A Love Story for Halloween

 

It sounds more like a story for Valentine's Day, but it was on this date in 1913 that the influential historians Ariel (1898-1981) and Will Durant (1885-1981) were married. Their remarkable love story began on the first day Ariel (born Chaya Kaufman) walked into his classroom and they were married a year later.

Learn more about their story in the video linked below.

https://fstube.net/w/dVk6LVyxy3ooNKUWLC15xq

Milo's 39th: The Tragedy of a Grifter

Today is the 39th birthday of Milo Yiannopoulos, a social influencer whose trajectory is significant in the recent evolution of US politics. From NewgonWiki: 

"Milo Yiannopoulos (born Milo Hanrahan, 18 October 1984) is a British media influencer (banned Twitter account @Nero) and online alt-lite personality known for his role in #Gamergate, ridiculing of feminism and 'regressive' leftism, and further controversies surrounding his views on pederasty. Prior to the adverse publicity, his career peaked in the lead-up to Donald Trump's election as US President -- with his contributions as editor of Breitbart News being almost entirely limited to American alternative-right politics, prior to the MAGA movement's takeover by social conservatives.

"In February 2017, a social media controversy took place concerning video clips in which Yiannopoulos said that sexual relationships between 13-year-old boys and adult men and women can be 'perfectly consensual' and positive experiences for the boys. Yiannopoulos subsequently resigned from his position at Breitbart, his invitation to speak before the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was revoked, and a contract to publish his autobiography with Simon & Schuster was cancelled.

"Milo's cancelling was a symbolic moment in the neutralization of any remaining cultural libertarianism in the alt-lite and MAGA movement, which has since mainstreamed itself as a new moral majority  -- for example, enabling 'groomer' rhetoric and campaigns against queer literature."

Milo's controversial statements were based on his own experience: "There are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age, I certainly consider myself to be one of them, people who are sexually active younger."

It's sad that Milo turned out to be a grifter who lacked the integrity even to defend the truth of his own youthful experiences when this started to lose him followers. For me it's poignant since, when I had barely heard of him, it was he who, by writing about its funding crisis due to ideological censorship, resurrected Cassie Jaye's  The Red Pill, an impartial documentary about the men's human rights movement made in the same fly-on-the-wall style as her previous features, Daddy I Do and The Right to Love, which unlike TRP were praised by feminists and progressives generally because they conformed to their ideological expectations.

Sources: https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Milo_Yiannopoulos

https://heavy.com/news/2017/02/milo-yiannopolous-pedophilia-transcript-pederasty-video-full-sex-boys-men-catholic-priest-cpac-quotes/

The Middle East Needs the Fourteenth Amendment: My Message to the White House

At the urging of an email from Dr. Cornel West's Presidential campaign, I left a message on President Biden's website today, as well as those of Senators Casey and Fetterman and Representative Boyle:

I demand that my taxes stop being used to fund the Israeli occupation that has given rise to the current bloodshed. Make clear that the resumption of aid is conditioned on unilateral action to withdraw forces from occupied lands, end the ethnic pass system and all discrimination within their own territory, and start negotiations to found a state for all its people in the entirety of historic Palestine/Israel.

From Dr. West's message:

"I call on world leaders, especially those from Western colonial nations, to be conscious of their rhetoric and actions to not add fuel to a violent fire that has been raging for decades. President Biden’s baleful, one-sided comments to the nation and the world on the terrible violence in Palestine and Israel were the direct antithesis of the requisite leadership to engender an immediate cessation of crimes against humanity and a pathway to lasting peace.

"After ordering a naval battle group into a region already trapped in a cauldron of war and senseless suffering, President Biden upped the ante by committing the United States and the people’s hard-earned money to another war of attrition. Worse yet, Congress, still without a Speaker of the House, is working to pass a resolution that will send even more military aid to Israel for operations that will result in greater bloodshed. And Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary just confirmed that more of your hard-earned money will be sent to increase military operations in Israel and Ukraine.

"The war machine of the deadly duopoly must be stopped, defunded, and deracinated before we find ourselves in a calamitous third world war.

"That’s why, as part of my Pillars for Truth, Justice, and Love, I committed to slashing the U.S. military budget and ceasing military spending in the Eastern European and Middle Eastern theaters. But the truth is, we can’t wait until I become president to stop the duopoly’s bellicose initiatives – we must act now and prevent more slaughter of innocent people, many of them children and elders. “Ordering” one million people living in an open-air prison to simply move somewhere else is unacceptable.

"I urge you to call, write, tweet, and otherwise message President Biden and your elected lawmakers by clicking here and demand they stop paving the road to war and start building bridges to peace.

"This is no time for placing party loyalty over people and the planet. We need independent voices speaking out and coming together for a collective call for immediate and lasting peace. The truth is until we achieve justice for the precious Palestinian people, there will never be peace for precious Jewish people, nor the opportunity for both to live together with love through truth, reconciliation, and deep healing.

"We need fewer weapons, less vindictive rhetoric, and more truth, more love, and more justice. Together, we can send our lawmakers and the world a message that we not only choose peace, we demand it.

"May all those suffering find immediate solace and safety."

Election Endorsement: Vote for Seth!

 

My thinking about electoral politics over the past few years has been focused on searching for strategies for breaking the grip of the orchestrated culture wars that both big capitalist parties have been promoting to keep working-class people in their thrall by getting us polarized along tribal partisan lines rather than uniting on a class-wide basis.

Because of the way we've been induced to demonize each other, the most promising tactics to change this picture are those that "tug sideways" -- those that don't appear to be coming from either the left or the right, and therefore don't provoke a reflexive tugging back from those on the other side. One project along these lines is the Forward Party, which has the slogan, "Not Left. Not Right. Forward," and which prioritizes fighting for political reforms like open primaries and ranked choice voting, as well as government transparency.

So I was very interested to hear the news that Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein had declared himself a supporter of Forward. But not so surprised. Earlier, starting when I was actively involved with the Greens, I had had very positive experiences interacting with both him when he was a Deputy Commissioner, and his boss, then Commissioner Al Schmidt. In the spring of 2020, when only a few days before the primary I still hadn't received the mail ballot I'd applied for, I contacted Schmidt's office and that same weekend he came up to Northeast Philly, where I was living at the time, in a van to hand deliver me an emergency ballot, letting me go fill it out and seal it in a private location before returning to his van to watch as he dropped it in a portable ballot box he'd brought with him. This only reinforced the positive impression I already had of him and his deputy as hard-working public servants dedicated to helping all voters impartially.

Before hearing about Bluestein's announcement, I saw no reason to be interested in the City Commissioners race. In fact it's not competitive this year. No party is allowed more than two nominees, so it's practically guaranteed in this overwhelmingly blue town that the two Democratic incumbents will win. And since the Republicans only have one nominee this time, the contest for the minority party seat is also non-competitive. But casting a vote can perform an expressive function. By voting only for Seth, and not for the two Democrats who are just machine politicians -- especially if your other votes indicate Democratic leanings -- you can signal that you value the spirit of public service over blind partisanship. That's why I'm planning to vote for him, and if you're a Philadelphia voter I encourage you to do so too.

Student Workers Rally at Penn

 

The other day student workers rallied on Penn's central green after voting overwhelmingly to form a union. Above is a group picture taken at its conclusion. I'm in the second row near the extreme left, with a blue baseball cap on.

The Daily Pennsylvanian's story on the rally can be read here, and a video panorama I took of the crowd can be seen here.

Behind the Button

Yesterday, as I was sitting in Mark's Cafe in Van Pelt Library, someone who looked to be a Penn undergrad pointed to one of the buttons on my sweatshirt and said he'd be very interested in learning how I came to be wearing it. So I told him.

A number of years ago, I read in the paper about a city employee who claimed to be intimidated as a Jew by a Palestinian flag that someone had posted on an office bulletin board. I thought: if that person feels intimidated, it's clear they're misinformed about the flag's meaning. I recalled the historic position of the Palestinian movement -- one state for all its people -- and considered that a symbol clearly expressing this idea couldn't be misinterpreted as exclusionary and menacing. And the idea of a flag to symbolize a pluralist state reminded me of post-apartheid South Africa, where this was done by melding the apartheid-era flag with that of the ANC.

So I thought: I can do something analogous for Palestine by melding the Palestinian and Israeli flags. And I did so. (Subsequently I posted stickers of it in various places, and on one occasion gave a copy to someone I met at an event for artists at Underground Arts.) So, when I read a couple weeks ago how the Palestine Writes Literature Festival was under attack, I had the idea of showing my solidarity with it by turning the flag into a badge that I could wear on my clothes.

The young man thanked me for taking the trouble to explain this history to him, and said he thought the button is really cool. I do too!

The other button shows a profile picture of Omega Kitten Hydra, the youth liberation advocate who makes videos about children's rights with whom I'm mutuals.

Ageist Superstition Is Not Okay: Answering Verity Violet

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data."

In a superlong post partially screencapped below, Verity Violet lists numerous age-gap relationships involving famous people, restricting herself in sexist fashion to those between an older male and a younger female although in reality they occur in all combinations of age and sex. Then she asserts that this is "not okay."

Here's what the science shows: "Constantine (1981) showed that reaction depends on perception of willingness and whether the minor had absorbed the moral negatives about the sex. If the minor both saw himself or herself as willing and had not absorbed the moral negatives, then he or she would likely respond positively; otherwise, negatively or neutral. Rind et al. (2001) in footnote 7 showed how non-clinical research since Constantine has confirmed his conclusion. 'Informed consent' is a legal construct that varies widely across nations, from 12 to 18, and in the U.S. is at the high end (16 to 18). In the psychological literature, it has been assumed without any empirical evidence that informed consent relates directly to how persons react to sex. The unexamined assumption is that people under the U.S. age of consent of 16 or 18, by nature, will react negatively to age-gap sex, but those age 18 and above will react well. This is a serious conflation of moral and legal constructs with a scientific construct. Rather than informed consent, the scientific construct of 'simple consent' (whether the minor was willing in the minor's own perception) is the one that has predictive validity with respect to reactions (Rind et al., 2001)." -- Rind, Bruce (2010). "Social Response to Age-Gap Sex Involving Minors: Empirical, Historical, Cross-Cultural, and Cross-Species Considerations," Thymos, Vol 4, Issue 2, p. 113.

What's really not okay is making facile ageist assumptions that aren't supported by a shred of scientific evidence. Such assumptions can result in tragedies like this one:

A middle-aged woman recounts her positive experience at the hands of a loving adult and her negative experience at the hands of the authorities: "Perhaps you cannot imagine this but, when I was 12, I was very much in love with a man of 50 and he with me. I don't know who made the first move now, but we stroked each other and experienced a sexuality together. It relaxed me wonderfully. "One day my parents found out and the police were called in. The examination was terrible, I denied and denied again. Then I gave in. My older friend was arrested. My parents, after my forced confession, made out a formal complaint. Nothing then could be of help anymore. I have never been able to forget this. It wasn't just. It could have been such a beautiful memory. I am married and have four children. I would not object to their having sexual contacts with adults. I regard it as positive." "Pedophilia: psychological consequences for the child." In Child and Sex: New Findings, New Perspectives, L.L. Constantine & F.M. Martinson eds. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1982