Cults of the Right Wing

Fannie posted last week about a particular article at WorldNetDaily which purports to be a super-awesome takedown of teh feminism, except for the part where the writer doesn't know anything about a) feminism or b) reality.

It contained this quote: "They [teh Feminists] hate femininity (which they see as weakness) and loath [sic] women who choose traditional roles."

As I said in a comment over there:

We do not hate femininity. We hate the cult of femininity.

Anyone who's seen me dress up for a concert or an opera, for example, knows full well that I, a feminist, do not hate femininity. I like wearing pretty dresses. I like looking at women in pretty dresses. I like to bake and do needlepoint. I sing soprano. My wallpaper has flowers on it. But I object to the idea that this is all that my life should consist of or that it's what every woman's life should consist of.

Nor do I hate women who choose to work in traditionally female occupations. I don't think that by doing so they are reversing women's progress. I think that Patrice Lewis (author of the article), Phyllis Schlafly, Jennie Chancey (founder of Ladies Against Women Feminism, and Sarah Palin - writers, activists and politicians, but one who advance anti-woman positions - are reversing women's progress.

The cult of femininity, on the other hand, does believe these things. It believes that all women not only like dresses and homemaking, but are biologically determined to, and that those who do not are freaks or denying their true nature. (See Fannie's post for excellent explanation.) In the cult of femininity, my dress-wearing, baking, flowery self would not be welcome because I have a purple belt in jujitsu, like war films, and kick the figurative asses of most of the guys in my local Quizbowl league. Oh, and I don't think that my sex makes me weak or subordinate. Of course, you'll hear advocates of this cult say that they think both women and men are people - they're just fundamentally different! Women are supposed to complement men! Ah yes, I say, a lot of complementing was I doing at the dojo today when I threw four guys to the ground or the wall repeatedly. Guess I'm just a freak.

Someone who believes in the cult of femininity does not believe that women and men are people, with sex coming secondary to the qualities that make them a person. Sex comes first and foremost.

Not only that, but this cult does see homemakers as reversing women's progress - and they think that's a good thing. Women who choose to stay at home, however feminist they might be, are held up as mute examples by people who would like to take away their opportunity to choose it by making it their only option. The idea of individual choice - a choice that affects you and maybe your immediate familiars, but not other people - doesn't seem to exist here. (You'll recall that these are the same people who try to argue that gay people having sex is affecting society in some nebulous way.)

We do not hate babies or embryos. We hate the cult of babies and embryos.

Personal disclosure: I have a baby cousin. She is only three weeks old and very soft and cute and I love her already. I have been told, in fact, that I'm a natural with babies. Yet I'm to the point where there are large corners of the Internet where seeing a picture of a baby makes me flinch because I know it's going to be an anti-choice ad.

I'm sure a lot of the people who put up these ads don't see an overlap between feminists and women who have abortions, since, you'll remember, feminists are evil man-hating unsexed freaks and women who have abortions are coerced since all real women want babies. Even the moderate narrative holds that women who have abortions just don't want children. This is incorrect. 61% of women who have an abortion already have children. 66% plan to have children later in life. Obviously it's not about hatred of children. Some feminists (gasp!) even have them. But the embryo-cultists have never let little things like facts stop them.

This is another arena where the concept of individual choice seems to be absent. The idea that a woman might not want children for herself and still support allowing others to have them is unthinkable, as is the converse - a rabid pro-choice activist who has ten children is Bringing Society in the Right Direction even if she's going to raise them all to be rabid pro-choice activists.

The same people that love to scream about LGBT people getting "special rights" (like marriage equality, protection from terrorism, and the right to work - rights that everyone else has) view embryos - babies, if they prefer, since whether or not the embryo is a person is irrelevant - not as equal to born human beings, but as more than born human beings. It's had to be stated too many times, but evidently it still needs repeating: bestowing personhood on an embryo would not give it the right to use another person's body without her consent, because no person has that right.

As anyone who spends even a little time looking at American politics is surely aware, it is the Christian religion that dominates right-wing politics in this country. This is the same Christian religion that, depending on where you like to start your story, began with an all-powerful deity using the body of a woman without her consent. In trying to give to a "baby" a power that, in their religion, is the province of God, the religious right is literally deifying the embryo.

We do not hate "traditional marriage." We hate the cult of "traditional marriage."

"Traditional marriage." Used to mean so many different things. Are we against those things? Read on!

Many feminists are straight or bisexual. Many of those feminists have opposite-sex partners. Many of those feminists are married to their opposite-sex partners. Do feminists hate opposite-sex marriage? No.

Many feminist women are homemakers. As discussed above, when it's about individual choice and not a position forced on a woman by society, we don't really have a problem with it. Do feminists hate opposite-sex marriage where the wife is a homemaker? I don't think so.

On the other hand, we do hate the movement that puts "traditional marriage" on a pedestal in order to deny other people the right to marry, and implies that domestic violence and child molestation are water under the bridge because the most important thing is for a child to have parents of different sexes. (Which is essentialist, see above, etc.)

The other oft-used synonym for "traditional marriage" is "Biblical marriage," and that strikes closer to the heart of what these people are really going for. Because "Biblical marriage" refers to opposite-sex marriage, yes. But does it refer to marriage between "one man and one woman"? No. It refers to marriage that is a relationship between a man and his property rather than a relationship between two people who love each other - a relationship where the female partner has no rights, whether they be to property, to her own children, to protection from rape and beating. Do feminists hate that? Yes, we do. And so, I'm sure, do a lot of the people who claim to be in favor of "traditional marriage."

One of the progressive movement's greatest obstacles, whatever the specific cause, is that the market of ideas is dominated by conservative euphemisms and lies. From abortion rights ("90% of abortions are done days before birth because the girl wants to fit into her prom dress!!1!!!" - and "pro-abortion" too, in case you needed a reminder about the idea of individual choice not existing) to taxation ("socialism"), one often has to make an effort just to speak neutrally about the issues because the buzzwords are part of common parlance. Don't let "traditional marriage" be one of them.

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In entirely unrelated news, why did I not know about this? (Read also: David's post here, making the excellent point that while President Obama's made some progress disengaging from the Israeli right, he hasn't linked up in any way with the Israeli left, which has kept it ineffective.) Read More......

Rachel Maddow 1, Pat Buchanan —1,000,000

Remember last week when Pat Buchanan ranted on the Rachel Maddow about how America was built by white people?

Well, yesterday on the Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel Maddow, very politely and with several appeals to journalistic ethics, smacked him down. And I just had to post it.

I do wish she'd pointed out why exactly 100% of the people who signed the Declaration were white men, but you can't have everything, and this is beautiful. Read More......

I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying

A while ago, this blog featured a post on how various organizations issued statements following the murder of Dr. George Tiller, a doctor well-known for his willingness to perform late-term abortions. In that post, I spent a lot of time focusing on Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, a pro-life organization. The problem I had with this man was that he was claiming to take the moral high ground by supposedly trying to protect the "sanctity of life," yet when he discussed Tiller's death, he took the attitude that Tiller was evil, so any actions taken against him were justified. However, the second that such actions included murder, he immediately tried to distance himself, arguing that just because the killer had the same motives and ideology as Operation Rescue doesn't mean that the two could possibly be connected in any way:



This type of attitude is a way of rationalizing events people like Terry contributed to and encouraged, but without actually having to take personal responsibility. Accomplishing this form of assholishness is done with a very simple technique comprised of 4 easy steps:
1) Have a clear enemy or target.
2) Mention a harmful action to be taken against this target.
3) Imply that you have no control over this harmful action.
4) Assert that since you can't control the harmful action, it must be the other person's fault.

Here's a very straightforward, somewhat humorous example of this technique to demonstrate how it's used and it's lack of logic:
In an episode of "The Simpsons" entitled "Lisa on Ice," Bart and Lisa resent each other because of a rivalry between their respective hockey teams. (step 1 fulfilled)
The two get into an argument and Bart, when asked to leave Lisa's room, says "OK, but on my way, I'm going to be doing this: [starts swinging arms violently] (steps 2 & 3 fulfilled) If you get hit, it's your own fault. (step 4)"
In response, Lisa says, "OK, then I'm going to start kicking air like this. [kicks] (step 2) And if any part of you should fill that air, (step 3 implied) [kicks] it's your own fault. (step 4)"
Bart and Lisa end up punching and kicking each other, with neither of them taking responsibility for their own behavior. (Additionally, Homer later uses the 4 aforementioned steps to blame a pie for being eaten by him.) As you can probably tell, the characters weren't punching and kicking as an inevitability of being angry. They were just trying to find a reason to hit each other without having to seem like bullies.

So, why am I even talking about Terry and a 4-step program for becoming an asshole? The reason is that Terry recently gave several press conferences in which he criticized the idea that abortions could be covered by the government's healthcare program. Here are his words:

It is clear that many elements in the pro-abortion congress and White House want to force Americans to pay for the murder of the unborn in their 'healthcare' program.

If that happens, it is tantamount to the government putting a gun to taxpayers' heads to pay for the brutal murder of an innocent child. This is tyranny and evil of the highest order.

Please understand: neither I, nor any thinking person wants the convulsions that would inevitably come from such a government policy -- the decision to force Americans to pay for the murder of their neighbor.

Nevertheless, the sheer horror and frustration of such an evil policy will lead some people to absolutely refuse to pay their taxes. And I believe -- if my reading of history from America and around the world is correct -- that there are others who will be tempted to acts of violence.

If the government of this country tramples the faith and values of its citizens, history will hold those in power responsible for the violent convulsions that follow.

Let's go through the steps again:
1) Terry's target is obviously proponents (specifically in congress) of a government health insurance plan that covers abortions.
2) He suggests that some people may refuse to pay taxes or engage in violent protest.
3) He says that people will be led to these behaviors by the policy itself and that it's the inevitable course of history.
4) Terry states his lack of responsibility in the last sentence of the quote.

In short, Terry's encouraging violence to intimidate members of congress, but, at the same time, he's suggesting that people would only be violent because they couldn't help themselves. After all, it's not like using violence to intimidate people and obtain political change is anything remotely similar to something bad like terrorism.

Update: I found an embeddable version of the Simpsons clip I mentioned earlier.
Read More......

NIMBY Parents

There are different kinds of people.

There are people who are accepting of others' sexual orientation, to the point where it doesn't matter to them whom one is interested in.

There are people who rant and rave that homosexuality is a sin, in spite of the concept being unknown in biblical times, and who think it's the job of the government to stop people from getting married. We all know and love them.

And then there are the people who say they're accepting, until they have to deal with it.

This post is about how to deal with them.

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I call them NIMBY parents. "Not In My Backyard" - the acronym used for people who are all in favor of a new power plant or homeless shelter, as long as it's not near them. They are straight, liberal, understand legal and moral arguments for gay rights, and can be argued with.

What they say	What you say
"Why are you doing this?"	"It's who I am, and I want you to know, because you're my [insert X affectionate diminutive of "mother" or "father"]." "If I could have chosen, why would I choose something that would make you look at me like that?"
"It's not normal."	"Neither is [insert X characteristic about yourself, e.g. height, love for classical music]." "Neither is [insert X characteristic about your parent, e.g. hair color, talent for cooking]."
"I want you to get married and have children someday."	"Then you should support [insert X marriage equality initiative in your state or country]." "Then it's a good thing [insert X state or country] allows same-sex marriage, isn't it?"
"I don't want you to have that lifestyle."	"It's not a lifestyle, it's how I am." "What, dating people? I thought you wanted me to date people." (fall in love, get married, etc.) "My lifestyle? Why didn't you tell me sooner that you had a problem with [insert X recreational activity e.g. soccer, basket-weaving, World of Warcraft]?"
"Is that why you're so gung-ho about gay rights?"	"Yes - wouldn't you be?" "Yes, but I would be even if I were straight and had a family member who couldn't get married [etc.]." "No, it's because it's a [civil / human] rights issue."
"It's fine that you're gay, but why do you have to be so open about it?"	"I'm no more open about it than [insert XYZ people here e.g. parent, sibling, friend] are about being straight."
"How did you decide this?"	"I didn't decide anything." "Probably the same way you decided you were straight."
"You'll change your mind."	"I didn't make up my mind to begin with." "When you realized you were attracted to a [insert X opposite sex of parent], would you have believed anyone who said you'd change your mind and be attracted to [insert Y same sex of parent]?" "If I 'change my mind' and date [insert X sex opposite to your own], I won't be happy."
"You'll break [insert X elderly relative]'s heart."	"I'm sure [insert X elderly relative] wants me to be happy."

It might work. It might not. But what you're trying to do here is overcome that kneejerk homophobia. Even people who support gay rights intellectually are often left with the emotional residues of the myths they learned growing up or from society, politicians or the mass media. They've got to reconcile two deeply held ideas - that gays are X bad thing, and that their kid is a shining star of wonder. It makes the process difficult initially - if my kid is a shining star of wonder, s/he can't really be gay, s/he's doing it to spite me, it's a phase - but it also means that they are likely to come round eventually and be more accepting of gays in general rather than deciding that you are not a shining star of wonder. That attempt to overcome internalized homophobia is why so many of the responses here try to equate your experience with your parents' as straight people and appeal to their desire for you to have the best.

Any other suggestions for either column are most welcome. Read More......

Megapost

A lot has happened in the time since my last post, so I will (futilely) attempt to cover all the major political events that have occurred in that time. Enjoy!


Ricci v. DeStefano

This Supreme Court case was brought into the national spotlight following the nomination of Judge Sotomayor, who had previously heard this case. In a nutshell, the case dealt with a test taken by New Haven firefighters influencing who got promoted. Those who qualified for a promotion were disproportionately white. As a result, the city decided to disregard the test on the grounds that they feared a racial discrimination lawsuit. Ironically, there was a racial discrimination lawsuit, but it was filed by 18 firefighters, 17 of whom are white, who had originally gotten promotion-worthy scores on the test. The complaining party was led by Frank Ricci, a white firefighter who, due to his dyslexia, took extreme measures to ensure that he performed well, even going so far as to give up a second job to increase his studying time. The city, officially led by Mayor John DeStefano Jr., argued that the fire department was right in trying to avoid taking actions with a "disparate impact" on people of different races.

The law in question for this case was Article VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There really isn't much of an issue about the spirit of the law as a whole - it's clearly to deter discrimination in employment practices - but there is some debate about which kinds of specific actions qualify as discrimination. Personally, after looking at Article VII, I think that the Supreme Court was correct in its decision that the city's decision to throw out the test scores was an act of discrimination.

In order to determine if the city broke the law, let's look at some relevant sections of the previously-linked Civil Rights Act of 1964:

...nor shall it be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to give and to act upon the results of any professionally developed ability test provided that such test, its administration or action upon the results is not designed, intended or used to discriminate because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

The defendant in the case claimed that the test results were thrown out in order to avoid breaking any rules on discrimination. But based on this excerpt, changing its response to the test would only legal if there was sufficient reason to believe that keeping the test scores would have been discriminatory. So, was the original test discriminatory? Based on the racial discrepancies in the test scores, we are left with several possible answers:

1) No. The test was fair. It just so happened that the best candidates happened to be disproportionately white. Statistically, it's not at all unusual for one possible outcome to occur disproportionately more often than another. For example, if you were to flip a coin 10 times and it landed on heads 7 times, that would not prove that there was something wrong with the coin. Such a scenario would display a disproportionate number of heads, but it would not be sufficient to indicate that there was something wrong with the coin.

2) No. The test was fair. The white candidates just happened to be more more qualified due to factors unrelated to the specific policies of the New Haven fire department. It's very conceivable that a disproportionate number of white candidates lived lives better suited for learning information about being a firefighter. Perhaps the white candidates, on average, went to better schools as children, providing them with better study habits. If this were the case, then it would've been easier for them to learn relevant information, thus making them more qualified. Or perhaps more of the white candidates were related to other firefighters, thus exposing them to relevant knowledge from an earlier age. In this scenario, the white firefighters would be expected to be somewhat more knowledgeable, and therefore should have done better on a fairly-written exam. These circumstances are purely speculatory as I have essentially no background on the personal lives of these firefighters, but it is certainly plausible that the white firefighters were in an environment more conducive to learning about their job, causing them to know more, thus making them more worthy of a promotion.

3) Yes. The test itself was made in such a way that even if all the candidates were equally competent, the white candidates would have higher scores. I don't know much about firefighting, so I can't think of a particular question on a firefighting exam that would be biased. That being said, on tests in general, it's not unheard of for there to be a phenomenon known as "test bias," for which members of each racial group, when confronted with the same question, tend to provide answers most similar to those of other test-takers of the same race. This phenomenon could account for a racial discrepancy.

4) Yes. Regardless of what was on the actual test, the mere fact that such racial differences were exhibited could lead to a "disparate impact." As I'll explain in a in depth in a later paragraph, I don't believe that there is sufficient evidence that this was the case.

Based on these possibilities together, there does not seem to be a clear indication that the city of New Haven had a lawsuit on its hands had it kept the scores, suggesting that there wasn't much of a necessity to make the controversial decision to throw out the test.

But even if the city had a good reason for throwing out the scores, was the act of disregarding the scores discriminatory in and of itself? Here's what Title VII says:

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for a respondent, in connection with the selection or referral of applicants or candidates for employment or promotion, to adjust the scores of, use different cutoff scores for, or otherwise alter the results of, employment related tests on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Based on this, it seems pretty clear that the city broke the law. After all, their decision, by their own admission, was based on race. Additionally, by throwing out the test scores, they were deviating from their already established system of deciding promotions. Since they made this adjustment "on the basis of race," their action constituted a violation of the law.

However, one argument I've heard against such a conclusion is that the city had a right act in favor of the minority candidates on the grounds that maintaining the test scores would have resulted in a significant deviation between the group of people in high-ranking positions and the demographics of New Haven. The problem with this assertion is that it's explicitly prohibited by Title VII:

Nothing contained in this subchapter shall be interpreted to require any employer, employment agency, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee subject to this subchapter to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex, or national origin of such individual or group on account of an imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race, color, religion, sex, or national origin employed by any employer, referred or classified for employment by any employment agency or labor organization, admitted to membership or classified by any labor organization, or admitted to, or employed in, any apprenticeship or other training program, in comparison with the total number or percentage of persons of such race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in any community, State, section, or other area, or in the available work force in any community, State, section, or other area.

Another argument used to justify the city's actions is, as I mentioned earlier, the idea of "disparate impact." This term means exactly what it sounds like, and here's how it is used in the law:

(1)(A) An unlawful employment practice based on disparate impact is established under this subchapter only if -
(i) a complaining party demonstrates that a respondent uses a particular employment practice that causes a disparate impact on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and the respondent fails to demonstrate that the challenged practice is job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity...

There really wasn't much question about the reason for the city deciding to throw out the tests. By their own admission, it was based on trying to control the racial distribution of highly ranked positions. That certainly seems to suggest a disparate impact against the white firefighters.

But the issue isn't that simple. The city's motivation was to avoid using a biased test. Had the original test been capable of causing a disparate impact, then the city would be in the right on the grounds that they were undoing a discriminatory policy. So, at this point, the obvious question is this: Did the city of New Haven have sufficient reason to believe that the original test results would've caused a disparate impact? The answer is flat-out no.

So, how did I come to this conclusion that no such disparate impact would have resulted? The answer is the government's use of the "Four-Fifths Rule." (To see the exact wording, click on the link and scroll down to Section 4, Part D.) The gist of the rule is that if the selection rate of one ethnic group is less than 80% of that of another group, then the selection process is considered to have a disparate impact. However, there is an exception to the rule stating that a racial disparity is not problematic when the difference is "not statistically significant." As it turns out, based on the passage rates for the tests for Captain and Lieutenant, and applying them to the chi-square test, there was no statistically significant difference between the test scores of the whites and the other races. Therefore, when the city of New Haven created a disparate impact by revoking the test scores, it did not do so in a manner that would've prevented discrimination against minorities. So, to make a (very) long story short, it is clear to me that there wasn't a sufficient reason to believe that the tests were unfair and that by throwing out the test scores, the city of New Haven was discriminating against the white firefighters. As a result, I agree with the Supreme Court's ruling.


More SCOTUS

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a student who was strip searched under suspicion of possessing ibuprofen. Who could've seen that coming?


Even More SCOTUS

Judge Sotomayor's confirmation hearings have begun. When asked about abortion rights, she said that she considers these rights to be "settled precedent."


Another One Bites the Dust

Yet another politician was caught having an affair. This time, it was South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Personally, I don't usually care about politicians' marital infidelity. Don't get me wrong; it's a disgusting thing to do. However, it doesn't affect one's ability to function as a government official. But Sanford's situation was worse because he hypocritically argued that Clinton was incapable of being a politician following his affair.

But what really bothers me is that Sanford left his state without telling anyone. That, unlike cheating on one's wife, puts the entire state at risk. After all, what if there had been some sort of emergency while he was gone? Time would've had to have been wasted figuring out how to delegate control of the state's actions.

Also, it was probably a bad idea for Sanford to claim that he had gone to hike the Appalachian Trail on the same weekend as Naked Hiking Day.


The Iranian Election

Iran had its presidential election and incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner after 40 million votes were counted by hand... in 3 hours. That's right, Iran, which uses paper, hand-counted ballots, claimed to have counted all 40 million votes in a few hours. Oh, and that wasn't the only issue. Challenger Mousavi's supporters tended to be more tech-savvy, and there were internet issues throughout the country beginning on election day, reducing efforts to increase voter turnout via the internet. Voting patterns were irregular, showing that Mousavi didn't even beat Ahmadinejad in his home part of the country. Also, Mousavi's vote count was shown to have decreased for portion of election day. In other words, Mousavi was recorded as having received negative votes. But perhaps the most obvious piece of evidence suggesting that something's not right is that, according to the country's own government, many places recorded more votes than they had registered voters. (For some statistical analyses of the election results, click here.)


Coleman Concedes

Al Franken is officially a Senator thanks a Minnesota State Supreme Court ruling that he was entitled to the position, thus completing the elections of 2008. Don't you wish America could count ballots as quickly as Iran (minus the cheating)?


The State of Gay Marriage in America

Massachusetts is suing suing the national government over the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as between one man and one woman. The basis of the lawsuit is that each state has the right to determine its own marriage laws. Massachusetts contends that since DOMA denies certain benefits to same-sex couples that are married under state law, the federal government is infringing upon states' rights and denying equal treatment to married people of the same sex. If successful, DOMA would be invalidated, but there probably wouldn't be any radical changes, i.e., gay marriage will still be illegal in most of the country.


Gay Exorcism

A video recently surfaced showing a man being given an exorcism to remove a "homosexual demon." Nothing says religious compassion quite like rolling someone around on the ground, yelling at him, and making him vomit. Read More......