Case Closed -- Er, Open -- Er, Whatever

I recently read a couple books I'd acquired over the years pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. My curiosity about it had initially been stimulated by conversations I had with John Judge while in college. He co-directed an anti-militarist project that was housed in Penn's Christian Association. (I wasn't Christian, but had taken a work/study job there for 1981-82 because I knew a lot of progressive groups had their offices in its building.) My predisposition was to be skeptical of conspiracy theories. In part this was because they cut across the structuralist sort of class analysis in which I'd been trained, and whose conceptual elegance (like that of philosophical materialism more generally) I found appealing. But I also noticed, in these conversations, evidence that John's perennially narrow focus on a conspiratorial world view (he said he was one of only a few people in the country to have read the entire Warren Commission report), had distorted his perception of things, giving him a sort of tunnel vision. For instance, the subject of the social value of technology once came up, and I suggested that in general you can't characterize a technology as pro- or antisocial, because it depends on who's using it and for what purpose. As a counterexample, he said he didn't see what progressive use could be made of genetic engineering. I was quite surprised by this statement, since one of the first things I'd ever read on that subject, an article in Newsweek, had described how it was anticipated that genetically engineered bacteria might be used to clean up oil spills. It seemed strange to me that John would be unaware of something as well publicized as this, if he cared so much about the potential uses of this technology. Evidently his conception of it had been shaped entirely by those who conjured up Hitlerian visions of engineered master and slave races and the like, and he hadn't even stopped to consider what other sorts of applications it might have, let alone read up on it. Several years later I saw him again when he made an appearance on the Penn campus to present his views. These, by the way, cover a lot more territory than just the JFK assassination. He's part of a circle of people who think recent history has largely been shaped by an "international fascist network" that comprises various "neo-fascist" and military intelligence groups around the world, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Office of Naval Research in the US. They trace this network back to the 1920s with a grouping he refers to as "southern rim boys." So I went to hear my old friend speak. But it wasn't long before I saw another example of how his conspiratorial obsession had resulted in a too-narrow range of knowledge. In connection with some cult-related tragedies (I think this may have been shortly after the Solar Temple deaths), John made fun of the phrase "murder-suicide." He asked, "How stupid do they think we are? How can something be both a murder and a suicide?" I was really stunned by this one. I wondered how any literate person could not know what this phrase meant, since it had appeared over and over again in the press, usually in connection not with mass cult deaths, but individuals' going berserk after losing their long-held jobs, killing a bunch of coworkers and/or family members before killing themselves. The meaning was perfectly plain, whether in an individual or group context -- but not to John. Unfortunately my social anxiety then was too great to let me point this out during his presentation. Despite my skepticism I was still curious to learn more about his ideas, and though I was too poor at the time to buy the book he was selling (a collection of talks and articles titled Judge for Yourselves), I did order it a few years later. If nothing else, it certainly makes for interesting reading. It includes lengthy pieces about both JFK and Jonestown, plus shorter ones on various other subjects, such as UFOs. (He thinks they're surveillance craft initially created by the Nazis and further developed by the military here after taking in some of the former after WWII. He likes to call them "unidentified fascist observatories.") It was easy to see how, if one isn't trained in critical thinking, one might well be persuaded by this sort of thing. He obviously has done a lot of research -- but the question is, what kind of research? He likes to quote this saying by his friend Penn Jones: "Take one incident and research the hell out of it." But, almost as if in answer to this motto, a writer in one of the skeptical publications once pointed out that focusing too much on one incident is likely to lead one astray: any collection of facts will contain some seeming patterns which are completely accidental, simply because of the laws of probability. (Indeed, this is the key premise behind much of John Cage's art.) And, when you're focusing on one past incident, you don't have much opportunity to do hypothesis testing (not that I've seen any evidence that conspiracy theorists are wont to do that anyway). But you have lots of leeway to choose which avenues of inquiry to pursue, and favor those that appear likely to confirm your ideological predispositions. And afterwards, of course, you have leeway to report only on those connections that led to something that confirms those predispositions, further distorting the picture of reality you pass on to others. And all this, note, can happen without any intent to deceive -- it depends only on the researcher's lack of critical thinking skills. My impression is that typically conspiracy theorists not only lack such skills themselves but, because they don't understand the sort of cognitive malfunctions these serve to guard against, they never think to attribute others' errors (real or perceived) to such self-deception, but instead jump to the conclusion that intentional dishonesty and malevolence must be involved. Which further reinforces their conspiratorial world view, ad infinitum. I subsequently bought a couple other assassination books that I happened upon -- High Treason by Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone and ZR Rifle: The Plot to Kill Kennedy and Castro by Claudia Furiati. Only in the past few months did I get around to reading them. The former has a lot of sources, but I noticed some signs of sloppy research. For instance, there's one section in which Groden and Livingstone enumerate what they consider instances of missing or destroyed evidence. In several cases they mention the same example twice within the space of a few pages, as if they were listing two separate items (thereby multiplying the apparent evidence of cover-up). This doesn't exactly inspire confidence: if they can't even keep track of the information as they're putting it in their book, why would I trust the procedures by which they assembled and verified it in the first place? They also make a number of tendentious inferences. For example, discussing the Oswald backyard photos, in which he holds a rifle in one hand and a radical newspaper in the other, they say, "It is unlikely that anyone would be reading both the [Stalinist] Worker and the [then Trotskyist] Militant, since the two papers are of opposing ideologies -- unless that person was involved in an intelligence operation." Whoa! Haven't Groden and Livingstone ever heard of exploring a range of ideas? Well, perhaps not. Maybe they're the sort of people who only read things they expect to reinforce their current view of things. This would come as no surprise, given my experience with John Judge. This dubious inference on their part serves as additional evidence that conspiratorial thinking often reflects (and in turn reinforces) poor cognitive habits. Furiati's book is less substantial. There are no endnotes, and much of the text reiterates the putative findings of US-based assassination researchers. The new part is based on Furiati's interview with Cuban counterintelligence chief Fabian Escalante. Although the book's cover says, "Cuba Opens Secret Files," these files are not reproduced in the book, aside from a couple brief passages quoted. The appendix features several reports from Cuba's State Security Department, but only the top page of each one; the captions don't indicate how long they actually are. So most of the book's new material is Furiati's paraphrases of what Escalante told her. What he told her -- only some of which directly pertains to the Kennedy assassination -- sounds interesting, but clearly it's coming from an interested source. While it's possible to make a strong case against the US economic embargo and other hostile policies toward Cuba without being a supporter of its present government (and many of their opponents do so), it's also clear that they might see propaganda value in linking their opponents with Kennedy's assassination. So, having now read several pro-conspiracy writings -- and found them intriguing but not quite persuasive -- I decided it was time to check out the other side of the argument. So I borrowed Gerald Posner's Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK from the library. This was a rather different experience. It's generally very well sourced, and he refrains from tendentious inferences (at least with respect to the assassination itself; he's a little less careful when discussing the conspiracy theorists). The most notable difference may be the huge amount of space he devotes to Oswald's biography, compared to the paltry treatment the conspiratorialists give him. This was, in fact, the part of the book I found most fascinating. And not only fascinating. The first chapter, covering Oswald's childhood, was anxious-making, because all too often aspects of his home environment were reminiscent of things I'd experienced, as were his psychological responses thereto -- though neither were as bad for me as they were for him. It made for some very difficult reading; I felt like putting the book down a few times because of how uncomfortable it was making me. The scary thing was not that Oswald as assassin was incomprehensible, but that he was too easy to understand. In addition, from the outset and often seemingly without trying, Posner makes apparent the dishonesty of some of the conspiracy theorists. On the first page he describes Oswald's arrest in the Texas Theater -- how a police officer approached him, how Oswald assaulted the officer and only subsequently, when the fight wasn't going his way, put his hands up and said, "I am not resisting arrest!" How do Groden and Livingstone present this? They only describe the second part of this incident; reading them, you'd never know that Oswald had put up a fight before surrendering. This is important because Groden and Livingstone present their version in support of the claim that Oswald knew he'd been set up as a patsy, and was avoiding a fight so as not to give the police an excuse to kill him on the spot and thereby silence him. This interpretation obviously falls apart when one reads the complete account. Are Groden and Livingstone being dishonest? Probably not, in their own minds. They may have convinced themselves the first part of the incident never happened, and so see nothing wrong with omitting it. But a more intellectually honest approach would have been to tell the whole story as reported, and then explain why they think part of it isn't true. Another thing that struck me was in Posner's chapter on Yuri Nosenko and the "war of the defectors." He mentions that Richard Helms, while heading the CIA, advised Earl Warren against taking testimony from Nosenko. I took note because Nosenko denied that Oswald had been a Soviet agent; his testimony would therefore weaken the case that Oswald had been that, as well as tending to discourage inquiry into any kind of conspiracy hypothesis. Yet Groden and Livingstone clearly indicated that they consider Helms to be part of the assassination conspiracy. If they're right, it would have been in his interest to have Nosenko testify, not to prevent his testimony. (More on this below.) Notwithstanding the title, Posner doesn't thoroughly address all the conspiratorialists' arguments. But he does make some important points. For instance, he points out that if Oswald had been hired at any of the several places he applied prior to the Texas School Book Depository, he wouldn't have been in the right building to shoot Kennedy (or to serve as a patsy for that matter, as some allege). Further, the people who helped him get that job were Ruth Paine, a Quaker, and her friends -- not likely participants in a right-wing conspiracy. He also shows that no "magic" is required to explain the fatal bullet's trajectory if one takes Kennedy and Connolly's body configurations at the time into account. By the way, Oswald's posing with both Stalinist and Trotskyist papers has become totally unmysterious by the time one gets to that episode in Posner's book. It jibes perfectly with the political and psychological portrait he paints of him, based on a variety of documents. Although I found Posner's book pretty persuasive, I knew a rejoinder to it had been written. So now I borrowed Harold Weisberg's Case Open from the library. This was pretty disappointing. First of all, Weisberg's style is awfully off-putting. After averring in the preface that "nothing in Case Open is meant personally," he proceeds almost immediately to engage in harsh ad hominem attacks; on the very first page he writes of Posner's "little-man dirtiness," a phrase he repeats with variations throughout the book. Another thing that makes this book hard to read is Weisberg's frequent indulgence in extremely convoluted complex sentences, so that it's hard to even follow what he's trying to say. A couple things complicated judging the book. One is that Weisberg is evidently criticizing an earlier edition of Case Closed than the one I had borrowed; once I realized this, statements that had initially struck me as willful misrepresentations, I had to set aside as possibly being accurate with respect to the original version of Posner's book. Nonetheless, the fact that Case Closed could remain as convincing as it is, even after possibly having been revised in the wake of Weisberg's criticisms, indicates the weakness of those criticisms. Put in the best possible light, they could be construed as, "Consider the source." The problem with that argument is that it cuts both ways, and when it cuts Weisberg it draws blood. While another allowance I might feel obliged to make is that he was confined by infirmity to his bed when writing the book, and so couldn't access most of his own files and had to rely largely on memory, this doesn't explain away internal inconsistencies in what he could write. For example, early in the book he accuses Posner of "withholding from his readers" the fact that he had the CIA's cooperation in interviewing Nosenko. (He actually goes further by saying the CIA "jumped in to help" Posner with the "gift" of Nosenko, although he cites no evidence that this was the CIA's idea rather than Posner's.) He repeats this claim of "dishonesty" on Posner's part several times. And what does he do later on in the book? He complains about Posner's "incessantly" "boasting" about the the cooperation he got from the CIA to interview Nosenko -- diametrically opposite to what he claimed earlier! And now he repeats this claim several times. Another thing that really undermines Weisberg's credibility is the way he ignores the biographical information about Oswald. He portrays Posner's entire case for Oswald's motive as having been based on a report on him as a boy made by a psychiatrist at a juvenile detention center. He then tries to discredit the psychiatrist, named Hartogs, by saying he'd engaged in sexual abuse of patients, without explaining what bearing this has on the reliability of his clinical observations, let alone how it would cause him to provide false testimony in support of an assassination conspiracy years before it was hatched. But in reality, by the time one gets to the account of Hartogs' notes on Oswald, they don't even come as a surprise. After reading all the preceding material about the circumstances of his upbringing, and observations that others made of him, the real surprise would have been if Hartogs hadn't expressed some serious concerns (well beyond that he merely "behaved badly," as Weisberg dismissively puts it; that would by definition be true of anyone in juvenile detention, whereas Hartogs explicitly says Oswald is atypical). As for Weisberg's argument concerning Nosenko, this seems to me like much ado about nothing. His claim is that Nosenko's maltreatment by the CIA began right after he told the FBI that the KGB had suspected Oswald of being a US intelligence agent; together with testimony that the FBI was known not to have any agents in the USSR, Weisberg describes this as "fingering" the CIA. Presumably he thinks this is also why Helms didn't want Nosenko testifying to the Warren Commission. This seems pretty silly to me. There weren't many defectors from the US to the USSR in that period; it would not surprise me if the KGB had suspected all of them were US agents. The natural suspiciousness of an intelligence agency like the KGB hardly constitutes evidence "fingering" a rival agency. Yet this alone, according to Weisberg, is supposed to have motivated the CIA in their horrendous maltreatment of Nosenko (which he incomprehensibly accuses Posner of downplaying, though he specifies little beyond what Posner does). Weisberg also frequently engages in double standards. He says without explanation that Posner could not possibly have read all the Warren Commission materials he says he did, and therefore must be working from what someone else gave him. Based on this, he derides Posner's claim to have made his own index of these materials to compensate for the bias he saw in Sylvia Meagher's index. Yet if one compares the time periods involved, there's hardly any difference -- Weisberg allows that Posner had as much as a year and a half to prepare his index, whereas there were also only a couple years from when the Warren Commission published its report to when Meagher published her index. So, why is what was evidently possible for Meagher, supposedly not possible for Posner? One of the flimsy arguments Weisberg makes for Posner's dishonesty is based on the fact that in one interview, he said he'd intended his book to be an open-minded review of all the theories, to try and sort what was credible from what wasn't; while in another, he indicated he thought at the outset that Oswald may have been in a conspiracy with the Mafia, or possibly just a small circle of friends. Weisberg says this "proves" that Posner was untruthful when he claimed to have approached his subject with an open mind. As with Groden and Livingstone's argument about the backyard photos, this may inadvertently say a lot about the way Weisberg thinks. What does it say about a person, that he thinks having any kind of opinion about a question makes it impossible to set that opinion aside and try to impartially examine all the evidence? Meanwhile, Weisberg doesn't hold himself to the same standard. Although throughout the book he claims to only be presenting facts, not speculations, at the very outset he explains that he took up research on the assassination after having told his wife, during the interval between Kennedy's murder and Oswald's, that it looked like someone was trying to ensure that Oswald couldn't get a fair trial, and was probably going to kill him -- and then saw it happen. It never occurs to him that if Posner's having an opinion beforehand about what happened (supposedly) prevented him from examining all the evidence impartially, then the exact same argument would apply to Weisberg, who obviously also had an opinion before he'd done any research. While there are parts of Weisberg's book that might look like a strong case for conspiracy -- if I could rely on his presentation of the facts -- his own inconsistency and his disregard for important facts in areas I already know about make it quite impossible for me to trust his presentation of evidence. While I'm not in a position to totally rule out conspiratorial explanations in this matter, the evidence as a whole seems to weigh strongly against them. And after seeing so much sloppy research and reasoning on the part of conspiracy theorists, I'm not inclined to invest any more time studying them.

Recent experience seems to confirm something I'd observed before: I'm more motivated to take social initiatives when I have someone to "report back" to.

Today I attended the Sunday platform at the Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia, at which David Lindorff spoke. After initially sitting down next to a couple people I've known for a while and a relative of theirs (all nice, but not my generation), I made myself get up and sit instead with a younger, attractive stranger. I was able to resume conversation after the platform and then had some lunch with her, and exchanged contact info.

This was the third time I'd done something similar in the past few weeks. The first time was just the day before my first appointment with a therapist, having not seen one since 2006. And that was also the last time I had "asked out" someone in a general way (as opposed to inviting them somewhere I was already going), specifically as homework agreed with that therapist.

Even though no homework has been agreed with this new therapist yet, simply having one seems to have motivated me to take initiatives I likely wouldn't have otherwise. The same thing was true back in 1993, when I was being supervised by a psychiatrist in connection with a drug study, also in relation to social anxiety disorder.

This connection probably has to do with the roots of my condition, which I believe lie in a period of my childhood when I had trouble getting my parents' attention. This led me to start avoiding any effort to get people's attention under most circumstances, so as to avoid the pain of being refused it, as well as a low tolerance for frustration in general. I believe it also led to my motivation's being dependent on having someone who would notice and approve my efforts without my having to seek their attention. For instance, unlike most kids apparently, I generally dreaded summer vacation because I seemed to have nothing to do then. I would be impatient for the school year to begin again.

That said, I have also gradually improved during periods when I wasn't seeing a mental health professional -- but with a lag behind things I did while seeing one. It's also true that I've improved thanks to things I've learned from other sources such as the self-described seduction community. But I've also put these into practice mostly while seeing a professional.

Specter's Switch Is No Reason for Labor to Sell Itself Short

Since Senator Arlen Specter has left the Republican party for the Democrats, the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO is now indicating it may support him, according to an interview with their president Bill George on WHYY this morning. This is despite Specter's opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, aimed at leveling a playing field presently stacked steeply against workers trying to form unions. Unions can do better than this; despite their decline in recent years, they still have a lot of resources, especially in the form of people power. They demonstrated this in the considerable role they played in helping elect Barack Obama president. Why should labor settle for someone like Specter, who opposes such an important part of its agenda? Just because he now has a "D" after his name? Such an attitude betrays a lack of self-confidence, and of confidence in the membership, on the part of the current leadership. This is particularly self-destructive when it leads to dependence on a party that has so often sold workers short. George indicates that he's "talking" to Specter and may get him to change his position on EFCA. We can wish him well in that effort, but his chances will be better if he makes clear that he knows he can go somewhere else. Nor does he have to settle for what's acceptable to Democratic party power brokers; he could challenge Specter himself, or call a special convention of the labor movement to consider other electoral options, including the Labor Party. 

The Woodhull Freedom Foundation's newslist has sent me another example of blame-the-victim discourse about sex work, which you can read at http://newsblaze.com/story/20090430080434rose.nb/topstory.html. My comment follows.

  

You identify Martha Rosenberg as "a columnist and cartoonist who writes about public health." Looks more to me like she writes about victim-blaming sensationalism -- or, rather, writes it herself. Her article is identified as an op-ed rather than a news story, yet usually an op-ed piece advocates for a public policy of some sort. What policy is advocated here? Seemingly none, but what's implied is an endorsement of current laws against sex work, and the stigma that is used to justify them. Her method is S.O.P. for prohibitionists: take the worst cases of what can go wrong, portray these not as worst cases but as the norm (without bothering to cite any sources -- it doesn't appear she's ever talked to a current sex worker, nor even a former one who wasn't "repentant"), and avoid any mention of how prohibition and stigma are largely responsible for these abuses. No surprise, as she's doing her part to help perpetuate such stigma. How else to interpret a passage like: "Because when a woman has an improvident one night stand and does the 'shame walk' home, when her 'friends' post or sext her moments of dissipation or compromise or she 'shares' them herself on her blog or webpage that's one thing." Apparently Rosenberg regards bad sex as an occasion for "shame" -- for women though not men. And she presumes to know better what constitutes "dissipation" or "compromise" for any given woman than the woman herself, who presumably wouldn't post such moments if she saw them the same way. Such "slut-shaming" attitudes not only serve to maintain laws against sex workers, but also let some police, clients, and members of the general public feel entitled to commit all sorts of crimes and abuses against them, or look the other way when others do. Finally there's this doozy of a head-scratcher: "But when a nervous john or inappropriate john like a good looking medical student in his early twenties who has no reason to visit a sex worker appears, it may be the first time a woman realizes just how outside of the law and society's protection she has strayed." Wha-?? After warning women to expect that all clients will be repulsive, she implies that anything else is necessarily scary. While one accused murderer may happen to be a good-looking medical student, this hardly means that such people have no reason to visit a sex worker. For one thing, med students often have no time for dating. Even more ridiculous is the suggestion that nervousness should be a warning sign. Hello? Does it not occur to her that many clients may be clients because they're shy? If I ever patronized a prostitute, as someone with social anxiety disorder I'm pretty sure I would be nervous. Interacting with the opposite sex is typically a big problem area for people with this condition. But Rosenberg doesn't consider these possibilities. She's too preoccupied with her mission of convincing women involved in sex work that they've "strayed."

Since posting the above, I tried looking Rosenberg up on the Web in an effort to understand the apparent inconsistencies in her attitude toward sex workers. It seems she regards herself as an ally, but can't help sometimes manifesting a feeling that sex work is essentially unhealthy. See http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/beware-right-wings-%e2%80%9csex-slavery%e2%80%9d-agenda-say-chicago-sex-workers/ for another example of this, with my comment. 

This Should Be Easier Now

I hadn't previously had a home Internet connection that worked with Blogger, so I had to post from a library computer. Now that I do, I should be able to update much more consistently. I was at the National Equality Rally today (part of Equality Forum), along with a few thousand others who came out in spite of the rain. One man told me he was there from Michigan. Then I spent some time at the SundayOUT! street fest, where the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia had a table. They organize the local atheist meetups in which I often participate. When someone infected with the Repent America mind virus (of about three who'd been around the rally) came near, the group had fun displaying T-shirts like "Smile -- there's no Hell" and "I'm your friendly neighborhood atheist" and passing out Get Out of Hell Free cards. All in all, a satisfying day. 

Quote of the Month

"Thank goodness Hitler never got the Lizard." -- James Morrow, reading from his latest novel, Shambling Towards Hiroshima, last Thursday.

"Sexting" and the Reactionary Rhetoric of "Consequences"

Dr. Dan Gottlieb, the house psychologist of WHYY radio, revealed his erotophobia again in the interview he gave this morning on the Pennsylvania "sexting" case. I just submitted the following comment to the station: 

I was disappointed, but not surprised, by Dan Gottlieb's comments on the "sexting" case. Not surprised, because the promo had made no mention of the nature of the court case, in which the judge threatened not just three, but dozens of teens, mostly girls, with charges of "child pornography" for sending pictures of themselves, not engaged in any sexual activity, to their friends -- unless they submitted to "sexual violence awareness" classes. Are we really supposed to believe that boys are less eager to show off their looks? Or isn't this clearly a case of one judge's attempt to enforce traditional standards of female modesty? Yet Gottlieb made no mention of this context. Instead, he urged parents talk to their children about "long-term consequences," taking for granted that those same traditional norms of modesty, clearly already being challenged, will still be in place "when they're thirty." By implying this, and urging parents to convey the same to their children, Gottlieb was in fact perpetuating the same puritanical attitudes as the judge is trying to enforce. It's time he thought about the long-term consequences of his own actions.

You can listen to the original story and post your own comment by going to http://whyy.org/cms/news/health-science/behavioral-health-health-science/2009/04/13/teens-technology-and-sex/6032/comment-page-1#comment-177. 

Not "Off the Top of My Head"

Rather, a post brought to my attention by someone on BiUnity's discussion list gave me the chance to point out something I've known about for a long time but don't get enough opportunity to mention. The occasion was a blog posting by satirist Jon Swift, commenting on a posting by conservative blogger Rod Dreher:

Rod Dreher was shocked by the story of a Texas man whose wife and children were slaughtered by his daughter and her friends. But he wasn't shocked by the brutal murder itself. Murders happen all the time. Big deal. What shocked him was a passing remark by the father who survived the attack by Erin, his little murderess. After he moved his family from the small Texas town of Celeste (pop. 800) to the liberal Emory (pop. 1200) his daughter was subject to the horrors of big city debauchery. "Emory has a lot of bisexual kids; it's like it was almost cool to be bisexual. One of the first things that happened was some girl wanted to be Erin's little girlfriend. And I was like, 'That ain't happenin'.' " Dreher was understandably shocked by this revelation. "This is a tiny East Texas town -- and there's a bisexual culture in one of them, among the teenagers?" he wrote. "WTF? What do I not get about teenage life these days? What do I not get about the cultural air kids breathe? I am so not going to give my children over to this culture, if I can help it." If for some reason Dreher's children decide to murder him, though I can't think of any reason why they would off the top of my head, at least he'll go to his grave comforted by the thought that he saved them from the evils of bisexuality. 

I read Dreher's post and added the following comment: Rod, your surprise appears to stem from the erroneous belief -- which, interestingly, is pretty common on both the Right and the Left -- that human beings are not really animals but instead are shaped entirely by our culture. (This is sometimes called "cultural determinism," though I prefer to say cultural reductionism to distinguish it from philosophical determinism, which does not imply reductionism.) If you understood that human behavior is largely shaped by our biology, then you wouldn't be surprised by thriving bisexuality in a small town, since it's well established that bisexuality exists in countless species throughout nature (for instance see the book Biological Exuberance), where culture in the human sense, and certainly media culture, is presumably not a factor. The main difference between small towns and big cities, I think, is that behaviors regarded as "deviant" are more likely to be swept under a rug there. And this may be germane to why the brutal mass murder occurred. The father makes clear that he and his wife would go to considerable lengths to "protect" their daughter from any message telling her that it's okay to do anything they consider "deviant." And there's considerable clinical evidence to suggest that children raised in such a repressive family atmosphere are more likely to develop violent fixations to which their sexuality becomes tied ("vandalized lovemaps" as pediatric psychiatrist John Money puts it). So the violent outcome in this case may actually be an indirect consequence of the same attitudes and parenting style that made them so alarmed about "bisexual chic." 

A Few Thoughts on the Vagina Monologues

In the process of creating the previous post, I perused the Wikipedia article about The Vagina Monologues and was rather surprised that it said some pro-sex feminists had described them as sex-negative or male-bashing. I had, in fact, been worried before seeing them that this would turn out to be true, but I didn't find them that way at all. Notably, at a couple points the characters, who I understand to be based on real women, say rather apologetically that their stories aren't "politically correct" -- like the woman who explains that she didn't like her vagina till she met a man who loved to ogle it. It may be considered a sad comment on the ideological climate in some circles, that they would feel the need to make such apologies. But they tell their stories anyway, never mind their "incorrectness" -- and Eve Ensler, the Monologues' creator, didn't censor them. It seems to me that this amounts to an implicit criticism of "PC," not an endorsement of it.

P.S. In fact, it occurs to me that the piece I mentioned above, "Because He Liked to Look at It," not only is not male-bashing but appears as a rather direct challenge to the negative critique of "male gaze" that is so central for many idealist feminists.

Squeaky Voices 'R' Us

I just had the first occasion in quite a while to read a children's book -- and probably the first time ever that I read an entire book aloud, since the first book I was able to read. That's because, after attending a performance of The Vagina Monologues last month, I volunteered to read a book-on-tape as part of the Penn Women's Center's Week of Service. I just came from doing so. The book was Squizzy the Black Squirrel: A Fabulous Fable of Friendship, written by Chuck Stone with illustrations by Jeannie Jackson. It will be one of 35 books-on-tape to be donated by PWC to a women's and children's shelter run by Women Against Abuse. I volunteered this particular form of service because reading aloud is one of the things I'm good at. And I chose that particular book because squirrels were my favorite animals when I was little. (Although, when my mother told me she'd run out of bedtime stories and I would have to invent a character for her to tell new ones about, I made it a zebra named Stripey. Hence my username.) 

Support Ethics Education for Freedom

The Woodhull Freedom Foundation recently forwarded this from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S.--

ACTION ALERT

Tell Superintendent Ed Turlington: Teach Respect!

Reinstate Teacher Debra Taylor!

A number of organizations have been monitoring a school controversy in Grandfield, OK where a teacher was recently suspended for teaching The Laramie Project, an award-wining play about the murder of Matthew Shepard, a young man in Wyoming who was killed because he was gay.

Debra Taylor, who teaches the Ethics and Street Law class, was using pieces of the play to help her students examine how hatred and intolerance can be justified by attitudes within a community, a church, or in the home. Midway through the unit, Superintendent Ed Turlington told her to stop teaching the material. She held a mock funeral for the play to give her students closure and was subsequently suspended. She has now accepted a resignation agreement, as she feared that she would otherwise be fired.

Her students are standing behind the play and their teacher. “She always taught us to speak our minds and have our voices heard,” said one student. We need to tell Superintendent Turlington that Debra Taylor is a dedicated teacher who is willing to confront issues of respect and acceptance for all people regardless of sexual orientation and that she deserves to be immediately reinstated.

Tell Superintendent Turlington: Teach Respect! Reinstate Teacher Debra Taylor!

Advocates in Oklahoma, Texas, and surrounding states are strongly

encouraged to call or email in support.

TAKE ACTION NOW…call Superintendent Turlington at

580-479-5237 or send an email to eturlington@grandfield.k12.ok.us and tell him:

“Debra Taylor did not deserve this kind of treatment. Young people need dedicated teachers willing to confront issues of respect and acceptance for people of all sexual orientations. She should be commended for creating a safe space for all her students and should be reinstated immediately.”

=============================

Ricci Joy Levy, Executive Director

The Woodhull Freedom Foundation

1325 Massachusetts Avenue

Suite 700

Washington, DC 20005

p: 202.628.3333

f: 202-330-5282

Direct Line: 610.212.5555

www.woodhullfoundation.org

Affirming Sexual Freedom as a Fundamental Human Right.

Another Lie Gets Repeated on NPR

This time it's the one about the Sandinistas' having supposedly lost when they "finally" let the Nicaraguan people vote. Here's what I just wrote Morning Edition: In your story this morning about the upcoming Salvadoran election, you said, "No leftist candidate has ever won a presidential election in Central America." This is false. The Sandinistas won Nicaragua's elections in 1984. Perhaps you forgot about them because the US government refused to recognize their legitimacy. But independent observers called them free and fair. In fact, as documented in Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent, they were marked by better guarantees of ballot secrecy and other prerequisites of legitimacy, than were the much-touted elections held in other, US-backed states in the region during the same period.

Counter Ageist "Warnings" Before Broadcasts

In the first post I made to my other blog, SexFreedomAction, I listed several "everyday things you can do to combat sex-negativity." Another kind of "everyday action" against sex-negativity is prompted by "warnings" like the one I heard at the start of a segment on Weekend Edition Sunday, saying it was "inappropriate for children" because it dealt with sex. I sent them the following message: 

Your story concerning a novel about an SS officer opened with a warning that the segment was "inappropriate for children." This statement was false and dangerous. There is no evidence that information about sex is harmful to children. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence that hiding such information puts them at increased risk for psychosexual problems, and makes them more vulnerable to abuse. If you feel the need to insure yourselves against complaints by erotophobic listeners, may I suggest you adopt the approach taken by Ira Glass of This American Life? When sexual subject matter is coming up, he advises listeners that what follows "mentions the existence of sex." This warning allows people to indulge their irrational fears without according them any legitimacy.

If you heard this segment too but didn't think to register an objection, it's not too late. (And if you didn't hear it you may be able to online at npr.org.) Sadly, there are sure to be plenty of future opportunities to do so as well.

'Objectivism" .NE. Objectivity

I just sent this letter to the editor of Phactum, the newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking. The latest issue featured a picture of Ayn Rand on the cover and a quote used as filler on one of the interior pages.

While the paragraphs about naval vessels that have adorned recent Phacta lack pertinence to the group's aims, they're innocuous enough. The same cannot be said for the latest issue's apparent endorsement of Ayn Rand. Rand exemplified that peculiar species, still extant, that uses "reason" and "objectivity" (or, in this case, "Objectivism") as code words not for critical thinking but, rather, another brand of dogma. I learned some interesting things about her several years ago when my book group met with Matt Ruff, who used her as a character in his science fiction novel Sewer, Gas & Electric. For one, she refused ever to debate those holding an opposing view. For another, her coterie constituted a cult of personality that actually practiced Maoist-style "criticism and self-criticism." These facts reinforced the impression I'd previously formed from my own reading of her. In some essays she offers the most ridiculous caricature of "primitive" communist societies -- a portrayal devoid of any actual ethnographic knowledge but faithfully reflecting her ideological prejudice that private property is the prerequisite to "civilization." Another telling moment was an internal monologue in her novel Atlas Shrugged, describing wilderness as "without cause or purpose." Now there's an odd conflation. Wilderness generally is without purpose, but that hardly means it's without cause. Things in the wild are just as much "caused," i.e., deterministic, as are things in the human world. The flip side of this confusion is expressed elsewhere in the same passage, where the protagonist reflects on her preference for "the clean, rational world of the [train] tunnels." Taken together, these phrases betray a visceral revulsion toward wilderness, and a rejection of anything not immediately reducible to conscious human purpose as "irrational." If you know something about her personal history, you can guess this all stems from her family's dispossession by the Bolsheviks when she was a child, which appears to have given her an obsession with order and "legality" at any cost. She defined "freedom" not in terms of democracy at all, but as the untrammeled supremacy of private property -- while conveniently ignoring the role of force in that institution's creation. I understand that many skeptics are very individualistic and may find Rand's individualism, as well as her atheism, appealing. But an exemplar of critical thinking, she was not. 

"Price Worth Paying" Albright to Speak at Penn

It's reported in today's Daily Pennsylvanian that former Secretary of State Madeleine "price worth paying" Albright will be speaking at Penn Saturday, 28 February, 7:30pm at Irvine Auditorium, 34th and Spruce Streets. I regrettably couldn't protest her last appearance in this area, which was on a weekday. I look forward to being there this time and hope many of you can be too.

Obama Covers Up Israel's Nukes

In his press conference the other day, President Obama was asked by one reporter whether he knew if any countries in the Middle East currently possess nuclear weapons. He responded only by saying that he "didn't want to speculate," followed by some routine rhetoric. This was disingenuous. While they have never made it official, it is understood by all observers that Israel has had a nuclear program for many years, and probably at least one or two operational weapons. In fact, when scientist Mordechai Vanunu quit the program and went public with what he knew, they jailed him and held him incommunicado for a couple years. But, evidently, Obama intends to continue our "special relationship" with Israel, whereunder it is never acknowledged that they could be the destabilizing element in the region. This recalls his famous "speech on race." In a less remembered portion thereof, he differentiated himself from his former pastor by saying he recognizes the threat to Middle East peace as coming from Islamic extremists, and "not from staunch US allies like Israel." Note the implication that a US ally, ipso facto, cannot be the problem. This was a perfect example of what polymath Tariq Ali, in his book The Clash of Fundamentalisms, calls "imperial fundamentalism": the assumption that the United States and its allies are inherently good, and therefore cannot be on the wrong side in any world conflict -- at most, it's assumed, we may occasionally make well-intentioned mistakes. No matter how much evidence accumulates of imperial amorality, the logical conclusion is never drawn. And, speaking of cover-ups, here's another one. Last week the radio program America Abroad did a story reviewing the recent history of Afghanistan, in the course of which an old official lie was regurgitated. As I wrote them a moment ago:

Your story perpetuated the official myth that US support for religious extremists in Afghanistan began in response to the Soviet invasion. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski actually admitted, in an interview he gave to Le Nouvel Observateur which appeared in the French edition, what some of us had said from the beginning: that this aid to feudal/fundamentalist reactionaries started before the invasion -- five months before, to be exact. A translation of this article can be read at: http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/brz.htm. While claiming it wasn't their intent, Brzezinski admitted they knew this aid might well provoke a Soviet military response, and that they would regard the resulting quagmire for the USSR as a welcome outcome. And the Afghani people, especially Afghani women, be damned. A translation of the interview is copied below.

Brzezinski's Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur

Le Nouvel Observateur: Former CIA director Robert Gates states in his memoirs: The American secret services began six months before the Soviet intervention to support the Mujahideen [in Afghanistan]. At that time you were president Carters security advisor; thus you played a key role in this affair. Do you confirm this statement? Zbigniew Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version, the CIA's support for the Mujahideen began in 1980, i.e. after the Soviet army's invasion of Afghanistan on 24 December 1979. But the reality, which was kept secret until today, is completely different: Actually it was on 3 July 1979 that president Carter signed the first directive for the secret support of the opposition against the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day I wrote a note, in which I explained to the president that this support would in my opinion lead to a military intervention by the Soviets.

Le Nouvel Observateur: Despite this risk you were a supporter of this covert action? But perhaps you expected the Soviets to enter this war and tried to provoke it? Zbigniew Brzezinski: It's not exactly like that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene but we knowingly increased the probability that they would do it. Le Nouvel Observateur: When the Soviets justified their intervention with the statement that they were fighting against a secret US interference in Afghanistan, nobody believed them. Nevertheless there was a core of truth to this...Do you regret nothing today? Zbigniew Brzezinski: Regret what? This secret operation was an excellent idea. It lured the Russians into the Afghan trap, and you would like me to regret that? On the day when the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote president Carter, in essence: "We now have the opportunity to provide the USSR with their Viet Nam war." Indeed for ten years Moscow had to conduct a war that was intolerable for the regime, a conflict which involved the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet Empire. Le Nouvel Observateur: And also, don't you regret having helped future terrorists, having given them weapons and advice? Zbigniew Brzezinski: What is most important for world history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? Some Islamic hotheads or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? Le Nouvel Observateur: "Some hotheads?" But it has been said time and time again: today Islamic fundamentalism represents a world-wide threat... Zbigniew Brzezinski: Rubbish! It's said that the West has a global policy regarding Islam. That's hogwash: there is no global Islam. Let's look at Islam in a rational and not a demagogic or emotional way. It is the first world religion with 1.5 billion adherents. But what is there in common between fundamentalist Saudi Arabia, moderate Morocco, militaristic Pakistan, pro-Western Egypt and secularized Central Asia? Nothing more than that which connects the Christian countries...

***

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Stepping Up the Exposures

Over the past few weeks I've gotten more focused on exposing myself to potentially anxiety-inducing situations so as to learn to be less sociallyanxious. On ething that helped propel this was a card I received on Christmas Eve from my uncle Frank, who asked what I'd been doing with my life. I responded with a note telling of the progress I've made over the past few years, particularly noting my appearances at some open mikes and the hopes that this may lead to something that pays. Having written that, I then felt obliged to start getting more serious about it. So next day I busked for an hour in Suburban Station, after not having done so anywhere more than a few times and that at least a year before. I've busked several times in the days since, often before work, and mean to make it a regular habit. I'd already decided to forgo my usual New Year's Eve practice of attending the party at Lee and Diane Weinstein's for membersof the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, in favor of going to a public party where there would be more new people I might meet. I went to McGillen's Old Ale House, where they were also doing karaoke. I sang "Imagine" -- having been reminded of how much I like it when it concluded the HumanLight event a couple weeks ago -- and the MC told me I'd done a good job. This feeling must have been shared by another partygoer who high-fived me as I was on my way out. High-fived by a total stranger! That ever happened before. But I'd earned it by having the courage to get in the spotlight like that, without even having any friends present. When I'd first thought I might like to do karaoke, visiting Sisters with other members of BiUnity nearly four years ago, I only tried singing along under my breath, being as yet to shy to do more. Now I sang under my breath only prior to my own performance, to save my voice, but sang out loud afterward, and with no self-consciousness to speak of.

Uploading My Art

The other day I decided to start trying to sell my art, most of which is mathematically inspired. I've just uploaded some of it to my flickr account. My user name there is stripeyseven, and you can find my work in the set called "My art."

Exchanging Languages

Relax! That doesn't mean I'm posting in Korean from now on. Not yet anyway. What it does mean is that I've started conversing with a Korean exchange student, with the object of learning each other's languages. Why am I doing this? you may ask. Well, a Penn undergrad I met at the ICSA conference in June, on hearing of my efforts to overcome social anxiety -- and especially my desire to get more comfortable in one-on-one interaction with people -- suggested I look for ads from people seeking English conversation. In the past month or two I've noticed a couple such ads on Penn's campus (where I use the library's computers for Net access) and responded to them. The first person had already found a conversation partner, but the second was still looking. After exchanging emails I got a call from her yesterday, and met her (with her sister) this evening. I'll be seeing her again Friday. I got that call while receiving a ride home from a HumanLight celebration in Horsham, hosted by the Humanist Association of Greater Philadelphia and sponsored by PhillyCOR, the Philadelphia Coalition of Reason. HumanLight is a humanist winter holiday officially observed on 23 December. The celebration featured food and drink,a speech or two, a storyteller, live music, and the gathering of all the volunteers for a group picture. The ceremonial part involved the lighting of three candles representing reason, hope, and compassion. The mother candle was red while the daughters were green, yellow, and blue, but I don't know whether these colors symbolized anything. The ceremonies opened with singing a song specifically written for HumanLight, and closed with John Lennon's "Imagine." I get rather emotional from that song. Today, I was pleased to see that PhillyCOR has its own display on the mall by the National Visitors Center, set a little further back than the Hannukah menorah and the Nativity creche. PhillyCOR's display is a giant globe on a pedestal, "brought to you by your friendly neighborhood atheists, humanists, and freethinkers."

Logo

Early yesterday morning, a college professor told me and my classmates to write an essay (don't remember what about), and that we each should put not only our name on it, but also something that would distinguish our work from others'.

I was worried that I wouldn't know what to write, but before thinking about that I made up this logo, based on my initials.

Then I woke up.

Quote of the Month

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/6404-vote-first-ask-questions-later.html

"Is there reason to be happy that the insufferably religious George W. is soon to be history? 'I believe that Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis.' That was said by someone named Barack Obama.[1] The United States turns out religious fanatics like the Japanese turn out cars. Let's pray for an end to this." -- William Blum

Help Keep Sex Worker Media Alive

The nation's premier magazine by and about sex workers, maintained by an all-volunteer staff, is in serious financial trouble. I'm going to help them in whatever ways I'm able and hope you will too. Here's a recent communication from outgoing editor-in-chief Rachel Aimee, including some special premium offers to loosen you generosity: 

Help Us Keep the Hustle Up–And Get Cute $pread Stuff! Back in August, I sent an email to the $pread staff list saying I thought we were going to have to stop publishing. Within the space of a year, most of our core staff members had left, and I was feeling burned out to the point where I had to accept that it was time for me to leave too. When we started this magazine, we optimistically figured it would only be a couple of years before we were able to start paying our staff. Turns out the publishing industry is a brutal place for an independent magazine like $pread, and four and a half years on this ass-kicking project is still completely dependent on an all-volunteer staff, many of whom put in 20 plus hours a week on top of their day—or night—jobs. Fortunately the new team of $preadsters are still enthusiastic enough to see our daily struggles as challenges instead of defeats. (2008 has certainly brought its fair share of challenges: On top of our collective mass burnout, we’ve had to move offices twice in the past six months and are now operating our of a six by six foot closet packed from wall to wall with boxes of magazines.) The problem is that $pread is not going to be able to carry on like this forever. Eventually even our most devoted volunteers will burn out, and it’s really difficult to keep morale up—and the magazine going—with such a high staff turnover. We’ve talked about cutting our Outreach Program to move toward financial stability, but we don’t want to have to stop sending free magazines to low income sex workers. That’s why we need your support. To inspire you to support $pread this holiday season we have two new cute giveaway items to tempt you with, both available until January 31st. DONATE $50 or more to get the cute $pread tote bag, pictured above! Or, DONATE $25 or more to get your very own $pread magnet. You can also get your hands on either of these items by becoming a Member or Lifetime Member, and of course, you can always support us the old-fashioned way by subscribing! The holiday season is upon us! A subscription to $pread, t-shirt, tank top, tote bag, back issues, and art posters are the perfect way to give to your friends while supporting an organization you love. Please help us keep the hustle up—and your favorite magazine in print—by buying, donating, and supporting. Thank you! 

Workers Occupy Chicago Factory

I received the following news yesterday. Bank of America's homepage doesn't offer a fax number or email address, but if you click on "Contact" you'll be directed to a web form. The article tells how you can contribute financially.

Workers occupy Chicago factory! Give your support!
By Jill White
Chicago
Published Dec 6, 2008 9:18 PM

Dec. 6—This afternoon more than 250
community activists, union leaders and others gathered in a rally in front of
Republic Windows Factory on Chicago’s northwest side. They were voicing their
solidarity with the workers who have refused to leave the factory in protest
over the shutdown of the plant. Speakers included members of the Service
Employees International Union; Teamsters; Chicago Teachers Union; American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and others.

In an interview following the rally, Armando Robles, President of UE Local
111, described the anger felt by the workers when they were told, with so little
notice, that not only were they losing their jobs but that their insurance
policies had been canceled and workers were not to receive vacation earned or
severance pay.

Robles said that according to Illinois law, the company is required to give
75 days notice of a shutdown, or pay workers for 75 days. The company blames the
Bank of America for not providing a line of credit to the company. But,
according to Robles, management has been lying to the workers and the union
about the status of company.

Following the vote to stage the sit-in, Robles described how the management
tried to isolate reporters from the workers, but they blocked the door so the
reporters could remain in the meeting.

Another worker, Silvia Magna, described how shocked and angry the workers
were when they found out they were losing their jobs. She said they all work
hard, and yet she only brings home $328 a week.

Many workers have been cut and lost fingers on the job. Magna said the
workers are determined to stay in the plant until “we get what we worked for.”
They blame both the owners and the bankers because the owners have not been
honest with the workers.

Magna says they are fighting not only for themselves and their families, “but
to be an inspiration to other workers to fight like we are. We are making
history because people have not seen the workers fight from inside the plants.”
She says the workers will do whatever is necessary and requested solidarity from
people from the outside.

UE organizer Leah Fried said that if there is no satisfactory resolution at a
meeting Dec. 8, and all else remains stable, the next solidarity action in
Chicago will be held at noon Tuesday, Dec. 9, at Bank of America at 231 S.
LaSalle. Fried said people should email and fax Bank of America demanding the
workers receive their pay due. Chicago supporters are encouraged to come by and
sign a solidarity banner that is posted in the plant lobby. Financial
contributions should be sent to Local 111, UE Hall, 37 S. Ashland Ave., Chicago,
IL 60607.

Articles copyright 1995-2008 Workers World. Verbatim copying
and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without
royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Foxhole Myth Rears Its Head Again

In an otherwise well-reasoned opinion piece about the hypocrisy of many erstwhile "free (capitalist) market" ideologues, David Faris regrettably (and quite superfluously to his actual point) repeated that old canard about atheists in foxholes. I've posted the following comment which I'll also submit as a letter to the editor:

It was disappointing to see David Faris trot out that old myth about there being no atheists in foxholes. There are plenty of atheists around who've been in foxholes and can testify otherwise. I'm optimistic that, once this is brought to his attention, Faris will realize how insulting this saying is.

After his public support for the Afghanistan war (in spite of his being a Quaker), it wasn't too surprising to hear NPR's Scott Simon offer a simple-minded commentary on Weekend Edition Saturday, chalking up the terrorism in Mumbai to "evil." But it provided a good opportunity to express some thoughts I hadn't had the chance to publish previously. The letter I've sent in response follows.

I was disappointed to hear Scott Simon ramble self-indulgently about "evil" today. I say "self-indulgently" because his comments expressed a surrender of intellectual clarity and curiosity to the impulse to dismissively label an enemy. Simon says the Mumbai terrorists had "learned to use their intellect to turn off their conscience." But empirically, as social psychologist [and my instructor for a psych intro course at Penn] John Sabini once put it, conscience is "what stops you from doing what you'd like to do." Can Simon seriously think the Mumbai terrorists liked slaughtering dozens of people who were no threat to them? Nonsense. Free of the constraints of conscience, they doubtless would rather have been lying on a beach sipping a cold drink. But, as the Milgram experiment demonstrated, a conscience governed by an authoritarian ideology can be used to make people do unnatural, anti-empathic things. As [fellow] cult survivor and sociologist Janja Lalich said in her keynote address to the International Cultic Studies Association in June, "The suicide bombers are not psychopaths. They are victims." The same applies to the Mumbai terrorists. 

Polygyny Increases Diversity, Study Finds

Another story in the 25 October Science News may interest partisans of sexual freedom. Titled "X chromosome is extra diverse," it describes a recent study finding evidence that "the X chromosome is more genetically diverse than would be expected if men and women passed along their genes equally." Despite this wording, I don't think this implies that it's the inequality between quantities of polyandry and polygyny that is responsible for increasing total genetic diversity. It's just that men are physically capable of having children by more mates than women are. It stands to reason that if women were capable of the same degree of polyandry, diversity would be increased even further. The bottom line is that this seems to be a good counterexample to the common assumption that monogamy is good for the species. The article can be read here: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/36900/title/X_chromosome_is_extra_diverse. 

The Climate Consensus That Never Was

The 25 October issue of Science News contains an article germane to one of the issues discussed recently by PhACT. Titled "Cooling climate 'consensus' of 1970s never was," it reports on a study convincingly documenting that, while popular media may have given disproportionate attention to the possibility of a new ice age (coincidentally, I only recently saw such an article in the first, 1976 edition of Analog Annual which I happened to purchase a few years ago), in "major journal papers published between 1965 and 1979...only seven articles predicted that global average temperature would continue to cool. During the same period, 44 journal papers indicated that the average temperature would rise and 20 were neutral or made no climate predictions." This contradicts the claim frequently made by global warming skeptics that "not long ago experts all believed the Earth was cooling, not warming," the implication being that the experts could be wrong again. The Science News article is readable by the public at http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/37590/title/Cooling_climate_%E2%80%98consensus%E2%80%99_of_1970s_never_was. 

How Not to Do a Story About Porn

I just sent the following letter in response to an article in Philadelphia's City Paper. The original article is at http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2008/11/13/meet-south-phillys-stoya.



It's clear that Matt Stroud came to his assignment with a stick up his innards about pornography.

It's not surprising that Stoya got annoyed with him after a while. Sex workers are used to being approached by people with a judgmental attitude toward their work -- people who can't accept them at face value; who assume, if they seem happy, that they must be hiding something. I'm willing to bet that's what Stoya picked up on and got "mad" at.

Stroud makes his bias clear in innumerable small ways. There's his description of contract stars as "indentured," as if to remind us of the almost-slavery of some early American settlers -- while ignoring that "mainstream" actors, athletes, and other sorts of professionals have agreed to very similar arrangements up to the present time.

His ignorance is screamed again when he quotes someone at a porn confab who tells him many of the women he sees there are "fluffers." This looks like a case of natives-hoax-anthropologist; there's actually no such thing as a fluffer. Porn producers are far too cheap to keep people on retainer just in case someone has trouble keeping it up; they simply expect the male talent to have this ability.

Near the end of the piece, Stroud says, "I know [Stoya's father] doesn't like [her performing in pornographic films]. Stoya says as much." Unless Stroud has left something out, this too is false. What she told him is that her father works for a "mega-Christian" employer. It's Stroud who insisted that "almost any company would find that difficult to deal with." And he likewise projects that onto her father.

Then there are the quotes interspersed with the story, which are of dubious relevance when not from plainly erotophobic sources. One of these is a book whose title equates kink with "hatred"; another is from Susan Brownmiller and concerns the relationship between war and rape. The statement in itself is incontestable but has no bearing whatever on the subject of pornography; its inclusion could only have been intended to create a spurious association in the mind of the reader.

But none of this came as a surprise after reading the column by [publisher] Bruce Schimmel, who clearly shares Stroud's bias. He claims that porn "feeds on exploitation," without ever bothering to define this term. The only objective sense of the word of which I'm aware is that of one person's living off the labor of another by means of some sort of power imbalance, typically an unequal distribution of property. Under this definition sex work occurs in both exploitative and non-exploitative contexts, like most any other kind of work. But the stigmatizing attitude expressed in the article contributes to the conditions for exploitation.

Schimmel even cites Boogie NightsBoogie Nights as having shown us what the lives of porn stars are really like. Um, excuse me, Bruce, but that film was fictionfiction; it reliably showed not what the porn world is like, but how Hollywood is comfortable portraying it and/or thinks we want to see it.

If Schimmel, Stroud, or anyone else wants to get a more accurate picture of the porn industry, I recommend they subscribe to Spread$pread, a magazine by and about sex workers. Their URL is http://www.spreadmagazine.org/.