traditions may thrive, and nobody becomes the victim of racial bigotry. Neither is anyone's racial bigotry challenged by this arrangement.

And there lies the problem. A segregated school system does not serve an integrated world, does not increase our understanding of people from other ethnic and social groups, does not reduce the 'Othering' that ultimately lies at the very bottom of every misogynist or racist thought or act. For this reason I lament the failure of school integration.

There is a second reason for my lament, and that is the fact that racially segregated schools are almost by definition going to be unequal schools for minority children. This is because schools are largely funded from local property taxes, and predominantly African-American or Latino areas are, on average, poorer than predominantly Caucasian non-Latino areas. Until we are willing to equalize the spending by child for all school districts in this country, those children who go to poorer schools will have fewer books, fewer computers and teachers who get paid less.

Why has integration failed? There are many reasons, but the most important one is that Americans tend to live in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods. To achieve real school integration requires then that some children at least are transported to schools far outside their home neighborhood, and parents don't like this at all, even when the pill is made more palatable by making the target school a magnet school: one with better resources than other available schools.

Another reason for the failure of integration can be found in private schools. It is mainly the Caucasian non-Latino families who send their children to private schools. This often leaves the public schools of even a racially integrated area with a predominantly minority population of children. Once this happens, the parents of children in the private schools are going to be a lot less willing to vote for more tax funded public education (it's not helping their children, after all). The quality of public schools will then drop which causes a further flight to private schools by those who can afford it, and so on. No wonder that our public schools are in crisis.

What will President Bush say in his speech on Monday, to be given at the same school where the white supremacists were marching? Will he say anything like the message of this post? I doubt it. I doubt it very much.

Echidnegate

The title is to tease one of the smart commenters on this blog! I'm going to build a gate to my garden. Proposals as to its shape are eagerly desired. Right now I'm vacillating between a Chinese moon gate and a simple solid gate with eyeballs painted on it. The eyeballs are to stare at any invaders and send them shrieking back to their lairs. Of course they will have no magic in them at all, but the repetition of many eyeballs should make them seem magical, if the repetition of political Bushisms makes us believe in them.

A snakegate would be nice, too, but that would require metalwork and I want to use my tablesaw skills on this gate.

On Monsters, Princesses and Cruella DeVille

They are sometimes all the same, as in the case of one Lynndie England, the poster-girl for everything that has gone wrong with the U.S. military in Iraq. The photographs of her leading a naked Iraqi detainee on a leash received frontpage coverage in all the best papers. What's the world coming to, the message seems to be. How can women abuse people? And how can the same women then get pregnant? Where did we go wrong?

As Richard Goldstein points out in the Village Voice, England is the symbol of the Torturegate even though the vast majority of those accused of torturing the detainees were male for the very reason that many don't associate women with the ability to commit violent acts. It's the man-bites-dog view of what's newsworthy, or as Goldstein expresses it: the bitch-bites-man.

The overall reaction to the women in Torturegate is naturally sexist in the sense that it is based on the assumptions that violent acts are not something the group 'women' engages in and that all women act the same in this respect. But there is also a subtler kind of sexism in some of the articles about England: that women should know better, given that women so often are the victims of sexual abuse. This is sexism because it implies that men would not have such moral prior knowledge.

What does the media make of the fact that some women played an integral role as torturers at Abu Ghraib? You can probably guess that it depends on the political slant of the writers: the right-wingers see in this the evidence of what eight years of Clinton administration and the don't ask - don't tell policy have wrought. Feminists are widely blamed for now celebrating the utter humiliation of men by women. George Neumayr in the Spectator goes on a wild and totally illogical rant about the whole escapade being a science-fiction movie created by Betty Friedan, and Elaine Donnelly, that little girl who doesn't want any other little girl to play with her guns, is quite sure that some feminists in the academia are salivating over the England pictures. I have not found a single feminist source for such celebrations, and I doubt that Friedan had anything to do with the Iraq war in general. But this doesn't matter in the wingnut world.

In fact, evidence in general doesn't matter there: the earlier right-wing argument against having women in the military at all was based on women's inability to act violently. Yet when the reverse seems to have been proved, it is this very reverse which is attacked as proof of the earlier argument. I guess that's why they are called wingnuts. It's the conclusion that matters, not how to get there, and the conclusion is always that women should not be in the military, but if this cannot be avoided they should be totally segregated from men. Otherwise the evil spectre of sex will appear somewhere in the forces, and we all know what comes from that: detainees on leashes, pregnancies and rapes. This point was repeatedly brought up by Deborah Simmons in Washington Times and Gary Aldrich at the townhall.com. Never mind that the military has always somehow obtained access to women for sexual purposes, just consider the prostitutes around the Philippine bases for an example, and never mind that abuse and torture of military prisoners has been common for centuries; ruling out unisex military forces would miraculously cure all these problems.

The left-wing writers don't arrive at the same conclusion, of course. But neither are they totally able to stay away from the question of gender and torture: Goldstein's article argues that the pictures of women as torturers allow the readers to engage in homo-sadistic enjoyment while somehow transforming this into seemingly heterosexual musings. He also links the pictures to the idea of the evil dominatrix, the Cruella deVille, if you like. Ta-Nehisi Coates believes that the Torturegate is bad news for women in the military, because it allows people like Linda Chavez to argue that women don't improve the tone of the military at all and that unisex troops were a big mistake. But Coates also wonders if women shouldn't have known better, given their victim status in the sexual field, and suggests that maybe the masculine ethos of the military makes women act much tougher than they otherwise would, just to be accepted as 'one of the guys'. One of the experts interviewed in this article thinks that women might be inherently less likely to torture than men, though no evidence is brought to support this claim.

Why is it that we can't focus on the torture as a whole, whether committed by men or women or both? What is it about Lynndey England and the other women accused of torture that pricks our curiosity so much? I don't think that the man-bites-dog explanation is adequate alone. I suggest a slightly wider reading of the whole phenomenom: a certain mythology of the genders which is well and flourishing in the extreme political right, but which also has subtler effects on all of us through tradition and popular culture.

This mythology assumes that women and men are defined by a small set of simple and extremely dualistic characteristics. While reality is, I believe, complicated, messy and full of exceptions and overlaps, the sex mythology doesn't allow for these. Rather, it defines a man by what is defined as 'not-woman' and vice versa. The easiest way to describe the relevant myths are by looking at what the extreme right believes to be true about men and women, as it is there that the myths have been retained in their purest forms. Their support bases are two: fundamentalist Christianity and a sort of quasi-scientific theory of evolutionary psychology. Somewhat astonishingly, these result in the same convenient view of the purpose of men and women in this world:

-men are protectors and providers, women are birth-givers and nurturers
-men are meant to be dominant over women, and women are meant to be submissive to men
-men are naturally more sexual than women
-men can't control their sexuality; thus, women must do it for men

I call these myths because of their power on the believers, and because of their extremist either-or formulation. Whether there is any scientific truth in any of them, in terms of tendencies, is clearly an empirical question almost impossible to answer given the simultaneous influence of culture, environment and any biological basis for behavior. What can be safely said, though, is that none of these dual classifications is true as a general unchanging rule.

Consider now the questions of women as torturers and of a unisex military force in the light of these myths: If women are supposed to give birth and nurture, how can a woman abuse someone? It's not nurturing. And how on earth can she then get pregnant? Moreover, what does it do to our definition of men if women act as protectors? (An abuser is a protector gone wrong, after all.) Also, if men are meant to dominate women, what does a picture of a woman leading a naked man on a leash do to us? Where does this woman belong in our classification? Either the classification falls apart, which is very painful for the believers in the mythology, or the woman must be labelled as a pervert, a deviant, a 'not-woman'.

And if men are naturally more sexual than women, yet can't control this sexuality, what will happen when women and men serve together in the military? The men will 'naturally' attack the women all the time. It is up to the women to refuse this, somehow, and if they can't then the idea of a unisex force has failed. Moreover, it is the women's fault that it failed.

I think that these ideas are in the air when people discuss Lynndey England and the other women involved in Torturegate. They explain most of the right-wing articles I have read and even some of the left-wing views. They explain why women's ability in the military is all the time questioned: women can't be good providers and protectors, because this is not in the mythology, and should they actually prove to be good at the job this will affect the definition of masculinity, take away the basis on which 'a man' is defined. Either way, the news are bad for those who believe in the myths.

The news are also bad for the women in the military. Practically everything they do, whether actually a success or not, will fail the mythology and provide grounds for getting rid of them or at least for isolating them from the 'real military'. They'll all be seen as monsters who torture men or as princesses incapable of hurting a fly, yet far too delicious to be let out alone.


---------
Thanks for the links to feministing.com (a good new blog) and mousewords (also a good new feminist blog).

How Bush Chose Stupidity

This post is supposed to suffice while I work on something much longer and more boring to harass you with. But it's interesting, full of deep educational and psychological dilemmas:

Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has
>achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes
>mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least
>once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has
>discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time
>for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on
>name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family
>connections. The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is
>that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After
>years of working as his dad's spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't
>understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and
>third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush
>still couldn't get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims,
>the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he
>sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn't
>absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent that many of
>his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public.

Read the whole thing here.

We might disagree about the good looks, of course. But I am concerned that he couldn't tell Medicare from Medicaid (the first funds certain types of health care for people 65 and over, the latter funds nursing care for the elderly poor and health care in general for poor families), especially as one is a federal government program and the other is based on states. I suspect he carries books to work on his arm muscles. I prefer to put them on top of my head for posture improvement purposes.

A Very Important Post

Which ice-cream flavor do you like best? This is the time of the year to start seriously considering this fundamental existential question. Your answer will reveal your innermost secrets to all and sundry, so think carefully.

Strawberry ice-cream is for people who are unaware of the true taste of a virgin strawberry, straight from the fields. This may indicate a general tendency to be oblivious.

Vanilla is not as bland as it is painted in some nearby fields of enjoyment, though the flavor must come from real vanilla pods. Still, unless you only dip into it occasionally, you might be a little predictable.

Chocolate. I bet you think I'd choose this one, but I don't, and the reason is that a chocolate ice-cream is not chocolatey enough for me, yet it's too far from the generic flavor of ice-cream. If you choose chocolate, you might be yet undecided about your life values. Or you might have found a better version of the ice-cream than I have.

Peach, banana etcetera: See above for comments on strawberry. I don't like bits of fruit in other foods, so I'm prejudiced of course.

Licorice ice-cream: not generally available but I've had it once. If this is your choice, you are an adventurer or come from a foreign country where people routinely snack on licorice.

Garlic: it does exist. Anyone who prefers this is certainly a loner.

Mint with chocolate chips. This is my darling amongst all the flavors. If you pick this one you're a god or a goddess for sure.

Any real ice-cream lover is always ready for new flavor experiments, though. What are your favorites?

F*cked by the F*CC by Jeff Jarvis

Howard Stern is suffering in the claws of the FCC for the use of offensive language in the media. Jeff Jarvis in a recent Nation article argues that Democrats should take Stern's side in this row because a) censorship is wrong, b) Stern could deliver as many as eight million angry white male viewers to the Democratic Party and c) Jarvis likes to listen to Stern's shows.

All this is perfectly ok, even part c). We all have our little peccadilloes, though we usually don't advertize them in public. But Jarvis can't stop when the going is good; no, he has to try to prove to the reader that Stern is actually a really nice guy:

Let's be honest: We don't all talk like Hallmark cards and human resources directors. When we sit in the bar with friends, we gossip about people we hate; we joke about sex. And on our couches, when we watch the news, we think thoughts we won't admit. Stern admits them. Is he sexist? By many definitions, sure. But unlike many a wolf in sensitive-man clothing, he's straightforward about it. Is he racist? No. He has racists on the show, and he ridicules them because idiots are entertaining. Admit it: When you watch reality shows, you love to make fun of the fools on them, and that's not necessarily something to be proud of--but making fun of racist bozos is. Stern gives us credit for knowing they're offensive; he doesn't have to explain that to us or protect us from it. The nannies and the PC police only insult our intelligence when they think they need to save us.

Yep. Howard is a very nice guy. He's a sexist, ok, but at least he isn't a closet sexist: a pretend-sensitive new age guy. Howard's stuff hangs out in the open. And he isn't a racist, either. If you think so you are not very smart, not as smart as Jarvis is. And what a relief to know that the nannies and the PC police don't have to save "us". If only I knew who the "us" in the article might be: women? minorities?

Nope. I'm not going to lead a liberation army for Howard Stern, however many voters he might be able to deliver. Even if I was the Lady Liberty herself, Howard would only want to know about my cup size.

The Gifts of Cyberspace

So much to be thankful for! Here are some of my favorite things about participating in the cybercommunity:

1. I have met wonderful people, people whose road would never cross mine in real life.
2. I have also found out that some people are truly, truly crazy, which is also interesting.
3. I have learned zillions of new facts without paying for this learning or without having to go back to boring university or college.
4. I have learned that there are people who know nothing, and are proud of that.
5. Many people in the cyberspace have excellent manners: I get the courtesy and worshipping that a goddess expects.
6. Someone just called me a moron on another blog. It's fun to be called something totally new after all these centuries.
7. There are proper-thinking lefties in the cyberspace: a big, happy family!
8. There are also horrible meanie righties out there: it's good to know your enemy.
9. Cyberspace is a great excuse to procrastinate from life's boring aspects (work, vacuuming, talking to your in-laws).
10.It also reminds me of how nice real life can be: after hours of staring at the screen I lift my eyes up and see trees in full flower, hear birds singing and feel the slithering of hungry snakes clamoring for attention. We have lots of senses (especially us divines), and cyberspace only feeds a few of them.

Anti-feminist News of the Day

I've put on my bright-red two-piece suit with a very short skirt and I'm ready to be a media pundit. Imagine a big red mouth and very sharp white teeth, too.

Here we go: According to FAIR, the March for Women's Lives in 2004 wasn't worthy of the same coverage in the news as the Promisekeepers' March in 1997, despite the fact that the more recent march had many more participants:

A Nexis search of the week surrounding the women's march found a total of eight stories from the broadcast networks (not counting incidental mentions of the march): ABC, CBS, and NBC all ran two stories the day of the march; CBS also ran two stories the next morning. CNN, as a 24-hour cable news outlet, gave more extensive coverage to the event, running several reports on Sunday. But even CNN failed to treat the march as the historic occasion that it was, running just a small handful of brief march-related stories on Saturday and Monday.

Other cable news outlets focused not on the march itself but on abortion opponents, a few hundred of whom held a counter-protest at the march. Of three Fox News stories found on Nexis related to the march, two focused on anti-abortion activists (Special Report with Brit Hume, Hannity & Colmes, 4/22/04). Special Report examined anti-abortion opposition to the National Education Association's endorsement of the march-- a story that MSNBC also covered in that network's only march report found in the Nexis database. (Fox and MSNBC do not transcribe their news coverage as thoroughly as CNN does, so the amount of coverage on the three cable channels cannot be compared.)

To put the women's march coverage in perspective, FAIR conducted a similar Nexis search of the week surrounding the Promise Keepers march in 1997. The Promise Keepers, an evangelical men's organization that has been widely accused of promoting misogyny and homophobia, drew an estimated 480,000-750,000 demonstrators to Washington-- roughly three-quarters the size of the women's march. Despite its somewhat smaller size, the Promise Keepers received much more media attention: Stories began appearing on network news three days before the march and continued for two days afterward, with a total of 26 stories between the three broadcast networks-- more than three times the coverage the networks devoted to the women's march. Was the Promise Keepers march three times more newsworthy than the March for Women's Lives?

Was the Promise Keepers' march three times more newsworthy than the March for Women's Lives? But of course. What a silly question from FAIR. The Promise Keepers are for traditional values: the supremacy of men in the family, and traditional values are much more newsworthy (I initially wrote mewsworthy) than anything to do with those nasty dirty feminists. Who is it that owns the news networks, may I ask? Right, and this country is founded on ownership. Sheesh!

And in any case, according to Kathleen Parker all those women marching were so unladylike: why did they have to yell and scream when a suitably timed whisper in the right ear would have gotten better results and in a more traditional way? Sorry, Kathleen. We'll do better next time: the Ladies' Powder Puff and Whisper Convention next year, and Kathleen can lead us all. Now that'll guarantee us the necessary news coverage.

Elsewhere in the anti-feminist news, Spain is going to the dogs as we all well know. Not only are the Spaniards bowing to the terrorists and doing their bidding, but they're also quota queens! Think of this, half of the new cabinet consists of women, and the Prime Minister of Spain has vouched that his government will finally crack down on domestic abuse. Poor Kathleen Parker, will she get any sleep now?

Well, it's perfectly obvious what's going on in Spain: white Christian males are being oppressed, and nobody there lifts a finger. Domestic abuse is a private matter between consenting adults, and in any case families are sacred institutions and not to be tampered by outsiders. But then we all knew that this would follow after the Spaniards pulled out if Iraq.

I'm sure glad that I live in a country where truth still gets freely expressed. Like here in our very own anti-feminist news. And now a word from our sponsors: the Promise Keepers on how to get the checkbook away from the little wife...

Courtesy of TheaLogie

This is an interesting article about the spread of global warming abstinence in sex:

A group of US virgins and an evangelist are urging British teenagers to abstain from sex before marriage.
The Silver Ring Thing encourages young people to buy a silver ring and pledge to remain celibate.
The scheme has sold 20,000 of the $12 rings to US teenagers and is planning a British tour, preaching the beliefs and selling the rings for £10 each.
It is funded partly by the Bush administration, which is a strong supporter of abstinence.

But I was disappointed to read that the rings are to be worn on the fingers...

On Torture

Is torturing detainees un-American? Are those that torture just a few bad apples that ruin the whole barrel? Is the recently revealed torture in Iraq and Afghanistan some new perversion that has only now infected the armed forces of the United States and Great Britain?

Yes and no, naturally. It wouldn't be surprising if torture has become more common in the last few years, given the tenor of the war on terror and the simplified messages we have been fed about the responsibility for the 9/11 atrocities, and it's probably true that the worst cases of torture shown all over the newspages and television screen are not representative of the whole armed forces. In that sense torture may indeed be seen as traditionally un-American or un-Western.

But. Human beings have the capability to torture other human beings and animals as we well know. If a situation is carefully constructed to induce torture, that's what we will observe. Consider the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. It picked a group of young male students, carefully vetted for good mental health and 'normality', and it then randomly assigned some of them to be prisoners and some of them to be guards. The prisoners were expected to participate in the experiment for its whole duration of two weeks, while the guards worked eight hour shifts.

The prisoners were housed in rooms made to look like a real prison, they were arrested by real police officers and taken to real police stations. They were searched, stripped and deliced before being committed.

The guards were told that it was their duty to maintain prison order but that they should not use violence.

The experiment had to be discontinued after only six days, because the prisoners (who first had revolted) had become depressed and the guards cruel. In particular, the night shift engaged in gratuitous abuse of the prisoners. This was the shift with no oversight by the experiment's creators.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is well known, both for its findings about the fragility of what we regard as 'civilized' behavior and as an example of the ethical problems inherent in this type of research (four of the participants suffered mental breakdowns). What it tells us is that torture can be induced, and quite rapidly, if the circumstances are correct: dehumanization of the other side, anonymity and strict hierarchical structures all increase the likelihood of abusive behavior.

This is not meant to serve as an apology for those who torture, but to point out, as the creator of the Stanford Prison Study did, that it might be the barrels that ruin good apples. Maybe almost all of us are capable of torture under the right circumstances?

And what would those circumstances be? I suspect that a war far away from home in a totally different culture might contribute to the necessary feelings of alienation, especially as it is combined with continuous attacks by the other side and an implicit justification of the whole campaing as a revenge for even worse butchery three years ago. Maybe some people can go out and kill others logically, coolly and rationally, and then simply remove all the necessary instincts like a uniform that needs laundering. Maybe. I doubt that this is very common, however.

What is likely to be much more common is exactly what we are now observing: a real life repetition of the Stanford Prison Study.

Nicer Greetings from the East Coast

Sorry for my outburst last night. I was tired. This post will serve to make partial restitution for it by telling about some of the interesting things to do in Philadelphia and New Jersey.

Philadelphia Museum of Arts has wonderful collections, including the best collection of Pennsylvania Dutch taufscheins and frakturs. These were baptismal and marriage certificates painted by local schoolteachers and ministers as well as itinerant painters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Pennsylvania. They burst with color and weird birds, flowers and monsters. The Pennsylvania Dutch were of course really of German origin (Dutch comes from 'Deutsch').

You can also see Rodin's The Kiss there. If you have seen it only in photographs, its small size will astonish you. The combination of power and diminutiveness is a good reminder not to trip over stereotypes in general.

It's just a few hours drive from Philadelphia to the seashore. Cape May diamonds are very affordable and have no link to wars, terrorism or the use of slave labor. They are quite lovely, or you can just pick up the pebbles as they come from the ocean. Cape May also has a fantastic bird sanctuary. It serves as a half-way resort for migrating birds, and in one day it's possible to see more different birds than some of us see in a lifetime.

And then there is the sea. The mother of us all. If you are lucky you can see the dolphins dancing their mystical messages in the far horizon. I wish I could understand what they are saying.

Greetings from Joisey

I've been to New Jersey. Now I'm totally fulfilled. I also saw Philadelphia. Lots of people there, and the food is not good, but I like the name. The city was named after Filip Adolph, a poorly known Swedish prisoner who was sent to the newly discovered continent to populate it along with other Swedish prisoners and prostitutes. Actually, I made this up but it could be true, one never knows. The Swedes did send prisoners and prostitutes to the area, though probably not all the way to Philadelphia.

That's the nice thing about history: whoever gets to print something first is regarded as a valid source.

I took the little snakes to see the sea. They liked the sand, but not the water. We collected lots of interesting pebbles with good vibrations, and had a very good time. Except for the fact that there are no real coffee beans in the state of New Jersey, or if they exist, they are kept carefully guarded from tourists. The snakes didn't mind the absence of coffee as they gorged on taffy, which meant that I had a bunch of extremely sticky snakes to take home with me. The smog from the factories stained them dark gray. The combination is less than fetching.

They're in the bathtub right now. The snakes, I mean. Now, tell me where the garden state is. I missed it somehow. But I did see lots of churches advertizing themselves as "independent, fundamental". How's that for a paradox?

Don't mind me, especially if you live in New Jersey or Philadelphia. I write equally nastily about every single place I visit, especially when I'm tired, dirty and coffee-deprived. I'm an equal-opportunity hater! Tomorrow I'll write about all the nice things that I saw and experienced!

Happy Mother's Day!

It's not today, but as I may not stay sugary-sweet all through the post I decided it would be nicer of me to post my greetings a little early, so there's time for the wounds I inflict to close by Sunday.

The Sunday that is the one day of the year when mothers are celebrated. The second Sunday of May as the Mother's Day began as something totally different from today's celebrations: it was created in the United States 150 years ago by one Anna Jarvis to organize a day to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her Appalachian community. Julia Ward Howe (the author of the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic) borrowed the idea fifteen years later for peace rallies. She felt that mothers were especially suited for this work. It was the daughter of Anna Jarvis (also called Anna) who finally got the day made into a national holiday by Woodrow Wilson in 1914, though she supposedly regretted all her work later on when Mother's Day became increasingly commercialized.

Not all countries celebrate Mother's Day or celebrate it at the same time. The United Kingdom has its Mothering Sunday earlier in the spring. It began as a day when young women who worked as domestic workers could go home to see their mothers. It is an older holiday than the American one, but the earliest Mother's Day of all is probably the spring festival the Greeks dedicated to Rhea, the mother of some of the gods and goddesses that I know so intimately. Never met Rhea, though.

A special day for mothers sounds such a nice idea that I'm immediately suspecting some sort of a heinous plot. And there may be one: if you see enough Mother's Day commercials and ads you will soon learn that mothers are all-sacrificing and completely trustworthy; that's why they need a box of chocolates once a year. This heinous plot, and I don't mean the commercial one, makes all less-than-perfect mothers feel guilty, and that's 99.9% of us. What's more, the impression these ads and commercials give (me at least) is that any mother who doesn't think that one day off each year is a sufficient compromise for all the unending sacrificing and trustworthiness must be an ungenerous mean-spirited harridan.

As you may notice, I'm not too keen on Mother's Day. Yes, it's lovely when small children give their mothers home-made presents and scorched breakfasts, but it gets a lot less lovely when the whole society writes mothers off by having them fanfared for a period of few days and then forgets all about the job of mothering for the rest of the year. Besides, the media always uses the Mother's Day as an opportunity to bash women: either not enough of them are becoming mothers or too many of them are out there working rather than at home with their children or they fail in one of the zillions of other ways that journalists can think up. What we need is a reversal of the time spans allowed for Mother's Day and the rest of the year: one day a year that is not a Mother's Day.

I am a mother myself, though the rules for goddesses are somewhat different. For one thing, nobody dares to criticize me for the excess heads and tails that my children have. My offspring have all done very well, if I say so myself. The only one I worry about a little is Cerberus. He is such a yes-monster, always kowtowing to Hades and always working, working. He can't even come to see his poor old mother on this one day of the year when mothers are celebrated; no, he has to guard the entrances to the Underworld. Who would try to sneak in on Mother's Day, I asked him. George Bush? But my pleas fell on deaf ears. Cerberus would stay away, again. He sent me the same old card, of course, all about the all-sacrificing mother who now gets a card in return. Rubbish, total rubbish. I had a ball bringing him up, and when I needed a break I took it. No self-sacrifices there.

I probably should not have shared this with you, my dear readers. Anything mothers do will be used against them, and I can already see the headlines: "Goddess mother out gallivanting; son develops three heads."

The National Prayer Day

Today is the day. We are all supposed to pray today, even those of us who are atheists. I'm going to crash the local town prayer circle as a whirling dervish. The stitches were taken out today, and my hand is ready for some more enlightenment. I'm going to whirl right next to the mayor!

So what are you going to pray for? The recommended things in the newspapers are to pray for the Bush administration and the troops in Iraq. The administration sure could use some help, and the troops need to be brought home safely. But it would also be good to pray for the Iraqis and for all people of this world. Pray that honor killings (like this horrible one in Turkey) will end. Pray that AIDS will stop ravishing this world. Pray that we all finally get some brains and start talking to each other instead of killing each other. Pray that the powers-to-be on this planet get some of the humility that is excessively the lot of the poor and the oppressed.

Pray for the animals. Pray for this planet in its hour of crisis. Pray for a second chance, or a third one. And then get up and get active. That's how prayers are answered.

Does Donald Know?

Donald Duck, that is, and what he might not know is this:

In yet another case of corporate media censorship, executives at Disney have decided not to distribute filmmaker Michael Moore's new documentary entitled, "Fahrenheit 911". Moore's new film is highly critical of the financial ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family as well as the action taken by the government in secretly evacuating relatives of Osama bin Laden out of the country immediately after the attacks on September 11.

Published reports indicate that although the movie is ready for release, Miramax studios have been told by parent company Disney that it has decided to ban distribution of the film.

Why? According to one Disney executive, "It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle".

This according to Common Cause. Donald might be interested, given that he runs around without anything on his lower body, and this is regarded as perfectly acceptable by the Disney executives. Also, all the nephews hate Donald, and Uncle Scrooge is a really sick example of what capitalism can do to warp a person (or a duck). Not good publicity for either family values or capitalism, one might think.

So what's one more film by Michael Moore compared to decades of anti-parental, anti-money, pro-nudity indoctrination by Disney? Come on guys, give Michael's film a chance to be assessed at its own merits or the lack of them.

Oh Atrios!

I love to visit Eschaton and poke my nose into the comments threads. It's like going to a big leftie carnival. But now I can't go there. Atrios has an ad about tortured chickens with a picture. As I mentioned in the previous post, torturing living creatures is horrible, and that includes chickens. Let this serve as a warning for anybody else who is equally lily-livered. Let me know when that particular picture is further down the screen.

There is a larger point to this post, I think, which is the way in which we tend to preach to the converted. Who gets all the letters about abused and tortured animals pictured on the envelopes? Answer: those kind-hearted souls who have already given money to stop animal abuse. Not the torturers. Who gets letters telling about human rights abuses and AIDS in Africa? Probably not the people committing abuses or enabling the spread of the disease, probably not even the people who are indifferent. No, the recipients are the ones who are already involved in trying to stop bad things from happening.

I understand why this happens, but it stinks, nevertheless. We should find a way to fix this, or alternatively, have the senders of these letters come around once a week to pick up the hundred pounds or so of Bad News Mail I get during the average seven days. The senders should also apologize, if not to me, then to the trees that have been transformed into unnecessary paper. I'm already giving what I can, do you hear me!

I even give to chicken-causes, so there's no need to remind me how ineffective I have been.

Vacationing in the Liberal Coalition, Part II

More places to visit, to escape the stresses and disappointments of life, to get reinvigorated and informed and even to laugh a little. Here are our current suggestions (our as in Echidne's Travel Agency, our motto being: SSSmooth as a SSSnake):

-Bushland: Here you can learn all about our president and his life. May I offer Tony Wright's enjoyable discussion on Bush and racism? or Wanda's interesting theories about why Bush dumbed down and holied up? (and no, Wanda, he won't suddenly turn all normal). Or something a little further in the wilderness? How about some time with Rush Limbaugh? Thomasblog gives us Rush as the ridiculer of people with Aspergen's Syndrome, and Mercury visits David Brock's new site to learn more about the horrible things that routinely slither out of Rush's mouth. For those who like ideas more than people, I recommend archy on how even in Italy evolution and schools don't mix that well all the time, or Bryan on how the right sees attacking business interests as a really cruel thing to do, or musing's musings on Christian spam (among other funny stuff).

-Women as torturers: A topic in the news for obvious reasons. Kick the Leftist tells how one right-winger argues that the news about detainee abuses in Iraq must be false, as everybody knows that women make inept torturers. Edwardpig doesn't doubt that women can be torturers but he's nevertheless disappointed in finding this to be possible. And he's disappointed in finding out about his own disappointment. I don't really know what to say here. Nobody should torture other creatures, but everybody has the potential of doing so, given the indoctrination and emotional stress that produces torturers out of otherwise fairly normal people. To assume that women are exempt from this is not that different from assuming that women as a group are exempt from things like intelligence. In other words, women are not mythological creatures (with the exception of yours truly).

-Other interesting destinations: Victoria has a good survey article on some of the issues that have to do with the current EU enlargement. American readers should read this one. Chris Brown has started a new series of interviews with 'ordinary' people (nobody is really ordinary), and the first one is very interesting. Rubber Hose has a fascinating glimpse into what it means to have visited a distant hard-to-reach-locale, and then to find it in the news (Siyu), and Invisible Library gives an excellent discussion on codes in human life. Finally, Rick Blaine reveals how he has dropped lawyering and taken up standup comicing and poker playing!

Good News Only, Thank You Very Much

How well is the Bush administration working for women? Consider women in the labor force. What information can they get from our government? Here is a list of books and fact sheets which were available in 1999 but which have vanished in 2004:


Books:

Don’t Work in the Dark, Know Your Rights
1993 Handbook on Women Workers

Fact Sheets

Domestic Violence:A Workplace Issue
Earning Differences Between Women and Men
Women Who Maintain Families
Hiring Someone to Work in Your Home
20 Facts on Women Workers
Facts About Asian American and Pacific Islander Women
Work and Elder Care:Facts for Caregivers and Their Employers
Women in Management
Child Care Workers
Outlook on Women Veterans
Black Women in the Labor Force
Women of Hispanic Origin in the Labor Force
Worth More Than We Earn:Fair Pay for Working Women
Wage and Occupational Data on Working Women
What Works:Fair Pay for Working Women
Meeting the Needs of Today ’s Work Force:Child Care Best
Practices
Equal Pay:A Thirty-Five Year Perspective
First National Working Women ’s Summit
Working Women Count
Care Around the Clock:Developing Child Care Resources
Before Nine and After Five
Median annual earnings for year-round full -time workers by
sex in current and real dollars,1951-1997 (Statistical Report)
Women ’s Jobs 1964-1996:More Than 30 Years of Progress
(Statistical Report)
Women ’s Earnings as Percent of Men ’s 1979 -1997 (Statistical Report)


Here are the still available and any new fact sheets:

Hot Jobs for the 21st Century
Women Business Owners
20 Leading Occupations for Women
Nontraditional Occupations for Women
Women in High Tech Jobs (Statistical Report)
Trafficking in Persons
Occupational Outlook Handbook (Bureau of Labor Statistics)


What do you think? That we no longer need to worry about fairness and justice in the workforce? No longer need to know our rights? No longer need to have information on minority women as a separate category? Are all the news now good news (with the exception of trafficking)? Or is the government just trying to save us money by cutting back on publications of interest mainly to women? Hmmm.
________
The source for these statistics is a pdf file which you can download here.
Postscript: Trish Wilson (in the comments) shows that the disappeared materials are back! This ruins my post, of course. Oh well, I guess on balance it's positive that the materials are available again.

Silly, silly,...

There is a time for everything on this earth, including being silly. In other words, my muse has a hangover.
Silly 1: Men who look like Kenny Rogers
Silly 2: A gift for someone who has everything
Silly 3: Test your IQ (a silly concept) with the question below:

There is a mute who wants to buy a toothbrush. By imitating the action
of brushing one's teeth he successfully
expresses himself to the shopkeeper and the purchase is done. Now if
there is a blind man who wishes to buy a pair of sunglasses, how should he
express himself?

The answer will be in the comments section.

My Recent Conversion

You read it here first! I've become a conservative anti-feminist. I'm going to join the Independent Women's Forum and the Republican party's extreme right edge. I'm going to turn into a commentator for Faux News, and I'm going to have my hair beautifully permed. Everything in this snakepit will be ladylike and smell of violets, and the heels in my shoes will be so high that just looking at them will make people go dizzy.

This is part of my new career plan. This is the way to make lots of money and to become a famous woman. Then, after a few years of getting my face into every single news-related show in this country, and after writing several best-selling woman-hating books I shall recant my conversion and start a feminist website with two million dollars worth of grant money from all kinds of very kind leftie billionaires. And this will naturally make me famous and rich all over again.

It worked for David Brock, with some obvious adjustments:

David Brock, the former right-wing journalist turned liberal, describes himself as once having been a rather large cog in the machinery of the conservative media.
Now Mr. Brock is starting a new endeavor built to combat the very sector of journalism that spawned him, with support from the same sorts of people (Democrats) about whom he once wrote so critically.
With more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals, Mr. Brock will start a new Internet site this week that he says will monitor the conservative media and correct erroneous assertions in real time.

His original claim to fame was the smearing of Anita Hill in the early 1990's:

For Mr. Brock, 41, the project is yet another considerable step in his public evolution from conservative muckraker to liberal activist. That evolution began after Mr. Brock began publicly apologizing in the late 1990's for reporting that brutally criticized Anita F. Hill and a report that Arkansas state troopers had helped Bill Clinton procure paramours when he was the governor of Arkansas, the veracity of which he is no longer sure.
Mr. Brock has also said that he knowingly lied in an article he wrote for The American Spectator in 1992 that raised doubts about the credibility of Ms. Hill. The article formed the basis for a later book about Ms. Hill, whose charges of harassment almost derailed Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court.

What do you think? Will this work more than once? If it does, I had better hurry before someone else gets the same idea. The first change on this blog will be in its name: From 'Echidne of the snakes' to either 'Mrs. Typhoon' (though I never actually married him) or 'Cerberus' Mom'. Or both: 'Mrs. Typhoon, Cerberus' Mom'. That should please the family values crowd as I have nicely erased any reference to me as a goddess or a person. The second change will be in the layout and color. I need to get lots of pink stuff and pictures of lambs. The third change will be the hardest: some extreme right-wing anti-women reporting. Would it be too unethical to steal it from mensnewsdaily.com?

How to Report on Religion

Barbara Bradley Hagerty is the religion correspondent for the NPR, the National Public Radio. She works in the very middle of the dreaded liberal media, at least according to our friends on the right.

What qualifies someone to be a religion correspondent? I was curious about this, especially after the storm Hagerty has caused in our little blogosphere (more about that later). It seems that Hagerty was trained in economics and law and that her prior experience is largely in covering legal affairs and crime as well as politics. She seems not to have had any special training in religion. Is this the customary way of selecting religion correspondents? What qualifies Hagerty to report in this area?

My guess is that it is her own fervent faith. She is quite open about her own religiousness, and used to be affiliated to the now-famous World Journalism Institute. The WJI once had this interesting mission statement:

To accompany reporting with practical commentary on current events and issues from a perspective committed to the final authority of the Bible as the inerrant written word of God (2 Tim. 3:16-17; 2 Peter 3:14-16).

but after Atrios wrote about them and Hagerty in some detail, the mission statement was diluted to the usual wishy-washiness. Nevertheless, it's pretty clear that the WJI has a fundamentalist flavor. Of course, Hagerty's one-time association with them doesn't necessarily mean that she subscribes to fundamentalism.

But she sure does subscribe to Christianity. Which is interesting, as the media in general frowns upon journalists who take an activist role in the fields that they report. Things are different in religion, the last bastion of immunity from critical reporting in the media. Not only doesn't the reporter need any training in the area, being fanatically invested in one side of the debate might be an asset. Hmmm.

The blogosphere of the left doesn't like this. Neither do I, actually. That's why I'm grateful for Atrios and his readers as well as Body and Soul for doing some critical research and reporting on Hagerty's research and reporting. Consider this direct excerpt from Hagerty's program on John Kerry and the Catholic Church (thanks to Atrios):

HAGERTY: Last week some 300 people protested church doctrine on birth control in front of the Vatican embassy in Washington. Frances Kissling was there. She's the president of Catholics for a Free Choice.

Ms. FRANCES KISSLING (President, Catholic for a Free Choice): Catholics are no different than the rest of Americans. They vote on their pocketbook, they vote on the economic issues, Social Security, Medicare, crime, education and health. They don't vote on the abortion issue.

HAGERTY: Surveys from Georgetown University show that the number one issue for Catholics in 2000 was the economy. Taxing, spending and government programs came in second. Moral issues were a distant third.

(Soundbite from a Mass)

HAGERTY: But tell that to the worshipers at the 8:00 Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington. All but one interviewed there on a recent morning said they won't vote for Kerry. They said they knew he personally thought abortion was wrong but that his stand on abortion rights had a larger meaning. Here's Philip Monos(ph), Carrie Gress(ph) and Ted Flynn.
>

Mr. PHILIP MONOS (Worshiper): It's really character and personal integrity, and a man who does not seem committed to his faith, I don't see why he would be committed to his ideas or necessarily even his country.

Ms. CARRIE GRESS (Worshiper): It seems that he doesn't take his faith seriously, and it's something that it seems like he's using as a political card instead of something that he deeply believes in and is committed to.

Mr. TED FLYNN (Worshiper): I would work very hard against Senator Kerry because I think he is actually, from start to finish, a four-star phoney.

HAGERTY: Another early worshiper, Charles Loveless, a union official, downplayed the abortion issue.

A straightforward both-sides-are-covered story about the religion, one might think. Of course, one side has a famous named leader of the group interviewed (Frances Kissling), whereas the majority of the other side consists of the 'ordinary people's views, random opinions from the actual church pews. Too bad that only one of the nonfamous people told Hagerty his job (the union guy).

Quite innocent, isn't it. So where's the storm? Well, it turns out that St. Matthew's Cathedral doesn't have 8 a.m. masses on Sundays but on weekdays. People who go to mass on weekday mornings may quite safely be seen as more religious than those who only attend on Sundays, don't you think? It also turns out that the randomly selected congregants might not in fact be so randomly selected, but just could be quite well-known people from the Catholic right.

Hagerty is very good in subtly flavoring her reporting with the True Word of God. Maybe God told her to find out that the only congregant who downplayed the abortion issue was a union official, but forgot to ask her to check about the jobs of the others she interviewed? Maybe God told her that the average run-of-the-mill Catholic can be found attending a weekday morning mass?

Maybe. But this reporting does make me a little worried about Hagerty's impartiality as a correspondent on religion. I think that the NPR should hire me as their correspondent on heathenism, and let me write shadow articles on all these god-and-goddess issues. This would be good for religious diversity and would frighten the right wing. It would also increase my budget for nectar. All good causes.

WAM!

This is the first annual Woman And Media conference, just held in Boston, Massachusetts. I participated as the only amateur (and only goddess, probably) among a large group of very intelligent and lively media women or future media women. I ought to have posted about the event before that took place, but that would have been much too sane.

The event began last night with an enjoyable speech by Katha Pollitt. She speaks as well as she writes, and yes, she did point out the odd omission of our media commentators on the question whether a moron can be the president of the United States. Then today we heard from many famous women, all experts in media. I am all revved up and ready to do battle, which is slightly misplaced as it's Saturday night and I can't apply for a job anywhere right now. Ah well, maybe it will keep until Monday.

Anyway, the point of the meeting was to get women's voices more audible in the media, to get all sorts of women into the media and to make the media finally take women's issues seriously which would mean seeing them as human issues. This is all very important, but it has been very important in the past, too, a sceptic might say. What makes this conference any different from what we have read before?

The differences are in the large number of young women participating, the role of the cyberspace and the freedoms it offers, and the palpable energy in the air during the conference. Maybe things will actually change now? Also, the participants were very knowledgeable and smart, and any television station or newspaper worth its salt would want to hire them immediately or suffer a serious drop in its market share if it didn't do so. Or so we all thought.

The event ended with a farewell speech by Julienne Malveaux. She had us alternately pondering deep truths and rolling on the floor laughing. A wonderful end to a good conference.

If you are interested in learning more about this conference and not missing next year's conference, check out this link for more information.

No Nightline Tonight?

Ted Koppel, the unpatriotic liberal television commentator has decided to read the names of men and women who have died in the Iraq war on Nightline. Immediately the Sinclair Broadcasting group decided not to air this reading of names on its television stations, because a) it isn't patriotic to do so and b) if these names are read, so should the names of those that died in the events on 9/11/2001.

Except of course that many of the names of the 9/11 victims were read in ABC news programs, and it's hard to see why honoring those who have made the utmost sacrifice for their country would be unpatriotic; rather the reverse. And ABC hasn't exactly stayed silent on various aspects of the Iraq war before now, so it can't be accused of not covering a variety of points of view.

No, the real reason for criticisms is the idea that reading the names of those who have died makes war sound a lot less fun and might even make some people more anti-war. THIS is what is now viewed as unpatriotic: any deviation from the policies of the Bush administration. THIS is what is now viewed as biased: showing both sides of an argument.

Yet, surely, one of the important aspects in judging the desirability of a war is the number of casualties it causes? If you are pro-war only because you are unaware of the true numbers of the dead and wounded, aren't your opinions then faulty? It is up to the administration to show us that the war is worth fighting despite the casualties it causes (including those affecting Iraqi civilians). It is not up to the administratrion or the media to censure the information available for American citizens about these casualties.

Or so an old-time traditional-values goddess would like to think.


P.S. About partiality, by the way: The Sinclair Broadcasting group is politically quite partisan itself. According to Common Cause:

What is also troubling is Sinclair's own record of partisanship. Since 1997 through the end of 2003, Sinclair and its executives and affiliates have given 100% of their political contributions exclusively to Republicans, more than $165,000 in total.

What Was I Thinking?

I spent most of the day at the hairdresser's, having my hair streaked. My butt is sore from all the sitting, and my wallet is much lighter now. The result: hair exactly as it was when I entered the cavernous place this morning. The streaks I chose were the color of my hair...

Why can't I be normal, just once?
Does this sort of thing ever happen to you?

Some Thoughts About Misogyny

Misogyny, like in the hatred of women. This term always seemed inadequate to me, as there's considerably more contempt of women in the air than actual hatred, though the latter can be found, too, especially on the net, and there is also something close to fear of women. We need a word that encompasses all of these, or words to reflect the different types and intensities of feeling.

I believe that misogyny has always existed. I also believe that the majority of men, or the majority of people in general, are not misogynistic, but there is a sizable chorus of hateful voices, and these voices are always humming in the background. The effect this has is to make us almost oblivious to mild hatred of women: it's just how things are. This happens to me a lot. I read an article or see a cartoon or overhear a conversation, and I'm left with an odd displaced feeling which is not quite fear or disappointment but something similar, a feeling of something being wrong or missing, like looking at a group photograph where one person has been whitened out, yet nobody notices. Then later my overworked brain puts the pieces together and I realize that the point of the story was something negative about women or that the cartoon was only funny if you think that women are stupid/greedy/indolent/overemotional, or the overheard conversation expressed an anger at some woman by smearing her for being a woman.

David Gilmore, an anthropologist at New York University at Stony Brook, wrote a book titled Misogyny some years ago. In it he gives us hundreds of pages of evidence on the existence of fear and hatred of women in primitive societies, in so-called advanced societies and in all types of intermediate societies. He also almost delights in showing us the extent of misogyny in many religious writings, in literature and in the visual arts. Any reader brave enough to read him should prepare by downing a stiff drink of nectar or two.

Just about the only people not committing misogyny in Gilmore's book are women. My suspicion is that this omission is a direct result of Gilmore's mild misogyny: that women don't exist except as objects of men's hatred and/or veneration. But this omission is a serious one. Misogyny is not uncommon among women. Misogynist women give us advice in radio call-in shows and political advice as television commentators. They are hired by some religious extremists and politicians to justify largely anti-woman practices. They write articles and books telling women how to live and then blaming them for the negative consequences of these 'choices'. Some of them probably even live in your neighborhood.

True, there are many more misogynistic men than women, but the ignorance of the fact that women, too, can be infected by misogyny casts doubt on Gilmore's theories about the causes of woman-hating. These rely largely on psychological and genetic explanations stressing men's experiences and emotions about women, in particular about women as mothers or as sex objects. Since Gilmore specifically argues that women's experiences and emotions are different from those of men's, his explanations can't cover generalized misogyny.

Which is sort of disappointing, as he provides the reader with a multitude of possible theories. In fact, almost anything seems a likely cause, which doesn't bode well for women, or the reader who might reach for another strengthening sip of nectar. Still, there are a few dim rays of hope for us equalists: Studies suggest that misogyny decreases when men take a more active role in child-rearing and when the sexes work together. Maybe it's just a case of increasing the general understanding between the sexes? I don't know. Disappointingly, Gilmore ends his book by appealing to men to fight their incipient misogyny by noticing how gentle and kind creatures women really are. He obviously never met me.

Whatever the other reasons for misogyny might be, I believe that one reason for its endurance is that people bash women because they can. Women have traditionally not been able to fight back very effectively, and have thereby become a safe target for the general venting of spleen, diffuse rage and other sinister emotions. Obnoxious children torture flies, not bears or lions or tigers. It doesn't matter to these children that the flies might be wholly innocent of any wrong-doing.

So one solution to misogyny and similar maladies might be to fight back: Be a bear or lion! Roar! Or if you prefer to be a fly, at least crap on the misogynists' dinner plates.

One More Bad Poem

Hillary

I met her in the swimming pool
I cannot stand the crowd
But Hillary was different
and seemed to say so, loud.

Her skin was silvery and cool
Her swimming like a dream
Her crawling style was ancient
but made the waters stream.

Her eyes were deep and green as sea
I never saw them blink
Yes, Hillary was different
but how, I could not think.

Until at last it came to me
and I saw what I had missed:
These facts made it evident
That Hillary was a fish.


This is actually an ode for Hillary Clinton which went bad as usual with my poetry

Spring Vacations in the Liberal Coalition, Part I

These are my tips for a weekend getaway from the gray everyday world. Though only the trip is included in the price, these are good deal, given that the price is just one click away!

For a holiday with some nice liberal anger on the administration and the media, I recommend the following:
- Lambert on Corrente takes down Jodi Wilgoren a peg or two (or a whole ladder);a lovely, biting article
- dohiyimir scolds Karen Hughes on her Kerry-comments; another acerbic break
- Rook rants about how the British press beats ours in proper aggression towards the powers-that-be
- Jeff on Speedkill looks at the religious right-wing and how to do this objectively.

If you prefer something more ruminative on politics and the society, you'll lurve
- Rivka of the respectful otters on pro-choice attitudes by age groups; she shows us why the polls must be interpreted carefully
- Trish Wilson on the real-world horrors in the life of one of the little girls that acted in the Little House on the Prairie
-iddybud on what the media attention on Pat Tillman's death tells about Americans
-And Then... on the teddy bears we have given to Iraqi children in hospitals and what's wrong with them (and there is something wrong with them, believe me).

None of these quite fits the bill? Don't despair, here are a few additional suggestions about politics: all hit the point
- Gotham City 13 shows a picture of a coathanger (trigger-warning, but it's impressive)
- Andante tells what terrible crime made the police in Texas handcuff a 97-year old woman
- David on blogamy gives us more funny bushisms
- while T. Rex shows a bunch of meaningless classroom polls on voting intentions which are nevertheless pretty interesting to interpret

Don't want to read about politics as such? Not to worry, here are other interesting suggestions
- Pen-Elayne got a raise and is moving house
- Steve Gilliard tells us what to keep in the kitchen and the pantry cupboards
- Mustang Bobby has an interesting series on writing (he 'sees' things!)
- and the Fulcrum has a most beautiful picture of a spring meadow: a sea of blue

More suggestions in the near future. And no, I have not trackbacked any of these, given that doing the work Haloscan requires for that would make me too unwell to travel anywhere in the next forty years myself. Sorry.

Why, Despite Everything, Humans Should be Given a Second Chance

This is meant to be a happy post, to keep my dear readers reading rather than running away in disgust at the gloom and doom I usually radiate. So here is my list of wonderful things that humans have created:

1. Chocolate. True, the ingredients are from nature, but people invented the formula for chocolate. It is food for goddesses and anyone else sane. It is said to contain chemical ingredients similar to those that are unleashed when one falls in love. It should be called 'the little orgasm', and it should be declared the national food of all countries. Eating chocolate is good for you, researchers have established (too lazy to find the link now but this is true). The only bad thing about chocolate is something called 'white chocolate'. It is an imposter and should be shunned. The best, absolutely the best chocolate is a home-made truffle. I make a mean chocolate truffle.

2. Buttons, zippers and safety pins; all things to hold us together. Nothing else has come close to these nifty inventions, not therapies or antidepressants, not even velcro (which sticks too much). Where would we be without these helpers? Imagine Bush trying to march looking militant while his toga disintegrates all around him. Sorry, maybe you don't want to imagine that.

3. Vermeer's paintings, especially his blue tones. They are a good substitute for illegal drugs.

4. Dickinson's poetry; so innocent that it covers the most obscene with equal surety.

5. Taj Mahal. Though I've never been there, so this is provisional. But based on the pictures I've seen it is an eternal ode to love.

6. The ancient South American feather murals. I want one!

7. A little medieval wooden head of Christ in a tiny rural church somewhere in Scandinavia.

8. Physicians Without Borders.

9. Blogs.

10. Emergency Rooms, for reasons that to me are obvious.

11. Pesto, another food for goddesses, and freezable!

12. French kissing, though only by people who know what they're doing.

13. Siberian throat-singing, because it is so inexplicable, and sounds to me like an attempt to French-kiss oneself.

The Tendrils of Talibanization

In Afghanistan,

Female performers in an Afghan province have been banned from performing on television and radio. According to Reuters, female entertainers have been declared un-Islamic in the Southeastern province. The provincial government, according to Radio Free Europe, ordered state-run television in Jalalabad to stop broadcasting singer's performances.

I thought that they could sing if they didn't "move their bodies"? They are very protective of their audiences, these Afghan authorities. Who knew that women's voices are that powerful? They don't seem to have that much impact when used in speech. Maybe all women should communicate by singing?

In the United States,

Bush Administration officials rescinded funding for an international health conference because Republican staff members and right-wing groups such as the Traditional Values Coalition complained that the conference promotes abortion.

According to the Washington Post, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) withdrew funding for the Global Health Council's conference entitled "Youth and Health: Generation on the Edge." House Republican aides sent an email to anti-choice groups stating that they found the conference to be "outrageous" because they believe one of the groups speaking at the conference, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), "performs abortions" and helps "the communist Chinese force them on women." These accusations were proven false by the Bush Administration's own experts who investigated and cleared the UNFPA of abuses in its programs in China.

Ok, maybe the two are not comparable, but remember that we're at different stages in the Talibanization process. The conference is to discuss issues such as sexual health, nutrition and the spread of SARS. Well, aren't we all glad that our tax money isn't spent on such an evil idea!

Widows, Merry or Not

Widowhood is a sorry state. Just think of expressions like "the widow's weeds" (clothes for the mourning period) and "the widow's mite". At least in our cultural heritage a widow is someone to be pitied; poor thing, she has lost the mainstay and love of her life. This is of course often true, but why is my image of widows also tinged with poverty? Why do I instantly think of begging and of women perpetually dressed in faded black?

In other cultures widows wear white. In India, laws banned sati, or the self-immolation of widows, in 1829, and other laws in the nineteenth century gave widows the legal right to remarry and to inherit. Yet, Indian widows are still often expected not to marry or to demand any inheritance. When this is combined with child marriages for girls, frequently to a much older men, it is possible to have very young widows with no employment skills and nobody willing to take care of them. Add to this the fear of widows by the rest of the society:

After the death of a husband, a woman is shorn of her bridal ornamentation; her head is shaved by the local barber and her body is wrapped in a stark white sari so she may not arouse carnal pleasures in other men.
The bright red sindoor, the red smear that a married woman wears in the parting of her hairline, is substituted by a vertical ash smear from the top of her forehead to the top of her nose. Her very presence is considered so inauspicious that even her shadow may not fall on a married woman lest her terrible fate befall the other woman.

and it's not surprising that most of these unfortunate women survive as beggars near religious shines:

When they arrive at Vrindavan and Varanasi, the widows find shelters that were built almost a century ago for local ashrams or religious institutions. Today, the cramped, leaky spaces--administered by local government officials--accommodate about three women each, who sleep on torn sacks.
They receive meager rations of rice and lentils only if they spend six hours singing devotional songs at the ashram. Young widows are often lured into sex in exchange for more food or money.

The future looks a little brighter for these women, as several organizations and the Indian government have started paying attention to their plight.

But what is it about widows that would have caused such ill-treatment of them to begin with? And not only in India; the widow's lot has not been much happier in many other countries. Is there something about widows that reminds us of death, that ever-present silent menace always there, always waiting for the smallest amount of carelessness that will allow it to swoop and catch us? If there is, isn't the same threat equally hovering around the shoulders of widowers? Yet no culture that I know of treats the widowers with such harshness as widows have traditionally provoked. No, this explanation doesn't suffice.

I find a more promising one in economics or, perhaps, in simple human greed, combined with sexism. If a wife is regarded as a belonging of the husband, something that he is responsible for and alone can use, then his dying first is comparable to someone leaving all their property littered around for another person to pick up and care for. What is to be done about the poor widow? How can the other heirs get their maximal inheritance while also somehow escaping the stigma associated with someone who mistreats widows and fatherless children? Or, to put this less cynically, how can widows be provided without destroying the value of the estate for the later generations?

One solution is to provide for her legally, and this is the most common traditional solution. Widows in the twelfth century Sienna were entitled to their dowries and any 'morgengabes' their husband had given them, and in most of medieval Europe a widow had some legal claim to her late husband's property, though the widow's inheritance share was often rather small.* This is all on paper, of course. It is much harder to find out how widows were actually treated, though some at least must have been lucky or successful, given the frequent medieval image of widowhood as a happy time of life for independent-minded women (for the first time, these women were free of male guidance). Still, having to support the widow reduced the available inheritance for other heirs and must have caused pressures to leave her as little as possible, especially if she had no adult sons to fight for her share.

In some African societies, a man's inheritance went to his brothers. This included his widow. Thus, she was taken care of by being married to one of her erstwhile brother-in-laws, though I doubt that her opinion on the desirability of this match was an important consideration to anybody.

Another solution already referred to is to remove the stigma attached to any mistreatment of the widow. When this is successful (as it was in the sati-tradition), the remaining heirs can divide the whole pot. I'm not discounting the other reasons for sati, including religious fervour and true devotion on the widow's part, but neither am I convinced by their sufficiency, given that widowers were not expected to reach the same peaks of religiousness and love.

None of these solutions are very good from the widow's point of view, and ultimately they fail even the other heirs who are made to act in all sorts of unbecoming ways. Much better to circumvent the whole problem by declaring women and wives and widows as full human beings, by training girls in trades and occupations and by allowing for the sorrow that the loss of a spouse can cause in both widows and widowers without making either one into some everlasting symbol of grief.


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*See The Marriage Bargain. Women and Dowries in European History, by Marion A. Kaplan, pp. 69-73.

Media Coverage of Yesterday's March

What a wonderful occasion the march was! Democracy in action. And it was even covered by many of the mainstream media. But how exactly was it covered?

The short answer is: neutrally. For the mainstream media this translates into giving the two sides equal time. As one side consists of hundreds of thousands and the other of a few hundreds, the final effect is to give the pro-life people much more coverage per person. In fact, the march was a real bonanza for them: they got half the publicity with zero organizing costs. Even the Bush administration got free coverage this way. Here's Karen Hughes on the real meaning of the march:

Karen Hughes, an adviser to President Bush, appeared on CNN today to provide a counterpoint to the anti-Bush sentiment on the Mall. She praised the president on his "very strong record for women," saying he has employed more women in senior-level staff positions than any other presidential administration.
She also said that abortion-rights activists were moving against what she said was popular momentum, particularly since the terrorist attacks of 2001, in favor of anti-abortion policies.
"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life," she said. "President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."

We are at war, she reminds us, and the difference between Us and Them is that we value life and freedom and they don't. Therefore, the multitudes marching yesterday were obviously terrorists. The ones heckling them along the route (one with a placard saying "God Hates You") are the Real Americans, the ones that are reasonable. And valuing lives is something that covers the period from conception to birth for everybody, but thereafter becomes very selective as to status of motherhood, occupation, religion and country of citizenship. Shame on you, Karen. If president Bush has actually said "let's be reasonable", he has done so somewhere outside the reach of microphones and cameras.

In a bizarre way the media's neutral coverage is exactly the opposite of neutrality. Here is this gigantic event expressing a political opinion, and the media interpretation of it is trying to nullify what happened by reintroducing the same old parameters of debate. As if nothing has changed. As if suddenly it isn't quite clear that young women indeed are concerned about their right to their own bodies, as if they didn't march yesterday in their hundreds of thousands. No, the television and papers tell us; nothing has changed, this is all old hat and will have no effect on elections this year.

Let's prove them wrong.


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If you want to hear more personal opinions of the march, click here, or here.

A Sunday Post

The "s" in my keyboard is sticking due to a tiny accident with yogurt (pear-flavored). I have to avoid it if I can, hence problems with sstyle.

Did you march for freedom and women's lives? I hope that you did.

I didn't. Because I was in Novocaine-induced sleep for the last 24 hours, and my hand is very much improved by it.

What happened was this: I was meditating, as usual in a dark room. I had been standing motionless for a couple of hours, when I got the brilliant idea of becoming a whirling dervish. No brilliant idea should be wasted; so I immediately started whirling. The stars were whirling, the room was whirling, the emptiness was whirling. And the Last Final Question suddenly appeared at the end of a long tunnel of light! Yes! I screamed, Yes! I whispered, I'm coming! The Consciousness looked down and spotted me...

AND WHAM. The answer to the Last Final Question: the final communion of my right hand and the corner of some very sharp window glass. I think that Rumi would have laughed at this. I certainly did, despite also feeling slightly queazy when I turned on the lights and saw what the room looked like. I couldn't stem the bleeding so off to the emergency room I went.

Emergency rooms are weird places at four a.m.. The television is on at full blast: you can learn how to lose twenty pounds in one day, though they don't mean by bleeding to death. Maintenance people hover around, not maintaining much except the vending machines for fifty-year old coffee. And on the benches lie pain, curled up, vomiting, hoping for some answers. As I wasn't very high in the pecking order of horrors I had time to listen and observe. One woman had a headache that never went away. She had been installing wall-to-wall carpeting for years, and feared that the glues she had used had caused this ache in her head. Her employer had fired her for taking too many days off from work. She had finally too much pain this Saturday morning at four o'clock, and she was waiting for some relief. I so hope she found it.

Another woman had brought a toddler in, because he had fallen on some toy the previous night and was now bleeding in the mouth. Except that the bleeding had stopped, and the toddler was happily making the rounds in the waiting room. His mother tried to jump the queue by appealing to higher powers: that she was a patient of someone important in the hospital, that she (unlike the rest of us dregs of humanity waiting there) actually paid for health insurance, that the people coming in on stretchers from traffic accidents surely shouldn't be admitted before her toddler and so on. I understand the fear of a parent with a small child that might be badly hurt, but it was not nice to observe this human pecking order instinct at full swing in an emergency room. After all, some people there were very ill indeed.

Anyway, finally I was admitted and had my finger nicely stitched. Though I suggested to the physician that he should take a course in embroidery. He wanted to know all about the blanket stitch, but I couldn't show him with one hand. He couldn't understand why I felt no pain, and I didn't really want to explain about the goddess thing; my explanation about the meditation and so on was already what they were all talking about, inbetween giggles. I do think that I gave them all a small moment of joy in that place, though maybe at some cost to my reputation as a sane and responsible member of the community. I was also wearing my "Bitch" t-shirt...

I'm feeling much better now, thank you all well-wishers, and the "S" seems to be working better, too. And I only got six stitches, though they're all on one finger. What does that count in bragging rights?