In ‘white man’s burden’ style

Oct 13th, 2012 3:34 pm | By

On the wonderful Pakistani Atheists and Agnostics Facebook page the other day, a friend posted a link to an obnoxious sneery article on Racialicious about the Half the Sky PBS series. She was infuriated by it. She was right.

…the PBS film Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women, a well-publicized neo-liberal “odyssey through Asia and Africa” hosted by everyone’s favorite white savior New York Times reporter, Nikolas Kristof.

Well that’s a shitty start. “Neo-liberal”? No. Neo-liberal is libertarian free market gospeller; the film wasn’t about that.  ”White savior”? That’s just offensive.

…in ‘white man’s burden’ style, Kristof even says at one point, “When you have won the lottery of life that there is some obligation some responsibility we have to discharge.”

Yes, he does say that, but in context it’s clear that he’s not doing a “white man’s burden” number. He’s saying what’s true: some people have the good luck of not being born into horrendous circumstances – like for instance being a prostitute because that’s your subcaste and you’re not allowed to do anything else – while other people don’t, and it is only ethical for the former to use their good luck to try to improve that of the latter. Would it be better to ignore people who have not won the lottery of life? Are selfishness and indifference better?

Perhaps reflecting this sense of noblesse oblige, the film is based on an amazingly problematic premise: the camera crew follows Kristof as he travels to various countries in the Global South to examine issues of violence against women–from rape in Sierra Leone, to sex trafficking in Cambodia, from maternal mortality and female genital cutting in Somaliland, to intergenerational prostitution in India. Because, hey, all the histories and cultures and situations of these countries are alike, right? (Um, no.)

No. So what? They all do have something in common, certainly.

There are plenty of critiques I could make of Kristof’s reporting (in this film and beyond, see this great round-up of critiques for more). Critiques about voyeurism and exotification: the way that global gender violence gets made pornographic, akin to what has been in other contexts called “poverty porn.”

For example, would Kristof, a middle-aged male reporter, so blithely ask a 14-year-old U.S. rape survivor to describe her experiences in front of cameras, her family, and other onlookers? Would he sit smilingly in a European woman’s house asking her to describe the state of her genitals to him? Yet, somehow, the fact that the rape survivor is from Sierra Leone and that the woman being asked about her genital cutting is from Somaliland, seems to make this behavior acceptable in Kristof’s book. And more importantly, the goal of such exhibition is unclear. What is the viewer supposed to receive–other than titillation and a sense of “oh, we’re so lucky, those women’s lives are so bad”?

Identification, for one thing. Empathy. Interest. Engagement. Solidarity. A desire to do something useful. Awareness of what kind of thing needs to be done.

Why would the opposites of all these be better?

The issue of agency is also paramount. In the graduate seminar I teach on Narrative, Health, and Social Justice in the Master’s Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, I often ask my students to evaluate a text’s ethical stance by asking themselves–“whose story is it?” For example, are people of color acting or being acted upon? Although the film does highlight fantastic on-the-ground activists such as maternal-health activist Edna Adan of Somaliland, the point of entry–the people with whom we, the (presumably) Western watchers, are supposed to identify–are Kristof and his actress sidekick-du-jour.

Bullshit. Edna Adan was far from peripheral. At other times, yes, the outsiders did serve as a kind of bridge, because they’re the naive newcomers who have to be told everything and shown everything. But is that a bad thing? Not that I can see. They come across as incompetent, and we feel incompetent with them, and we also learn along with them. We’re the novice outsiders and the people we’re visiting are knowledgeable and informed. I thought the show did a pretty good job of that.

Although a few passing comments are made about rape, coerced sex work, and other gender-based violence existing everywhere in the world–including in the U.S., hello?!–the point that is consistently reiterated in the film is that gender oppression is “worse” in “these countries”–that it is a part of “their culture.” In fact, at one point, on the issue of female genital cutting, Kristof tells actress Diane Lane, “That may be [their] culture, but it’s also a pretty lousy aspect of culture.”

There’s nothing that smacks more of “us and them” talk than these sorts of statements about “their culture.” Postcultural critic Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak, in fact, coined the term “white men saving brown women from brown men” to describe the imperialist use of women’s oppression as justification for political aggression.

Ah well if postcultural critic Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak says it it must be true. She translated Derrida, so she knows.

It goes on in that vein. I won’t cite any more, because life is short. But I think it’s a horrible piece. The author, Sayantani DasGupta, teaches in the “Narrative Medicine” program at Columbia. The what? Yes.

 

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



Creepshots

Oct 13th, 2012 12:02 pm | By

The outing of Reddit’s “Violentacrez” is all over the place. He’s one of Reddit’s most loathsome users (members? denizens? occupants? what’s the right word?), and Adrian Chen outed him on Gawker as one Michael Brutsch, who works at a Texas financial services company  as a programmer.

Loathsome how?

His speciality is distributing images of scantily-clad underage girls, but as Violentacrez he also issued an unending fountain of racism, porn, gore, misogyny, incest, and exotic abominations yet unnamed, all on the sprawling online community Reddit. At the time I called Brutsch, his latest project was moderating a new section of Reddit where users posted covert photos they had taken of women in public, usually close-ups of their asses or breasts, for a voyeuristic sexual thrill. It was called “Creepshots.”

Oh. That’s how.

There’s more.

Reddit’s laissez-faire attitude towards offensive speech has led to a vast underbelly that rivals anything on the notorious cesspool 4chan. And with Jailbait, Violentacrez decided to create a safe space for people sexually attracted to underage girls to share their photo stashes. I would call these people pedophiles; the Jailbait subreddit called them “ephebophiles.” Jailbait was the online equivalent of systematized street harassment. Users posted snapshots of tween and teenage girls, often in bikinis and skirts. Many of these were lifted from their Facebook accounts and thrown in front of Jailbait’s 20,000 horny subscribers.

Violentacrez and his fellow moderators worked hard to make sure every girl on jailbait was underage, diligently deleting any photos whose subjects seemed older than 16 or 17. Violentacrez himself posted hundreds of photos. Jailbait became one of Reddit’s most popular subreddits, generating millions of pageviews a month. “Jailbait” was for a time the second biggest search term bringing traffic to Reddit, after “Reddit.” Eventually, Jailbait landed on CNN, where Anderson Cooper called out Reddit for hosting it, and Violentacrez for creating it. The ensuing outcry led Reddit administrators to reluctantly ban Jailbait, and all sexually suggestive content featuring minors.

Oh gee – killjoys. Meanies. Prudes, cunts, bitchez. How dare anyone intefere with people stalking and endangering underage girls.

Since Brutsch stumbled on Reddit from a link on the internet culture blog Boing Boing in 2007, he has pushed the boundaries of Reddit’s free-speech culture. He has done this mostly through creating offensive subreddits to troll sensitive users. Some of the sections Violentacrez created or moderated were called:

  • Chokeabitch
  • Niggerjailbait
  • Rapebait
  • Hitler
  • Jewmerica
  • Misogyny
  • Incest

No Genocidebait? That would be hilarious.

Violentacrez explained his trolling philosophy to the internet culture website the Daily Dot in August of 2011. He had sparked yet another controversy by posting a graphic image of a partially clothed woman being brutally beaten by a large man, in “beatingwomen,” a subreddit dedicated to glorifying violence against women. A Redditor had called out the picture in a post, and it was voted to the front page.

“People take things way too seriously around here,” Violentacrez said. ” I was not surprised by the outrage of the person who made the post, because I see it all the time. What was surprising was the community support for it. Most posts that complain about these things never do very well, and are quickly buried or deleted. I think it’s interesting how many people defend my right to act the way I do, while decrying my posts themselves.”

A troll exploits social dynamics like computer hackers exploit security loopholes, and Violentacrez calmly exploited the Reddit hive mind’s powerful outrage machine and free speech values at the same time.

It was this pattern, repeated to various degrees dozens of times, that made Violentacrez an unlikely hero to many of the white male geeks who make up Reddit’s hard core. They saw Violentacrez as a champion in the fight against the oppressive schoolmarms…

Yup. I’ve written about the “schoolmarm” hatefigure before. My angry reaction to being called that was what got me instantly and permanently banned from the Talking Philosophy blog…and that was three years ago, before the hot new trend of unabashed misogyny landed in theaters near us.

He wasn’t happy about being outed.

He asked a number of times if there was anything he could do to keep me from outing him. He offered to act as a mole for me, to be my “sockpuppet” on Reddit. “I’m like the spy who’s found out,” he said. “I’ll do anything. If you want me to stop posting, delete whatever I posted, whatever. I am at your mercy because I really can’t think of anything worse that could possibly happen. It’s not like I do anything illegal.”

The women in all those “creepshots” didn’t want to be outed. The underage girls in all those photos didn’t want to be outed. Brutsch didn’t worry about them or what they wanted. It’s fine to do it to them, but he begs and pleads not to have it done to him. Miserable fucking bastard.

H/t Beatrice Pteryxx.

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



Malala’s condition is “satisfactory”

Oct 13th, 2012 11:04 am | By

She’s still on a ventilator but her vital organs are “intact and working properly.” The swelling in her head has subsided.

Her two schoolmates are doing better.

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



A note to Al

Oct 13th, 2012 9:42 am | By

Just a quick one. Because he says

I’ve been confirming that I left of my own accord all over the ether, including my farewell post on Ftb, and my Welcome post here, on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

It was Ophelia who decided to let the cat out of the bag several days before I had planned, and posted a piece that insinuated the exact opposite. This left me with a shitload of work to do changing links, redesigning graphics, etc., on a night I planned to spend with my family.

The quick note is just to say that I didn’t know it was a secret. I didn’t know I was letting a cat out of a bag. Part of the reason for that is that the ragey podcast with Reap Paden was already out there. Given the nature of the podcast it didn’t even occur to me that Al was keeping his departure a secret. Maybe it should have, but it didn’t. I didn’t intend to leave Al with a shitload of work on a night he’d planned to spend with his family.

This made me quite angry, but not at FtB as a whole. I still maintain there are a lot of talented writers there, and regardless of anyone’s personal opinion about individual writers, it would be perfectly understandable if they stayed with their favorites.

I’ve commented on this blog, as well as other places, that the only two who’ve been given the boot from FtB have been Thunderf00t and Laden, and that JT, Dan, John, etc., left on their own accord, as well.

There are, however, individuals at FtB who are REALLY starting to piss me off – and the results will be predictable, and not pretty at all.

Got it. We can look forward to another ragey podcast, with extra added fucking bitches and stupid cunts. Noted.

Update: I forgot to say that it’s just not true that I “insinuated” that Al had been pushed out of FTB as opposed to deciding to leave. That’s a falsehood.

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



A hit, a palpable hit

Oct 12th, 2012 4:40 pm | By

In a comment by adriana at Stephanie’s.

One interesting fact about this whole affair of rejection of feminism or the word feminism, is that a bunch of atheists (I don’t know how many, but they sure are vocal) think Western women, and especially atheist women in secular democracies, have nothing to complain about. Equality has been reached, according to those people, and misogyny eradicated. Therefore, any complaints of unequal treatment or misogyny are signs of bitchiness, basically.

I hadn’t thought of that before. That’s illuminating.

It certainly seems to fit well with “Dear Muslima” and all the subseqent bullshit that has amounted to amplification of  ”Dear Muslima” – so much amplification that we all feel a bit deaf.

Yeah, we’re just being bitchy when we object to being called bitches and cunts. We’re being bitchy, because hey, Nancy Pelosi, and SUVs, and Real Housewives of New Jersey, and bikini waxes, and slate countertops, and Sex and the City, and Greek yogurt, and contraception. What more do we want?

Biatches.

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



Greta’s father

Oct 12th, 2012 3:37 pm | By

As you may know, Greta’s father just died. She has a wonderful post about him – a daughter’s biography, I would call it, rather than an obituary.

A small excerpt.

My father used to read to us — me and my brother — from fun, brainy books for kids: The Phantom Tollbooth, Alice in Wonderland. His copy of Alice, the Annotated Alice with annotations by Martin Gardner, is the version I fell in love with, the version I still think of as the classic. I learned the poem “Jabberwocky” by heart when I was in third grade. I got the Jabberwock tattooed on my arm when Ingrid gave me a tattoo for my wedding present. And I didn’t just get my dad’s love of Alice. I got his love of ideas. Not a refined, high-falutin’ version of the “life of the mind,” but a delighted, silly, deeply joyful life of the mind: a sense of the playfulness in ideas, a sense of ideas as toys or puzzles or games, a sense of the deep pleasure and straight-up goofy fun that could be found in just tossing ideas around and seeing where they landed.

My father was a math teacher. He never taught me, not in school anyway — he was always careful to never have me in one of his classes — but I knew other kids who had him as a teacher. And the word I got was that he was one of the fun teachers. He was one of the teachers that kids were glad they got. His love of math, his love of the puzzle-and-game aspect of it… it was infectious. There are people in the world now who enjoy math, and aren’t scared of it, because they had my dad as a teacher. And my dad had a love, not just of math, but of the act of teaching itself. He understood that unique pleasure of conveying ideas to other people, the unique pleasure of sharing not only the ideas but the love and the fun of them, the unique pleasure of watching other people not only catch your ideas but run with them in their own direction. I’m not a teacher… but that pleasure is a big part of what motivates me as a writer. And it comes from my dad.

Read it all. There’s a part about being a union organizer at his school, and how risky that was. Read it all.

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



Not simple

Oct 12th, 2012 1:06 pm | By

Update: this probably needs a trigger warning. It is indeed very upsetting.

Speaking of girls, and bullying, and sexualization, and bullying, and name-calling, and bullying…

A girl in Coquitlam, BC, couldn’t wait for it to get better, and killed herself on Wednesday. She left a video telling the story.

“In 7th grade I would go with friends on webcam,” the card in the teen’s hand read.

The next few cards reveal that the teen began to get attention on the Internet from people that she did not know. People who told her she was beautiful, stunning, perfect.

“They wanted me to flash. So I did one year later,” the cards said.

The teen then got a message on Facebook from a stranger who said she needed to show more of herself or he would publish the topless pictures he had taken of her.

“He knew my address, school, relatives, friends, family, names …”

And it went on from there. Anxiety, depression, withdrawal, self-cutting. Bullying. More and more and more bullying. So she killed herself.

The weird thing about this (weird to me) is that I saw it via a tweet by Al Stefanelli, a tweet which was (kind of) aimed at me, in the sense that it quoted something I’d said on his (new-old) blog. I said it as a comment on his post Free Speech, Being Offended and the Role the Internet Plays in the Exchange of Ideas, which (I think) makes the whole thing much too simple.

For fuck’s sake, if something is being said about you or about a subject that you are sensitive to on the Internet in a way that is going to cause you extreme duress, stress you out, or trigger a reaction that will cause you to have a psychological breakdown, the stay the hell away from those spaces. Really, it’s that simple.

No, really, it isn’t. So I commented to that effect. (It wasn’t meant as a hostile gesture. On the contrary, it was meant as a conciliatory one – a maybe we can still keep the conversation going despite your sudden departure gesture.)

But it isn’t that simple. Suppose what is being said about you is both false and defamatory? Suppose it could do you real-world damage? Then just staying the hell away isn’t really a solution, is it.

So you’re over-simplifying, Al. Quite drastically. It’s just not the case that the only harm ever done by any kind of speech including written speech is that it “offends” someone.

Al’s tweet a couple of hours later said

THIS is what ‘real-world damage’ from digital bullying looks like: Teen leaves behind chilling YouTube video

Quoting me, see. But it’s odd, because that’s what I was saying.  Just staying the hell away isn’t always really a solution.

Anyway…the gesture didn’t work, to say the least. Al is angrier than I’d realized. I frankly don’t know why. But the point remains – no, it’s not that simple. This subject isn’t simple.

 

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



A portent?

Oct 12th, 2012 11:45 am | By

The CBC’s Doc Zone had an interesting show last night about the sexualization of children. At one point a group of high school girls were talking about the way porn affects boys, and they said it teaches them to treat girls with contempt and call them bitches, sluts, whores, cunts – you know the drill.

If they’re right, that seems a rather depressing sign for the future.

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



Compiling a list

Oct 12th, 2012 11:11 am | By

This is bad.

Radical Islamists are compiling a list of unmarried mothers in northern Mali, raising fears of cruel punishments such as stoning, amputations and executions, a senior United Nations official said.

In July, they forced a man and a woman into two holes and stoned them to death for committing adultery as terrified residents quietly watched in remote Aguelhok town.

The U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights, who just returned from a visit to Mali, said there are reports that Islamist groups are compiling lists of women who have had children out of wedlock, or who were unmarried and pregnant.

“The threat is there, it’s real and people live with it and they are afraid of those lists,” Ivan Simonovic said. “This could indicate that these women are at imminent risk of being subjected to cruel and inhumane punishment.”

And it’s all just a racket. It’s a big pimping operation.

Women and children face greater risk, he said.

More women in the region are ending up in forced marriages. And with wives costing less than $1,000, husbands are also reselling the women, according to Simonovic.

He said the process is “a smokescreen for enforced prostitution and rapes” occurring in the region.

“Civil and political rights are being severely restricted as a result of the imposition of a strict interpretation of sharia law, and systemic cruel and inhumane punishments are being implemented,” Simonovic said.

The Islamists don’t have to listen to Simonovic so hahaha and neener neener. They can do anything they want to. Simonovic is not the boss of them.

“We don’t have to answer to anyone over the application of sharia,” Islamist commissioner Aliou Toure said in August. “This is the form of Islam practiced for thousands of years.”

No, 1400, actually. Anyway guess what, humans are able to improve over time, so the fact that a practice has been around for a long time does not automatically mean it’s a good practice.

But Toure and his friends have the upper hand, and that’s what counts.

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



How is Malala doing today?

Oct 12th, 2012 10:42 am | By

It appears that she is stable.

On Friday, an international team of neurological specialists said her condition  was stable, but they’re watching her closely…

Tests on Malala went well, doctors said Friday, and her care at a hospital  where she was initially treated was good. She remains in critical condition, but  specialists are satisfied with the situation.

“The next 36 to 48 hours are important,” Major Gen. Asim Bajwa told reporters  in Rawalpindi.

People keep telling us to pray, which is understandable but still annoying. However I do spend some time saying “don’t die don’t die don’t die don’t die” at intervals. Might as well.

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



No money for us? Get out of our church then.

Oct 11th, 2012 5:50 pm | By

The German bishops have told German Catholics that if they don’t give the church money they don’t get the sacraments.

Last month, German bishops warned that if members of the Catholic Church don’t pay the country’s church tax, they’ll be denied the sacraments — including baptisms, weddings and funerals.

In increasingly secular Europe, Germany is one of the few countries where the state collects a special levy from tax-registered believers and hands it over to three organized faiths.

Registered Catholics, Protestants and Jews pay a surcharge of up to 9 percent on their income. The Catholic Church alone received some $6.5 billion in 2011.

$6.5 billion! That’s not a bad chunk of change, especially for putting on fancy dress to pretend there’s a magic sky dude who will make everything come out right. How nice of the state to do the church’s collecting for it.

In issuing the stringent new decree, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the president of the German bishops’ conference, said that not paying taxes for the church is a grave offense, and that sacraments will be banned for those who distance themselves from the church.

“In Germany, the church is a community of faith which coexists alongside the legal system,” Zollitsch said. “The two cannot be separated.”

And if you try, no sacraments for you! Don’t like it, take it up with god.

The bishops issued their decree as church defections are growing. In 2010, when the clerical sex abuse scandal exploded in Germany, nearly 200,000 Catholics left the church. In a normal year, it’s 100,000.

Church statistics show that only 13 percent of Germany’s Catholics attend Mass weekly. And, Weisner says, the majority of those who are observant criticize the church leadership.

So the German bishops have come up with the perfect way to fix that! Threaten and bully!

What could possibly go wrong?

 

 

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



In Pakistan

Oct 11th, 2012 5:40 pm | By

A picture Dil Nawaz shared on Facebook.

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



A guest post by Reap Paden

Oct 11th, 2012 5:28 pm | By

Because it’s far too good to blush unseen in the comments.

Reap Paden says

Allow me to add “FUCK YEA!” and “Fuck you” just try and do something about me and my freedom to say any damn thing I want. You loons sit here at your circle jerk and think you effect the real world? People like me who take on people face to face will be making change while you sputter amongst yourselves. Look at how much you’ve changed my behavior so far…pfft. Ophelia Benson are you needy for attention or just like to blab blab blab? No matter do not fret you will have your wish I’m happy to speak out about you to as part of the disease called A+. Poor A+ a group of idiots too dumb to know how limited their reach. You do make for great fodder I give you that much. Nothing anything any of you can or will say will harm or hurt me I am the wall you were bound to hit sooner or later. Funny thing is I am not alone we just don’t talk to hear ourselves speak, people actually listen. Now back to the banter……

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



Doin it rong

Oct 11th, 2012 5:07 pm | By

A guy from Greater Manchester, Barry Thew, wore a horrible T shirt right after two police constables, Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes, were killed. The T shirt said “one less pig perfect justice.” Nasty.

He was sentenced to four months in jail today. He “admitted a public order offence.”

A police spokesman said Thew, of Worsley Street, Radcliffe, had been arrested after being seen wearing the T-shirt in Radcliffe town centre “just hours” after the constables died in a gun and grenade attack in Mottram on 18 September.

Mr Williams said: “While officers on the ground were just learning of and trying to come to terms with the devastating news that two colleagues had been killed, Thew thought nothing of going out in public with a shirt daubed with appalling handwritten comments on.”

That’s very very unkind and unfeeling and rude. Barry Thew shouldn’t be like that. But – being unkind isn’t a crime. All his friends should give him a good talking-to, but he shouldn’t be convicted of a crime or sent to jail.

It’s a T shirt. With a handwritten slogan on it.

 

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



Just kidding!

Oct 11th, 2012 4:35 pm | By

Well that’s funny. All that martyrdom stuff about stepping down was apparently just performance art. I hear that Justin Vacula hasn’t stepped down as chapter co-chair of the Pennsylvania SCA after all. Certainly he’s still listed as such.

Update October 13: now he’s not listed.

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



From what clay?

Oct 11th, 2012 4:23 pm | By

Kamila Shamsie had a great piece on Malala in the Guardian yesterday.

Today, as Malala Yousafzai remains critical but stable in hospital following an assassination attempt by the Taliban, I watched the laughing, wise, determined 11-year-old in that video and thought of the Urdu phrase, “kis mitti kay banee ho” – “from what clay were you fashioned?”

It’s an expression that changes meaning according to context. Sometimes, as when applied to Malala Yousafzai, it’s a compliment, alluding to a person’s exceptional qualities. At other times it indicates some element of humanity that’s missing. From what clay were you fashioned, I’d like to say to the TTP (the Pakistan Taliban), in a tone quite different to that in which I’d direct it to the 14-year-old girl they shot “because of her pioneering role in preaching secularism and so-called enlightened moderation” and who, according to their spokesman, they intend to target again.

That’s a good phrase; I like it. And it does sum up what I’ve been thinking and feeling (along with countless others, I should think). What a polarity: the exceptional qualities of a Malala and the horrible qualities of the men who want her dead.

Because the state of Pakistan allowed the Taliban to exist, and to grow in strength, Malala Yousafzai couldn’t simply be a schoolgirl who displayed courage in facing down school bullies but one who, instead, appeared on talk shows in Pakistan less than a year ago to discuss the possibility of her own death at the hands of the Taliban.

“Sometimes I imagine I’m going along and the Taliban stop me. I take my sandal and hit them on the face and say what you’re doing is wrong. Education is our right, don’t take it from us. There is this quality in me – I’m ready for all situations. So even if (God let this not happen) they kill me, I’ll first say to them, what you’re doing is wrong.”

Well she did say it, but she didn’t have time to say it to the ones who stopped the school van and shot her and two other girls, so the rest of us have to say it for her. What the Taliban are doing is wrong.

For political differences, seek political solutions. But what do you do in the face of an enemy with a pathological hatred of woman? What is it that you’re saying if you say (and I do, in this case) there can be no starting point for negotiations? I believe in due process of law; I know violence begets violence. But as I keep clicking my Twitter feed for updates on Malala Yousafzai’s condition, and find instead one statement after another from the government, political parties, and the army (writing in capital letters) condemning the attack, I find myself thinking, do any of you know the way forward? Today, I’m unable to see it. But Malala, I’m sure, would tell me I’m wrong. Let her wake up, and do that.

I’ve been doing that too. Her condition is still critical. She’s been moved to Rawalpindi for more treatment.

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



Metamorphoses

Oct 11th, 2012 12:35 pm | By

Never a dull moment, eh? Al Stefanelli has left FTB, and on his way out he did a podcast with his friend Reap Paden.

I listened to as much as I could stand, which wasn’t much. I transcribed a few high points.

Reap Paden: I guess I pissed some people off with my last. I guess the main thing – I called Stephanie Zvan a bitch. She was being a bitch.

They both agree it’s a good word. “I use it all the time,” says Al. ”So does my wife. I can understand that it’s controversial, but everyone’s entitled to their opinion.”

They say swearing is great, they like swearing. Hooray for swearing. “If it’s a word that offends you don’t use it,” one of them adds. They compare “bitch” to “fuck” and Al talks about offending people by saying fuck, and being obliging enough not to use it if he knows someone dislikes it, then they say it’s a great word and they like it.

(Commentary: yes, I like it too, and I use it quite a lot in blogging [and certainly in conversation]. I notice it doesn’t work all that well on a podcast (or radio) though, at least not the way Al and RP say it. I could explain why, but I don’t feel like it right now.

But anyway the whole discussion misses the point. “Swearing” isn’t the issue. The issue is epithets. It’s a different thing. “Bitch” doesn’t go in the box with “fucking,” it goes with “nigger” and “faggot” and “kike.” And of course “cunt.”)

RP explains why it’s fine to call Stephanie a fucking bitch repeatedly. He said “She’s a bitch and here’s why”; he didn’t just say “she’s a bitch”; he explained why she’s a bitch, so that’s totally ok.

But those stupid people got all in a lather. “Everybody’s running around with their arms over their heads screaming.” All angry and upset.

Because Stephanie’s such a fucking queen of the shit? Give me a break. Get over yourself.

Al says people aren’t familiar with your podcast. If they were, they would know what to expect. It’s like someone who tunes into Howard Stern. Nothing is sacred, there are no sacred cows, and people would get they if they listened to more of RP’s podcast. That’s how shock radio works.

That’s you, that’s how you are.

I listened to a couple of minutes more but then I couldn’t stomach any more of the shock radio schtick. I never have liked shock radio.

Meanwhile, we have new people joining FTB very soon. You will be thrilled! I promise.

Update: I forgot to add Al’s farewell post (although he apparently didn’t think of it as such when he wrote it).

Update 2: Al’s actual farewell post, which he wrote after I wrote this one. Note first two sentences:

Yes, I’ve decided to leave Freethought Blogs. Now, before you go assuming there were pitchforks and torches involved, this was my decision.

His decision.

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



What’s the matter with you? Are you a lesbian or something?

Oct 11th, 2012 8:50 am | By

I woke up the other morning, as one does, and found myself reading, at a free speech outlet not a million miles from here, a joke.  At least I think it was a joke.

Hell!  I hope it was a joke.  The notion was that women being systematically shoved from ‘always wear a head covering when you go out’ (which could almost have applied to my late mother) to ‘abaya at all times and a male escort if you ever go out’ should take advantage of their anonymity to create mischief.  Mischief?

Where dress codes are enforced they are, in the final analysis, enforced on pain of death though the death rate may stay low.  And as you read that, dear Westerner, think not of faraway places with deserts.  Think trans people.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, a cover story is unravelling in a very untidy manner.  One TV company did a story on, I think, 4 women who had been sexually assaulted, when teenagers, by a not-long-dead pop super-star.  First response, in chorus, was I don’t believe this because he was a good bloke.  End of story, as they thought.

As more women came forward that changed to but why didn’t they tell anyone at the time?  Within minutes the news came back  -  they had reported, not all of them but enough to establish a pattern, had anyone been interested.  Cases had been dropped, journalists had backed off, one distressed teen had been punished for telling lies about that great and good man.  And so forth.

There is, at last, to be a full police inquiry and two very successful women have come out and said that their success was bought  -  bought at the price of having uninvited hands shoved inside their clothing when they were live on mic and broadcasting to the nation, a culture enforced by managers to whom they complained asking, “What’s the matter with you?  Are you a lesbian or something?”

Should we be shocked?  Yes, but only if we can be as shocked about denial of the right to a personality, to full citizenship, as we are about sexual impropriety tipping into the criminal.  Anything less than this is prurience.

We are still together, right?  Now, what about freedom of the mind?  What about the right  -  which the teenage girls above were denied  -  to say, ‘This is what happened to me and this is the effect it had.’  And be believed!

Doing anything necessary to shut up a crying teenager may seem at 40 years distance to be a failure of empathy.  Yes, but we can’t leave it at that, can we?  At the time it was an abuse of power and  -  didn’t they tell you?  -  the effect of abuses of power is cumulative.  It acts against the social good as it damages individuals.

So the people who have done real damage to whatever it was  -  we can discuss that  -  in the 16 months since a woman of our acquaintance put up four words of advice to the lovelorn on YouTube are not the repetitive trolls.  Nor are they the idiots who have argued, inter alia, that women’s brains are entirely different in every way from men’s brains or that terms I learned in the social sciences 50 years ago are neologisms and should not be used, that the definition of a word given in a dictionary  -  even if that’s Dr Johnson’s original  -  is the only sense in which a word may ever be used, especially by a woman.  No, such people are merely incredibly boring.

The destroyers have been that small handful of men who, either all the time or just when drunk, believe that they are Genghis Khan and destined to be the ancestor of just about everyone a thousand years from now.  They have supporters, of course, and at two levels.  First line of defence  -  the powerful people of all genders who address bad behaviour with a sort of gamesmanship.  You know, I can get away with ignoring this, we can circulate our own version to key opinion formers, by next year no-one will remember exactly what happened and so forth.  And then there is the Greek chorus, very numerous, always masked of course, who make a lot of noise but seem always to be acting from fear and have no real part in the drama.

And now, because I am not a philosopher, I can sum this up in a sentence.  You do not get to barrack, harass, humiliate, exclude, disbelieve and disregard another group of your fellow humans and then call them the splitters.

Lessons of history and all that.

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



Live discussion about Malala on Huffington Post

Oct 10th, 2012 5:42 pm | By

http://live.huffingtonpost.com/

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



Is harassment just so over?

Oct 10th, 2012 5:26 pm | By

Hey remember sexual harassment? Those were fun times, weren’t they?

The implication is that a combination of awareness, women’s growing economic power and legislation that began with the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act and has been updated repeatedly, has stamped out the problem.

Laura Bates, who set up the website Everyday Sexism earlier this year, isn’t so sure. Like those 1970s speak-outs, her site allows women to share their experiences, and over the course of six months 7,500 entries have poured in, “thousands of which pertain specifically to workplace harassment, workplace sexism and sadly, in many cases, workplace sexual assault and even rape”. “What I don’t know is whether the prevalence has diminished or not [since the 70s],” she says. “But I do know that an Equal Opportunities Commission report in 2000 said that 50% of women still experience sexual harassment in the workplace.”

Problem not so stamped out then.

So why is there this idea that workplaces are so much better now? Part of it, perhaps, is that sexual harassment affects women at different times in their lives. Endean says it is a particular problem, for instance, for young female apprentices in male-dominated workplaces and, anecdotally, many of us are affected by the issue when we start work in our late teens and early 20s. It’s an issue of power. As individual women get older and more personally powerful, sexual harassment often has less effect on them, and so they believe it has been left behind in another era.

Paula Kirby please note. Not all women are treated the way Paula Kirby is treated, therefore what Paula Kirby knows from her own experience is of limited utility for understanding what women in general experience.

Not only is classic workplace sexual harassment still going on, says Bates, but technology has created new forms; in the space of six months, she has seen several thousand abusive emails, including rape threats and death threats. As those 1975 feminists knew, what’s important is to stop the silence around the issue. “I think there’s an idea that women have to put up and shut up,” says Bates. “They’re told they’re whining, being uptight, frigid, sometimes even blamed for causing it in the first place.”

Oh surely not! Surely that never happens.

 

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