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Reddit makes Rebecca hate atheists and Ed hate men

Reddit makes Rebecca hate atheists and Ed hate men published on 3 Comments on Reddit makes Rebecca hate atheists and Ed hate men
Reddit thread here, if you’re interested

These discussions, while useful, take a toll. Sometimes they just seem…tiring. I admire people who are willing to run the “sexism on the internet/in skepticism/atheism” treadmill, but can’t help but wonder how they manage to remain sane. Especially while being attacked endlessly for their efforts, as Rebecca Watson has been. As she has shown, all you need do provoke the misogynistic ire of the internet is mention its existence disapprovingly. I really don’t think it has much to do with atheism/skepticism.

Sexism on the internet is a problem, and atheism/skepticism are predominant on the internet. So “sexism is a problem for atheism/skepticism,” because the internet is a primary conduit of interaction for such people. The internet helps people around the world who feel isolated come into contact with others of their kind, yes…and it also creates the impression that those who take advantage of this opportunity speak for everyone in their minority group. When, for example, PZ Myers and Greta Christina disagree, who should we listen to? Who is the representative of all atheist-kind? Well, neither of them, obviously. Atheists and skeptics have no popes, no bishops, no chain of command, because– this is important– atheism and skepticism are not belief systems. Atheism is a lack of belief in gods, and skepticism is a tool, an epistemological approach. Nevertheless prominent atheists can influence the beliefs of others, and lacking churches and being in disparate locations, they often do so on the internet. People want to group together with others of their kind, and when they do they like to have authorities. People outside of groups like for those groups to have authorities to speak for them, to encapsulate what they’re all about. It makes things easier, but in this case also distorts the picture grossly.

Bottom line: sexism is an internet problem. A world problem. The fact that atheists and skeptics on the internet are discussing its existence within their own ranks does not betray that atheism/skepticism “has a sexism problem.” It means that there are vocal people who are concerned enough about this ubiquitous problem to address it, and that quite naturally leads to a widespread ongoing discussion. It’s amazing how much easier it is to avoid having a “problem” with something when your community is either homogeneous, or the community is homogeneously in agreement on it (perhaps by silencing or just not listening to dissidents). Atheists/skeptics on the internet are willing and able to speak up, therefore they’re the ones with the problem. Hmm, not buying it.

Dramatic generalizations incoming. Ready? Here we go.

Dramatic generalizations incoming. Ready? Here we go. published on 1 Comment on Dramatic generalizations incoming. Ready? Here we go.
When it comes to women and political issues, conservatives will generally be the ones to attack women’s actions by attacking their appearance. Liberals, however, can be counted upon to respond by defending the woman’s appearance rather than her actions. 
The corollary is, of course, that when desiring to promote a woman politically conservatives will trumpet the virtues of her appearance, whereupon at least some liberals will respond by attacking it.

#heblowsalot

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Ah, the power of Twitter. It can help organize protests, keep people in contact in the midst of tragedy, spread news like wildfire, and allow governors to become aware of the fact that teenagers are saying mean things about them. And then take action!

Emma Sullivan is an eighteen year old student at Shawnee Mission East high school in Kansas. While making a visit to the state capitol of Topeka as part of a Youth in Government program, she made the following tweet:

“Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.” 

She didn’t actually meet him– the tweet was a joke with friends. But that wasn’t a factor to Brownback staffers, who in scanning social media for mentions of him came across the tweet and proceeded to contact Sullivan’s school. The school’s principal, Karl Krawitz, called Sullivan into his office and proceeded to berate her for nearly an hour:

“I had no idea what it was about or why I was being called into the office,” she said. “I had never been in trouble before.”
Sullivan claimed that the principal “told me he needed to do damage control and was really upset.”
“He said I was an embarrassment to the school and the school district and that I had been disrespectful,” she added.

Krawitz followed this with a demand that Sullivan write a note of apology to Brownback for the tweet, to be turned in on Monday (today). Sullivan had decided by Sunday night, with the support of her parents, that she wasn’t going to do it. This became a non-issue today, however, when the school district decided it could not demand an apology:

“The district acknowledges a student’s right to freedom of speech and expression is constitutionally protected. The district has not censored Miss Sullivan nor infringed upon her freedom of speech,” said a statement. “She is not required to write a letter of apology to the Governor. Whether and to whom any apologies are issued will be left to the individuals involved.”

Sam Brownback himself responded by blaming his staff:

A statement issued by Brownback on Monday did not reference Sullivan by name or mention the prospect of any apology letter. He did emphasize his support for “freedom of speech,” while thanking “the thousands of Kansas educators who remind us daily of our liberties, as well as the values of civility and decorum.”
“My staff overreacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize,” the governor said. “Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms.”

Meanwhile Sullivan’s Twitter following has jumped from 63 to almost 11,000 (as of now). Brownback’s is at about 3,000. And the #heblowsalot hashtag is being used constantly by Sullivan’s supporters. A representative tweet:

It’s unusual, I think, not to have heard of Brownback before considering that he was a U.S. senator from 1996 until this year, and ran for president in 2008. Still, there’s no question that awareness of him is exploding because of this…and doubtless not in a way he would prefer. Like the enormously successful campaign to re-define Rick Santorum’s last name, “heblowsalot” might become the phrase that comes to most people’s minds when considering Governor Brownback.

Now, here’s the question: would that be a good thing? Does Sam Brownback, in fact, blow?

Maybe not literally. But as those of us from Kansas–especially women– who are not right-wingers are more than aware, figuratively he most certainly does. If you want a quick idea, imagine Rick Perry and take away some reasoning ability and restraint. As Amanda Marcotte notes over at Slate,

I suppose it’s not that big a surprise that someone like Brownback, who has a strong belief that women should not be in control of their own ladyparts, would also find the notion that teenage girls have the legal right to make fun of him deeply threatening. First he comes for your abortions, then your contraception, and next any fancy electronic devices that could be used to register displeasure with dudely authority figures. The freakout over a teenage girl having a less-than-flattering opinion of him was also predictable if you look at Brownback’s long history with the C Street Family, a religious-political group that specifically promotes patriarchy and disdains the idea of women holding political power. (Though they have been known to make exceptions for the occasional woman who has economic goals in common with them.) To a large extent, Brownback has created a bubble around him that has a pleasing 19th-century cast to it, where young people and women knew their place, and men of privilege are protected from the opinions of those who are most subject to social control. No wonder a juvenile bit of tweetage caused such an oversized reaction.

This is not an exaggeration. Brownback has spent his years in office, both as senator and governor, doing everything he can to restrict reproductive freedom for women. He is also not a fan of state funding for art, having eliminated Kansas’ arts commission this year making it the only state without such an agency. He denies evolution and supports the Discovery Institute (intelligent design think tank), is relentlessly pro-war (supporting the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the suspension of habeas corpus rights under the Military Commissions Act of 2007), and is so adamantly opposed to gay marriage that in 2006 he blocked confirmation of federal judicial nominee Janet Neff because she had attended a same-sex commitment ceremony. He believes that the Constitution does not carry any guarantee of a right to privacy. His record on civil rights is rated– this will shock you– 20 percent by the ACLU. Pretty dismal. As is, no doubt, the outlook of any Kansan who cares about civil rights since Brownback assumed governorship, which I’m guessing includes Emma Sullivan.

But regardless of why Sullivan thinks Brownback blows, specifically, I think her handling of the issue has been excellent. She seems quite level-headed:

Emma Sullivan said Sunday that she thought the tweet “has turned into a good starting point to open up dialogue about this … free speech and the power of social media and the power that people my age could potentially have, that people will listen to us.”

Indeed, indeed. Although it’s unfortunate that this dialogue would not have opened up in the first place had Brownback’s staff and Sullivan’s principal (any bets on whether she’ll get an apology from him?) both not wildly overreacted to something said in that context.

This whole event could result in a bully pulpit for Ms. Sullivan, should she choose to use it. She said that she’s interested in getting involved in politics, and judging from the coverage this is getting not only on Twitter but ABC, CNN, HuffPo, and so on, this seems like a good start! I hope she takes advantage of it to go out and do something. Whatever she finds most appropriate to do in terms of combating the many ways in which Sam Brownback sucks. And blows.

“Masculine Christianity” and the Penn State scandal

“Masculine Christianity” and the Penn State scandal published on 2 Comments on “Masculine Christianity” and the Penn State scandal

                                      . 

This is University of Nebraska Assistant Coach Ron Brown praying on behalf of his football team and that of Penn State prior to their game on November 12th, in the wake of the latter university’s scandal regarding former head coach Joe Paterno. Which you already know about if you haven’t been living under a rock for the past week and a half, so you don’t need any commentary on it from me. But Brown thought that God needed a comment on the matter, specifically regarding manhood and young boys:

There are a lot of little boys around the country, today, who are watching this game. And they’re trying to figure out what the definition of manhood is all about. Father, this is it right here. I pray that this game will be a training ground of what manhood looks like. And we will compete with fierce intensity. With the honor, and the gifts, and the talents that you’ve given us. And may we be reminded, Lord, as it says in John 1:14, that Jesus is full of grace and truth. May the truth be known!

Indeed– may the truth be known. And the truth is that a coach from a public university found it appropriate to use a scandal involving child molestation as an opportunity to teach little boys what manhood is, via a football and declarations about Jesus. I saw this, and thought “I can’t be the only person believes this to be very, very wrong.” And I’m not– it’s just that it’s hard to articulate all of the things wrong about it.

Hemant Mehta decided to re-write Brown’s statements to be something that is, in Mehta’s eyes, more useful:

Here’s what Ron Brown could’ve said to the teams — and the crowd of over 100,000 — that would’ve made a real difference — instead of the worthless tripe that came out instead:  

We’ve been through a lot this past week, but it’s nothing compared to what Jerry Sandusky’s victims have been through. We can never let something like this happen again.

 If any of you ever sees abuse taking place — on the field, off the field, after you graduate — it doesn’t matter who the abuser is, go to the police immediately.

If you’re ever the victim of such abuse, please tell someone you trust what happened. It doesn’t matter what you think about the person who did it to you, and no one will ever think less of you for turning them in.

If you had nothing to do with the situation but you still want to help, well, we need more people like you. Please encourage your fans, friends, and family members to make a donation to a child abuse prevention organization.

That will do more for these children that our god ever can. 

That would’ve taken real courage to say, so I’m not surprised we didn’t hear anything even remotely resembling that before the game.  

I suppose it would have taken real courage to say, but only because of the last line– and that line should be left out. Everything else is not particularly courageous, but it is certainly important. It’s what people need to hear and know, valuable information. It doesn’t exactly take the place of what Brown said, though, because it’s not ceremonial. It doesn’t address the communal mood, the event that is about to take place. It’s a comment that should be made in addition to something else, and here’s the important thing…that “something else” should not be a prayer. This is something overlooked in Sean O’Neil’s essay concerning what he calls “muscular Christianity”:

John Sandusky is an older man who used his prestige and power to abuse boys. Perhaps, then, Brown’s prayer about a redemptive display of masculinity merely reinforces a truism: that decent men would never abuse anyone. Since lines were transgressed in obviously horrific ways perhaps the boundaries of decency need to be reinforced in just as obvious a fashion. This still raises other questions, though: Who gets to re-draw these borders at such a sensitive time of (national) crisis? Also, what will young boys learn about gender from the dominant religious portrayals of manhood in muscular Christianity? Muscular Christianity refers to the wedding of traditional conceptions of masculinity—such as bravery, chivalry, and athleticism—with evangelical Christian emphases on personal conversion and biblical devotion. Tim Tebow is perhaps the quintessential muscular Christian, combining religious and athletic vigor on the most visible athletic platform in the country: the National Football League. Muscular Christianity is also developed in more pedestrian venues, on college campuses among groups such as the Fellowship for Christian Athletes. Evangelicals espousing some form of muscular Christianity (not a term that most would use) tend to interpret the Bible conservatively—especially with regards to sexual norms. Gay sex among consenting adults, for example, is usually labeled sinful in such evangelical contexts. There are few if any progressive religious voices in these settings. . .  If the only religious voices heard on the fields are the most conservative on issues of human sexuality, there may be few opportunities for athletes to combine vigorous athleticism, strong religious commitment, and fidelity to LGBT identities in the same breath.

Hoo boy. If you know me, you know what will be the sticking points here: 1) “traditional conceptions of masculinity” and 2) “religious voices heard on the fields.” Bin them both, please.

Why? Let’s start with the former. I hate to point out the obvious, but “LGBT identities” often do not conform to “traditional concepts of masculinity.” Nor is there any reason why they should, considering that “traditionally masculine” people are often outright phobic or hateful of those who are non-traditional. Just as much or more than being brave, chivalrous (ugh) or athletic, traditional masculinity entails being straight. And so far as I can tell, there is nothing about being non-straight, non-traditionally masculine, that inhibits one’s athleticism. So maybe when it comes to football or any other sport, it would be better to call a spade a spade and emphasize that. Those attributes of character that are desirable to have also– bravery, stalwartness, reliability, foresight, cunning, and so on– are by no means exclusive to the masculine. Especially not the traditional kind.

(I will also mention, though I hope it’s not necessary, the significance of focusing on how to tell/show young boys what it means to be a (traditional) man in the wake of scandal surrounding child rape. Just as with the scandals within the Catholic Church, there are plenty– perhaps Asst. Coach Brown is one of them– who interpret such an act as part and parcel of homosexuality. As something that gays just do, or that just gays do. This bigoted belief has no place on the football field or anywhere else.

Let it be emphasized: a decent person would not abuse anyone. Indecent people come in all sorts of gender and sexual configurations.)

As for religious voices on that field…why do we need those? Even disregarding the question of whether it constitutes a church/state violation to have a coach for a public university’s football team to deliver a prayer before a game, O’Neil’s grievance above illustrates precisely the problem with having a religious invocation in the first place– it creates a debate about whether it’s the right religion. Whose beliefs should prevail. Because for everyone who doesn’t worship Jesus and/or doesn’t appreciate the treatment of Jesus in the prayer given, the ritual becomes a period of discomfort rather than bolstering. And for many of those to whom the words about Jesus ring pure and true, any other religious message will seem either diluted or outright blasphemous. By all means, don’t prevent the players from practicing their faith as they see fit. But leading everyone in a massive group prayer such as this seems designed to be unnecessarily divisive and yet squelch any minority views.

I can’t help but wonder how many of those players kneeling around Assistant Coach Ron Brown feel resentful, silly, or confused. How many wish that a message acknowledging the situation but encouraging them to play a good game could be delivered without being wrapped in platitudes about what it means to be a real man and a real believer. How many of that group would never breathe a word about such sentiments, for fear that they would be ridiculed, hated, maybe even attacked by others.

How sad that is. And how completely unnecessary.

Miss? Excuse me, Miss? Someone wants you to “represent.”

Miss? Excuse me, Miss? Someone wants you to “represent.” published on 1 Comment on Miss? Excuse me, Miss? Someone wants you to “represent.”

Is it a bit hasty to write about a movie you’ve not yet seen? Perhaps, but this one I’m eager to see, and it will be televised again on November 12th so perhaps there will be an opportunity. Miss Representation is a documentary made by Jennifer Siebel Newsom on the subject of how women are portrayed in media, making a case that  both on and off-screen they are both under- and misrepresented. Newsom is an actress herself, and described some of that experience to Mother Jones in a recent interview:

Something I’ve learned myself in making this film is sometimes people have a hard time listening to what we have to say because they’re so concerned about how we look. I think that’s a challenge that women in particular have in our culture. . . I started acting at the age of 28, and my agent told me to lie about my age and take my MBA off my résumé. I didn’t do either, but that was like, whoa! I thought there was value in being smart. I thought there was value and wisdom in getting older. We’re challenging the culture in Hollywood that is all about youth, youth, youth, beauty. Because not even that’s healthy. I don’t care how much plastic surgery people have: At some point, they’re going to die. We’re all going to age somewhere on our body, and we may as well accept that and embrace it. I mean, aging is a beautiful thing; wisdom is a beautiful thing. Frankly, as a woman who’s getting older in our culture, I want to see stories about women who are before me, so I can be inspired—because someday I’ll be there. 

Older women. Smarter women. Diverse women. More women– I was rather shocked a few years ago to learn of the Bechdel Test, which first appeared way back in 1985 in a comic called “Dykes to Watch Out For” which described the rules of the author’s friend for being willing to see a movie:

  1. It has to have at least two women in it,
  2. Who talk to each other,
  3. About something other than a man.
  4. (Addendum: who have names)
Deceptively simple, right? You’d think that most movies would pass this easily. But not really:
Note that the word used here is not “conspiracy,” but “systemic problem.” The claim isn’t being made that male directors, producers, screen writers, and so on have a conscious agreement to keep women down. For that matter, Newsom’s stated concern in making Miss Representation is not solely about women. She notes that 

it’s really interesting now, being a mother raising both of a son and a daughter, in a culture that objectifies women and sees women’s value in their youth or beauty or sexuality, and not in their ability to lead. And in a culture that values a hypermasculinized version of what it is to be a man. At MissRepresentation.org, we’re about creating a dialogue about how we empower women and men, or girls and boys, to find their own path and to find value in a plethora of attributes and possibilities for who they can be.

You can’t say something about women without also saying something about men. Portraying women as helpless things that need to be rescued, for example, means portraying men as having to be powerful rescuers. Ideals of masculinity are constructed and enforced in media, too. It’s fun to unplug your brain and enjoy an action movie (which, needless to say, predictably fail the Bechdel Test), so long as you’re fully aware of how distant the impressions in it are from reality. But not everybody is, and it’s hard to expect them to be if they don’t have other images to look at. And so far as I know, there’s no law that says explosions and boobs have to go together. Just saying.

Speaking on that– Newsom says she’s fighting the objectification of women (boobs), and that can lead to some bad places. Conservatives and liberal feminists, as has often been noted, come together to make strange bedfellows when they decide that showing off bodies for aesthetic appreciation and titillation is inherently wrong. It would not encourage girls and women to “find their own path” and the “value in a plethora or attributes and possibilities for who they can be” if women who decide that their path is to show off their bodies are shamed and/or forbidden to do so. I believe that a feminist wagging her finger at an actress who opts to go topless in a film is no less moralizing than a fundamentalist who does it. So here’s hoping Newsom doesn’t intend to wag fingers so much as point to opportunities. We would be making progress if there are more women showing up in general as well as a decreased willingness to think less of them according to how much clothing they have on. Slut-shaming is not a feminist pursuit.

Having said all of this, I am eager to see Miss Representation when possible. If possible. If you have the means, you can catch it on the Oprah Winfrey Network at 11am ET on November 12th.

“Normal” is overrated

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“We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that’s all.” — Andrew, The Breakfast Club

The Pervocracy has a great post on the end of “normal” relationships in general, but I particularly liked the part about gender norms:

you don’t have to be non-heterosexual to question what gender means to your relationship.  If “which one of y’all does the dishes?” is a stupid question to ask a gay couple, it ought to be an equally stupid assumption to make about a straight one.  The fact that assigned gender roles are available for a straight couple doesn’t mean they ought to take them on without question. What kind of relationship you have is your choice, and one choice isn’t better than another.  What’s important is that you make a choice.  That even if you’re you’re monogamous, vanilla, and heterosexual–you’re doing it because it’s what you want and because you and your partner have agreed to it, not because that’s what people do.  What’s important isn’t what path you take, but that you know there are paths. Paths?  Fuck, there’s an entire open world out there once you get past “man buys dinner, woman agrees to missionary PIV until he ejaculates.  (Or rather, a world including “man buys dinner, woman agrees to missionary PIV until he ejaculates,” because, hey, if that’s your thing.)  There’s a million goddamn ways to love, a billion things  “partner” or “lover” or “fuckbuddy” or “spouse” can mean to you, and you get to decide. How fucking cool is that?

Very. The emphasis in this post is on what it calls “consciousamory”– the idea that no orientation or lifestyle is necessarily superior or more evolved, but what matters is that people are aware that there are options and feel free to choose from among them. There’s a problem when consenting adults don’t feel that, when pressure from the outside or from one partner only determines the nature of their relationship rather than it being based on an agreement between them.

People write in to Savage Love all of the time asking whether the particular conditions of their relationship or the things that turn them on are normal, and every time the answer is the same: who gives a damn about “normal”?  If you like it, and your partner(s) like it, then it’s right for you. If you’re aware of the possibilities, have a preference, and all involved parties want it, that’s what’s important.  That means that your relationship, whatever it might be, is freely chosen.

Pervocracy goes on to point out that if everyone is aware that they don’t have to be normal, people who engage in polyamory or any other non-standard relationship style are no longer abnormal. They’re just different….in a perfectly normal way.

Coulda been, shoulda been, never woulda been

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Apparently October 9th is National Pro Life Cupcake Day. Did you know? It’s a day when pastries become  political…poor pastries. Pressed into service on behalf of highly controversial issue which doesn’t have, so far as I can tell, any direct connection to wax paper wrappers and frosting. But, one might ask, how is this joyous holiday celebrated? Well…

Here’s how we celebrate: once a year, on October 9th, we would bake as many birthday cupcakes as humanly possible and hand them out for free wherever we can.  When people asked whose birthday it is, we tell them these cupcakes are for celebrating the birthdays of every person who never gets to have a birthday.  People respond in all ways – from refusing the cupcake, to sharing about abortions they’ve had in the past and the regret they carry, to just wanting to know more.

Amanda Marcotte offers up some lovely snark in response:

But really, they’re selling the whole “never will get a birthday” thing short!  After all, there are many, many, many more potential people that never come into existence than just those who may have been but for an abortion. After all, there are children you never had because you use contraception (to be fair, anti-choice activists are also against that).  But there are also children you didn’t have because you didn’t have sex in the first place.  Not fucking is clearly murder in these cases. Every time you’re ovulating and you elect to go to bed alone, you have deprived someone of a birthday!  So women like Lila Rose and Jill Stanek, who claim that contraception is a sin and therefore expect us to believe they simply use abstinence to keep from having babies, are also horrible deprivers-of-birthdays with all that abstaining. Stanek is in her 50s and has only one son, I do believe, meaning she’s deprived approximately 400 children of their chance to have a birthday. That’s a lot of cupcakes!

All I can think of this quote from Richard Dawkins’ book Unweaving the Rainbow:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

 Have a cupcake.

Limbaugh’s big fat complete lack of self-awareness

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Rush Limbaugh takes yet another poke at Michelle Obama for being fat. A commenter on Dispatches called Nemo writes

This meme on the right that Michelle Obama is overweight is utterly bizarre to me. A glance at her should serve to debunk it. I can’t see another explanation for its persistence than racism — they have to be thinking, even if unconsciously, something like “Black women are fat. Michelle Obama is black. Therefore, Michelle Obama is fat. QED.”

I had been busy noting that Limbaugh is no Kate Moss himself, and if he had a “No Fat Chicks” t-shirt it would have to come with a few X’s in front of the size “Large.” Ed Brayton remarks

Really, Rush? You’re going to do weight jokes? You might notice that I don’t ever poke fun at someone’s weight. You know why? Because I’m overweight myself and I’d look like an idiot and a hypocrite if I did it. That seems not to matter to Limbaugh.

No, I expect it doesn’t. But the reason for that isn’t quite clear. It could be because Limbaugh’s a racist, and therefore the charge of hypocrisy is dismissed as irrelevant or (more likely) doesn’t even register. But I think plain ol’ misogyny is closer to the truth. Insulting a woman’s appearance, especially by calling her fat, is the most basic, intellectually lazy things you can do to dismiss her. And it only seems relevant if you consider it important for her appearance to conform to your tastes…as Limbaugh pretty clearly does. Michael Heath points out that this tendency extends back in history beyond the Obama White House:

Mr. Limbaugh criticized Bill & Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea’s physical appearance when she was a 13 year old child. While he’s clearly a racist, his misogyny goes back decades.
Cite:
“Socks is the White House cat. But did you know there is also a White House dog?”
— while holding up a photograph of 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton on his 1993 television show

And Sadie Morrison is not even necessarily convinced that Limbaugh thinks Obama is fat:

I don’t think that he necessarily views Michelle Obama as overweight; as previously mentioned, slurs regarding physical appearance are almost always the first offense directed against women by misogynists whether or not such slurs match any sense of objective reality.

And if the woman in question is so thin that there’s no way you can call her fat without looking like a lunatic, you say she’s horse-faced. For the dedicated yet lazy, there is always a physical put-down handy.  I would hazard a guess that this is part of the reason why some conservatives like to extol the beauty of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann to the point of creepiness– it’s defensive tactic against the same sort of attacks they would be hurling against left-leaning female politicians. They have not taken into consideration the idea that a woman’s appearance as the most important thing about her might be a premise their opponents have discarded.

How not to deal with misogyny, gaming edition

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Girls, keep out!

Let’s say you’re planning a big party. Unfortunately, when parties like the one you have in mind have been thrown in the past, they have tended to attract…well, some assholes. These assholes direct their ire to and about a certain specific group of people, and it can be really obnoxious, making others feel uncomfortable or even unsafe. You want to make sure that kind of thing isn’t going to happen at your party. So what do you do?

A) Announce in advance that assholery of any kind will not be tolerated, and enforce it by kicking out anyone at the party who insists on behaving that way.
B) Take note of assholes who have attended such parties in the past, and make an effort not to invite them.
C) Incentivise people of the group targeted by the assholes to attend, so as to create a disparity in numbers which encourages the assholes to keep their traps shut.
D) Some combination of the above.

If you’re one of the organizers of an upcoming LAN party in Austin, Texas for Battlefield 3, your answer was…. E) None of the above! Announce that members of the group targeted by assholes are not invited to attend, for the sake of their own protection.

Yes, really. And as you can guess from this post’s title, the targeted group is women. From Owen Good at Kotaku:

Enthusiasts of military-style first-person shooters are not well known for their progressive thoughts on the matter of gender. The organizers of a large LAN party in Texas, scheduled to celebrate the launch of Battlefield 3, have decided the best way to deal with any slurs hurled at female gamers is to simply forbid them from attending. “Nothing ruins a good LAN party like uncomfortable guests or lots of tension, both of which can result from mixing immature, misogynistic male-gamers with female counterparts,” the organizers originally wrote in an event FAQ. “Though we’ve done our best to avoid these situations in years past, we’ve certainly had our share of problems. As a result, we no longer allow women to attend this event. This paragraph has since been removed, as the stink over the exclusion went viral, and replaced with: “This event is a ‘gentlemen’s retreat’; as such we do not allow women to attend.” Later, they clarified that with: “We actively discourage gamers from being the kind of mysogynistic jackwagons seen in the Reddit post, and such behavior should not be tolerated. Frankly, we don’t like that kind of player either. So far as this event goes, it is an special event designed specifically for male gamers. Further, it is meant as a getaway designed to help said male contingent become better men both for themselves and for those who love us.” This is a large, private event and its organizers certainly have the right to associate with whomever they please. But given what I usually hear over my headset in military shooters like Battlefield, I wonder if this party would so outwardly ban any black gamers from registering. Because it would be so, you know, uncomfortable to hear them being insulted. Or maybe the answer here is to forbid that kind of obnoxious behavior, and kick out anyone who breaks the rule, $49 registration be damned. Or maybe this event is more about the comfort of the organizers than the participants.

This is not the sort of event I would want to attend anyway, not being big on first person shooter (FPS) style games, let alone playing them with strangers who are known for their propensity to engage in aggressive smack talk throughout the game. That this is the general pattern of conversation for multiplayer FPS games is so well-known it is practically a truism. But as Good suggests above, insults to and about women are not the only kind of prejudice displayed in gamer put-downs. It’s not at all uncommon to hear racism and especially homophobia as well– would the LAN party organizers ban non-whites and/or gays as well, in the name of making those gamers who are allowed to attend “better”?  Doesn’t it seem a little odd on its face to keep the assholes and exclude the victims, for the sake of decreasing the levels of general assholery?

The Battlefield 3 party is being organized by Powers Gaming, which is a private organization so of course they get to make their own rules. And I have no doubt that they are genuinely interested in keeping the level of aggressiveness during gameplay itself to a minimum. But their chosen means of doing so amounts to creating a heckler’s veto— an institutionalized means for those who are willing to be obnoxious to penalize those who are not, while escaping any penalty for themselves.

Lesley at Two Whole Cakes sums up what is going on:

Since it’s been picked up by some blogs, the text has been changed to describe the event simply as a “gentleman’s retreat”, with a link to this site, in an effort to either elicit hilarity (that said men are trying to be better people by playing Battlefield 3 together) or to earnestly reframe the male-exclusive space as a positive thing. There is also some weird drama in which possibly-imaginary female attendees describe harassment at prior LAN parties put on by this group that may have never happened. Ultimately, the question of whether women have been egregiously harassed at past events — although it would seem to be implied by the original wording — is irrelevant to this post. All I want to unpack here is the original language in the original pre-drama announcement quoted above, because I think it demonstrates a lot of what is wrong with games culture in an especially clear way. The encoded, indirect message behind that text is this: We don’t want this to be difficult. We just want to play our games and not have to worry about forcing people to behave. We don’t want to think critically about what kind of ground rules would need to be laid down, how we would make them clear, and how we would enforce them, because that seems like a lot of work without any worthwhile payoff. We don’t want to be distracted by having to police our participants. We just want to play some motherfucking Battlefield 3, and have fun doing it. Because dealing with misogyny, racism, homophobia, or any kind of hate speech? It’s just not fun. So in the interest of making this event fun for the men and safe for the women, we’re just going to require that the women stay home. The idea that it is somehow “safer” to make the event male-only is problematic in that it reinforces the assumption that men are feral fucking animals who are incapable of controlling their allegedly natural chromosomal need to be assholes. It presupposes that getting dudes to treat women and other non-dudebro people like human beings is, at best, a huge imposition, or at worst, an impossibility.

Exactly. Yet again, such a characterization is not doing men or women any favors.

I do very much believe that, in addition to simply being regularly exposed to friendly interaction with members of a targeted group, the next best way to eliminate prejudice against that group is peer pressure. As in, having friends who are not members of that group say to you “Hey, that’s not cool. Saying things like that makes you sound like a douche, actually. And I know you’re not one, so cut it out.” But I’m under no illusions that that is at all what this Battlefield 3 “gentleman’s retreat” will be about.  It will be, quite naturally, about playing Battlefield 3. And that’s perfectly fine– that’s the reason the event is being held.  But it could still be about Battlefield 3 without preemptively excluding the people who are likely to get picked on while the bullies walk right in the door…presumably to conduct all of the bullying they care to do, since the parties most likely to be offended have been eliminated.

Or have they? How cool would it be if a certain number of guy gamers went to the event to stand in for the excluded girl gamers?  To apply a little peer pressure, while simultaneously not approving of the chosen format which makes it so much more important for them to fulfill that role?

Maybe I’m dreaming, in that regard. But it would be nice.

“All great leaps forward in liberty and equality”

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Ed Brayton has a very moving (to me) post today about the progressive acceptance of equality in the face of absolutist proclamations that the faith of the majority rejects it. Using an argument from Southern Baptist Al Mohler which appeals entirely to tradition and biblical exegesis as an example, he notes that advancements in equality for virtually every minority have been faced by the objection that a person who takes his/her Christian faith seriously could never accept this “moral inversion” in which what was formerly considered sinful is now acceptable, and those who object considered the immoral ones:

The same thing always happens when society struggles to leave behind a traditional prejudice and embrace equality instead. In a remarkably short period of time in this country, slavery went from being a God-ordained institution that had existed from the earliest human civilizations with little to no doubt about its moral standing to being viewed as perhaps the single most inhumane thing one can do to another person, the greatest immorality of all. In a remarkably short period of time in this country, miscegenation went from being viewed as a great moral evil — preached as such by the very same Southern Baptist church that now stands against same-sex marriage — that society had outlawed for centuries, to being declared a protected right by a unanimous Supreme Court. And guess what? The same exact arguments were used against that ruling as are used against same-sex marriage today. The constitution itself is a perfect example of this dynamic in many ways. Prior to the constitution the norm was for all governments to be built upon a religious foundation. All written charters or constitutions prior to that time were expressed as covenants with God, complete with punishments for blasphemy and heresy. All of the colonies with the exception of Rhode Island had official churches prior to the constitution and forbid and punished even the preaching of other Christian denominations. In Massachusetts, one could be arrested, banished and even put to death (and many were) for preaching the Baptist or Catholic brand of Christianity, much less preaching Judaism, Islam or — God forbid — atheism. In Virginia, Anglicanism was the official religion and Baptists were thrown in jail. And nearly all of them had religious tests for office, requirements that one be of the right brand of religion in order to hold public office. The constitution rejected all of those things. It guaranteed freedom of religion and outlawed religious tests for office. Instead of a covenant with God, it forbid all such establishments of religion. It guaranteed freedom of speech, including the right to blaspheme and preach what others might consider heresy. and in a remarkably short period of time, everything changed. One by one the states did away with their religious establishments and adopted new constitutions without religious tests and protected free speech. This is the way it is with all great leaps forward in liberty and equality, what was previously seen as terribly immoral was legalized and legitimized — leaving conservatives making the same old arguments from tradition that Mohler is making now.