This is an article I wrote in 2003. I thought I’d lost it because it was removed from the page where it was originally published, and I’d failed to stash a copy securely and couldn’t find it on the internet archive. Then just now I realized what the right search term would be to find it, and sure enough it was. So I’m publishing it again.

There is a famous morality tale in Herodotus.

Darius…called together some of the Greeks…and asked them what they would take to eat their dead fathers. They said that no price in the world would make them do so. After that Darius summoned those of the Indians who are called Callatians, who do eat their parents, and, in the presence of the Greeks…, asked them what price would make them burn their dead fathers with fire. They shouted aloud, “Don’t mention such horrors!” These are matters of settled custom, and I think Pindar is right when he says, “Custom is king of all.” [3, 38. David Grene translation]

Herodotus noticed twenty-five centuries ago what people go on noticing today: customs and taboos differ from one society to another, one town to another, one household to another. Some people think circumcision is disgusting, some think its absence is; some think female genital mutilation is repugnant, others think female genitals in their pre-mutilation state are. Chinese women used to find unbound feet just as ugly and crude and silly-looking as men did; they endured the pain and crippling of binding, and forced it on their daughters and grandaughters. The result was generations of women who could barely walk and couldn’t possibly run, but were proud owners of the lotus foot – a foot which, by being folded in half, created a new orifice just the right size for an erect penis. Custom is king of all.

Such customs and taboos, however arbitrary and even harmful they may be, have their uses. They help create and reinforce group solidarity and loyalty. They’re yet another way of demarcating and emphasizing that highly prized difference between Us and Them, Our People and Those Other People, Self and Other. Like many animals, humans organize their lives around what Freud in one of his moments of lucidity called the narcissism of minor differences: Friend and Stranger, Greek and Barbarian, Home and Away, Blue and Green, Man United and Liverpool, Big Endian and Little Endian, Native and Alien. Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Jew, believer and infidel – it’s all too obvious where this goes. People in 16th Century France slaughtered each other in wholesale lots over a drop of wine and a bit of bread. The Indian Mutiny of 1857 is said to have been triggered partly by the use of beef tallow to lubricate guns. The issues involved can seem staggeringly trivial, but to some at least the payoff in arousing and engorging the sensation of loyalty and Hurrah for our team is worth it.

Desire for that invidious thrill of belonging is no doubt what motivates the relentless nagging about Family Values in the US over the past twenty years or so. Forget all that Wider Community stuff, forget going down to Mississippi to try to help undo some of their more vicious and destructive taboos and group loyalties and untraversable borders, forget famines in Ethiopia or little wars in Asia, just stick to your own clan and let other people stick to theirs. Nobody really gives a damn about anybody but relatives, after all, so let’s just all hunker down in our own tiny group. I had a senior relative who used to rebuke my misbehavior when I was a child by saying sternly ‘We don’t do that in this house,’ which always made me dislike him quite a lot, but no doubt gave him a thrill.

It’s a popular thrill, saying ‘We don’t do that here.’ Leon Kass, chair of the Council on Bioethics in the Bush administration, wrote a famous article for The New Republic in 1997, entitled ‘The Wisdom of Repugnance.’ ‘Repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power to express it,’ he said. But this business of repugnance we can’t quite articulate should give us pause – should make us come to a screeching halt, in fact. Why can’t we articulate it? Could it be because there is nothing to articulate? If we have good reasons for doing or not doing a thing, aren’t we normally able to put them in words? ‘Because I said so’ is all right when telling children what to do, because who has time to explain every single thing to a five-year-old, but for an actual official indeed presidential council, one expects a little more. Arm-waving and saying ‘I can’t explain’ don’t really match the job description.

Especially since people have always ‘just somehow known’ in their guts or their hearts or their gluteus maximus, without being able to say why, all sorts of things that the world would be better off if they hadn’t just known. That Africans should be slaves, that Jews were polluting Germany, that women should be kept under house arrest at all times, that witches should be burnt, that the races must never mix. We’re all too adept at thinking what we’re not used to is inherently disgusting. John Ruskin never consummated his marriage because he thought his wife’s pubic hair was disgusting. He’d never seen a living naked woman before, only paintings and statues, and he wasn’t used to it. No doubt he thought it was very wrong of Effie to have it. All sorts of things are disgusting. Slimy wet rotting vegetation is disgusting, pus is disgusting, a swollen decomposing squirrel in the woods is disgusting. But is there any moral content to this disgust? Should the squirrel pull itself together and stop decaying in that nasty way? Should pus take thought and transform itself into peach ice cream?

Habit and familiarity have a great deal (though not everything) to do with what people find disgusting but very little to do with ethics. Cruelty, exploitation, injustice, violence don’t become better with repetition, they only become easier for the perpetrators, such as the regular guys turned obedient Jew-killers of Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men. Disgust is good clean fun and provides endless amusement for children, but it’s worthless as a moral compass. Saying ‘Ew, ick, yuk, gross,’ and saying ‘That’s wrong’ are two different things. It’s a long-standing confusion, going back to Plato if not farther, to think the beautiful is the good and the good is the beautiful, but it’s not necessarily so.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I wish I could find a better source for this story than Murdoch’s New York Post…

After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.

But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

It was kept secret and remains so today.

President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report.

Not just redacted, not just covered with black lines, but blank pages where approximately 7,200 words should have been.

A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.

Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. So they’ve proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report, “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally.

The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.

Hmm. A few years ago when the Saudi king visited the British queen, Jack Straw talked some emetic garbage about our shared values. Hmm.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A different set of battle-lines…The Guardian reports via the AP in Delhi:

An Indian diplomat said US authorities subjected her to a strip search, cavity search and DNA swabbing following her arrest on visa charges in New York, despite her “incessant assertions of immunity”.

The case has sparked widespread outrage in India and infuriated the New Delhi government, which revoked privileges for US diplomats to protest against the woman’s treatment. It has cast a pall over India-US relations…

Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York, was arrested on Thursday outside her daughter’s Manhattan school on charges that she lied on a visa application about how much she paid her housekeeper, an Indian national.

Prosecutors say the maid received less than $3 (£1.80) per hour for her work.

The “widespread outrage in India” is apparently all for the diplomat, none of it for the maid who was paid less than half the minimum wage. Hmm.

In an email published in Indian media on Wednesday, Khobragade said she was treated like a common criminal.

“I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, in a holdup with common criminals and drug addicts were all being imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity,” she wrote.

Oh, like a common criminal, as opposed to like a rich person who paid her servant poverty-level wages.

Khobragade’s case has touched a nerve in India, where the fear of public humiliation resonates strongly and heavy-handed treatment by the police is normally reserved for the poor. For an educated, middle-class woman to face public arrest and a strip search is almost unimaginable, except in the most brutal crimes.

Well that says it all. Horrible treatment is reserved for the poor, while prosperous people go first class even when arrested. Imagine a system in which all suspects get basic rights and no suspects get to go first class.

Prosecutors say Khobragade claimed on visa application documents that she paid her Indian maid $4,500 a month, but that she actually paid her less than $3 an hour. Khobragade has pleaded not guilty and plans to challenge the arrest on grounds of diplomatic immunity.

Marie Harf, the US state department deputy spokeswoman, said Khobragade did not have full diplomatic immunity. Instead, she has consular immunity from the jurisdiction of US courts only with respect to acts performed in the exercise of consular functions.

Oh gee, so underpaying her servant and lying about it on visa application documents isn’t part of the exercise of consular functions? Who knew.

Funny thing: I read about this via Priyamvada Gopal’s Twitter feed. On this subject, I like her take.

Priyamvada Gopal @PriyamvadaGopal

India–where it’s normal for middle class women to treat poor women like crap but be above the law themselves. Where is the real scandal?

‘I’m elite, not common, like my maid’. Strip-searched Indian diplomat: I was treated like a common criminal by US http://t.gu.com/rSxkY 

Indian diplomat underpays servant, misleads on visa app, breaks US law- and SHE’S the victim? And NYPD shd treat *all* with more dignity.

Quite. Well said.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

From the Southern Poverty Law Center:

The Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit in federal court today to stop pervasive anti-LGBT bullying and harassment committed by students – and even faculty members and administrators – within the schools of Mississippi’s Moss Point School District.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Destin Holmes, a district student who endured such severe harassment she was eventually driven out of school. She temporarily left the district in March 2012 to be homeschooled after the then-principal at Magnolia Junior High School called her a “pathetic fool” and told her, “I don’t want a dyke in this school.”

The principal. Not a classmate, but the principal. One who is supposed to have a fully developed prefrontal cortex, and thus supposed to be able to control sadistic impulses. (Also, one would think it would be part of the job description, however implicitly. “Calling the students names? Right out.”)

During her time at Magnolia Junior High School, students and district staff called Destin slurs such as “it,” “freak” and “he-she.” Destin heard such insults as many as 20 times a day. She also was denied access to the girls’ restroom by a teacher. Another teacher even refused to allow her to participate in a classroom activity where teams were divided by gender because Destin – according to the teacher – was an “in-between it.”

The lawsuit describes how Destin and other students perceived as LGBT were subjected to anti-LGBT slurs on a daily basis and were physically threatened or attacked by peers. While many of these abuses occurred in front of teachers or were reported to school officials, school personnel did little to stop the abuse.

The harassment took a severe toll on Destin. Even after she threatened suicide, school officials failed to take appropriate action. When a social worker providing mental health services for Destin met with the then-principal about the need to stop the harassment, the principal said he wouldn’t follow the social worker’s suggestions because “when you are in my school, you follow my lead since I allow you to be here.”

That principal seems to be confused. He seems to think he’s a dictator rather than a junior high school principal. Junion high principals don’t have as much arbitrary power as dictators have. This junior high principal doesn’t seem to know that.

Destin talks about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvvlAQ2vUqw

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

As Rosie mentioned in a comment, the telltale link in Gopal’s article that I pointed out yesterday has been silently removed. I call that sneaky. It’s sneaky to correct a mistake silently instead of acknowledging it.

Here is the passage now:

I want to raise this because of the deft way in which Student Rights, an offshoot of the bullishly paternalist Euro-American think tank, the Henry Jackson Society, has managed to bring ‘gender segregation’ at some campus events to national attention despite evidence that events in which the audience is so segregated are not numerous. 

Yesterday, as I wrote, there was a link on “to national attention” and the link was to channel 4 on the protest – as is visible in the url:

http://www.channel4.com/news/universities-uk-uuk-gender-segregation-demo-protest

As I wrote, that link was either a gross misrepresentation or an equally gross mistake, because the Henry Jackson Society had nothing to do with that protest. Apparently Rationalist UK saw the point, and that’s why it removed the link – but since the article had already been published, and read by quite a few people, and discussed – Rationalist UK should have openly corrected the mistake, not just disappeared it.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Maryam was on the BBC World Service yesterday to debate a woman from Hizb-Ut-Tahrir.

Her opponent made me squirm with anger and revulsion.

You can listen via Maryam’s link.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Via Helen Dale* on Facebook, Priyamvada Gopal on gender segregation and the politics of same.

Ours is not an easy moment at which to practice a simultaneous commitment to anti-racism, equality and social justice. It’s a particularly testing time for progressive people who affiliate in some way to Britain’s ethnic and religious minority communities, among whom Muslims are under unprecedented attack. For us, it is especially difficult to practise a commitment to gender equality and social change in a context so heavily shaped by an intolerant Western ‘liberalism’ passing itself off as ‘secular’, ‘enlightened’ and more knowing-than-thou.

That doesn’t bode well.

In the wake of Student Rights’ aggressive campaign, which clearly targeted Islamic student groups, Universities UK – not a body known for championing social justice – issued guidance indicating that voluntary gender segregation of an audience at the request of a speaker at guest lectures was acceptable. The advice was withdrawn when the Equalities and Human Rights Commission deemed this advice discriminatory. The battle lines were drawn once again between so-called ‘muscular liberals’ (generally, in fact, deeply conservative white males with a commitment to the idea that West is Best) and defenders of the rights of minorities to their own customary or traditional practices.

I’m not a deeply conservative white male. I’m white, but not the rest of it. Maryam isn’t a deeply conservative white male. Chris and Abhishek aren’t what I understand by “deeply conservative” – in fact, the reality is that people who are deeply conservative approve of gender segregation. One of the ways to be deeply conservative is to oppose all the advances in women’s rights over the past century or two. That’s just a bit of rhetorical bullying.

And then “the rights of minorities to their own customary or traditional practices” – is she really standing up for the  the rights of minorities to their own customary or traditional practice of segregating women from men? Is she really blind to the fact that “minorities” are no more monolithic than any other group, and that people within minorities and communities and all the other buzzwords themselves disagree about customary or traditional practices?

As a matter of fact that last line is far more “deeply conservative” than anything Maryam or I or anyone else said in criticism of gender segregation. On the one hand conservatism is bad when it’s a stick to beat liberals with, on the other hand it’s good when it belongs to imaginary monolithic “minorities.”

I grew up in a context where gender segregation in many public spaces is common and ostensibly voluntary but far from making me comfortable with custom, it caused me and others concern. It did not take the proverbial ‘decent, nice, liberal’ Europeans to get us to ask what segregation meant in both ideological and institutional terms. Many Muslim women and men, individuals and organisations, have also long queried such practices and, regrettably, such voices are often pushed to the side.

No kidding, and we never said it did take the proverbial ‘decent, nice, liberal’ Europeans to get us to ask what segregation meant. We didn’t say that at all. On the contrary, we kept pointing out that many Muslims want nothing to do with gender segregation and that UUK was trying to appease a reactionary faction of Muslims at the expense of more liberal and/or relaxed ones.

To be continued.

*Helen is not a fan of Gopal’s article.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Have a heartwarming story because why not. It’s a reunion story. I love reunions. I’m like Shakespeare in that way (and no other) – he was always staging separations so that he could stage reunions in Act 5. Cymbeline, for instance; there are so many reunions at the end of that play you have no idea who half the reunited characters are, but you soak your hanky just the same.

This reunion is a little girl and her stuffed friend Roar, whom she accidentally left on a train from York to London. Someone named Lauren found Roar at King’s Cross and posted pictures on Twitter.

She took a lot of pictures of Roar having adventures while waiting to be found, and they’re very funny and touching. Check them out for yourself. Having tea, at a pub, at the panto, at a hotel, on a morning walk on the quay in Newcastle, on the train back to London.

The Twitter saga worked and the little girl who lost Roar, who was devastated, is now happy again. Heartwarming eh? Go ahead, laugh; I don’t care.

Update: I forgot to mention: the tweet before the Roar series is an RT of Robin Ince. It all makes sense.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)