There’s always the definition problem. We’re all against BadThings. That’s why they’re called Bad, isn’t it – because they’re Bad and we’re all against them. It’s just that we disagree on which things are Bad.

Caroline Criado-Perez looks at an example of this in the arguments over rape.

A couple of days ago on Twitter, the hashtag “MenAgainstRape” started to trend. Some people found this a positive and heartening response to a week where the hashtag “RapeApologist” also got some traction.

Because Aikin and Galloway and their cognates said the things they said.

Others, however, saw the hashtag as problematic. A typical response was that men being “against rape” should be considered the default position: the need for a hashtag was in itself disheartening. They also felt it demeaned the majority of men, who were, of course “against rape” – who wouldn’t be? It would be like coming out in favour of kicking puppies. Or murder. Of course as a society we are, by default, “against rape”.

A more significant problem with this hashtag was that, as was demonstrated by Akin’s desperate back-pedalling, even these new hate-figures are “against rape”; they just reserve the right to dictate, in defiance of law and science, what actually constitutes rape. Since Galloway denied that Assange’s actions fitted in with what “most people” understand by the term “rape”, he could also join the “MenAgainstRape” Twitter-fest – why not? He’s surely against rape too – whatever it is he considers that to be.

Quite so, and this is and always has been part of the problem. Until recently there was no such crime as marital rape, for instance.

We see the same thing with misogyny. Of course we’re all against misogyny; what serious atheist is not against misogyny? It’s insulting even to say it has to be spelled out. But the trouble with that is…we don’t all agree on what misogyny is, and it turns out that quite a few people define it so narrowly that it’s defined out of existence.

Naturally it’s possible to be wrong in the other direction – to label every cross word or disagreement or joke as misogynist. (The same is true, mutatis mutandis, for other categories – racial, national, professional, political, you name it.) So what to do? Keep arguing, I suppose, until the sands of time wash over us and new people are arguing about new things.

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

A new campaign ad: Kate Beckinsale, Judy Greer and Andrea Savage “spread” the message that the one thing women really want in their vagina is the government.

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

Health Canada has this thing where it solemnly approves homeopathic stuff as safe, effective and of high quality. What kind of stuff? you ask with your inquiring minds. Oh, nothing much. Just insulin and things.

Insulin?

Yes.

Pharmacist Scott Gavura tells us about it:

The Natural Health Product Regulations, under Canada’s Food and Drugs Act, regulate products such as nutritional supplements, probiotics, traditional Chinese medicine, vitamins, herbal remedies, and homeopathy. They are a deliberate shadow of the regulations that govern drug products — requiring some manufacturing quality and safety standards, while effectively removing the standards for product efficacy claims. Standards were dropped because there was no possible way that many of these products could ever meet the rigorous standards established for drug products.

So they dropped the standards to match the quality? That’s scary.

 The most problematic in the group was homeopathy. Homeopathy is an elaborate placebo system, where the “remedies” lack active ingredients. As would be expected with inert products, clinical trials confirm what basic science predicts: homeopathy’s effects are placebo effects. Yet Health Canada insists that this doesn’t compromise quality, safety, or efficacy:

Through the Natural Health Products Directorate, Health Canada ensures that all Canadians have ready access to natural health products that are safe, effective and of high quality, while respecting freedom of choice and philosophical and cultural diversity.

Oh dear god are you kidding me. Never mind philosophical and cultural diversity! Inappropriate! There isn’t useful diversity in medical standards and regulations. Poison doesn’t become not poison in a different culture. A glass of water doesn’t become insulin because cultural diversity. If you’re certifying something as effective then you have to use the right – universal – standards.

The consequence? Regulation of the absurd. Health Canada reviews every remedy, and explicitly attests their safety and effectiveness. In Canada you can purchase Health Canada approved (Search each product by number here):

• homeopathic sea water — DIN-HM 80017767
• homeopathic insulin — DIN-HM 80016480

There it is – homeopathic insulin. How many diabetic comas has that caused?

There’s also a homeopathic insect repellent.

For many of us, insect bites are an occasional annoyance that we can largely avoid. Yet insects can transmit over 100 diseases, including malaria, West Nile virus, yellow fever, Dengue fever, Lyme disease and even plague. Malaria alone kills 1.2 million people, mainly African children, annually. And now that we have West Nile and Lyme disease in Canada, there is a bigger impetus to minimize bites.

Yes but respect for freedom of choice and philosophical and cultural diversity is even more important than preventing malaria or West Nile virus. Apparently.

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

In the spirit of learning from the sciencey knowings of Todd Akin, the artist Kit Cameo created an artistic yet medical bottle in which women can collect and store their Magical Vaginal Death Venom.

It was for sale on ebay, and the subject of funny Q&A, but then ebay decided whoops, venom, two people complained (about “vagina”?) and ebay whisked it all away. Details pending.

So that’s crappy.

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

Michael Nugent has a draft manifesto to promote ethical atheism. I see this as a companion to atheism+ – as the same kind of thing, and compatible, and equally reasonable and unthreatening. I also see both as companions to other related campaigns and organizations and platforms and statements. I’ve seen a good deal of panic and hair-clutching about atheism+, which seems bizarre. There are no gulags.

The ideas in this draft manifesto are not new. Many atheist activists already promote many or all of them. This manifesto tries to combine the best of our existing ideas into a set of principles and aims that all ethical atheists can promote, regardless of our policy differences on how best to implement them.

See? Not new. No need to panic.

You know, the idea that sexism and racism and homophobia are really bad things and should be socially discouraged has been around for quite awhile. Atheism+ is much more of a reminder than it is a Giant Wall. Are all your friends sexist homophobic racists? Well then you’re already kind of restricted in your pool of friends, aren’t you. If you’re a frank unabashed vocal sexist or racist, the chances are very good that you’ve already alienated a lot of thoughtful clever interesting people, because people like that mostly aren’t fond of unabashed racism and sexism. If you’re a secret sexist or racist – well then what’s the problem? We don’t have magic radar to disclose your secret views.

So relax. Nobody’s coming to gitcha.

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

Yulia Latinina, who hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio, explains the religious views of many Orthodox Christians, whom she calls Homo Orthodoxus. They sound quite similar to fanatics in the US, Pakistan, Rome, northern Nigeria – you get the idea.

First, this belief holds that God does not forgive. A typical example: During a recent demonstration against Pussy Riot, an Orthodox activist screamed “God does not forgive, and to claim otherwise is blasphemy,” while  beating a female supporter of the punk group.

And notice one other thing about that – it clearly includes the belief that the Self is authorized to assume it knows exactly what God does not forgive, and to punish people for that unforgivable thing. That’s a lot to assume! Even if the Orthodox activist were right about “God,” why would that justify the activist in beating someone up?

People so easily forget that the first does not lead to the second. “God does not forgive, so I get to beat you up.” No. That doesn’t follow.

The second belief of Homo Orthodoxus is that God bestows lavish  material gifts on the church’s leadership: luxury apartments, fancy cars  and expensive Swiss watches. For the Homo Orthodoxus, such perks are  part of being close to the Godhead.

Vatican.

Third, this God does not make any moral demands on his chosen followers but gives them full authority to make such demands on everybody else.

Aha, there it is. I would love to know exactly how they convince themselves of that…Although I suppose they don’t, really, they just assume it. It’s such a dangerous belief.

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

Hey, the Staggers blog is onto Atheism+.

Let me introduce you to Atheism+, the nascent movement that might be the most exciting thing to hit the world of unbelief since Richard Dawkins teamed up with Christopher Hitchens to tell the world that God was a Delusion and, worse than that, Not Great.

Less than a week old in its current form, Atheism+ is the brainchild of Jen McCreight, a Seattle-based biology postgrad and blogger at the secularist Freethought network. She has called for a “new wave” of atheism on that “cares about how religion affects everyone and that applies skepticism to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, politics, poverty, and crime.”

Nelson Jones (for it is he) got that a bit wrong – you’re not supposed to say “the secularist Freethought network” like that, you have to add a minimum of two pejoratives and a parenthesis saying we hunt down dissenters and have been officially registered as a hategroup by The Coalition of Furious Tweeters.

In this early phase Atheism+ is fired by anger as much as by as idealism. And, at least initially, much of this anger is directed inward towards the world of atheism itself.

Any community, new or old, has its tensions, and in the past year the atheist/sceptical community has been rocked by a divisive and increasingly bad-tempered debate over sexism and, more generally, a sense that the dominant voices have tended to be white, male and middle-class.

And additionally that that wasn’t because there were no women qualified to be dominant voices, but rather because of sheer lazy forgetting to include them.

A number of incidents have served to crystallise the sense that all is not right in the world of unbelief.  Most notoriously, there was “Elevatorgate”, an late-night incident in a lift during an atheist conference in Dublin during which the blogger Rebecca Watson was propositioned. Her subsequent public complaint about the man’s behaviour and sexual harassment within the Skeptic movement drew criticism from Richard Dawkins himself and fuelled an ugly flame war.  She received, and continues to receive, rape and death threats.

…

The first item on the Atheism+ agenda, then, is a cleansing one. McCreight herself says: “We need to recognize that there’s still room for self-improvement and to address the root of why we’ve been having these problems in atheism and skepticism.” Greta Christina has gone so far as to devise a checklist of goals to which atheist organisations should aspire, including anti-harassment policies and ensuring diversity among both members and invited speakers. “To remember that not all atheists look like Richard Dawkins.”

That sounds like, at least partly, a negative programme – “getting rid of the garbage”. Yet the name – or at least the symbol – is pleasingly double-edged. “Atheism plus”, the natural reading, implies incompleteness: that other, associated principles need to be added to the core idea to produce a rounded philosophy. But it can also be read as “Atheism positive”, going beyond the mere negation of belief. Time will tell whether McCreight’s initiative leads to permanent changes in the atheist and sceptical movement, or to the formation of a new and distinct nexus of atheism and progressive politics, or is soon forgotten. But I’d bet against the latter. Whether or not the name sticks, there is an energy behind this new wave that makes it hard to ignore.

He forgot the pejoratives again!

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

Seen on Frans de Waal’s Facebook page – a problem is solved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2yvp4SZS3M

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

Richard Carvath, a “Conservative political activist” in the UK who hopes to be an MP, has written a rebarbative piece on Tony Nicklinson.

Tony Nicklinson shouldn’t have done it, you see. He was being a selfish baby doing it. Carvath knows, because he once fell off a mountain and spent weeks feeling like crap – and then got better. That’s totally comparable to Nicklinson’s life being locked in without the ability to talk and with no prospect of getting better.

Poor old Tony Nicklinson.  His wife wants to kill him, his family want to kill him, his barrister wants to kill him, the mainstream media want to kill him, the euthanasia lobby want to kill him and a vociferous mob of Twitter followers want to kill him.  It’s enough to depress anyone to the point of despair.  In a recent tweet, Cheryl Baker (yes, she of 1981 Eurovision Bucks Fizz fame) seemed to sum up the general attitude of the misguided ‘Kill Tony’ mob when she wrote: “My heart cries for Tony Nicklinson.  If he was a dog there would be no ethical or moral decision to be made, just whatever is best for him.”  But Tony is not a dog.  Tony is a human being.  Last week, thankfully, Tony failed in his attempt to change the law which serves to protect us all from murder.  The upholding of the law was applauded by champions of justice and pro-life defenders of the disabled – and rightly so.  Tony Nicklinson isn’t terminally ill; he is severely physically disabled but he is not dying; Tony has a life to live.

A horrible life, of being totally dependent, unable to do anything but watch tv, unable to scratch an itch or make a point in a conversation. He didn’t like it, and he wanted to know he could end it if it got unendurable. The fact that he wasn’t dying was part of what worried him: he didn’t want another twenty years of that emptied-out life.

The first day that I stood up after the accident was Day 33, and it was many more weeks before I was able to proceed with learning to walk again.  Wheelchairs, frames and sticks were my lot for a long time.  To be severely incapacitated for several weeks was painful, humiliating and unpleasant – but despite it all I had peace, hope, purpose and the will to live.  My memory of being completely incapacitated is such that I can reasonably claim a better insight than many able-bodied observers into what it feels like to be trapped unable to move in one’s own body.  Tony Nicklinson’s epic trial of years of paralysis is greater than my few weeks and months of incapacity, but unlike many I can claim to have had a taster of his torment, and hand-on-heart I say there is no suffering so great that it cannot be endured when we know the source of the courage to conquer our worst fears.

Sanctimonious piece of shit – he doesn’t know that, his experience isn’t comparable because he knew all along it would end soon, and in any case it’s not up to him to decide instead of the person whose life it is.

Let me make it plain: anybody who wants to kill Tony does not want to care for him.  Nobody murders another person they claim to love and are committed to caring for.  Nobody who loves and cares for a disabled person thinks or speaks in favour of putting that disabled person to death.

Okay that’s it, that makes me so angry I’m not going to read any more of it. That’s a wicked thing to say.

A bad bit of work, Richard Carvath.

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

Well here is something I did not know – that in 31 states in the US, rapists have parental rights.

Shauna Prewitt was raped and got pregnant (pipe down there in the back, Mr Akin), and had a daughter, and then found out something she did not know.

You could say she was conceived in rape; she was. But she is also so much more than her beginnings. I blissfully believed that after I finally had decided to give birth to and to raise my daughter, life would be all roses and endless days at the playground. I was wrong again.

It would not be long before I would learn firsthand that in the vast majority of states — 31 — men who father through rape are able to assert the same custody and visitation rights to their children that other fathers enjoy. When no law prohibits a rapist from exercising these rights, a woman may feel forced to bargain away her legal rights to a criminal trial in exchange for the rapist dropping the bid to have access to her child.

Are you fucking kidding me. Rapists can assert custody and visitation rights to the child they conceived through rape?

What country is this? What century is this?

Having fought this injustice for the past several years, I have come to believe that ignorance is to blame for this legal absence. Opponents argue no woman would ever choose to raise the child she conceived through rape. The only two studies to analyze the choices made by pregnant raped women indicate otherwise — at least 30% of women who conceive by rape make this choice.

Others argue that no rapist would ever seek parental rights. Not only does my experience and that of others I know prove otherwise, but it is not surprising that a man who cruelly degrades a woman would also seek to torture her in an even more agonizing way, by seeking access to her child.

What did I do with that sick bucket…

H/t Roger Ebert

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

What a horror.

Tony Nicklinson last week lost his court case to be allowed to have help in ending his life. He had a stroke in 2005 left him paralysed from the neck down.

So he stopped eating, and died. That’s a nasty way to die. If the court had ruled in his favor, he would have been able to relax, knowing he could have a less nasty way to die at a time of his choosing.

He explained this for the BBC in June.

I have locked-in syndrome and it makes my life a living nightmare.

I cannot speak and I am also paralysed below the neck, which means I need someone to do everything for me.

For example, 90% of itches have to be endured because by the time someone comes to scratch it and I have laboriously explained where it is, the itch has gone. Now I just put up with them.

Or there is the screaming frustration of wanting to make a point but knowing that the only way I can express my opinion, by the board or computer, are useless in normal conversation…

However, all these things are physical and arguably one can learn to live with them. What I find impossible to live with is the knowledge that, unlike you, I have no way out – suicide – when this life gets too much to bear.

The reason for this mess is, apparently, adamant refusal to think.

Many opponents of assisted dying object because they think it is wrong to take your own or another’s life. Recently I asked such people if there was anything I could say to make them change their mind. They both replied there wasn’t.

I even suggested to one some safeguards for his approval or otherwise. He totally ignored the question. Clearly any discussion with them is a complete waste of time.

Much has been said about the part care plays in assisted dying and the argument is essentially that better care and more of it will expunge all thoughts of taking one’s own life.

This was said of me on a prestigious national radio programme back in February. I invited the speaker to visit so that she could tell me to my face what I am missing. So far all she has come up with is a number of excuses not to visit. Draw your own conclusions.

It’s a horror.

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

It’s not just the Catholic church that is more concerned to protect its own sweet self than it is to prevent child sexual abuse or help the victims of child sexual abuse.

An evangelist Christian preacher from East Sussex urged a victim of sexual abuse not to report the man responsible to the police, the BBC has learned.

Ian Jackson told Lina Barnes he would not support her if she reported that Gospel Hall Brethren preacher Allan Cundick assaulted her at the age of 12.

Mr Jackson, from Eastbourne, said he was only concerned for her progress.

But Ms Barnes, 33, who sought advice from him last year, said he wanted to protect the Church.

“Only concerned for her progress” – god that’s disgusting, not just treating her badly but also pretending to be a decent chap while doing it.

Ms Barnes, who has waived her anonymity, said: “I’d confided a lot in Ian Jackson about what I had suffered and here was this man now telling me that I just had to be merciful to my abuser, not to involve the police, and it just caused a lot of hurt, a lot of heartache.”

She added: “I believe he [Mr Jackson] didn’t want it getting out.”

Ms Barnes added: “In his email, he said to me it was important that Christians keep the testimony of the Church and therefore protect the institution.”

And not important that the institution do right by the people abused by its own employees.

Imagine if a restaurant served you food that made you sick, and then told you it was important that diners keep the testimony of the restaurant and therefore protect the institution. Sod the institution! What about the victim?

Last year, Ms Barnes told Mr Jackson she planned to report her abuser to the police.

But in an email on 24 May 2011, Mr Jackson wrote to her: “I am not prepared to give you any support in relation to the involvement of the police and court proceedings.

“I think it is a wrong decision that you have made.”

He said: “There is a better way. ‘Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.’”

So there should be no law enforcement at all, yeh? Just mercy all around, except of course for the people who get killed or beaten up or raped.

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