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Posts from July 2012

Petition to free Alexander Aan

Petition to free Alexander Aan published on 4 Comments on Petition to free Alexander Aan

I had no idea that the White House had established a web site specifically to host petitions. Some of them are quite wacky, but the one I got an email from CFI (the Center for Inquiry) about today is very worthy:

Call upon the Indonesian government to respect the freedom and dignity of all its citizens and to free Alexander Aan. Earlier this year, Indonesian civil servant Alexander Aan posted on Facebook that he doubted the existence of God. He was then attacked and beaten by an angry mob, and arrested for blasphemy. On June 14, Aan was convicted of “disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred or hostility,” sentenced to 30 months in prison, and saddled with a large fine. Now many Indonesians are calling for his death. By punishing Aan, Indonesia is violating its obligations to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees every person the rights to freedom of belief and expression. We petition the Obama administration to call upon the Indonesian government to immediately release Alexander Aan and improve its protections for religious dissidents and nonbelievers.

There can be no freedom of religion where there is no right to be non-religious. When simply admitting that you don’t share the religious beliefs of the majority amounts to blasphemy, it’s effectively illegal to not believe. This petition has a long way to go, and I don’t know whether it will do any good. But it’s simple to sign, so please do!

Being good at slinging a ball around doesn’t make you a hero, part 327

Being good at slinging a ball around doesn’t make you a hero, part 327 published on 2 Comments on Being good at slinging a ball around doesn’t make you a hero, part 327

As the Penn State report is being reviewed, and people are talking about how a man could rape multiple children over a sustained period with the protection of his colleagues, I see explanations of “hero worship” and comparisons to the Catholic church again and again. I won’t say these explanations and comparisons are wrong– after all, Joe Paterno was a hero to many, and his handling of Jerry Sandusky’s behavior did amount to a cover-up and a refusal to allow the law to deal with matters. But I have a simultaneously more specific and more general suggestion for how to avoid such things happening again: stop treating people involved in athletics as role models. Stop treating people who are highly talented athletes or coaches as if they are somewhere therefore morally trustworthy. They are not, and should not be expected to be. They are simply entertainers, akin to singers, actors, or directors. A sporting event is a performance. There is no necessary moral component to performing well.

It is, of course, a form of performance that is incredibly tribal– and by that I don’t mean a fancy dance. I mean that team sports are a kind of entertainment that strongly encourages the formation of alliances on the part of people who have no real direct connection to whatever is happening on the field/pitch/diamond/rink/etc., but who will forge one out of whatever mental materials are available in order to invest themselves in the success of whomever they’re rooting for. That makes the performance far more exciting, because it’s hard to care about the result of a contest between two parties when you have no reason to favor one or the other. And rather scarily, there really is no limit to how deeply entrenched this feeling of investment can go– it can become quite literally an investment, as fans (short for “fanatics”) sink countless dollars into season tickets, jerseys and other paraphernalia, tuning into games via pay-per-view, playing fantasy versions of their favorite sport using their favored players, and so on. For the dedicated sports fan, there is no end of possibilities to pour oneself into support for the particular sports and particular teams that have been made part of that person’s identify. Most people see this as normal. It’s also ubiquitous– sports themselves may vary across the globe, but the value of sports, and the dedication of fans, really doesn’t. It’s rather like religion in that way.

And like religion, sport too often brings the opportunity to give moral esteem to people who have done nothing to earn it. At least in religion these are generally people who aspire to a moral status, but in sports they are simply those who have proven particularly physically adept and genetically fortunate. There is nothing about winning games and making lots of money that is generally understood to improve moral character– you’d think that after years of seeing professional athletes take up hobbies such as dog-fighting, domestic abuse, adultery, and casual bigotry, we’d more than aware of that by now.

People certainly idolize actors and singers, pretending that what they have to say about politics is relevant and that their romantic relationships somehow either reflect or determine the kind that the rest of us have. But we don’t hold them responsible for being good. We don’t assume they are any less likely to be criminals, let alone more likely to be Eagle scouts. Why do we do this to athletes and their trainers?

Here’s a suggestion: Let’s stop.

How to destroy a woman

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Taslima Nasreen has a horrifying post up at No Country for Women on individual cases of women attacked with acid in different countries. It includes a lot of photos, so be forewarned. Each woman had acid thrown in her face, with the result of being disfigured beyond recognition and often losing sight in one or both eyes and even the eyes themselves, resulting in a person who barely looks human any longer. Why does this happen? Nasreen writes:

Men throw acid on us with the intention of injuring and disfiguring us. Men throw acid on our bodies, burn our faces, smash our noses, melt our eyes, and walk away as happy men. Acid attack is common in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Cambodia, and a few other countries. Men throw acid on us because men are angry with us for refusing sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, proposals of marriage, demands for dowry, for attending schools, for not wearing Islamic veils, for not behaving well, for speaking too much, for laughing loudly and for pure fun.

Nasreen’s post is titled “Our men throw acid in our faces, destroy our lives but we never stop loving men.”

The aim, as she says, is to disfigure. You can gravely injure anyone by throwing acid on them, of course, but these attacks specifically for women are to mar her face and make her ugly– beyond ugly; monstrous and frightening. Her primary worth is her beauty, therefore to destroy that is to destroy her. In so doing, you also destroy her family through the burdens of caring for her health, her chances of having gainful employment, her social status since she is now an outcast…you have taken everything from her. Every one of these attacks is motivated by sheer misogyny– a feeling of resentment for women who do not conduct themselves as desired, for refusing to obey, for simply being women. For this, their faces have literally been melted and their entire existence turned to suffering.

A handful of face transplant surgeries have occurred recently, most notably Isabelle Dinoire in France and Charla Nash and Dallas Wiens in the United States. In each of their cases the disfigurement was the result of an accident, and each was lucky enough to live in a country with advanced medical care and the opportunity to radically improve– though not completely fix– his or her appearance and physical functioning. The women who are attacked by acid have no similar opportunity in their countries. They are pariahs not only within their own societies, but in their world.

Nasreen concludes:

We are more abused, harassed, exploited, kidnapped, raped, trafficked, murdered by our lovers, husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, friends, or men we know well than by strangers. Whatever happens to us, we never stop loving men.

Equal opportunity flirt-slaying

Equal opportunity flirt-slaying published on 1 Comment on Equal opportunity flirt-slaying

I received an email this morning from Change.org:

“Yeah, I killed him, but he did worse to me.” In 1997, a man in Queensland, Australia killed a gay man who he claimed flirted with him by bashing his head into a wall and stabbing him to death. Today, “gay panic” is still a legal defense for murder in Queensland that can result in lesser charges. In fact, just two years ago, a man was brutally killed in a Queensland churchyard, and his killer used the “gay panic” defense in court. He was subsequently acquitted of murder. Father Paul Kelly is a priest in the parish where that man was killed, and he started a petition on Change.org demanding that Queensland abolish the gay panic defense. It looked like Father Kelly’s petition was headed for victory, but now there’s a new Premier in Queensland, Campbell Newman, and he won’t say whether he will abolish the gay panic loophole. Father Kelly thinks it’s crucial to build quick international pressure on Premier Newman, particularly from important Australian allies like the US. A recent study named Queensland as Australia’s most homophobic state — 73% of gay and lesbian Queenslanders are subjected to verbal abuse or physical violence for their sexuality. Father Kelly believes that if the gay panic defense stands, Queensland’s gay community will be forced to live in terror knowing that the law is on their tormentors’ side.

Upon clicking through to the petition, I saw that an update had been made:

Queensland’s new Attorney-General has just said in media they won’t end the “gay panic” defence — instead saying any change is “unnecessary”.

Yes, apparently he did say that, but that’s not the most bizarre thing. Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said that it’s “not a priority” to change the defense, and also that it’s not appropriate to call it a gay panic defense because both sexes can use it:

I think we have to get this misconception out of everyone’s mind that this [is a] “gay panic” defence. It’s a Criminal Code defence open to any Queenslander regardless of sex.

So, two straight men have used the fact that they felt “provoked” by a non-violent sexual advance– i.e., they were hit on– by another man as justification for murdering that man, and did so successfully, but it shouldn’t be considered a gay panic defense because apparently (for example) women can also use this defense if they murder a woman who hits on them, or…a man who hits on them.

Wow. Can you imagine if every woman who felt threatened– or even “provoked”– by being hit on by a man reacted with violence? To the point of murder? And was acquitted of that? In America, I would guess that every woman has been or will be sexually harassed at least once in her life, and about 1 in 5 have been raped. I hope I don’t need to clarify that if 100% of women had been raped it wouldn’t justify killing a man simply for hitting on them, but if we’re talking concern about personal safety then surely women have a need for it. More concern, at least, than a man needs to have about another man who has expressed a sexual interest in him deciding to translate that into a sexual attack.

And yet how often do women react to sexual advances with violence? Rarely, regardless of who they’re coming from. Will the crudest of these advances be met with a slap? Occasionally (and no, I do not advocate this). But if violence enters the picture it’s far more likely to come from the woman’s jealous significant other, provoked not by concern for his own physical welfare or that of the wife/girlfriend, but by a sense of propriety. I say this not to step into some kind of gender war, but to point out that women are hit on all of the time without violence ever resulting, even though they arguably have at least some justification for being defensive. So what’s the excuse of the homophobe?

Oh yeah– he’s grossed out. He’s offended, both by the thought of the type of sex act he imagines will result from being receptive to the advances of this other man, and by the assumption on the part of the other man that he might be receptive to these advances. At being thought a “fag.” Horrible. Horrible enough to justify bashing that man’s repeatedly head against the wall and then stabbing him to death.

In Australia this is known as the “homosexual advance defense.” It was entrenched in Australian law by a high court decision in 1997 and used successfully as recently as 2009.

But it’s okay, because hey– it’s not just a defense against homosexuals. We all can use it!

Imagine a world in which everyone did.

You have the freedom to make rape jokes. Should you?

You have the freedom to make rape jokes. Should you? published on 1 Comment on You have the freedom to make rape jokes. Should you?

There is no way, I think, to more thoroughly annoy a proponent of free speech than to claim that criticism violates it.

It’s hard enough defending free speech sometimes. People don’t see anything wrong with stopping the Westboro Baptists from protesting. Denying the Holocaust? Yeah, go ahead and outlaw that. Hate speech– what, that’s not already illegal? By all means, ban that too. And nobody really needs violent video games or faux-violent porn, do they? Banish those, along with the burqas!

No, I’m not going to address any of those topics right now. I’m just going to say that when you’re talking about violations of free speech, more speech which happens to be critical of that speech isn’t one such violation.

I am talking, of course, about the Daniel Tosh thing. If you’ve been under a rock lately and aren’t familiar, he made some jokes about rape to an audience and then heckled a female heckler who didn’t like them by joking about her being raped. Yeah, I know. I know. And now we have to have this big discussion about the claim made by the woman which was that jokes about rape are never funny, and alliances have to be created and lines drawn between people who agree and people who disagree, and actually some really good and useful and even funny discussion can arise from it. For instance, you should go read Lindy West’s piece How to Make a Rape Joke at Jezebel. I really enjoyed her last two examples of funny jokes about rape, because a) I hadn’t heard of either of those comics before, and b) as with all four examples she gives, the joke isn’t making fun of rape victims. It’s about mocking the rapist, and the mentalities that feed into that, and the circumstances of people who go about their lives worrying about either being raped or being thought a rapist, or both.

Two of my favorite comedians, Patton Oswalt and Louis CK, have weighed in with support for Tosh. Oswalt’s has been conflicted and convoluted, and Louis CK is one of the people commonly accepted as being able to do a joke about rape correctly– he’s one of West’s four examples, for that matter. To call this disappointing would be an understatement. Both of these comedians are so much smarter and so much funnier than Tosh that it’s like seeing Batman sympathize with a police officer who was accused of roughing up a suspect. And there is actually a similar sort of closing ranks going on– they’re sympathizing as fellow comedians, people who also get up in front of a crowd and say things that might make the crowd erupt in laughter or erupt in rage. And they’ve also dealt with hecklers, and know what a trial that is. Hecklers don’t just pop up in the audiences of small time comics, but that’s where they’re most common. Generally speaking, the “job” of a comedian who is faced with a heckler is to shout him or her down. To make fun of and embarrass him or her. Some comics have developed this ability into a high art, while others prefer to simply say “Shut up, or you’re out of here.” And that, of course, requires having access to some sort of security personnel who can make good on that threat for you, since the comedian him or herself is not going to interrupt the show, step down off the stage, and personally deal with the person who has been disrupting things.

So yes, dealing with hecklers is rough. And the woman in question was technically a heckler, though in the interests of fairness it’s important to point out that she didn’t mean to go see a Daniel Tosh show. She meant to see Dane Cook (also offensive, but mainly because unfunny), and Tosh came on afterward. She apparently had no idea who he was, was disturbed to see rape discussed as a possible topic of jokes to follow, and declared that rape jokes are not funny to this person with whom she was quite unfamiliar. And what followed was really unpleasant, regardless of whether you go by the described linked above or the account of the owner of the Laugh Factory, who ended by saying “If you don’t want to get insulted don’t go to comedy clubs.” After being quite happy to condemn Michael Richards for his racist insults, of course, because those “came from hatred.”

Patton Oswalt and Louis CK offend audiences sometimes too, and they have an interest in not wanting comedians who offend to be punished too severely. But by and large they have no reason to fear this punishment, because they don’t make bigoted jokes. Making bigoted jokes is easy, which is why why lazier and less creative comics do it all the time. It’s hard to fail by appealing to the prejudices of your audience, provided your audience actually has those prejudices. And since audiences have warmly embraced or at least chuckled at sexist jokes for a very long time, it’s not at all surprising that a lazy, uncreative comic would resort to them. Because they work, and most likely because that comic shares those prejudices himself.  It takes work to make a joke about a sensitive subject that doesn’t involve mocking the very people who are so sensitive to it, and it also takes caring about those people in the first place. Comedians have an interest in appealing to a broad audience, obviously, and it’s doubly, triply challenging to make it and be successful without mocking minorities or even being a minority yourself– if you don’t believe me, give Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story a watch sometime.

Louis CK is a straight white man, and he makes fun of himself as a straight white man– constantly. He is the definition of self-awareness, sometimes even painfully self-aware, and that’s why his jokes on these topics work. Clearly he’s thought about them, a great deal. My favorite Louis CK rape joke isn’t mentioned in the Lindy West article, but it’s this (NSFW language, definitely):

Here we have Louis CK talking about trying to do the right thing, and not being appreciated for it. And it’s funny, because he is earnest. He’s thought about it. When Louis CK makes a joke that portrays him as an asshole, you know he’s not really an asshole. Possibly people who are assholes laugh at those jokes because they think he’s identifying with them, but he isn’t. Trusting the comedian is an important element, but you don’t really have to trust Louis CK because he makes it abundantly clear what he’s being literal about and what he isn’t. This is not a description that applies for Daniel Tosh.

Somebody in the comments for the Pharyngula post about this whole debacle linked to this essay articulating why and when rape jokes are or aren’t funny, and it’s definitely worth a read. It’s clear, it’s actually very light-hearted and casual considering the subject matter, and it’s very thoughtful. Give it a read when you’ve got some time to think and consider.

You know what it’s not, however? A freedom of speech issue. A freedom of speech issue is when you’re being censored by the government. Massive crowds of people looking on what you’ve said or done disapprovingly is not a freedom of speech issue. It is simply the assertion and exercise of their equivalent freedom of speech.

When a cult rules a town

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Two former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) found a kitten, still alive, mostly buried in concrete inside a metal tube on one of the men’s property in Colorado City, Arizona. The tube was of one of six standing upright in the ground, intended for use in making posts to support a horse shelter. They worked to rescue the kitten– cut the tubing apart and hacked at the concrete– and managed to get it out, but it died a couple of days later. Andrew Chatwin was working on Isaac Wyler’s property, and was the one who initially discovered the cat. He says he has seen incidents of apparent deliberate animal abuse before, and believes that this was an act of intimidation by FLDS members telling Wyler (and presumably himself) to “get out.”

When Chatwin went to local police to report the incident, he says they laughed at him. Chatwin says that the police are themselves FLDS, and Colorado City is effectively a “theocracy.”:

The U.S. Justice Department recently filed a lawsuit against government officials in Colorado City, and the neighboring border town of Hildale, Utah, for alleged civil rights violations, including acting as de-facto agents for the church, denying ex-members and non-members of the FLDS Church access to everything from police services to housing and utilities, according to KSTU-TV.

Warren Jeffs may be in prison, but his people appear to still be going strong. According to The 21st Floor,

The FDLS [sic] is one of the largest fundamentalist Mormon denominations and split from the Church of the Latter Day Saints over their suspension of the practice of polygamy and its decision to excommunicate its members who would continue the practice. The sect believe that a man must have three wifes [sic] to get into heaven and a number of members have been convicted of abusing their spiritual wifes [sic] who were aged between 15 and 16. The FLDS Church is estimated to have 10,000 members and was formerly led by Warren Jeffs who is convicted of two counts of child sexual abuse and is currently serving life plus twenty years in Palestine Texas. The church believes that women should be subordinate to their husbands and in general, women are not allowed to cut their hair short or wear makeup, pants, or any skirt above the knees. It has been reported by former members that the FLDS Church has excommunicated more than 400 teenage boys for offenses such as dating or listening to rock music. Some former members claim that the real reason for these excommunications is that there are not enough women for each male to receive three or more wives. Six men, aged 18 to 22, filed a conspiracy lawsuit against Jeffs and Sam Barlow, a former Mohave County deputy sheriff and close associate of Jeffs, for a “systematic excommunication” of young men to reduce competition for wives. The church is considered a hate group because of it’s views on race. Former leader Warren Jeffs is quoted as saying: ”the black race is the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth.”

Richard Dawkins claims that at least a mild form of mental abuse is “inherent in a typical religious education,” and that threats of eternal suffering in hell are an extreme example. What about the abuse of telling young men that they must marry at least three women if they want to get into heaven, and then denying them any opportunity to do so? What about the abuse of telling women that they must acquiesce to sharing a husband with other wives if they want to get into heaven– and that they really have no say in who that husband may be, and must marry him as a teenager though he could be fifty years old?

I call FLDS a cult, but not because they having teachings I consider immoral– though they have loads of those. I call them a cult because they are an insular group which threatens and harasses defectors, and indoctrinates children with beliefs that render them unable to function within society outside of the group, terrified and guilt-stricken about trying to do so. I think Dawkins is definitely exaggerating to suggest that abuse is inherent in a religious education, but that it is abusive to tell children that their eternal fate rests on obeying the particular restrictions of your group, especially if doing so is nearly impossible.

And I think that torturing an animal on someone’s property as a means of intimidation counts as terrorism– what more effective way is there to say “We have absolutely no regard for your well-being” than to demonstrate a complete lack of such regard for a kitten? Even among farmers, who are at least accustomed to dealing with the suffering of animals even if they will never be exactly comfortable with it, that recognition seems clear. As Chatwin says “How else would you take the message?”

Casual Sunday. Casual everyday.

Casual Sunday. Casual everyday. published on 4 Comments on Casual Sunday. Casual everyday.
Spotted at infidel753.blogspot.com

I am not one of those people who enjoys dressing up. I do not fault them for it, and wish them all the best, but I am not one of them. Sure, it can be fun for a wedding or fancy dinner, but generally speaking I am at my happiest in a t-shirt and jeans. Or better yet a tank top and jeans, because I like my arms to be as free as possible. There are particular brands of clothing that I like, but not because they are expensive– because they have a track record of producing durable clothes with nice textures. I rarely wear skirts and almost never wear heels, though again I don’t have a hard and fast rule against them. I just like to be comfortable. I spent the final two years in college barefoot about 80% of the time.

I would like to dispense with the notion that dressing formally conveys respect. Sure, you wear a nice black dress to a funeral. But I don’t think that occasions in which it is mandatory to dress up out of sheer tradition should be necessarily treated that way. For example, I’d love to have a president who never wears suits. If female, I’d love to have a president who doesn’t even wear dresses (but of course we’d have to get one first). I would love to see Congress convene casually, clad in attire that might have come from Target or even a thrift store. Hell, I’d like to see actors and actresses show up to the Oscars that way! Can you imagine? That might be the downfall of the fashion industry, but it would be a beautiful downfall indeed.

One good thing about dressing casually is that t-shirts and jeans don’t really go out of style. So you don’t have to buy a lot of them, though you could. Yes, trends in different styles of jeans come and go, but you can wear the same basic pair of Levis in 2012 that you wore in 1998, provided they still fit. Trying to be always on-trend and fashionable is a good way to spend a lot of money and acquire a lot of clothes that you won’t wear again after this year. Clothes that you have to look in the mirror while wearing, and think “Wow, I don’t look especially good in this…but at least I’m trendy!”

Lastly, dressing formally does not make you more virtuous, knowledgeable, or trustworthy. Unfortunately everywhere you look this myth is reiterated, and I would love to see it banished completely. Let’s have experts interviewed on the news while clad in shorts. Heck, news anchors clad in shorts…or I guess tank tops, since you don’t generally see their legs. Talking heads of all sorts being casual from the neck down. That would actually force us to consider what they’re saying by its content, rather than instinctively conclude without explicitly saying it to ourselves “This person looks nice; he/she must know what he/she is talking about and generally be a trustworthy person.”

That would be nice. But I’m not holding my breath– not for that to happen, and not to get my jeans on.

Weekend web readin’

Weekend web readin’ published on No Comments on Weekend web readin’

I’ve been slacking with the interesting articles sharing lately. Let’s fix that.

From The Raw Story: Global report: Decriminalization does not increase rates of drug use

Money quote:

The report, A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice Across the Globe, “looks at over 20 countries that have adopted some form of decriminalisation of drug possession, including some States that have only decriminalised cannabis possession.” The studies’ objective was to examine all existing research and attempt to establish whether communities that adopted decriminalization policies saw in an uptick in use. “The simple answer,” said the report, “is that it did not.” After examining the 21 countries and their “decriminalization profiles,” including the U.S., Mexico, Australia, the Netherlands, Estonia and more, the global study concluded that “many countries adopt models that are ineffective, unworkable, or in some cases which result in greater harms for those who use drugs and for society more broadly,” but that ultimately a country’s policies concerning drug legalization and enforcement have “little correlation with levels of drug use and misuse in that country.”

From Greta Christina’s Blog: Unmixing Messages: Nudity, Sex, and Hooking Up at Atheist Conferences

Money quote:

So yes, if you’re interested in hooking up at atheist conferences, knowing which other people might share this interest — as an interest in general, or with you in particular — is not always obvious. So if you’re at a conference hotel bar, and you’re trying to figure out which people there also want to hook up — and which among those number might be interested in hooking up with you — how are you supposed to know? You ask them. Not right off the bat, of course. There are some settings in which etiquette permits introducing yourself to strangers by asking if they want to have sex with you — but hotel bars at conferences are, as far as I can tell, not among them. So you start by conversing on other topics. You see if you establish a rapport. You behave in slightly flirtatious ways, and see if these are met with a withdrawal or a response in kind. If it seems that things are moving forward with this, you behave in slightly more flirtatious ways. If this seems to be moving forward, and you want to try establishing physical contact — you ask them if they would be interested in that. This seems to be a tricky concept for some people. So I’ll spell it out again: If you are interested in having sex with someone, the person you need to consult about it is the person you’re interested in. You do not, however, consult the question of whether some atheist bloggers posed nude for a calendar. Or whether they participated in a mock scientific experiment designed to make fun of the hypothesis that female immodesty causes earthquakes. Or whether they title their quick-summary-of-interesting-links blog posts with the mildly double-entendre title of “quickies.”

From Gamasutra: Video games and Male Gaze – are we men or boys?

Money quote:

Male Gaze, then, has to do with the relationship between a heterosexual male viewer, and a female that is being viewed. The theory poses that in media like film, photography, and I would here add games, when a heterosexual male is in charge of the viewing of a female, the resulting media necessarily reflects that male’s gaze. In the case of games, this may be more of a collective gaze.  In cinema, for example, if a camera follows the curve of a woman’s body, or keeps her cleavage in primary screen real-estate, that is an example of Male Gaze. Or in games, consider the Golden Axe Beast Rider trailer in which the camera pans down from the protagonist’s butt to reveal enemies in the distance. This was a conscious choice someone made when creating this trailer. Note also that the two top-rated comments are in reference to this scene, which altogether should give you a pretty good idea of what Male Gaze means, and the simplest forms it takes. [Note: the original version of the trailer linked is this one which has more views, and has the mentioned top-rated comments. It was not viewable in the U.S., so was replaced. -ed.]Some folks argue that these women are strong, kill lots of men, and thus are positive characters. But take a look at these ladies from Tera Online. They may have crazy superpowers, sure. But they are nearly naked to the eye of the player, and the target player here is clearly male. All their power is stripped away; their primary function, the reason they were created, is to be sexy for a male gaze, to draw males to stare at them. When you look at that picture, do you see “powerful mage” or do you see “hot girl.” Let’s be honest here! I know what I see. 

From Dr. Nerdlove: On labeling women “crazy”

Money quote:

There are certain words that are applied to women specifically in order to manipulate them into compliance: “Slut”, “Bitch”, “Ugly/Fat” and of course, “Crazy”. These words encapsulate what society defines as the worst possible things a woman can be. Slut-shaming is used to coerce women into restricting their own sexuality into a pre-approved vision of feminine modesty and restraint. “Bitch” is used against women who might be seen as being too aggressive or assertive… acting, in other words, like a man might. “Ugly” or “Fat” are used – frequently interchangeably – to remind them that their core worth is based on a specific definition of beauty, and to deviate from it is to devalue not only oneself but to render her accomplishments or concerns as invalid. “Crazy” may well be the most insidious one of the four because it encompasses so much. At its base, calling women “crazy” is a way of waving away any behavior that men might find undesirable while simultaneously absolving those same men from responsibility. Why did you break up with her? Well, she was crazy. Said something a woman might find offensive? Stop being so sensitive.

From Dispatches from the Culture Wars:  SCOTUS Overturns Stolen Valor Act

Money quote:

The Stolen Valor Act punished such claims with a fine and up to a year in jail. The government argued that false statements do not have First Amendment protection and cited a long line of cases with language indicating that. But Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Roberts, Kagan and Sotomayor, notes that all of those examples “derive from cases discussing defamation, fraud, or some other legally cognizable harm associated with a false statement, such as an invasion of privacy or the costs of vexatious litigation.” The distinction should be obvious. A lie that deprives another person due process (perjury, for instance) or harms them against their will (fraud or defamation, for instance) is legally actionable, but that does not mean the government can, under the First Amendment, punish any and all false statements that do not harm others. By such reasoning, the government could police every personal interaction imaginable.

…Not yet

…Not yet published on No Comments on …Not yet

I often say that offense is a valuable thing– as appealing as it might seem, you really wouldn’t want to be a person who isn’t offended by anything, because that would mean losing your humanity. People who go through life being oversensitive are in a bad state because they’re suffering more than they really should, but people who develop a rock-hard emotional shell and take nothing seriously have trained themselves to be callous and uncaring, which isn’t good either.

Sometimes I re-think that, however. Such as when I see that someone created an interactive game allowing the player to beat up a woman for wanting to make a video series on sexism in video games.

Does it get easier?

Does it get easier? published on No Comments on Does it get easier?

Gaming as Women has an excellent advice post up today. The letter-writer wants to know if it gets easier to be a feminist:

Right now it is very hard to be a feminist when I am constantly told that I shouldn’t be one, that I’m doing it wrong somehow, and that I’m ruining everyone’s fun. I can’t unsee misogyny or the kyriarchy anymore, and now I’m starting to hate myself for seeing problematic things all the time because no one I’m with ever sees it with me or even wants to. I work in the game industry so I’m immersed in sexism on daily basis, but some people aren’t and just simply can’t see why I am the way I am. How can I tell if I’m a bad feminist? Or is this just how it feels constantly? If so…does it ever get better?

Melody, Elin, Vivian, Jess, and Dympha all give very good answers to this, which you should read. Their answers include two important reality checks: 1) that in one sense being a feminist today in the West is far easier than it has been further back in history or elsewhere in the modern world where women have it a lot worse, and 2) we all have our biases and prejudices, which is good to keep in mind when addressing those of other people so that you can avoid shaming the whole person while talking about a particular thing they said or did that displays bias or prejudice. Right on the money with both of those. However I would also point out that the historical/cultural comparison shows how it can be more difficult to be a feminist in a modern Western context, because it’s much easier to see and acknowledge a disparity in how men and women are treated when, say, half of them can’t vote or own property than when half of them tend to be represented primarily as sexual objects. You often have to start by getting a person to agree that gender representation even matters, and head off the assumption that even discussing it means that you don’t care about those poor women in Saudi Arabia who can’t go out of the house without being completely covered and why don’t you care about them anyway? If you’re going to be all fired up about treatment of women, why not focus on that?

Well, we are. We’re capable of caring about more than one thing at a time, you know.

Once that hurdle is cleared– if it’s cleared– you can talk about representation, and face the accusation of wanting to ruin everyone’s fun. Because feminists, as you know, don’t like fun. They enjoy misery and want everyone to be miserable with them, which is why they’re even less funny than women are generally (thanks, Adam Carolla). Actually feminists like to have fun and laugh just as much as anybody, but as feminists they tend to notice when that “fun” is at the expense of women and feel compelled to say something about that. It’s understandable that making bigoted jokes and viewing the sex you’re attracted to as existing mainly for your own purposes is fun, but it’s also unfortunate that it’s fun, because eventually the people who have been made the butt of those jokes and the object of that…objectification are going to speak up. Because they want to have fun too, and that’s getting in the way.

This is an impossible thing to make people (yes, including women) understand if they can’t manage to switch perspectives a bit. You’re marching right up to people who are enjoying something just the way it is, and demanding that they change it, and they can’t see why. It seems unfair. It seems pushy and entitled. Nobody wants to view themselves as sexist, so they will fight tooth and nail against the mere suggestion that there’s some sexism present in the movie/TV show/video game/comic they’ve been enjoying so much for such a long time. And if you change it to rectify this “bias” you see, that will make it worse. It’s just fine as it is, leave it alone.

I get it.

In the discussion on feminism and sexism in all things geekish, I’ve seen a number of attempts to force empathy on people by getting them to see what it would look like if men in movies/TV/video games/comics were depicted like women are. Male superheroes wearing the costumes of female superheroes and posed all coquettishly, male characters on the covers of science fiction and urban fantasy novels posed and dressed like the female characters, and so on. I’m not sure if it really does any good, aside from providing amusement for many and pointing out with stark clarity that men who are depicted as wanting to look sexy will look ridiculous even if they’re not also dressed revealingly (and all the moreso if they are).

Which, now that I say it, should be helpful since the point being made is that women appear ridiculous if they’re trying to look sexy as a default. If they’re trying to look sexy while fighting demons on a burning countryside, or sneak past guards and break into an enemy’s compound, or bound through the jungle pursued by wild animals, or wage a battle against an aliens species, or just generally trying to save the world. It’s not a Revlon commercial; it’s more like the Army. Portraying women as if they have confused the latter for the former makes them look stupid and inept– they styled their hair, put on makeup, and wore their most revealing bustier and six inch heels to kick a cave troll’s butt in battle. What were they thinking? That doesn’t say “strong woman;” it says “When they said Dungeon, I thought they were talking about a night club.” This does not do women a favor. Sometimes they do want to dress in bustiers and six inch heels, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but making them do so inappropriately is not good. It says that their being sexy is the most important thing about them, all the time. It doesn’t have to be that way.

If you can get to this point and your fellow conversant is still listening, my hat’s off to you. Getting to this point is hard. That’s because of all the hurdles preceding it which have labels like “It’s just a game; get over yourself” and “We like it this way, and there aren’t as many of you” and of course our old friend “Don’t you have something more important to worry about?” That’s what our letter-writer is dealing with, and she has my sympathy.

But the question remains, though– does it get any better? My answer: We’ll have to see, won’t we?