Author: Ophelia Benson

Misogyny wins another round.

Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos has signed into law a ban on all abortions, even in cases when a woman’s life is judged to be at risk. Previous legislation from a century ago allowed an abortion if three doctors certified that the woman was in danger…President-elect Daniel Ortega once favoured abortion rights but changed stance after re-embracing Catholicism. Mr Bolanos signed the law in the presence of Roman Catholic bishops and Protestant evangelist leaders.

All of them agreeing, apparently, that a foetus is more valuable than the woman who is carrying it.

I liked this article on the sense of smell. It made me think, as the saying goes.

Mine is a mediocre specimen of a post-lapsarian nose. As a fallen daughter of Eve—or, more accurately, a fallen granddaughter of a sharp-nosed chimpanzee—I am conscious of smell only a few times each day…But for most of the day, it is unusual for me to notice any particular smells. I do eat food, of course, but with the illusory impression that I am tasting rather than smelling the myriad different flavours that make up even an ordinary meal.

Yes, same here, I suppose; but I do value smells, I thought to myself. Then later in the day when I was outside, I thought of the article and began sniffing, trying to see if I could exercise my sense of smell. It was interesting – interesting to find how little I could really smell.

It was a perfect day for it. It’s officially the wettest November on record in Seattle, and the month only half over; it rained heavily and non-stop all day Wednesday and it was also very windy, then it cleared overnight, so yesterday the air was as clean as it can possibly get, plus the ground is saturated, so you would think one would be able to smell it. But I couldn’t, really. I tried, but I couldn’t. Sniff sniff sniff – what am I smelling? Nothing, really – very clean damp air; it’s lovely, it’s a joy to sniff, but it doesn’t really have any specific content that I could name. That seemed odd. I looked around (I was walking) – there was, not surprisingly, wet fallen vegetation everywhere, gently decaying; wouldn’t you think we’d be able to smell that? But I couldn’t. Once or twice I thought I perhaps got a faint hint of wet earth and leaves, but I wasn’t at all sure. Maybe I could have in a forest; maybe the ratio of concrete to earth and grass and leaves in an urban neighborhood makes the organic segment more difficult to smell. I thought about farms, the ocean, eucalyptus groves, other smelly places. Gorillas – gorillas have a very strong, pungent smell; orang utans don’t. That’s interesting. Dogs smell bad; cats smell good; why is that?

That pope – he’s always walking into these things. He’s like one of those physical comedy types whose schtick is all tripping over the furniture and sitting on the cat.

Apparently there was this fuss in Italy the other day ‘when the daily newspaper of the Italian Roman Catholic church criticised a string of recent satirical acts’ about this same pope. The pope’s private secretary explained to a journalist what the papal crowd was thinking.

“I am aware of the controversy and I hope that broadcasts of this kind stop,” Father Genswein said. “Satire is fine. But these things do not have any intellectual quality and offend men of the church. They are not acceptable.”

That’s fun, isn’t it? Satire is fine – fine, I tell you, fine, we love the stuff, it’s meat and drink to us, we can’t get enough – but these particular ones right here that we’re talking about ain’t clever enough and besides they offend – well, you know, us. Therefore, it must follow as the night the day, They Are Not Acceptable.

That’s what’s so funny. Pure walking into a door. Sheer tripping and falling into the soup tureen. Here’s where you went wrong, papa Genswein; here’s where you made your fatal error; here’s what you don’t want to do: it really doesn’t work to say ‘Satire is fine unless it’s about me.’ See what I’m getting at here? It’s just no good saying ‘Satire is fine as long as it’s about other people, any other people, really, let a thousand flowers bloom, it’s liberty hall, anyone, except me.’ You see the problem? It looks like special pleading. It looks just a tiny bit self-interested. I’ll give you an example. Suppose you said ‘Hitting people with heavy wooden sporting implements is fine’ and then added ‘except when we’re the people being hit’ – you see, disinterested onlookers would think you were happy to see everyone else mocked or pummeled but wanted immunity for your own special self alone. Tragically, and riotously, the result is not persuasion but shouts of laughter. Sorry, Father G.

Something from an essay by Richard Rorty – ‘Globalization, the Politics of Identity and Social Hope,’ in Philosophy and Social Hope (1996). See what you think.

As I see it, the emergence of feminism, gay liberation, various sorts of ethnic separatism, aboriginal rights, and the like, simply add further concreteness to sketches of the good old egalitarian utopia…In that society, people who wanted to think of themselves as Basque first, or black first, or women first, and citizens of their countries or a global cooperative commonwealth second, would have little trouble doing so. For the institutions of that commonwealth would be regulated by John Stuart Mill’s dictum that everybody gets to do what they like as long as it doesn’t interfere with other people’s doing the same.

Well – it was 1996, which probably helps to explain it, but that passage strikes me as way too easy. Basque first, women first – right; but what if it’s Saudi first, or men first? What if you pick the hard examples instead of the easy ones? What happens then? Is it just an accident that he chose easy examples? I don’t know – but I can’t help thinking that he should have realized that ‘women first’ necessarily implies ‘men first’ and that then should lead to the thought that ‘men first’ could very easily include ‘men who define maleness as superiority to and dominance of women’ among the men who want to think of themselves as men first; and that that puts the whole easy formula in question. That’s one of the rocks we keep tripping over in this identity thing – for some people, it is the case that their identity is closely involved with the right or ability to subordinate other people, and/or to deny them the ability to think of themselves as whatever they like first. And the emergence of, for instance, ‘ethnic separatism, aboriginal rights, and the like’ does not necessarily work toward a more egalitarian utopia; it can work for the opposite. What if part of the ‘ethnic’ in ethnic separatism consists largely of the segregation and subordination of women? I bet we can – right now, all by ourselves, with no help – think of some ethnic separatisms of which that is the case. I can. Can you? I knew you could.

So – it’s too easy. And he wrote it in such a way that it’s too easy – he wrote it in such a way that it slides neatly around the hard part. Objection, Your Honor.