Right-wing Fox News pundit Sean Hannity half-jokingly offers to undergo water-boarding as a test to see just how bad it really is, Huffington Post writer Jason Linkins says go for it.
My first reaction to this would be: shame on Linkins and those of his commentors who support Hannity getting the torture he asked for. Torture is evil. It is always wrong. Period. It is not something which should be done to anyone for any reason, ever, and it is interesting to see just how easy it is, even for the people on the side of the angels in the argument over whether or not to prosecute Bush era officials for their design and use of "enhanced interrogation techniques", to decide that a little bit of torture is okay if it's done for a just cause on a person naive enough to ask for it to be done on them. This is why torture must be ferociously opposed, no matter whether it works, no matter why it is done, no matter who does it, no matter who it is done to. Its evil is too seductive even for good people.
On the other hand: there is an argument made by the anti-torture side that waterboarding that can be stopped at any time by the person undergoing it isn't actually torture, and that the complete and total helplessness of the person undergoing a torture "treatment" to make it stop when they've had enough is an essential component of defining something as torture rather than a lesser moral evil like "unwarranted infliction of violence". That conceivably opens up space for Hannity to undergo water-boarding under carefully controlled conditions: if he's able to stop it at any time while undergoing it, then it doesn't cross the moral evil threshold of being torture. But it also defeats the purpose of the entire exercise: if the idea is to show that the techniques used by the Bush Administration are too horrible to use on anyone, then what's the point of putting on a demonstration that's missing a key component of what made those techniques qualify as "torture"? It would at best just show how painful and frightening water-boarding really is, but it wouldn't demonstrate just what it is about torture that makes it truly evil.
To do that without actually torturing someone seems impossible. Keeping in mind the possibility that I myself am getting seduced by the evil of torture by even suggesting that taking Hannity up on this offer to subject him to some type of water-boarding is anything other than irredeemably evil, I'm inclined to explore the idea that it might be possible.
The problem: for the experience of waterboarding to truly demonstrate to Hannity some measure of the personal experience of being tortured, it would have to be done in a way that he can't stop. But if he has no say in when it stops, then we're torturing him. A partial reproduction of the treatment may be ethically justifiable, but the mere physical experience of water-boarding, able to be stopped by Hannity at any time, is an insufficent example of what it actually is that makes torture irredeemably evil.
But, what if Sean Hannity was allowed to decide how long he would be water-boarded for, but he had to make that decision before the waterboarding started? Then, once the process starts, he cannot change that decision for any reason and must undergo waterboarding for the time he himself earlier chose. That would give an idea of what its like to be helpless to stop waterboarding while still granting him a limited control over the whole process.
In suggesting that Sean Hannity be offered a chance to undergo waterboarding under the conditions I just described, have or have I not myself just justified torturing someone as a legitimate way to demonstrate to them why torture is evil? I suspect that the only reason Hannity would accept the terms I presented would be because he's too naive about torture to understand what it is he would be signing up for. That says "yes, it's torture" to me. So yes, it is impossible to give a person a personal understanding of why torture is so evil without torturing them, and it would be better for all to stop contemplating the highly seductive, evil idea of even trying.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Seen on the Internet: a parable about torture
Top members of Mossad, MI-5, and the CIA compete in the International Intelligence Service Olympics. They are told to enter a nearby forest and return with a fox.
The Mossad agents return an hour later with a fox. Two hours later, MI-5 also returns with a fox. The two groups congratulate each other on their respective gold and silver prizes.
Hours pass. The judges begin to get restless.
Finally, the CIA agents emerge from the forest with a deer, who is battered and bleeding, with shackles on its legs, opaque goggles over its eyes, and muffled earphones on its ears. As it passes the judges’ stand they hear it saying over and over:
“I am a fox. I am a fox. I am a fox . . .”
The Mossad agents return an hour later with a fox. Two hours later, MI-5 also returns with a fox. The two groups congratulate each other on their respective gold and silver prizes.
Hours pass. The judges begin to get restless.
Finally, the CIA agents emerge from the forest with a deer, who is battered and bleeding, with shackles on its legs, opaque goggles over its eyes, and muffled earphones on its ears. As it passes the judges’ stand they hear it saying over and over:
“I am a fox. I am a fox. I am a fox . . .”
Sunday, February 22, 2009
21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Plagiarism?
This is odd. Section 15 of the pamphlet 21 Reasons Why Gender Matters is the section of the leaflet primarily concerned with homosexuality (or "gender identity disorder", as they pseudoscientifically call it). It starts out like this:
Now look at the section "Understanding: Gender-Disorientation Pathology" in this paper from the far-right website the Patriot Post:
The second paragraphs of each section are likewise almost identical. Gender Matters pamphlet:
From the Patriot Post article:
It continues. Gender Matters pamphlet:
Skip a little in the Patriot Post article until:
The number "107" you can see up there sandwiched in the quotes from the Gender Matters pamphlet refers to this footnote:
107 Mark Alexander, “The Homosexual Agenda”, http://www.patriotpost.us/papers/03-32.asp 6/6/2006, although the URL didn't work for me when I tried it. The link to the Patriot Post piece above references the URL by IP address, not domain name.
In any case, it is remotely conceivable that reference 107 is an attempt to reference all this apparently plagiarised text. If so, it was done so badly that it makes it look like the text presented here was actually original work by the Gender Matters people. I don't suppose Mark Alexander (author of the Patriot Post piece) would mind being plagiarised overmuch so long as his writing is being used to further an anti-gay agenda somehow, but I wonder how such plagiarism would reflect on the people doing the plagiarising?
The only other possibilityI can see here is that Mark Alexander himself was involved in the production of this pamphlet somehow. I've found no evidence of that as yet.
Consider first the issue of pathology. The whole notion of gender
disorientation has been highly politicised in the past few decades.
Objective scientific debate has been overwhelmed by advocacy
groups driving specific agendas. For example, in 1952, the first edition
of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official catalogue of mental
disorders used by mental health professionals, listed homosexuality
as a sociopath personality disturbance. In 1968, the revised DSM II
reclassified homosexuality as a sexual deviancy. But in the midst of the
sexual revolution, homosexual protestors began picketing the APA’s
annual conventions, demanding that homosexuality not be identified
as a pathology. In 1973, under enormous pressure from homosexual
activists, the APA removed homosexuality from its DSM III edition to
the dismay of about 40 percent of psychiatrists - particularly those who
specialized in treating homosexuals.
Now look at the section "Understanding: Gender-Disorientation Pathology" in this paper from the far-right website the Patriot Post:
n order to understand how to respond to the homosexual agenda in the Church and society, it is helpful to understand the underlying pathology.
In 1952, the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official catalogue of mental disorders used by mental health professionals, listed homosexuality as a sociopath personality disturbance. In 1968, the revised DSM II reclassified homosexuality as a sexual deviancy. But in the midst of the sexual revolution, homosexual protestors began picketing the APA's annual conventions, demanding that homosexuality not be identified as pathology. In 1973, under enormous pressure from homosexual activists, the APA removed homosexuality from its the DSM III edition to the dismay of about 40 percent of psychiatrists -- particularly those who specialized in treating homosexuals.
The second paragraphs of each section are likewise almost identical. Gender Matters pamphlet:
Dr. Ronald Bayer, author of the book, Homosexuality and American
Psychiatry, writes: “The entire process, from the first confrontation
organized by homosexual demonstrators, to the referendum demanded
by orthodox psychiatrists, seemed to violate the most basic expectations
about how questions of science should be resolved. Instead of being
engaged in sober discussion of data, psychiatrists were swept up in
a political controversy. The result was not a conclusion based on an
approximation of the scientific truth as dictated by reason, but was
instead an action demanded by the ideological temper of the times.”106
It is hoped that the APA will reverse its position.
From the Patriot Post article:
Dr. Ronald Bayer, author of the book, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry writes: "The entire process, from the first confrontation organized by gay demonstrators to the referendum demanded by orthodox psychiatrists, seemed to violate the most basic expectations about how questions of science should be resolved. Instead of being engaged in sober discussion of data, psychiatrists were swept up in a political controversy. The result was not a conclusion based on an approximation of the scientific truth as dictated by reason, but was instead an action demanded by the ideological temper of the times."
But the APA is not likely to reverse their position.
It continues. Gender Matters pamphlet:
Some homosexuals report that they over-identified with their opposite
sex parent and peers - thus a boy becomes increasingly feminized
while a girl becomes more masculine.107 In both cases - lack of identity
and over identity - there is a common denominator, which is emotional
deprivation. In their formative years, all children need emotional and
physical closeness with their parents - particularly with their samesex
parent, and they need to develop a healthy sense of their gender
identity as male or female.
Skip a little in the Patriot Post article until:
Many homosexuals report that as children, they had a dysfunctional relationship with their same-sex parent, such relationships being their primary means of gender identification and affirmation. For some children, particularly those whose parents are separated or divorced, the dissociation from their same-sex parent can cause an unconscious but directive drive for gender identification and affirmation among same-sex peers, which, after puberty, can manifest as sexual behavior. The search for closure to a dysfunctional relationship with a parent can lead to a lifetime of misery.
Some homosexuals report that they over-identified with their opposite sex parent and peers -- thus a boy becomes increasingly feminized while a girl becomes more masculine.
In both cases -- lack of identity and over identity -- there is a common denominator, which is emotional deprivation. In their formative years, all children need emotional and physical closeness with their parents -- particularly with their same sex parent, and they need to develop a healthy sense of their gender identity as masculine or feminine.
The number "107" you can see up there sandwiched in the quotes from the Gender Matters pamphlet refers to this footnote:
107 Mark Alexander, “The Homosexual Agenda”, http://www.patriotpost.us/papers/03-32.asp 6/6/2006, although the URL didn't work for me when I tried it. The link to the Patriot Post piece above references the URL by IP address, not domain name.
In any case, it is remotely conceivable that reference 107 is an attempt to reference all this apparently plagiarised text. If so, it was done so badly that it makes it look like the text presented here was actually original work by the Gender Matters people. I don't suppose Mark Alexander (author of the Patriot Post piece) would mind being plagiarised overmuch so long as his writing is being used to further an anti-gay agenda somehow, but I wonder how such plagiarism would reflect on the people doing the plagiarising?
The only other possibilityI can see here is that Mark Alexander himself was involved in the production of this pamphlet somehow. I've found no evidence of that as yet.
21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Paul Cameron references
I go back to university soon, so I won't have much time to write here. I didn't get through nearly as many of the references of the local anti-gay pamphlet "21 Reasons Why Gender Matters" as I would have wanted over the holidays, but realistically I suppose it's too tough a job for one person. There are still a few things I have found, though. The most significant would probably be the use of not one, but two, direct references from Paul Cameron, an "expert on homosexuality" so discredited that there are even anti-gay groups who consider his work too shoddy and unreliable to use (and that's saying something).
The first is using his recent distortions about the average lifespan of gay and lesbian partnered people in Europe:
With footnote 151 being none other than
151 Paul Cameron,. “Federal Distortion of The Homosexual Footprint.”:
which has already been debunked in detail by Box Turtle Bulletin.
The second is the usual conflation of homosexuality and child molestation
With footnote 161 being
169 Reported in Paul Cameron, Exposing the AIDS Scandal. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1988, p39.
Child molestation is child molestation of course, and it's only anti-gay activists who falsely treat molesters of boys and girls as subsets of the larger heterosexual and homosexual population. But I am somewhat amused by the description by the Gender Matters pamphlet of a Cameronite writing from 1988 as a "recent review of the child molestation literature". Getting desperate for relevance, these anti-gay types are.
The first is using his recent distortions about the average lifespan of gay and lesbian partnered people in Europe:
Scandinavian research has shown that married homosexuals’ and
lesbians’ life spans are 24 years shorter than heterosexual couples.
In Denmark over the 12 years after 1990, the average age of death
of hetero men was 74, whereas the 561 partnered homosexual men
who died in the same period did so at an average age of 51. Married
women died at an average age of 78, whereas the nine lesbian women
who died, did so at an average age of 56. In Norway the figures were
similar – married heterosexual men died at an average age of 77, the
31 homosexuals at 52; heterosexual women died at 81, while the 6
lesbians who died, did so at mean 56.151
With footnote 151 being none other than
151 Paul Cameron,. “Federal Distortion of The Homosexual Footprint.”:
which has already been debunked in detail by Box Turtle Bulletin.
The second is the usual conflation of homosexuality and child molestation
A recent review of the child molestation literature as it appears in
medical and psychological journals concluded that between 25 and 40
per cent of all recorded child molestation was homosexual.169
With footnote 161 being
169 Reported in Paul Cameron, Exposing the AIDS Scandal. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1988, p39.
Child molestation is child molestation of course, and it's only anti-gay activists who falsely treat molesters of boys and girls as subsets of the larger heterosexual and homosexual population. But I am somewhat amused by the description by the Gender Matters pamphlet of a Cameronite writing from 1988 as a "recent review of the child molestation literature". Getting desperate for relevance, these anti-gay types are.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Origin of the homosexual recruitment myth?
It's probably one of the most powerful lies in the anti-gay lobby's rhetoric: that homosexuals recruit. I'm curious about where it first appeared.
The usual "deduction" to justify it is that homosexuals can't procreate, therefore they must need to recruit. There are a whole load of problematic assumptions in this "deduction" that, I think, would not be so conveniently skipped over if there wasn't such a long history of the belief of homosexual recruitment in Western culture. It's the social entrenchment of the belief rather than any internal logic to the idea that is the problem I think.
Believing the recruitment myth is not a requirement of believing that homosexuality is wrong. It is a requirement of believing that homosexuality is a "social disease" which needs to be "contained". Is there any other society that viewed homosexuality as socially contagious before Western culture introduced the idea to the world? I honestly don't know. I suspect not.
What few writings I've examined about the recruitment myth so far merely try to refute it or, in the case of anti-gay tracts, support it. I've found almost nothing about the origin or spread of the belief. Has anyone actually ever bothered to research it?
There is just one reference I've found, in a newsletter from 1993 put out by Paul Cameron's Family Research Institute. He points out a single passage in an early writing by the Christian founders. The Didache contains the single line "you shall not corrupt children", which Cameron portrays as a prohibition on attempts at homosexual recruitment. Another work called the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 7 of which is apparently an expansion of the Didache, suggests that the "corruption" referred to is indeed male homosexuality: "Thou shall not corrupt boys: (5) for this wickedness is contrary to nature, and arose from Sodom, which was therefore entirely consumed with fire sent from God."
That's the only reference to an origin of the recruitment myth I can find, and it's still vague (does "corruption" specifically refer to the idea of recruitment here? I'm not 100% convinced that it must do so). I'd be very interested in further exploring the origin and trajectory of the idea if at all possible.
The usual "deduction" to justify it is that homosexuals can't procreate, therefore they must need to recruit. There are a whole load of problematic assumptions in this "deduction" that, I think, would not be so conveniently skipped over if there wasn't such a long history of the belief of homosexual recruitment in Western culture. It's the social entrenchment of the belief rather than any internal logic to the idea that is the problem I think.
Believing the recruitment myth is not a requirement of believing that homosexuality is wrong. It is a requirement of believing that homosexuality is a "social disease" which needs to be "contained". Is there any other society that viewed homosexuality as socially contagious before Western culture introduced the idea to the world? I honestly don't know. I suspect not.
What few writings I've examined about the recruitment myth so far merely try to refute it or, in the case of anti-gay tracts, support it. I've found almost nothing about the origin or spread of the belief. Has anyone actually ever bothered to research it?
There is just one reference I've found, in a newsletter from 1993 put out by Paul Cameron's Family Research Institute. He points out a single passage in an early writing by the Christian founders. The Didache contains the single line "you shall not corrupt children", which Cameron portrays as a prohibition on attempts at homosexual recruitment. Another work called the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 7 of which is apparently an expansion of the Didache, suggests that the "corruption" referred to is indeed male homosexuality: "Thou shall not corrupt boys: (5) for this wickedness is contrary to nature, and arose from Sodom, which was therefore entirely consumed with fire sent from God."
That's the only reference to an origin of the recruitment myth I can find, and it's still vague (does "corruption" specifically refer to the idea of recruitment here? I'm not 100% convinced that it must do so). I'd be very interested in further exploring the origin and trajectory of the idea if at all possible.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Al-Qaeda´s opinion about the closure of Guantanamo Bay
Al-Qaeda has apparently been releasing a lot of anti-Obama propaganda in the wake of his election victory. While the linked article concerns itself with what it means for al-Qaeda that Bush is no longer President and Obama is, I was struck by a minor point on Page 2:
It does not escape my notice that al-Qaeda is trying to scare people into believing that releasing prisoners - even prisoners who were not originally jihadists when they were originally imprisoned - from Guantanamo Bay will greatly increase the risk of terrorist attack. This is the same argument made by domestic opponents of the closure: that the people imprisoned there are too dangerous to release, even into the regular American prison system.
I conclude from this unity of arguments that al-Qaeda doesn´t want Guantanamo Bay to close. Why would they? The propaganda value that its continued existence has for them is immense. I conclude also that they are intentionally trying to feed the fear that local opponents are instilling about the possible release of Guantanamo Bay detainees in an intentional effort to prevent the facility´s closure. Local opponents of the closure of Guantanamo Bay might want to think about that.
Friday, a new al-Qaeda salvo attempted to embarrass Obama, a day after the new president announced his plans for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Appearing on the videotaped message were two men who enlisted in al-Qaeda after being freed from that detention center.
"By Allah, imprisonment only increased our persistence in our principles for which we went out, did jihad for and were imprisoned for," said Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri, who described himself as a deputy commander for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
It does not escape my notice that al-Qaeda is trying to scare people into believing that releasing prisoners - even prisoners who were not originally jihadists when they were originally imprisoned - from Guantanamo Bay will greatly increase the risk of terrorist attack. This is the same argument made by domestic opponents of the closure: that the people imprisoned there are too dangerous to release, even into the regular American prison system.
I conclude from this unity of arguments that al-Qaeda doesn´t want Guantanamo Bay to close. Why would they? The propaganda value that its continued existence has for them is immense. I conclude also that they are intentionally trying to feed the fear that local opponents are instilling about the possible release of Guantanamo Bay detainees in an intentional effort to prevent the facility´s closure. Local opponents of the closure of Guantanamo Bay might want to think about that.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Homosexuality and shame: how shame turns us against ourselves
Some basic research that I did at university has led me to believe that one of the most important things in defining gay people on both an individual and social level is the emotion of shame.
Shame is what so many of us carry as a silent burden when we are closeted. Heck, it's the very reason for the existence of the closet. It's a common refrain from our opponents when we appear in public in, say, Pride marches: "Shame on you!" "You should be ashamed of yourself!". The very existence of gay Pride was once described to me as "a natural reaction to undeserved shame".
Shame is intimately bound up with social activity. A social theorist named Barbalet(1998, p104) whose writings I encountered in my studies described the social mechanism of shame as the "supposition of another's regard for self, of taking the view of another". It is a means of social control, more subtle and more effective than brute force or even peer pressure: make a person feel that others will judge them negatively for the "shameful" thing and also make them believe that this judgement is correct. The person, through their own feeling of shame, punishes themself more effectively than through any further external means that could be applied.
The struggle against undeserved shame is the struggle to believe that the judgements of others is wrong. Even after you may have spent a very long time believing that they were right.
Our society has long treated homosexuality as a shameful thing on the basis that homosexuality was seen as something that could be prevented or altered: making it shameful would therefore prevent people from engaging in it and encourage those who had engaged in it to stop. The emotional coercion of shame was preferred over attempts at rational persuasion perhaps because of the view of homosexuality as "depravity", "mental illness", and many other labels, all signifying the belief that a homosexual must have taken leave of their senses and could not be reasoned with.
It is my suspicion that true liberation from the corrosive personal and social effects of this shame has not yet been achieved among the GLBT community.
I suspect that one of the understandable but unfortunate results of individuals' efforts to throw off this shame is overcompensation and oversensitivity. Having struggled so hard and for so long, often from the very start of adolescence, against external attempts to, through the pressure to feel shame, over-ride feelings and emotions as fundamental to our being as those concerning sexual orientation, it makes sense to me that many such individuals would be very sensitive to even so much as the possibility of other people attempting to pressure them emotionally. Oversensitive, even. To the point that a gay person will absolutely not let other people's opinions and desires affect their behaviour in any way. Do gay people tend to be more selfish and egotistical than straight people? On average, perhaps, yes. If so, our battle against the shame we have been taught to feel is the reason why.
In some cases this overcompensating defense against the imposition of shame may cause a gay person to start attacking first in self-defense, so to speak. The sense of threat, so pressing for so long, leads to a sort of bunker mentality. Every social engagement with another is seen as a potential danger. The sense of threat from others is exaggerated, and the person counterattacks even before they know for sure whether or not an attack is coming. And the usual form of attack? The one they are most familiar with: an attempt to shame a person. Hence the reputation of gay people as "bitchy".
Occasionally a gay person notes that gay people are quite good at oppressing ourselves without any outside help, which I think isn't quite true: we do oppress ourselves, but we do it as a result of our struggles with the shame which we have been taught to feel about ourselves.
There is hope. The younger generation are growing up in a society where the social pressures of shaming have been weakened, or even in some cases have vanished completely. It's somewhat gratifying to occasionally read one of the younger generation say that they don't understand the point of gay pride. And for them, having never been taught to be ashamed of being gay, there is nothing to be gained from a conscious display of pride. It's for those who have still been taught that homosexuality is a shameful thing. It's a way of dealing with that shame. I don't know if it's the best way to deal with it - my Buddhist tendencies lead me to see the opposite of shame as not pride but as, well, the absence of shame - but it's one way of dealing with it.
I believe that our failure to deal with our shame effectively makes us often far too quick to take offense, even (or perhaps especially) to take offense at each other, and far too quick to give it, even (or perhaps especially) to each other. That is corrosive to us, and it is corrosive to our community. While there have been many positive steps to prevent the future generations from experiencing that shame, I think we need to become more aware of how our battle with our existing feelings of shame impacts us and the people around us, so that we can better ameliorate its effects.
Reference
Barbalet, J.M., 1998. Emotion, social theory, and social structure: a macrosociological approach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge NY,
Shame is what so many of us carry as a silent burden when we are closeted. Heck, it's the very reason for the existence of the closet. It's a common refrain from our opponents when we appear in public in, say, Pride marches: "Shame on you!" "You should be ashamed of yourself!". The very existence of gay Pride was once described to me as "a natural reaction to undeserved shame".
Shame is intimately bound up with social activity. A social theorist named Barbalet(1998, p104) whose writings I encountered in my studies described the social mechanism of shame as the "supposition of another's regard for self, of taking the view of another". It is a means of social control, more subtle and more effective than brute force or even peer pressure: make a person feel that others will judge them negatively for the "shameful" thing and also make them believe that this judgement is correct. The person, through their own feeling of shame, punishes themself more effectively than through any further external means that could be applied.
The struggle against undeserved shame is the struggle to believe that the judgements of others is wrong. Even after you may have spent a very long time believing that they were right.
Our society has long treated homosexuality as a shameful thing on the basis that homosexuality was seen as something that could be prevented or altered: making it shameful would therefore prevent people from engaging in it and encourage those who had engaged in it to stop. The emotional coercion of shame was preferred over attempts at rational persuasion perhaps because of the view of homosexuality as "depravity", "mental illness", and many other labels, all signifying the belief that a homosexual must have taken leave of their senses and could not be reasoned with.
It is my suspicion that true liberation from the corrosive personal and social effects of this shame has not yet been achieved among the GLBT community.
I suspect that one of the understandable but unfortunate results of individuals' efforts to throw off this shame is overcompensation and oversensitivity. Having struggled so hard and for so long, often from the very start of adolescence, against external attempts to, through the pressure to feel shame, over-ride feelings and emotions as fundamental to our being as those concerning sexual orientation, it makes sense to me that many such individuals would be very sensitive to even so much as the possibility of other people attempting to pressure them emotionally. Oversensitive, even. To the point that a gay person will absolutely not let other people's opinions and desires affect their behaviour in any way. Do gay people tend to be more selfish and egotistical than straight people? On average, perhaps, yes. If so, our battle against the shame we have been taught to feel is the reason why.
In some cases this overcompensating defense against the imposition of shame may cause a gay person to start attacking first in self-defense, so to speak. The sense of threat, so pressing for so long, leads to a sort of bunker mentality. Every social engagement with another is seen as a potential danger. The sense of threat from others is exaggerated, and the person counterattacks even before they know for sure whether or not an attack is coming. And the usual form of attack? The one they are most familiar with: an attempt to shame a person. Hence the reputation of gay people as "bitchy".
Occasionally a gay person notes that gay people are quite good at oppressing ourselves without any outside help, which I think isn't quite true: we do oppress ourselves, but we do it as a result of our struggles with the shame which we have been taught to feel about ourselves.
There is hope. The younger generation are growing up in a society where the social pressures of shaming have been weakened, or even in some cases have vanished completely. It's somewhat gratifying to occasionally read one of the younger generation say that they don't understand the point of gay pride. And for them, having never been taught to be ashamed of being gay, there is nothing to be gained from a conscious display of pride. It's for those who have still been taught that homosexuality is a shameful thing. It's a way of dealing with that shame. I don't know if it's the best way to deal with it - my Buddhist tendencies lead me to see the opposite of shame as not pride but as, well, the absence of shame - but it's one way of dealing with it.
I believe that our failure to deal with our shame effectively makes us often far too quick to take offense, even (or perhaps especially) to take offense at each other, and far too quick to give it, even (or perhaps especially) to each other. That is corrosive to us, and it is corrosive to our community. While there have been many positive steps to prevent the future generations from experiencing that shame, I think we need to become more aware of how our battle with our existing feelings of shame impacts us and the people around us, so that we can better ameliorate its effects.
Reference
Barbalet, J.M., 1998. Emotion, social theory, and social structure: a macrosociological approach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge NY,
Friday, January 02, 2009
21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Footnote 67, promiscuity and fidelity
From page 10 of the anti-gay pamphlet "21 Reasons Why Gender Matters":
I do wish the Fatherhood Foundation would be more accurate in their referencing. Footnote 67 lists the quoted text as coming from the "Gay Community Periodic Survey. Sydney: National Centre in HIV Social Research, 2007, pp. 14-15", by Iryna Zablotska, et. al. Close, but not quite: the NCHSR conducts multiple surveys in multiple cities around Australia, and they all specify the city in the title. There is no single "Gay Community Periodic Survey".
There is, among others, a "Gay Community Periodic Survey: Canberra 2006". This marks the second time that the pamphlet garbled the title of the work they referenced, and the error is more severe this time. It took me quite a while to locate the one they were talking about. I suppose I should be thankful they gave me page numbers, and that they were the right ones: many of the references in anti-gay literature in general and in this pamphlet in particular fail to go that far.
Despite the inaccurate referencing of the title, the text of the quote is accurate. Whether it supports the conclusion that the authors are trying to suggest - that homosexual relationships are all fundamentally unfaithful and unstable - is less clear. The pamphlet's authors could have mentioned that this survey was not limited to gay men in regular relationships: on page 6 the survey notes that "about 60% of the men in the sample were in a regular sexual relationship with a man at the time of completing the survey". So 40% of the men were, how shall we say, "swinging singles", "footloose and fancy free"? Gee, you think that should be taken into account when reporting the findings about number of sex partners? Or is it more convenient for the pamphlet's authors to just let readers leap to the wrong conclusion that this says something about "infidelity" in gay relationships?
Perhaps more suited to the pamphlet authors' purposes are the figures on men who are both in a "regular sexual relationship" and have "regular casual sexual relations" as well. They comprised 29.1% of the 2006 respondents according to the Table on page 6 of the survey, which sounds like a lot. Yet it is still less than the number of respondents who reported having sex only with a regular partner: 31.6%. Furthermore, despite the stereotype of all gay men being horribly oversexed, 14.5% of the 2006 survey respondents reported having no sexual contact over the 6 month period at all.
I feel strangely sorry for that 14.5%. Here everyone is saying how much sex gay men have and this lot isn't getting any. Or then again, maybe they prefer it that way. It's impossible to tell just by looking at the numbers.
Of course, the survey was only asking about behaviour during a six month period, so it's entirely possible that the "monagamous" and "no sexual partners" entries for that particular period were in part due to circumstance rather than choice. Some clarification is available on page 21. Figure 28 provides a breakdown of "Agreements with regular male partners about sex outside the relationship". The figure is about split 3 different ways: 30.4% "Anal intercourse is permitted only with a condom", 33.3% "no sexual contact with casual partners is permitted", 26.7% "no spoken agreement about sex" (remaining percentages are 5.2% "no anal intercourse with casual partners is permitted" and 4.4% "anal intercourse without a condom is permitted"). I would say that the figures for monogamous and non-monogamous relationship arrangements seem about equal, but that large chunk who report no agreement makes such estimates impossible. It is not possible to say which is more common. It is possible to say that (a) monogamous male-male relationships exist, and (b) the number is far from miniscule, if we view the results of this survey as representative of relationships.
And that is the final problem with the way the pamphlet uses the survey, what is it really measuring? Seems to me that it's a measure of sexual behaviour of a specific subsegment of GLBT individuals, not an overall examination of the quality of our emotional partnerships.
"Regular sexual partner" as used in the survey could include everything from "man of my dreams" to "fuckbuddy", the survey doesn't care about such distinctions. The recruiting strategy of the survey described on pages 1-2 also seems biased in favour of gay men who identify strongly with the existing gay community, under-representing those gay men who might not identify with mainstream gay culture and its urban liberal sexual morality.
And of course, as in each and every one of these anti-gay statistics, we only ever hear the scary stories about the alleged sexual proclivities of gay men. Where are women in all this? I begin to understand why some lesbians view the lesbian experience and more problematic than that of gay men: their very existence is totally disregarded in so many fundamental ways.
Indeed, high rates of multiple partnering in the homosexual community continues to be the norm. As one recent report notes, “The majority of the 2006 respondents had engaged in sex with between one and 10 partners in the six months prior to the survey [over 63 per cent], while almost 20% of the men reported having had sex with more than 10 partners.”67
I do wish the Fatherhood Foundation would be more accurate in their referencing. Footnote 67 lists the quoted text as coming from the "Gay Community Periodic Survey. Sydney: National Centre in HIV Social Research, 2007, pp. 14-15", by Iryna Zablotska, et. al. Close, but not quite: the NCHSR conducts multiple surveys in multiple cities around Australia, and they all specify the city in the title. There is no single "Gay Community Periodic Survey".
There is, among others, a "Gay Community Periodic Survey: Canberra 2006". This marks the second time that the pamphlet garbled the title of the work they referenced, and the error is more severe this time. It took me quite a while to locate the one they were talking about. I suppose I should be thankful they gave me page numbers, and that they were the right ones: many of the references in anti-gay literature in general and in this pamphlet in particular fail to go that far.
Despite the inaccurate referencing of the title, the text of the quote is accurate. Whether it supports the conclusion that the authors are trying to suggest - that homosexual relationships are all fundamentally unfaithful and unstable - is less clear. The pamphlet's authors could have mentioned that this survey was not limited to gay men in regular relationships: on page 6 the survey notes that "about 60% of the men in the sample were in a regular sexual relationship with a man at the time of completing the survey". So 40% of the men were, how shall we say, "swinging singles", "footloose and fancy free"? Gee, you think that should be taken into account when reporting the findings about number of sex partners? Or is it more convenient for the pamphlet's authors to just let readers leap to the wrong conclusion that this says something about "infidelity" in gay relationships?
Perhaps more suited to the pamphlet authors' purposes are the figures on men who are both in a "regular sexual relationship" and have "regular casual sexual relations" as well. They comprised 29.1% of the 2006 respondents according to the Table on page 6 of the survey, which sounds like a lot. Yet it is still less than the number of respondents who reported having sex only with a regular partner: 31.6%. Furthermore, despite the stereotype of all gay men being horribly oversexed, 14.5% of the 2006 survey respondents reported having no sexual contact over the 6 month period at all.
I feel strangely sorry for that 14.5%. Here everyone is saying how much sex gay men have and this lot isn't getting any. Or then again, maybe they prefer it that way. It's impossible to tell just by looking at the numbers.
Of course, the survey was only asking about behaviour during a six month period, so it's entirely possible that the "monagamous" and "no sexual partners" entries for that particular period were in part due to circumstance rather than choice. Some clarification is available on page 21. Figure 28 provides a breakdown of "Agreements with regular male partners about sex outside the relationship". The figure is about split 3 different ways: 30.4% "Anal intercourse is permitted only with a condom", 33.3% "no sexual contact with casual partners is permitted", 26.7% "no spoken agreement about sex" (remaining percentages are 5.2% "no anal intercourse with casual partners is permitted" and 4.4% "anal intercourse without a condom is permitted"). I would say that the figures for monogamous and non-monogamous relationship arrangements seem about equal, but that large chunk who report no agreement makes such estimates impossible. It is not possible to say which is more common. It is possible to say that (a) monogamous male-male relationships exist, and (b) the number is far from miniscule, if we view the results of this survey as representative of relationships.
And that is the final problem with the way the pamphlet uses the survey, what is it really measuring? Seems to me that it's a measure of sexual behaviour of a specific subsegment of GLBT individuals, not an overall examination of the quality of our emotional partnerships.
"Regular sexual partner" as used in the survey could include everything from "man of my dreams" to "fuckbuddy", the survey doesn't care about such distinctions. The recruiting strategy of the survey described on pages 1-2 also seems biased in favour of gay men who identify strongly with the existing gay community, under-representing those gay men who might not identify with mainstream gay culture and its urban liberal sexual morality.
And of course, as in each and every one of these anti-gay statistics, we only ever hear the scary stories about the alleged sexual proclivities of gay men. Where are women in all this? I begin to understand why some lesbians view the lesbian experience and more problematic than that of gay men: their very existence is totally disregarded in so many fundamental ways.
21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Footnote 66 is another mistake
The pamphlet "21 reasons why gender matters" can be found online here.
Footnote 66 is the alleged source of these statistics on the length of male same-sex relationships:
They supposedly come from the "Melbourne Gay Community Periodic Survey, 2000" by Clive Aspin et al, published by the National Centre in HIV Social Research.
The survey results are available online. It is simply impossible for the statistics attributed to it to have come from there. The Periodic Survey only measures whether the regular relationships of those surveyed have lasted for "less than 1 year" or for "at least one year" (see Table 9 on page 12 of the Periodic Survey). Even the most statistically illiterate person around would have trouble getting the Fatherhood Foundation's alleged statistics from the data actually in the Periodic Survey: in 2000, 31.8% of those in a regular relationship had been in it for less than a year, while 68.1% had been in it for a year or more.
The website of the Australian Christianist group the Saltshakers includes a statistics page on relationships which quotes the same numbers but gives a different source, although it's easy to get confused (which the Fatherhood Foundation apparently did. Again). Their source for the numbers is "Men and Sexual Health", by the National Centre in HIV Social Research, 1997. There doesn't appear to be any kind of study with this name. Are they referring to the longitudinal cohort study called "Sydney Men and Sexual Health" (SMASH)? It's hard to say, as the main report that I can find on that study is a book called "Methods and sample in a study of homosexually active men in Sydney, Australia" that was, er, published in 1995. The book is accessible to me, once university libraries end their holiday closing period next week.
So the Fatherhood Foundation has, for the third time that I've now found, supplied a reference in their pamphlet "21 Reasons Why Gender Matters" that is verifiably wrong. I hope people keep that in mind when anti-gay activists rabbit on about how "well-referenced" this little smear pamphlet supposedly is. And the only alternative source given for the quote - from another anti-gay organisation - does not appear to be correct either. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to find the true source next week, but we'll see.
By the by, the reason that anti-gay groups continue to get away with telling these lies is because nobody effectively challenges them. That's one of the reasons I continue to hunt these misquotes down despite the obstacles and frustrations that their inaccurate referencing throw up. I hope it proves useful to somebody someday.
Footnote 66 is the alleged source of these statistics on the length of male same-sex relationships:
a study of the Melbourne homosexual community showed that 40 per cent of men had changed partners in the past 6 months; 9.8 per cent had been in a relationship for only six months to a year; 18.8 per cent for 1-2 years; 15.3 per cent had lasted for 3-5 years; and only 15.7 per cent were in a relationship of more than five years – meaning 84 per cent had broken down after five years.
They supposedly come from the "Melbourne Gay Community Periodic Survey, 2000" by Clive Aspin et al, published by the National Centre in HIV Social Research.
The survey results are available online. It is simply impossible for the statistics attributed to it to have come from there. The Periodic Survey only measures whether the regular relationships of those surveyed have lasted for "less than 1 year" or for "at least one year" (see Table 9 on page 12 of the Periodic Survey). Even the most statistically illiterate person around would have trouble getting the Fatherhood Foundation's alleged statistics from the data actually in the Periodic Survey: in 2000, 31.8% of those in a regular relationship had been in it for less than a year, while 68.1% had been in it for a year or more.
The website of the Australian Christianist group the Saltshakers includes a statistics page on relationships which quotes the same numbers but gives a different source, although it's easy to get confused (which the Fatherhood Foundation apparently did. Again). Their source for the numbers is "Men and Sexual Health", by the National Centre in HIV Social Research, 1997. There doesn't appear to be any kind of study with this name. Are they referring to the longitudinal cohort study called "Sydney Men and Sexual Health" (SMASH)? It's hard to say, as the main report that I can find on that study is a book called "Methods and sample in a study of homosexually active men in Sydney, Australia" that was, er, published in 1995. The book is accessible to me, once university libraries end their holiday closing period next week.
So the Fatherhood Foundation has, for the third time that I've now found, supplied a reference in their pamphlet "21 Reasons Why Gender Matters" that is verifiably wrong. I hope people keep that in mind when anti-gay activists rabbit on about how "well-referenced" this little smear pamphlet supposedly is. And the only alternative source given for the quote - from another anti-gay organisation - does not appear to be correct either. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to find the true source next week, but we'll see.
By the by, the reason that anti-gay groups continue to get away with telling these lies is because nobody effectively challenges them. That's one of the reasons I continue to hunt these misquotes down despite the obstacles and frustrations that their inaccurate referencing throw up. I hope it proves useful to somebody someday.
Statistical skullduggery from the Fatherhood Foundation: "proving" gay relationships shorter
On page 10 of the anti-gay pamphlet "21 reasons why gender matters" there is a piece of statistical deception that is very popular among anti-gay circles. It is one that needs no examination of references to spot.
The text is as follows:
The lie is glaringly obvious to anyone within even a slight understanding of statistics: the Fatherhood Foundation is comparing every single homosexual relationship to only those heterosexual relationships that are called "marriage". They've deliberately and dishonestly weighted the heterosexual side of the comparison by excluding all unmarried opposite-sex couples, and then used that false data to try and paint homosexual couples as inherently inferior across the board. Unmarried opposite-sex couples, and not married opposite-sex couples, would be the real equivalent of unmarried same-sex male couples such as those allegedly studied in Melbourne. But making a comparison that's actually valid wouldn't give the Fatherhood Foundation the opportunity to smear the gay community with their misinformation now, would it?
The text is as follows:
Heterosexual married couples have a far lower rate of relationship breakdown than homosexual couples. As an Australian Government report stated, “According to a 1995 study, ten per cent of marriages failed within six years, 20 per cent within ten years, 30 per cent by twenty years, and 40 per cent by thirty years.”65 In comparison, a study of the Melbourne homosexual community showed that 40 per cent of men had changed partners in the past 6 months; 9.8 per cent had been in a relationship for only six months to a year; 18.8 per cent for 1-2 years; 15.3 per cent had lasted for 3-5 years; and only 15.7 per cent were in a relationship of more than five years – meaning 84 per cent had broken down after five years.
The lie is glaringly obvious to anyone within even a slight understanding of statistics: the Fatherhood Foundation is comparing every single homosexual relationship to only those heterosexual relationships that are called "marriage". They've deliberately and dishonestly weighted the heterosexual side of the comparison by excluding all unmarried opposite-sex couples, and then used that false data to try and paint homosexual couples as inherently inferior across the board. Unmarried opposite-sex couples, and not married opposite-sex couples, would be the real equivalent of unmarried same-sex male couples such as those allegedly studied in Melbourne. But making a comparison that's actually valid wouldn't give the Fatherhood Foundation the opportunity to smear the gay community with their misinformation now, would it?
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Homosexuality and Tolerance in the Netherlands: The Real Story
Significantly, the study sampled residents of the Netherlands, where social acceptance of same-sex behavior is high. This would call into question the assumption that the high rate of psychiatric problems is primarily due to social or internalized homophobia.
This is what the "pro-treatment of homosexuality" group NARTH recently said about the study "Same-Sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders: Findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS)" published in Archives of General Psychiatry 2001, vol 58(1), pp 85-91. While NARTH may chauvinistically choose to view the entirety of a Western European country like the Netherlands as some sort of gay mecca where no anti-gay sentiment ever exists in any form at all, the truth is that anti-gay sentiment does exist there, and it causes serious problems for gay people. Perhaps NARTH should engage in an honest assessment of the Dutch attitudes towards homosexuality instead of misleadingly trying to handwave past it.
The Dutch study itself actually references three works that assess attitudes towards homosexuality in the Netherlands. I have traced one of them: a study called "Attitudes towards nonmarital sex in 24 countries" by E D WIlmer, J Treas, and R Newcomb, published in Journal of Sex Research 1998, vol 35, pp349-358. Its measurement of sexual attitudes in the 24 countries included a question on whether respondents believed that homosexual sex was wrong. With 65% of Dutch respondents saying that it was "not wrong at all", it is true that tolerance in the Netherlands for homosexual sex is relatively high, especially compared to the USA where fully 70%said it was "always wrong". But the fact remains that 19% of Dutch respondents believed that homosexual sex was "always wrong". Intolerance for homosexuality still exists in the Netherlands, and it is reasonable to believe that this will be reflected in an increased toll on the mental health of people who engage in homosexual behaviour. (To round out the percentages, 4% of Dutch respondents believed that homosexual sex was wrong "almost always", while a further 12% believed it was wrong "only sometimes". I will not speculate at this time on why those people answered the question like that.)
And the attitudes of people who do find fault with homosexuality would seem to be especially virulent. A study on anti-gay violence by the University of Amsterdam called "As long as they keep away from me" (an English translation of the summary is available at the bottom of the page) noted that "gays fall victim to violence in Amsterdam on a regular basis. In 2007, 201 cases were recorded, of which 67 were of physical violence", 17 of robbery and 38 of serious threat". Yet anti-gay groups like NARTH would have you believe that gay people in the Netherlands experience no kind of discrimination that would tax their mental health whatsoever.
Further, and disturbingly, a person who might claim homosexual sex is not wrong can still be a gaybasher. As the Dutch study on anti-gay violence discovered, the "tolerance" expressed towards homosexuality among some Dutch youth can be highly conditional:
The major cause of the aversion to homosexuality felt by perpetrators of anti-gay violence lies in their views and emotions regarding masculinity and sexuality. Four aspects of homosexuality that particularly appear to arouse annoyance, disapproval and loathing are anal sex, feminine behaviour, the visibility of homosexuality, and the fear of being hit on by a gay.
It is remarkable that the perpetrators do not reject homosexuality on all fronts. Indeed, in many cases the perpetrators declare not to hate gays at all and realise that homosexuality is a part of Dutch society. They reject homosexuality, however, on express conditions: gays should not openly show the four aspects of the behaviour mentioned above. The perpetrators tend to copy the prevailing gay-tolerant rhetoric of Dutch society, but do not refrain from all sorts of violence as soon as homosexuality comes close to them or if gay men do not fulfil their supposed obligations[emphasis added].
It may be premature for me to accuse NARTH on capitalising on the anti-European bigotry prevalent among their usual audience of Christianist fanatics, who tend to inaccurately view Amsterdam as a modern-day Sodom where homosexuality is not just tolerated, but glorified. But I would hope that this examination of the actual evidence will help to correct the misinformation propagated by anti-gay activists that increased mental health problems among homosexual men and women in the Netherlands cannot be the result of discrimination against gay people. Overt anti-gay bigotry does exist in the Netherlands, and even some Dutch youth who might call themselves "tolerant" of homosexuality can show an especially violent side if the conditions put on providing that "tolerance" aren't perceived as being met.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
21 Reasons why Gender Matters: shonky referencing and the mental health of gay people
I found a second serious referencing error in the anti-gay pamphlet 21 Reasons why Gender Matters. Like the earlier one, it falsely claims that a study includes text which it doesn't actually include. Unlike the earlier one, I can actually see how they got it wrong.
On page 14 of the pamphlet, the following text appears:
Footnote 110 refers to a study that is very popular among anti-gay activists trying to "prove" that homosexual behaviour itself directly causes the person engaging in it to become mentally disturbed: "Same-sex Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders", by TGM Sandfort et al, published in volume 58(1) of the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2001.
I have now read the complete study, and the text quoted above as appearing in the study itself does not appear anywhere within in. Given the actual sentiments expressed by the authors in the study, particularly their fairly clear statement in the "Comment" section that "because of the study's cross-sectional design, it is not possible to adequately address the question of the causes of the observed differences" in mental health, it is highly misleading to claim that they made any statement of fact as clear-cut as the one that the pamphlet falsely attributed to them.
The actual source of the quoted text is this article from the so-called "research and therapy" group NARTH, a little way in to "Section D:Mental Health, Physical Health, Stability of Homosexual Men and Women and Longevity of Homosexual Relationships". The shoddy use of HTML, in which a separate font is used when quoting a study, but that font accidentally spills out of the closing blockquote, could, if you're not reading carefully, give the misleading impression that the paragraph after the quote from the study is also a quote from the study. Apparently the Fatherhood Foundation didn't notice the problem.
The study itself that they're misquoting is interesting, and probably deserves a more thorugh consideration given the multiple lies that a great deal of anti-gay organisations tell about it, not just NARTH and the Fatherhood Foundation. For now I'll just point to a news article about a much more recent study about the issue of homosexuality and mental health, one which should give pause to any anti-gay activist trying to encourage negative attitudes to homosexuality: Parents' response key to health of gay youth:
Follow the link for the full article.
On page 14 of the pamphlet, the following text appears:
One study revealed that “the lifetime prevalence for two or more psychiatric disorders for men who engaged in homosexual behaviors was 37.85 per cent versus 14.4 per cent for men who did not engage in homosexual behaviors. For women engaging in homosexual behaviours, the rate for two or more psychiatric disorders was 39.5 per cent versus 21.3 per cent for women not engaging in homosexual behaviours. Society’s oppression of homosexual people is a hypothesis unlikely to find support in this study, concluded the Netherlands [sic], which is perhaps one of the most homosexual-affirming and tolerant countries in the world.”110
Footnote 110 refers to a study that is very popular among anti-gay activists trying to "prove" that homosexual behaviour itself directly causes the person engaging in it to become mentally disturbed: "Same-sex Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders", by TGM Sandfort et al, published in volume 58(1) of the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2001.
I have now read the complete study, and the text quoted above as appearing in the study itself does not appear anywhere within in. Given the actual sentiments expressed by the authors in the study, particularly their fairly clear statement in the "Comment" section that "because of the study's cross-sectional design, it is not possible to adequately address the question of the causes of the observed differences" in mental health, it is highly misleading to claim that they made any statement of fact as clear-cut as the one that the pamphlet falsely attributed to them.
The actual source of the quoted text is this article from the so-called "research and therapy" group NARTH, a little way in to "Section D:Mental Health, Physical Health, Stability of Homosexual Men and Women and Longevity of Homosexual Relationships". The shoddy use of HTML, in which a separate font is used when quoting a study, but that font accidentally spills out of the closing blockquote, could, if you're not reading carefully, give the misleading impression that the paragraph after the quote from the study is also a quote from the study. Apparently the Fatherhood Foundation didn't notice the problem.
The study itself that they're misquoting is interesting, and probably deserves a more thorugh consideration given the multiple lies that a great deal of anti-gay organisations tell about it, not just NARTH and the Fatherhood Foundation. For now I'll just point to a news article about a much more recent study about the issue of homosexuality and mental health, one which should give pause to any anti-gay activist trying to encourage negative attitudes to homosexuality: Parents' response key to health of gay youth:
Kids with parents who reacted negatively 8 times more likely to try suicide
by Lisa Leff
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO - Young gay people whose parents or guardians responded negatively when they revealed their sexual orientation were more likely to attempt suicide, experience severe depression and use drugs than those whose families accepted the news, according to a new study.
Follow the link for the full article.
Friday, December 26, 2008
21 Reasons Why Gender Matters on transgenderism, cont.
The pamphlet "21 reasons why gender matters" can be found online here.
The pamphlet offers three footnotes citing two documents in support of their contribution to the question of "whether gender re-assignment surgery can ever be justified". The first footnote refers to a court case, in which they reference an online post from the right-wing site Worldnet Daily about the case rather than the case itself. The other two refer to statements made by transgender individuals who allegedly express regret about undergoing gender reassignment surgery, the second of which is also from the Worldnet Daily post.
The court case referred to is Marc Andrew Mario vs P & C Food Markets, Inc, in which Mario tried - unsuccessfully - to argue that his gender reassignment surgey should have been covered by his employer's health insurance because it was "medically necessary". The court found in a summary judgement that this was not the case, a judgement which was upheld on appeal. The characterisation in the pamphlet that the decision was made due to the court's perceptation that there was "conflict in the medical community over whether or not gender dysphoria is a legitimate illness worthy of such severe medical intervention" seems accurate. It's not entirely clear with the court's impression was accurate, though.
Opponents of the ruling point out that this particular decision is "an anomaly in light of the many recent developments signaling a growing acceptance of the reality of transsexualism", including the Medicaid program in the US covering gender reassignment surgery in many states and jurisdictions, "under regulations that limit coverage to medically necessary procedures". There's apparently some room for disagreement here.
Not so much with the second, though. It's a quote from a transgender woman named Dr Renee Richards, taken from an interview with her in Tennis Magazine in March, 1999:
I couldn't find the original interview, but a later interview with the New York Times provides some interesting context when she talks about her 1999 comment. Contrary to the implication in the Gender Matters pamphlet, Dr Richards does not believe that transsexualism doesn't exist, and does still think of herself as a woman:
Got that? She does not regret the surgery, she did not view her gendery dysphoria as "curable" through mere therapy, and the reason she does not want others to undergo the surgery is not because she thinks it's wrong to try and change gender, but because it doesn't go far enough in changing it.
The final footnote refers once again to Worldnet Daily, in which is quoted a self-described "former trans-sexual" named Joseph Cluse:
Joseph Cluse is described on the Exodus International website as "a man whom God redeemed from transsexuality". His statement there that he no longer views himself as transgender, and that he sought gender reassignment surgery in the first place because "Satan’s stronghold on my life was such that I could see no other course for my life than a complete sex change operation" seems sincere enough, but it's difficult to tell with testimonials from people affiliated with ex-gay organisations. Will Joseph Cluse become JoAnna Cluse again as an ex-ex-transsexual, as so many ex-gays have become ex-ex-gays? Only time will tell.
The pamphlet offers three footnotes citing two documents in support of their contribution to the question of "whether gender re-assignment surgery can ever be justified". The first footnote refers to a court case, in which they reference an online post from the right-wing site Worldnet Daily about the case rather than the case itself. The other two refer to statements made by transgender individuals who allegedly express regret about undergoing gender reassignment surgery, the second of which is also from the Worldnet Daily post.
The court case referred to is Marc Andrew Mario vs P & C Food Markets, Inc, in which Mario tried - unsuccessfully - to argue that his gender reassignment surgey should have been covered by his employer's health insurance because it was "medically necessary". The court found in a summary judgement that this was not the case, a judgement which was upheld on appeal. The characterisation in the pamphlet that the decision was made due to the court's perceptation that there was "conflict in the medical community over whether or not gender dysphoria is a legitimate illness worthy of such severe medical intervention" seems accurate. It's not entirely clear with the court's impression was accurate, though.
Opponents of the ruling point out that this particular decision is "an anomaly in light of the many recent developments signaling a growing acceptance of the reality of transsexualism", including the Medicaid program in the US covering gender reassignment surgery in many states and jurisdictions, "under regulations that limit coverage to medically necessary procedures". There's apparently some room for disagreement here.
Not so much with the second, though. It's a quote from a transgender woman named Dr Renee Richards, taken from an interview with her in Tennis Magazine in March, 1999:
“I would have been better off staying the way I was,” said tennis star Renee Richards, the high-profile sex-change recipient.26 She goes on to say: “I wish that there could have been an alternative way, but there wasn’t in 1975. If there was a drug that I could have taken that would have reduced the pressure, I would have been better off staying the way I was - a totally intact person. I know deep down that I’m a second-class woman. I get a lot of inquiries from would-be transsexuals, but I don’t want anyone to hold me out as an example to follow. Today there are better choices, including medication, for dealing with the compulsion to crossdress and the depression that comes from gender confusion. As far as being fulfilled as a woman, I’m not as fulfilled as I dreamed of being. I get a lot of letters from people who are considering having this operation...and I discourage them all.”
I couldn't find the original interview, but a later interview with the New York Times provides some interesting context when she talks about her 1999 comment. Contrary to the implication in the Gender Matters pamphlet, Dr Richards does not believe that transsexualism doesn't exist, and does still think of herself as a woman:
''In 1999, you told People--'' the reporter begins.
Dr. Richards interrupts.
''--I told People what I was feeling, which I still feel: Better to be an intact man functioning with 100 percent capacity for everything than to be a transsexual woman who is an imperfect woman.''
In the same interview, Dr. Richards talked about wishing for something that could have prevented the surgery.
''What I said was if there were a drug, some voodoo, any kind of mind-altering magic remedy to keep the man intact, that would have been preferable, but there wasn't,'' Dr. Richards says. ''The pressure to change into a woman was so strong that if I had not been able to do it, I might have been a suicide.''
Does she regret having the surgery?
''The answer is no.''
Got that? She does not regret the surgery, she did not view her gendery dysphoria as "curable" through mere therapy, and the reason she does not want others to undergo the surgery is not because she thinks it's wrong to try and change gender, but because it doesn't go far enough in changing it.
The final footnote refers once again to Worldnet Daily, in which is quoted a self-described "former trans-sexual" named Joseph Cluse:
“How can outward physical change bring about the needed change
within? (After surgery) there is still a painful void,” says a regretful Joseph Cluse, who in 1979 had surgery in Trinidad, Colorado. “Relationships are destroyed and everyday I have to live with scars. The mirror is ever before me.”
Joseph Cluse is described on the Exodus International website as "a man whom God redeemed from transsexuality". His statement there that he no longer views himself as transgender, and that he sought gender reassignment surgery in the first place because "Satan’s stronghold on my life was such that I could see no other course for my life than a complete sex change operation" seems sincere enough, but it's difficult to tell with testimonials from people affiliated with ex-gay organisations. Will Joseph Cluse become JoAnna Cluse again as an ex-ex-transsexual, as so many ex-gays have become ex-ex-gays? Only time will tell.
21 Reasons Why Gender Matters on transgenderism
The pamphlet "21 reasons why gender matters" can be found online here.
On page 5 and 6, the pamphlet disgracefully misuses the story of Dr John Money as an argument against the very existence of transgender people. Apparently because one unwilling boy still viewed himself as a boy after an attempt to force him into girlhood was attempted, then this supposedly "highlights the dangers in gender reassignment which does not match the chromosomes of the individual."
No, this story tells us nothing about people who want to have their gender reassigned at all. But then, the Religious Right always did have a problem fully understanding the concept of free will.
On page 5 and 6, the pamphlet disgracefully misuses the story of Dr John Money as an argument against the very existence of transgender people. Apparently because one unwilling boy still viewed himself as a boy after an attempt to force him into girlhood was attempted, then this supposedly "highlights the dangers in gender reassignment which does not match the chromosomes of the individual."
No, this story tells us nothing about people who want to have their gender reassigned at all. But then, the Religious Right always did have a problem fully understanding the concept of free will.
21 Reasons why Gender Matters: Footnote 7
The pamphlet "21 reasons why gender matters" can be found online here.
It's unclear to me which part of the text footnote 7 refers to. There are two sentences just preceding it: "Yet various social engineers, including extreme feminists and homosexual activists, have sought to ignore or minimise these inherent differences. Their attempts have led to social and personal upheaval." Does the Footnote refer to just the sentence about "social and personal upheaval", or does it contain evidence about the alleged activities of "extreme feminists and homosexual activists" as well? The way it's laid out is not at all clear.
The footnote itself is also singularly unhelpful, saying merely "See for example, Dale O’Leary, The Gender Agenda. Lafayette, LA: Vita Issues Press, 1997." I have to read an entire book to verify the claim (or possibly claims) being made? Again?
The book's full title is "The Gender Agenda: Redefining Inequality". It is not readily available to me, and I can't give any kind of verdict about it without reading it, even assuming I could take the time to do so, and trace down the further references almost certainly within it. I'll just have to add it to the pile I guess. In the meantime, here's a description of it from the viruently anti-feminist site "Fathers For Life":
Oookay, then.
There's just too much referenced in this pamphlet to be able to examine everything properly (and why do I suspect that that's deliberate?). I'm going to have to change strategies and go after the low-hanging fruit first.
edit: Here is a further book review of "The Gender agenda", in which the author's bizarre confusion between the concepts of "gender" and "sexual orientation" can be seen:
It's unclear to me which part of the text footnote 7 refers to. There are two sentences just preceding it: "Yet various social engineers, including extreme feminists and homosexual activists, have sought to ignore or minimise these inherent differences. Their attempts have led to social and personal upheaval." Does the Footnote refer to just the sentence about "social and personal upheaval", or does it contain evidence about the alleged activities of "extreme feminists and homosexual activists" as well? The way it's laid out is not at all clear.
The footnote itself is also singularly unhelpful, saying merely "See for example, Dale O’Leary, The Gender Agenda. Lafayette, LA: Vita Issues Press, 1997." I have to read an entire book to verify the claim (or possibly claims) being made? Again?
The book's full title is "The Gender Agenda: Redefining Inequality". It is not readily available to me, and I can't give any kind of verdict about it without reading it, even assuming I could take the time to do so, and trace down the further references almost certainly within it. I'll just have to add it to the pile I guess. In the meantime, here's a description of it from the viruently anti-feminist site "Fathers For Life":
The Gender Agenda, by Dale O'Leary, a book that explains the sinister strategy — firmly rooted in communist ideology — for the destruction of our families and the role that the U.N. and the seemingly innocent word gender play in it.
Oookay, then.
There's just too much referenced in this pamphlet to be able to examine everything properly (and why do I suspect that that's deliberate?). I'm going to have to change strategies and go after the low-hanging fruit first.
edit: Here is a further book review of "The Gender agenda", in which the author's bizarre confusion between the concepts of "gender" and "sexual orientation" can be seen:
It is a useful instrument to expose the aims and machinations of a strange new breed of people - people who believe in five genders, male, female, homosexual male, homosexual female, and bisexual.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Treatment of Muntadhar al-Zeidi looking very suspicious
So now the Iraqi government is claiming that the shoe-thrower was put up to the act by an un-named (but definitely evil) "militant".
No word from al-Zeidi himself at this stage, although his brothers have been allowed to visit him. They contradict the government's claims:
Muntadhar al-Zeidi's brothers continue to say that he's being tortured while in custody, although the AP is at pains to point out that "there has been no independent corroboration that al-Zeidi was abused once in custody." However, there is confirmation that he received injuries in the process of being arrested:
I've been trying to give the Iraqi government the benefit of the doubt over the torture allegations, but this admission that he received injuries during his arrest, combined with the claim that he did not appear in open court on Wednesday 17th December despite earlier expectations that he would, do not bode well.
"He revealed ... that a person provoked him to commit this act, and that person is known to us for slitting throats," al-Maliki said, according to the prime minister's Web site. The alleged instigator was not named and neither al-Maliki nor any of his officials would elaborate.
No word from al-Zeidi himself at this stage, although his brothers have been allowed to visit him. They contradict the government's claims:
"He told me that he has no regret for what he did and that he would do it again," Uday al-Zeidi told The Associated Press."
Muntadhar al-Zeidi's brothers continue to say that he's being tortured while in custody, although the AP is at pains to point out that "there has been no independent corroboration that al-Zeidi was abused once in custody." However, there is confirmation that he received injuries in the process of being arrested:
The investigating judge, Dhia al-Kinani, has said that the journalist was beaten around the face and eyes when he was wrestled to the ground after throwing the shoes at Bush during a Dec. 14 press conference in the Green Zone. The judge said al-Zeidi's face was bruised but he did not provide a further description.
I've been trying to give the Iraqi government the benefit of the doubt over the torture allegations, but this admission that he received injuries during his arrest, combined with the claim that he did not appear in open court on Wednesday 17th December despite earlier expectations that he would, do not bode well.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Rick Warren - the reason behind the anger
The kerfuffle over the inclusion of evangelical minister Rick Warren at Obama's inauguration has inspired a fair bit of writing around the blogosphere. I might as well add my two cents.
I think that the reaction to Warren's inclusion is excessive, but the strength of the reaction has a reason behind it. This reason is more than just "hysterical faggots are over-reacting to nothing", which is in some cases disturbingly close to an accurate assessment of the sentiment expressed by people telling us to quieten down.
Having spent some time reading and listening to those who oppose gay rights, there's a certain style to their rhetoric. In many, many cases, the words and language convey kindness and a desire to help, but the sentiment behind them is deeply painful to the gay target. An example is in the motivations anti-gay people ascribe to themselves: where they say they're only so opposed to homosexuals being homosexuals because they love us and want to "rescue" us from the "evils" we face by being "in the homosexual lifestyle". I wonder if it has ever even occurred to them that they just told those of us who don't want to be "rescued" that they think we're in love with our "evil". Why else would we actively resist any attempts to "rescue" us, in their opinion?
I don't know if this duel-messaging is intentional, but it comes off as passive-aggressive: publicly conveying insulting messages, but then acting deeply hurt and shocked when called out on it, insisting that they never said anything insulting at all. Anyone who's been on the receiving end of such a tactic will know how deeply infuriating it is, made all the worse when others insist that it's the target who's in the wrong for losing their temper over "nothing".
Glenn Greenwald has suggested that the existence of the controversy here "is a proxy for numerous pre-existing conflicts and agendas that have nothing to do with Rick Warren". I do think that the anger has something to do with Rick Warren, or rather with evangelical anti-gay sentiment in general. It's frustrating that an evangelical can casually say in response to a question about gay marriage that "a committed boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is not a marriage. Two lovers living together is a not a marriage. Incest is not marriage. A domestic partnership or even a civil union is still not marriage", and then we get berated for suggesting that he just equated gay marriage with incest, and get lectured that Pastor Warren "shows no indication of hate or bigotry". The frustration at that false statement from someone who claims to be on our side needs an outlet.
It's unfortunate that the outlet has become Rick Warren's presence at Obama's inauguration, because it's a symbolic gesture really matters very little, if at all. But telling gay people to "quieten down", while making ZERO effort to understand the source of their anger, no matter how misdirected it might currently be, won't make them quieten down. It'll probably make us more frustrated, and noisier, especially if you give indications that you don't see what's going on. The "loving" and "compassionate" language of evangelicals is deeply hurtful to us, and we fear that people don't see the hurt it's causing.
Please don't give us reason to believe that our fear is justified.
I think that the reaction to Warren's inclusion is excessive, but the strength of the reaction has a reason behind it. This reason is more than just "hysterical faggots are over-reacting to nothing", which is in some cases disturbingly close to an accurate assessment of the sentiment expressed by people telling us to quieten down.
Having spent some time reading and listening to those who oppose gay rights, there's a certain style to their rhetoric. In many, many cases, the words and language convey kindness and a desire to help, but the sentiment behind them is deeply painful to the gay target. An example is in the motivations anti-gay people ascribe to themselves: where they say they're only so opposed to homosexuals being homosexuals because they love us and want to "rescue" us from the "evils" we face by being "in the homosexual lifestyle". I wonder if it has ever even occurred to them that they just told those of us who don't want to be "rescued" that they think we're in love with our "evil". Why else would we actively resist any attempts to "rescue" us, in their opinion?
I don't know if this duel-messaging is intentional, but it comes off as passive-aggressive: publicly conveying insulting messages, but then acting deeply hurt and shocked when called out on it, insisting that they never said anything insulting at all. Anyone who's been on the receiving end of such a tactic will know how deeply infuriating it is, made all the worse when others insist that it's the target who's in the wrong for losing their temper over "nothing".
Glenn Greenwald has suggested that the existence of the controversy here "is a proxy for numerous pre-existing conflicts and agendas that have nothing to do with Rick Warren". I do think that the anger has something to do with Rick Warren, or rather with evangelical anti-gay sentiment in general. It's frustrating that an evangelical can casually say in response to a question about gay marriage that "a committed boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is not a marriage. Two lovers living together is a not a marriage. Incest is not marriage. A domestic partnership or even a civil union is still not marriage", and then we get berated for suggesting that he just equated gay marriage with incest, and get lectured that Pastor Warren "shows no indication of hate or bigotry". The frustration at that false statement from someone who claims to be on our side needs an outlet.
It's unfortunate that the outlet has become Rick Warren's presence at Obama's inauguration, because it's a symbolic gesture really matters very little, if at all. But telling gay people to "quieten down", while making ZERO effort to understand the source of their anger, no matter how misdirected it might currently be, won't make them quieten down. It'll probably make us more frustrated, and noisier, especially if you give indications that you don't see what's going on. The "loving" and "compassionate" language of evangelicals is deeply hurtful to us, and we fear that people don't see the hurt it's causing.
Please don't give us reason to believe that our fear is justified.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: footnotes 4, 5 and 6
The pamphlet "21 reasons why gender matters" can be found online here.
Footnote 4 is intended to act as clarification rather than an academic cite. The footnote is used to back away somewhat from the claims made in the pamphlet so far that give the impression they believe that gender variation is 100% biologically determined. The footnote mentions that "environmental influences certainly have a role to play". Unfortunately such acknowledgement of environmental influence extends only to a concern about resisting "cultural norms which may constrain the free and natural expression of males and females". I take issue with the argument that environmental factors have such a tiny role to play, but the footnote serves a reasonable function even though it isn't citing anything.
Verdict on Footnote 4: Null Verdict (explanatory footnote, not a cite)
Footnote 5 once again offers an opportunity to explain just what the writers mean when they define homosexuality with the pseudo-scientific sounding label "gender disorientation pathology". This footnote once again fails to do so, once again merely citing the pamphlet itself by saying "See Section 11". Section 11 will (if I ever get there) be dealt with in due course.
Verdict on Footnote 5: DISQUALIFIED DUE TO BEING SELF-REFERENTIAL
Footnote 6 is from the book "Taking Sex Differences Seriously", by Steven Rhoads. The quote is "Sex differences are large, deeply rooted and consequential. Men and women still have different natures, and, generally speaking, different preferences, talents and interests....These differences can be explained in part by hormones and other physiological and chemical distinctions between men and women. Thus they won't disappear unless we tinker with our fundamental biological natures".
The full quote in the original source, with the small amount of redacted text emphasised here, reads "Men and women still have different natures, and, generally speaking, different preferences, talents and interests.The book provides evidence that these differences can be explained in part by hormones and other physiological and chemical distinctions between men and women. Thus they won't disappear unless we tinker with our fundamental biological natures".
The omitted text is logical to remove, but removing it may give the impression that the book is repeating established and uncontested fact about the hormonal/physiological basis of sex difference, while keeping it in illustrates that the author is making an argument and preventing evidence which is contestable. I'm unsure if I should consider this misleading or not.
In any case, examining this footnote means examining the merits of the argument of the book.
The book author - Rhoads - has this to say in response to possible criticism of his work, on page 6: "I will not consider my argument disproved if some of my evidence is questioned. There is so much of it that what remains will be enough to challenge the dominant ideology of the last thirty years that sees men and women as having fundamentally equivalent natures and goals".
So, to challenge Rhoad's argument, Rhoad thinks I need to read his whole book, and then examine each and every book and study that he cites. You begin to see why critically engaging with footnotes like this is very rarely done. I'll say for now that the original source was represented accurately in footnote 6 of the pamphlet (well, except for that slight omission), without going into the relative merits of the source itself. I'd like to though, someday.
Verdict on Footnote 6: Accurately Represented
I wonder how long I can keep doing this?
Footnote 4 is intended to act as clarification rather than an academic cite. The footnote is used to back away somewhat from the claims made in the pamphlet so far that give the impression they believe that gender variation is 100% biologically determined. The footnote mentions that "environmental influences certainly have a role to play". Unfortunately such acknowledgement of environmental influence extends only to a concern about resisting "cultural norms which may constrain the free and natural expression of males and females". I take issue with the argument that environmental factors have such a tiny role to play, but the footnote serves a reasonable function even though it isn't citing anything.
Verdict on Footnote 4: Null Verdict (explanatory footnote, not a cite)
Footnote 5 once again offers an opportunity to explain just what the writers mean when they define homosexuality with the pseudo-scientific sounding label "gender disorientation pathology". This footnote once again fails to do so, once again merely citing the pamphlet itself by saying "See Section 11". Section 11 will (if I ever get there) be dealt with in due course.
Verdict on Footnote 5: DISQUALIFIED DUE TO BEING SELF-REFERENTIAL
Footnote 6 is from the book "Taking Sex Differences Seriously", by Steven Rhoads. The quote is "Sex differences are large, deeply rooted and consequential. Men and women still have different natures, and, generally speaking, different preferences, talents and interests....These differences can be explained in part by hormones and other physiological and chemical distinctions between men and women. Thus they won't disappear unless we tinker with our fundamental biological natures".
The full quote in the original source, with the small amount of redacted text emphasised here, reads "Men and women still have different natures, and, generally speaking, different preferences, talents and interests.The book provides evidence that these differences can be explained in part by hormones and other physiological and chemical distinctions between men and women. Thus they won't disappear unless we tinker with our fundamental biological natures".
The omitted text is logical to remove, but removing it may give the impression that the book is repeating established and uncontested fact about the hormonal/physiological basis of sex difference, while keeping it in illustrates that the author is making an argument and preventing evidence which is contestable. I'm unsure if I should consider this misleading or not.
In any case, examining this footnote means examining the merits of the argument of the book.
The book author - Rhoads - has this to say in response to possible criticism of his work, on page 6: "I will not consider my argument disproved if some of my evidence is questioned. There is so much of it that what remains will be enough to challenge the dominant ideology of the last thirty years that sees men and women as having fundamentally equivalent natures and goals".
So, to challenge Rhoad's argument, Rhoad thinks I need to read his whole book, and then examine each and every book and study that he cites. You begin to see why critically engaging with footnotes like this is very rarely done. I'll say for now that the original source was represented accurately in footnote 6 of the pamphlet (well, except for that slight omission), without going into the relative merits of the source itself. I'd like to though, someday.
Verdict on Footnote 6: Accurately Represented
I wonder how long I can keep doing this?
Friday, December 12, 2008
Strange arguments from supporters of Conroy's censorship proposal
The backlash against Senator Conroy's proposed Internet filter for Australia made the New York Times. Two supporters of the filter were quoted in it.
Clive Hamilton, described by the Times as "a senior ethics professor at the Australian National University and a supporter of the plan", said "The laws that mandate upper speed limits do not stop people from speeding, does that mean that we should not have those laws?.....We live in a society, and societies have always imposed limits on activities that it deems are damaging.....There is nothing sacrosanct about the Internet."
Mr Hamilton seems confused about the difference between a legal restriction like laws against speeding and a technological limitation like what's being proposed for the Australian Internet. This filter is not like passing a law - is Mr Hamilton not aware that child pornography is already illegal in Australia?
The correct analogy to Senator Conroy's proposal in the context of speeding would be as if the government started requiring all cars manufactured in Australia to be made in such a way that they could not go over the speed limit at all. Needless to say, no cars in Australia are made like this, and no car maker would ever accept such a stupid and technologically ignorant demand. I admit I don't fully understand the technical details that make such a thing unachievable in today's cars, but I trust the people who do understand when they say that cars need to be made the way that they're made: with the ability to let the user violate speeding laws. It is the task of the user, not the car, to respect the law and refrain from doing so.
And yet when the people who understand the technology that drives the Internet say that requiring an ISP to filter Internet traffic won't work and is a technically ignorant demand, their expertise is ignored because the answer "it can't be done", no matter how accurate and no matter how well-informed the person giving the answer, is not the answer that Senator Conroy wants to hear. And we get subjected to quotes from ethics professors who confuse the issue with inaccurate analogies.
The other supporter was the group ChildWise, who said filtering child pornography on the Internet would be "a victory for common sense". I guess ChildWise is still in denial about the (lack of) effectiveness of the proposed filter.
Clive Hamilton, described by the Times as "a senior ethics professor at the Australian National University and a supporter of the plan", said "The laws that mandate upper speed limits do not stop people from speeding, does that mean that we should not have those laws?.....We live in a society, and societies have always imposed limits on activities that it deems are damaging.....There is nothing sacrosanct about the Internet."
Mr Hamilton seems confused about the difference between a legal restriction like laws against speeding and a technological limitation like what's being proposed for the Australian Internet. This filter is not like passing a law - is Mr Hamilton not aware that child pornography is already illegal in Australia?
The correct analogy to Senator Conroy's proposal in the context of speeding would be as if the government started requiring all cars manufactured in Australia to be made in such a way that they could not go over the speed limit at all. Needless to say, no cars in Australia are made like this, and no car maker would ever accept such a stupid and technologically ignorant demand. I admit I don't fully understand the technical details that make such a thing unachievable in today's cars, but I trust the people who do understand when they say that cars need to be made the way that they're made: with the ability to let the user violate speeding laws. It is the task of the user, not the car, to respect the law and refrain from doing so.
And yet when the people who understand the technology that drives the Internet say that requiring an ISP to filter Internet traffic won't work and is a technically ignorant demand, their expertise is ignored because the answer "it can't be done", no matter how accurate and no matter how well-informed the person giving the answer, is not the answer that Senator Conroy wants to hear. And we get subjected to quotes from ethics professors who confuse the issue with inaccurate analogies.
The other supporter was the group ChildWise, who said filtering child pornography on the Internet would be "a victory for common sense". I guess ChildWise is still in denial about the (lack of) effectiveness of the proposed filter.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Footnote 3
For reference the pamphlet "21 Reasons Why Gender Matters" can be found online here.
Footnote 3 is provided as evidence that the brains of men and women are different, claiming "for example, one University of Massachusetts researcher reported that “at least 100 differences in male and female brains have been described so far”." The quote is a secondary quote, footnoted as being "cited in Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens, The Mind of Boys. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005, p. 46.
It was tricky to track down for two reasons. The first was that they got the title of the book they cited slightly wrong, and while the difference between "The Mind of Boys", and "The Minds of Boys" (complete title is "The Minds of Boys: Saving our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life") may seem unimportant, it can mean the difference between a successful and a failed Google Book Search.
The second was that the quote in the book was cited in the book from another source, not published there originally. I found the details for the original source. The unnamed-in-the-pamphlet University of Massachusetts researcher has a name: Nancy Forger. The quote from her is not from any academic work, but from a news article. The footnotes in "The Minds of Boys" give the following source: "Quoted in Amanda Onion, 'Sex in the Brain: Research Showing Men and Women Differ in More than One Area', ABC News, Sep 21 2004". This article does not appear to be online anymore at abcnews.com.
I'm forced to rely on what appears to be a reposting of some or all of the original article on a web forum. Again, the quote isn't quite right. "The Minds of Boys" lists the quote as given above, but this repost of the news article includes an extra word: "At least 100 sex differences in male and female brains have been described so far" (emphasis added).
So after all that, does this footnote support the claim that the pamphlet makes in the main text? Yes, as far as demonstrating the existence of differences in brain structure between the sexes goes. But Nancy Forger makes a further statement that isn't included in either the pamphlet or the book quoting her. From the article itself:
When the pamphlet states in the main text that "our brains are different", it seems to me that they are vastly overstating the limited findings so far. They leave the findings behind completely in the very next sentence, claiming that "such hardwired differences explain why men and women are so different in areas of behaviour, perceptions, the way they process information, and so on".
While there is some of evidence of some difference in brain structure provided, the news article (not a research paper) cited does not support claims about those differences as grandiose as those made in the pamphlet.
Verdict on Footnote 3: Exaggerated
Footnote 3 is provided as evidence that the brains of men and women are different, claiming "for example, one University of Massachusetts researcher reported that “at least 100 differences in male and female brains have been described so far”." The quote is a secondary quote, footnoted as being "cited in Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens, The Mind of Boys. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005, p. 46.
It was tricky to track down for two reasons. The first was that they got the title of the book they cited slightly wrong, and while the difference between "The Mind of Boys", and "The Minds of Boys" (complete title is "The Minds of Boys: Saving our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life") may seem unimportant, it can mean the difference between a successful and a failed Google Book Search.
The second was that the quote in the book was cited in the book from another source, not published there originally. I found the details for the original source. The unnamed-in-the-pamphlet University of Massachusetts researcher has a name: Nancy Forger. The quote from her is not from any academic work, but from a news article. The footnotes in "The Minds of Boys" give the following source: "Quoted in Amanda Onion, 'Sex in the Brain: Research Showing Men and Women Differ in More than One Area', ABC News, Sep 21 2004". This article does not appear to be online anymore at abcnews.com.
I'm forced to rely on what appears to be a reposting of some or all of the original article on a web forum. Again, the quote isn't quite right. "The Minds of Boys" lists the quote as given above, but this repost of the news article includes an extra word: "At least 100 sex differences in male and female brains have been described so far" (emphasis added).
So after all that, does this footnote support the claim that the pamphlet makes in the main text? Yes, as far as demonstrating the existence of differences in brain structure between the sexes goes. But Nancy Forger makes a further statement that isn't included in either the pamphlet or the book quoting her. From the article itself:
This kind of research [searching for differences between sexes in the brain] remains controversial, as does any work that looks for explanations for human behavior in the brain. But most researchers looking into differences of the brain are quick to point out that there are many more differences in the brain just between individuals than between groups of people or between the sexes.
"Men and women are more the same than different in the brain — without a question," said Forger. "But," she added, "little differences can go a long way."
When the pamphlet states in the main text that "our brains are different", it seems to me that they are vastly overstating the limited findings so far. They leave the findings behind completely in the very next sentence, claiming that "such hardwired differences explain why men and women are so different in areas of behaviour, perceptions, the way they process information, and so on".
While there is some of evidence of some difference in brain structure provided, the news article (not a research paper) cited does not support claims about those differences as grandiose as those made in the pamphlet.
Verdict on Footnote 3: Exaggerated
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