Category: Notes and Comment Blog

The other day I told a brief version of how Vyckie Garrison’s then 3d grader fared going to school after eight sheltered years. She tells a fuller version at NLQ.

These days, I am thoroughly enjoying my “blessings” ~ they are far from perfect as they’ve gone from passive, obedient little robots (a couple of them were more like zombies ~ and, Chassé ~ my “spirited” child ~ really reminded me of a jack-in-the-box gone bonkers ~ no matter how many times she was stuffed into the box and the lid slammed down on her, she had this quirky way of popping back up with a crazy, intimidating, you-can’t-get-rid-of-me smirk) ~ to “normal” kids with their own unique personalities, feelings, thoughts ~ and … every single one of them now has this idea in their heads that their particular experience and perceptions of life matter.

Something we out here in the world take for granted, but it’s not how things are in Quiverfullworld.

I say they are “far from perfect” ~ but actually, they’re very good kids ~ not Duggar-like with neat, matching outfits, always helpful and obedient and smiling ~ they are taking full advantage of their new freedom to discover themselves which means that they don’t always say, “Yes, Mom” ~ and they’re pretty likely to disagree with me and not one of them still believes that I know everything and have all the answers.

Human beings in a human world, in short.

Now Andy –

When I put my kids in school, I was especially worried about my then-10 year old Andrew. He was so far behind academically ~ plus, he was so angry because after Angel left home, he became the main focus of Warren’s abuse. He was so beaten down and dispirited that he would scurry about the house like a mouse ~ trying to stay off of his father’s radar because as soon as Warren noticed Andrew, he’d spend hours lecturing and preaching to him until the poor boy was in tears. I remember many, many nights when I would lay in bed and think to myself that Andrew had not spoken a single word all day.

So when I talked to the elementary school principal, I expressed my concern, “I’m afraid Andrew will go to school and beat everyone up.”

Well ~ it didn’t turn out anything like what I imagined. Although Andrew was the most fearful and reluctant of all the kids when we talked about public school ~ he is now totally loving it.

I think the key factor in how well he’s doing was his teacher ~ she is amazing ~ absolutely “pro-Andrew” and that made all the difference for him. At the second parent-teacher conference, Andrew’s teacher was beaming with pride as she told me how Andrew was excelling in every area ~ academically and socially. She told me that at the beginning of the year, they were struggling to get him to write the “d” in his name rather than a “b” ~ but soon he was writing pages of really good stuff.

She asked Andrew to read one of his reports for me titled “Changes.” In his story, Andrew told about the divorce and how, at the beginning he really didn’t want me to divorce his dad ~ he didn’t believe that Warren was really so bad and he felt sorry for him because he’d lost his family. But, after getting away from him and seeing how other people live, he knows now that before the divorce, he was not even a real person. Then he told how happy he is to be able to think and learn and have his own ideas and opinions. He concluded by saying that he is grateful that I divorced his father because he knows it was a very hard fight for me but I did it so that he could have a life and now he can be anything he wants to be.

When Andrew was done reading his report for me, his teacher was all teary-eyed and she told me that when she gave the assignment, the other students wrote about how, “My life really changed when we got a new kitten,” and such ~ but when Andrew got up and gave his report, the class listened with total interest, and when he was finished, there was absolute silence ~ and then they started clapping ~ and then the whole class gave Andrew a standing ovation.

Hang on a second while I wipe my eyes …

She had to do that when she told me the story, too. I had to take a couple of deep breaths myself. “Then he told how happy he is to be able to think and learn and have his own ideas and opinions.”

And about Warren – he has a much better relationship with the children now. When he starts to get preachy at them they just tell him to chill, Dad, and he does.

Eric describes an odd thought experiment in Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue.

He asks us to imagine a time in the future when people have got fed up with science, have removed science from the curricula of schools and universities, killed or imprisoned all the scientists, and then government is carried out — well, how, exactly? Since science is not only physics and math and chemistry and biology, but a fairly strict methodological approach to information, how would a government function where fact checking was ruled out, and decisions were based on pure whim? MacIntyre seems to forget that science is not only composed of lists of facts, but is tied together by theory and based on experience, and that that process can scarcely simply disappear when we stop teaching the sciences. However, imagine it done for the purposes of argument. Now, says MacIntyre, we are to suppose that a generation comes along which is opposed to this science-destructive world outlook. However, during the anti-science period the scientific tradition had been virtually destroyed. There are fragments left, a book here or a page there, and a few memories of phrases and scientific terms, like the periodic table without any sense of what it was once about. But now we are to imagine people trying to reconstruct science in the absence of any understanding of what science was once really about, so they begin using scientific language without really understanding what the language was for, or what it really signified. Science, for this new generation, is a bunch of disjointed technical terms thrown out more or less at random, and repeated pointlessly in a form much like some postmodernist free association.

In this situation, MacIntyre supposes, people would still have theories about how science functioned.

If the scientific tradition had been virtually destroyed, then on what grounds is the new generation opposed to this science-destructive world outlook? That idea doesn’t seem to make any sense.

The tradition is all but destroyed, so the new generation is unfamiliar with scientific thinking of any kind. The new generation is kind of like Sarah Palin or George Bush. What would there be in the heads of that new generation that would prompt it to oppose the science-destructive world outlook, let alone to try to reconstruct science in the absence of any understanding of what science was once really about?

Nothing, that I can see. People in 6th century Britain (say) didn’t sit around pining for science; they didn’t know from science.

MacIntyre seems to be thinking of it as a kind of cargo cult, but the periodic table wouldn’t attract people the way bottles of Coke do.

Some thought experiments just aren’t very good.

Barry Karr is the Executive Director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer Magazine. Surly Amy posts his statement.

I find totally reprehensible statements advocating violence, rape and even death directed towards women. I have said it in personal communications, and I will say it here now: People who make statements filled with hatred and threatening or calling for acts of violence have no place in the humanist or skeptical movements.

Good old religious entitelement. The state can’t tell religious entities what to do, because freedom, but if the state wants to give religious entities lots of money, why it’s the least they can do. That’s how the people who run Hope Christian School in Albuquerque view the matter.

A three year-old was denied admittance to Hope Christian School in Albuquerque, N.M. because he has two gay fathers, KOAT-TV reported.

A letter sent to the family offered the school’s rationale:

“Same gender couples are inconsistent with scriptural lifestyle and biblical teachings,” and “Home life doesn’t reflect the school’s belief of what a biblical family lifestyle is.”

The letter added that because Hope Christian School is private, it is exempt from “excessive government interference in matters of religion,”according to KOAT-TV.

And yet, the school will receive over $60,000 dollars from the federal government this year, according to the Huffington Post.

Heads we win, tails you lose. That’s fair, right?

More on this issue about how to discuss things without everyone getting out the flamethrowers, and do we even want to discuss things that way, and is it the right thing to do even if we don’t want to.

I do think it’s better to err on the side of avoiding calling people names, but I have to add that I don’t actually want a Fully Sedate™ discussion. Chris Hallquist explains one reason today.

Furthermore, most of Dan’s suggested alternatives are to a degree academic and there’s a risk of classism in demanding people put their criticisms of others in academic terms. Robin Hanson makes a good point about this:

Lower “working” class cultures tend to talk more overtly. Insults are more direct and cutting, friends and co-workers often tease each other about their weaknesses. Nicknames often express weakness – a fat man might be nicknamed “slim.”

Upper class culture, in contrast, tends more to emphasize politeness and indirect communication. This helps to signal intelligence and social awareness, and distinguishes upper from lower classes.

I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t think cutting insults are a good thing even if they are part of working class culture, but I think there is something to the idea. I know that I don’t want this place to be academic-like.

I’ve read a couple of Fully Sedate™ threads on distant sites lately, and while it’s good that there’s no “hey you’re stupid and ugly,” the trouble is that they were also quite lifeless and boring – even stilted. I don’t want that.

This is no doubt because I’m shallow and lazy and frivolous. I don’t like dryness in writing. Then again I also don’t like too much poppyness – I’m a good deal too fussy.

But there it is. I don’t want ponderousness. Maybe I should, but I don’t. I want lively writing. That doesn’t mean rude or flamey or permananently hostile – but it does mean leaving room for irritation and frustration and exasperation, along with humor.

So not flamethrowers – how about those party favor things that unfurl and toot when you blow on them?

It’s well known (to people who follow such things) that philosophy stands out among academic disciplines in its shortage of women.

For years, many philosophers have been frustrated by the status of women in the discipline, which remains male-dominated in many ways, even as other humanities fields have seen more women advance into  leadership positions. Various efforts have focused on issues that range from sexual harassment to questioning traditions that make many women uncomfortable.

Oh gosh, that sounds familiar. What does that remind me of? Oh yes, I remember now.

Let’s follow the link on sexual harassment, shall we? What do we find? It’s Inside Higer Ed again, Scott Jaschik again. What’s the story?

Let’s say there is a scholar in your field who is known to harasswomen. Maybe you witnessed an incident. Maybe you heard from friends who were his victims. Maybe you heard from friends of friends. The person is known (among women at least) as someone to avoid, but he continues on in a professorship at a top university, serving on influential editorial boards, turning up on the programs of all the right conferences.

If the man has never been convicted by a judicial body or punished by a university (at least not that you know of), is this just a case of “innocent until proven guilty”? Or does this suggest disciplinary negligence — or tolerance of serial harassment?

Oh gosh, that sounds super-familiar too. Isn’t that amazing? In fact it sounds kind of…identical. Top dude, known to harass, known among women as someone to avoid, still invited to all the things.

I wonder if the next part is about the president of Yale or Harvard rebuking women for talking about this issue. [reads on] No, I don’t see that. Strange.

The comments are very familiar though. Fanaticism, medieval persecution, McCarthyism, witch hunts – it’s all there.

Dan Fincke has a good point in comments on his own post about namecalling on blogs (or on his blog, which comes to the same thing). It’s a point that I probably ought to do a better job of keeping in mind.

The post says don’t call people demeaning names, and says why. (It’s obvious why, of course, but having it spelled out is useful.)

Words like these use emotional violence to coerce people with the aim of driving them into submission. These words aim to do that by demeaning them so that they feel worthless and hated. These words aim to irrationally gain leverage in an argument by making someone feel intellectually insecure and interpersonally rejected if they do not concede the other person’s debating point. These words try to drive people away with hostility. And, finally, these words try to coerce moral agreement by making the implicit threat of stigmatization and ostracism of any who differ.

A commenter makes a distinction between kinds of namecalling.

Stupid, jerk and asshole though? These are NOT minority-bashing words that silence a marginalized group of people. They’re just offensive words (and even there, jerk and stupid are just mildly offensive, IMO).  Sometimes the actions and words of others deserve to be called out for being stupid.  Often, people act in certain ways that are indeed undesirable and they deserve the label of jerk.

Dan rejects the distinction.

Stupid is a serious word that torments more people than tranny does.

And no, it’s not about “playing nice”, it’s about having mature, civil discussions like adults, not like playground bullies.

“Stupid” is just not a word that smart people have ruining their self-esteem from the time they’re little kids.

And even yet, it is a false and belittling word that is counterproductive to constructive discourse. Calling someone stupid tempts them to either slink away in shame or to fight back with equal emotional abuse.

As I said – he has a point.

And another point.

I’m pretty sure, based on my knowledge of human psychology and what other less educated people have indicated to me, that when you belittle other people as stupid those who feel intellectually unequal to you are being made insecure and nervous that you would do the same thing to [them]. It’s bad enough they feel intimidated to begin with. It’s insensitive of you to carelessly use words that relate to their insecurity. They are likely to identify with whomever you’re denigrating and feel at least a twinge of anxiety over it. “Check your privilege” (as the kids like to say).

Yes – that is undeniably a point.

A girl of 16 in the Dominican Republic is in the hospital with acute leukemia. She can’t get life-saving chemotherapy because she’s ten weeks pregnant.

Following a change to the constitution in 2010, abortion in the Dominican Republic is banned under any circumstances, even when the mother’s health or life is in danger.

But wait, you say, chemotherapy is not an abortion. Ah no, but that doesn’t matter, Rafael Romo reports for CNN.

…treatment would very likely terminate the pregnancy, a violation of Dominican anti-abortion laws.

So Dominican “anti-abortion” laws cover even life-saving medical treatment that would very likely end the pregnancy? That’s quite an anti-abortion law.

Miguel Montalvo, the director of the bioethics council that rules on the application of the law, says the council is leaning toward allowing the treatment. “At the end of the day the patient may decide for himself or herself. In this case, the family may decide what’s more convenient for the patient,” Montalvo said.

Women’s and human rights groups are outraged, saying the girl should have received chemotherapy immediately.

Lilliam Fondeur, a women’s rights activist, complains that conservative politics is preventing necessary treatment to save the teenager’s life.

“How can it be possible that so much time is being wasted? That the treatment hasn’t begun yet because they’re still meeting, trying to decide if she has the right to receive the treatment to save her life — that’s unacceptable,” Fondeur said.

It is, isn’t it.”Leaning toward”? Hurry the fuck up! “At the end of the day”? At the end of what day? Hurry up! It’s so attractive, all this calm leisured chat while a teenager is deathly ill.

And while the debate rages on around the country, back at the hospital the clock keeps ticking for the 16-year-old pregnant girl.

Oh never mind her, let’s just have some more reasoned discussion.

Skepticism, libertarianism, and conspiracy theory sometimes combine into one package.

…new research to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science has found a link between the endorsement of conspiracy theories and the rejection of established facts about climate science.

In a survey of more than 1,000 readers of websites related to climate change, people who agreed with free market economic principles and endorsed conspiracy theories were more likely to dispute that human-caused climate change was a reality.

…

The link between endorsing conspiracy theories and rejecting climate science facts suggests that it is the libertarian instinct to stick two fingers up at the mainstream – whatever the issue – that is important. Because a radical libertarian streak is the hallmark of free-market economics, and because free market views are popular on the political right, this is where climate change scepticism is most likely to be found.

And there’s a fourth item that you often find along with those three – a suspicion (to put it delicately) of women. This business of telling the mainstream to fuck off is probably part of that. For a lot of rebel doodz, women represent all the things they want to say fuck off to – the mainstream, conformity, respectability. They’re all Huck Finn, and we’re all the Widow Douglas.

What that of course overlooks (cluelessly) is that male superiority is probably the most mainstream idea there’s ever been. I suppose that’s why MRAs spend so much time and energy trying to turn that fact on its head.

Women have conspired throughout history to disguise their huge power and to pretend humans have walked on the moon.

Saturday, 1 p.m., the 2100 Building on at 2100 24th Avenue South, between Hill and Walker. Very near Borracchini’s Bakery.

Go to there!

Amy has the latest, from Nick Lee, the President of Atheist Alliance International.

Movement leaders frequently bemoan the gender imbalance in the movement and wonder what can be done to motivate more women to become active leaders. We need the diversity of thought and experiences from females (and minorities), not as tokens but as fully engaged leaders.

We do NOT need to be driving women away with frat house behavior.

Just Stop It!

Deep question of the day. Is it fun to have protracted arguments about complicated subjects on Twitter?

I say no. Hell no. It’s irritating as fuck. It’s stupid. It’s pointless – because there are better tools available so why the hell use Twitter? Twitter is good for some things, but complicated arguments are not among those things.

I know this extra at the moment because some derp tried to have such an argument with me earlier and it was completely annoying. The derp read Foster Disbelief’s post about misogyny and privilege and tweeted at me

Speaking out against misogyny, and making it clear that the only valid white male opinion is one that lines up with his.

But that’s not what he said – but how boring and irritating to try to make that case on Twitter! But I tried anyway, and the derp kept replying, and I kept replying, and it was all completely futile because 140 characters.

People of the world, stop using Twitter to argue about things that take more than 140 characters! Just stop!

Doctor Hawa Abdi is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize according to her foundation’s website. According to a commenter below this must be a mistake – but she’s well worth knowing about just the same.

For more than two decades, Mama Hawa has poured her blood, sweat and tears into her humanitarian work, asking for no reward as she sought to provide aid to the most vulnerable victims of the civil war. She has saved tens of thousands of lives in her hospital, while simultaneously providing an education to hundreds of displaced children at the Waqaf-Dhiblawe school.

Mama Hawa’s focus is on creating an independent Somali community, shielded from the conflict that exists outside her camp, and we hope her work will inspire those who fear they can do nothing to improve the circumstances of those around them.

In spite of all the trials that Somalia has been put through over the last twenty years, Mama Hawa has sought to provide a place of refuge for ninety thousand people, ignoring the clan lines that have often served to divide the country. Working under the principle that women are the corner stone of society and that they can be the agents of change in Somalia, Mama Hawa has tried to bring hope to a nation that so many have for too long dismissed as hopeless. Doctor Hawa Abdi can be an inspiration for us, for Somalia, and the entire global community.

Photo Dr Hawa Abdi Foundation

The third in Amy’s series.

Hate-filled invective has been directed at many different people, male and female, but of late women have been disproportionately targeted. What is especially sad and disgusting about this trend is that some religious skeptics seem to be mimicking religious fundamentalists: they want to intimidate women into silence and submission. What’s the point of discarding the Bible or the Koran if you retain the misogyny sanctified therein?

Members of the secular and skeptical communities should be distinguished by their respect for others, including those with whom they may disagree. Those who are incapable of treating others with decency and respect do not belong in our communities. To such individuals we should say with one voice: take your hate elsewhere.

To 4chan for instance.