A Rant About Whoever Changes MY Computer Stuff

Has this ever happened to you? You start a browser you use all the time or Google a term just as you did yesterday or log into your e-mail and suddenly find yourself in a brand new space? Where everything is now NEW AND IMPROVED and where all the things you had handily at your fingertips and well memorized are now useless?

Twitter just did that. Though the changes are not large, they do manage to bury all the stuff I need. But in other cases I feel almost as if I had been robbed. There I stand, in some imaginary rain, and I haven't got an umbrella! All that learning: gone down the drain. And I'm supposed to be happy about the frequent changes.

I'm beginning to suspect that those who design changes do not take into account the learning curve. Or rather having to crawl up it once again. And again. And again. Learning takes time which is not then available for other things. It's a real cost, and an infuriating one if the changes are not useful to begin with.

Part of my anger comes from not having much choice about those changes. Sometimes the old system will be available for a month or two, but no longer than that. But part of it has to do with how all this clashes with the concept of ownership I have somewhere in my primitive brain.

If I have paid for it, it is mine, right? Imagine buying a couch, using it for a few months, and then waking up one morning to find that someone has changed it to a pair of armchairs while you were asleep. In some gaudy color with horrible tassels along the hems.

Those programs I think I own I really do not own, even when I didn't get them for nothing. All I own is the vague concept of "something to sit on" (to continue with the couch metaphor) and I have no control over its other details unless I discontinue the contract altogether. But all the contracts seem to be the same type, and all the designers seem to be about changing things.

Lest you think I'm a complete stick-in-the-mud, let me hurry to add that changes can be useful and over time they are needed. It's the frequency of the changes which I deplore and the feeling that I have about the costs of learning. I suspect they are completely ignored by whoever it is who keeps changing my computer stuff.

More on the Powerful Catholic Bishops and The War On Women

The Catholic Bishops. The guys who don't want women to have any control over their reproductive destinies. Those guys. Here's what is happening now:

In August, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, announced new rules that included contraceptives for women in the package of preventive health care services that all insurers must cover without a deductible or co-payment beginning next year.
The policy follows the recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine. It will help drive down the rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion by making birth control more accessible.
It was distressing but came as no surprise that the new rules prompted protests from Roman Catholic bishops and other church leaders. What is surprising, and even more distressing, is that the White House is considering caving to their call for an expansive exemption that would cover employees of hospitals, universities, charitable organizations and other entities that are associated with religious organizations but serve the general public and benefit from public money.

It's not the White House who is considering caving in. It's president Obama.

Let's go to that arid-but-firm Logic Land and consider all this there.

It makes no sense. Now, what would make logical sense is for the Bishops to demand that no woman who has put down her religion as Catholic should get free contraceptives, wherever she might happen to work. That would be logical. It might even wake up those women who don't make a fuss in their church about its misogynistic policies and politics.

But that is not what the Bishops demand. They demand that women who work for their organizations should not get free birth control, whatever their religion might say about that. And the reason is that these guys don't believe women should have the right to artificial contraception.

That oversteps their domain, however we might define it. Sure, tell your flocks that women's bodies belong to the church. Don't tell women not in your flocks that their bodies belong to your church.
-----
Read Frances Kissling on this topic in general.

The Fashion in Shrouds

Margery Allingham's The Fashion in Shrouds was first published in the UK in 1938. I bought it because I had never read it and because I like reading old detective novels as the equivalent of literary fast food. I'm familiar with other Allingham's books, and though she shares the usual class-snobbery of most of the British detective writers of that era I didn't recall her as especially racist or sexist.

This book is sexist, however. It is also racist and classist, but sexism takes by far the starring role here.

The book begins when Allingham's private detective, Albert Campion, visits his sister, Val, who is a famous women's fashion designer, at her place of work. During their initial conversation he states:

"If one resents one's sister or even loathes the sight of her," he remarked presently, "it's for familiar faults or virtues which one either has or hasn't got oneself and one likes the little beast for the same rather personal reasons. I think you're better than I am in one or two ways, but I'm always glad to note that you have sufficient feminine weaknesses to make you thoroughly inferior on the whole. This is a serious, valuable thought, by the way. See what I mean?"

"Yes," she said with an irritating lack of appreciation, "but I don't think it's very new. What feminine weaknesses have I got?"

He beamed at her. In spite of her astonishing success she could always be relied upon to make him feel comfortably superior.

That's the first hint that this book is what idiots call a discourse on gender roles. Remember that the man speaking above is the detective in the book, the one we are going to follow all through it. And, nope, he is not going to get his comeuppance later on.

Instead, it gets worse. Campion is much irritated by the sound of many women speaking simultaneously. A horrible noise. Later in the book he tells his sister:

"Oh." said Mr Campion furiously, "This is damned silly introspective rot. What you need, my girl, is a good cry or a nice rape -- either, I should think."

It could be that we are not supposed to agree with Mr Campion's opinions. But there's also all that stuff about the unfulfilled career women. It culminates with the marriage proposal Val receives from the man she loves, Alan Dell:

"It's not so easy," he said. "Wives are out of fashion. I love you, Val. Will you marry me and give up to me your independence, the enthusiasm which you give your career, your time and your thought? That's my proposition. It's not a very good one, is it?
...
However, that is the offer. In return--and you probably won't like this either--in return, mind you (I consider it an obligation), I should assume full responsibility for you. I would pay your bills to any amount which my income might afford. I would make all decisions which were not directly in your province, although on the other hand I would like to feel that I might discuss everything with you if I wanted to; but only because I wanted to, mind you; not as your right. And until I died you would be the only woman. You would be my care, my mate as in plumber, my possession if you like. If you wanted your own way in everything, you'd have to cheat it out of me, not demand it. Our immediate trouble is serious, but not so serious as this. It means the other half of my life to me, but the whole of yours to you. Will you do it?"

"Yes," said Val so quickly that she startled herself. The word sounded odd in her ears, it carried such ingenuous relief. Authority. The simple nature of her desire for him took her breath away with its very obviousness and in the back of her mind she caught a glimpse of its root. She was a clever woman who would not or could not relinquish her femininity, and femininity unpossessed is femininity unprotected from itself, a weakness and not a charm.

That's $14.75 I will never get back, and the only reason I read the whole book was that I could not believe in the absence of a comeuppance for Mr Campion.

Though I must admit that it's funny how similar this sounds to one of the trolls who sends me crap about how horrible American women are, not wanting to cook and clean for him 24/7 in exchange for a wedding ring.

I'm not going to do a literary analysis of a silly old book like this, though I think it's worth pointing out how very often sexist or misogynist rants are covered under the euphemism of "discussing gender" even when it's only women who are bashed as a class. Even today.

So why am I writing about this at all? Perhaps to point out that finding innocent amusement can be damn hard.

Happy Thanksgiving! (by Suzie)

This is an Hermes scarf depicting the flora and fauna of Texas. I wore it yesterday like a cape so that everyone could feast their eyes on the wild turkey in the middle.

For this post, I copied the image from a site that notes that Texas artist Kermit Oliver designed this 1986 scarf, the first time an American had designed for the high-fashion Paris company. (That's Paris, France, by the way, not Paris, Texas.) As a Texan, I fell in love with the design when I saw it last year. I hunted on eBay until I found one that was less expensive -- it has some marks on it.

Many women diagnosed with cancer get rid of stuff they no longer need. Others do the opposite, shopping as if there were no tomorrow. I've gone through both cycles and am on the downhill side of my thrift-store shopping spree.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on shopping, as the madness of the season begins.

A Good Piece On The 47%

It explains that Republican argument about all those people who are not paying federal income taxes (47% of all tax-payers) at all and how we should immediately make them pay lots and let the rich pay less. It hits all the main points, from noting that federal income taxes are just one of many types of taxes and that most tax-payers do pay taxes in general, then pointing out that it was the Republicans who made the changes which dropped many tax-payers to zero levels and finally making this very important point:

There is no question that the wealthy pay a higher overall tax rate than any other group. That is an American tradition. But there is also no question that their tax rates have fallen more than any other group’s over the last three decades. The only reason they are paying more taxes than in the past is that their pretax incomes have risen so rapidly — which hardly seems a great rationale for a further tax cut.

On Rape of Children and Gender. WILL TRIGGER.

Two recent articles discuss the Sandusky allegations from the point of view of the gender of a rape victim. Daniel Mendelsohn in the New York Times asks:

WHAT if it had been a 10-year-old girl in the Penn State locker room that Friday night in 2002?

The likely answer to that question reveals an ugly truth, one that goes stubbornly undiscussed. Whichever version of Mike McQueary’s story you choose to believe — his grand jury testimony, in which a “distraught” Mr. McQueary, then a graduate assistant to the football team, “left immediately” after witnessing the former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky sodomize a young boy, or the e-mail recently leaked to the press, in which he wrote, “I did stop it, not physically ... but made sure it was stopped when I left that locker room” — the mind recoils at the grotesque failure to intervene more forcefully. How could a grown man have left the scene without taking the child with him? Mr. McQueary wants us to imagine that his brain was racing during those “30 to 45 seconds,” that he “had to make tough impacting quick decisions.” But it seems clear he wasn’t thinking at all — and it’s hard not to wonder why.

I think it was the gender of the victim.

Don Lemon at CNN.com, in a brave and moving article about the sexual abuse he underwent as a child, makes a similar argument (though more focused on the legal definition of rape in Pennsylvania):

So, I imagine it’s difficult for people who haven’t dealt with abuse to confront it, face it, or, for that matter, know what to call it. But if the events at Penn State are to teach us anything, it should be that we can no longer turn away from something so ugly just because we struggle to define it or accept it exists.
So, let’s just call it for what it is: rape.
Rape is what former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky is accused of doing to at least one boy in a university shower. But because the victim is a boy, under Pennsylvania law, Sandusky is charged with deviant sexual behavior. If the victim had been a little girl, in fact, the law would call it rape.

...

But as painful as it is for us, as far removed as we are, no matter how much we may want to put it out of our minds, no matter how much we want to turn away, we cannot and should not. Our inability to view and talk about male and female rape in the same way might have permitted a man to continue his alleged depraved behavior for decades. Rape is rape no matter the gender of the perpetrator or the victim. Pedophilia is wrong no matter the gender of the perpetrator or the victim.

I agree that rape should be called rape, whether the victim is female or male. Indeed, feminists have worked hard to get the definition of forcible rape the FBI uses changed:

The FBI took a step away from the archaic way it defines rape on Tuesday, when an agency panel voted to update the federal definition for the first time since 1929.
Currently, the FBI defines rape as the "carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will."
This definition is narrower than the one used by many police departments around the country, and women's rights advocates say it leads to the under-counting of thousands of sexual assaults each year.
On Tuesday, an FBI panel composed of outside experts from criminal justice agencies and national security agencies voted to broaden the federal government's definition.
The new definition would take out the requirement that the sexual assault be "forcible," remove the restriction that the attack be toward a woman and include non-vaginal/penile rape and rape by a blood relative.
The panel's recommended definition reads: "Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim."

Emphasis mine. Women's rights activists have been working to get the definition of rape changed so that the victim does not have to be female or the penetration vaginal and with a penis. I wish this work was better known, for obvious reasons.

What about Mendelsohn's question concerning the victim's gender and the answer to that question given in the article:

WHAT if it had been a 10-year-old girl in the Penn State locker room that Friday night in 2002?

...

Does anyone believe that if a burly graduate student had walked in on a 58-year-old man raping a naked little girl in the shower, he would have left without calling the police and without trying to rescue the girl? But the victim in this case was a boy, and so Mr. McQueary left and called his dad (who didn’t seem to think that it was a matter for the police either).

Perhaps Mendelsohn is right. Perhaps he is wrong. I really don't know*.

But the accused man, Jerry Sandusky, was very powerful. Would such power somehow not have had any effect if the alleged victim had been a ten-year-old girl? I doubt that.

I applaud these gentlemen for writing on the topic of rape. It is important to shed as much light on the evil consequences of rape and sexual abuse. If these articles help the survivors of sexual abuse to come forward and seek help when help is needed, they have paid for themselves.

At the same time, I hope that the work feminists have done in the area was better known, that we didn't always slide towards another round of Oppression Olympics and that future articles on the sexual abuse of boys didn't have to end with these sorts of statements:

But true masculinity, like true sportsmanship, contains other virtues, too: forthrightness, honesty, fair play, courage in difficult situations, readiness to acknowledge error, concern for the weak as well as admiration for the strong. In their handling of Mr. Sandusky, the leaders of Penn State’s legendary football program failed to display a single one of these qualities.

Emphasis mine.
-------------
*Mostly because the answer depends on the way he posed the question. There's the problem of how sexual abusers of children choose the place for the abuse. By focusing on events that allegedly happened in men's locker-room, Mendelsohn adds something to the basic question he wants to ask about the treatment of girls and boys as victims of sexual abuse, and that is the presence of a girl in an all-male space.

But those who sexually abuse young girls will not do so in an all-male environment such as showers for men, because they are more likely to be caught. Both boys and girls are more likely to be abused in a setting where the abuse can be masked as something more innocent.

Ideally, Mendelsohn should have asked whether people are more likely to acknowledge the rape of a ten-year-old girl than a ten-year-old boy. The environment in which those are most likely to happen are not necessarily the same.

In some countries ten-year-old girls can be legally married off. This suggests that getting answers to such a question on worldwide level might be tricky.

Pertinent Comments About The Thanksgiving Meal

Thanksgiving is an American (and Canadian) holiday. The American version takes place this Thursday. Here's a funny cartoon (courtesy of noblejoanie) for those of you who celebrated this holiday as children.

Holidays are never the same if you did not celebrate them as children, because so much of the anticipation and the emotions of it all depend on those memories being re-awakened. This means that I always stand outside the Thanksgiving holiday, even when I participate in it.

But be not sad for me! This means that I don't have to eat pumpkin pie! I hate pumpkin pie. Pumpkin is a vegetable, like a turnip, and should not masquerade as a delectable dessert. That, my sweet and erudite friends, is cruelty! So is not letting me just eat the crust.

Now yell at me.

The Occupy Movement And Women

This is an interesting take on why there are more men than women in the various Occupy protests:

Women may be the 51%, but the Occupy camps and General Assemblies look as gender-imbalanced as Congress

...

Thus far I've visited eight Occupations in the U.S. and Canada, four on the West coast and four on the East: Toronto, New York City, Baltimore, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, the University of California at Berkeley and Oakland.
The only GA that had anywhere near gender parity was the largest one there's been yet -- the GA on the day of the general strike at U.C. Berkeley. The largest GAs will only turn out 500 people max; Zuccotti Park is a tiny granite slab in lower Manhattan and can't fit many more than that. But the Mario Savio Steps at Sproul Hall at Berkeley held more than 4,000 students and activists -- and half of them appeared to be female. (Go Bears!)

...

But when it comes to women, Occupy is really a microcosm of the greater culture at large. This should give comfort to those who find Occupy's dynamics puzzling -- and greatly embarrass those in the movement who see themselves as revolutionaries. America's gender conflict fault-lines are making a familiar reappearance inside Occupy, with results both predictable and novel.
I'm not the only one to notice the Occupy gender gap. This issue is talked about at GAs, I'm told, a lot. Nearly every night at Occupy LA, the question comes up: "What can we do to get more women out here?"

That initial comparison to the US Congress may be misleading in this particular case. The reasons why so few women end up in the Congress have much to do with American still-sexist beliefs about who should wield power and with the two-party-winner-takes-all system. But a female member of the House or the Senate does not face a greater risk of rape or sexual harassment by just being there. A female member of the Occupy movement very well may.

I think of it this way: Every person thinking about joining an Occupy-protest somewhere must weigh the pros and cons of that decision, and those cons are a longer list for a woman, especially if she is going alone.

This is because the protests are open, take place in public areas with large crowds milling about and the presence of the police is not necessarily a sign of greater security. Indeed the article I link to suggests (though does not prove) that women may have a higher probability of getting arrested than men. Even if that is not the case, women must think of not only the same risks men take but also the additional risks of sexual assault or sexual harassment.

Given all this, one would expect fewer women than men in those protests even if the same percentage of both genders supports the movement.
----
Added later: It's hard to get exact numbers on the gender breakdown and it might be the case that the author of the linked piece got the numbers wrong. That initial reference to the US Congress would give us a much lower percentage of female participants in the protests than is the case. Whether the General Assemblies look like the US Congress I cannot say.

Today's Instructive Video

Michelle Bachmann filling the water glasses before the Republican presidential debate

Capital Gains Taxes: The Worst Thing In The World.

That's what we are often told. If only those poor capital gains were not taxed so harshly (!), all investors would let their money flock here! The "job-creators" (shorthand for very very rich people) suffer because of that fifteen percent tax on long-term capital gains! It's an economic imperative to stop taxing capital gains!

So say several Republican presidential candidates, including Herman Cain and Rick Perry:

Two Republican presidential candidates, Herman Cain and Rick Perry, have proposed tax reform proposals to stimulate the economy and spur job growth. Both proposals share many desirable attributes, such as simplifying the complex tax code, lowering the corporate tax rate to become globally competitive again, eliminating the death tax and capital gains tax to increase capital mobility, eliminating taxes on repatriated foreign earnings of U.S. multinational companies so they make investments at home, and maintaining revenue neutrality so the tax cuts will not add to the federal budget deficits.

Bolds are mine, the biased writing is by the link I quote.

Huntsman would also eliminate capital gains taxes for all, Romney only for middle class tax-payers. Obama would eliminate this tax for "small businesses."

Why am I writing about something so boring? Because of this:

The top 0.1%–  about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million–  are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.

Assuming these numbers are true, what would be the impact of zero capital gains taxes on economic inequality in the United States? The richest of the very rich would pay zero taxes on 60% of their income!

It's like looking at the hairy underbelly of the Republican ideology, it is. Those Republican presidential candidates are openly asking the extremely rich to be released from income taxes, and the Republican commentators think that is an excellent idea.

Woman the Shopper. Man the Scientist. A Funny Sci-Fi Story

You can read it in the Nature magazine. It is about two extremely intelligent science guys sent out to buy girls' knickers/panties by the wife of one of them, and how these extremely intelligent gentlemen could not find those knickers anywhere, even though their wives easily could. Which means that the knickers are brought in from a parallel universes only women can access. But at least men can do abstract science!

The flavor of the story:

At this point I must digress, and mention, for those who are not aware, the profound differences in strategy between Men Going Shopping and Women Going Shopping. In any general shopping situation, men hunt: that is, they go into a complex environment with a few clear objectives, achieve those, and leave. Women, on the other hand, gather: such that any mission to buy just bread and milk could turn into an extended foraging expedition that also snares a to-die-for pair of discounted shoes; a useful new mop; three sorts of new cook-in sauces; and possibly a selection of frozen fish.
And the interesting thing is — and this is what sparked the discovery — that any male would be very hard pressed to say where she got some of these things, even if he accompanied her.

Verrry good! I like those clear objectives Men The Hunters have, how they enter a complex environment, catch their animal and return home. Now contrast this to the next part of the story:

So there we were, looking for knickers, and a rather wary woman asked if she could help, given that we looked lost and hopeless. Russell explained to her exactly what we were looking for, and her wariness seemed to become mild alarm, until we hastened to reassure her that this was in fact a commission for the mother of said child. She then said, with what seemed to be great satisfaction, “Oh, no; you'll never find those in here — you'll have to go down to [some remote location],” which we had no chance of achieving before they closed, so the whole mission was now a failure.

Mmm. Yes, I know all this falls under the Humorous Stories About Blundering Men. But really, where were those clear objectives and simple strategies?

Others have written about the hidden message in this story to women who would be scientists, so it might be more useful if I wrote about the role practice has here.

Like in practicing by finding where certain items are sold. That practice usually comes from having to do that shopping, over and over and over again. After a while one miraculously learns (from a parallel universe, most likely) that girls' knickers are not available at the fish counter of the local supermarket! Or that the local pharmacy/chemist does not sell snow tires for your car.

And after you learn about those snow tires, you might, while waiting for your car to be shod with them, also pick up some new windshield/windscreen wipers and this neat little snow-scraping appliance which also defrosts the keyholes of the car and serves as an extra flashlight/torch! All that comes from a parallel universe which you can only access through repeated practice and by being on the lookout for certain products.

I astonish myself! I am ruining a perfectly good funny-sci-fi story by pointing out that it's not really that funny if you are not like that smart science guy whose practice in shopping for children's clothing consists of mostly making evo-psycho explanations for why women seem innately better at it.

But it's worth ruining because of the real parallel universe lurking behind this story. In that universe, men are such blundering fools when it comes to shopping or finding their socks that it is really very cute! Besides, no man need ever get any better at those skills because they are innate blunderings, though nicely balanced out by men's scientific superiority.

Katha Pollitt on The Sandusky Case

She writes:

And that brings us to the patriarchal aspect of the Penn State scandal. I know it’s predictable and boring, but come on, people! There really is a message here about masculine privilege: the deification of a powerful old man who can do no wrong, an all-male hierarchy protecting itself (hello, pedophile priests), a culture of entitlement and a truly astonishing lack of concern about sexual violence. This last is old news, unfortunately: sexual assaults by athletes are regularly covered up or lightly punished by administrations, even in high school, and society really doesn’t care all that much. A federal appeals court declared that a Texas cheerleader could be kicked off the squad (and made to contribute to the school’s legal costs) for refusing to cheer her rapist when he took the field—and he’d pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault too, so why was he even still playing? According to USA Today, an athlete accused of a sex crime has a very good chance of getting away with it. If Sandusky had abused little girls, let alone teenage or adult women, would he be in trouble today? Or would we say, like the neighbors of an 11-year-old gang-raped in Cleveland, Texas, that she was asking for it?

And she is quite right. The eleven-year-old in Cleveland, Texas, had her case initially written up in the New York Times as victim-blaming. She wore make-up, she dressed like an adult woman, she went out with the rapists. And where was her mother in all this? That the Times later wrote about the case from a different angle was because of all the criticism the initial write-up provoked.

Even more generally, victim-blaming has been almost totally absent in the Catholic Church cases. This is as it should be, of course. But the same should be applied to female children who have been raped or sexually abused and to their parents.

Today's Pepper-Spray Picture

The deed courtesy of the UC Davis campus police.

I haven't written much on the Occupy movement because others do it well and because I don't have anything to add to the general debate. Still, I see the movement as an attempt at democracy when democracy is no longer truly functioning in this country (or quite a few other countries).

Money and power have married each other, and the rest of us are offered only slates of candidates which money and power have pre-picked. Is it even possible to get elected to the US Congress if you don't belong to the very top of the one percent? And by the time you have fund-raised enough for your election campaign, whom do you owe your allegiance?

Blogging While Female

Sadie Doyle writes about Internet misogyny, a topic I also wrote about a while ago.

The topic Sadie covers is not for laughs but this is hilarious:

Last October, cartoonist Gabby Schulz published a comic about Internet sexism. Titled, in part, “How Every Single Discussion About Sexism And Woman-Type Stuff On The Internet Has Ever Happened,” it detailed a familiar cycle: Man says sexist thing, woman responds, men shout at woman, etc.
Within 24 hours, “men’s rights” blog The Spearhead fulfilled Schultz’s prophecy. Their post, titled “Feminist Cartoonist Bemoans Online Resistance, Claims She is Enslaved by Patriarchy When Men Disagree With Her,” sniffed that Schultz’s cartoon “supposedly depicts what happened when she called some guy sexist.” Predictably sexist comments followed: “I bet ole Gabby is soaking wet with all the attention shes getting tonight,” one Spearhead commenter opined. ”Shut the fuck up you stupid cunt,” wrote another. Yet another wrote, “I am not being sexist when I say I do think your point of view is lesbic: you seem to despise all men.” Schulz reports receiving death threats.
So far, so predictable. Except for one tiny detail: Gabby Schulz is a guy. His biography — easily accessible from the offending post — shows him with a full beard, and uses the pronoun “him.” The comic was based on a controversy surrounding cartoonist Kate Beaton. But many harassers had no inclination to fact-check: If someone named “Gabby” didn’t like sexism, that someone had to be a self-pitying girl.

Speaking of hilarious trolling, I get a big laugh from those trolls who tell me I obviously cannot think at all or who correct me in the field of my doctorate because they took an intro course once, and me being but a feeble-minded foaming c***t must be corrected. It really is funny.

Asshattery is not gender-linked, as such, but the patronizing and loud teachery tone without any actual listening is an odd perk we female bloggers get.

Here Under the Northern Star. A Musical Interlude.

This is a Finnish song which is supposed to be quite hard to sing. I think its sole aim in life is to present as many Finnish h-sounds as possible. But I have a soft spot for the sadness of it all.

A rough translation:

1.

Here under the Northern Star
on the highest of hills
I look far into distance
you return to my dreams.

Here under the Northern Star
the sky fills with purple
it makes me a blanket
to shelter me.

2.

And under the Northern Star
I come
I leave
and only in the sight of the Northern Star
I shed a tear for you.

3.

Here under the Northern Star
a singer is full of sorrows
here the moon gibbous
is also melancholic

Here under the Northern Star
frost slides into the soul
and by killing all feeling
it rips the heart apart.

Repeat of 2.
Repeat of 1.
Repeat of 2.
Repeat of 2.

Sniff.

Comfort the Afflicted And Afflict the Comfortable. The Media and the Sandusky Case.

The quote, attributed to Peter Dunne, is one way of defining the moral task of the press. That this task has been slowly drowning in the she-said-he-said-and-some-people-say ocean of pretend-neutrality has made me very sad and angry.

Hence my pleasure in finding that at least some in the press are doing their jobs on the Sandusky child abuse allegations. Otherwise I would not have learned of the conflict-of-interest problems of Leslie Dutchcot, the judge who granted Sandusky bail:

The judge who freed Jerry Sandusky on bail that was lower than prosecutors requested -- and said he didn't require an ankle monitor -- has not only volunteered for Sandusky's Second Mile charity but also reportedly benefited from a fundraiser organized by a Second Mile official.

Now she has been replaced as the judge in the Sandusky hearings by an out-of-county judge. The reason? This:

“Due to the unique circumstances surrounding this case, it was essential that every precaution be taken to ensure all legal proceedings occur without the appearance of bias on the part of the judicial system,” said Vereb.
“With this particular case, it would have been extremely difficult to find a judge without some connection to Penn State, The Second Mile or any alleged victims. Assigning the case to an out-of-county judge takes away any hint of bias or conflict of interest.”

Probably. But that quote reminds us that the comfortable lunch with the comfortable, fund-raise with the comfortable and in general move within a tight circle consisting of other quite-comfortable-thank-you folks. And this is the reason why the press cannot live inside that same circle.

The most recent installment of the Sandusky allegations has to do with the mysterious disappearing files at Second Mile, the charity which Sandusky appears to have used for grooming boys:

According to unnamed Times' sources, investigators served subpoenas on the Second Mile to learn the names of every child who dealt with the foundation. Members of the charity's board of directors learned recently that records from 2000 to 2003 were missing.
The charity has since located the records from one of those years, the newspaper reported, but the rest remain gone.
"It could be that they are just lost, but under the circumstances it is suspicious," a law enforcement official involved in the case told the Times.

I hope those files turn up. But whether they do or not, it is important to learn that they are currently missing.

It may be worth pointing out that the way I read "comfortable" and "afflicted" in that quotation is not necessarily based on material wealth but on societal power. Those who think that laws apply to only little people, those who buy their way out of problems which would send others to prison, those are the comfortable. If the press does not afflict them, who will?

Why Must We Do This? On How Male and Female Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse Might Differ. May Trigger.

An article discussing male survivors of childhood sexual abuse covers much useful material and many opinions. Its relevance is obvious in view of the Sandunsky case.

But read this section of the piece:

Different experience for boys 


Sexual abuse has a different impact on boys than on girls, and they deal with it differently because of socialization, experts say.
“Men aren’t supposed to be victims. Men are supposed to be strong,” said Jim Hopper, clinical instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. “A man says I’m not a real man, because I let someone do this to me. I should have been tougher. Even after years of therapy they say this.”
Girls who are abused by men are psychologically damaged, to be sure, experts say, but boys abused by men often come to question their sexual identity and orientation.
“If they were sexually abused by a man, there’s this whole stigma — does that mean I’m gay, or did he do it to me because I look gay?” says Hopper.
Another difference: Boys who are forced into sexual acts may have an erection — a physiological response which makes them all the more confused and ashamed of the encounter, Gartner says.

I am not an expert in this field, but is it not the case that female victims of rape or other sexual abuse can feel sexual arousal and even orgasm? I'm pretty sure that I have read about that and the way it can cause feelings of shame and confusion.

If that's the case, the last difference mentioned is not an actual difference.

What about the second-but-last difference? The article compares two different types of abuse. In one type, adult men abuse young girls. In the other type, adult men abuse young boys. That male victims of the latter type of abuse are more likely to question their sexual identity and orientation may not be because they are boys. It may be because their abuser was of the same sex.

To properly compare boys and girls here the abusers should all be of the same gender as the victims or all of a different gender than the victims.

Finally, the first difference mentioned in the article: How boys are not expected to be victims. When you turn that around you get to the conclusion that girls ARE expected to be victims. I understand what the expert means here and I agree that this is a problem in getting the survivors to come forward when they need help.

At the same time, that's the part where I asked myself why we must do this? Why can't all victims of sexual abuse be taken equally seriously? Why must an article tell us how it might be harder if you are not viewed as born weak and a potential victim anyway? There are better ways of framing the important information about the difficulties men may face when seeking help.

A Fascinating Interview

With the 84-year-old Seattle activist, Dorli Rainey, who got pepper-sprayed by the Seattle police. I like the idea of taking just one step out of one's comfort zone when it comes to activism.

What Is Pat Buchanan Good For?

Atrios gives him the World's Worst Person badge today, because of Pat's clever statements about the obvious link between same-sex marriage and the Sandunsky child abuse case.





I have written about Pat's views on us wimmin in the past. But Pat is an equal-opportunity-bigot, pretty much.

Hence the question in the title of this post. Why is a man like that always invited to political debates on television?

Here's my guess for the answer: The American mainstream media views acceptable political opinions along a half-line. It has an absolute starting point, the most extreme lefty opinions allowed on television, and those tend to be pretty milquetoast ones. No fire-breathing lefties on American television, never.

Indeed, this left end-point used to consist of what I call courteous conservatives. It has been pushed back a bit, but not by much.

The other end point, however, is always the most foaming-at-the-mouth wingnut bigot you can possibly unearth, always! That's why I call the system not a line but a half-line (probably not the real name for something like that), because the right end-point can be moved further and further out, so that it always allows for the extremest of the extremists!

I don't mind having Buchanan on television, not at all. What I DO mind is that we are not allowed to have his lefty equivalent on television.

This imbalance works out equally strongly when it comes to feminism, by the way. The anti-feminists always get invited to the shows, the so-called feminist side might consist of only the interviewing journalists who try to take a middle-of-the-road or he-says-she-says-but-some-people-believe stance.

All US mainstream debates are biased by the way the extreme opinions are picked, and the bias works in favor of the conservative and anti-feminist views.

Very Proud of Myself

I spent five hours yesterday driving in Boston. To explain why that makes me feel proud and a bigger-than-normal goddess may not be possible for those of you who have never driven in Boston. It is an experience.

I don't think there was a single casualty! No cars were harmed during the day! And I only collapsed after I got back to the Snakepit Inc.

P.S. I tried to find a video of Boston drivers but none on the YouTube can compete with reality.