Hobby Lobby decision makes my brain hurt.

I’ve just been reading over the Hobby Lobby ruling by the supreme court today and the majority ruling is just baffling to me. Let’s look at two parts of the ruling.

First:

Nothing in RFRA suggests a congressional intent to depart from the Dictionary Act definition of “person,” which “include[s] corporations, . . . as well as individuals.” 1 U. S. C. §1. The Court has entertained RFRA and free-exercise claims brought by nonprofit corporations.

Basically the are saying that for the purpose of legal ruling corporations are treated as persons. Now, the notion that corporations are to be treated as persons is certain respects goes back to the 19th century, this initially only extended to rights regarding contract enforcement and obligation. However throughout the years various rulings by the supreme court have extended this concept of personhood being vested in a corporation to granting more rights normally reserved for persons in normal sense. The most recent and well known example of this trend was the Citizens United ruling published back in 2010.

One of the features of this ruling is essentially to continue this trend, by now arguing that corporations have the right of free exercise of religion. With this there are almost no rights given to persons which are not also given to corporations. This is a mistake, corporations are for profit enterprises, there is no reason to grant them any rights beyond those needed to engage in free market trade, I.E. laws relating to contract enforcement. The free exercise clause is there to guarantee individuals the right to practice their religious beliefs, but a corporation cannot HAVE religious beliefs and to make the religious beliefs of the corporations owners or managers coequal with the “beliefs” of the corporation seems at odds with the very purpose of corporations, I.E. limited liability. That is to say I find it odd that people who would fight to defend the notion that they are not individually responsible in an economic sense for the corporations choices, now want to claim they feel a personal moral responsibility for the corporation's choices.  This is particularly galling since there is evidence that Hobby Lobby, in particular, has investments in companies that make some of the contraceptives they claim to oppose.

There is an overriding interest, I believe, in keeping the courts “out of the business of evaluating the relative merits of differing religious claims,” Lee, 455 U. S., at 263, n. 2 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment), or the sincerity with which an asserted religious belief is held. Indeed, approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be “perceived as favoring one religion over another,” the very “risk the Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.”

Notice that they don’t that Hobby Lobby’s claim merits protection under the RFRA because the claim is sincere, they claim that the court cannot even be asked to determine if religious claims are sincere. This is simply wrong in my opinion, and disastrously wrong at that. Ginsburg’s dissent to the majorities ruling puts it best.

"Reading the Act expansively, as the court does, raises a host of "Me, too" questions. Can an employer in business for profit opt out of coverage for blood transfusions, vaccinations, antidepressants, or medications derived from pigs, based on the employer's sincerely held religious beliefs opposing those medical practices.

The point is that the courts MUST, as best they can, attempt to determine which claims are sincere and which are not, at the very least. To assume that all religious claims are sincere, and therefore must be respected under the law, would lead to the court being required to allow anyone to do virtually anything by simply claiming a religious exemption. Don’t want to pay taxes? My religion says I’m not allowed to pay taxes. What you don’t think my beliefs are sincere? You think I’m more interested in a way of getting out of my moral obligations to government and society? How dare you question the sincerity of my beliefs! Now, do I think Scalia and the other conservatives on the court would actually rule this way? Absolutely not, which is why this ruling is a complete joke. Even they don’t accept the logic they used to justify this ruling.

Assassin’s Creed Unity, Ubisoft, and the controversy over their lack of female characters.

So, for those who don’t know Ubisoft demoed it’s new Assassin’s Creed game at E3 recently and it was reveled that, like previous Assassin's Creed games, the main playable character was male. This sparked some criticism, which in turn sparked defenses of this criticism from both Ubisoft and from other gamers. As a feminist, and one of the rare male gamers who usually plays a female character if there is an option to do so I thought I speak about the issue a bit.

I’ve played a fair share of Ubisoft games over the years and have mostly enjoyed them, though I have several critiques of Ubisoft’s game design beyond possible gender issues, but before any of that let’s take a look at some of the defenses offered for this choice.

Ubisoft points out that they actually wanted to include an option for a female lead but it would have doubled their work load. Now, I’m not sure that It would have doubled their work load but it would have increased it significantly, not just in terms of animations, but in scripting and voice acting. Hiring a voice actor for the female lines, and recording any lines of dialogs that name the character or refer to them in gender specific pronouns, plus the time needed by the writers to hunt down those instances if done after the fact. I don’t doubt that this would have added at least a few weeks to the total time for game design, and increased their budget requirements.

On the other hand, plenty of other game companies have done this quite well in games that were often larger in scope than any Ubisoft game has been till now. The new dragon age game seems to have drastically increased the size of the explorable game world, and added the ability to ride horses while continuing their tradition of letting people play as either gender and then set about seducing your fellow party members. I realize that the two games are different and don’t expect all games to be the same, but if they could do all that in their development time it seems Ubisoft could have spared the time for a female lead option if it had been a priority.

So it wasn’t a priority, big deal right? Many of Ubisoft’s defenders point out that they have the right to make any game they want, which is true enough, but I think irrelevant. The point that people are making is not that Ubisoft must add female characters, but that it represents a larger failure on their part to make women and equal part the worlds they create, and people would like them to be a part of the solution not a part of the problem.

Another defense gamers put forward is to ask if feminists expect every game to offer a female lead option. The sort answer to this is generally no. I’m a fan of the Witcher games and don’t expect they will add a female lead any time soon, but this game is built of off existing lore and the characters that already exist in that lore. It also manages to present a host of strong female characters in the story despite being set in a culture that is generally fairly sexist. So I don’t think anyone is expecting ALL games to have female leads in them, simply that there be a bit more balance, and thoughtfulness when writing female characters.

So what do I think about all this? Well first I point out a general critique of Unbisoft’s games, despite enjoying them, every time I play one I get the distinct feeling that I’ve done it all before. Far cry, Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs, virtually ever Ubisoft game ever made uses the same basic game mechanics. For instance, unlocking sections of the map and/or side quests by climbing to some high place and unlocking a tower or view point of some kind. This is in EVERY game I play by them, and nearly no one else uses it at all. It’s not a bad game mechanic, I just think it is being over used. They changed it up a bit with Assassins Creed 4 by adding a new type of combat with ships, but the basic mechanic was unchanged. How does this relate? I think Ubisoft’s games have become a bit “paint by the numbers,” I hope they grow beyond it, but there it is.

All this being the case, it doesn’t surprise me that they didn’t add a female character. I’ll go one step further, this “paint by numbers” tendency is precisely why Ubisoft has found itself increasingly criticized. It’s not that they left women out this one time, or they failed to address certain problems in their characterizations of minorities in one game. They do this over and over again. Watch Dogs was rightly criticized for the way it “fridged” every female character in the game. Far Cry 3 was criticized for it’s “white person saves the natives” plot, as also seen in Dances with Wolves and Avatar (why did people like this movie?) The point is that these plots are examples of lazy writing and are far too common in all kinds of media, and Ubisoft games in particular. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting a boycott or something. I’ll probably play Unity and enjoy it, though I suspect I will enjoy The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age 3 more. I just also think that we should, at the same time, encourage Ubisoft to do a better job.

People only want to marry virgins apparently.

Today on buzz feed a person posted images from the abstinence only curriculum in a Texas school district.

It explains to us how human beings are exactly like inanimate objects and gives us helpful information like:

People want to marry a virgin, just like they want a virgin toothbrush or stick of gum.

I’ll let you guys in on a little secret. I’m getting married in March, though my fiancé will be giving birth to our child in a little more than a month. You don’t have to be a math wiz to know that means we had sex before we got married. Also, does anyone want to hazard a guess at the number of fucks I gave about how many sexual partners my fiancé had before me? None, absolutely zero fucks were given about this question. That isn’t to say we don’t communicate honestly about with each other, we just don’t judge another person’s worth as a human being or as a spouse by number of people we had sex with before we met each other.  So I’ll say to sex education teachers of Canyon Independent School District, stop teaching your students to be bigots, because that is what you are teaching them to be when you teach them to judge other people’s worth by the number of sexual partners they have had.

Psychologist who writes for fox news blames feminism for Weiner’s sexting scandal.

So this article was published a couple of months ago but I just ran into it a few days ago and it was just too ridiculous to pass up commenting on.

What Weiner’s sexting scandal tells us about young women today

Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychologist who is part of the fox news medical team, writes this article. He seems to think the feminist ideal of sexual liberation is what’s really to blame for this scandal by teaching women to enjoy sex outside of marriage. Dr. Ablow seems to think this is a “man’s job.”

The sexual liberation of women has liberated them to be just like men—who, whether anyone likes it or not, often enjoy sex outside of emotionally-connected, longstanding relationships.

Unfortunately for Ablow he gets a number of facts wrong in this article. First he seems to think that feminists seem to have no issues with Weiner’s actions. To be clear we tend to have different problems with it than Ablow has, I don’t think there is anything inherently immoral with premarital sex. However, Weiner was clearly in the wrong, he was lying to his wife. Further suggesting that the women Weiner sent these photo’s too are somehow responsible for his behavior is more than a little sexist, and suggesting that men never had affairs before feminism is more than a little bizarre. Clearly such affairs have been common throughout history even in cultures without all of those “evil” feminists.

However, he clearly thinks his arguments have scientific merit and the feminists are just being political when they suggest that there is no psychological difference between men and women; so let’s look at his actual argument:

From my perch as a psychiatrist talking to thousands of people a year, I can tell you that the average young woman no longer balks at sexting, watching pornography or being the aggressor sexually in a relationship.

…

But I will tell you that, from what I hear in my office, the girls actually feel a whole lot worse about it, in their hearts, than the boys.  Because, you see, girls and boys, are not the same.

In this argument we actually get a picture of the scientific methodology he employed to come to this conclusion. My conclusion is that his methodology is dangerously sloppy. You will noticed he, at no point, mentions any studies that demonstrate that the average women feels psychologically traumatized by unmarried consensual sex. I can only assume that he quotes no studies because he is unaware of any.

So what is the evidence he brings to the table? His brings up his work with his patients and says that women feel worse in their hearts than men do. Now some people wanting to defend him might at this point say that this guy has a degree in his field and has practiced psychology for years, and don’t I believe in trusting scientists? Who am I to question his authority in this field, since I clearly have no degree in psychology. Well, it’s true I have no degree, but I actually trust the scientific method much more than I trust individual scientists. This is important because Ablow clearly fails to follow scientific principals in his analysis.

You see Ablow uses a flawed sample set. In this case he is making generalizations about a whole population based upon a small self selected sample set. In general if you want your figures to be representative of the whole population then a self selected set is a bad way to do it. This problem is further complicated by the way in which the group self selects itself. In this case all of his patients come to him with some kind of psychological issues, so to assume that facts about the sexual neuroses of his patients can be used to generalize about about all women is very sloppy science indeed.

Further, his statements are vague and metaphorical (they feel worse in their hearts) which makes it impossible to tell if his opinions about the sexual neurosis of even the small sample set he worked from are reliable. It is entirely possible that his biases about sexual behaviors have colored his perception of his clients feelings on the matter.

The sad thing is that if he actually went looking for it there is a lot of studies out there on gender psychology, like this one:

Men and Women May Not Be So Different After All

So a further problem for Ablow is that there are good studies that actually run contrary to Ablow’s claim.

…Statistically, men and women definitely fall into distinct groups, or taxons, based on anthropometric measurements such as height, shoulder breadth, arm circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio. And gender can be a reliable predictor for interest in very stereotypic activities, such as scrapbooking and cosmetics (women) and boxing and watching pornography (men). But for the vast majority of psychological traits, including the fear of success, mate selection criteria, and empathy, men and women are definitely from the same planet.

I suggest reading the whole study, as it demonstrates a much more careful and thoughtful methodology than Ablow does, which is why I find it ironic that he ends with this:

Some gender roles developed because of psychological facts, not in spite of them.  And when feminists urged and urge that we throw out all of them, they do a disservice to females and to the truth.

Ablow’s willingness to use his flawed data, in place of the good data which contradicts his desired conclusion, makes it painfully obvious that his reasoning is motivated by his political and religious ideals, not a desire for truth. It does not qualify as good science. Further, he subtly engages in victim blaming and sexism throughout his article, which makes it difficult to believe he is overly concerned about women’s rights.

Nothing like listening to a sermon to remind me why I don’t go to church.

A book caught my eye today through a social media link called God Behaving Badly. It’s written by a pastor trying to explain some of the more “difficult” passages in the bible from the outlook of a conservative theologian. I’m always interested in this kind of stuff because I like to see if the other side is making any new or innovative arguments, but I really hated the idea of coughing up nine bucks for the book when I was fairly certain from the description that it was not going to have anything particularly original. Plus I always hate the idea of giving money to an evangelist, it makes me feel a bit dirty.

Since I couldn’t find a free copy online so I thought I’d look on YouTube to see if the guy had done any live talks that had been recorded. While looking I ran into a video where an unrelated pastor was doing a talk about the same subject. 

What’s this? A pastor wearing jeans and sandals. A bare brick wall? A Mac Book on a table. Yeah this church has a bit of a hipster vibe. Thought to tell the truth this was the sort of church I tended to be attracted to when I was a believer. I was a college student for most of that time after all.

In any case, the preacher is speaking about sexism in the bible and trying to explain how it doesn’t really exist. Now, I will give the guy a bit of credit here, he actually seems to really work hard reinterpret the bible as non sexist. And he doesn’t skip out of dealing with the more difficult passages. As opposed to people like Pastor Steven Anderson who the Friendly Atheist has written about several times who seems to outright revel in the sexism of the bible this guy does actually work rather hard to clean up the Bible’s image.

Unfortunately he fails in this task quite spectacularly. The sermon starts out with him reading a pithy top 10 list of reasons god created Eve including things like “God was afraid Adam would get lost in Eden because he wouldn’t ask for directions,” I know he only intended this to be a funny opening, though it was absolutely not funny, but either way, starting out by making blatantly sexist jokes was probably a poor way to start this topic. He then goes through several passages. He explains the passage in Genesis 2:18-25 which refers to woman as man’s helper. He claims the word helper doesn’t imply secondary class since the term is used to refer to god as well in the Bible, but it seems like he misses the basic point that claiming women exist primarily to help men is inherently sexist.

He brings up several other verses, like the one is 1st Timothy 2 that is used by most churches as a justification to not allow women any positions of authority in the church. One of the things I’ve always found interesting about this verse is that it never specifies whether the writer believes this rule should apply in all situations or only in church, and some churches even read the statement in 2:15 about childbearing as a statement that only women who give birth can be saved. The passage is actually quite confusing even for fundamentalists, but he fails to bring up these problems at all.  Of course he acknowledges that his church does prevent women from having positions of authority over men, which should be a straight up admission that his church engages in sexism. He does not do this though, instead he makes several arguments to justify this interpretation as not actually being sexist.

The first thing he does is to essentially make a separate but equal argument. He does this by bringing up the old, “women are just different than men” canard. This argument is unfortunately pretty common even outside of the church circles, anyone remember “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus?” However, I’ve written several times (here for instance) about the shoddy pseudo-scientific nature these sorts of claims. Typically these arguments are built around questionable statistical inferences and anecdotal evidence. The pastor doesn’t surprise in this area as he brings up the differences between he and his wife as proof. Unfortunately for him it doesn’t get around the basic problem that his church is taking the position that women are not suited for certain types of jobs merely because of their gender. This is sexism, no matter how you spin it, no matter what bible passages justify the position.

Then he makes the argument that all people, including men, are called to be servants by the bible so rather than a put down of women these passages are good things. Basically he is saying that women should feel special because god has given them a special calling to be the servants of men. Now don’t all the women reading this feel special? It’s like they are saying everyone is called to service one another, but women are called a little bit more, and don’t be angry at men for this because it’s not us men who are being patriarchal, it’s God’s law. Convenient how that works right?

Interspersed in these arguments he brings up passages in the bible where women are given authority or power in some way as an argument that the bible is not sexist. I found this odd since this argument seems to actually contradict the others. Of course, I am happy to acknowledge that the bible contradicts itself on this issue, but he want’s to treat these passages as clarifications of passages like the one is 1st Timothy instead of contradictions. The thing is the passages don’t really support that kind of interpretation.

You know, when someone like Anderson, or James Dobson opens their mouth to speak on feminists issues I usually find myself getting angry at the outright unapologetic sexism in their attitudes, but with this I honestly feel pity. He seems like a decent guy who doesn’t want to be sexist, and therefore really wants the religion he believes in not to be sexist. He really does his best to preform a balancing act between this desire and his desire to maintain a fundamentalist approach to the bible. I feel for this guy precisely because I used to be this guy, but in the end we just have a fundamentalist who really wants to have his cake and eat it too, but unfortunately for him one can either believe the bible is morally inerrant or be a feminist, it is not possible to do both.

A typical rant on Fox News about plan B.

Dr. Manny Alvarez goes on a rant about how the government is intruding into medicine by allowing 15 year old women to purchase plan B pills with no prescription:

He says that at 15 these women are still children, which, while true by cultural standards is, totally untrue by biological standards, which is they key and warns that 15 year olds will be unable to understand the medical warnings on the packaging. I guess he never stopped to ask if someone unable to understand medical warnings has any business being a parent, or to consider that pregnancy carries more health risks than plan B.

At one point he even suggests that next the government is going to suggest selling plan B to infants which makes me question his medical qualifications. He does know that infants can't get pregnant right?

It always strikes me as funny that the opposing side always manages to miss the most important point in these debates. The only teenagers who are buying plan B are ones who have had sex and are worried they might get pregnant from said sex. Teenagers have been having sex since always, and the average age of first sexual experience in the U.S. is about 16 years old. Abstinence only programs have never increased that age by more than 3-6 months. Making plan B easier to get will lower both abortions and teen pregnancy rates so it should be an easy sell to social conservatives who say they want those numbers to go down.

Unfortunately for us, social conservatives take an "our way or the highway" approach to moral issues. In their mind the there is only one valid way for these numbers to go down and that is by only having sex in a manner they find acceptable, which usually means within a marriage.  Any other way of making those numbers go down is cheating the system, and they would rather have pregnant 15 year olds than let us cheat the system.

Arizona campus preacher tells anti-rape protesters: ‘You deserve rape'

Christian preacher Dean Saxton wants women to know that they deserve to be raped. 

'You Deserve Rape' sign causes controversy on UA campus.

Arizona campus preacher to anti-rape protesters: ‘You deserve rape’

Saxon was quoting as saying:

if you dress like a whore, act like a whore, you’re probably going to get raped. I think that girls that dress and act like it, they should realize that they do have partial responsibility, because I believe that they’re pretty much asking for it.

Feeling that Christian love yet?

A short message for Saxton: No one deserves to be raped. Even if a woman is doing naked cartwheels in front of you don't have a right to force yourself on her. If you really look at a woman in a mini-skirt and think that her skimpy dress gives you (or anyone else) the right to sexually assault her there is something wrong with you not her.  The only time it is reasonable to have sex with someone is when they also want to have sex with you, this shouldn't even be that complicated.

Sexist shirts from Marvel.

I'm a nerd and I'm proud of it, I also think nerd culture should be well positioned to be more aware of gender issues than the population in general, which is why this story made me sad.

Sexist 'Avengers' T Shirts Tell Boys To Be Heroes And Girls To Need A Hero 

Marvel is selling these two shirts, the left one for boys and the right one for girls.

 

What kind of subtle sexist messages are we selling to children with these shirts? Some people have said that this is no big deal because the shirts are marketed to kids, but I think this actually makes it worse. Childhood and adolescence are when most people form a lot of their ideas about the world including how they relate to the other gender. Of course some people overcome those ideas in adulthood, but many will not. It is a bad idea to start kids out by providing them with sexist gender stereotypes before they are even old enough to fully understand what a gender stereotype is. 

We already have enough of this stuff from religion. I expect better from my nerdy icons.

Bobby Jindal's statement about birth control not friendly to women's rights.

Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana who is famous for his support of creationist nonsense in the Louisiana school system says something that on the surface seems reasonable.  He suggests that birth control should be made an over the counter drug.

Bobby Jindal: Birth control should be over the counter.

I wanted to give this guy some credit, believe me I would like to be able to say he isn't a complete loss, but lets look at the reasons he gives for suggesting that birth control should be sold without a prescription.

Republican objections to mandatory birth control coverage in health insurance coverage were a major part of Democratic messaging toward women in the 2012 election cycle. Republicans wanted an exemption to the mandate for religious organizations. Jindal argues over-the-counter sales to those over 18 years of age would make this debate irrelevant.

See, Jindal doesn't care about women's health he only cares about winning elections, whether or not this is good for women or not is irrelevant as long as it shuts down a political argument.  What should be important is a science based assessment of the risk verses the benefits of changing the law.

Every form of birth control, just like any medial treatment, have possible side effects, the risks of those side effects vary depending on other life style practices and family history of certain illnesses.  The pill, for instance, caries a small risk of blood clots.  Not a major concern for most people, but for someone with a family history of heart problems, or someone who smokes a lot it is a concern.  Traditionally doctors have been the ones to determine which form of birth control is safest for a particular woman.  There are arguments to be made for changing this, but "it will help my political party win elections" is not one of them.

It is also worth noting that this is not really going to fix his parties issues with birth control, since the mandate in the affordable health care act includes other forms of birth control than the "pill" like IUD, which is considerably more expensive, but is also more effective than the pill.  Even if the laws are changed it won't end this debate.

Someone doesn't understand the concept of irony.

Who is this person you ask?  Well they wrote this article.

The Feminism of 2 Peter 2:19

This person is confused because the people who rightfully complained that Rush Limbaugh called a woman a slut and jokingly agreed to pay for her birth control provided she would tape the sex for his enjoyment went on to form this movement. Rock The Slut Vote.  

A quick perusal of this blog revealed a host of errors in basic math, biology, and others, but this particular article caught my eye.  

They complain about how movements like this encourage us to treat women as mere sexual things for the entertainment of men, even comparing U.S. culture to that of fundamentalist Muslim countries.  They think that modern feminism is the same as that of Islam because they both treat women as sex objects for men.  I say they are completely different because what exemplifies the type of Islam they are speaking about is a desire for men to control every aspect of women's sexuality, while feminists want women to be in control of it.

Unlike the bloggers claim feminists are not saying that women are nothing more than vaginas, but to pretend that sexuality is not a very important part of most people's identity is absurd.  To me it seems clear that the use of the term slut is meant ironically and at no point does the "Rock The Slut Vote" site advocate for women to have sex with any man who asks her.  There seems to be an objection to the attempt get rid of the negative connotation of the term slut based upon the notion that women who have had lots of sexual partners are bad people right?  Also apparently words can never be redefined. 

This blogger could probably do with an education about the gay rights movement.  the term "gay" was originally used as an insult, and the movement actually did over a period of several decades change it to a normal and accepted term by using it to describe themselves.  So the concept is not as crazy as this blogger seems to think.

The blogger ends their article complaining about the lack of impact Christians seem to have on mainstream culture, but somehow also manages to believe that things Lady Gaga sings about somehow represents the mainstream culture of people who are no longer teenagers.  I'm guessing the reason they fail to impact mainstream culture is that they have no clue what that even is, but they have such a beautiful straw-man of what they think it is who am I to get in the way of that?

Abortion debate.

Ok, so the abortion debate is up now.

http://backpack.podbean.com/2012/10/22/abortion-debate-10212012/ 

Before reading any of my thoughts here, I suggest listing, otherwise a lot of this won't make any sense.

In most debates one realizes after it there were ways in which they could have responded or things that should have been said that were not.  This is even more true when the debate topic is complex and the discussion time is short.  So I am writing out my thoughts on the debate a few days after it, I will save this and post it after the debate has been put up because otherwise it would be unfair to both my readers and to Vocab.

So during the debate several things were brought up I want to comment on.

First, Vocab's use of what I think may rightfully be called a deepity.  He says that someone's rights should not change simply because their location has changed.  First off, it is a gross oversimplification of the issue to refer to the woman's uterus as just another location.  It's as if he saying, "I'm at the store", or "I'm in my home" or "I'm in a woman's uterus" are logically indistinct.  I'm sure there are some women out there who would be willing to point out that they are very different.

In addition to this, Vocab calls abortion murder as part of the same argument.  The problem is that he seems to be treating all killing as equal, but most rational people already admit that there are valid contexts in which we can kill another human being.  If I run out onto the street and shoot a random stranger I'll be charged with murder, but if that same stranger breaks into my house and I shoot him people think I'm a hero who defended his home from an intruder.  Odd that one of the main differences in these two scenarios is the other persons location, and another is the question of permission.  Context matters, and the pro-life groups seem to want to selectively pretend it doesn't.

My argument is that even if you treat a fetus as a human (Which I'll address this in a bit) the context of pregnancy justifies the abortion, now if one wants to argue that this particular context does not justify said action we can have that discussion, but this was not the argument Vocab made as far as I can tell, and would require him credit the issue with being more complex than most pro-lifers like to admit.  He seemed to be making a blanket statement that context doesn't matter at all when you kill another human being. This seemed bizarre to me, since I can think plenty of contexts in which society would say that killing a person is justified and therefore not actually murder.  I suppose it would be consistent if he takes the absolute position of a pacifist, but he never alluded to that and it would my first time meeting and evangelical who was also a pacifist.

Next, I tried to structure my own argument to avoid biology as much as possible.  One because biology is complex and can't really be adequately addressed in 45 minutes, but mainly because neither I nor Vocab are biologists and any thing either one of us say is going to sound the least bit intelligent to actual biologists. 

Of course he was determined to bring this topic up since it is basically the main argument the pro life stance has that isn't mired in religious dogma.  I think he believed he scored a major victory in this arena, but he seemed to do it by speaking about one thing in embryology and then stopping at that because it seemed to support his argument and ignoring the rest of the science.   Of course the point he brings up is that the fetus has DNA unique to either one of the parents.  Of course I was not going to be able to lay out the actual complexities of fetal development in five minutes and he seemed to treat that as a victory, which is because short sound bytes work better than evidence in debates quite often.

As an example there is a debate about whether or not a fetus is even conscience until the point of actual birth.  Many seem to think that the oxygenation level in the brain of the fetus is too low to support conscience thought in utero.  Any movements made by the fetus are easily attributable to autonomic responses, and as it has never been conscious the fetus can't possibly feel pain.  Also as a being that has never been conscious it is difficult to refer to them as alive.  Of course this may get into the rather hairy question of defining what consciousness (and what life) is, but neuroscience has certainly give us more insight into this question than religion ever did.

Further, studies have found that the neurological connections needed to be conscious or feel pain are not present until after 24 weeks.

Fetus not yet conscious at 24 weeks

One thing I brought up at the end was the need for a more reasonable approach, and that making abortion illegal would do little to stop abortions from happening.  That being the case I presented a case for several things which have actually been shown to lower the number of abortions (wider access to birth control, and better sex education for teens) and mentioned that I support those things and would certainly have no problem with the number of abortions going down, and that I thought it was odd that so many fundamentalists oppose those things given their proven effect. 

I felt he pretty much dodged the question entirely by just basically reiterating that he thinks abortion is wrong and failing to address my point at all.  The best way of putting it, which of course I didn't think of at the time, was if the pro life groups got exactly what they wanted and abortions were totally illegal would this stop abortions?  No, in fact, statistics show that the numbers don't seem to change much.  Further, evangelicals have more recently been taking a strong stance against birth control as well, which will almost certainly increase abortions even with them illegal.  So is that it? Make abortion illegal and then pat yourself on the back and go home?  If your main goal is to decrease abortions why not do something that will actually do that, irregardless of the legality of the abortions?  I don't consider it my main goal to decrease the number of abortions but that number decreasing would not bother me if it was done in a way that respected women's rights and intelligently engaged the topic of sexuality.

Understand while I'm not accusing Vocab of this, my hypothesis is that evangelical's antagonism towards both abortion and contraception is part of a bigger issue.  They want everyone to act in accordance with the sexual values of their religion (even though statistically most of them don't measure up to those either) and they think by preventing access to anything that might negate the real world consequences to sexual behavior will push people to have less sex.  Mind you, they think this despite evidence that access to birth control and abortion does little to change the sexual behavior of the average person.  Oddly enough this ends up creating a situation where children are seen as one of the punishments for "immoral" actions like premarital sex, which is not exactly pro family.

Sandra Fluke is the real misogynist according to LifeSiteNews.com

 Sandra Fluke’s war on womanhood

So Sandra Fluke made a speech at the Democratic National Convention.  I didn't really watch much of the DNC myself because I generally have better things to do, but when I ran across this article on LifeSiteNews, a super pro life site.  I decided to check out her speech, since according to them the speech was full of "venom" and Fluke was "disgruntled and disillusioned." So I decided to look up the video and see for myself.

You can see it here:

It didn't really strike me as that bad. 

Of course they choose to quote Kirstin Powers statement about how women should "visit Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and then see how she feels about how the US treats women"  A statement I find ridiculous.  Treating women better than Saudi Arabia is a pretty low standard.  I would like to think our country would aim a bit higher than that.  Also, Fluke's statements were pointedly directed at the senates failure to include women on a panel discussing contraception issues, so it is not as if she was simply tilting at windmills, she had a concrete example to point to.

However the article gets even more bizarre.  The writer of the article (most likely a man given the name Peter) seems to have decided that a woman cannot truly be a women unless they are having children, and somehow allowing them to decide when and if they reproduce makes them sexual servants of men.  Does he really think that atheists and feminists are just having one non stop orgy? 

A couple of quotes:

Women like Fluke who accept this detestable lie, have thereby rejected the glorious beauty and radiant splendor of what is really at the core of a woman’s being, namely her profound ability to procreate

This is downright creepy, and are not even necessarily accurate.  Did this guy actually ask if Fluke ever intends to have children?  I don't personally know, but I do know the choice should be up to her and perhaps the man she has sex with.  Not some random person on the internet who has decided that not reproducing is some black mark on a woman's reputation.

Women like Fluke are not fighting against the alleged “War on Women”; they are in fact its biggest perpetrators. Contraception and abortion have separated women from their true selves. Depraved men, capitalizing on this unnatural separation, have used and abused women’s bodies like never before. Women are commonly degraded as objects for recreation, pleasure, and profit.

This quote is dripping with weird sex negativity, he seems to think that any sex that is not purposed to be procreative is dirty.  It seems to bother him that women might have sex for any other reason.

He seems to fail to understand that each woman is an individual, if one wants to have children that is fine, but it is also fine to not have children. No matter how he tries to spin it, he is ultimately saying that he will let women choose as long as they make the choices he has already predetermined are right for all women. 

This is not the way to do things people.

So I ran into this the other day.  Read, through the posts, I'll give you some time.

Now, I don't really care what rock these people crawled out from under, I don't care if they believe in god or not and I certainty don't care if they think of themselves as rational.

Whether you agree with things said on skepchick or not is irrelevant.

I wish that all of us as fellow god damn human beings could at least agree that joking about raping someone or assaulting them because you disagree with them  (and I damn well hope it was just a joke) makes you an awful, or perhaps just painfully self absorbed, person.

Of course some people on the site did not back this guy up, but there were far too many people making excuses for this sort of stuff.  Such as people who suggested it's all the woman's fault for not being tough enough to laugh off abusive statements and etc etc.....blah blah blah. 

For fucks sake people, stop making the atheist/skeptic movements look stupid.

Update 8/2/2012:  The person who made the initial post on this page apparently apologized for the joke.  Though did not change his position towards skepchick or feminist issues in general as far as I know.  But he did apologize and I felt it was worth updating this post to reflect that.

There is just no nice way to say some things.

I ran across an interesting article over at skepchick today that I found interesting.

A Few Things To Stop Doing When You Find a Feminist Blog

The author poses several questions that she gets asked often and answers them, one question and answer in particular caught my eye.

Have you perhaps considered taking the oppressor’s face in your hands, gently smoothing back hir hair, softly and sweetly whispering your message in hir ears with lots of words like “maybe” “sort of” and “I’m not blaming you”? I think the people who treat you horribly would be very receptive to that. Just my two cents.

She answers this in the following way.  

I have considered this one! I have done this one. I have also tried not doing this. Funny thing: you get the same result either way. And that result is based on the person you are talking to. You know, based on the way they choose to react, instead of your tone of voice, kind smile, and Circadian rhythms at the time. Everybody has their own responsibility to choose how to approach the inequities of the world; many people choose to slough off that responsibility onto the messenger, because they can, because they have that privilege, because to listen to the messenger and agree with them means the immediate end of that privilege. 

Now, as a man I have to admit that in the past, even since becoming an atheist, I have said things that were rather ignorant on the topic of feminism.  Even in the last several years my views have evolved quite a bit, and I'm sure I am still less than perfect on this.  What made me realize I was wrong here was my own experiences as an atheist, and I think this answer is relevant to a lot of issues besides feminism.

As an I regularly hear much the same complaint from various people, not all of them are Christians or even religious, but they all say the same basic thing.  Perhaps people would listen if atheists were nicer.  In my experience, however, it rarely matters. I have written posts or had conversations where I have specifically said I am not saying something only to be accused of saying that very thing a few moments later, I have pointed out cases in society where religious people (often specifically Christians) are given special privilege or status in my country only to be told that by religious people that I'm wrong to complain or that this isn't a case of special privilege at all.  Any conversation about our national motto inevitably ends with Christians telling me that the national motto being "in god we trust" does not amount the government giving special status to the religious and I should simply stop complaining because my complaint is stupid.   This is often followed by complaints about how Christian rights are being trampled in the country because they no longer have the right to force children to pray in schools.

No matter how nice I am the reaction is mostly the same, and these aren't even conversations about beliefs.  These aren't conversations where I am trying to convince someone that their religious beliefs are wrong, only that having those beliefs result in special  privileges in much of our society.

The reality is that human psychology is to blame for quite a bit of this.  None of us want to admit our failings, or admit that we benefit from a system that is biased in our favor.  For a very long time when some feminist came along and pointed some example of sexism I often reacted by denying it in some way.

My rationalization usually worked like this:

1. Sexism is bad.
2. If I supported sexism, or even indirectly benefited from it in some way I would be bad.
3. I'm a good person.
4. Therefore whatever you are talking about couldn't be sexist.

It took me a long time to get over that line of thinking, I can't even say I totally am over it, but I can't help but think that many theists are reacting with the same line of reasoning, and insisting they socially privileged because of their belief sounds to them like I am saying they are a bad person.  I'm not of course, most people are generally pretty decent irregardless of their religious beliefs.  People usually support a system biased in their favor because they are so used to the privilege they are unaware they even have it, instead of special favor it is just the way things are.  Usually the hardest part of change is admitting to being part of the problem.

Arizona High School Forfeits Baseball Final over Female Player

Arizona High School Forfeits Baseball Final over Female Player Paige Sultzbach 
 

Saw this today, now why would a group forfeit a game because the other team has a female playing for them? Unsurprisingly it is because the school is a conservative Catholic religious school. They had this to say on fox news.

Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we choose not to place them in an athletic competition where proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty. Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls.

I've written about this before but Conservative Christians usually don't respect women, they think they do, but clearly have no idea what respect actually is.  What they respect is an idea or concept they have about women, not the women themselves.

It really is not that hard, respecting women works the same way as respecting men, you have to treat each person as an individual, but this school is not seeing this baseball player as an individual, they only see her as a woman.  It is not enough to respect women in general, in fact that is not even a useful concept.  If you want to respect women you have to respect each woman as an individual.

This is not respect, forfeiting this game was extremely disrespectful of her because they chose to see her as nothing more than her gender.  It is clear that the only thing they respected is their religious regulations, and that is fine, they have a legal right to do that, but Our Lady of Sorrows should not disrespect our intelligence by pretending they did it out of a respect for women.

Arizona passed a law banning funding to Planed Parent hood.

So a law was just signed into law banning any funds from going to places preform abortion including Planed Parent hood.

Sometimes I am so disappointed in my state, all they have done is cut funding that helps many poor women get health care.

I particularly like the part where Jan Brewer says:

By signing this measure into law I stand with the majority of Americans who oppose the use of taxpayer funds for abortion.

This is a complete misrepresentation since there are already laws in place that prevent public funds from paying for abortions, the money given to planed parent hood by the state went to other services, but way to go supporting your narrow interpretation of your religion over the needs of the people in the state you serve.

Uh....you do know that you said that out loud right?

Mississippi Gov. Says Democrats ‘One Mission in Life Is to Abort Children

I will honestly acknowledge being a liberal, though like most liberals I don't always agree with the democratic party...but this, I am honestly speechless.  I get the abortion is a controversial issue but suggesting that the goal of your opponents is to entirely eliminate the human race is just insane.

Of course I know that is is political rhetoric meant to engender an emotional response not a logical one, but it seriously amazes me that they believe their constituency would take this kind of nonsense seriously, it sounds like a conspiracy theory right up there with people who claim 9/11 was an inside job or big pharma wants to keep you sick.  (of course there are people who actually believe those things too)

The governor is selling the bill in question as necessary for the safety women. However, the bill that is being creates a set of rules governing abortion clinics which would cause the one clinic in the entire state to shut down, which would, in effect, eliminate abortion as an option for most women.  Which is, of course, the point of the bill, and the smoke screen about women's health is just a thin veneer to cover up their goal.

The argument that the bill's requirement that the abortion doctors have admitting privileges at a local hospital is about women's safety doesn't even make sense.  Are there any cases where a doctors lack of admitting privileges in a hospital resulted in a serious problem for a person being admitted?  I certainly don't know of any case where that has been an issue.  The goal seems to be much the same as the dozens of other bills that have been passed over the past several years on abortion.  Since Roe V. Wade prevents states from outright banning abortions they are trying to pass laws that make it nearly impossible to get one.  

No war on women? I beg to differ.

I have read quite a few articles and heard quite a bit from Republicans claiming that there is no war on women going on.  They love women but just favor small government (well except for all the invasive abortion laws they pass) Like most things relating to religion I have an opinion on this topic that I'm sure everyone really wants to know.

However, before I get into my argument let me be clear on a few things.  I am not saying that all republicans are in on some systematic conspiracy to force women back into the kitchen. (Though Rick Santorum may want this).  I am not even arguing that all Christian Republicans are part of some systematic conspiracy.  There is, however, a fairly large minority within the republican party made up of religious zealots who I think are ultimately waging a war on women's rights.  Now, they will all claim (including Santorum) that they are not doing this, and while some of them may be outright lying I suspect that most of them are being quite honest in their estimation of their own actions.  It is clear to me that their estimation is wrong.

Now, I generally think most Christians, just like anyone else, are genuinely trying to be good people and trying to make the correct choices.  I know this because I was a fundamentalist for years, and I did not become smarter nor did I suddenly decide that not being a jerk was a good thing after all.  Many of the Christians I used to know were trying to be decent people as well.  However, I do think they and other fundamentalists are very mistaken about certain things, and in this particular issue there is a pernicious view of how women relate to men which causes them to make some rather bone headed choices in this area.

Like most failures in Christian "logic" this one starts with the bible.

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.   1 Peter 3:7

Now back when I was involved with Student Mobilization I remember hearing plenty of sermons about relationships and this was brought up quite a bit.  The typical apologetic that was used was to say that weaker was used in the sense of a expensive vase.  The idea was that men are tough and rugged, while women are dainty and need our protection.  Now Christians argue that this is not misogyny, they value women a great deal.  I beg to differ.

Let me offer some thoughts here.  Several years ago I applied for and got a job teaching English in Japan.  I read a lot of information that said that Japan was a bit racist especially towards non Asians, but didn't pay much attention to it.  However, after living there for 8 months I understood what people meant.  Now, I was hardly ever treated poorly by people.  In fact  I was usually treated quite well, but it was like living in a fish bowl.  Every one knew I was not a native, and most people thought that foreigners were incredibly interesting.  The reality is that I am nothing particularly special, and I could hardly live up to the expectations they had.

You see, bigotry doesn't always come in the form of saying someone bad.  For instance, there is a rather racist myth that black people are inherently better at basket ball.  Some people seem oblivious to the problem here, as if it was a compliment, but it devalues the effort that some one legitimately put into something to say they are only good at it because of some inborn trait like race or gender.

This relates because the attitude of fundamentalist men is to put women on a pedestal, a position which is unreasonable and not very fun for the person you put there.  My time in Japan taught me that.  Psychologists usually tell you that you should avoid relationships with people who want to put you on a pedestal just as much as the people who treat you like shit.  It isn't healthy and in the end the people who put you on a pedestal have just found a way to make their abuse seem more socially acceptable.  Don't believe me?  Take a look at a quote I found here while doing research for this article.

That women are usually physically weaker is undeniable, but the implication of the fall is that by virtue of her being deceived by Satan, women may also sometimes be weaker in other ways. That definitely does not mean she is less valuable (Ephesians 1:6) or that she does not have equal access to grace (Galatians 3:28). Rather, it is a basis for a husband to treat his wife with understanding, tenderness, and patience.

If you aren't used to the sort of double speak employed by apologists let me sum up for you.  He is telling men to be patient and understanding towards their wives because they are stupid and easily deceived.  After all Eve was deceived by the snake and it makes total sense to extrapolate from that one instance to the behavior and thoughts of all women every where right?  No mater what they say, no matter what they even believe about themselves, the religious right is not a friend to women's rights.

16-year-old girl who was forced to marry her rapist

 Moroccans outraged over suicide of 16-year-old girl who was forced to marry her rapist

Some might remember a bit of friendly banter on my blog last month about this passage in the bible.

Deuteronomy 22:28-29, If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

Also the Christian who argued on my blog that it wasn't immoral to force a women to marry her rapist if she happens to live a culture where a woman's worth is determined by her virginity.  It's an easy thing to say I suppose when it is only a theoretical concept about a long dead culture.  Not quite as easy when it is happening somewhere today.

This girl, Amina Filali, was actually forced to marry her rapist and eventually committed suicide to get away from him.

Here is a few important parts of the article.

Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code allows for the "kidnapper" of a minor to marry his victim to escape prosecution, and it has been used to justify a traditional practice of making a rapist marry his victim to preserve the honor of the woman's family.

 And 

The victim's father said in an interview with an online Moroccan newspaper that it was the court officials who suggested from the beginning the marriage option when they reported the rape.

"The prosecutor advised my daughter to marry, he said 'go and make the marriage contract,'" said Lahcen Filali in an interview that appeared on goud.ma Tuesday night.

In many societies, the loss of a woman's virginity outside of wedlock is a huge stain of honor on the family.

While the people involved in this story were Muslims not Christians it hardly makes any difference.  This behavior is sick, and anyone who suggests this OK is sick.  If women loose "value" in a culture because they are no longer a virgin then the culture is wrong.  Admit that the culture is wrong and fix it.  Luckily that is exactly what people are doing there as there have been protests in the country to end this law. 

James Dobson and Daniel Lapin get together and say crazy things.

 Dobson and Lapin Blame Feminism for Everything, Scold Bill Clinton and 'Womanizer' Newt Gingrich

Rabbi Lapin

I ran across this article on RightWingWatch.org earlier and saw something worth noting.  You can listen to Dobson's full program here if you can manage to make it through the whole thing.  Anyway I noted this particular quote from Rabbi Lapin with my own comments interspersed.

Once you remove the religious restraints to rampant sexuality, and all you got to do is relax those religious restraints and male nature will take care of the rest and bring about the decline of a civilization,

Fundamentalists no matter the religion have a big drive to control people's sexuality with fear tactics like this.  Of course he also makes a jab at men, who apparently are just beasts who can't keep in in their pants without the fear of god in them.

one of the mechanisms is of course as we’ve discussed economic because in a sense it requires the same kind of control and self-discipline to get up every single morning and go to work whether you like it or not as it takes to restrain various appetites.

Amazingly many cultures and people who have not restrained themselves sexually in the way Dobson or Lapin's religion requires have still been able to manage to go to work.  I wonder if Lapin has ever read a history book, no civilization in the history of the world, including Victorian era England has ever been as puritanical as Christianity or Judaism requires. 

So when you weaken one muscle you weaken everything else as well and not only do we have a tendency on the part of a society that has relaxed all form of sexual restraint to also go into free fall economically but what also happens is such a society tends towards becoming a more feminine society in a sense.

More feminine? I'm not exactly sure what he means here but no matter how you interpret this it sounds sexist.  It also seems to contradict what he said earlier about "male nature."

Islam, fundamentalist Islam, which is essentially a brutal and violent culture is seducing a somewhat effeminized American culture because there is no other way to explain the love affair that America’s leftwing and secularized elites have with Islam.

Yes because us liberals just LOVE us some fundamentalist religion, nothing we like better than to have our liberty taken away by some crazy religious zealot.  That was sarcasm in case you were wondering.

I really am not even sure where he is getting this from, he seems to believe that we, "secularists," who have fought tooth and nail to wrest our civil liberties from the hands of fundamentalist Christians in this country would just hand it over to another group who is even more extreme than they are.

Islam has at least as bad if not a worse track record on women's rights, sexuality, free speech, and many other issues.  Why would he think that secularists would just turn over our rights to them?  If there is anyone who would it is most certainly not me or any of the members of skeptical/atheist movement.  The idea that any of the feminists in our movement, the likes of Greta Christinea or Jen McCreight have some love affair with fundamentalist Islam is ridiculous.

It also strikes me a rather funny that he talks about Islam as being a "brutal and violent culture" when historically Judaism and Christianity have been very bad too.  Indeed the world Dobson and Lapin want to create in America doesn't look any better than the ones fundamentalist Muslims want to create.