Pleading for Sympathetic Acceptance: Your host blogger is in the process of moving, and has precious little time (not to mention space) to write. She should return to her regularly scheduled ranting in due time.
PSA
Posts from March 2012
The blood footprint
 |
| More animal-friendly than a vegetarian? |
There are all sorts of ways in which people can alter their diets for ethical reasons, but the presumed reason that people become vegetarians out of ethical concern is that they don’t want to cause any animals to die in order to supply their meal. Jackson Landers at Zester Daily puts forth the counter-intuitive position that sometimes not eating meat can cause more suffering and death than eating it. In A Better Choice: Deer, he compares eating hunted venison to soy burgers:
Meat is not the only food that is the byproduct of animals suffering. Other foods have what I call a “blood footprint,” but the relationship is more subtle. It is possible for a vegetarian meal to require more suffering than a carnivorous meal. A thoughtful carnivore, especially if she is a hunter, can potentially eat with a smaller blood footprint than a vegetarian. Consider the typical blood footprint of that mainstay of a vegetarian diet, the soy burger. The meal itself contains no meat. But the production of soy and tofu on an industrial scale requires quite a lot of killing. Crop depredation by deer and other animals is a huge problem for most soy growers. The majority of states will issue depredation permits to farmers who are suffering crop damage, and as a result, deer are shot in high numbers in the name of protecting soy and corn crops. Some states require that the deer shot under these permits be left to rot, and forbid any meat from being taken from the animals. Crows, starlings, blackbirds and other birds are shot, trapped and poisoned by the millions every year in North America for the sole purpose of protecting crops. Millions of mice, voles and ground squirrels are trapped, poisoned or otherwise killed for the same purpose. All of the food harvested from these fields is technically vegetarian fodder, but how many lives were lost to produce that tofu burger? How much suffering was required? You won’t find anything on the label about that. If your purpose in ordering from the vegetarian menu was to dodge cruelty, your mission failed. True, if you compare a tofu burger to a grain-fed beef burger, the tofu burger comes out ahead. Corn-fed beef involves all of the sins required to grow its food, and then the cow is slaughtered to boot. But a wild venison burger is arguably a more ethical way of putting lunch on the table. A wild deer requires no killing until the moment of harvest to produce some 40 pounds of meat, even from a smallish animal. The deer lives free of cages, electric prods, hormones or antibiotics. No other animals are trapped, poisoned or shot to bring it to maturity. The blood footprint of the venison burger may be less than that of a tub of popcorn. One life, divided among many meals. The deer lives a good life, and then has one bad day.
Obviously this is not a complete argument for ethical vegetarians to resume/begin being omnivorous. For one thing it isn’t necessary that they consume soy, though this essay addresses the importance of considering the possible suffering caused to animals in the production of whatever food you do eat, because that too is part of your blood footprint even if no actual animal flesh is part of your diet. Not eating soy doesn’t get you off the hook. For another, while it might be possible for all current vegetarians to become deer hunters and swap soy for venison, that’s a) not a very realistic thing to imagine and b) as proliferate as deer are, it wouldn’t be possible for all of us who currently eat meat with a greater blood footprint than venison to switch to that as well. America eats too much meat, period, for us all to switch to venison even if we wanted to. And plenty of us don’t.
Still, this is an excellent reminder to differentiate between ethics and sentimentality. I wrote the following on this blog two years ago, as part of a general discussion on the morality of survival:
I’m not touching so much on the “meat vs. no meat” discussion here, because I think that’s a somewhat different issue. Certainly that’s an ethical matter as well, but I think bringing the discussion of whether eating meat is inherently unethical into the general topic of how to eat ethically muddies things quite a bit. There are more and less ethical ways to eat meat, and generally speaking they coincide with the more and less healthy ways to eat meat. For example, I think that people who object to factory farming but aren’t vegetarians should be big fans of hunting, which often involves shooting a deer, putting it in the freezer, and eating from it for much of the winter. That white-tailed deer has lived in the wild all of its life, eating the plants that Odocoileus virginianus traditionally eats as opposed to dining on corn and standing in its own feces, and later is killed by a hunter to provide a family with meat that is nutritionally superior to that of a CAFO steer. And we have in this country a ton of deer, as anyone who habitually drives in the country and has to worry about accidentally hitting one can testify. Of course not everyone can hunt for their food due to constraints on both geography and population, but it’s something that meat-eaters who are concerned about the interests of animals should enthusiastically endorse.
There may be a cultural gulf between the type of people who hunt and fish and the people who shop Whole Foods for only the most humanely produced organic products, but there isn’t really an ethical one. At least, not nearly as much as one might think. And at least not regarding food.
Savage U
Long-time sex columnist, author, podcaster, advocate, and public educator Dan Savage now has a TV show. And it looks good.
Get More: Savage U, Full Episodes
I was a little concerned before watching the trailer that the show would be watered down, homogenized, and generally weaker than the typical frank, funny, pointed commentary we tend to get from Savage. And I’m still a little concerned, but not nearly as much. Savage has been doing Q&A presentations at universities and occasionally the odd appearance at stage venues in various parts of the country for years now, and it looks like the show is going to pretty much just show those appearances…along with some candid conversations with specific students about their particular concerns. But it’s MTV, so there’s still the potential for unexpected ruin. Nevertheless I’m keeping my hopes up and planning to watch. Hopefully a lot of non-collegiate teenagers will watch as well– the kind of people Savage needs to speak to directly even more, but can’t. And maybe, maybe, they will even watch with……their parents!
Yeah, probably not. But one can dream. The show premieres Tuesday, April 3.
Some actual good relationship advice on the web
I know, it’s hard to believe. But hear me out in appreciating Madame Noir for the article 8 Dynamics That Should Never Exist in a Relationship (formerly “8 Things Women Think Are Normal In A Relationship That Aren’t,” which was a wise change). Since it’s a list, each item must have a title. And each title appears so obvious upon reading it that you might wonder why anyone would need a list to inform them that these particular dynamic sshouldn’t exist in their relationships, but then it’s not the titles that matter most– it’s the descriptions and examples. Most of us tend to think we have good relationship sense, especially after we’ve had a few or a dozen, but we can also forget that that a relationship doesn’t have to be outright abusive in order to have problems that need to be addressed. The section on “royal mentality” reminded me of this. Yes, the whole thing is written for women…but men, I know you can overlook that and benefit from it anyway.
Conservative group to gather, bemoan 40 year old advance in sexual freedom
No, I’m not kidding. And no, this is not from The Onion, though it sounds like it. The Family Research Council is holding a symposium on Wednesday, March 21st, to get together and talk about a terrible moment in history. The title is 40 Years Since Eisenstadt v. Baird: A Look at the High Court’s Legal Attack on Marriage. Eisenstadt v. Baird, whose ruling was actually delivered on March 22, 1972, was when SCOTUS decided that unmarried people should have the same access to contraceptives that married people do, invalidating state laws to the contrary. Here is the FRC’s statement on the purpose of their event:
On March 22nd, 1972, the Supreme Court undermined the boundaries and benefits of marriage. In the decision Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Court struck down a Massachusetts law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, and implicitly sanctioned unmarried non-procreative sexual intimacy. While the decision may seem archaic and insignificant by modern sexual standards, Eisenstadt v. Baird dealt a decisive blow to the legal and cultural norm that marriage was the institution for the full expression of the sexual relationship between man and woman. The decision and its legal consequences affect us today. Forty years ago, the Court ruled that unmarried couples could not be denied their birth control. Today, the Federal government is forcing us to share the cost, for said contraception and some states are giving marital status to homosexual relationships. Join us on March 21st, as legal and social science experts Helen Alvaré and Pat Fagan explain why the Court’s decision matters and how anyone who cares about the family should understand the legal landscape and the social consequences of this momentous decision.
It’s telling that the final paragraph refers to “the family,” and not “families.” This is for the same reason that the organization is called the Family Research Council in the first place– to seize hold of the notion of “family” and fight with tooth and nail against it referring to any other arrangement than one biological mother and one biological father who are married and have sex only after marriage. I would say “for the purpose of procreation,” but apparently the FRC is a-okay with sanctioning married non-procreative intimacy, just not the unmarried kind.
And of course, they likewise want to grab onto the word “marriage” and insist that only one meaning of the word is appropriate– theirs. That’s the only way to describe the SCOTUS ruling as an “attack on marriage” with a straight face, when it did absolutely nothing to actually prevent people from getting married (just as, when it eventually acknowledges the right of gays to marry, it will do nothing to prevent anyone from getting married but conservatives will likewise again complain about being “attacked”). Presumably the FRC wants all children to be born to married parents, so their opposition to Eisenstadt here amounts to an objection to unmarried people being able to have sex, period. Thinking about this, bear in mind that not only did 95% of Americans have premarital sex in 2002, but that (evenly balanced as to sex) 70% had it in the 1930’s.
The people going to the FRC gathering on Wednesday should consider that their great-grandparents might well have had sex outside of marriage, and used contraceptives in the process to prevent pregnancy. Yes, I know it’s not fun to think about your ancestors having sex, period. But just for the sake of this thought experiment, it’s important. It’s important for the sake of remembering that no matter how much you want children to be born to parents joined in marriage, the solution is not to try and force unmarried people into marriage by preventing them from being able to have sex without risk of conception. For one thing, it should be obvious by now that that doesn’t work. For another, people make their own sex lives, both before and after marriage (or totally outside of it, for those of us who are not keen on marriage to begin with). It’s possible that if Eisenstadt had not turned out in the way it did, there might still be states with laws on the books preventing unmarried couples from having access to birth control. In which case we could expect to see the number of married couples skyrocket, but the demand for birth control remain the same if it doesn’t escalate. Because people who want to have sex without procreating will do so. And they are the majority, all of the time.
Weekend web readin’
From Roger Ebert’s Journal at the Chicago Sun-Times, Hey kids! Anybody here not heard the F-word?
Money quote:
If a director wants to make a film against bullying, it is not for a committee of MPAA bean-counters to tell him what words he can use. Not many years ago, the word rape was not used in newspapers, on television–or in the movies, for that matter. But there is a crime, and the name of the crime is rape, and if you remove the word you help make the crime invisible. This is yet another example of the MPAA sidestepping ethical judgments by falling back on the technicalities of its guidelines. It is even more insidious because the MPAA never clearly spells out its guidelines, leaving it to filmmakers to guess–although they often judge by past experience. It seems to me that either the f-word word is permissible, or it is not. If impermissible, nobody should use it at all in a PG-13 film. If permissible, nobody should count. Is it a magic word, a totemistic expression that dare not say its own name? Is it a vulgar equivalent of such a word as G-d?
From Bloomberg View, Fight Birth-Control Battle Over the Counter: Virginia Postrel
Money quote:
Unlike most medications, the article noted, birth-control pills require no medical diagnosis: “A woman herself determines her need for oral contraception; she assesses her own risk of pregnancy … and the costs and benefits of both pregnancy and alternative contraceptions.” Nearly two decades later, birth- control pills look even safer than they did then, and recent research indicates that women are both able and eager to manage their own purchase decisions. Requiring a prescription “acts more as a barrier to access rather than providing medically necessary supervision,” argues Daniel Grossman of Ibis Reproductive Health, a research and advocacy group based in Massachusetts, in an article published in September in Expert Review of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Birth-control pills can have side effects, of course, but so can such over-the-counter drugs as antihistamines, ibuprofen or the Aleve that once turned me into a scary, hive-covered monster. That’s why even the most common over-the-counter drugs, including aspirin, carry warning labels. Most women aren’t at risk from oral contraceptives, however, just as most patients aren’t at risk from aspirin or Benadryl, and studies suggest that a patient checklist can catch most potential problems.
From the LaCrosse Tribune, Iowa high school assembly stirs protest
Money quote:
DUNKERTON, Iowa — Administrators, teachers and students did not get what they expected Thursday during an extended school program. Everyone anticipated the message from Junkyard Prophet, a traveling band based in Minnesota, to be about bullying and making good choices. Instead, junior and senior high students at Dunkerton High School and faculty members said they were assaulted by the group’s extreme opinions on homosexuality and images of aborted fetuses. “They told my daughter, the girls, that they were going to have mud on their wedding dresses if they weren’t virgins,” said Jennifer Littlefield, a parent upset with the band’s performance.
Her daughter, Alivia Littlefield, 16, is a junior, and called Littlefield after the event. “I couldn’t even understand her, she was crying so hard,” Littlefield said. Littlefield also did not appreciate what she described as gay bashing. “They told these kids that anyone who was gay was going to die at the age of 42,” she said. “It just blows me away that no one stopped this.”
From Addicting Info, Fox News: There Is Definitely A ‘War on Women Voters’
Money quote:
When the propaganda arm of the Republican party admits that there is a war on women voters, it’s time to accept that the recent attacks on women’s rights are not coincidental, that they are, in fact, an orchestrated political strategy. Sally Kohn of Fox News writes,
While women voters might rather focus on jobs and the economy, watching Republicans jeopardize women’s health and reproductive freedom while slandering those who try and stand in their way is enough to make women demand not only good jobs and fair pay but political leaders who respect the liberty and rights of women in America.
President Obama’s campaign may be paying for fliers and advertisements to attract women voters, but in this regard, Republicans are giving him the kind of help that money can’t buy.
Now, to be fair, Kohn does seem to be a token liberal. She’s openly gay and was hired as part of Fox’s new “kinder, gentler” approach. And of course, Kohn doesn’t speak for the talking heads at Fox News. Bill O’Reilly, for example, denies that there is a war on women, going as far as to say, “It’s not about women,” much to the dismay of even one of his own correspondents. According to O’Reilly and his radio counterpart, Rush Limbaugh, the war on women isn’t because of Republican actions, it’s a Democratic conspiracy.
Also…..this ain’t readin’, but it’s definitely worth watching (or, okay, watchin’):
Fun with word clouds
Upon discovering wordle.net, I decided to make a couple of word clouds. First, for my CV and dissertation (both of which which can be viewed by clicking the tab above, or here). And then another for this blog, which apparently only captured words from this front page. Very fun.
Misconceptions on contraception
 |
| Do you know how this stuff works? |
This ongoing battle over the significance of contraception has come as quite a shock to those of us for whom it has been a normal, completely non-controversial part of life for so long. But perhaps it shouldn’t be. Attacks on its importance have come in large part from people who don’t know how contraception works, and that number will surely increase if measures like Utah’s push to ban instruction on birth control, homosexuality, and any kind of extra-marital sex in public schools succeed and proliferate. What’s especially worrisome is not just that Americans are stunningly ignorant of the varieties of contraception, their function, and their effectiveness, but that they aren’t aware of their own ignorance:
Jenna had been living with her boyfriend for several months when he floated his own contraceptive theory. Jenna was taking her birth control pills continuously, meaning that she was skipping the pack’s built-in placebo pills in order to stop her period. At some point, her boyfriend discovered how she had managed to avoid the monthly ritual. “I was thinking you were just magical, like a unicorn,” he told her. “I mean, you hope one exists somewhere, but you never think you’ll get to live with one…a cool chick with no period drama that has sex all month long.” He added, “The guys thought I was making it up.” (Boyfriends could not be reached for comment for this story).
According to a new study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, many young American men exhibit attitudes toward contraception that could best be described as “magical.” The study [PDF] surveyed American singles ages 18–29 about their perceptions about and use of contraception. Twenty-eight percent of young men think that wearing two condoms at a time is more effective than just one. Twenty-five percent think that women can prevent pregnancy by douching after sex. Eighteen percent believe that they can reduce the chance of pregnancy by doing it standing up.
For the most part, men lagged behind women on the pregnancy prevention front. And when the study dipped into the realm of “female” forms of birth control, the gender divide intensified. In the study, 29 percent of men and 32 percent of women reported that they know “little or nothing about condoms.” When asked to rate their knowledge of birth control pills, 78 percent of men reported to be clueless, compared to 45 percent of women.
According to that study, most young people (the American singles in that age group)
a) are sexually active (78% in the past year),
b) believe (94% male, 86% female) that pregnancy should be planned, and
c) say that it’s important (88% male and 86% female) to avoid pregnancy right now.
Nonetheless, 19% no contraception at all and 24% use it inconsistently. 17% of women and 19% admitted that it is quite likely that they will engage in unprotected sex in the next year. 31% of women said that they had had an unplanned pregnancy.
Why the discrepancy? A combination of ignorance (lack of information) and false belief (misinformation). Because these men and women did not receive sufficient instruction on contraception, they have relied on “folk” knowledge about how it works, which can make contraception seem unreliable at best and actually suspicious and harmful at worst:
Despite the myths, inflated fears, gaps in knowledge and more, nearly
all unmarried young adults say they have the knowledge they need to
avoid an unplanned pregnancy. • 90% believe (and 66% strongly believe) they have all the knowledge they
need to avoid an unplanned pregnancy. Moreover, many are fatalistic about fertility and pregnancy… • 38% of men and 44% of women believe “it doesn’t matter whether you use
birth control or not; when it is your time to get pregnant it will happen.”
• Hispanics (49%) and non-Hispanic blacks (50%) are more likely than nonHispanic whites (34%) to believe that birth control doesn’t matter much. …and many are suspicious of the whole birth control enterprise. • 31% overall (40% of non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics) agree with the
statement, “the government and public health institutions use poor and
minority people as guinea pigs to try out new birth control methods.”
• 32% overall (44% of non-Hispanic blacks and 46% of Hispanics) agree with
the statement, “the government is trying to limit blacks and other minority
populations by encouraging the use of birth control.”
The study is full of other disturbing statistics, which you should definitely read for yourself. The take-home message, I think, is that young Americans are woefully misinformed about contraception, and even though the study says that only 13% of this group believe it to be morally wrong, misunderstanding how contraception works and how well it works can feed into the creation of beliefs about who needs contraception, and how much, and why. Erroneous beliefs that foster prejudice and, worse, grossly mistaken policy. Like in Arizona, where legislators are trying to make it possible for your employer to know whether you’re using birth control and, if they have a problem with that, fire you for it.
One can’t help but wonder how well they understand birth control. My hunch is: not well at all.
Working for a cause vs. for yourself
In discussion about Gloria Allred’s attempt to prosecute Rush Limbaugh at Dispatches, a commenter called Harold observed the following (the first line is a quote from another comment, to which he is responding):
Is Allred trying to give Limbaugh the upper hand in the court of public opinion?
I believe she would not care one way or another.
A group of people exist who attempt to “take over” popular progressive stances and make themselves the “only real” advocates.
In doing so, they consciously or unconsciously value their own ego more than the cause they are ostensibly associated with.
To test for this propensity, simply ask yourself –
1) “If the issue I claim to be motivated by were resolved in the way I claim to want, to the great benefit of those I claim to ‘speak for’, but I received no direct credit or recognition, would I be happy?”
2) “Can the issue ever be resolved to my satisfaction, or will I ‘up the ante’ any time a resolution seems near, even if the resolution gives what I previously seemed to be demanding?”
3) “If people I don’t like for some reason actually support my side of the issue I claim to be motivated by, do I react by angrily trying to ‘disqualify’ them from being ‘true’ supporters, rather than forming common cause with them (on that issue)?”
If the answer to any of these is “yes”, then you are not really exactly an advocate for gender equality, gay rights, animal welfare, or whatever it is. You are actually an egotist, who prefers that the injustice you claim to object to continue, so that you can continue to pose as a crusading martyr. And in this way, you are consciously or unconsciously a strong ally for those you claim to most oppose.
I like it. It’s a test that people who find themselves acting as spokespersons for any movement should probably take for themselves periodically. That is, if they don’t want others applying it for them, later on down the line.
Gloria Allred tries to use slut-shaming law to stop slut-shaming
The most important thing wrong, to my eyes, with the fact that Gloria Allred is trying to hold Rush Limbaugh criminally responsible for his “slut” remarks is that it elevates him. It gives credence to the claim that his First Amendment rights are being infringed, because if Allred is successful they would be. No supporter of free speech should stand behind that.
But the added bonus of disturbing can be found in he specific legislation Allred wants to use to prosecute him: Section 836.04 of the Florida Statutes, which allows for the criminal prosecution of anyone who “speaks of and concerning any woman, married or unmarried, falsely and maliciously imputing to her a want of chastity.” Jonathan Turley writes:
What is curious about Allred’s embracing of this law is that it is overtly sexist. The law suggests that a woman who is viewed as unchaste is so harmed that she constitutes a crime victim. Chastity is defined by Webster’s as “(a) : abstention from unlawful sexual intercourse; (b) : abstention from all sexual intercourse.” The law is based on the out-dated notion that a woman who has sex before marriage is damaged and subject to social stigma. To put it more colloquially, such a woman was viewed as a “slut or prostitute.” That is precisely the outrageous view voiced by Limbaugh in relation to Fluke and led to a worldwide condemnation. Now, Allred wants him prosecuted under a law that assumes that is based on the same assumption. The law was not designed to prevent women from being called sluts. Laws like Florida’s code provision were designed on the belief that a woman who is unchaste is a slut — and that “good” women should never be accused of sex before marriage. So Allred wants Limbaugh prosecuted for saying Fluke is a slut based on the law that effectively treats unchaste women as sluts. It does not protect men because an unchaste man was viewed under these dated laws as just a normal man. A man was not viewed as harmed or demeaned by being sexually active. Only a woman was harmed by the suggestion of sexual activities. Not also the law only protects women who are “falsely” accused of being unchaste. Thus if a woman has been sexually active before married, she would presumably not be protected under the law.
It’s troublesome enough that so many people who are happy to condemn Limbaugh for his remarks without mentioning that it would be wrong to call Fluke a slut even if she did stand up in front of Congress and testify that she slept with five different men every day. But the law Allred wants to use against Limbaugh buys into the exact same patriarchal, sexist thinking that she seeks to prosecute. In no way does this effort score points for free speech or feminism, and so merits a big thumbs down from this fan of both.
The appropriate response when someone says that Fluke (or anyone) is a slut is not “No she isn’t.” It’s “I’m not going to accept that it’s your business to morally judge her sex life, which is what you just declared by using that word.” It takes longer to say, but it notes something important, something definitely worth noting.